PardonMyFrench

2008 Election Recount Part 4 - Why Weren't We More Social?

This is part 4 of my series looking at the 2008 Presidential Election.  Past posts are: Part 1 The Palin Effect, Part 2 Monday Morning Quarterback, and Part 3 The Death of Microtargeting.

So one of the questions that everyone likes to ask or write about is why didn't Senator McCain's team embrace social networking?  My answer is, well we did but we were challenged by money, people resources, and our own supporters.

First a little disclosure.  It is no secret that I am not a believer in using social networking sites for PAID online advertising.  That's especially true for MySpace which is where I believe good advertisers go to die, especially if they do direct deals with them.  Facebook, I have a little more faith in, but I am hard pressed to recommend them for advertising too.  YouTube I love and I've run campaigns there; I especially love YouTube because they are powered by Google which always makes me happy.  So, standard display advertising is a waste of money on most social networking sites, but I do (and did) believe they are critical for involving supporters and pushing CRM messages.  OK, so what do I think happened.  Three things....

1. No Money - as much as social networking costs next to nothing when compared with advertising, it still costs money to develop widgets and content.  When compared with Senator Obama, we were at a significant disadvantage.
2. No People - social networking done correctly needs people to do the outreach.  Unofficially I've heard that Senator Obama's eCampaign totaled around 95 and Senator McCain's totaled around 15.  At that level of disparity you have to make choices by prioritizing items.
3. Different Supporters - While I believe there were quite a number of people that supported Senator McCain that would spontaneously create videos, Senator Obama as well as Congressman Ron Paul had a much larger pool of people that would create content.  Here's a screen shot of videos when you search on YouTube for Barack Obama and John McCain (filtered out crap).  Other than "Dear Mr. Obama" and "Obama's Citizenship Problem" the number of positive McCain supporter videos are nowhere to be found and even if they were further do on the list, they would not have nearly as many video views.  Heck, even our best professional fan video - Raisin' McCain by John Rich only generated 152,000 views.

McCain's team had a Facebook page and we pushed messaging through it added widgets, and had 600K+ supporters.  To put that in perspective, we had 3.85 times as many supporters as Hillary Clinton.  Yes, Obama was a monster when it came to Facebook but then again you could argue he had inside help to get him started. We did some advertising in Facebook and for a very small micro-target it performed great, but didn't scale.

We used YouTube from the very beginning.  When the campaign imploded during the Primary season we had to use YouTube to push out video ads.  Web videos was a key strategy for us especially before we won New Hampshire.

The blogosphere was also very important but it was a tough row to hoe prior to wrapping up the nomination and then it took some time after that.  The vast majority of Republican blogs are very conservative writers and those are our activists.  It was BRUTAL during the Primary season.  Town Hall bloggers were rough, Michelle Malkin, RedState, Race42008, and so on.  I should know because I monitored posts.  I made comments.  I reached out to bloggers.  I mixed it up with people.  I interacted with Mitt Romney's army of supporters and took on Ron Paul's zealots.  Town Hall's Hugh Hewitt DROVE ME FRIGGIN CRAZY and years later I still find it difficult to read his posts. 

I marshalled bloggers to help John McCain win TechCrunch's Tech President endorsement.  Heck, who do you think put John McCain's SecondLife together just in case?  If you were one of my Twitter followers in the last month of the campaign you saw campaign posts from the Daily Briefing.  We pushed out widgets, video contests, tried donation gathering from MySpace, Yahoo! Answers, MySpace Townhall, etc and etc.

So when people say John McCain's team wasn't social, they are wrong.  We were very social.  Did we run into the greatest use of social networking marketing in the history of the internet in the form of Barack Obama? YES. 

If we were more social would we have won the election?  No.  We still had to deal withan unpopular President, the economy, and money problems.  Senator McCain's eCampaign Team was VERY SOCIAL and any marketer should be jealous of what we accomplished; that is unless you were on Senator Obama's campaign.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

More Smoke and Mirrors from MySpace on Politics

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of MySpace.  I haven't been from the very beginning.  I believe it is the 2010 version of Geo Cities and that the only advertisers that really shown any results are online dating, soft porn, and entertainment.  Those types of advertisers are fine when you are starting out, but to never grow beyond that it is pathetic.  The CPMs you can get there still cost you less than buying a gum ball at your local diner.  That's right for 25 cents you too can have a banner ad run in the "great" MySpace 1000 times.  I don't really see any significant results that have made me approach them for a deal, let alone in politics.

Of course that won't stop them from trying to get a share of the political advertising budget which of course is expected to be huge.  Webware has a summary of a recent survey that MySpace is releasing to try and make their case.  You should not be fooled into thinking this is a fertile ground for you political marketers.  Here are some highlights from the post called MySpace touts early success with political initiatives:

• banner ads invited a selection of users to participate, meaning that in order to even notice the invitation to participate (MY NOTE: SELECTION BIAS)
• the MySpace user in question would have to proactively click through (MY NOTE: MORE BIAS)
• Responses showed that MySpace users are 139 percent more likely than the population at large "to have visited an online chat room with public officials or political candidates in the last 30 days," according to a release (MY NOTE: THAT'S THE BIAS IN ACTION)
• They were also 29 percent more likely to have searched online for political information the day before the poll was taken, and 16 percent more likely to have read news online. (MY NOTE: THAT'S THE BIAS IN ACTION)
• It's convenient news for MySpace, which has been branding itself as a new-media political hub with its series of candidate dialogues co-sponsored by MTV, and a mock primary scheduled for the beginning of January (MY NOTE:  MORE THAN JUST A CONVENIENCE)

Ok, so let me give you some inside baseball on surveys online.  MySpace runs a survey using a pop-up banner and for a user to participate in the poll they need to click on that banner.  Hmmm, let me tell you that I've participated in similar online surveys, but the big difference was they were conducted as control-exposed to the ad experiments.  Those survey ads typically get a click thru rate of less than 0.01% and when I've run them they were run on reputable sites, not a Geo City clone where click rates for real ads hover just slightly above 0.01%.

What does this mean?  Well for someone to participate in the survey they already have to be pre-disposed to seeing banner ads, seeing political ads and then be willing to take a poll.  These types of people would of course be VERY INTERESTED IN POLITICS.  So of course the numbers look great.  This type of data is self serving for someone in the advertising business.  All it is really trying to do is make it easier on their sales force to sell through to politics.  Usually these ideas get cooked up by a sales team to make their lives better.  The conversation goes like this behind the scenes.

BIG VP OF SALES: Wow Ace Sales Man, I just read a report that says political ad spending is going to approach a Googol Dollars by November 2008.  If we can get 1% of those sales we can make our end of year goal.

ACE SALES MAN:  Ok that sounds great, who do you want to work on this.

BIG VP OF SALES::  Well of course you!  You are my top sales person so we'll make you Head of Political Sales.  How does that sound?

ACE SALES MAN::  Well what about my big client, who gets that?

BIG VP OF SALES:  We'll give it to Molly, she can handle it.  Think of how rich you'll be.  This will be an easy sale for you because we have a huge audience.

ACE SALES MAN: OK, well do you know anyone in politics?

BIG VP OF SALES:  My neighbor is running for the Planning Board in my home town, I'm sure he knows somebody in Mr and Mrs President Campaign.  Better yet, we'll make them come to us because we have such an awesome, engaged audience.  Let's throw a survey together and build this new web page that the candidates will be beating our doors down to advertise on...

The problem with a self-serving survey like this is that it is almost insulting to the community of e-Campaign directors and media consultants (like me).  While some campaigns (obviously not McCain or any clients that work with us) might be playing a little catch up on the internet that doesn't mean they can be fooled with survey data.  Here's a hint MySpace, Political campaigns know more about polling and survey data than you do.

If you have a product that goes well with the content in MySpace, then by all means go for it.  If you are a political campaign and you have a reason to advertise in there, then ummm, email me so we can talk unless of course you are one of the other Presidential campaigns and then spend, spend away in MySpace.  Social networks work best as a CRM tool and not so well for acquisition unless you have R-rated ads.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Politico, Compete Study Rains on Social Networking Parade

Political news site The Politico just published a study it completed with Compete.com which looked at web surfing behaviors of people who visited the current crop of Presidential contenders' websites.  While some of you readers might be saying to yourself, oh great another political marketing post that I'll just ignore, I think you should spend a little more time studying the article and the results.  If a political marketers has challenges with social networking, then perhaps maybe you should rethink your strategy too.  The article called Campaign seek measure of internet success has some great quotes in it and a link to a table to run some of your own comparisons.  Here are some highlights from the article...

• Some of the more newsworthy efforts have focused on campaign-created MySpace, Facebook, Meetup and YouTube pages — and so far, the payoff has been difficult to measure.
• But the results reveal interesting online habits among the politically attuned. A significant number get their news from mainstream media versus political blogs. YouTube, meanwhile, is one of the most reliable ways for candidates to communicate directly to voters. But the candidates’ official Meetup, Facebook and MySpace pages appear less effective at that.
• Half of those tracked by Compete visited MySpace in September, and 54 percent visited YouTube. Nearly two-thirds went to Wikipedia, a quarter logged on to Facebook and 7 percent visited Meetup.
• Meetup, the darling of the 2004 election cycle, barely registers with any candidate other than Internet phenom Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)
• Two percent checked out the candidates’ MySpace pages, and 1 percent hit his or her Facebook page.
• YouTube is in a different league, with 16 percent of its readers visiting candidate-specific pages
• The political readers captured by Compete were much more likely to get their news from a mainstream source than from political blogs. Forty-eight percent went to CNN, followed by Yahoo News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, USA Today and, to a lesser extent, Politico.

So are these social networks all hype?  Well for politics I think they are over hyped, but they do serve useful purposes in connecting people.  While for advertisers, they provide a cheap and often free way of advertising.  Plus, the word of mouth potential of course is always there.

However (and that's a big however), as an acquisition vehicle I don't think the majority of advertisers have quite figured out how to use them.  Sure for every Ron Paul advertiser there are thousands of other advertisers that don't have the right message or product to move the social networking needle. 

This study clearly shows for the majority of political advertisers that they should put the spending back towards more traditional internet mediums.  Besides that I think advertisers should really think of social networks as a CRM vehicle (yes I wrote that).  That's really where your strategy should be moving towards and less of an acquisition vehicle.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Where Are Those Online Advertising Dollars Going?

I saw this post today from Steve Rubel called Five Reasons Why A Pay Per Click Recession Looms and it got me thinking about a post I've been meaning to write.  Couple that with the announcement that AOL is laying off 2,000 people (see this analysis by Kara Swisher over at BoomTown) and I think you can see a post forming.  Also Reuters has an article called Ad dollars flood web, but will they go far enough that talks about how web advertising may be over-hyped.  So between those articles and the New York Times article that Steve referenced it got me thinking having we seen this movie before?  Now, I won't get tit for tat with Steve because he brings up a lot of valid observations, but I don't think a PPC Recession is coming, definitely a slow down in growth rates.  I also don't believe CPAs will push CPC aside and that's mainly because I've seen this movie before. 

Steve's 5 reasons are Clutter, Declining Relevance of Traffic unless it results in an action, Rising Costs, Marketers Spread The Ball Around, and Search Ads Are Viewed As Untrustworthy and all of them can be extrapolated to advertising in general, not just search.  Let's use Steve's reasons with my own historical perspective of why a recession isn't looming, but a revaluation of the expectations of online advertising is going to occur.

1. CLUTTER:  Way back in my early days of online advertising at AT&T circa 1998, we had a theory that said "if you bought all of the major portals (aka on ramps to the internet) you can reduce the amount of competitive ads that a user could see" and thus AT&T had deals with Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and iVillage (AOL had a deal with MCI).  AT&T paid through the nose for these deals and I had the honor of canceling them one by one as the deals didn't pan out.  Basically, advertisers, who only now are discovering the internet, are shifting ad dollars away from more traditional vehicles to online; this means that inventory will tighten, costs will rise, and then advertisers will start to wonder, why did I shift those dollars in the first place.
2. DECLINING OF RELEVANT TRAFFIC:  Back in the old days people wanted to know about eyeballs - how many people saw my ad or how many people visited my website.  Personally because I grew up in a direct response, results oriented world I always wanted to know about conversions and what my CPA was.  In fact, it let me buy on a CPA basis even back in 1998.  CPA dealsc peaked around 2002 when inventory supplies were easy.  CPCs, CPMs, CPAs don't matter all that much because what really matters is whether you are hitting your goals (a poorly performing CPA deal means you get nothing and that includes impressions).
3. RISING COSTS:  See above and I don't just think it is a search problem, but search has probably the most to lose.  When costs rise advertisers will start to turn back to Direct Mail (yes I wrote that) for a segment of customers and even TV ads.  A very smart person (Norm Lehoullier formerly of Grey Interactive) once told me that every medium has its place and for direct mail it might be for an older audience. 
4. SEARCH ADS ARE VIEWED AS UNTRUSTWORTHY:  What ad isn't?  Search just seems to be more trusting probably due to relevancy factors as well as mixing up of organic search with paid search.  That's always been an erroneous observation.
5. MARKETERS SPREAD THE BALL AROUND:  This is probably the most significant problem for any site owner and not just search.  There are so many sites out there that try to have specific content to attract more ad dollars (proof see the multitudes of social networking sites) that it becomes harder and harder to figure out where to place your dollars.  Blogs, social networks, Google, Yahoo, ad networkers the list goes on and on.  Try figuring out which ad network to place your dollars with.  All of them claim they have the best sites, the cheapest inventory, the best behavioral targeting, the best results, etc.  This is a widespread problem for the industry and the way it will shake out will be marketers will stick with the bigger sites and the bigger networks only because they hopefully will control more of a user's time during a day and they have less attention to spend on the one highly relevant site that delivers little volume.   Why do you think MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Google are gobbling up other sites?  The battle will be not for users but for average time spent on a site.

Really, this movie has been seen before.  It will shake out like it always does which is a few big players controlling as much of the ad dollars as they can.  That's why there is a consolidation occurring and when you can't get enough of your forecasted share of revenue, big layoffs can occur like they are at AOL.  Google, Yahoo, and even MSN will survive because they will make the acquisitions that are needed to keep going.  I'm not ready to forecast doom for Google or search, not when there are still more advertisers to jump into the mix (small business and local merchants).

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

I Still Believe That MySpace Is The Web 2.0 Version of GeoCities

I saw this Fortune article called As Facebook Takes Off, MySpace Strikes Back and I really had to smile.  I think it shows a lack of understanding to compare MySpace with Facebook, but before I rant a little bit lets take a look at some of the pluses that MySpace has according to the article:

• 45 billion page views and the most traffic on the internet
• Americans spend 12% of their time there
• Almost half of its members are 35+
• MySpace is a mishmash of modern media - rich with music and video and comedy. It's like a rock & roll club - chaotic, loud, and packed. Many user profiles are florid and flamboyant, with flashing text and music that starts playing as soon as you arrive.
• You can befriend a crab or AT&T
• It's free

Seriously, that's the pluses according to the article and those traffic numbers are formidable but I personally think that's their downfall.  There is no common thread between these pages and the best way to describe MySpace is a loose confederation of pages joined together.  I mean just compare the two designs for individuals.  Facebook has standard layouts that you can add applications to, but at the end of the day, the designs are Facebook's.  Meanwhile MySpace while allowing you to make your own personalized page looks like 42nd st of my youth - just a series of blinking lights and porn.  You can friend anyone or anything and the ONLY requests I ever get are from scantily clad women with names like Bambi and Candi.  I get a few Facebook requests per day and they are all legitimate.

The only part of the article that resonated with me is that MySpace is cashing in on blog bling, but then you have to question how long that will last.  I spend 10+ hours per day on the internet and I NEVER RUN ACROSS A SINGLE MYSPACE PAGE.  I have plenty of Google Alerts setup and never find anything from those pages.  If they are cashing in on blogs then when was the last time you saw a blog post from them? Seriously where are these blog pages?

That's why I believe that MySpace is just a Web 2.0 version of GeoCities.  Back in its day, GeoCities was the 5th most trafficked site on the internet.  Users had their own pages with plenty of bling and were part of neighborhoods.  These pages allowed them to express themselves and of course had music and pictures, but there was no consistency even within a neighborhood.  They added advertising, went IPO and then was purchased by Yahoo for $3.5 billion.  Now it is the equivalent of an internet junkyard and the last time I ever saw a page I caught a virus because of a behind the scenes drive by download.

I still have no use for MySpace.  Not that I'm so mature (which I am definitely not), but the lack of control makes the pages look like 42nd street - just a bunch of blinking lights and porn.  The folks at Fox are going to monetize the traffic and in the short term have it churn out money.  Music, dating sites, movies, and entertainment will spend money to have their ads show up on those sites, but the end of the day, it will be GeoCities part 2.  Mark it down.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Hey Eric, What's With All of The LinkedIn and Facebook Invites?

So the last few days I expanded my Facebook and LinkedIn network and I got a bunch of emails and instant messages from people asking, umm why? Well a few big name blogs (yes people have more traffic than I do :-) like Jason Calacanis (yes my tough commenter on bloggingstocks.com) has declared Facebook Bankruptcy and Social Networking Exhaustion.  Robert Scoble countered back with pro Facebook posts and now recently posted around his favorite Facebook apps.  Also I saw this link I believe from Scoble on 12 ways to use Facebook professionally, so I decided to give it another try.  However, with a different twist which is how it compares to LinkedIn for professionals.

So, I'm giving both a go and here are my quick observations from the past few days:

• I have many more people in my professional network on LinkedIn.  I have 116 real contacts at LinkedIn and a whopping 18 on Facebook.
• Both were very easy to upload my Outlook contacts and then look for friends on both; however, I don't know about you but trolling through LinkedIn's add a contact  has always been very tedious while Facebook is actually kind of fun and easy to use.
• LinkedIn's format and profiles are very bland even for a professional site and reminds me most about those old Who's Who in American Business books that you try and get sold on.
• While Facebook has that underlying feeling that people are kind of there to find a date (notice the questions on your profile: relationship status, looking for...), LinkedIn feels like an easy place for recruiters to look for their next job applicant.
• Facebook of course has a ton more applications and is much more dynamic when it comes to current status and updates.  Plus, by being able to join Central NJ as a network I get to see what is happening in my local area; posted by other Facebook peeps.

Net, net to me LinkedIn just feels like something you have to do in order to be a professional and feels like a safe step for busy management types (the people I used to work with for 10 years at AT&T and 5 years at Harrisdirect) who want to test networking online.  It isn't something that keeps you coming back and checking on people unless you need to look for a job or connect to people that could be hiring.  Most people that I've talked to use it as part of their job search and for finding recruiters in a quiet manner - again it reminds me of that coveted directory of professional recruiters that you used to need in your job search.

However, Facebook is really a fast grower for professionals because there is more to do and as Jason Calacanis pointed out, more ways to spend time (or waste time).  Searching for people is fun and it is easy to leave messages for people.  You can look for people in past jobs, past schools, or in and around where you live.  It is the perfect mash up of MySpace and LinkedIn - it is becoming professional enough for co-workers not to look down on you, yet it has a much safer environment for more social past-times.  It is definitely less creepy and less raunchy than MySpace which I have very little use for; my favorite past time is to look for neighbors who really get into MySpace.

For me Facebook looks like a real winner long term while MySpace as I've written before is just the year 2010 version of GeoCities.  If LinkedIn doesn't up their applications and usability it will become as useful as the Who's Who in American Business reference books of the past.  I'm starting to believe in Facebook again, even if I don't have a ton of contacts and you can definitely waste a lot of time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

These Mini-Episodes Are A Brilliant Idea

Yes, I'm about 5 days behind making this post, but other things caught my attention and I do have one full time jobs and a couple of side things that keeps me busy (BTW - that's why I don't consider myself a full-time blogger).  Anyway, the NYTimes had an article called MySpace Mini-Episodes, Courtesy of Honda and I went through the entire article and test drove the TJ Hooker episode and I think this is an absolutely wonderful idea.  Here's the basic idea:

• Take a bunch of 70s/80s reruns like Charlie Angels, TJ Hooker, etc and edit them down to 4-6 minutes to be shown on the screen.
• Each episode is carefully edited to keep the plot together all while making sure you get the general gist of the show
• Stick an 8 second pre-roll commercial in front of the episode solely  sponsored by Honda
• And, bingo you have webified  TV shows built for today's attention deficit disorder crowd of the internet

Seriously, it is brilliant.  I can't really see it hurting DVD sales and to be blunt it may even help.  How many of you are going to run out and buy the Facts of Life in DVD?  (Did anyone else have a crush on Nancy McKeon besides myself while in school?)  Plus it introduces these shows to a generation that will never see them because they've probably outlived their TV syndication usefulness . 

I watched the TJ Hooker episode and you could definitely get a feel for the show and the plot.  That is, bad guy on the loose, James T Kirk chases him but fails at first, Heather Locklear make it look easy being sexy, and then Kirk fights the villain and wins in the end rescuing his partner. It was enjoyable, fast watching, virtually commercial free, and looked great on the little screen.

The only concerns I might have is limiting it to MySpace only for now and how Honda will judge success.  The sponsorship for now is 6 figures and as the article mentions, Honda is trying to sell the Honda Fit.  Also found in the NY Times article is this "Lauren Mehl, associate media director at RPA in Santa Monica, Calif., said the agency would evaluate the subsequent sponsorship opportunities based on how the commercials perform their run on MySpace."

I wonder what Honda will deem success.  It fits in with their positioning of their car, but other than boosting awareness and visits to the site, I think they'll have a hard time proving car sales are being generated from these ads, but maybe they have some other measurements.

This is clearly a homerun product and besides being available on the web, you can bet the format will find a home on your cell phone in the future as well as other online properties. Hopefully, more studios will follow the lead.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric   

MySpace Reality Show Needs a Reality Check

Saw this over at the Wall Street Journal today.  MySpace, Mark Burnett Team Up for Political Reality Show and while I think it is a good test and makes sense from MySpace's perspective, my prediction is that it will be a non-event.  Here's the premise.  MySpace users submit videos on why they should be included in the show, called Independent.  The field of contestants is narrowed down based on the MySpace community .  Challenges on the network show will be determined by buzz generated on MySpace.  The winner gets $1 million dollars to use on their own political campaign or donate to a political cause.

Here's why I think this will be a lackluster event and pretty much nothing more than a PR trick:

• Unlike other reality shows (Idol) where a winner can get fame, fortune, and career, that's not the case here.  If an Independent were to win, they'd have to be super rich and famous...
• This show also assumed that the American Public views politics as a game and that they are not being overwhelmed with political messages already
• Not sure what the advertising opportunities will be here especially for politicians.  Seriously, how good do you think the content will be to advertise a presidential candidate against (because that's what you will be doing) an opponent that is being voted to stay on to potentially run against them?

Ok, stop right there.  Sure, I've been critical of MySpace in the past and still am.  I do applaud them for monetizing the traffic that is there, but I've yet to see advertising that is not a) music, video, TV, gaming, movie products or b) not placed there by an advertising network like Ad.com or c) a result of a Google search or d) food or e) cheap .com products (more on that later).  I've been buying a ton of online advertising for political as well as financial clients and I just don't see the outcry for placing ads there.  The clients I've dealt with don't want any ads running there because of the unpredictable content and the perceived demographic profile.

Again, I don't fault MySpace for participating and it goes well with their online vote and of course their impact page, I just think that the theory that says that they will garner a lion's share of advertising dollars because of these efforts is a little exaggerated.  I don't hear an outcry with my advertisers to get on MySpace and I wonder how many other non-entertainment advertisers are seeing the same lack of demand.  Sure all politicians have profiles and that's good business, but I waiting to see one of them actually spend ad dollars in MySpace, especially ad dollars not associated with a network buy.  BTW - I believe there was another version of this show that was run on cable TV in the past and as I recall it bombed.  Anyone remember the show or the results?

BTW - According to MediaPost no network has committed yet to this show.  That will definitely damper ad revenue....

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Copyright, Universal Music and the Community

So on Friday Universal Music decided to sue MySpace over copyright infringement and I was originally going to sit this one out because I've said enough on the subject in the past.  Well, I can't sit this one out for very long.  Sorry, besides I need to write another post to keep my mind off of the the Giants-Jaguars football game. 

First up for me was Joe Jaffe's website and the commentary which I left for Joe which he did answer.   You can read the post from Joe which is a good one and no he didn't get me upset or fired up, just made me think a little more and post.  However, I asked this question "Why should MySpace make money from other's content?.....Seems to me that MySpace cuts a deal or end up in court."  Joe wrote back "Don't get me wrong...I'm not advocating that MySpace profit (although I'm still not sure there's a robust and proven advertising model per se other than the exit strategy which as already been enacted), but at the same time, how exactly does one figure out a fair and equitable royalty per se.."  Good stuff.

Next up was my fellow Marketing Prof blogger Mack Collier in the post called Want to Go Swimming? Try Going WITH The Current.  I didn't leave a comment because well, it goes along with what Joe wrote and I already have one conversation going.

So, my question is why should the content owners let  MySpace, YouTube and others make money off of their traffic which is partly driven by the copyrighted material posted there?  Where do you think people are going to go to see The Daily Show now that they had the content removed from YouTube and kept over at their website so Comedy Central can monetize that traffic themselves?  How do you view the Google search results shown on the right?  See #4?  Where do you think that traffic is now going to?  Back to the content owner.  I'm sure Comedy Central's web marketers are happy with where that traffic is going now.

I'm not sure what the right answer is here, but when YouTube can be sold for a king's ransom for traffic that is partly generated by copyrighted material than those content owners will take notice and want a slice of the pie.  I do believe that going after the end-user who uploaded the material in the first place is not the solution - that's just wrong to go after people that are not benefiting from a trickle down effect of the gold being showered on the inventors of the social marketing shell game.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

90,000 MySpace Friends - So What

Speaking of Whatsnextblog, B.L. wrote a post about Honda's Gil the crab MySpace profile (BTW - thanks to my new friend Jeff, I've corrected Git with Gil when I had a typo) saying it is lame and then Beyond Madison Avenue wrote another post that took the other side of the argument saying that 90,000 friends can't be all that bad.  It shouldn't be any surprise that I think this is lame.

So a marketer throws up a fake MySpace profile and then you get friends to link to it.  Great.  How many Honda Elements is it selling?  Do you think these 90K friends are running out and buying an Element?  Are they going to tell their friends to buy an $18K car because they are friends with a fake crab?  How about if a new commercial is made with a crab? No.

One thing people have forgotten are the 23K people that have signed Gil's petition to get back to work in a revised Honda commercial.  If anything, the people that dropped their personal information on the form are really Gil's friends.

As I've written before there are much better uses of MySpace than just lame pages.  This type of advertising is neither cutting edge nor brand altering.  At the end of the day, companies like Honda are interested in car sales or at least traffic into a showroom, not helping trying to save a crab from the lousy cutting room floor.  Sure, someone is having some fun with it, but I doubt Honda is paying attention; when I ran online marketing for Harrisdirect, I wouldn't have paid any attention either unless it delivered sales.

Social communities are about having conversations and building communities of interest.  I'm sure the only interest Gil's friends have are trying to get displayed on his MySpace page to drive traffic back to their own page.  With friends like that, we'd all end up as main ingredients in She Crab Soup.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

NJ Warns Parents About MySpace

A very interesting letter came home in my son's school backpack on Friday.  It was a  letter from the state of New Jersey and it was warning parents about inappropriate Internet use in and out of school.  It speaks about research linking cyber bullying

and child predators with social networks.  And, the guest of honor for the story was none other than, you guessed it, MySpace.  In fact, there is a whole paragraph devoted to MySpace at the end of the letter.

I took a lot of grief for some of my MySpace bashing when I warned advertisers about using it.  Not, music, video, movies, and other entertainment products, but your every day big companies that care about what their brand is associated with when advertising.  And, this letter in addition to past posts should provide further evidence of the type of traffic that is believed to be on MySpace.

Yes there is a ton of traffic on MySpace and the model has some very good aspects to it.  However, some of the traffic is dubious at best.  If you are going to advertise there you need to make sure it is just not due to a network buy on Advertising.com where you will have your banners shown over and over again until eventually someone clicks because they are bored.  If you do make the conscience effort to advertise there I hope your product is youth oriented and you create a conversational marketing strategy because that's what good social networking is all about.  You just have to wade through some garbage while slogging through MySpace.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

 

 

My There's Some News on MySpace This Week

Ok, some folks think I've been a little harsh on marketers and politicians using MySpace to have a conversation with that user base.  In fact, over at Marketing Prof's Blog which I write for, I got into a debate with one of these MySpace zealots.  As I've written quite a number of times - MySpace is not appropriate for all advertisers even though they have like 75 million registered users.  Well, some forward thinking advertisers as reported by a number of sites and newspapers (listed below in a second) finally started using MySpace for what it was meant for.  Look, by definition online advertising should be more targeted than other mediums out there, so there is no excuse to flush good marketing dollars down the bowl.  MySpace with their very young audience is the P-E-R-F-E-C-T place for music, video, movies, TV shows, etc as witnessed by these new campaigns.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal and CNET, MySpace via Fox will offer $1.99 downloads of the popular show 24.  Burger King will sponsor the downloads and get a MySpace themed page.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, said MySpace will likely offer more content in the future such as television shows, games, and movies.  At least Burger King got a clue about social networking or at least they are willing to try it.  Thank goodness they didn't slap up a MySpace page so you can link to your favorite Double Whopper with cheese.

AdRants got the jump with reporting that HBO's Entourage has a MySpace page.  As you can see, the page includes a contest to create your own MySpace page featuring your group of friends.  HBO will choose the finalists and MySpace the winner.  Of course included in the contest was the ability to pass the page out through your network.  As of 9PM tonight, Entourage has 308 "friends".

While these are all great uses of MySpace and targeted at the right audience, it is not for all advertisers.  You think that I've been exaggerating or I have an axe to grind with them?  Well in today's Wall Street Journal, on the front page no less, there was an article titled A Problem With Hot Web Outfits: Keeping Pages Free From Porn.  Basically it describes how big web destinations, and in particular MySpace, are working with the  photo hosting companies like PhotoBucket to screen out pornographic photos which are against their policies.  The article described one poor sap that looks at 300 photos PER MINUTE to screen out these HOTT (2 T's on purpose) photos.  (I wonder how this guy would fair in a Rorschach test :-))  The article also reminded people how Verizon pulled its ads out of MySpace because of these photos.  BTW - why would Verizon think that anyone would want to have a social networking relationship with a land line phone?  Can you spell new product development for screening out photos on the internet?

MySpace is not for every marketer even though it has a ton of traffic and a good, youthful demographic.  Remember that you can always find this audience elsewhere on the internet if you are afraid of having your ads run next to content that would make your PR officer pull a Flounder on Dean Wormer.  The only problem you'd run into then would be a lack of a social networking relationship unless you figure out another angle, but I guess that's what boring display and search ads are for!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Looking for Voters In All The Wrong Spaces

I know you are thinking another MySpace bashing post, but that’s not entirely true. I don’t dislike MySpace, but I do think people need to put it in perspective and use it wisely for advertising. Take this article posted on the San Francisco Cronicle called Candidates invade MySpace. Gubernatorial hopefuls seek younger voters on teen chat site.

The article goes into detail how Democratic California Gubernatorial hopeful Phil Angelides has a MySpace page in addition to your typical website, blog, etc. It seems Mr. Angelides has 1200 friends over at MySpace (link here), undoubtly all there to help him win the election right? As Theo Yedinsky, director of the New Politics Institute, a part of the New Democratic Network said in the article “"I think it is unbelievably important,'' Yedinsky says. "And my question for the future would be: If you are a presidential candidate (in 2008), do you have MySpace organizers? And if you don't, why not? Because this is way too big to ignore.”

Need a few reasons? I can come up with a few reasons that MySpace is not the holy grail for political advertising. Sure the web is the place for candidates to push a message, socialize with voters, and raise donations, however is MySpace the place for that?  I think the vote is still not in.   You see you need voters and the first key to being a voter is…..bingo – age. You have to be ummm, last time I checked – 18 to vote. This article clearly forgets to outline how many people in MySpace are over 18.  Plus, a rule of thumb is that younger people are less likely to register and vote (sorry, I'm down in DC today for meetings and I can't find my  demographic report or else I'd back that up with numbers). Finally, most elections are state specific, so he needs all of the friends he can get in California only.  Having friends elsewhere unless they donate is pretty much useless.

Now why do people go to MySpace? The answer is to have their personalized page (more on that in a sec) and to socialize. Is Mr. Angelides writing posts and having a conversation or is it a static page? I couldn’t tell for sure from his MySpace page and the article didn’t specify.  MySpace is about socializing and is more than just a one-way communication vehicle. Also, does he have email addresses from any of these new friends and have they donated any money? Political friends provide grass-root support, emails, donations, and hopefully votes and again the article fails to point out any of those important points. I guess all you need to win an election in 2006 is to have a MySpace page with a lot of friends, right?

Enough about MySpace for a second.  I think candidates can pretty much ignore it for now without damaging a campaign, but they should not ignore the social networking or social aspect of the internet. Candidates should have an ongoing communication with perspective voters and supporters and they can do it in a more effective manner.

First of all using the internet for messaging and communicating with potential voters would be powerful and is virtually untapped today. Second, two-way communications via a blog or their own site could be helpful if done correctly; for example, one has to wonder about a few of Mr Angelides’ friends especially the one with the button that say Bush Sucks Dick Cheney Too. I think allowing people with their own sites and blogs to link to a candidate’s site and vice versa could be very powerful, provided they supply a few critical pieces of information like zip code, email, name, etc. Allowing them an open forum with certain members of the staff again after they provided information could be useful too. Finally, if candidates really want to get into social networking, I’d venture into LinkedIn or Meetup, but that’s just me of course.

As Yedinsky says at the end of the article "I don't think we've seen the first big MySpace story in politics.” You are right and I’m betting you won’t see many coming soon. MySpace is filled with teenagers who can’t or typically don’t vote in elections and even when they do come of voting age may not think MySpace is cool anymore.

Don’t agree? Ask people you know who are in college how often they use MySpace. I’ve asked every college student I’ve run into and they all say the same thing – “MySpace is for high school kids” and the last time I checked they don’t donate and frequently don’t vote. If social networking is where it is at for political advertising, I’d be looking in other spaces.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

MySpace Letter

To: Ross Levinsohn , President of Fox Interactive Media
Fr:  Eric Frenchman
Re: What to Do With MySpace

Mr Levinsohn,

I read with interest Sunday's NY Times article regarding MySpace and then I subsequently wrote a post on my website titled My Those Are Low CPMs at MySpace.  It occurred to me that while you probably read with interest the NY Times article, you probably missed my personal post so I thought I would take a different tact since my post was more helpful than the article from a strategy perspective. In that post, I wrote that you bought a conversational marketing place with MySpace and you should stop trying to force-fit the kiddies of your site into a nice bunch of consumers of typical marketing messages.  Why do I think I can offer this advice?  Simple, I buy a ton of media and most recently I managed the online media buying for Harrisdirect the 17th largest US internet advertiser; plus, you work on MySpace so you are open to conversations, right?

MY THOSE CPMs ARE LOW

According to the article, you are currently selling banner advertising at the rock bottom price of 10 cent CPMs which is really, really pathetic.  You probably think you have a lot of big name advertisers like E*Trade, Verizon, Cingular, University of Phoenix, but my guess is that these advertisers are not really MySpace direct advertisers but part of a media buying network like Advertising.com.  I have no inside knowledge, so I could be wrong, but I doubt it because these companies need credit worthy, over 18 customers and MySpace is not a site that they would normally fish in.  Sure, they probably grab a customer once in a while with your 70 million or so profiles, but then again if I dropped a fish hook in the ocean with no bait I'll eventually catch a fluke.  Instead of dreaming of getting higher CPMs from traditional advertisers, try a different strategy and use the strengths of your group of consumers.

MySpace STRENGTHS

Obviously you have a ton of traffic every day since you are the second largest server of pages on the internet behind Yahoo, but who is using your pages and why are they there?  Simple, you have a social network which makes it very easy for kids, 14 years and older, to quickly build a homepage and list their likes and dislikes, post photos and videos, find and connect with friends, and check out and meet new people.  I set up a page myself and you know what, you really don't gather enough information to really know who these people are.  So, stick with what you know, these kids are there to socialize not be a shill for deodorant products.

CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING ONLY

Kids, of which my wife says I'm still one (plus I do have two little ones) socialize regarding music, video, downloads, latest gadgets, cool toys, movies, clothing, video games, comic book superheros, World of Warcraft, sports, baseball cards, friends, dating, and maybe even latest cell phones, but that's stretching it a bit.   Plus, depending on the age, politics.  In fact, my 12 year old nephew and I discussed his distorted view of the President during Passover Seder.   Kids don't want to sell for car manufactures,  banks, online discount brokers,  toothpaste, deodorants, or any other traditional internet advertiser.  Any dreams of gaining higher CPMs from that group is just a pipe dream. 

Stick with  fun, social marketers  and build  web portals for these types of companies plus sponsorships.  Let kids link to these profiles and push what their likes and dislikes are.  You could also let marketers test products, make special music releases, special invites for concerts, and etc.  Also, these marketers crave data and information on who is using their product and when they fall in and out of popularity, so of course you could provide it to them for a fee.  You could create a new metric called YourBUZZ which measures popularity of a product with your MySpace participants.  You get the idea. Think of the rates and dollars you could generate from this model and if you have a few billion leftover impressions, you would now be able to sell them at a higher rate because you'll have more demand and less supply.  See how easy it is to make money on the internet?

Ross, I hope you found this memo helpful.  You seem like a very bright executive with a lot of pressure and sometimes marketing executives have trouble seeing through the forest to the trees, so I thought I might help.  Stick with what you bought, a social network for kids and stop trying to turn it into Foxnews.com.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric
April 25, 2006

My Those Are Low CPMs at MySpace

In Sunday's NY Times Business Section, there was a huge article on MySpace.com called Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher and I found it eye-opening.  If you don't know what MySpace is, let me give you a quick synopsis.    MySpace is owned by News Corp who bought it last year for $649 million and has over 70 million profiles. These profiles are personalized webpages created by mostly under 30 types where people can link to friends, post likes and dislikes, video, interest, pretty much anything that could describe you.  For the corporate types that read this blog, think of it as LinkedIn for kids. 

Now let's ignore some of the issues with MySpace (see Business Week article) which includes sexually explicit posts, trolling for minors, and etc because MySpace is a social network place for over 14 year olds.  According to the NY Times article, MySpace taps into 3 passions of young people: expressing themselves, interacting with friends, and consuming popular culture.  I'll revisit the social impact a little later on because that's the only place MySpace can make money.  Right now, MySpace is displaying more web pages than everyone except for Yahoo and theoretically can be targeted to users based on interest.  However, who is buying these ads?

Quoting the article, "the company will have $200 million in revenue this year" and later on it points out that it is charging around 10 cent CPMs for such ads.  That rate is pathetic and when you spend time on MySpace you get a ton of ads from E*Trade, Univ. of Phoenix, Verizon, Napster, etc the usual cast of characters you see on pay for performance network buys that are probably charging back to these MySpace advertisers on a CPA (cost per action) basis or a CPC basis. Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media says, "if we can raise that by 10 cents, think of the upside". Yes, and if my cat had a college degree, he'd be a professor.

MySpace has plans to expand the advertising opportunities, letting advertisers create MySpace pages so that kids can link to them.  Say, have an advertisers put a page up for cute deodorants and then let kids link to them saying this is what I use to cure bad odor.  Another idea that Fox has, according to Mark Jung, COO of Fox Interactive, is to let a car dealership create a page and then sell enhancements to attract business. 

Both these ideas, plus selling plain old banner ads at a pathetically tiny CPM misses the point of a social network.  To throw more cold water on these grandiose revenue ideas, MySpace ran testing with Google and Yahoo for search ads and then tried to get into a long term deal with them.  You know what the search companies told them?  You guessed it, no thanks, and according to the article, MySpace users are not the best prospects for most marketing since these kids use MySpace for socializing not buying.

Now what?  First of all, if you are one of these marketers and you need credit worthy customers, you should probably stay away from running typical banner ads on MySpace.  Personally, I'm a little surprised that any financial services companies are directly advertising in MySpace; I know that when I ran the 17th largest US internet advertising program, I NEVER WOULD HAVE DIPPED A TOE into MySpace.  It is the wrong demo target, even if it was a CPA deal.  I wouldn't even run on a CPC basis because there was nothing I disliked more than a clicker deal that didn't convert.  However, there is something to social network or conversational marketing if you are in the broadcast, movie, music, clothing, video game, and etc business. 

If I was marketing a musician or a TV show, targeted at the Youth market, this is where I would advertise.  Sure, I'd even run banner ads at 10 cent CPMs, but I would create pages to link to MySpace users.  I'd also want to know how many people are linking and what they are saying.  MySpace would not only provide great advertising opportunities but a wealth of information and market research for their advertisers.

Creating MySpace pages for a toothpaste advertisers, seems like a bad idea that the youth of America won't get fooled into playing along with.  I think they can figure out a commercial from a mile away.  Using MySpace for pushing out TV shows, movies, music, new music downloads, etc is really where social network advertising could work especially by providing critical market intelligence.  Mr. Levinsohn should forget about doubling his pathetic CPM with traditional advertisers and embrace what News Corp bought, a social network opportunity for the youth market the best the internet has seen since AOL from the 90's. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric