The Digital Marketing Blog

A collaboration of Fernando Barbella:

 - Agency: Saatchi&Saatchi Frankfurt

- Client: Frankfurt Taxi Services
- Brief: to encourage people to take taxis going back home after a night of drinking in bars, instead of driving while intoxicated their own cars. 

 
 http://www.piss-screen.de/

Thanks Fer!

Among the vertical online businesses the Exchange have been the one that grew the most in the last 12 months and has become one of the biggest generators of online relevance.
 The latest news is that Microsoft anounced the adquisition of ADeCN yesterday in a non revealed amount.

 This transactions adds to a long list of positions taken where Yahoo leads (only this category) having RigthMedia, followed by Google with its DoubleClick Exchange  and now MSX with ADeCN could launch its product in less than 2 years and obtained the critical part within the business at the moment.

 This will make its founders very happy (Congrats Bill, Kathryn!) and also the people from Wunderloop who will have the last independent exchange in the market. , when it grows….

We have very good news and want to share them with you!

 After a long process where we explored many strategic opportunities, we have made a decision according to what we believe is the best option to develop the company into a global level and to extend the leadership that we already have in the region to other fields and regions.

 This is why I am proud to announce that Fox International Channels (FIC) has acquired Digital Ventures, parent company of Directa Network, Inzearch, Afiliados Hispanos and Performa Network.

Rupert Murdoch and his team have a clear vision of the power transition that the traditional media is going through towards the digital media, and coming from the person seating in the chair at News Corp is more significant.  We are being part of this transformation on the way we consume and manage media. Now as Fox we will contribute from these latitudes to the media convergence and new generations with an interactive base.
 As our press release states:

 Directa Network, the largest online ad network in Latin America, and ClickDiario (recently acquired by FIC) will turn into “DirectaClick.FOX”, offering a reach of more than 40 million users and more than 7 billion monthly impressions. With offices in Buenos Aires, Mexico, Guatemala, San Pablo and Madrid, DirectaClick will rely on the wide range of Fox International Channels sales network in Miami, Santiago, Bogotá and other markets as well as on its own content network with 35 sites such as mundofox. Natgeo.tv, utilisima.com, canalfx.tv, (among others).

 In addition the Search Engine Marketing & Optimization (SEM & SEO) company of the group will become InZearch.Fox.
 The management team (Damián Voltes, Ariel Arrieta, Germán Herebia y Juan Carlos Göldy) will remain in their positions.This is a significant step forward that strengthens and enhances our leadership in the Spanish and Portuguese online markets.
 

Official press release: http://www.directaclick.com/

Coverage (partial):

 Red hearring
Adotas
Uberbin
Dossier
Merca 2.0
Medios digitales
Carlos Blanco
WorldScreen
Alarm Clock
PampaBiz
Paid Content
Inform
TMS
Netadblog
CRM
Compra directa
Vgroup

When do you become famous?

 Well, according to a criteria that I once heard and that I completely share, is that you become really famous when you appear on The Simpsons. 

 This is exactly what happened this week to Google Maps:
 

More Info: Like Homer
Via Dirson
 

San Francisco: Taking advantage of the trip to San Francisco to attend Ad-Tech SF, we coordinated a series of meetings with the main publishers and advertisers of the US West Coast. In this case with MySpace.

The purpose of the breakfast was to increase the business that we already have for more that a year, in which we are monetizing the Lating American inventory of MySpace with Directa Networks (specially now that the will launch their Spanish version for LATAM and the US-Hispanic version) and mainly to add MySpace as a official media in which we can use the Behavioral Targeting skill of Directa Networks to serve in the English content of the site, Spanish creatives to the USH users database. In reference to this last point I was surprised by several things:

Firstly, being Mark Papia, current Vice President- Performance Marketing, Fox Interactive Media, an eminence in network optimization, with an impressive career that includes a previous job in Yahoo, Monster and with more than 20 years of experience in media in the east coast as well as in the west coast in the present, I was surprised that at the beginning he thought that it was inappropriate from the user experience point of view, to have English content with advertising in Spanish. Besides all my explanation about the cultural relevance and the respect to the roots that the dialogue from a brand in the native language can provide to a US- Hispanic, what surprised me the most was the market research that the carried out to make a decision.
And this was to interview our waitress, first he asked her if she spoke Spanish, her answer was yes, then he asked her if she surfed on the Internet and her answer was affirmative as well, later if she knew or had an account in MySpace and she also answered yes “of course”. And at last he asked what she thought about surfing with a content in English and Spanish Advertising. Fortunately her answer was that even she didn’t like advertising of any kind on the Internet, she thought that it would be nice to see advertising in Spanish and that it would be a way of being taken into account as a user.

Finally Mark was delighted with the answer from the waitress, who was very attentive and kindly participated.  Thanks to this meeting, besides increasing our business with FIM, today we can run Behavioral Targeting campaigns and retargeting of Directa Networks in MySpace and we are responsible of checking creatives in Spanish that are uploaded to this content. Even though I knew who I was meeting and we had talked several times I couldn’t help being surprised by the analysis capacity, experience and charisma of Mark.
 

I believe that the 25% tip that I left to the waitress.
 

AMDIA offers a breakfast that will allow people related to product and services consumption to think about the opportunities and necessary actions to obtain a result in a market moving constantly.

 In the Digital Chapter of AMDIA we are developing a new series of breakfasts intended to spread Interactive Marketing practices, in this case a new market research, in an exclusive presentation before the official publication.

 Next Thursday in the auditorium kindly offered by UP, we will have the pleasure of introducing

 This presentation contains the results recently published in the Internet Book of Argentina 2006, which was made in third consecutive year by D’Alessio IROL and Clarín.com as well as different researches carried out by D’Alessio IROL in the last months.

 The Argentina Internet user map – The answers to the 10 key questions

 ·         How many and who are they today?
·         What is the Internet user like?
·         What do they use it for?
·         How does it enter the house?
·         What is happening with the Internet and young people?
·         And where is the woman?
·         Competition or complement of other media?
·         How is Internet integrated to the buying process?
·         Which are the barriers to lift their fears and learning?
·         Where is it going forward to?
The speaker of this breakfast will be Lic. Nora D’Alessio
 » She has been Vice President of D’Alessio IROL e Irolamericas (www.dalessio.com.ar ) since 1981 with 30 years of continuous work on market research and Marketing Consulting and Communication in Latin Americas as well as in the Hispanic Market in the US, currently doing work in all Spanish, Portuguese and English speaking countries of America.

 » Her company has obtained ISO 9001:2000 certification, being one of the few firms of market research that has been able to comply with the strict requirement to obtain that quality certification in its field around the world and the first one to certificate online surveys.

 As always this breakfast is free for AMDIA Members and it is only $50 for non-members.

US-Hispanic market is one of the fastest growing segments and whose purchase power today represents 8.5% of US total, and will reach 11% by 2010.

Taking into account that the Latin population represents 14% of the adult population of US  and that more than half (56%) of this growing segment is online, Internet comes as a natural media where marketing people can find this audience, and there is a higher penetration of the Internet when the social economic status is higher as well as the education level.

Those users, principally the ones that are the second and third generation are bilingual, and surf firstly contents in English (because of works or the news) and secondly in Spanish mainly for entertainment.
Usually the first way that an advertiser has to reach this segment through a network, is by using GEO Target (IP USA) that allows to show a creative only to the users that are in USA combining the origin (IP-USA) with sites with content in Spanish (no matter where the publisher is located), which are commonly Latin America portals because they are the ones who concentrate the highest percentage of content in Spanish.

A second method that adnetworks have to find this segment is through the browser language they use. When the language is Spanish and it is in USA (user IP is from USA) it is assumed that the surfer is US-Hispanic.

The problem with this method is that most of US-Hispanic buy their PC with pre installed software and most of the time is in English. For those that are bilingual this point is not very relevant. Only the ones from the first generation, who prefer the software in Spanish and don’t want to add a language barrier to the complex technology, are going to be the ones contacted through this segmentation.

Unfortunately this market niche (1^st generation) within the US-Hispanic is the least attractive one in terms of purchase power.
A more sophisticated segmentation comes from the use of Behavioral Targeting where at the beginning the recurring surfing behavior is detected in sites with Spanish content within the network. Each user interaction is anonymously labelled with a pixel that leaves a cookie with this behavior.

Then from this behavioral base you can show advertising in Spanish on sites with English content only to the target audience.

The effect of Spanish language personalization in an english content context, adds advertising and cultural relevance, giving the campaign an additional ingredient of emotional “engage” through the media that is shown.

For example, a person that usually reads soccer news following the “America Cup” in Spanish sites like the sport newspaper Ole or the Mexican newspaper La jornada.com.mx , advertiser of telephone communications would be able to contact the user in Spanish when he is surfing sites such us MySpace.com or Hi5.com within the spaces assigned to DirectaNetworks.

To sum up the use of Behavioral Targeting to reach US-Hispanic adds value to all players.

• The advertiser obtains new ad space where he is able to reach with a more relevant cultural message and with a higher knowledge of the target and therefore better results.
  
• The Publisher achieves, through a better knowledge of the audience more conversions with fewer inventories, which implies a real appreciation by the advertiser in terms of conversion and in the case of inventory at dynamic prices such as DCPM, an instant higher income.
  
• The user reduces irrelevant advertising and gets only cultural relevant advertising that generates and “engage” with his traditions and respect the values of his culture.
  
• And lastly the network contributes with an additional value to the commercialization.
  

Directa Networks video in YouTube went over the million views in three months after launching and it is one of the most viewed video in its category.

This was born as an experiment about what we could do with this new media and to explore other viral marketing options. Right now it went over the boldest expectations that we could have, being even linked from Japanese sites.

It is very clear that it is very complicated to forecast what will happen, who will be the target receiving the material, its impact and the public response, but on the other hand: How much are 1,000,000 spectators in an 8-minute spot (not 30 seconds) on open television? 

Traffic is a unique event on its style that groups a specific audience in a vertical industry as the interactive one that is called domainers or direct navigation.

This event takes place in Las Vegas (west version) and principally attracts domain and company owners that were developed around this third millennium real state. Among the companies that offer services there area cde parking companies, scrow, domain auction, adnetworks, etc.It is a pretty exclusive event that was sold out (I can estimate 500 people) weeks in advance and the cost was about $200 just to enrol and some more money to stay at the hotel where it takes place.The event started on Monday with a networking cocktail.
 Without a doubt the best thing about traffic is networking generated because being so few qualified people there are a lot of opportunities to interact with the assisting crowd. Not only on the speed dating days where compared to last year we had to go on stage and make a 2 minutes speech, but also in daily cocktails, breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

 About the conferences, the best one was the one offered bye John Reese (CEO and founder of income. Com) who became famous by creating “million dollar day” where he could concentrate one day sales for 1MUSD. He is also a very important domain owner with more than 35000 domains.com

 Basically what I am trying to explain is that domainers had to work to generate more revenues focusing on values generation for the surfer through content, offers, creating portals instead of collectioning parked domains. The were forced to transform from Money makers to businessmen.

 Another conference that was interesting was the one confronting Madision Avenue position represented by an agency panel and an audience that wanted branding advertisers to buy their services or properties. The people who were at the previous one in Miami said that nothing progressed and it was almost a repetitions of reasons and fixed positions that weren’t very approachable and with a few successful cases.

 Another strong point of the vent was where I am right now writing with my UMPC, which is the live domain auction sotheby’s style. Right now they are auctioning 314 domains valued between $500 and $100,000 with some without any bid (like clitoris.us or items.us) and some like televisioshow.com with a bid of  $45,000 or casinos.mobi on $52,000, fox.net on $19,000, musicvideos.mobi on $16,500 or behappy.com on $11,000 or realstate.mobi on $85,000.

The strongest bid should have been porn.com that according to rumours it generated between 2 and 4kUSD daily. The bidding went up to 7MM but ended up on its owner’s hands and “Scot” who was the other one pushing the bid stopped doing it. I guess that with some luck the operation will be closed privately for a lot less. This make me think about self rumours like the one generated by Christian Chena about selling juegos.com for 10MM…but that is another story.
Alter the bid there is a gala dinner and another networking party.
 Tomorrow will be very quiet with consulting disks and a little bit more of networking to close the event at noon.

 The interesting thing about this industry is to see how fast is growing and how the development of it attracts all type of roles (investors, intermediaries, lawyers, etc) and the ones that really obtain the repayment are the ones that can get out of the business earning more than what they invested, where this stage is uncertain for  those who are immerse in this industry (with good perspectives but without certainty).

The founders of Skype Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, after proposing a disruptive model in the telephone field and after selling their company to e-Bay, are working in an also disruptive model to create a TV platform without a cable or satellite operator, via Internet.

Originally it was known as ‘The Venice Project’ (because the decision was made in a conference room called Venice). The site were the platform was built is www.joost.com. Today “The Venice Project” remains only for some contents that you can see in the application or for the first t-shirts that were sent to the ones that gave the first feedback.
The disruptive thing about Joost is that it is thought to distribute TV content through Internet, with Peer to Peer technology. This means that the content will be stored in (and distributed by) users’ hard disks, aside from being in the main server of Joost.

So it is like Napster or eMule but for video (understanding that Napster didn’t have its own Server) as a very simple interface , in real time and 100% legal. The great advantage of the Peer to Peer technology is that the more people requesting a file the easier and faster is to obtain it (because it will be present in more hard disks.)
Joost is not available yet to be downloaded (is in beta estate). Currently it is a closed group of users that can invite other users the same way it was done with Gmail and other programs. This gives the beta subscription more virality because “it is not for everybody”.

Another interesting point is the way the amateur contents will be combined with the professional contents; the way to search and catalogue this content and the way of monetize them.

Maybe we are in front of what could be a 2.0 version of the media that can support the 30-second commercials in the coming years….