The Association for Downloadable Media, an organization whose purpose is to help provide advertising and audience measurement standards for episodic and downloadable media, announced today a proposal for advertising standards at Ad:Tech San Francisco.

A cross section of podcasters, agencies, device manufacturers and others interested in monetizing downloadable media have developed the proposed standards.

Why do we need standards for downloadable media?

• Lots of podcasts, lots of sponsors, lots of options and confusion
• Like IAB display ad unit guidelines for podcasts
• Allow sponsors to create 1 advertisement for multiple podcasts

The panel believed that the standards should be

• Simple
• Inclusive
• Acceptable

The group is proposing three types of ad standards: Insertions, Content Participation, and Collaterals

Insertions (as provided by advertisers)

• Definition: pre-recorded file provided by sponsor
• Time up to :10, ;15, :30, or :60 seconds
• Location: Pre-roll, post roll mid roll
• Frequency: Variable or time period
• Audio: 128k stereo/64k mono mp3, Sample Rate: 44.1 khz
• Video: H.264 MP$, Aspect 4×3 or 16×9 SD and HD

Content participation

• Definition: When an advertiser’s message is included as part of the audio or video podcast content.
• Time: Variable from :1 second to full episode
• Location: Pre-roll; mid-roll; post-roll; or integrated within one or a series of episodes
• Frequency: Variable by number of episodes per month; variable by number of insertions per user per month; or fixed per channel/feed per month.

Collaterals
All the other real estate that a podcaster has that may be included as part of an advertising or sponsorship package, or as separate items a lá carte.
Examples

• Show notes on podcast website
• ID3 tags in podcast episode file
• Album Art Cards
• Link and banner in enhanced audio podcasts
• Overlays, underlays in video podcasts
• Web banners, buttons, text links, hyperlinks (using IAB standards)
• Email sponsorships
• Press Releases
• Product sales (CDs, DVDs, merchandise)
• Signage/Outdoor (for retail)
• Brochures, flyers

The second area that the ADM focused on is developing a set of proposed measurement guidelines for audience traffic.

The Association of Downloadable Media is recommending compliance with one of two proposed methods to determine true download measurement. These two methods are Native Server Measurement or Third Party Measurement.

In order to comply with these guidelines, publishers would clearly state their download measurement methodologies to interested buyers. Buyers seeking to work with ADM-compliant publishers would be entitled to request and receive these download methodologies. The goal is to achieve high levels of confidence around the metrics for both parties.

Third Party Measurement (TPM)
A Third Party server is the intermediary between the Native Server and another Third Party Server. Third Party Measurement refers to the files measuring the initial download requests as received by a third party server to be delivered to the requester. Because the Third Party server is a constant, it may uniformly measure download statistics across multiple hosting services.

Data logged by third party servers include request information about the media being downloaded. Each request contains the following data that may be utilized for analysis.

• IP Address - Unique Internet address of the user consuming the media file.
• Time Stamp - Time at which the request was made for the media file.
• Request - The request specifies the media file requested and provides the method at which the request should be handled.
• HTTP Status Code - A technical code defined by the HTTP protocol that determines the status of the request.
• Referrer - Location where the request came from.
• User Agent - A unique value that identifies the service or application making the request. e.g. web browser such as Internet Explorer, podcatching agent such as iTunes, a web bot such as Google.
• Byte Range - This is the range of start and end bytes requested by the media consumer.

Native Server Measurement (NSM)
The Native Server is the actual end point where the media is hosted. Native Server
Measurement refers to the log files derived from the Native Server. It may include
the amount of data that was transferred in each log entry, and therefore may provide information to derive more than simple download statistics.

Data logged by native servers include request information about the media being downloaded as well as the amount of bytes transferred during the download transaction. All the data listed above (available to third party servers) applies to Native Servers. In addition, the following data may be utilized for analysis.

• Bytes Served - This is the amount of bytes that have been transferred to the media consumer in a given request. Depending on the type of request made, the bytes served may be less than or equal to the size of media file.

The data contained in either native or third party server log files does not necessarily mean that the data is analyzed. The method of analysis used varies.

Analysis Techniques and Factors

Both types of measurement include analysis techniques, in order to calculate download measurement. These analytic techniques are used to determine the validity of actual downloads (versus duplicated or aborted download attempts)

There are a number of factors used in any given technique to analyze log files.

• IP Address - The IP address may be used to determine if the request is unique or a duplicate. It may also be used to determine geographical information of the media consumer.
• Time Stamp - The date and time may be used to determine if the request should be counted.
• HTTP Status Code - The appropriate HTTP status code is examined to determine if the request should be counted.
• Bytes Served - The value may be used to determine if the media was completely downloaded. (Note: This information is only available from native server log files.)
• Referrer - The origin of the download may be used to determine if the request should be counted. e.g. media that is auto played upon loading a web page may be removed or reported.
• User Agent - The identifier of the application or service consuming the media may be analyzed to determine if the request is unique.
• Byte Range - The range of bytes requested in a given request may be used to determine what portion of the media is requested. When analyzed across multiple requests, the information may provide an accurate assessment to determine if the media was completely downloaded.

The ADM does not require a specific combination of factors or techniques, instead requires that you use analysis that’s appropriate to the business at hand in a way that provides high confidence data and you can explain the process used to create the data. It is left to any company following these guidelines to create techniques that fit their situation. However, it is strongly recommended to include the IP Address in analysis.

These types of measurements can be provided by services like Wizzard Media or PodTrac. UPDATE: ADM members RawVoice and Volomedia are also providing this kind of measurement service.

The proposed standards are open for public review and comment through May 16, 2008. Send to comments and feed back to info@downloadablemedia.org.

Once ratified will be reviewed bi-annually by ADM.

Technorati Tags: downloadable media, ADM, Association for Downloadable Media, Advertising, Standards

Television is changing a lot and television advertising is changing with it. Tivo, DVRs and the internet are changing the way content and advertising is consumed. It changes the way TV ads need to work. This panel explores some of the changes they see on the horizon.

Panelists
Karen Bressner, SVP, Advertising Sales, TiVo
Eric Hadley, Chief Marketing Officer, Heavy Corporation
Rick Mandler, VP, Digital Media Advertising, Disney/ABC Media Networks
Robert Riesenberg, President & CEO, Full Circle Entertainment
Moderator: Joe Adalian, Television Editor, Variety

What’s the future of the 30 second spot?
The 30 second spot is still an important marketing tools and will remain so into the future. As long as television is important spots like 30 second or 15 second ads will be important. Karen from Tivo says they can enhance the 30 second spot by making it interactive. Eric points out that the importance of TV will change for different segments as young males are using the Internet with increasing intensity on sites like Heavy.com. He says the key is to respecting the viewer and make the advertising relevant and engaging.

How important is diverse portfolio in marketing?
In this day and age, when a network has a show doing 7-8 share its a success. It demonstrates the fragmentation of advertising channels and the need for marketers to explore a diverse set of channels to find their audience.

What one thing should change, what would be the new rule?
As the networks have jumped on the bandwagon of integration it has become more commoditized. The integration needs to be more strategic and in harmony with the show as opposed to something that is just a media deal done for an advertiser wanting integration. Rick would like to see more aggregation of agencies to make it easier to coordinate marketing and make it more integrated. Eric suggests that measures need to be tied to the intent of the campaign, not just what can be measured. Just because you can measure impressions or click throughs does not make it a good measure for everything.

What new capabilities will brand marketers need to become publishers of relevant and engaging content?
Need to become masters of what data comes from set top boxes and DVRs to understand what works in different environments. There is also a crying need for different kinds of resources within the marketing infrastructure. Interactive capabilities are still very underdeveloped and need to improved. Brand marketers will need to integrate these new capabilities with their traditional story telling strengths to make interesting content.

Should brands rent or own their content?
Rick suggests that brands should rely on rented content. Content is not what advertisers do so they should leave it to the traditional content producers. Eric suggests that it doesn’t matter whether you rent or own it. What matter is that you need good content wherever the content comes from.

Technorati Tags: Future of Television, television, advertising

Is brand based advantage eroding as Umair Haque argues in a post entitled The Shrinking Advantage of Brands?

Umair points to Millward Brown’s report about the top 100 most powerful brands in which the number one brand is Google as evidence that there is a shrinking advantage of brands.

I strongly disagree with the point Umair makes in the title to his post. Brands are just as important as ever. Just ask Ask or Yahoo? Would they like to be at the top of that list. You bet.

However, when I read the post I agree with the body of the argument he is making. If you substitute the word advertising for the word brand the argument makes sense. There is a shrinking advantage to advertising and advertising scale.

Because every other player in the top ten has spent decades – if not literally centuries, as for P&G and Coke – investing billions in advertising to build a brand.

But where these players invest on the order of 5-10% of revenues on advertising, Google’s advertising expenditure is almost exactly zero.

Stop and think about that for a second: the top brand in the world belongs to a player that…uhhh…doesn’t advertise.

The social web is way more powerful than traditional advertising based brand building efforts.

Communities have always been central to building brands as positive word of mouth has always been much more powerful than advertising in building brand strength and value. When our friends speak, we listen.

Google’s brand has been built without any paid advertising. It has been built by the world’s biggest community - the social web.

We’ve gone from people telling their physical communities about good stuff to global web based communities where strong positive word of mouth spreads virally across the globe at zero cost.

Brands that don’t understand the power of the social web will shrink in advantage, those that do can build even stronger brands and more value.

Technorati Tags: social web, advertising, brand building, competitive advantage

In Digital Podcast 38, we interview David Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at ExpoTV.com. ExpoTV is all about consumer generated video product reviews both on line and on TV. ExpoTV covers just about any product you can imagine with about 250,000 reviews.

If you are interested in producing a social media marketing campaign that uses user generated content this podcast is for you. David discusses the concerns advertisers have about marketing around user generated content and some of the steps marketers can take to mitigate the risks. He provides case studies from other companies that show how they have managed to produce successful social marketing campaigns. David has suggestions about how to connect with super fans and turn them into allies that will make social marketing work for you.

 

 Digital Podcast 38 [48:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (516)

David Becker is ExpoTV’s Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to Expo, David served as president and COO for Beliefnet.com, a spirituality and self-help web site. David also founded Backslap Entertainment, a user-generated content production and syndication company backed by Fremantle, producers of American Idol. David was also President and COO of Uproar.com.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, user generated content, super fans, advertising, David Becker, ExpoTV

Chris MacDonald, Libsyn’s EVP of Business Development and Operations, told me all about the Association for Downloadable Media.

Chris is the newly elected Chairman of the Association. Chris explained that the Association for Downloadable Media is focused on providing standards for advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media. If you are producing downloadable media the association is working on making it easier for advertisers and publishers to buy and publish ads on this type of content. If you want to get involved you can join the association. Individual memberships are $150 and corporate memberships are $1,000 for now.

 

 Digital Podcast 21 [16:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (950)

In today’s announcement, The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) announced the election results for the 20 inaugural office seat positions including the Executive Board (Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer); eleven (11) Advisory Board seats, Chairs for: Advertising Standards Committee, Education & Outreach Committee, Measurement Committee, Membership Committee and the Terminology Standardization Committee.

Elected individuals for the 4 Executive Committees (Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer), 11 Advisory Board seats and 5 Committee Chair positions are:

• Chair
  • Chris MacDonald, Chris MacDonald, Libsyn PRO Enterprise Platform and Indiefeed
• Vice Chair
  • Susan Bratton, Personal Life Media
• Secretary
  • Matthew Snodgrass, Porter Novelli
• Treasurer
  • Duncan Perry, Podcast.com, Treedia.com
• Committee Chair: Advertising Standards
  • Brian McMahon, National Podcasting System
• Committee Chair: Education & Outreach
  • Rob Walch, Wizzard Media
• Committee Chair: Measurement
  • Angelo Mandato, Raw Voice
• Committee Chair: Membership Committee
  • Bryan Moffett, NPR Digital Media
• Committee Chair: Terminology Standardization
  • David Rowley, Kiptronic, Inc.
• Advisory Board
  • CC Chapman, The Advance Guard
  • Jonathan Cobb, Kiptronic Inc.
  • John Furrier, Podtech
  • Rob Greenlee, Microsoft Zune
  • John Havens, BlogTalkRadio
  • Risto Koski, Nokia
  • Jim Louderback, Revision3
  • Mark McCrery, Podtrac
  • Elisabeth McLaury Lewin, PodcastingNews.com
  • Kent Nichols, AskANinja.com
  • Tim Street, French Maid TV

Technorati Tags: Association for Downloadable Media, ADM, advertising, new media

In a world where competition for attention is growing faster than ever and consumers get to skip the ads if they want, will advertisements as content save the day for advertisers? It’s not clear yet, but there is a growing body of evidence that it can and is being done by advertisers, both big and small.

The Wall Street Journal provided five case studies today of advertising as content, and all done by small companies.

1. Blendtec’s Will It Blend

Blendtec is in the blender business. One day the marketing guy sees the enginneering guy test blenders with chunks of wood. The net result is one of the most successful Ads as Content campaigns, Will It Blend.

The video series is so popular they are now selling it as a DVD for $9.93.

Straight from the success of YouTube.com, Will It Blend has been known as an internet marketing sensation, viewed by more than 30 million people. Now for the first time ever, you can take home the glory, passion and power of Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson with his blending antics on the first 50 Will It Blend videos, including Will It Blend facts and behind the scenes footage.

Not only has it been successful as content they say sales of blenders have shot up 500%.

Here’s the video of one of my favorites Will It Blend: the iPhone edition.

2. MJ Safety Solutions Bullet Resistant Backpack

MJ Safety Solutions MyChildsPack is a bullet resistant back pack. The video is serious with lots of explosions and guns firing. YouTube reports that the video has been viewed just under 25,000 times at the time I write this. The company reports that it has sold over 1,000 of these backpacks at $175 each.

3. All Natural Maine Root’s Free Range Root Beer

In this video campaign, All Natural Main Root is marketing the fight against corporate root beer and of course their alternative: Free Range Root Beer. Sales have gone up from $500,000 to $3,000,000 year over year. Maine Root paid $20,000 for the campaign. Not a bad return from some viral videos.

FreeRangeRootBeer.com is dedicated to stopping corporate root beer “by any means necessary.” Non-violence is our modus operandi. We spread our message mostly through non-violent protests, but also use root beer “breakouts” to free root beer from their bondage in their inhumane storage facilities. We’re on a path of peace, love and organic root-based beverages.

Here’s the SugerCane Shuffle from the SugerCane Gang - fans of Maine Root.

4. Make Magazine’s Weekend Projects

Make Magazine takes a different approach. They not into comedy or even trying to sell you something. They provide How To videos that focus on things you can do over the weekend. Think of what Popular Mechanics or Popular Electronics could have been if they got the web. The other benefit for Make is that the videos have sponsors so they get to advertise their website and re-advertise someone else’s product at the same time. Is that like re-gifting?

5. Moe’s Southwest Grill

Moe’s Southwest Grill decided to get the customers to do the work. They held a contest for a “Burrito in Every Hand” campaign. The winner gets 2,860 vouchers good at Moe’s. They got 40 videos and over 200,000 visitors to the website set up for the campaign. They say sales have gone up, but no details and they expanded their email mailing list by over 200,000.

And here’s a link to the Notorious M.O.E. and Nacho Daddy video, the winner of MOE’s contest.( sorry,I could not get the player to publish -)

So there you have it. Some great, well maybe not great, content that deliver the goods as advertisements. There’s some good lessons for content producers in here and for advertisers as well. It’s time to think differently.

It’s too bad the Wall Street Journal doesn’t understand what it writes about as I would have provided a link to the WSJ story, but it’s behind a walled garden. And I would have provided a link to to the Wall Street Journal video on makes a video go viral, but it had too many ads to make it bearable.

The journal should also get the news that viral is not only about getting a great funny, useful or how to video, its about working the system to get to the top of the most viewed video list. Here’s a link to TechCrunch’s Secrets to Viral Videos. Too bad there’s so much gaming and shady practices involved.

If you know of more case studies, let me know.

Technorati Tags: viral video, online video, advertising, ads as content