Category: marketing

As someone who worked at CDNow in the early days, I find this announcement amazing purely from the historical competitive nature of things. That said, given the number of people laid off at CDNow and the fulfillment and traffic at Amazon this deal does seem to make a lot of sense. I guess the CDNow brand will live on and the Amazon music area will convert. Amazon will also be managing CDNow.com, in the same way that they work with Toys “R” Us, Virginmega.com and Borders.com.

Amazon, CDNow make it official – Tech News – CNET.com

While they mention that you will be able to watch the movies on your TV as well as PC, there is no mention of how this will work. Since you can already hook your PC to a TV using a cable or tow, I hope this announcement is going to being something more like burning into the picture… It would be nice to be able to burn a DVD of content downloaded to watch in the living room.

RealNetworks, Starz enter movie deal – Tech News – CNET.com

For the first time I noticed that Wired.com is running an advertorial from Sony. If you don’t know what an Advertorial is, it’s ad based content written in the form of an article though usually marked in a way so that you are not too easily fooled to think it impartial from the publisher. Magazines run them fairly regularly. This particular piece is titled:

Revolutionary A/V Gear
The Most Advanced Professional Audio-Visual Technology Comes Home
feature by Sony advertising series

You can check it our for yourself here: New Technologies

If you are in the market to save a few bucks and have an Earthlink account, you might want to try this tactic. I called to say I wanted to cancel (which I did) and when the first CSR put me on hold to get my confirmation number I knew I was being transferred to the “save team.” The guy comes on and makes me a few deals I can’t refuse… I honestly did not hear the first one (damn I’m tired) but the second offer was for $9.95/mo unlimited with 30 days free.

I really did cancel my account as I have too many email accounts as it is and have other ways of getting online. If you use earthlink as your primary path online, you might benefit from paying half what you do now.

While waiting for the stuffit stuff (see below) I surf over to Salon and once again decide to read some premium content thanks to their Ultramercial. The thing I wonder is now that I have clicked through the required screens a few times to get what I want, what does Salon really get out of this. I suppose they charge a premium (pun intended) for the ads to Mercedes, but what does Mercedes get? I am no closer to buying a car and certainly not a Mercedes at this time. I just want to read the story, which I now can.

They basically are considering me as a pseudo qualified lead through a process, that requires nothing return from me, so they get nothing from the experience. I bet they already knew beforehand that people are willing to click through a few screens to get ad-supported content. Hmmm… seems like a test that is just being run all that scientifically.

If I were Salon, I would require a brief survey (couple of quick questions) to learn more about who wants to read my stuff. I would then use that information to target marketers who want access to my readership. I would require the Ultramercial be direct response in nature rather than simply a multi-stage ad. Seems silly to just have a commercial while reading. Granted you can look at greater detail on the car if you like, but you are not required to do anything more than move to the next screen. My guess is that the vast majority of people simply hit Next to get back into Salon. Think of TiVo as the same thing. If you have the option of fast forwarding across the commercials, you do. You generally are sitting on the couch or at your desk to watch or read something of your choosing, not to watch and play with ads.

Both Ultramercial and Salon are using the technology as a test, but it needs a lot of help in order to be considered a success by any standards. The simple metrics of number of viewers or sessions per day are going to be interesting, but are not going to help sell any cars.

On the flip side, I hope Salon can keep selling this stuff so I can keep reading…

Dear AOL,

After reading the latest piece in today’s WSJ, Road Runner, America Online Wage Unsisterly Rivalry (subscription required) it occured to me that there is a much longer list of issues that I was previously considering. Before today, I knew about the properties not really playing along with AOL to provide content. I knew about the waning subscription revenues due to broadband adoption (and not your broadband). Today I awoke to the Road Runner vs AOL Broadband issue.

I guess I knew it was there… I am a Road Runner subscriber in NYC. I use AOL rarely but have maintained my account for many years (don’t ask why) paying the minimum to access over tcp/ip since you offered it. Today though, it really hit home how much you are out to hurt yourself with bad business decisions and that is well, just bad business.

It’s easy for me to suggest a solution I don’t work at AOLTW and am not dealing with any of your corporate politics. I imagine things are intense there based on company size and history of the merger… Anyway, I have a few ideas I thought I might share I think can help out.

You offer Road Runner over you cable system and sell AOL as a more expensive add-on but don’t offer a bundled price through YOUR OWN cable company. When I initially subscribed to Road Runner it was a separate item on my cable bill. When packages became available (through the second digital cable upgrade) a bundled option was offered which actually lowered my total bill.

You openly allow two brands to compete in the same space:

Corporate spokesman Ed Adler says it’s not unusual for a company of AOL’s size to have competing brands. “With America Online and Road Runner, we offer two unique brands to high-speed Internet consumers,” he says. “Having multiple brands in the marketplace allows us to share learning, be innovative and save money.”

Wrong! This is not like Coke and Fanta or brands of detergent. You can’t buy one on Monday and another the next week. Once you lock in you are set. (Bundling works…) When the average consumer converts to broadband from AOL, they don’t say but where’s my AOL? They move on. They realize that with speed, they can find what they want through other paths. They use portals like the one provided by their NEW access provider or Yahoo and MSN. You are missing a massive opportunity here.

Consider this…

You are a cable company, a multi-media company and an access provider. Use what you know on all fronts. What if you made some use out of you main online Brand (AOL) and played the game through a domain strategy. People who sign up for Road Runner get AOL.net addresses. AOL Broadband, get AOL.com addresses. AOL.com customers get the benefits of bundled service on YOUR cable company, value-add service on external providers.

AOL.net customers can get an AOL based portal to access some level of content you determine, though more than what is publically available. AOL.com customers can get access to your full arsenal of material. AOL.net customers can BUY pay per view access to AOL and AOL.com content because, like on cable, they are on your network. Provide benefits to your customers.

It’s not too late, but things are moving very quickly against you. Yahoo premium services (yes I know it’s not proven yet) and MSN are making strong moves against you. You still have the market share and the brand equity to move strong and maintain the lead. I know I am not alone in believing and perhaps wishing this would happen. Just do it. Stop the BS internally and make it so. Need some help? Send me an email.

There is something I can’t figure out about the strategy at ZDNet/CNet. This morning I read a story on ZDNet about the latest Comdex gizmos and this afternoon I catch the same article on CNet. They are exactly the same except for the differences in each site’s layout.

What’s the point of this debacle? Seems silly to me that after all this time ZDNet and CNet feel that they have to maintain copies of the same articles on both sites. I know there was something of a merger announced some time back …Why not choose one site and brand to use for news and leave the other for other things. Instead they maintain both and create confusion across the readership. I guess the brand management was unable to be convincing enough.

In many cases when companies merge into newer forms they maintain a transition period so that customer (readers in this case) are not confused by a sudden flip of the switch. It would not hurt to send an email communicating the changes, and hopefully the advantages found through change as well. Nothing like this has happened at all. Seems like no one is thinking out there.

This time it’s “Beat the Devil.” Released for download tomorrow, streamed today…

Starring Clive Owen, Gary Oldman and James Brown… how can you go wrong?

This could be good news for AOL and for the subscribers… AOL has been deliberately slow to roll out true content oriented offerings to its members, which is difficult for me to understand considering that is the only advantage they have.

With the number of properties across all forms of media, AOL is the site/portal/service that should truly be king. While the certainly have the largest subscriber base, it is only a matter of time for that base to mature and jump ship. As they have seen over the past few years, subscription growth is slowing, especially with the adoption of broadband, since people no longer need AOL to get get online initially.

AOL Chairman to Present New Initiatives: “Thursday’s presentation about AOL’s future is a crucial test for AOL Time Warner and a chance for AOL’s new chairman, Jonathan Miller, to ease investors’ many worries.” Source: New York Times: Technology

I wish I had a larger readership… I picked up this story a few days before any other site I can tell noticed…or at least gave me credit for.

Follow Up: Salon Ultramercials: “

Media Post: Salon Breaks New Ad Ground

Last week we covered Salon’s new advertising format that gives users day past access premium conent in return for viewing 4 full page ads. Today Media Post adds some detail to the story. It turns out that this format wasn’t developed specifically by Salon, but is in fact the brainchild of Ultramercial, an ad technology company. Significantly Ultramercial have a patent pending for this approach to advertising, which if granted could prove very valuable if the format were to take off.

” Source: marketingfix

Branding and Direct Marketing Lived Happily Together Ever After: “

Line56: Online Marketing and ROI

[B]rand advertising is more effective at the bottom rung of the ladder, where it is essential to build awareness and establish perceptions. Direct response tactics must then take over during the suspect and prospect phases, in which the user needs to be given incentive to take action. Direct gives way to brand again in order to transition a user from a customer to loyal brand advocacy. But in all cases, elements of both brand and direct must be used in each message.

[…]

Brand-direct marketing requires a careful collaboration between these two formerly isolated practices. No longer is it an “either/or” situation. Instead, direct marketing allows us to strengthen the brand, to go deeper into it. Direct marketing essentially puts the customer in control of the relationship, and in so doing it allows the marketer to substantiate the brand image

” Source: marketingfix

Because I work in marketing I can see why this is happening, but as a consumer this needs to offset the high ticket price. It’s already bad enough that commericials get shown in addition to slide show local ads. If another whole set of progamming comes in, the price needs to change, period.

Paying $10 to get pitched: more movie ads coming: “Regal movie theatres will expand their pre-show advertising and trailers to twenty minutes. The last few AMC/Loew’s movies I’ve gone to in San Francisco have had 20 minutes’ worth, too — it seems to be the norm everywhere. The CEO of Regal sees a trend: “I hope that the line between entertainment and advertising will begin to blur.”LinkDiscuss

(Thanks, Futtbuck!)” Source: Boing Boing

on what it costs to be ruled by the bell-heads: “

Here’s a company to watch: eAccess, Japan. They are a profitable aDSL company here in Japan, building the fastest growing aDSL network in the world. They now offer 12 mbs (yes, I mean 12 mps) for $26/m, service within 7 days. And to celebrate their amazing success, on 12/12, they go public.

Talk to the extraordinary president of eAccess, Sachio Semmoto, and he’ll tell you the key to eAccess’s success: That Japan learned from the United States that access to copper had to be “open.” Open access meant new competition; competition has driven prices down, speed up.

It’s an amazing thing, competition. Apparently it doesn’t work in America, though. Now that the Japanese have profited from the American lesson on regulation, the Americans are retreating. The FCC is moving as quickly as it can to undo open access requirements.” Source: Lessig Blog

This is a good article with some good thinking from Sir Martin… The views are not that new but are becoming more common across the ever-changing Marketing and Advertising landscape. At my company we strive for media neutral solutions that solve the business issues at hand for our clients.

WPP: Focus on the End Game: “” Source: Drunk Guerilla – Marketing Out of the Cage