Don't Mind Us, We're Joost Watching You!

The Mediapost article Joost's Volpi Touts 'Targetability' (free registration required) states:

"Our biggest asset is targetability, and our belief is that TV advertisers want a high degree of targetability," he said. "From an advertiser perspective, we know exactly who's watching what content."

This is the kind of statement that anyone hardly bats an eye at anymore. Twenty years ago there would have been a privacy uproar at such a statement, even if it were made in a trade publication. Now, in the age where we've come to expect ubiquitous government surveillance, and in which we're raising a generation of children who grow up taking for granted that they're constantly being surveilled, we just shrug our shoulders and say, "meh..."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. After all, I work in this industry, too. But from a marketer's perspective, this is good news, indeed.

Widgets: Advertising Will Never Be The Same

So says this article that ran originally in Billboard.

Widgets are those handy little apps you can place on a PC (or Mac) desktop that transmits information to you from a website, such as news headlines, weather forecasts, sports scores, etc., without you having to endure the pain and agony of opening a web browser and visit the website itself. The Vista operating system has embraced the widget concept (calling them "gadgets").

Remember the old application PointCast? It was essentially the same thing in that it used what was called "push technology", i.e., it pushed information to you through this application, without your having to manually request it. Same deal here, essentially, except each widget is standalone, with its unique stream of streamlined information, as opposed to the omnibus that PointCast was intended to be.

So who benefits from widgets, from a marketing point of view? Seems to me that those who can deliver information in a branded environment would obviously benefit (Weather.com, CNN.com, etc.), although their ability to directly monetize it might be hampered in this format. After all, a widget is almost by definition of very small app, as opposed to large desktop apps like Weatherbug, so the ability to carry advertising on a widget might be difficult.

Perhaps widget content providers would like people to click headlines and come to the site for more information, but isn't the point of the widget that you receive the information in the widget without having to come to the site? Seems to defeat the purpose, n'est-ce pas? Used in that way, the widget is not more than an RSS conduit.

From my standpoint, of course, I am most interested in how direct marketers can use the widget for customer acquisition purposes. I'm a bit doubtful that you can successfully engage widget users to sign up through a complex registration form on the widget itself, and using it to drive traffic might be a testable proposition, but I wouldn't bet on its success as a high volume generation marketing vehicle. I'll keep my eye on it, though, in case an acquisition usage tactic becomes clear to me.

Cops of the World, Rejoice!

It will be easier than ever to find your nearest Dunkin' Donuts location! (free registration required)

Or, go directly to www.myicedcoffee.com.

Viral: It's Not For Just Anybody Anymore

So says this Mediapost article (free registration required). A Dynamic Logic survey reveals that 50% of over 1,000 respondents in the marketing field think of viral marketing as a fad, whereas only 24% think of it as a marketing strategy with traction.

I've thought for sometime that successful viral campaigns are like catching lightning in a bottle. It is extremely difficult to predict with any level of certainly that something you create might catch on with your audience so strongly that they forward it to all their friends. Marketing viral is particularly tricky in this regard because no one wants to look like a marketing tool to their friends, so advertisers either have to mute their brand identity in the campaign -- which obviously defeats the purpose -- or they need to do something to take the "brand hero" aspect down a notch, such as injecting an ironic twist into the execution.

But because successful viral relies on insight into zeitgeist -- knowing the exact right mood at precisely the right moment -- it seems more likely that these campiagns will happen at best by hunch, and at worst by accident, than by careful planning, which by definition is a process that takes place over time. That, I think, may cement the idea that successful viral marketing is lightning in a bottle.

I also wonder whether there's a little bit of wishful thinking on the part of marketers in this survey as well: perhaps if they call it a fad, they can convince their management or their clients that it's not reasonable to ask for it, thus removing the likelihood of being set up for failure.

Social Networking Goes Niche

As titled in this Business Week article.

The gist is that more people are getting turned off at the overt openness of MySpace, where basically anyone can reach out to you (except if you're a teen, in which case you can put up a wall), so social networks that allow you to control exposure of your profiles to others are gaining traction. The article names Vox as an example of just such a niche network.

I see MySpace as filling a fundamentally different need than Vox. MySpace is all about widening your circle. It's a place where kids can connect with other kids from far-flung places, to help mitigate the isolation they feel as their parents place ever more restrictions on their mobility in response to our increasing media and news culture built on fear of strangers and of The Other. Young people, therefore, would like as many contacts as possible. It also makes them feel popular if they have 100,000 "friends" in their network.

People like the protagonist in this story, who fled MySpace for Vox, want to use social networks in a different way: to strengthen ties with the contacts they already have, and to broker, and have brokered, contacts with only those new people with whom they share common interests or purpose.

But there's another thing not being addressed by this article: is another reason people are fleeing MySpace that there's just too much advertising and storefonts being put up there? I can easily envision such backlash against this marketing tactic causing the sun to set on it in the next year or two. And if that happens, what would justify continued investment in broad network platforms like MySpace?