“Creepy” Advertising, Video and (D’uh) Making Money

Live from the offices of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the
trade association for interactive marketing in the United States, Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media sits down for live video discussions with IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg, Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum and Blip.TV co-founder and COO Dina Kaplan.

Topic

We’re excited to do our first show from the IAB offices as part of our new partnership with the organization. We’ll first sit down with IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg to get his take on why “advertising is creepy,” as the IAB says in its new campaign to fend off privacy legislation, and talk about other industry trends and news. Then we’re joined by the founder and head of video platform Magnify.net, Steve Rosenbaum, and Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.TV. We’ll talk about what is and isn’t working in video, about trends in curation and aggregation, details of sponsorship and revenue, and, of course your questions.

Plus, as always, Dorian’s “Shallow Thoughts” on the media, and recent coverage and interviews from industry trade shows.

And, of course: your questions. Send some now and sign in to get an email reminder before the show is live, December 9, 11:30 a.m. ET.

Register now to ask questions and get in on the discussion right away.

Bing and Google Go After Each Other With Ads

Trying to woo News Corp. isn't the only way Bing is taking it to Google. They're also placing ads on the Google site. Looking recently for a restaurant to have a business lunch at in New York, I noticed when I searched on Google Maps that Bing had placed an ad there.

And when I went to Bing, guess what? Google was doing the same.

(By the way, my search was a little too "natural language" for both sites. But that's a different story.)




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Women and Social Marketing

"We're seeing a divide right now of where the women are leaping ahead of the brand and the brands are struggling to find how best to interact with them."

From Social Network Branding Fails to Sway Female Purchasing

Testing CUNY's New Business Models with Adjusted Assumptions

My poking and probing shows that when the assumptions are changed to less optimistic but still reasonable scenarios, the models can swing to much lower profit levels or even losses.

My latest Poynter e-Media Tidbits column

Being Social With Architects

I was invited to be on a panel for the architecture group AIA last night, and found that not only is the Haworth Showroom a very nice venue, but also that architects, like many, are grappling with how to use social media, what one can do to raise one's image, get new clients, follow the "rules" and otherwise figure out how to works.

Some of the main points I raised were that it's important to experiment, cultivate and get better over time ("iterate" is one way of putting it). One audience member asked how to use social media like Twitter, which is quick and short bursts persistently, in the course of managing long-term architectural projects. "In the course of managing the project, don't you find yourself considering a lot of things, checking in often as you make decisions?" I replied, "Wouldn't it be nice if you could, for example, Tweet that you were considering a certain wood for a certain type of situation, say a damp environment, and get feedback from others in the community about woods they'd used that were particularly effective for your situation? Or cement. Or doorknobs." He made the point that you will not only gain interested followers who want to learn about your projects, and potentially pick up new clients that way, but also get "inbound marketing" intelligence that may be useful to your business.

Adam Lutz, facilities manager of Google, talked about how a niche brewery instilled passion among avid fans by being very participatory in social media. Mike Plotnick, Media Relations Manager, at the architecture firm HOK talked about how they'd started HOKLife and let 30 staff members talk about what they were doing around the world -- and that sometimes it was a risk (they said things in ways that weren't quite "on message") but ultimately the brand was carried by them,a nd spread more. Jessica Sheridan, Editor-in-Chief of eOculus, talked about how she'd found sources, stories and more on Twitter and other social media.

You can see more coverage by looking on Twitter at the hashtag #aianysocialmedia.

Ad Spend Down, IAB Says. Is it Right, Though?

Over at PaidContent, David Kaplan writes of the new IAB report saying ad spend is down more than 5 percent. Online.

But I ask (becuase PaidContent belched my comment): "Are other things that are now marketing but not ads in the traditional sense included in this?

"Virtual goods, Facebook fan pages, content widgets, dedicated blogs, YouTube videos, sms text messages, outdoor ads on digital signage, etc, etc.

Cuz if we count those, bet we'd see more money moving to digital than ever."

Meanwhile, Over at Tumblr

I've been doing a lot of posting of things I find interesting, and excerpts of my own writing and projects, on my Tumblog. In fact, I may move this blog to Tumblr.