Something a CFO and CMO Will Agree On

November 14, 2008 in Online advertising | Tags: , , , , , | by tyjlevine | No comments

How many times has a CMO been asked by a company president to draw up an annual budget only to have the CFO step in and question, line by line, item by item, each expenditure planned. Some of us have even been questioned down to the penny. I think the most overused question by CFO’s is, “Why do we need that?” or “Do we really need that campaign to achieve our goals; can we do it any cheaper?”

Marketing is an inexact science. Anyone who says differently hasn’t seen great campaigns with oodles of testing go belly up and risky ones with low expectations blow the roof off of metrics. It seems that during every economic boom CMO’s and marketing departments are not questioned about their spend and during every downturn everyone from the CFO to the junior bean counter go on the warpath slashing and burning every line item possible. Not only are every $1000, $500 and $100 dollar expenses looked at with a magnifying glass, but so too are every quarter, dime, nickel and penny.

So what is a CMO to do? How can a CFO reconcile expenses with the need for company growth? Are there marketing campaigns and tactics that could meet a CMO’s need for reaching a target audience, consumer engagement and increased brand awareness while satisfying the fiscal responsibility of the CFO? Yes!

A marketer generally has a number of buckets to allocate marketing spend that generally fall into traditional and non-traditional. Traditional marketing/advertising encompasses television, radio, print, newspaper and pr etc., while non-traditional includes online, event marketing, and promotions.

I have always argued that efficiency and talking to the most targeted audience should be paramount in all marketing decision making. All too often marketers eschew smaller, more targeted audiences for larger, broader and less targeted ones. Reach is great and should be a consideration, but a more targeted audience should and will respond more favorably and provide more viral opportunity than a mass audience where some might be interested in your offering. Almost anyone can aggregate reach on the Internet, don’t let a small reach number scare you away from doing business. There is a lot of real estate available for aggregation and it happens every day.

Online video advertising solves some of these challenges and video ads that run in multiple insertion slots inside casual games provide additional benefits that a CFO will love. At the same time CMO’s win with continual brand uplift, increased brand recognition and moving consumers farther down the purchase funnel.

What are the benefits?

Online Video Ads in Casual
Games

CMO
Benefit

CFO
Benefit

Targeted Opportunities

x

Lower CPM than Television and Print

x

Industry Leading Metrics

x

x

Remarketing Opportunities

x

x

Repurposed Video Commercials

x

x

Engaged Audience

x

CPM Campaign + Engagement = Cost Per Lead

x

Audience Who Have Said Yes to Advertising

x

x

Television like creative with consumer interaction

x

Safe, Family Friendly Medium Online

x

x

Next time your CFO asks, “Is that expense worthwhile,” you can answer with a resounding, yes! Online video advertising works in the casual game environment and no other network has the reach, technology, targeting or metrics that NeoEdge provides. Start your campaign today and please both the creative and bean-counting side of management.

ad-in-game1

If you have any questions feel free to reach out: marketing@neoedge.com

Looking for other blogs that follow the online video and casual game arena? Let me suggest the following:

Venturebeat and Dean Takahashi

Lightspeed Ventures Blog and Jeremy Liew

Ars Technica Gaming

GigaOm

Media Buyer Planner

Casual Games Blog

Will Video for Food

Future of Media

The Women are Here - CPG Where are You?

November 3, 2008 in Online advertising | Tags: , , , , , , | by tyjlevine | No comments

In 1960 teenagers and young adults of the era flocked to the movie theaters to see the coming of age flick “Where the Boys Are.” Fort Lauderdale, Florida was never the same after that and drew humongous crowds of college students for the next three plus decades.  If the boys were in Florida during spring break, the girls had to follow.  Today, advertisers might be asking Where the Girls are. Or more appropriately where are the women.

I can remember, not too long ago, when men dominated the Internet and it seemed that porn and sports sites dominated the internet landscape.  Boy has times changed (pun intended).  Sure we all know that women outnumber men when it comes to spending time online, but who are these women, what do they do online.  Most important to advertisers should be where the women are when they are online. And then ask, what is the best way to engage with them while online?

In today’s Advertising Age article “Wired Women an Untapped Goldmine for Packaged Goods” writer Jack Neff talks about these “Digital Divas” and how they relate to and interact with digital media.  As the article indicates the results of the Microsoft/Mindshare and Ogilvy & Mather study point out what we at NeoEdge have been saying for months. CPG marketers and advertisers need to begin migrating away from the comfort zone of traditional media to digital world.

But what should that digital advertising look like, sound like and where should it be placed?  I think the ad age article says it even better than I could.  “The key, however, is hitting what the research team dubs the “female trifecta” of providing information, entertainment and connection simultaneously.”  Guess what, I know a medium that provides all three and has a track record of success to support those three goals.
Online video advertising is far more effective than banner or display advertising when it comes to CPG.

When it comes to CPG advertising packaged goods marketers invest millions of dollars into building brands that create positive emotions with consumers.  It is pretty hard to create an emotional connection between brand/product and consumer in a banner, display or keyword ad for that matter.  Online video advertising is so much more powerful.  Clearly this medium is the “provide information” piece to the female trifecta.

Casual Games – the #1 entertainment activity on the web, enjoyed by over 80 million adults in the US is the entertainment leg in the trifecta stool.  There are few, if any better, categories of web activity that provide a captured, focused consumer in an uncluttered environment than casual games.  When the average page view on a website is around 52 seconds, according to comScore™, and the average casual game play session is 45 minutes (NeoEdge Networks statistics), the choice is simple.

Casual games provide CPG advertisers the long form opportunity similar to television advertising but add a storytelling or serial component to linking multiple ads together in a single game play session.  And because the format of casual game advertising on the NeoEdge Network provides for call-to-action opportunities that allow for consumers to pass along information to their friends or respond directly to an offer contained in the advertising.  This is the third rail of the trifecta – simultaneous connection.

NeoEdge provides the platform and the consumer audience.  Research abounds supporting the concept of non-traditional advertising being right for CPG and the economic climate is ripe for CPG to migrate towards this exciting concept.

The boys may have been in Ft. Lauderdale, but today the women are online and online playing casual games!

Is it Hot or Cold?

October 2, 2008 in Online advertising | Tags: , , , , , , | by tyjlevine | No comments

Forty plus years ago that question sparked the curiosity of many technologists, futurists and media leaders as they began to analyze the proliferation of content and content delivery mechanisms. Marshal McLuhan began this debate during the 1960’s with his seminal treatise Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. As media people we must realize that change is inevitable, and that rather than resisting change, we should embrace these new opportunities for connecting with consumers on their own terms.

Online Video Advertising is not the future of DTC advertising - it is the present. While it should not be considered a “one shoe fits all” solution, it can be used effectively to engage consumers with a brand, opportunity or offer. I would argue that although Marshal McLuhan was right in dividing media into Hot and Cold categories, the modern media landscape cries out for a third one. The pc and internet have created a new medium for consumable media, which could best be described as “warm”, or “in-between” the “Hot” and “Cold” groups.

According to McLuhan, “Hot” media includes content that requires complete consumer involvement without much stimulus. This type of media includes print, radio, film and photography, all focusing on one of the human senses, such as sight or sound. Cool media, such as television, is at the other end of the spectrum, requiring very little involvement by the participant, but provides high levels of stimulus. The consumer of this type of media is often detached, but entertained.

Are these classifications important to analyzing where advertisers’ spend their dollars? Where do ad dollars flow? To some extent yes. “Cool” media appear to get the lion’s share of the ad pool, while “Hot” mediums are declining at a rapid rate with no turnaround in sight. How advertisers place advertising and engage with consumers is an important question to ask each time a media plan is created. People interact and react differently to the same message in different mediums.

So where within these categories do online casual games fit? And how should advertisers think differently about crafting a message for this unique medium? Here is where I think a third category (“Warm”) is needed. Whereas hot media require less participation than cool ones, playing online casual games requires active participation and a lean-forward mentality while at the same time provides substantial stimulus and involvement in the game itself. Online casual games are a release from the daily grind. They are a brief respite in a person’s often hectic day. Radio is often consumed while doing something else – driving. While television is portrayed as a mindless diversion, it is often consumed while multitasking. Online casual game play is generally a focused and engaged activity with only a slight intensity or compete mentality.

How people find and consume entertainment has changed. Where they consume it has also changed. Radio and tv began as dispensers of news and evolved into entertainment mediums. Advertising has supported these mediums from the beginning, but audiences for each peaked years ago. When you combine a fractured media landscape with changes in consumer behavior, advertisers have to think outside the traditional “box” to 1) locate the audiences either niche or by scale, 2) engage consumers where they are most open to messaging, and 3) provide a message that invites interaction and branding in one opportunity. Online video advertising, inside casual games address these issues and challenges.

Online video advertising, when done effectively, is not just repackaged television spots. An ideal online video campaign combines focused messaging and calls to action inside the immersive casual games environment. The audience is there with over 80 million adults playing online casual games, and NeoEdge is leading the way for advertisers by aggregating this audience. The environment is more engaging than radio, television and print combined. Messaging and creative is improving, but still has a way to go.

If you are an advertiser and you already know that consumers are bombarded with 5000 messages per day, would you want your message floating around in that clutter? Or, would you be better off owning a television-like experience, inside a lean-forward medium where the consumer is open to messaging and engaged in an uncluttered environment?

When you think about it, online casual games would have been a great subject for Marshall McLuhan to study because to him “the medium is the message.” Casual Games may have been “warm” to McLuhan, but they are the “HOTTEST” advertising vehicle available today.

Political Media Buyers Are Missing Out

September 2, 2008 in Online advertising | Tags: , , , , | by tyjlevine | No comments

Television and Direct Mail have been the advertising of choice for political campaigns for the last four decades. On a percentage basis online advertising has failed to generate the interest and dollars that other vertical categories have shifted to the medium. It is time for that to change and technology, audience reach and competitive ad rates make the time NOW.

I can understand how campaigns, from the Obama/McCain camps all the way to state initiative proposals, fear the misspending of dollars that are the lifeblood of political campaigns. However, 2008 is different as online video advertising is an opportunity to move television dollars to the internet or even better use the medium to compliment traditional ad buys. Yes, there are risky sites to place this advertising. I doubt that John McCain wants to repeat his advertising message next to an Al Jazeera video on YouTube.  Yes this really did happen.

But there is a safe place online, a medium that is over 75% female and the coveted 30-60 demographic. Online video advertising in casual games is the closest thing to using advertising to reach female voters in this election other than placing signs inside the dressing rooms at Victoria Secret.

At NeoEdge we have spent the past four weeks asking casual game players, state by state, who they planned to vote for. The results have been interesting across the board, but especially interesting in the 10-12 key battleground states. Advisors to John McCain and Barack Obama should stand up and pay attention as they are missing one of the few advertising vehicles where they can tell a story in three parts, over the course of twenty minutes, while the voter is 100% engaged with their message.

The same goes for state races and state initiatives. In California, every election cycle has one or two ballot initiatives that seem to have hit the lottery when it comes to fund-raising. Already, here in California, there is a solar energy ballot measure that seems to have bought every other commercial slot on television. I cannot go an hour without seeing the same commercial over and over again. A better use of ad dollars would be for the supporters of this initiative to spread the ad buy across multiple mediums utilizing the same messaging and creative. Combining a television ad buy with an online video ad buy in casual games would provide complimentary mediums that have a proven track record of successful message awareness uplift and conversion to action.

Hey you – political advertising buyer, campaign manager or candidate – don’t let this election cycle pass you by. Online video advertising in casual games allow you to REACH a LARGE and TARGETED audience; an audience that is over 85% 18+ and over 75% FEMALE. Red states, blue states are you listening?

Click-Through Rates Can Be Misleading

August 22, 2008 in Online advertising | Tags: , , , , , , | by tyjlevine | 1 comment

I cannot think of a topic that is not more highly touted, as a measure of success, by internet firms than click-through rates, CTR for short. That would assume that the highest CTR would define a successful campaign or show that one company or technology is better than another. Not so Fast……..

Online Video Advertising is hot right now, but many factors determine a successful online video ad. Although CTR is a criterion to help determine engagement, many companies do not focus on the consumer experience and thus are able to generate artificially high CTRs. In the long run, there are multiple losers with this philosophy. Advertisers will soon learn that their data is inaccurate and artificially inflated. Consumers will turn away from video advertising that is intrusive. Game publishers will eventually lose revenue and portals like Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL Games will ultimately feel the brunt of all audiences and consumers will go elsewhere. The brand closest to the consumer is always the one tarred the most in this type of environment.

So what is really happening? In the casual game space online video ads are the most immersive engaging medium, but they will remain the economic vehicle only if they continue to prove valuable and successful to advertisers. Some casual game technology providers create consumer frustration by requiring them to sit, and watch the online video ad and require them to click on the ad if they want it to disappear even after the ad has finished playing. At NeoEdge, we place great importance on creating the best consumer experience possible while serving the needs of our advertisers. Consumers would go elsewhere to play their favorite games if the experience wasn’t accepted.

While the Internet is the best media to actually measure audience behavior, advertising success and success metrics we have seen over the years with click fraud involving keywords that these metrics can be adulterated. Ask yourself if the normal CTR for a typical campaign is X and a campaign runs 2-3 times better can that data be immediately trusted? Should further analysis be done? Absolutely! Some companies create a more confusing experience for consumers by having inferior technology that does not send a consumer to a web location immediately after one click. A consumer/game player’s natural tendency is to click again and again. Advertisers are ecstatic by increasing CTRs, while consumers get frustrated and mad at the advertiser because they don’t realize that the advertiser is not responsible for the ad placement technology in the game, but the advertiser and game portal get the backlash.

When a click occurs in an online video ad is vastly different than when it occurs in a banner or display ad. With banners and display ads, the visual and message appear instantaneously. Online video ads, like television commercials take time to develop the message and call to action. If a consumer clicks on a video ad in the first few seconds does anyone really believe that the click was done to find out more information or because they loved the ad’s intro?

If you were an advertiser and your ad received a click and the only result is the ad’s disappearance how would you feel? Like you just wasted your ad spend? Some major game portals and their technology providers are doing just that. The result is a poor customer experience, zero ad value and zero residual benefit to the advertiser. For online video advertising to be successful it needs to compliment the content it associates. Online video advertising that blends in with the entertainment nature of casual games is best, but ads that are clickable but do not “pay off” that click for the consumer are worthless. The CTR might as well be 100% for the metric is useless.

A present NeoEdge based campaign illustrates these points: Estee Lauder is currently running on the NeoEdge Network and the data shows that over 90% of the ads have been watched to completion and the average click point was 12 seconds into a 15 second ad. Clearly, those people who clicked did so to learn more about the Estee Lauder product. Isn’t that the purpose of a click?

Casual games advertising with NeoEdge: Combining leisure and business in a casual way

August 5, 2008 in Summer '08 Breakfast Series | by stevenweigel | No comments

 

Do you ever have the feeling that today’s world is too fast-paced? Too hectic and stressful? Giving you hardly enough time to grab something to eat before heading to work? I saw an ad for cereals this morning, claiming that eating breakfast boosts school children’s concentration by up to 20%. Interesting… I bet the same is true for adults. If I don’t eat before work, all I can pretty much think of is lunch, so I take my time in the morning. But I can imagine that some people don’t have that time, considering things like long commutes, getting the kids ready for school, etc.! So why not combine business with a good and healthy breakfast? We just launched our Summer 2008 Breakfast Series, with the first stops taking place in Boston and Chicago.

 

Boston

Free breakfast and game advertising seminar

Wednesday, July 30, 2008, 8am – 10am

@ Nine Zero Hotel



Chicago

Free breakfast and game advertising seminar

Thursday, August, 7, 2008, 8am – 10am

@ Hard Rock Hotel

 

Los Angeles

Free cocktail-event and game advertising seminar

Tuesday, August, 12, 2008, 6pm – 8pm

@ uWink 

 

Even though breakfasts are considered the most important meal of the day, we all love some evening get-togethers too, don’t we? And since Hollywood is just a little different from the rest of the country, we decided to have a cocktail event in Los Angeles! Moreover, attendees will have the chance to meet Nolan Bushnell, Chairman of NeoEdge’s Board and owner of uWink Restaurants. Nolan is the inventor of “Pong” and founder of Chuck E. Cheese restaurants as well as Atari. He is considered as the “father of electronic gaming”. Paramount Pictures is currently developing a biopic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Nolan Bushnell.

 

  

===========================================================================

All events are by invitation only. If you work for an ad agency and we haven’t reached out to you and you are interested in attending one of these events, please send an email to rsvp@neoedge.com. You will hear back from us shortly!===========================================================================

 

 

Sleepless in New York

July 11, 2008 in Online advertising | by stevenweigel | No comments

 

New York.

 

It is 4:21am.

 

The east coast is asleep… the entire east coast? Not quite! There is Barbara, for example. Barbara is 47 years old and married. She lives on the Upper Westside with her husband and her two children. Barbara is a freelance writer for fashion journals. She likes going to the opera and she enjoys shopping for beauty and fashion articles. Barbara is quite happy with her life. Or is she?

 

Barbara has the same problem that more than 30 million other Americans struggle with. Barbara cannot sleep, she suffers from insomnia. Studies have shown that the prevalence of insomnia is somewhere between 10 and 40%. Can you imagine? Up to 40% of the adult population has sleeping problems?

 

Fascinatingly, nearly 20% of daily game play that is ad-enabled by NeoEdge Networks in the US occurs between 10pm and 6am. Just coincidence or are there more people like Barbara playing games at night?

 

Certainly not when it looking at the gender distribution in casual games: The vast majority of the gamers on NeoEdge ad-enabled games are female. Interestingly, women are also about 1.4 times more likely to suffer from insomnia than men. See where I’m going here?

 

When looking at the incredible numbers that pharmaceutical companies are spending on their advertising every year, it seems odd to still spend the majority on television, where it is extremely difficult to break through the clutter of 6-10 brands per commercial break. On the other hand, advertising in casual games allows you to just do that: Break through the clutter!

 

With over 18 million casual gamers, more than half of them being female adults, NeoEdge provides a unique opportunity to combine the targeting abilities of local cable with the reach of national broadcast TV. Barbara is definitely much more receptive to advertising messages when she is in her comfort zone. The lean-forward experience of casual gaming is proven to be more engaging and more effective. So why not connect with your patients at play?!

 

If I was the media planner for Ambien, Lunesta, Rozerem, and the likes, I would be thrilled about these prospects…  And so would Barbara!

 

Good night!

Where Online Video Ads Work

July 10, 2008 in Online advertising | by tyjlevine | No comments

When you took a break yesterday or last night what did you do? Did you watch television? Maybe? Did you read the newspaper? Probably not. Did you go online? Probably so. Did you play a casual game online? If you are a 25+ female the answer is likely to be yes.

The growth in online casual game play continues to explode, both in the US and worldwide. Recent comScore data shows that over 28% of the worldwide online population 15+ visit an online game site each month. These numbers are simply amazing. For a company that is helping to revolutionize the casual game industry we at NeoEdge continue to see more and more people going online to play these games. Major media companies have realized that their media brands translate perfectly into this space.

At NeoEdge we created a turnkey solution for any website to have a casual game channel and allow their users to stay and play their favorite games. We are also the company that have allowed game publishers, those people and companies that actually create the games, to generate consistent revenues through advertising enabling the games. With our patent pending Neo ARM ™ technology we have led the way in this endeavor. Games are about competing and winning and this is a win-win for publishers to continue building great downloadable games and for consumers who get to play these games for free.

Television programming has from the beginning been paid for through advertising.  Even cable and satellite television comes to your living rooms with commercials.  Without commercials the cost of entertainment would be so expensive that only a few would be able to afford to watch and no one would create content for such a small audience.

Online video advertising is the next frontier of Internet advertising and no where is it more successful today than in downloadable casual games.  The rich, engaged experience between consumer and the game on their computer screen is a perfect medium for advertisers to reach this audience and connect their brand with a willing and appreciative audience.  Would M.A.S.H or Seinfeld have been two of the most popular television shows in history if commercials didn’t support their creation?  Would 1 billion people annually watch the Super Bowl if it was a pay Per View Event?

Check this space often as we continue to tell the story about how online casual games continue to be the #1 entertainment activity in the US (according to a 2007 Parks Associates study).  We will tell the story of how consumers, games and advertisers come together to create a playing field where everyone is a winner.

GAME ON!