Out-Of-Home is no more Traditional

OOH, Out-Of-Home advertisement was one of typical category in traditional advertisement. As the name represents, OOH categorize outdoor advertisement such as street furniture, billboards, and transportation space including airport. In digital age, those medias are no more provided in static media - they move to dynamic. Now it is called DOOH (yes, Digital-OOH), which enables interaction with passengers through touch panel or mobile apps and data analytics based on demographics and feedbacks. You may recall a street panel automatically swiping ads to display in New York. Without human labor to change display physically, and with those localization and dynamic display based on collected data, DOOH becomes much effective and precise being to the target customer.


REFERENCE: 5 Trends in 2018 That Are Changing the OOH Experience - Medium

The touch, the feel, of digital: The new fabric of our lives

             We live in a time where everything revolves around the growth of digital and e-commerce. “Soon, everything we purchase will be online,” “Mobile spending is increasing 2000% annually,” “Computers will take over the world,” etc.  The reality is that as these statistics are unavoidable and accurate, they do not full consider the human element of purchasing power.

            You would think that I am biased towards shifting to digital marketing since my core business and experience is in the space. I’ve been developing digital marketing strategies and monetizing social media since its inception. However, my tenure at Variety Magazine proved to me a valuable lesson in traditional media. That there is significant value in utilizing our most underwhelming sense in advertising: touch.

            While our team was working frantically to create engaging, disruptive digital advertising phenomena to satisfy our clients with video, high-tech graphics and gameifying initiatives, we consistently found ourselves hitting a brick wall. The CMOs and heads of marketing for various clients such as Major Film Studio X and Global Production Company Y (no need to expose the culprits as they all partake in this practice) would still have their eyes glued to their hands in the form of tangible advertising.

            Call it nostalgia, call it product life cycle, call it whatever you want. The reality is that the people with purchasing power for these marketing departments value advertisements that they can hold in their hands; ads that don’t disappear into thin air as they Yelp their dinner reservations.  

            I am curious to see how this behavior shifts as these executives age out of the industry and younger, more tech-savvy Gen X’s take their place. But until then, the reality is that large traditional consumer-facing companies will prefer print advertising over digital, and the majority of their ad spend will reflect as such. 

Bringing New York Times to the 21st Century

Silicon Alley Insider did a back of the envelope analysis on New York Times printing costs based on the company's 3Q08 results and came to the conclusion that they were twice as much as giving the paper's 830,000 subscribers a Kindle.

The article reminded me of a story in the New York Times about an eReader developed by Plastic Logic, which had the perfect dimensions for (8.5 x 11) for delivering newspapers. The company was supposed to announce partnerships at the CES conference, but nothing came of it. There's no news on Plastic Logic's website about partnerships with newspapers and it seems they are moving away from positioning the gadget as a newspaper reader to a business document reader.

That's too bad, given that the newspaper industry is losing ad revenues and readers are going online where the same content is free. Some may wonder who would want an eReader for periodicals when there's available access to the news on the computer, but there's a trade-off between accessibility and mobility. Sure laptops have shrunken over the years and netbooks are relatively light, but the clamshell design still makes them a pretty awkward replacement for holding and perusing a newspaper or magazine.

The Plastic Logic eReader is ideal for portability and ease-of-use and think of the printing costs saved and reduced carbon footprint (no more truck delivery, less trees cut) if the New York Times could get its users to convert to the gadget from newsprint. If the paper can offer an eReader with more reading area than the Kindle and integrate wireless technology, there's a real possibility it can maintain and grow its subscriber base by offering current news in a format that's easier to read than on the computer.

The Ads You Won't Take Home To Mom?

There were a couple of interesting articles in October highlighting studies about which advertising mediums earn the greatest trust by consumers. Seems like as online ads continue to grow and newspapers, magazines and TV scramble to keep their business models afloat, the true value of an ad is being overlooked. According to Nielsen, the tradional forms of ad messaging far outscore their new online counterparts. Obviously there are probably lots of reasons for this discrepancy. First, as mentioned in class, online advertising is both blessed and cursed by its low barrier to entry. Almost any sized company selling virtually any type of product can get its ads placed on 1000s of websites. The cost of TV and print advertising on the other hand is quite expensive and has a much tighter supply of inventory so the companies that can utilize these ad channels are basically pre-qualified as "legitimate" brands. Within the online advertising inventory I am sure that name brands from auto companies, big name retailers and large media companies earn as much trust as their offline counterparts. It's just when evaluating online advertising as a whole, there is tremendous trust dilution from the myriad of ads from small unknown brands and out-and-out fraudulent scams.

One positive highlight of the study was that among all online messaging, recommendations from other consumers was the most trusted form of "advertising." So can companies leverage customer recommendations to build brand awareness and buzz for its products? Maybe so, but it better be careful how it does it. Another study in October by WPP Group PR shop Burson-Marsteller indicates that online "influencers" - those most likely to recommend a product to friends - are beginning to distrust the opinions they find on product review sites and forums. There is growing skepticism by these brand advocates over the credibility of positive reviews with 30% believing that fake reviews are becoming a significant problem.

That being said, brands should still focus on building positive online "word of mouth" through legitimate means. Viral applications and user generated content are two ways that companies can provide customers a positive brand experience that they will share with others. If you have a good product then raising awareness through these types of user-focused campaigns can be a real winner among influencers and the rest of us alike.

Visit the following links to read the full articles referenced above:
"Do Web Ads Lack Credibility?", AdWeek, 10/02/07 (http://tinyurl.com/2bhh4m)
"Caveat: Influencers Growing Wary of Fakes", AdWeek, 10/23/07 (http://tinyurl.com/2699ye)