Last week Tracy Swedlow’s  annual “TV of Tomorrow” Conference was held in San Francisco where the “who’s who” of Interactive television gathered to discuss the future of television from broadcast to broadband including tru2way and TV Anywhere.

In past years’ conferences, you would have found the the few, the proud, the clinically-depressed-die-hards of advanced television platforms, geekgirls like myself , who have been trying for years to advance the cause of TV with social features, commerce solutions and true targeting capabilities.  And in the past, the legacy systems of the US cable infrastructure, the limitations of satellite’s two-way capabilities and the lack of scale in broadband hindered advancement in the space.  But this year, the conference came into its own as the industry showed market growth in a number of ongoing initiatives.   There is movement happening, money being spent and real players involved in the marketplace.

To set the stage for what’s happening in the interactive video space, here are some relevant statistics:

57% of Americans use their TV and PC simultaneously at least 1x a month (Nielsen)
20% of all tv viewers are simultaneously on their pc or mobile device (MRG)
78% of Teens and Tweens are online while watching tv and 66% are sending text messages while watching tv (ypulse/Pangea)

Of all the solutions bubbling up, here are a few that marketers can immediately take advantage of to leverage the power of video to accomplish a number of marketing goals:  Read More »

From our 2009 best-of the IPG Lab blog series:

Recently, I began to notice that Facebook’s friend suggestions were increasingly accurate, and increasingly far-fetched.

At first, it seemed innocent enough. My husband’s aunt appeared on my “Suggestions/Add as a Friend” sidebar. While I like Patty and was happy to friend her, I thought it was strange given 1) I’ve never uploaded my email list to Facebook, or given it permission to do so, 2) I’m not connected to any of my husband’s family or friends on any social network, and my husband has refused to join any social network except for one, and there he uses a fake identity and is not connected to anyone remotely connected to his aunt 3) My privacy settings are tight and in theory, I can’t be found if you’re not my friend.

At first I thought, well, we do share the same last name, so I figured perhaps Facebook was suggesting her for that reason. Over the next few days though, I began to mull this logic. Facebook had never suggested a friend based on last name before, and how would Facebook know which person with that last name to suggest? And what about people with the last name “Smith” – that wouldn’t be very effective.

Then, it happened again. This time, Facebook suggested my mother’s former boss. Read more. 

Can you feel it in the air? That brisk breath of air may not be the weather; instead it’s the sharp inhale as retailers who have spent as much as nine months preparing for the holidays step back, square their shoulders, and prepare to face what Holiday 2009 may bring.

Every product you see, ad you read, sale you line up for was carefully orchestrated last spring when retailers (and brands who sell into retail) made their call on Christmas. Those decisions came during perhaps the darkest hours of the macro-economic news fest, coming off one of the toughest holiday seasons on record.

Imagine being the buyer who had to commit to inventory, pricing and terms? It must have felt more like prognostication than retail merchandising. I have been asked a lot lately to make my own call on the holiday season. It’s easy to predict the worse. Read More »

This month the Lab attended a kind of Facebook marketing boot camp, where members of the Facebook team guided us on best practices for integrating Facebook within brand marketing plans. The opportunity is much larger then capturing a portion of the 250 million Facebook users as customers; it’s also a prospect for new ways to be innovative in our marketing.

Most of the conversation of the day centered around two ways you can use Facebook to market your brand: engagement ads and Facebook pages. But the team did talk a bit about what’s new on the popular site. For instance, they are starting to put demographic and geographic targeting into action: Targeting keywords from status updates and users birthdays are new features.

Read More »

My answer to the question of what makes a great marketer is simple: Being a great listener. Yeah, that’s right, listening.

The answer is simple because marketing is simple. If you know what your customers really want and give it to them, magic happens. Easy, right?

Most businesses start off as great listeners. Bernie and Arthur, two leaders I was fortunate to work for when I first joined Home Depot knew how to listen to customers. Their entire business was built around listening. Read More »

In tech circles, Apple’s been making some decisions that have concerned many consumers (not to mention Google’s CEO, who resigned from Apple’s board Monday). They have potentially caused serious damage to their relationship with Google, and undermined much of the promise of leading the charge in bringing unparalleled functionality to the mobile phone.

So what happened? The first recent rumblings of discontent came around the time of the 3.0 software launch and the release of the iPhone 3GS. While the iPhone now had sanctioned video capabilities, some of the very neat live broadcasting solutions like Qik or Flixwagon weren’t being allowed into the AppStore, despite already having software functioning flawlessly for months on jailbroken versions of the iPhone.

Then the trouble with Google started. Read More »

It can be scary for marketers to put the first foot down in the vast landscape of Digital Out-of-Home Ad Networks. Helping brands make large strides in the space is Adcentricity, an aggregator of DOOH Networks, that adds a level of human know-how to strategic campaigns. Now, the company has developed a new offering called “Research Lite” that will allow brands to measure their success more effectively.

Adcentricity’s timing couldn’t be better. Brands are increasingly turning traditional advertising models on their heads requiring agencies to provide proof of performance.“Research Lite” can help meet these expectations by offering a prepackaged research component that can be added to DOOH Network campaigns. The research provides a detailed, quick snapshot of how effective a brand’s plan is across multiple networks. Select networks provide proof of play and efficacy on their network, but as CEO, Rob Gorrie told me, “(Adcentricity implements) research for the campaign’s needs, not of the networks needs.” Research Lite provides an opportunity for a third party perspective to analyze the bigger picture. Read More »

Haptic feedback is the science of applying technology to create an interface with a user through the sense of touch.

Though the technology has been in the consumer market for many years, most popularly as force-feedback controls for gaming (E.G. Vibrating steering wheels), the area of haptics is getting some fresh attention.

The massive adoption of touch-screen interfaces across all types of computing platforms is forcing a rethink of the person/machine boundary.  The outmoding of the traditional keyboard and mouse is leaving the average user flat in terms filling the need for some level of tactile response. Read More »