Sports Illustrated & Smart Water follow the ESPN & Apple Route

I regularly write about trends in online advertising and the aggressive roles that Apple and ESPN in particular have taken with innovative, rich-media units.

It seems as though rich take overs are occurring in two primary locations - in part because the cost of development and implementation is far greater than traditional units: - big destination sites with very large audiences (like Yahoo) - targeted verticals with more measured audiences (ESPN and Wall Street Journal)

Today, Sports Illustrated took over their homepage with a very aggressive, unique unit by Smart Water that featured Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. Not only is unit very targeted (product and personality) but it is specifically crafted for Sports Illustrated (size, the SI.com header is integrated, and so forth). While these ads are highly engaging and attractive - they come at a few costs. First (and mentioned above), they are clearly more difficult to build and implement - but therefore demand high CPMs.

Second, the ad types have diminishing returns over time. For instance, the audience's interest is captured because it is a unique treatment (and therefore not seen as a regular annoyance). If these units appeared on the majority of pageviews, the audience reaction would be much different.

iPhone and iPod Touch Account for +42% of Mobile Advertising Calls in US

Each month, I look forward to reading AdMob's detailed 'Mobile Metrics' report. It is a comprehensive report of mobile usage by geography, device, OS, and so forth - and based on the size of AdMob's network, the report is as interesting as it is powerful. The June report focuses on global iPhone and iPod Touch usage. The most striking data (and something I have written about before) is how important the iPod Touch has become from a device and advertising perspective:

* We estimate that 13 million iPhones have been used in the US. More than 1 million iPhones have been used in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. * We estimate that 12 million iPod touches have been used in the US. More than 1million iPod touches have been used in the United Kingdom and Canada.

In the below graphic, notice how the split between iPhone and iPod Touch users in North America is roughly 63% / 37%.

But, despite that ration - iPhone and iPod Touch devices represent a more even percent of ad requests: 22.6% vs. 19.8% respectively.... suggesting that iPod Touch users are more actively browsing the web and using applications.

Also notable, the #3-#20 US devices account for 31% of ad requests... Apple's two devices alone account for over 42%:

MLB At Bat Now Streams all MLB Games to iPhone

MLB.com's At Bat 2009 iPhone App released a major update today that allows subscribers of both MLB.tv and the MLB At Bat app to stream all regular season games via the iPhone. Until today, At Bat subscribers were able to only watch the Game of the Day.

I am a paying subscriber of both and have reviewed both MLB products - in short, the video and audio quality of both services are unparalleled (in fact, no other offering even exists in other sports / leagues). The iPhone streaming is particularly impressive as it occurs both over 3G and Wifi - and the quality is not degraded in the same way that many other mobile video services are.

Hopefully the NFL, NBA and television networks are downloading these apps.

Tweetmeme, Bitly, Retweets and Blog Comments

Even if a small change, it is telling that TechCrunch has added a Tweetmeme "retweet" counter to their homepage... directly beneath the comments counter (and visually more powerful). It is also telling that the reteweet numbers are often 5-10x the comments.

I am not suggesting that either onsite comments are disappearing or less valuable that offsite comments (namely Twitter and Facebook) - but it is a powerful, fast-changing dynamic... and clearly publishers and brands need to understand, encourage and facilitate activity both on and off their domains. In this example, the TechCrunch post saw 10,000+ pageviews arrive from Bit.ly-only URLs:

Of course, as the conversation continues to become distributed, data and measurement become tougher to collect and mine. Danny Sullivan has two good, recent articles on how Twitter may be delivering 500%+ more traffic to your site than you currently believe.

- Is Twitter Sending You 500% To 1600% More Traffic Than You Might Think? - How Twitter Might Send Far More Traffic Than You Think

It is also important to remember that discussion and engagement themselves have great value... regardless of location and in ways measured beyond pageviews.

Starbucks: Four News Feed Interaction Lead to Three New Fans

Starbucks was named the "Most Engaged Global Brand" in Charlene Li's ENGAGEMENTdb study. I have written about Starbucks as a leading example of Facebook marketing ("A Lesson in Facebook Marketing and Engagement") - this document is helpful because it reveals Starbucks though process, team organization (six people with centralized focuses) and viral data:

“Recently, we found that for every four people that interacted with a particular news item, another three people are added virally as friends of those people.” Just to put it in perspective, the announcement of the mini-Starbucks card on Facebook drew 1,406 comments and 12,382 people “liking” the post so that it showed up in their news feed. Facebook is not only about messaging to the 3.5 million fans, but also allowing the fans to talk with each other about their love for the product and experience.

Contrast that to Twitter.com/starbucks where one person responds to inquiries, such as replacement blades for coffee grinders, or even questions from baristas about changes in the menu. With 250,000+ followers, Starbucks uses Twitter as an “in the moment” channel to deliver timely customer support and spread word about the latest breaking news and contests.

Other great brands to follow / study: - Zappos - Dunkin Donuts (my favorite Facebook brand) - Amazon - Jetblue (Southwest and Virgin are also good) - Redbull

ENGAGEMENTdb: Most Engaged Brands On Social Media -

Bit.ly, Real-Time Analytics & Twitter as a Traffic Referral

Over a year ago, I wrote about the need for analytics for the real-time web (and the potential business model surrounding it): "Twitter and Friendfeed: Understanding Referral Traffic; Arriving at a Business Model".

Since then, the real-time web has exploded (thank you Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc)... and the need for deep data, filtering and search has only become more glaring (a notion made very clear in Twitter's internal documents and memos).

I have also written about Bitly and the role it can play in this ecosystem. Recently, I have started using Bitly's sidebar and data more actively (Clicks, Referrers, Locations and retweets). I love it. It's a glimpse of: - what discussions and posts are active and engaging - where the traffic and discussion is beginning (email, IM and desktop clients like Twitterific are primary drivers) - where the discussion is occurring (for the most active topics, it is more off my site than on it... fascinating) - Twitter's ecosystem (in the below example, Twitter.com accounts for only 6.5% of the direct clicks)

Facebook Connection Targeting: Pages, Applications, Events & Groups

Facebook unveiled a relatively significant enhancement to their targeting and Ads platform... that, for some reason, has gone relatively unnoticed. Facebook now allows advertisers to target users that have engaged with your pages, applications, events and/or groups:

We've released new ad targeting capabilities built specifically for our developer community. Developers can now target ads to users who have never visited their applications to tap into new growth areas in Facebook's social graph. They can also target existing users of their applications to encourage repeat visits. More from Facebook's Justin Osofsky

Facebook's new targeting options are a powerful way to:

- drive distribution of new or existing content (Fan Pages, applications, etc) - deliver coupons or offers for in-application activity (ie Zynga's Mafia Wars) - activity / proximity based targeting (until this, Facebook only allowed demographic based targeting) - convert users into Facebook Fans - conduct user polling - and, for Facebook, capture advertising dollars from developers

Dropbox Nails Viral Marketing Through Facebook, Twitter & Email

As a freemium business, Dropbox knows that its users find value in incremental free storage for their accounts. Dropbox also knows that, while its product is hugely popular, it is not inherently viral (in part because it's not a social or entirely web-based product).

By leveraging their userbase, adding simple incentives and integrating with other social platforms (namely Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc) - Dropbox has implemented a killer viral marketing program... And in a way, it is as much social as it a traditional affiliate program. Each link is encoded with a specific 'affiliate' ID that tracks whether friends register for Dropbox accounts; and if they do, your account is upgraded.

Very simple and apparently very effective: in one post on Facebook, I drove two registrations.

Also worth noting, this implementation doesn't directly integrate Facebook Connect, but it certainly could. Dropbox could integrate users' Facebook 'address book' and individually invite each person, send custom messages, etc.

Is Amazon Acquiring Netflix?

As part of my 2009 Digital Media Predictions, I gave six reasons why Amazon should acquire Netflix (and also merge with eBay):

So why does Amazon + Netflix make sense? A few reasons:

1. In economic hardship or not, Netflix offers an alternative to movie purchasing… which I believe, over time, is eroding (just like music). Offering consumers the ability to either purchase a movie at a flat rate (ie $14.99) or renting it within a monthly subscription (ie $14.99) provides choice while still keeping buyers on Amazon.

2. I love Netflix’s service… but I despise Netflix.com and the site experience which, as I’ve written before, hasn’t changed for years. Amazon would immediately fix this by leveraging their best-in-class search and site experience – and integrating that into the core Amazon platform.

Continue reading for all six reason

According to TechCrunch, it looks as though Amazon may indeed be courting Netflix:

Well here’s a hot little rumor. Netflix stock has surged today on news that it may be acquired by Amazon.

The stock is currently up over 7% in trading today, at an 11-week high. Sources seem pretty thin, based seemingly on stock analysis from places like WhatsTrading.com. And neither company is commenting. But the idea is a hot one.

Update: Bloomberg is also covering: "Netflix Advances on Speculation of Buyout Offer From Amazon.com"