THE DIGITAL BLUR » Agencies

Commoditizing Valuable Service- “We Didn’t Budget For This”

Jason Heller — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:21:53 +0000

Agencies have become commoditized. To a degree many may have deserved it. But a good strategically minded agency is a good partner and needs to be treated as such. Commoditized agencies have no problem doing spec work, or bowing to clients’ every demand. Clients – I love you, how can I not, but if you see yourself in this video, know that you are often hurting yourself more than your agency or partners. The reality is – good work is not cheap. As the adage goes: Pick two of the following: Fast, Cheap, Good.

Enjoy!

To GRP Or Not To GRP?

Jason Heller — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:32:19 +0000

As many readers of this blog know, I often expose my inner media geek. Since leaving the agency world two years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to share all of the secret digital media sauce amassed throughout a carreer at the healm of an innovative, nimble and successful digital agency.

I now spend my time consulting other agencies and marketers, and presenting digital media planning & buying, and social media marketing training seminars around the country as part of my role at Laredo Group. In today’s edition of the Laredo Group newsletter, I authored an article about the role of GRP’s in digital media planning, and decided that it is too important a topic not to share with you. Would love to hear your thoughts and comments! Enjoy…

To GRP or Not to GRP?

Few topics evoke such passionate debate among senior level media strategists as “the role of the GRP/TRP metric online”. For the purpose of this article, each generic reference to GRP is in actuality a TRP reference, as is the case in most media conversations.

Since the dawn of media planning time, media impact has been predicted and evaluated as a function of the relationship of reach and frequency against a defined target universe – essentially the percentage reach against a target multiplied by the frequency:

GRP = (Reach/Target Universe x 100) x Frequency

Generally, the Nielsen television universe is used as the denominator in the reach calculation due to its close representation of the actual universe of US households. Proponents of a related metric, the iGRP, use the online universe of the target as the denominator of the calculation.

Allow me to lay out the arguments of both sides…

The argument for using GRP’s goes something like this: Advertisers use GRP’s to measure traditional media, so why should online be any different? Having an apples-to-apples metric allows advertisers to evaluate all media uniformly and in a more integrated fashion as part of a mix.

The argument against GRP’s: We shouldn’t fit a square peg of new media dynamics into the round hole of a traditional media planning model. The GRP doesn’t account for the unique attributes of digital media, such as engagement and relevant targeting. “Apples-to-apples” comparisons are rare because online targets are more psychographically defined, while traditional GRP evaluations only incorporate demographics. The iGRP further muddies the proverbial waters by using a different universe than the traditional GRP altogether, thereby countering the primary argument that the GRP provides an apples-to-apples comparison across media.

Whether you are for or against the use of GRP’s, nobody will argue against the importance of understanding how reach and frequency affect campaign impact.

There are plenty of ways to measure this influence and develop media mix models without retrofitting the GRP.

While the argument focuses around the GRP, the real issue quite simply stems from a difference in media currency, not evaluation metrics. While the unit of media currency for both traditional and digital media is called the “impression”, the underlying currencies are different. The currency of traditional media is “audience”, where impressions equal reach. However, digital media impressions are equal to reach x frequency. As a result there is an over abundance of devalued online ad inventory. Just think about the impact of the value of $1 if the government just flooded the market with newly minted currency.

As an example of these currency differences – if you buy a spot during a TV program that reaches 1MM viewers, you are buying 1MM impressions, and reach equals 1MM. Frequency is a function of additional buys. When you buy 1MM impressions from a particular website, you buy a share of voice, not the total audience. In this instance, your 1MM impressions can yield 1MM people at a frequency of 1, or 50,000 people at a frequency of 20. In either case your GRP’s would not give you the ability to judge the relationship of reach and frequency of your buy – a frequency cap would.

The Final Word -

With all the breadth of data and analytic tools available, why focus on a metric that aims to predict impact, when impact and influence can be measured? Make sure that all buys have frequency cap parameters so that you can predict reach and frequency, then measure the metrics that matter based on your objectives. Online, you can actually measure the frequency at which you hit a point of diminishing returns on branding effectiveness, or the frequency at which you achieve your best direct response performance. After all, isn’t media impact what the GRP tries to predict in the first place?

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Bigger Ad Units, Badder Facebook Pages, & Burgeoning Social Networks Oh My!

Jason Heller — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:10:12 +0000

Shame, shame, shame on me for breaking my own blog rules. The last 2 weeks has been the longest I’ve gone without updating The Digital Blur in a very long time. I apologize to my regular readers and have adequately reprimanded myself…

So, a lot has happened in the last two weeks!

Last week the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) conference concluded. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I was able to stay up to date on the major sound bytes throughout the days, as they were happening, thanks to some of my fellow colleagues, like David Smith of Mediasmith (thanks David and others!). There were many discussions regarding the value of digital marketing, how agencies can deal with the shifts to social media and generally the economics of making money offering digital advertising and marketing services. But more on that in its own post…

Bigger Ad Units

For at least the last year or so, many in the industry have been screaming from the mountaintops that online advertising needs to become more creative, engage consumers better, establish more value and prove that it can push the needle for marketers. Last month Randal Rothernberg from the IAB posted a passionate manifesto and a call for the industry to step up (worth a read by the way). Today the Online Publishers Association released a press release regarding a proposal for three new standard ad units:

The Fixed Panel (recommended dimension is 336 wide x 860 tall), which looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
The XXL Box (recommended dimension is 468 wide x 648 tall), which has page-turn functionality with video capability.
The Pushdown (recommended dimension is 970 wide x 418 tall), which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.

While we know that bigger units have proven over time to increase both brand measures and direct response, we as an industry are still missing one of the fundamental challenges. We work with a different media currency than other media. While most media sells audience (impressions = audience / reach), the digital industry sells gross impressions (reach x frequency). Savvy media buyers request frequency caps and plan around reach & frequency, but from what reps tell me, this is the exception and not the rule. Likewise many buyers don’t even track the depth of metrics available. With the currency difference measurement is key. One last point is that accountability does not by default equal direct response. All approaches are measurable and more accountable online, not just DR.

Badder Facebook Pages

Yes that’s “Badder” in the good sense of the word! Last week Facebook converted “fan pages” into the marketers’ equivalent of a Facebook profile, complete with the inclusion of all activity into friends’ feeds (so far the holy grail of Facebook). It’s amazing how much steam Facebook has picked up in the last 18 months. Or is it? Maybe they simply built a better mousetrap, so to speak. The experience, social graph connections and permission based ecosystem that Facebook provides is far superior at attracting the general public than other social networks. Historically (albeit a short history), Facebook has not been overtly focused on ad sales like the other social nets. The advertising products available have been innovative, and where possible, take advantage of incorporating social graph data. There has been no cost for marketers to create groups or fan pages, nor to distribute applications. Many marketers have been quite successful at engaging consumers in this manner. The conversion of fan pages into business profiles and having the activity included in the Facebook news feed will create far more engagement. This was a great move, and inevitably the customization and tools attached to this can be a future source of revenue for Facebook.

Burgeoning Social Networks

(forewarning of a little sarcasm and devil’s advocate positioning to follow)

Nielsen reported today that as of Dec ‘08, social network and blog activity has surpassed email, as the now 4th most popular activity on the web. Newsflash – social media is growing faster than other media – well…all together now – DUH! Heck, 3 of the top 10 websites are social media.

But let’s dig into this a bit, shall we…

Nobody is unaware of the fact that social media is exponentially growing. Also, let’s be realistic, how much can email (or search or portal) reach grow? We’d have to invent a whole new population for that. Tracking email reach, which involves installed clients, may not provide the complete picture here. Either way – does it really matter? Email isn’t going away. In fact, the more social media you participate in, the more email becomes the glue where you receive reminders that there is a message waiting for you in one of your social inboxes. I actually predict a social media shake out at some point – people have information and inbox overload. Ultimately, an inbox is an inbox is an inbox, right? From the consumer’s point of view, some of their email is now just heading to a different inbox. Even consumers accessing content via RSS feeds will reduce their reliance on email for accessing similar content, including our marketing communication. Of course, from a marketer’s perspective access to these inboxes, and the loss of control, is a whole other ball game and that is the angle here. The bigger picture is a general shift from “push” to “pull” – from outbound communication totally controlled by the marketer, to inbound communication controlled by the consumer. I would have loved to see the Nielsen report broken out demographically. I have seen research that shows the younger generations abandoning the frequent daily use of email as a regular communication channel in favor of social networks, but nothing indicates email is going away from a reach perspective. Even according to the Nielsen report – it’s the second fastest growing activity on the web. The web has always had its roots in communities and they have always garnered a fair share of traffic and participation and always will. Email is dead – long live email.

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Throwning Down The Mobile 3rd Party Ad Serving Gauntlet

Jason Heller — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:50:25 +0000

In a move that will surely help to further propel mobile display advertising, OMD, Omnicom’s media buying agency, has officially become the first [influential] agency to mandate that mobile publishers accept 3rd party ad serving tags and bill off of the 3rd party numbers.

Can I get an “amen!”

Mobile 3rd party ad serving is still in its infancy. But it’s moves like this, albeit potentially a bit premature for mandates from what I am hearing about discrepancies between 3rd party and publisher ad servers, that will help force the market to move forward.

Controlling the serving and tracking of campaigns has been part of agencies’ DNA for years now. 3rd party ad serving becoming the standard for mobile is inevitable. Doubleclick and others have been experimenting with mobile ad serving for several years now, but the mobile display ecosystem never seemed quite ripe enough for major roll outs (I guess).

Let’s recap why agencies (and advertisers) use 3rd party ad servers:

- To have immediate access to and glean insight from robust metrics not provided by, nor prioritized by publishers

- To measure all placements on an apples to apples basis and to provide an audit

- To gain more control over creative changes

Since next year has been the year for mobile marketing for at least the last three years, we are at the cusp of finally seeing this prophecy come to fruition. Of course SMS and app marketing are revelling in all their post tipping point glory. If OMD’s move is indicative of where the other major agencies are heading, display, and video are right behind them.

OMMA Ad Networks Panel

Jason Heller — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:17:50 +0000

Today was Media Post’s first iteration of a conference specifically focused on the topic of ad networks. (OMMA Ad Nets) I moderated a panel entitled “”Buyers Place Their Bets: Are Networks Living Up to Their Hype?” (details on the panel at the end of this post).

You know, sometimes one can get caught up in the sizzle of social media and mobile and all the great new media channels to reach and engage consumers, and lose sight of the steak of the mainstream digital media world. Today was one of those days that reminded me about that, and the several billion dollars generated by ad networks each year. Ad networks were once a mundane source of cheap remnant inventory at scale, but have seriously evolved. Vertical ad networks are aggregating audience contextually, while horizontal ad networks have become purveyors of sophisticated technology, algorithms and data, which helps agencies and marketers reach specific audiences based on a myriad of criteria. We see the application of data and technology to media and audiences evolving constantly. Some prime examples – AOL’s purchase of Tacoda in 2007 helped to create the largest network on the internet, Platform A, and more recently Akamai’s recent acquisition of Acerno to “…benefit the ecosystem of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages”, as stated by Mike Afergan, Akamai’s chief technology officer and SVP of Advertising Decision Solutions.

As a digital media-ologist, if you will, one theme stood out the most today at OMMA Ad Nets…

The large scale media agencies will eventually all have their own ad hoc networks: Data and technology are not only intrinsic to the network model, but competition is pushing the envelope. Soon we will see some of the data ownership shift to the agencies. There is tremendous power and efficiency when you control the data. Apparently, Havas Digital claims to have profiled 1/3 of the internet population and now issues “open insertion orders” for multiple clients at once. Their controlled data points dictate which client’s ads to serve against any given impression.

Don Epperson from Havas Digital was very upfront about it – in fact his keynote focused on Havas’ adNetic product that they developed to control the data and develop ad hoc networks, while other agencies were not as willing to share their strategies and direction in the regard. But make no mistake about it – the big agencies are stepping up. Scale is always a point of discussion when it comes to ad networks, behavioral targeting and generally applications of online advertising technology. Well, if it’s scale you want, look no further than the big media agencies.

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Buyers Place Their Bets: Are Networks Living Up to Their Hype?
After hearing the horizontal and vertical nets debate their case, our panel of media buyers enters the fray. Do they buy the arguments from the vertical networks that they curate and cultivate specialized content so advertisers get better and broader reach for niche audiences? Is this vertical inventory really more valuable to a buyer than the targeted remnants from a horizontal channel? Which of these models is aggregating the mid and long tail most effectively? Vertical networks help smaller and independent publishers get better CPMs. They are designed to capture what they hope are more engaged and receptive audiences for advertisers. Are they living up to their own hype? Is this argument over content quality important to buyers, or are most of them still just buying any kind of lightly targeted eyeballs? Our panel of media buyers and marketers explore whether the many offerings represent a fad or a model and whether more value really is being injected into the marketplace.
Moderator: Jason Heller, EVP, The Laredo Group
Lauren Boyer, Partner and Chief Global Strategist, Underscore Marketing
Russell Fradin, President, Adify
Shane Kay, VP, Digital Negotiations Director, Ford Motor Media
Joanna O’Connell, Razorfish NYC
Nate Woodman, SVP Strategic Development, Havas Digital

Blogged live by Joe Mandese

“E” For Efficiency … Well, One Day We’ll Get There

Jason Heller — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:52:39 +0000

For years the digital media industry has been plagued by the ironic amount of paper pushing and inefficiency that should not exist in a “digital” industry. From the RFP process, to planning, to billing reconciliation, we have had an exhorbinant amount of high labor/low value work being handled by highly paid staff who we would all love to see spending their time on more strategic and valuable tasks.

The IAB has finally stepped in and just announced their proposed solution – the “E-Business Interactive Standards“, in beta (additionally the IAB released other guidelines today including guidelines for serving into AJAX).

Admittedly creating a universal standard is a tough nut to crack, and surprisingly nobody has stepped up to the plate with universal tools to solve this fundamental time suck of connecting buyers and sellers of digital media electronically, I am not sure if the IAB issuing a set of guidelines and XML code is the solution, but it’s a damn good start. The tools that do exist to connect buyers and sellers are fragmented proprietary integrations into existing tools like ad servers and do not provide a universal method that makes buyers or sellers feel any efficiency. I know firsthand that agencies aren’t big fans and I’ve heard many publishers grumbling over the fact that the tools actually take longer than the manual option.

A standard must emerge. There is too much inefficiency in the paper pushing process – too much time is wasted, too many mistakes slip through the cracks. This will be an area that I will focus on covering throughout 2009. Stay tuned.

OMMA Global NY Panel: “Competing With Search”?

Jason Heller — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:56:41 +0000

I moderated a panel at the OMMA Global conference today titled “Competing With Search”, which I thought from day 1 was an interesting title, but somewhat of a misnomer for any conversation relating to digital media. I knew then that this would make for an interesting panel and hoped for some different perspectives and opinions (after all, what fun is a panel when everyone just agrees on everything).

The official description was:

Search advertising continues to attract 40% of today’s online ad budgets, and some projections have search growth continuing to outpace display spending over the next decade. Plus, the direct response model seems to have affected the success metrics applied to all campaigns. How do publishers-armed with a portfolio of display, email, video and sponsorships compete with almighty search for budgets that increasingly demand ROI? How are publishers making the case with clients to maintain or grow their non-search budgets. Is video proving to be a hedge against budgets moving to search? Can a content provider create unique packages that complement or replace parts of a search spending strategy? How can sales teams create compelling display and direct response programs that complement and enhance existing search spends? And how can the sites themselves use search engines to increase the value of their own inventory to clients?

I’ll pull out a few interesting sound bites from the panel…

The panel agreed that it’s not about “competing with search” for web publishers, but rather maximizing the value of an audience and packaging advertising in a way that maximizes monetization

The last-ad attribution model is broken and unfairly credits search for the entire influence chain rather than the activation of it. Multiple attribution protocol needs to emerge as the standard and is emerging far too slowly. Agencies and marketers need more education about these things.

The impression doesn’t mean anything – the value of the impression matters. Applied data helps increase the value of the impression.

Video can create emotionally compelling consumer experiences, but successfully adding video to a website requires good content, which requires a real investment.

MySpace is apparently so big that Jason Oberfest calls a site with 10 – 20 million unique users “mid-sized” (for the record 10 – 20 million uniques is still quite big, it’s just not MySpace big)

Scale matters when it comes to addressability, segmentation and the maximization of profitability for publishers

Ok, no revelations made, but the air was cleared for many in the room. I directed the audience to check out Atlas’ Engagement Mapping demo, and also mentioned Doubleclick’s Multiple Attribution Protocol, neither of which are perfect sciences, both of which are far better than the last ad standard and help to more accurate apply credit to advertising influence.

Microsoft, WPP, Avenue A, Open Ad Stream – Oh My!

Jason Heller — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:35:23 +0000

As someone who follows the digital agency world very closely, and the former CEO of an agency that once was in talks with Avenue A about an acquisition – my hats (because I wear multiple of course) go off to the agency for becoming the recipe of legend. After arguably becoming the most powerful stand alone digital media agency, developing what is now the second largest ad server in the industry, building a behavioral targeting network, creating a holding company (aQuantive) , and acquiring Razorfish (and a few smaller shops that everyone seems to have forgot already – remember i-Frontier?), and eventually getting acquired by Microsoft – Avenue A has basically accomplished what no other digital agency has and secretly wished for.

An acquisition of Avenue A by WPP would be a huge boon for the holding company, albeit would damage a lot of egos and create an awkward totem pole within GroupM. In the grand scheme of things however, this deal would help secure WPP’s positioning as the digital powerhouse among the agency networks, providing a significant boost in both scale and talent.

The potential deal would actually be an interesting structure, considering that Microsoft overpaid for the agency in the first place.

According to Ad Age:

Consider that in May 2007 Microsoft dropped $5.9 billion for aQuantive’s three businesses: Atlas, DrivePM and Avenue A. The deal was completed last August. While Microsoft was primarily interested in the first two businesses to help build out a massive ad platform, the latter accounted for 60% of aQuantive’s revenue. While $3.5 billion — 60% of $5.9 billion — isn’t necessarily indicative of Avenue A’s valuation in the Microsoft-aQuantive deal, there’s no way Microsoft would get even close to that for the shop. That figure approaches the market cap of WPP rival Interpublic Group of Cos. ($4.4 billion), and WPP’s own market cap is $10.7 billion. Selling Avenue A for market value would only highlight how much Microsoft overpaid for the No. 2 player in the ad-serving space. (Weeks before the Microsoft deal, the No. 1 player, DoubleClick, was snapped up by Google for $3.1 billion.)

According to the Ad Age article and people familiar with the discussions: Microsoft may “unload” the agency in exchange for a WPP package that would include 24/7’s Open AdStream publisher ad-serving tool plus cash.

Exciting times…

IPG’s “Media Brands” Leverages The Aggregatation of Media Services Groups

Jason Heller — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:03:43 +0000

As the shift of strategy development and stewardship continues to move into the realm of the media agencies, IPG has launched a group to manage and oversee all of the media services groups within the holding company. This move gives IPG the equivalent of WPP’s GroupM, a hub that creates efficiency through resource and information sharing. This is an essential move in this era of increasingly labor intensive, complex and collaborative client service requirements. The next step will be data systems that finally bind these units together from an analytic and insight perspective, across media. The eventual dashboards from each media services conglomerate will be the value center of the organization.

“The moves we are making today are part of an ongoing evolution in our approach to media as an increasingly strategic and high-value marketing service,” said Michael I. Roth, IPG’s Chairman and CEO. “The creation of ‘Mediabrands’ will allow our media companies to share and leverage resources, as required to meet the needs of our clients in a highly complex and rapidly-changing media landscape that’s being transformed by digital and the proliferation of content and media platforms.”…

The acquisitions and vital components of the “new agency” structure are being aggregated by each of the holding companies. So far it seems that WPP has the most momentum in the process, but ultimately this will be a focal area of competition among the agency holding company heavyweights as they aim to continue to serve the largest clients in the ecosystem.

Digital Marketing Round-Up

Jason Heller — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:36:16 +0000

I decided to add a new posting format to TheDigitalBlur. The “Digital Marketing Round-Up” will be posted around the end of each month and will be a combination of short thoughts on issues that I feel will have a big impact on us marketers in the not so distant future. This ranges from acquisitions to companies restructuring, new applications of technology, and new ad programs. I hope you enjoy it!

So without further delay, The inaugural Digital Round-up for June 2008…

Google Applying Cookie Data: Despite the cries of privacy advocates, this can be a major breakthrough in online advertising. A few years ago Google changed its privacy policy to state that they might eventually use cookie data to “display customized content and advertising.” Apparently a securities analyst has discovered that they are indeed doing so, and this was confirmed by Google. Well, I certainly hope so!

I am waiting for the true integration of Google and Doubleclick units, and although this will present a fine privacy line as it relates to the personally identifiable data that Google does indeed have via Gmail etc, there should be an easy way of firewalling that data if need be. We live in a data driven world folks. This is the future of content and marketing distribution. Creating increased relevancy for the consumer is a good thing. I have posted many thoughts on this matter, and I expect that we will get past the perceived privacy issues as we have with every other aspect of digital marketing to date. Doubleclick has been the martyr of at least one round of this issue in the past. Relevancy is a benefit, I wish we could all just get over it and move on.

Microsoft Acquires Semantic Search Technology: After the failed attempt at acquiring Yahoo, Microsoft last week announced the acquisition of semantic search company Powerset. Of course this was in the works for a long time , but the timing of the announcement was classic. Does Microsoft + Powerset = a threat to Google? Not in a million years. The momentum of Google’s stronghold on search is going to be tough to beat, or even compete with, as Yahoo and Microsoft have both learned the hard way to date. But the advances in semantic technology will in theory make for better search experiences over time, and this is Microsoft’s first step in the direction of developing a new search mouse mouse trap, or least improving the existing one. I’ve reported previously about Yahoo adopting semantic web standards, and have predicted that the application of semantic technology will fuel the next evolution of the web itself. In the increasingly data driven world we live in, I fiercely stand by that prediction.

Nokia Acquires Remaining Part of Symbian: It’s no secret that consumers’ and marketers’ dependence on the carriers for on-deck mobile opportunities will change over the next few years. Nokia has been making headway in the mobile advertising space, and the acquisition of Symbian should prove to be part of paving the road to the golden goose. Symbian currently runs on over half of the smart phones in the global market. However, with Apple’s iPhone and the soon-to-be-rolled-out open platform “Android” from Google, Symbian’s market share can be eroded quite easily. By standardizing an open platform, Nokia should be able to entice additional development and remain a major player in the mobile OS world.

More Print Shift To The Web: The LA Times slashed 250 jobs last week, the findings – consumers don’t have the time to read the paper anymore. Editor Russ Stanton stated that “The Web and print departments will be merged into one operation with a single budget, and the company will also refocus on being more versatile. We’ve heard these sentiments before, and we’ll here them again from others.

Average TV Network Viewer Age = 50 Years Old: Of course this varies from network to network (CW median age is only 34), but the trend shows that TV viewing audiences are getting older as media continues to fragment. It’s a brave new world out there, and as digital media consumption increases, we need to solve some of the basic issues that have plagued our industry since the dawn of online marketing history, including establishing more industry level research and data on the correlation of various aspects of advertising as it relates to effectiveness, as well as educating marketers about digital measurement in general. It still boggles my mind how many marketers (and agencies for that matter) mis-align their KPI’s (key performance indicators) with their objectives, or chose to use irrelevant metrics like CTR. There’s a lot of experimentation happening with emerging media, and most have not mastered the basics yet. A year has past since I published an article in MediaPost on this very subject, and on an industry level I haven;’tseen or heard of much change.

MySpace & Facebook – Battle of The Redesigns: Facebook is quickly catching up to MySpace’s market dominance, in part due to the open platform for developers and the streamlined nature of the profile design and application of the social graph. With Facebook’s upcoming redesign, applications will be moving to a separate tab, and the news feed will become even more prominent than it is currently. This is a big change amid marketers’ experimentation revolving primarily around launching applications and subsequntly trying to foster participation. Meanwhile MySpace rolled out a redesign a few weeks ago, which was primarily focused on streamlining the chaotic mess of a structure that was once consumer profiles. Cleaner navigation and increased applications of the social graph has been Facebook’s strong point. and MySpace’s achilles heel. MySpace had no choice but to update., and ‘they done good’. Even though they are a leader today, there always exists the chance of MySpace getting displaced as we have seen with other social networks like Friendster.

Publicis Consolidates and Creates Vivaki: Next in the big agencies to announce the consolidation of digital assets is Publicis. WPP and Carat have already sone so in varying capacities, and inevitably all the others will follow suit soon enough. Note to David Kenny & Jack Klues: the first step to proving that Vivaki is the right digital solution is following best practices. That 10 second flash intro on the new Vivaki website needs to go! Rishad, same to you buddy on the Denuo site.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I often write about the morphing agency structure. The fragmentation of media and the shift to a data driven marketplace has created a shift of general marketing strategy from the creative agencies to that of the media agencies. Many of the holding companies have even developed units that specifically specialize in the development and stewardship of strategy. We will continue to see re-bundling of agency services, although to a degree the specialist is needed more than ever . Agencies must attract and recruit specialized individuals to ensure the proficient execution across an ever growing palette of channels. We have seen many senior digital agency execs moving to the client and publisher side as an additional trend lately. Integration of services to offer a big picture approach while maintaining proficiency in the specialties will be the new agency positioning.

Social Media As A Formal Discipline?: As the opportunity cost of not monitoring the conversations and interactions surrounding your brands and products increases, the role of full time Social Media Strategists and Community Managers have crept into recent rounds of recruitment for marketers and agencies alike. The required commitment to the social media ecosystem has made it apparent that the attention of at least one full time staffer on the agency or client side is going to be a requirement at some point for all brands. Although brands can have their agencies assign a full time person assigned to their brand (today there are many specialized and integrated agencies who offer social marketing services), there is an economic reality that brands may be best served in this manner internally, with support from agencies for specific tasks and projects. It’s far too early to tell, but if I were a major brand I’d be looking for an internal manager at this point. The costs of the monitoring tools are coming down and the players are becoming more diverse. The social media ecosystem is evolving before our eyes, it’s a lot to keep up with. Brands must commit to be committed – hire a social media manager or at least an agency that can help you wrap your arms around what’s happening in social media and what it means to your brand.