Beer commercials typically run from the ridiculous (Coors Light trains running through improbable places) to the insane (Triple Hops Brewed spots from Miller Lite…insane if you actually think Miller Lite tastes good).

So it always refreshing to see the attacks on these spots by the Breckenridge Brewery “Truth In Beervertising” campaign. Along with Coors and Miller, Corona get’s targeted with a spot called “Find Your Couch,” a parody of their “Find Your Beach” campaign.

The best of the spots though has to be their parody of Dos Equis, introducing “the least interesting man in the world,” a brewery worker named Bob. Last year’s :15 spots were produced for just $10,000, a fraction of the cost of their competition and arguably much more effective.

As the desire for content control continues to increase and the cost of internet-connected TVs continues to decline, penetration of Smart TVs is predicted to reach nearly half of American households by the end of the holiday season. Just in time for the growing adoption of the new technology, LG is teaming up with online video advertising network YuMe to bring advertising to TV sets in a new way. Without needing a separate device such as a Roku or Boxee, people who own LG internet-connected TVs will see ads not only while watching programs, but also while searching for programs to watch.

Toyota Motor Sales USA will be the first sponsor, but we expect to see more as companies like Samsung, Panasonic and LG are beginning to develop partnerships with YuMe and/or Tremor Video. Spreading use of the technology, plus consumers’ shifting tastes to over-the-top video options with more control and substantially less advertising, challenges marketers to reach and engage this audience without annoying them.

Advertisers must remember the importance of providing ads that are interesting and relevant to the consumer. The new technology conveniently lends itself to this objective, something LG and YuMe intend to capitalize on. The application providers will also get a cut of the revenue, as well as approval of the ads that will air while their product is loading. Ad networks, TV manufacturers and content publishers working together to make internet-connected TV ads contextually relevant for the consumer means that everyone wins, including the advertisers gutsy enough to take a chance with new technology.

It has been estimated that in the first weekend since its introduction Apple would sell 4 million iPhone4S phones; the only forecasted hurdle would be ensuring supply/availability of the product would meet the expected demand.  Then came a collective sigh of disappointment from the technophiles and early adopters who closely monitor development of new gadgets.  It turned out that there was quite a bit of downgrading of iPhone4S sales estimates attributed to its lack of major enhancements from the current iPhone4.

We thought it would be fun to take a look at other new technology products and examine how their launch sales fared in the early days after their introduction.  Some of these new products have been tremendously successful, but it is also amusing to look at those that did not quite live up to expectations.

Recent technology introductions initial sales results:

2011-2012 Broadcast Season – early disappointments:

Reminder of some product misfires:

What does this mean for marketers?  Obviously it takes more than company reputation to gain and sustain public interest in your products.  Products must live up to the hype, provide a positive user experience and of course, be supported by impactful creative and well targeted media plans developed to introduce these new products to the marketplace through the most appropriate channels.

Media Post reported in their Daily News newsletter on Thursday 9/22/11 that Nielsen had a major ratings glitch.

While the newsletter implied that the reported C3 ratings starting in January 2011 were incorrect and would impact millions of dollars invested in national television advertising,  the news of this major glitch appear to be wildly exaggerated.

As we first reported, the glitch in ratings was discovered in one application, NPower.  The latest information from Nielsen is that the problem is confined to the reach and frequency part of this application and does not impact the C3 ratings used for negotiation, purchase and posting of national television buys.

This situation exposes three very important challenges for our industry.

• First, before newsletters are distributed, a careful examination of all the available facts with corroboration (or what the news business refers to as 2 independent sources) should be part of the process.
• Second, the huge databases that Nielsen produces on a daily basis must be carefully scrutinized and maintained as they have become part of our daily review of rating performance.  This is an important process required by audits of most major rating services and carried out by the government manditated MRC (Media Ratings Council).
• Any new service which attempts to enter the very complicated measurement arena of US national television ratings must be prepared to operate under the same audit process if it is to become an auxiliary metric used for the evaluation of television viewing behavior.

In sum, measuring a medium which spans multiple time zones, four broadcast networks, over 100 cable networks, numerous syndicated programs, 210 individual markets and a multitude of television stations in each DMA is not easy.  The amount of data that needs to go through the daily rating calculation processes is enormous.

We must be sure that as changes are made and new services enter this marketplace they offer improvements which lead to better measurement, and not just changes or enhancements which cannot be validated over time.

Talk about a back fire. Only one month into the company split of Netflix (into Netflix – Streaming and Qwikster – DVD’s), the once skyrocketing video entertainment powerhouse has lost over 1 million subscribers. Also, they have employed a more than backwards business strategy. Netflix CEO is effectively eliminating his core business prospects from the funnel, making it more difficult to convert new users. If Netflix remained as just Netflix, cross selling opportunities or possibily upselling opportunities would have remained from DVD to Streaming. Now, a user of Netflix DVD is automatically enrolled in Qwikster DVD, not only losing brand loyalists, but also making it more complex to be signed up for both services. Two companies. Two contracts. Too many issues. Without the brand Netflix for the DVD business, there is an increased concerned that users will become brand agnostic and switch to a different provider.

Check out the articles here

Earlier in the year ABC announced the impending cancellation of two long-running soap operas: All My Children, and One Life to Live.

It wasn’t hard to see this move coming–other networks have also dropped soaps from their daytime programming in response to dwindling audiences. These days there are far fewer stay-at-home moms, and more viewing options than ever, and these may be the forces driving the nails in the proverbial coffin of the soap opera legacy. In the past year both shows barely generated a 1.0 rating amongst W25-54.

Prospect Park, the production company for All My Children, and One Life to Live, is trying to fight the tide, however……maybe for selfish reasons. They want to keep the shows going, and run them online. Further, they may also try to get a cable network to run them after the web run. While we absolutely recognize the potential strength of the Internet as a content distribution outlet–as exemplified by the exponential growth of Online video consumption across demographics–we have serious doubts as to whether producing 2 high-quality, one-hour, daily soap operas for the web can pay for itself.

Top Online video content distributors, Cable Networks and even Satellite providers are all getting in the game of creating original content and monetizing their respective platforms via TV audience migration. HULU is launching a long-form documentary series called “A Day in the Life”, YouTube will stream 2 sponsored music festivals (Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits), AMC will run a 40-minute web series on AMC.com and HULU, and Direct TV–which has in the past aired new episodes of NBC’s Friday Night Lights–is now running new episodes of the cancelled FX series Damages. The thing these initiatives all have in common is that they were built to be either profitable through distribution over the Internet, or for other tactical/strategic reasons, rather than TV in the first place.

HULU needs content, now that their partnership with the broadcast networks may be ending. You Tube is looking to become a significant content provider and will stream two already existing concerts, signing two sponsors(AMD and Dell) to boot. AMC is using “The trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks” as a development laboratory and Direct TV airs those broadcast network shows as a means to attract new subscribers, not to generate ad sales.

On the other hand, the two ABC soaps cost roughly $150MM annually to produce–an expense that only delivered a barely profitable level of return in ad sales revenue, and a key factor which may have led to their eventual cancellation. Further, they were repeating these soaps on Soapnet, an ad-supported cable network they own. ABC recently decided to turn Soapnet into a kid-oriented channel, so they weren’t generating enough supplemental revenue there either. With a declining audience base, it is highly unlikely that these two venerable soaps can generate enough audience either through ad sales and/or a subscription model to afford their continuation Online.

With that said, the era of the soap opera as we’ve known it might see its curtain close for good in the next five years.

We can never overestimate the American public’s quest for video content.

Nielsen has released top line viewer usage comparison of the two major online video services Hulu and Netflix. This information is based on more than 12,000 online interviews conducted in March 2011.

It is obvious from the charts below that these two services satisfy very different purposes for the consumer.

• Hulu is the source for watching tv shows while Netflix is the source for movies

• The majority of Netflix users report watching on a TV screen and over half connect via a game console
• On the other hand, those who use Hulu as a source watch directly from their computers

We do not believe the recently announced new pricing structures will negatively impact these technologies as these costs will be off-set by the increasing availability of programming.

We see both of these technologies as adding to the viewing experience of consumers, and the near-future expansion of HBO Go to gaming consoles will only further enhance that experience. Additionally, these services represent advertising opportunities, whether directly with the service or through the devices used to access the programming.

It is interesting to note that since the recent announcement that Hulu is up for sale, it has attracted the interest of major players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. The real issue for Hulu is obtaining the necessary content to attract consumers.  In today’s marketplace, content providers are looking to find as many ways as possible to monetize and gain full value for their content — if not through Hulu, then by developing their own sites where they can control the advertising content.

To counter this both Hulu and Netflix have announced forays into the development of original long-form programming. On August 17^th, Hulu will offer A Day in the Life, a 6-episode half hour documentary series. Netflix has exclusive rights to the 26-episode series House of Cards in late 2012.

While it doesn’t seem likely, a Netflix purchase of Hulu would be beneficial to advertisers and consumers alike: Hulu would vastly improve its movie repertoire while Netflix could show recent television episodes and maybe even a few commercials.

Hmmm, Netflu could be the new epidemic for cable and alternate delivery systems to battle.

-Michele Buslik and Melissa Crosby

A new 3D technology called Unlimited Detail showcases how their technology will greatly improve in all genre of 3D. Using point cloud data, it can improve the amount of details by 100,000 times than the current standard. Point cloud data give artists unlimited freedom on how much details they can put into their 3D models. This technology eliminates the limitation on polygon count given to the artists and eliminates the need to create multiple detail levels of the same model. This will be the next break through in 3D technology. Check out the video.

The mass audience we’ve come to associate with broadcast television continues to fragment into ever-smaller niche audiences and communities. New technologies (DVR, streaming, mobile and VOD) have shifted control over the viewing experience from TV networks into the hands of savvy media consumers. And through it all, TV’s cumulative reach potential (online and offline) continues to rise, with the cost of TV advertising generally outpacing inflation year to year.

How do we measure TV advertising’s true value in this rapidly changing and increasingly complex environment? The media community points to one hotly debated term: engagement.

In its paper Engagement Definitions and Anatomy the ARF attempts to define the word’s possible meaning, offering 25 different opinions on the word, and how it applies to brand marketing. The emergent working definition of engagement is: “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context”.

How do businesses harness the power of television, and realize the true measure of engagement? Counting viewers (or TV ratings as we know them) is not a sufficient and satisfactory measure to understand the quality of the viewership; it doesn’t give advertisers or programmers any information regarding viewer engagement with the content. Without a measurement of engagement, beyond the measurement of ratings, the true value of ad placements is unknown.

Most studies agree that there is correlation between program engagement and positive ad recall. The inference is that viewer engagement has the potential to make a small, dedicated audience more valuable than a large, casual audience, which in turn raises new questions for advertisers. How does viewer engagement create value? How can we quantify this value? Who will benefit from these valuable viewers?

Available program engagement research includes Nielson IAG and Q-scores, each with a different methodology and benefit. While Nielsen IAG follows a portion of media schedule on continuous (daily) basis but on a smaller number of programs and networks, Q-scores covers a larger set of programs and networks in 6 bi-monthly waves.

The essence of these measures is their ability to determine the emotional bond to a program or network, as determined by the strength of likeability, viewing loyalty and commitment to ongoing viewing.  If we believe that program likeability translates to improved advertising engagement, these methodologies may open the door to an implementation dynamic in which advertisers can explore a wider variety of programming, simultaneously improving upon pricing and consumer connection.

Have you noticed all of those interesting works of black and white “op art” appearing on random newspaper, magazine and out of home advertising?  And the latest sighting has been on television.

Oh, that’s not art – it’s the soon to be ubiquitous QR code.  Which brings me to today’s question: Should an advertiser use QR codes or not?  Or maybe, why should an advertiser use QR codes?

During the first presidential debate of the year viewers were given the option of snapping a picture of a QR code to get behind the scenes footage not available to the viewer watching the live debate.

While this may not be the most productive use of this technology the question really is will QR codes become popular for television advertisers because they offer the call-to-action in real time?  This has a definite appeal to advertisers, especially those who use Infomercials as their major means of reaching the consumer. 

As with all of the new advertising technologies, the QR code application must work easily. In this case it must provide the consumer with the immediate satisfaction of getting to the right page to meet expectations.  At the same time, QR codes during programming content might have the potential to distract the viewer and ultimately become more an annoyance than add to enhancement of the brand.

And, is the QR code the best way to offer the viewer additional information – or is it a simple drive to web through a unique URL?  Isn’t that the promise of interactive television, or the lean-forward viewing experience achieved with tablet in hand?

 Is this a case of op art – I mean QR codes – run amok?  Or is there real value in this for advertisers?  I’d love to know what you think; respond to this blog, or email us at TargetCast.com to continue the conversation.