2007 Media Summit The Future of Enhanced Advertising: Addressing Brands, Message, Technology, Media and Entertainment

Peter Tortorici, President, GroupM Entertainment
Wenda Harris Millard, Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo!
Laura Klauberg, Vice President Media, Americas, Unilever
Tracey L. Scheppach, Vice President/Video Innovation Director, Starcom USA
Doug Scott, Senior Partner, Executive Director, Mather Productions Branded Content & Entertainment, Ogilvy & Mather
Seth Haberman, Founder-Chariman/CEO, Visible World
Mark Beeching, Chief Creative Officer, Digitas LLC
Michael Kassan, Principal, Media Link, LLC, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here



  • “Consumers will continue to call the shots in this converged media world” –Kassan

  • “Full integrated, relentlessly interactive”


  • Upfront

    • Yahoo having “infront”

    • Millard- TV sellers and buyers will define process for digital is her nightmare

    • “I do not believe in the upfront for the digital industry” – Millard




  • Revitalization of Dove

    • Campaign for real beauty

    • “would have been difficult to do if just relegated to tv and print world” Klauberg

    • Campaign launched with outdoor to get people talking

    • First CPG to get into the webisode space

    • “Evolution” on You Tube

    • Dove Message board

    • “The Idea helped drive the media” Beeching questioning Klauberg




  • Getting All The Agencies To Work Together

    • Greed is the main enemy

    • Be very clear about what is really deliverable by each partner




  • Ideation

    • New Approach to ideation. It is not just the creative team anymore, it is the media

    • “Everyone is looking for a best practice”….people want to find their silo and move on with it -  Beeching

    • Message Creation/Media Optimization

    • “Mashing together of skills” – Beeching

    • “Upronts stunt agility” – Beeching

    • Addressable media

    • You can’t just go out with one approach. lower the coast between making changes- Haberman

    • Turning data into stimulus

    • “How do you use content to spark a conversation”- Scott

    • Challenge for yahoo is turning data into real consumer insights- Millard

    • We can now get at behavior




  • UGC/Branded Content

    • True Branded content instead of product placement

    • Brand DNA being carried into story arch with signature moments

    • Activation from a promotion standpoint

    • People are measurement crazy, how do you measure branded content

    • Advertising is not an algorithm- Millard

    • GroupM to begin producing non brand specific content with CBS

    • Agencies as rights holders of IP



  • An intervention by Dr. Ruth really shakes things up

  • “It is customers that built brands…as if the web has invented people talking to each other”- Beeching

  • “Are you going to allow your consumer to participate in your marketing?”


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2007 Media Summit Hollywood and the Digital Consumer: How Technology, Content and Services Establish the Next Level of Consumer Entertainment Experience


Walter Delph,Director, Content & Programming, Verizon FiOS TV
John Penney, Senior Vice President, New Media Business Panning, HBO, Inc.
Kevin Donahue, VP of Content, YouTube
Lewis Henderson, Senior Vice President, William Morris Agency
James Ackerman, Chief Executive Officer (Interim), ClickStar
Ira Rubenstein, Executive Vice President, Digital Sales and Marketing, Sony Pictures
Diane Brady, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here


I don’t have a view of who is talking so, I cannot attribute who said what. Hey, I have to charge my laptop at some point.



  • Duality of content in terms of consumption

  • Digital Distribution not a lot of margin

  • New platforms new opportunities

  • “How does the talent participate” is still a questions and what are the new business models

  • FIOS TV in 10 markets, is the pie increasing…10% penetration

  • Distribution is not the only name of the game…we still most focus on content

  • Talent is seeking compensation beyond original distribution

  • Content Adaptation (they mentioned Second Life, hooray)

  • TV is and ad business, movies is primarily transactional (in a traditional sense)

  • Producers must be technologist today on order to aid in telling the story

  • HBO has a testing lab to test emerging platforms

  • Sharing content having a profound effect on the future of film, the way it is created and marketing


  • What is the value of the brand in the UGC space?

    • The most popular stuff on You Tube is generally not the high quality produced content



  • FIOS looks at You Tube as yet another partner in the multi channel universe

  • FIOS working on content partners as tier of strategy

  • This Just In…new channel at HBO…will be AOL’s comedy channel. Curated viral video’s (ummmm)

  • Consumers want to feel like they own part of the brand or part of the show[ajb1] 

  • Difficulty or multiple DRM’s across multiple platforms

  • Steve Jobs creating a closed ecosystem







 [ajb1]important note that consumers want to own part of the content somehow, even a little bit





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2007 Media Summit Unedited Notes- Metrics and Analytics around Video, Social Media, P2P and User Generated Media

Jonathan Carson, President and CEO BuzzMetrics
Will Hodgman, President & CEO, M:Metrics
Kenneth Papagan, Executive Vice President, Corporate, Business Development & Strategic Planning, Rentrak Corporation
Scott Radcliffe, Director of Communications Intelligence Solutions, SAS
David Rosenberg, Director, Emerging Media and Optimization, JWT
Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, Strategy and Legal Affairs, Oversi
Mark Ghuneim, CEO, Wiredset, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here





  • Methods of measurement around new experiences in UGC and social media

  • What is viable and not viable


  • The idea is primary…the medium is secondary. Telling stories across channels

    • “As long as the experience or take away message is the same it is a success” David Rosenberg



  • Kenneth Papagan- “We can get down to specific set top boxes within a household” on VOD

  • “The standards we relied on before don’t count anymore” Will Hodgman

  • It is important to count metrics but how are we using them

  • Mobile not yet at the place for contextual targeting

  • Location based services the only way to target via mobile

  • 3G and GPS promise greater targeting (similar to what is happening in Asia)


  • Where the money is being made outside of the internet is paid content- Radcliffe

    • Papagan disagrees. Says ad based models on VOD are thee future




  • Contextualized branding and direct marketing is the future Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski

    • Injections of real time advertising on top of content in the form of smart objects



  • “Find new ways to make you feel that there is something of value for you”- Rosenberg in regards to how we measure success.

  • As an advertiser we can spur on targeting by starting conversations. Rosenberg gives an example “who is better, blondes or brunettes” and then glean the targets by virtue of the conversation.




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2007 Media Summit Keynote: Unedited Notes

Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, February 7th
Barry Diller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Chairman of Expedia, Inc.




  • Acquisition of Ask Jeeves

    • Fear of disintermediation by search

    • Defensive strategy to protect against this disintermediation

    • “Value added information will live”

    • “Is there an opportunity?”

    • “Competing with less resources is a good thing”

    • “Could we move to the left”

    • How much market share can ask really build…Barry, “I think we can build double digits share”

    • “Media models have multiple players”


    • “Ask is the glue between all of our business’s”

      • Ties together multiple pieces of IAC



    • “One fat datastream tamed for consumers”


    • Social Networks

      • Barry says he is not in the scene

      • Talks about Match.com

      • “How can you do more social networking than flirt”

      • Pure social networks are an upgrade from the mall

      • “They tend to leave us and as life goes, they tend to come back” in reference to Match.com (got quite a laugh)




    • UGC

      • “we come up with these terms that don’t mean very much”


      • “the professional talent pool is finite”

        • People doing things that lots of people want to see



      • “As time goes on, professionally made products…..that is going to be where this is going to develop into”

      • “news gathering organizations are not going away, they simply need to find a form factor”

      • “the issue is form factor so the people get it….in that delivery there is going to have to be reinvention”




    • Recent acquisition of College Humor/Content Play

      • We really want to invent product. Start with an idea and then….

      • 100 million dollars of capital to invest in products

      • We much prefer to start than buy

      • “I never left programming”

      • Everything will be in a digital form, any screen,

      • Programming is Services or Stories distributed through net neutral pipe

      • Importance of the fact that distribution is not scarce



    • “Buying things for more than they are worth generally does not work out” (tongue in cheek)

    • “This is a much more practical time than in the early 2000’s”

    • Diller on Valuation- “How much can I lost?” is the most important question

    • “It is the height of craziness to read forward on anything”


    • Fragmentation

      • Diller “I don’t think it is happening”

      • “Editorship is what everything is about”



    • “The Internet is this miracle”


    • Commoditization in E-commerce

      • I don’t think there is a lot of innovation out there in terms of retailing

      • There is very little “merchant” on the Internet

      • You haven’t yet seen great merchant experience on the internet

      • Optimistic about invention

      • New ideas will come, it is not all about brick and mortar building a website



    • “Our conglomerate is interrelated”

    • “in a world that is constantly changing the best practices are those which you discover”

    • Diller talks about SEO and how it tripled CitySearch traffic

    • Final Convergence within 3 years

    • No limit to how big IAC can get

    • Tight control distribution models will not exist in 10 years

    • “Jack Welch is the best manager ever invented”




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2007 Media Summit NYC








Tomorrow is the big McGraw-Hill Media Summit in NYC and I am pretty excited to see Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch and a host of other media rockstars.


This is my first conference that I have been blogging on Amediacirc.us while the Morpheus Blog is live. I am not quite sure how I will do this. Perhaps I will cross post (as I am doing with this post) or devise another strategy. Either way I promise to bring back the goods!


Here is the agenda I have chosen for tomorrow


Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, February 7th
Barry Diller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Chairman of Expedia, Inc.


Session One

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Keynote Speaker
Barry Diller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Chairman of Expedia, Inc.
One on One Interview with:
Kathy Rebello, Executive Editor, BusinessWeek Online


Session Two

Metrics and Analytics around Video, Social Media, P2P and User Generated Media
Jonathan Carson, President and CEO BuzzMetrics
Will Hodgman, President & CEO, M:Metrics
Kenneth Papagan, Executive Vice President, Corporate, Business Development & Strategic Planning, Rentrak Corporation
Scott Radcliffe, Director of Communications Intelligence Solutions, SAS
David Rosenberg, Director, Emerging Media and Optimization, JWT
Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, Strategy and Legal Affairs, Oversi
Mark Ghuneim, CEO, Wiredset, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here


Session Three

12:45 PM - 2:00 PM
Session A:
Hollywood and the Digital Consumer: How Technology, Content and Services Establish the Next Level of Consumer Entertainment Experience
Walter Delph,Director, Content & Programming, Verizon FiOS TV
John Penney, Senior Vice President, New Media Business Planning, HBO, Inc.
Kevin Donahue, VP of Content, YouTube
Lewis Henderson, Senior Vice President, William Morris Agency
James Ackerman, Chief Executive Officer (Interim), ClickStar
Ira Rubenstein, Executive Vice President, Digital Sales and Marketing, Sony Pictures
Diane Brady, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here


Session Four

Session A:
The Future of Enhanced Advertising: Addressing Brands, Message, Technology, Media and Entertainment
Peter Tortorici, President, GroupM Entertainment
Wenda Harris Millard, Chief Sales Officer, Yahoo!
Laura Klauberg, Vice President Media, Americas, Unilever
Tracey L. Scheppach, Vice President/Video Innovation Director, Starcom USA
Doug Scott, Senior Partner, Executive Director, Mather Productions Branded Content & Entertainment, Ogilvy & Mather
Seth Haberman, Founder-Chariman/CEO, Visible World
Mark Beeching, Chief Creative Officer, Digitas LLC
Michael Kassan, Principal, Media Link, LLC, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here


Session Five

Keynote Roundtable State of the Industry - Probing the Future of the Media, Entertainment & Technology Industries
Daniel Scheinman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Media Solutions Group
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Jason Hirschhorn, President, Sling Media Entertainment
George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer, NBC Universal
Frank E. Dangeard, Chairman & CEO, Thomson
Janice Min, Editor in Chief, Us Weekly
Brian Buchwald, General Manager, nbbc, an NBC Universal digital venture
Tom Lowry, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek, Moderator
For Session Description & Speaker Bios Click Here


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Social Media Convergence and Virtual Worlds

At this risk of sounding like a buzz word jockey, I feel that 2007 will be the year the we begin to see a trend in social media. A trend where different forms of social media (blogs, podcasts,videocasts,wikis etc.) begin to converge. While this convergence has already begun I feel that the emergence of virtual worlds in the mainstream will expedite this process. Worlds such as Second Life, Kaneva, There and Cyworld (and dare I say Google?) are all, at their core, social networks.


Sure these platforms are 3D and allow for the fantastic but; MMOG’s have been able to do that for a while. There is something different about these new platforms. What is different about these new platforms and why is the mainstream beginning to pay attention?


With PodcampNYC approaching, I looked to some of the people I admire most to help tackle questions surrounding social media convergence and virtual worlds. As this is an unconference, and the rules are quite different than your average corporate affair, things may go in unexpected directions. In fact, this conversation that I am starting right now may morph into something completely different by the time Podcampnyc rolls around, but I think this general topic is something worthy of diving into.


The participants:


Jospeh Jaffe


Greg Verdino


Mark Wallace


Johnny Ming


...and of course me.


More information soon.


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The Long and Winding Meme

I hope that this meme continues. I got a note from Tateru Nino this morning about this post and then another from Greg Verdino when I touched down in San Diego.


I must say this whole thing is quite bizarre :) I wonder if my avatar is parading around in real life and not telling me.


WANTED: One dashing young avatar, blonde, white facial hair....very dangerous!



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Digital Purity

Self appointed film geek Halley presents us with an ironic scenario where she is left in a new media environment with a longing for “being there”.  Knowing Halley personally I am not shocked by her paradoxical post as I feel it is very fitting of the way that I see her.


Her musings turn to the days of “wine and analog” (I of course made up the wine part :) ) and then to an excitement about ubiquitous computing (this is where I see the beautiful irony come in). I have heard talk of computational invisibility, or more accurately a natural approach to technology. While the idealism is compelling to me I have not yet seen such environments (I realize we are talking theoretically for the most part). This is an official call out to the proponents and pioneers of such ideas to present me with actual evidence that this is possible (I would really love it as it perhaps it can drag me out of my Emersonian life of quiet desperation propelled, at times, by “always on” living…not that I am complaining about it :) ).


I am what one may call a digital purist. I was born a musician and learned to record audio on 2 inch tape. I could not have been happier when pro tools came along and allowed for the mind to take flight without worry of analog restraint. Sure, limitations can spur on creativity but in a digital world I feel the playing field is level and all are welcome; only the truly talented will survive. This my friends is the crux of, dare I say, the blogosphere and social media; everyone can have a voice.


In light of this I do not share Halley’s sense of nostalgia, but I do look forward to the same future and have just as much fun watching the present unfold.


To bring it back to the surface, I may need to take Halley’s advice and check out Decasia


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First-Ism

Frans Charming (yes, the international superstar) pointed out a post that Eric Rice wrote about First-Ism. It was a very timely post for me as I am dealing with a few issues of being in situations that border on firsts (with the proper slant of course :) . I am staying vague here as to not expose the situations so, I ask you not to speculate, it is irrelevant).  


Let’s first look at some motivations for being first:



  • Ego- Seth Godin calls them sneezers, others tastemakers. I supposed there is a certain personal satisfaction knowing that you created or uncovered something and spread the word. Sure, this may be rooted in ego but ego is not always bad (it is just bad most of the time :)  ). I know many people who always have to be the first to own the latest (fill in the blank) and if they are not, they won’t even consider X for ownership.

  • Notoriety- The First may not be the best but often it is the most notable

  • Security- No one will ever win the debate about the laurels of being first to market. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not.


(this results in a lovely acronym ENS…pretty deep)



Rice writes this:



I’ll be able to get more stuff done by waiting, watching the first bugs come out. You’ll get it first, and in several months, we’ll all be in the same place, looking at the future. Was it worth it?




Perhaps we will all be in the same place but the deciding factor may not be the fact that you were first.


First to market can be best if done well. Second to market has the ability to learn from the first and surpass it. Who know what the correct strategy is? I guess it must be taken case by case. What Eric appears to take issue with is the fact that people aim to be first for the sake of being first. What do I say to what he appears to be taking arms against, right on buddy (can I call a fellow blogger a buddy just because I agree with him and we do not know each other, I think so)!



My bottom line; go ahead, be first. Be first at everything you do if that is what your gut tells you, but be calculated. Make sure it is the right move. Don’t be first for the sake of being first.


I on the other hand will, 98% of the time be with Eric waiting to be best (the reason I say 98% is that sometimes mania overcomes me and I can see justifying first-ism if the cost benefit analysis seems favorable).


In light of all this I am going to do a better job of aiming to be best 100% of the time. Sometime it may legitimately mean being first (after all, they don’t give gold medals to the person that runs best…irrelevant metaphor, I realize this…irrelevance is my blogging style. My loyal readers can attest to that).


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Yes, I am adding to the virus...

...but I am doing so from a marketing angle. I am not sure that Dominos, who is behind this campaign, will be very successful with it but, what do you think?


In a way I applaud them for the attempt and it is a bit clever but, were people fooled and if so, might they think they have been deceived into watching an ad? Does trickery make for a good brand message? Does Dominos care?


Thoughts People?












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The Advertising World Is Flatter than Ever

In a roundabout series of events I wound up on a call with the CEO of Ad ECN, Bill Urschel. Although the series of event that led to this informative call were not necessarily common, this set up was not accident.


Allow me to share the events with you:



  1. I posted on a panel that took place at Ad:Tech back in November (http://amediacirc.us/2006/11/06/ad-tech-the-move-to-auction-based-media-and-the-demise-of-the-upfront/)

  2. I was contacted by an account manager from the PR firm, the Antenna Group

  3. After multiple attempts a call was arranged and I got the lowdown on Ad ECN, from the CEO (which is a great strategy. What better way to make someone feel like they are hearing things from the horses mouth and make the feel special than to put them on the phone with the Chef himself)


First of all, what a great way to market! It was not an invasive attempt on the part the Antenna group and overall, it really got me thinking about the product.


Here are a couple of notes that I took. To all media buyers out there, I recommend you give the folks over at Ad ECN a call.



  • Neutral Stock Exchange

  • Rooted on the idea Stock ECN Electronic Communication Network



    • Island and Archipelago



  • Addressing problem of liquidity

  • Only work with Ad Networks

  • Clearinghouse, single point of contact for all ad networks

  • Real time auction

  • All ad buys are done through UI


  • System as series of “Asks” and “Answers”

    • Ask- Here is what I am looking for and what I am willing to pay

    • Answer- Here is what we have that matches your query





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Its still the content, stupid!

I realize this is not a new microsite, and that Adrants wrote about it on December 6th but I did not get to it until now. This Vista touting microsite is pretty darn clever. My first approach to judging a microsite is to think about how it adds value to the brand. The value proposition of this site was not apparent initially but then I took a step back and just watched the content and it was pretty funny.


I don't have time at the moment to do a full write up about all the interactivity of this site but there is quite a bit and I recommend taking a look (if you haven't already)



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The Times Talks Social, How Engaging!

There are a couple a doozies in this one!


This is a really well written article about traditional mediation and how the modern user interacts with media and what this means for media companies and marketers. It also draws the similarities and differences between social networking and its cousin user generated content (which often get uttered in the same breath).


The article goes on to discuss engagement and the value proposition of such immersive environments in terms of their ability to engage.


Here are some key points;




  • "Social networking, on the other hand, is something potentially deeper — it represents a way to live one’s life online"

  • Engagement as "Depth of Participation"

  • The integration of ones favorite media into their "Digital Persona"  this is really key


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