TRUSTVERTISING - Written by Dmitriy

TRUSTVERTISING

While driving to work in the morning and listening to the ever soothing news of U.S. economy slowly crumbling into a recession to a mellow jazzy tune mixed by the folks on NPR station, I had a privilege to listen in on one conversation about online advertising and its near future focus. A few weeks ago I heard a piece about one of Ebay’s top brass “leaving” the company to work for senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In that piece the host and one of Ebay’s execs talked of how the most important features that will be focused on this year by websites and web based businesses is web security and even more importantly, trust. Trust here means protection of identity, enhanced privacy, financial credibility, and a variety of other security measures aimed at creating a comfortable non-intrusive space for the consumers to flourish and create a social network in.

What the morning piece today revealed is that trust is exactly what web advertisers are focusing on as well. Or more or less its exploitation for advertising. The thought process here is as follows. It is becoming more prominent through social networking sites and instant messaging for you and your friends to find funny videos and separate pieces of interest. What is becoming more and more of a reality is that these videos have some kind of advertisement plastered around them. A good example is youtube videos that have a TV show ad popping at you at the bottom of the tube window or hovering a mouse over a keyword that pops a window with directions to the nearest drug store(?). What the morning piece heavily discussed is the deliberate focus on propagating these kinds of ads through what they called friendvertising. Basically a strong focus on using your friends as advertising vehicles, to get to you, by enticing them to share the content with you that on the surface (puppies) is un-comparable to what the core (pepsi) might get in return. Whilst your friends perhaps are not paid (?, unless of course you have more than 1,000 friends) for doing this, they are susceptible to share news blurbs and pop culture without realizing that they just became a billboard.

Now I already regularly deny emails from my friends to check out videos of cute kittens and other short term memory distractions. This has nothing to do with my friends themselves or for that matter it is not a reflection of my more-of-a-dog-person personality; but it directly has to do with the fact that I am simply overly aware that wherever I will click, an ad will click back at me. This for the longest time has been the strategy of spam marketers that is slowly being more controlled through unsubscribing initiatives and laws. The problem is that now spam will come from friends that you have an actual trusting relationship with. What seems to be the biggest point of contention for me is that focus on “trust” here is not to benefit the consumer but rather to exploit the possible trust links between people as advertising vehicles.

This raises a few topics.

Is this fundamentally wrong or just a different and quite genious way to get the people the products they desire?

Do we see a shift in inter-personal trust due to an increase in advertising and advertising vehicles?

And finally would the choice ever become exclusive between kittens or friends?

I hope I’ll never have to decide.

Dmitriy Aristov

Will Blockbuster movies now have to compete for space with Blockbuster Video Games?

The article below suggests that the timing of release for Iron Man will suffer from competition with the release of Grand Theft Auto (GTA):

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04202008/business/media_battle_on_tap_107324.htm

This is suggestive of the rising importance of video games as a medium. Will movie studios have to be more careful of their timing to ensure they don't square off blockbuster games?

Gameasure gets big press - Advertising Age article

Gameasure got big press this week in Advertising Age, with extensive quotes from our leader Michael Dowling:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126153&search_phrase=gaudiosi

The article details some of the value Gameasure adds to metrics on video games by measuring total reach, not just sales. Only Gameasure captures this data, which is crucial to gauging the true value of advertising in and around games. As the article suggests, buyers of advertising in video games may be getting a bargain.

Recent NPD Data - The danger of PR - When figures just don't look right (Thanks Regan and Dino for contributing the cited articles)

NPD recently reported that 72% of Americans are gamers:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18107

This data was widely reported on the web before people began asking the obvious question - is this really believable? Soon the PR was being corrected:

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/npd-72-of-us-plays-games-online-gaming-still-relatively-small/?biz=1

Indeed the original story did not square at all with what we've seen in 4-5 quarters of Gameasure and people began to ask questions about NPD's findings. Gameasure typically finds that just under half of Americans aged 12-65 have played video games. The question in Gameasure is very broad and asks people if they have ever played video games on every conceivable platform. They only need to have played a video game once to qualify. They do not need to play regularly. Adding in a requirement that they play for at least an hour per week, the percentage drops to 46% in Wave 4. This is a far more realistic figure than the 72% originally reported by NPD, and closer to the revised figure of 59% (still too high if you ask me). A figure closer to 2 rather than 3 out of 4 people seems more realistic, and is backed by numerous waves of data in Gameasure.

The only data point that reaches near the higher NPD figures in Gameasure was the casual gaming data gathered in Wave 4. When asked if they had ever played a casual video game, 68% of people said they had at some point. We only have one data point right now, but will soon be able to see if this was an anomaly. If it is not an anomaly, a large proportion of people are identifying with PC based casual games, but not with video games. Nonetheless it also points to how misleading the data can be. It is likely that the 22% of Americans who are in-between active gamers (46%) and total casual gamers (68%) don't have much idea about video games - at least not yet.

Some of the figures are close to ours. NPD finds that 3% of Americans own 2 out of 3 current generation consoles (still called 'next-gen' in article). Gameasure finds this is as high as 3.6%. On the other hand Gameasure only finds that 1% own all three consoles, not 2%. The 1% was also an unstable base size, 84 respondents out of 9,089.

The NPD press release shows how misleading improperly defined market research can be, especially once it is filtered through a press release. The report was successful at gaining press, but likely resulted in many people questioning the credibility of NPD's data. There does not appear to have been an objective look at the numbers before press release. It's important to step back and see oneself as the client - is what you have to report really believable?