The
Boston Herald went hunting in the back alleys of the Leather District to find
this
story about BackChannelMedia,
a start-up that is attempting to go head to head with the Nielsen ratings
system – through the back door.

It’s
a huge undertaking. Cost estimations for the first phase along are between
$50-100 million. But with the technology falling into place and viewers apparently
showing that they are ready for an interactive
advertising experience, BackChannelMedia thinks it has a shot at the big time.

This
all comes in the wake of the much-debated issue of the slow,
lingering death of the traditional 30-second spot. Rick Mandler, vice president
of digital media advertising for Disney/ABC Media Networks, tells the Palm
Beach Post,
“The 30-second spot is like Mark Twain – reports of its demise are greatly
exaggerated.” (Ah, those American Lit classes at Wesleyan are finally paying
off.) He does admit, however, that it is “under a fair amount of challenge.”
With companies turning their attention more and more towards online
opportunities, if I were a TV network, I think I’d be sweating too.

But there are few ropes being tossed overboard. Daniel Hassan,
co-chief executive of BackChannelMedia, says that traditional 30-second
spots would be integrated in their system. “Clicking the right button during a
car commercial would set up the option of scheduling a test drive in the
viewer’s Web portal,” he explains.

And this news from PRNewswire about Nielsen getting DIRECTV to release viewer data from
interactive TV systems shows that maybe the “little guys” in Boston are scaring
them enough to find better ways to track viewer behavior and trends.

Ah, TV and the Internet. Whoever said “never the twain shall meet?”

Check
out the 2006 DoubleClick TouchPoints IV survey
which finds that “influencers” – those who actively network themselves, share
opinions, blog, and participate in online communities – cite online
advertisements as a source of information about a product, second only to
actual websites.

Influencers
spend more time on the Internet – 39% responded that they were online 5 or more
hours per day – and are more finely attuned to advertising, both positively and
negatively. They’re more likely to delete or clear their cookies, but also more
likely to, say, visit a website or store after seeing an Internet ad than
non-influencers. “They notice it and they value it, and they want to have
control over it,” concludes the study, noting further:

Considering
the impact that influencers have on the buying habits of the rest of the public,
advertisers have more to gain, and more to lose, when trying to sway this small
but important group
of people.

If
Malcolm Gladwell
was right, then these are the people that online advertisers have to convince to
buy their product – so that they can go ahead with their job and convince
everyone else to do the same.

Um, what? The New York Times informed us yesterday that the latest trend in advertising is “Ads Made by You,
in a Click.” Surely, the success of the user-generated ads for SuperBowl XLI opened up our eyes to what direction the industry might be
heading.

As a middle man, the agency, and specifically, the
creatives, may be getting cut out of the deal. Virtual ad agencies (and no, we’re not talking about the ones in Second Life) are
springing up to automate the process from start to finish, leaving only the
shooting of the footage and the site-management up to what we’ll call the human
factor. Is anybody else experiencing scenes from the movie A.I. flashing
through their mind? I am, and I haven’t even seen it.

What we’re interested in this next part: after “clicking”
their way to stardom, the advertisers will then have more control over placement
and targeted demographics. The Times article reports that the ad execs “expect
customization to become more and more finely sliced.” The first example of this
was The MiniCooper billboard ads that flashed personalized messages for drivers. Now people are thinking more about
customized ads and how they, well, make sense. The tightly-focused marketing
campaigns that the Internet enabled are now being applied offline. What can we
say? We saw it coming from afar like a Mack truck in the Mexican desert.

Everyone is talking about it. Actually, everyone is talking about Anna Nicole Smith, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that Steve Jobs is still the #1 notable news story of the week. (He deserves another 15 minutes, after going through all that trouble to write a manifesto and all. You understand.)

It’s been a rough trip. Under fire from consumer groups from several European countries for having implemented a Digital Right Management system for Apple iTunes and iPods, he’s been dealing with the threat of antitrust lawsuits. Our Viking friends haven’t let up, even after he let loose that now-famous Feb 6 statement in which he imagines "a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded
in open licensable formats." [Insert butterflies and rainbows here.] Oh, but the joy continues:

In such a world, any player can play music
purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is
playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for
consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

Smooth move, Steve. As Bob Kohn, founder of eMusic, noted in Business Week, this puts him in the role of "the Hero" to consumers, as he can now claim the moral high ground on the issue. In an effort to save face, perhaps, the Recording Industry Association of America has passed the hot potato back to Jobs, saying that maybe if Apple opened up its DRM technology to competitors, they wouldn’t be having this problem of interoperability.

Snap, snap. This could go on forever. If you want to keep up on the inner workings of this man’s mind, go ahead and read his online diary. (I should probably tell you it’s fake, or risk a lawsuit myself.)

But… if you want to scrap this whole piracy debate thingy and see some real news, this is probably your best bet.

…the
word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?

Did
you go running for your dictionary to look it up? Probably not. People nowadays
are not so easily convinced; in fact, I would go so far as to say that we are
downright skeptical. It’s not surprising, though, as we’re being more and more
inundated (from all sides) with people telling us what to buy, what to wear,
how to act.

But
we’re adults. (Or at least we pretend to be.) What about the kids? Not only are they one of the Web’s major growing
demographics, with 99%
of them online (compared to only 40% six years ago) but they are also more susceptible to the many tricks that
advertisers have up their sleeve.

I’m
flashing back to an incident that occurred in my childhood: a discussion
between my eight-year-old sister and our father. Place: the breakfast table.
Topic: Mrs. Butterworth’s Maple Syrup. Debate that ensued: Why would he buy
Shop Rite brand when (for just a little more money) he could make his children
deliriously happy by providing them with a real live talking person, like they
showed on TV?

“Honey?
What are the kids doing?” The truth is, we may have taken measures – both
personal and institutional – to block our kids from being exposed to “adult”
material on the Web, but they’re still wide open to the advertisers. At some point, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit stepped in and published a series of guidelines,
such as marking a clear separation between the editorial content and the ad,
and deliberately using simple words and grammar structure so as not to mislead
a younger audience who might not understand that Free iPod! doesn’t really mean
Free iPod.

They
also require that ads should not send the message that possession of a product will
result in popularity among peers or that the consumer will immediately acquire the
prestige, skills or other special qualities of characters used in the ad. Wait,
does that mean that eating Cap’n Crunch won’t turn me into a badass pirate-guy?

In
any case, it looks the industry is still under fire by the American Psychiatric Assocation, and specifically, the food industry, for their contribution to the obesity problem through overly convincing online ads.

However, a recent article by Stefanie Olsen of CNETnews labels them "Generation We," being raised as they are during the time of social networks and interactive media, cell phones and ever-disappearing geographic boundaries. Iconoculture president Nancy Robinson says, "There’s nothing remote about control anymore," noting that kids are not just passively absorbing media, but rather in active control of it.

Does this mean advertisers are going to have to rethink their marketing strategy?

Jefferson would be pissed. So would FDR. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a
president (one we like, anyway) who wouldn’t get a little miffed at the latest
news on the FCC’s official stand on net neutrality
and deregulation of the media.

It got banged down in the R-controlled Congress last year, but has recently been revived, thanks to the new
Democratic majority and frantic lobbying by the Google/MoveOn.org coalition in their Save the Internet campaign. The net neutrality bill would prevent large Internet service
providers (Verizon, ComCast, AT&T) from controlling the speed of content flowing
from the global network to the consumer, based on its source or ownership.

Peter
Huber waxes pessimistic about the bill in Forbes, saying that the net neutrality law won’t be effective in blocking
content providers from getting their page to load faster, and that the only
thing it would block is capital investment in “faster digital pipes”. Speaking
of pipes, let’s briefly revisit Jon Stewart’s spot on Sen. Ted Stevens’ speech to Congress, just for a quick laugh.

Back
to the debate. On the other side, weighing in at 185 pounds, is Ben Scott of
the Free Press,
a national media reform group, and the Save the Internet campaign. They point the battle-ax at FCC Chairman
Kevin Martin, accusing him of talking around the issue and not expecting anyone
other than AT&T- under the conditions of their merger to BellSouth last year – to obey standards of net neutrality.

We
need a national broadband policy, not a series of laws designed to prop up the
business models of incumbent telephone and cable companies. We want to make the
information superhighway a public good, to bring the transformative spirit of
free speech and free markets to every community.

So
there it is, all laid out. No doubt we want to improve the speed of the
Internet, but who is going to pay for it? Should it be in the strong but
discriminatory hands of big business, or in the omni-loving care of the
government, where “all content is created equal” – but may get a bit bogged
down in the process of reaching you?

The
question now is, as Arlo Guthrie prophetically asks, is “Which side / are you
on?”
Quick, you have 3 seconds to decide.
Click here
to sign the pro Net Neutrality petition,
    or here to join the Ted Stevens Fan Club on MySpace, which is another ironic story
in and of itself.

No,
it’s not Rex Grossman.  Nor is it Peter Ragone – or should I say "John Nelson"?

It’s a new feature on Technorati that allows
users to rate the latest topics raging in the blogosphere and explain why they’re so hot right now. David Sifry elaborates
here.

Is
it just a Digg alternative? Perhaps. But it’s a darn good idea, especially for
those of us who tend to get a little bit out of the loop, and in more than just print media. –Okay, a lot out of the loop; it’s gotten to the point where I’m scared to tackle the
newspaper after a long absence because I just feel so freakin’ stupid: Wait, we
have troops in Iraq?
What are they doing there? (I might be kidding, but don’t hate me if I’m not.)

The
idea is the same. When you feel utterly, hopelessly, doggedly behind in current events and stumble into a conversation, online or off, about a popular topic, you may feel “like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie.” (This Big Lebowski
quote was taken from Technorati’s SuperDotCom commercial hosted on YouTube, which debuted along with a few others from ‘vagabond’ startups like Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, and RockYou.com.)

Technorati’s new tool allows you to do a search for a topic, person, etc. and get a brief summary
of the issue before reading all the blog commentary. To give it a whirl, I searched for “Mooninites.”  Here’s what came up:

These
two guys posted a bunch of LED signs in Boston and other cities displaying the image of one of the Mooninites flipping the
bird to advertise for the cartoon/movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The Mooninites
are very funny 2-D low resolution digital characters based on 80′s video games.
The have obnoxious personalities. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is on Adult Swim on
the Cartoon Network on cable TV.

And an even more concise one:

Mooninites flipped the bird. Boston police not amused.

My only qualm with this new tool is the name: WTF. They say it stands for Where’s the Fire, but it is undoubtedly an Ersatz for another, more explicit phrase. As in, "Mooninites? WTF are you talking about?"

Mediapost
reports that those venture capital sharks are still eyeing media companies like
a hungry frat guy checking out a hot chick at a party (or a philly cheesesteak)
at 4 am.

Now
imagine it’s a hot chick – and her sister. (Or extra special sauce on the
cheesesteak.) That’s how sweet the deals look to aggressive venture-capital and
private equity investors when they factor all the M&A action that will
continue on in 2007.

But
who will benefit? The traditional media companies who claim they are adopting
“transformational strategies” to stay on top of new trends and technology, or
new online companies who are already there? Oh wait, haven’t they merged into one big conglomerate yet?

Admittedly, the days of Wayans-brothers style free flowing
cash money are over, and the VC boys are being more picky about who they pump
money into. They’re deliberately seeking out companies that are “extremely efficient in the way they
spend their money,” in other words, who more or less have their act together, and just need small
investments to deal with a few problems.

What? Mo’ money, mo’ problems? We’re with Notorious on this one:
Stay humble stay low, blow like
Hootie / True pimp niggaz spend no dough on the booty.

AKQA has sold a stake to private equity firm, General Atlantic.  First off the folks at AKQA deserve tremendous credit. Seeing a ray of hope deep in the hole that was 2002 was not an easy thing to do (believe me I was there in the abyss). AKQA,  with a cash cushion from Francisco, dug themselves out and thrived.

I always questioned why Francisco Partners had pumped in $40 million dollars (Adweek says $70M) into creating AKQA (from SF-based Citron, Haligman & Bedecarre, London-based AKQA, DC-based AKQA and a shop in Singapore, name long forgotten) at the bottom of the market just months after their larger, ill-fated investment in US Web (or MarchFirst or whatever it was before it crashed and burned). (BTW, I talked to Kirk Citron this morning — do you know how to say "happy guy"?)

But don’t hire me as your investment adviser.  According to published reports, General Atlantic, a Greenwich based private equity firm, valued the company at somewhere around $250 million on revenues of $75 million.  For those of you without your calculators handy that represents a super sweet 3.3x revenue deal. Folks, thems are 1999 boom time valuations. WPP was in the bidding but, as much as I’m sure Sir Martin would have loved to acquire our friends on Townsend Street, the holding companies can’t pay that kind of multiple because they are, to paraphrase Madonna, "living in a 1X world."

This is terrific news for anyone trying to build some value in the digital world.  Granted, AKQA has a high creative profile, a very strong growth track record, big name clients and a global footprint, all factors that surely played into this lofty valuation.  Nonetheless, there are really huge implications here. 

This deal is a direct threat to the hegemony of the agency holding companies like WPP, Interpublic, Omnicom et. al..  Here’s why:  1. The holding companies  can no longer afford to acquire assets in the fastest growth segment of the industry. 2. With private equity willing to invest in service businesses like this, you have to wonder if suddenly they have become a far more attractive buyer than holding companies offering the same old, same old earn out deals. 3.  The dirty little secret at AKQA and at Digitas for that matter is that they both do a fair amount of business doing print and TV. 4. Because of this and the longer view offered by Private Equity (meaning, say three years instead of three months) a company like AKQA is much more able to invest for the long term while the McCann’s and Ogilvy’s of the world are stuck shipping 20% of their revenue off to New York or London every quarter.

So, hats off!  It’s a good day for everyone (except Martin, of course.)

From time to time, we will be reviewing the content of some blogs that we find interesting.  There are obviously many, many political blogs out there.  Some of these blogs like HuffingtonPost and Drudge are well known, but we’ve found that if you want a really quick overview of everything significant happening in US politics over the last twenty four hours delivered without any bias or agenda check out BillO’Reilly.com .

Just KIDDING for God’s Sake

Check out Taegan Godard’s Political Wire .  The front piece carries five to ten  headlines, which, if you choose, you can have fed to your in-box daily. These headlines are mostly free of inside the beltway irrelevance, and contains the most significant political news from the presidential campaign to state office races.  Then, depending on your political orientation (not your sexual orientation) and depending on whether you are in a mood for being preached to from the choir or for making your blood boil, you can navigate to "Southpaws", e.g. Lefties e.g. liberals (get it?) or to "Wingers", e.g. Right Wingers, e.g. Conservatives (now you’re cathing on!)to view the latest outrages from the political blogging world.  The top several headlines each day are easily consumed and linked to the backing stories (I take the email.).  With good listings of columnists, political polling firms and other fascinating material, this is a great portal for doing a quick daily check in on the state of our body politic. 

I have only two bitches.  First, the ads run down the middle of the page and are very interruptive to my reading experience (which, I guess is the point) and second, the list of columnists and writers is nowhere near as comprehensive as say, Drudge’s site.

So when Keith and Arianna or Sean and Bill get to be too much, sanity is
guaranteed here. At least on the home page….After that, you’re on your own.

Bottom line, if you’d like an easy way to stay on top of politics over the next year, this is a great place to start your day.