I Want a ClueTrain Stick

Albert Cheng, EVP Digital Media, ABC Television Group is speaking right now at OMMA. You'd think that by now, ABC would get a clue and figure out that there's an interactive component to this newfangled Internet thing. So far, from Cheng's comments, I gather that they want to... * Invest big in content * Build a "marketing platform" * Build "direct relationships," but mostly by using the Internet's pipes to push content.

OMG, he actually believes that ABC's "equity" that has been earned with "consumers" cannot be replaced.

Jeez, he said he also believes that video is the primary driver behind consumers connecting with brands. He uses Sears' online sponsorship of Extreme Makeover:Home Edition as an example, saying that Sears enjoys a halo effect advertising with the show and that association with a show with an "altruistic bent" is beneficial for Sears. Nothing on how conversations about Sears and its products are happening outside the Disney/ABC realm of influence.

Ugh.

You Always Forget Something

I always forget something when I travel. This time, it was my stash of hot sauce and sweetener. Let me explain... In every hotel room I've ever stayed in, they give you enough coffee for Hannibal's army, but only two little packets of sweetener. Thus, I usually bring a little stash of Sweet & Low or Equal in my backpack.

And when I travel to the West Coast, often people look at me as if I have two heads when I order Tabasco sauce to go along with my eggs in the morning. Thus, I bring a little stash of those tiny Tabasco bottles.

Forgot both of them. Oh, well. At least it wasn't my razor.

Terms and Conditions Hell (Again)

Now that the interactive tide has turned from buyer's market to seller's market, some of the ridiculousness of Dot Com Boom Part I has returned in the form of random addenda to the IAB/AAAA Standard Terms and Conditions. I've seen some strange and unreasonable shit creeping into addenda recently, including a release from the obligation to pace the campaign evenly, reversal of sequential liability (replacing it with, of course, the "jointly and severally liable" language that publishers proposed when the standard Ts and Cs were being negotiated), automatic short rates for canceled campaigns, reservation of the right to discuss the results of the campaign with other advertisers, and random carve outs to introduce guidelines that "may change from time to time." In other words, the standard Ts and Cs are no longer a standard, even for those agencies (like ours) that followed the rules during the economic downturn when you couldn't get most advertisers to touch online with a 10-foot pole.

So am I to take it that everytime market conditions change, so will the standard? What's the point of having a standard in that case?

What ought we to do now? Do we start thinking up devious clauses to insert into addenda the next time the advertising economy does a header? Should we get the lawyers to start crafting the language that forces sales reps to fork over their first born children as makegoods for campaign shortfalls?

I can't shake this feeling that our industry fails to learn from past mistakes. We've seen all this crap before. We know where this path leads. So WTF?

Podcasting in 2010

Huh? Okay, I love eMarketer, but come on, people...

Joining the podcast audience requires confident use of an iPod or MP3 player, as well as ease with the process of downloading syndicated digital content from the internet (although podcasts can be listened to and watched on a computer with an internet connection, it's their portability that attracts users). This will remain a constraint on audience size even though the number of consumers who meet these requirements will inevitably grow over the next few years.

If we expect that the distribution mechanism for podcasts in 2010 will still involve the cumbersome process of downloading to one's computer and placing it on one's portable device, then we're probably being short-sighted. Personally, I think podcasting will explode and the audience will be much larger than 15 million people. Of course, by then, it probably won't be called podcasting anymore because there will be multiple distribution mechanisms and we'll be able to get our favorite programming without having to connect our portables to our PCs. How does on-demand IP content sound? I think it will get here before 2010.

That's the problem with these kinds of projections. They assume that the distribution mechanism will remain constant. Guess what? If the demand for the content is significant, we'll invent new ways to get it out to people.