Altyrian View

Since we moved the site from http://www.altyrianview.com to its new home here, we’ve been dropped from Technorati. They need this code to take us back: WZUV2YUZV7BG.

So Twitter wasn’t the biggest social app in 2009. It was Farmville, boasting 69 million active users. Yes, that Farmville – the one with the “Bill has found a lost cow. Click to adopt it.” status updates in Facebook.

TECHDIGEST compares Farmville to SecondLife’s “long lost cousin.” Like Second Life, the creators of Farmville got obscene amounts of money (a $200 million investment), but it is just another fad? To be fair, the investment wasn’t necessarily for the development of Farmville but for a host of new games that the developers wants to get us to play.

As you know, the biggest challenge of games like this is figuring out a way to make money. Of course, there is the ad revenue from the page views associated with playing the online game, but I’m sure that the developers would prefer a more direct form of cash flow. I happen to play Farmville (level 70, thank you very much), and I have yet to pay real money to buy virtual farm dollars – even if those farm dollars are needed to get my final blue ribbon.

What Farmville’s growth does show us is that there is a desire to play games online (duh) and that people like the social interactions afforded from games like Farmville. Is Farmville the end? No. Just like Second Life, it is merely a precursor to future development.

Today, Apple changed the advertising world. In an update about the new iPhone software, Steve Jobs introduced iAd.

The best way to describe iAd is to think about Google Adwords and changing it to work within iPhone applications – the entire system is run by Apple with the proceeds going to Apple (40%) and application developers (60%).

Of course, for developers, this is big news, but for advertisers and media buying services agencies, this is huge – a real game-changer. Assuming that Apple allows it, we will be able to target customers based on location and preferences. For example, if you are a store in a mall, you have the potential to be able to advertise your store once someone sets foot in the mall (to be fair, we don’t know yet if iAd will have those capabilities). In short, this turns the whole idea of mobile advertising on its ear.

If you’ve been reading the news, it’s obvious that Apple and Google have started to clash. This can’t do much for that relationship. What it will do is create another advertising outlet that allows us targeting that has only been available on the Web.

On Wednesday, we discussed three more reasons that you probably want to use a media buying services agency. If you missed parts one and two, be sure to check them out! Here are the last 3 in the series.

Free Stuff – No, I’m not talking about the free tickets that advertisers get. I’m talking about free placements. Often, media buyers will negotiate additional free advertising into the contract. Not only that, but with posting, we find that our clients often get lots of ads that they would have missed out on if they had been placing their media themselves.

Much Less Work – If you take away all of the accounting hassles, calls from sales reps, research into shows and networks, and all of the other miscellaneous work that goes into good media buying, then you can save lots of time. If you’ve worked with a media buying services agency, you know that working with one contact and company saves tons of time over placing on multiple media outlets.

Media Strategy – One of the biggest benefits of working with a media buyer is that they can often see the big picture in a way that the individual sales reps cannot. Your buyer knows all of your placements; they know your targets. Instead of ordering a buy based on open inventory (that’s the word that TV stations use for commercial slots), a buy is based on what you need.

I hope that you have found the Nine Reasons to Use a Media Buying Services Company useful. Of course, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post below or send me an email.

On Monday, we discussed the first three reasons that you probably want to use a media buying services agency. Without further adieu, here are reasons 4-6.

Posting – When you buy television advertising, you are buying based on the estimated number of people that might see your spot. What happens if you pay based on a million viewers and only half a million viewers tune in? It happens all the time. A good media buyer will review the ratings to make sure that you have gotten all of the eyeballs that you paid for. This can be huge benefit if you haven’t been getting all that you have purchased. As a matter of fact, in 2008 we were averaging about 20% under-delivery in our market. This isn’t the fault of the television station, but they aren’t going to point out under-delivery either.

One Contact – I was just talking to a potential client about our buying services, and I mentioned that any media salesperson that calls should be forwarded to us. As you might guess, he was very excited. When you work with a media buyer, you only work with your buyer – meaning, you don’t have to take all those media calls from sales reps.

Avoid Accounting Hassles – No matter how hard you plan, television advertising billing fluctuates and is sometimes incorrect. With a media buyer, you have an accountant that is accustomed to working with television stations to make sure that budgets are kept. This helps you avoid surprises in billing, and it gives you piece of mind that your invoices are correct.

Part 3

Although this post might seem to be self-serving, many people that I run into when meeting new people are not experienced at buying media. Yet, more often than not, they set up their own ad buys and handle the media buying themselves. While this might be a wonderful educational experience, this, most often is a mistake in many ways. Often you end up wasting time and money.

I’ve come up with 9 reasons that you might want to use a media buying services company instead of forging ahead on your own. Look for parts 2 and 3 on Wednesday and Friday, respectively.

It Doesn’t Cost Anything – When you use a media buying services agency to buy radio and television, they are paid through an agency discount offered by the station. For example, let’s pretend that you want to buy an ad spot that costs $100. If you work directly with the station sales rep, that spot costs $100. If you were to call a media buyer, that ad would still cost you $100, but you wouldn’t have any of the headaches. The station gives the media buyer a price discount (typically 15%) that is only available to media buying agencies. So, although you pay the media services agency $100 on your ad, the buyer only pays the station $85. In our example, it might seem like overkill to introduce a buyer into the mix. If you were buying just one ad, you could probably do it yourself. On the other hand, real buys often are complex with multiple stations.

Economies of Scale – Media buying services agencies often have quite a bit of influence – especially in local markets. Because media buyers typically have a few clients for which they are placing advertising, they can easily be one of the largest clients of the station. As you might guess, this has some real advantages when negotiating contracts.

More Experience – Most buyers will tell you that negotiating media buys is more art than science. A really good buyer understands the stations that she is buying. She knows how to create a compromise that helps both her client and the station. She also knows all of the tricks and traps that could cause problems with a buy. For example, did you know that if you negotiate a price that is too low that your spot will probably get bumped in favor of an advertiser that’s willing to pay more? Unfortunately, television stations have to bump spots all the time. Of course, there are ways to avoid this problem, but it takes some experience.

Part 2

Ever want to know the secrets of media buying services? John has a sit-down with a former media sales rep. VIDEO VERSION

Watch part one here, and then visit YouTube for part 2.

Seth Stevenson at Slate gives us the 12 television advertising types as created by Donald Gunn in 1978 for Leo Burnett. It’s a very interesting list.

1. The demo
2. The problem
3. Symbolize the problem
4. Symbolize the benefit
5. Comparison
6. Exemplary story
7. Benefit causes story
8. Testimonial
9. Ongoing character or celebrity
10. Associated user imagery
11. Unique personality property
12. Parody or borrowed format

What’s cool about the list is that not only was it created nearly 30 years ago, but it also still holds true today. The slideshow also has examples of each kind of ad.

Recently, a client said something that I just haven’t been able to get out of my head. We were in the middle of a budget discussion (lots of those going on these days) when she said “You know, we can’t outspend the competition, so we just have to outsmart them.” Our conversation went back to the budget and that was that.

Well, no, I guess that wasn’t entirely that, because the more I think about what she said, the more fundamental truth I see in it. Especially for us marketing strategists who understand that the number of dollars we spend on marketing and advertising isn’t nearly as important as how we actually spend those dollars.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that a company should spend nothing on marketing – that would be stupid as well as ineffective. Instead, it means that it’s better to spend smarter, to get more for every dollar of the marketing budget and to do those things that will generate the highest results. It means to focus our targeting, to sharpen our message, to explore and utilize new approaches for delivering our message. At times, it might also mean rethinking and changing our brand image to bring it more in line with our market. And it certainly always means to keep our focus on constantly improving the customer’s experience with the company and the product.

It also points to a big reason for strategy in the first place - the competition. They’re out there spending money to take away your customers and sometimes they have more money to spend. Regardless of budget constraints, you can – and you should – do whatever it takes to outsmart them at every turn.

I’m not prone to generalizing, but this one is a lock: the company with the best strategy always wins. Forget luck and everything else, the better strategy gives a company what it needs to crush its competition. Every time.

Try to name one company that beat its competition without having the better strategy. Can’t do it, eh? Think you have one where luck made it happen? What about spending – maybe you found one where the strategy was weak but the company succeeded because their spending was strong? Not a chance. Dig deeper into the reason any company beats its competition and you’ll find a superior strategy working for them.

One of my favorite examples is the video format war between Sony and JVC (The Observer Online has a good article on this). Sony’s Betamax had better quality, was first out and virtually owned the home video market. JVC, however, had a clearly superior marketing strategy – whereas Beta tapes were just one hour, JVC’s VHS tapes were two full hours (feature-length film anyone?). Beyond that, VHS tapes and equipment were less expensive and JVC happily licensed VHS to movie studios (not so for Beta). Result? VHS crushed Betamax in the marketplace.

Okay, this is just one example, but it represents the universal truth. If you think you have a case where superior strategy lost to something else, I’d love to hear it. I’m betting one doesn’t exist.