Ad-Pro Media

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod are globally recognized and applauded for their “Shift Happens (Did You Know?)” video series.  An updated 4.0 version was released on September 14, 2009 (see video below).

Just where will all of this focus of time and energy take us and just what role will technology supply for it?  That is the big bet the goys on Sand Hill Road want to know as well.

First a rant and then some help:

I am continually stunned that so many +40 year olds are indifferent, ignorant, or just blase about just how much social media has become an integral part of most everyone else’s life. Recently I have been helping some guys in their job search and when I inform them about how powerful Twitter can be (for example) they don’t believe me. And that is after admitting that they don’t even know what Twitter is nor have they even checked it out!

No wonder so many sub-35 year olds think boomers and older gen-x people are so clueless. Wake up, folks! If you cannot at least speak intelligently about one of the most important and lasting phenomenons of the past five years then why should they take you seriously about anything else you might have to say?

Guys, guys, guys! You don’t know it but to the hiring class you are walking around with a giant #failwhale over your head and you don’t even know it (#look it up). Just last week the WSJ quoted Newell Rubbermaid’s top talent guy about how important twitter is:

“Job boards have “become saturated,” says Mike Rickheim, vice president of global talent acquisition for Newell Rubbermaid Inc., a global manufacturer based in Atlanta.

“With Twitter, we don’t have to go through that huge pile of résumés.” Mr. Rickheim says the company uses Twitter to fill positions that tend to attract tons of applicants on job boards, such as administrative roles, as well as to share company news.”

Now, I have been preaching this very fact for months to these guys only to get blank stares or even hostile ones. What the pho, man?! Don’t get mad at me that the clue train passed you by. Get in the game! It isn’t too late. Even my 93-year old grandmother is on Facebook! Are you going to get shown up by a 93-year old grandmother? Well, so far you are.

Ok, I’ll let my rant subside with some quick advice with three tips:

1) Get on twitter. It is free. Here is the link: http://twitter.com/ Be passionate about what you believe in be it work or play and you’ll start to generate a following. The more real you are here the better. This is not the place to be a poser. And actively help people with links to useful stuff. Oh, and follow those people you like on there and let them know it with a quick tweet. You will be surprised at how quickly most people respond. Once you get some air under those little wings, check out the search function. Little things called hashtags are used to generate a way for people to locate threads and trends of info using the ‘#’ symbol before words or smashed together words and phrases. This is so useful and informative that entire companies have made business models around helping businesses discern what it all means but that is the subject matter for another post.

2) Get on Facebook. It is free (see a trend here?). Don’t go crazy with the beer party photos just camp out some real estate and get, you got it, connected! Facebook as some useful utility in establishing a network. Many think of it as a more fun LinkedIn but I think it is really something else. Think of a more laid back way to connect to those with a different mindset. And btw – most of those signing up for Facebook accounts are in their 50’s. What are you waiting for?

3) Blog! You don’t need to know CSS, HTML, or any code at all. Check out Tumblr, Yola, Ning, and slew of other options out there where you can quickly set up your own blog/website. Why? Personally, I think to make it a heck of a lot easier for people to find you on their own time. Plus, tweets are only 140 characters (about two lines of type max) so if you have more to share, you will have the space to do so here. If you get a bit more ambitious and understand software and computers even a little bit, sign up for a free Wordpress blog. It is much more powerful and fun to use. Again, start small and move up. Almost everyone of us out here started that very same way.

The great news is that the road to social media is not well paved yet.  There is room for new voices to be heard.  Yes!  Including yours!  But just like in our careers, it is what you say and how you say it that will help you stand above the crowd or get swallowed up in it.  Your choice.  If you’d like some more free advice on how to channel your new animal, drop me a tweet @marktis.  What?  After all that, did you think I would say call or email me?  That is so 1999…

The great blog, Silicon Alley Insider, recently posted the ability to embed their stories inside your own blog using an easy drop in embed mechanism most bloggers are used to using for video sharing sites like YouTube, Viddler, Veoh, and many others.  Here is what it looks like:

What makes it really interesting is that as a blogger you no longer have to worry about incorporating Silicon Alley Insider ’stuff’ in your blog since you will be grabbing and posting all of the text within a widget that is branded by them.  So, even though they will be losing page views at first glance, the odds are pretty good that they will grab a new future reader as well as create a more engaged reader by offering this service.

If they can get the word out by more bloggers like me, that effort alone will have boosted their profile via the search engines for those linking in with their content and that alone is worth the effort in my book.

Check it out here.

The great Jeff Jarvis mentioned it in his blog who is another person you should read consistently as he is usually spot on about what he is talking about in the newspaper, magazine, and online spaces imo.

First discovered via CC_Chapman on Twitter which led us over to the cool folks over at AdFreak, the following video is a very tasty demo of some leading edge handheld gaming design.

This submission was made collectively by several teams including those at Georgia Tech, Graz University of Technology, and SCAD Atlanta, the game was previewed at the Indiecade 2009 event held at E3 this year.

The game focuses on immerses handheld gaming players by having them physically ‘work’ with a 2D environmental map. A bit hard to explain but once you watch the video, you quickly get the picture. “Augmented reality,” is an interesting hybrid of the real physical world in a sense and video. The Eye of Judgement game for the Playstation 3 that came out back in 2007 was a precursor of this type of technology.

Recently, you may have seen the very cool augmented reality work for GE’s Smart Grid using something called the FLARToolkit which is very cool. The good folks at nVidia provided a devkit for the project for a new mobile device called Tegra nvidia is developing. which allowed them to make the zombie game called “ARhrrrr”. A key part of the game is how the developers created the use of real world Skittles as mines that you activate by placing them on a 2D real world map. Very cool and very smart to show how sponsors can be artfully employed within a game.

I think you could argue that this is probably where advergaming should be headed and is vastly superior to current offerings of advergames I have seen on the web.

Both a funny and sad commentary about vendor – client relationships in this video. This can easily apply to freelancers as well.

It is really interesting to see these vignettes played out in this way as there is a lot of truth to how many but not all clients approach vendors. Those of us in the category of value creation via intangibles have met these challenges more often than not and hopefully by sharing these gems we can all produce healthier relationships.

The following video provides one of the best roadmaps for the next four years in social media and really the social web. Probably about the best six minutes or so you will invest this year.

If the title of this entry is too geeky for you, here is the quick 411. A viral event is one in which you pre-plan an activity with multiple people to generate a set of actions to help draw attention. These were often first coordinated via websites (like Meetup.com), then cell phones, and now via Tweetups via your PDA. A meatspace is where you live in the real world versus cyberspace where I am typing this now.

This video captures a very cool event that takes place in what appears to be a train station in Belgium:

The AIMA meeting last night was well attended and had a strong panel to discuss Ad Networks and Exchanges. Those on the panel were

Lexi Reese, Director, Google Content Network

James Fellows, VP Product Management, Platform-A (AOL, Advertising.com)

Marc Grabowski, Exec Director, Yahoo! Ad Network

Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb / ADSDAQ

The panel was ably moderated by Joel Lunenfeld of Moxie Interactive who earned the biggest round of laughter during his introductory speech about how today we all should consider becoming part ‘Analyst’ and part ‘Therapist’ which would make you an “Analrapist” which he pronounced differently than what the audience quickly did. He indicated a need to change the slide later so this gaffe was apparently not intended but either way, it was funny and a bit ironic.

Laughs aside, after the requisite infomercials by the panelists, Joel proceeded to introduce some solid questions for the panelists to discuss and answer with some of them provided via text message to his phone before the discussion got started (expect nothing less at a meeting of digital professionals).

There were some good points made such as Lexi Reese of Google indicating that consumers on the web are 2x more likely to look at ads on niche sites (via the long tail!) and spend 4x more time interacting on niche sites!

To me, that provides some nice third party evidence for SMB publishers to sell more of the inventory directly and not through networks or exchanges. Clearly, the networks and exchanges will not go away and I applaud Lexi for even bringing up that possibility whether intended or not.

Jay Sears of ContextWeb / ADSDAQ probably had the some of the most riveting things to say as he dove down under the covers a bit. He mentioned how agencies are developing their own demand platforms such as WPP’s B-3, Publicis’s Vivaki, and Havas’s ad Netik as examples. His review of ADSDAQ was interesting for providing such as powerful tool to agencies to fully evaluate and target their buys down to the page level. Wow.

One of the other items Jay mentioned was the OPA’s recent announcement (discussed in an earlier post) about larger ad sizes. This was old news to me as I was instrumental in working with RIM / Blackberry in using large format ads and push-downs on a B2B site back in 2006! I guess it pays to be on the bleeding edge.

I made some new friends which is always nice and learned about their companies such as David Reed over at Enablus which I didn’t know anything about previously but whose firm works on online product development. AIMA overall has done a really good job of providing top notch speakers for a solid ROI on time and dollars spent to attend.

I learned first hand how well large format online display ads versus their smaller brethren perform with a campaign I worked on RIM / Blackberry for a B2B website I was representing a few years ago.

At that time, the B2B website I represented offered a large (336×850) display ad which during a test of several ad sizes on the site outperformed a 728×90, a 336×250, and an interstitial ad during the same timeframe by at least 40%. By any measure that was a huge difference!

I think it important to note that those 336×850 ads ran on the website over three years ago in 2006! I guess we were way ahead of the power curve.

If you have not seen the announcement, a good overview of the new ad sizes announced by the OPA can be reviewed here: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_456699.htm

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Ad-Pro Media was founded by Mark Tisdale and specializes in new business development for online and print in both B2C and B2B media.