Welcome!
Ok, OK so it's not strictly June but then again it doesn't exactly feel like July either does it? To brighten your day we've once again skimmed the cream off the top of the advertainment barrel, beaten it with some of the top viral news until fluffy and served it up in one, easy-to-swallow helping.
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News Round-up:
Facebook trounces MySpace
So everyone has heard of MySpace, and if you are reading this you are also very likely to have a profile on the popular social networking site. However since its introduction in the UK, Facebook has seen it number of users increase by exponential figures and is challenging MySpace for market share.
A clash between these two online titans for the title of most popular site is inevitable, as the amount of people using Facebook has been growing steadily and is forecasted to surpass Myspace soon.
A very interesting article was recently published on Mashable entitled "Facebook hammers MySpace on almost all key features" . While the title says it all it also provides a very detailed review of some of the factors that contributed to Facebook's success over the last 9 months.
MySpace has been a great site for quite a while, but it's now inundated by spammers trying to make friends, while the developers also seem to have lost interest in its innovation, meaning its functionality is limited.
Google view of future of online advertising
On Thursday 21st June at the Supernova conference, Sheryl Sandberg, Google's Global VP of Sales and Operations, gave a presentation entitled 'What's next for advertising?.
Sheryl highlighted two big changes to the way that individuals are consuming content:
•Social networks play a great role in user's context
•Individuals are now creating content as well as
consuming it.
She shared three key points for the future of online advertising:
•Advertisers need to get better at creating a 1:1 experience for their users.
•Advertisements need to continue increasing personalization.
•Users are demanding the delivery of information to be an experience and advertising must respond to it, just like content needs to.
As online advertising looks more to this personalized, experience-based advertising, it is clear that advertainment and viral campaigns are the top tools to achieve these aims.
Source: Read/WriteWeb
The future of viral is . . . longer
Viral video is finally coming of age. Historically viral videos were the bastard sons of TV ads, and generally ran if a client didn't have the full budget for a TV campaign but liked the idea of creating a video commercial. Because of this, viral videos tended to take the same format - usually a 30 to 45 second spot, structured in a similar way as a TV spot, but generally with a surprise Easter egg at the end.
Five or so years on, and virals are starting to slowly move out of this format and mature into their own longer and often more engaging medium - a change largely driven by broadband and YouTube.
Our recent campaign with E3 for Triumph motorbikes is a great example of viral getting longer. The campaign runs at 3 minutes long, and takes a documentary format. And the results prove that this works not only from the numbers (180,000 views in the first 3 weeks) but also from a brand engagement level, with over 7,200 positive online conversations being started about Triumph as a result of the campaign.
The recent arrival of Heavy.com's ad proposition to the UK isles is also something to watch in this area. We've worked closely with Heavy.com in the US on a series called the Kensington Report, which is based around a true "advertainment" model - where product messages are integrated into the film creative - and will be doing more in the coming months with UK advertisers.
We predict that longer and more engaging creative is definitely the future of viral over the coming 12 months - and hopefully much of it coming out of the Rubber stable . . .
Can't make time for your friends?
Rory Cellan-Jones, Tech correspondent on the BBC has unearthed a worrying trend- the online PA.
His BBC blog entry tells of a new media mover-and-shaker who pays someone £1,000 a month to 'be him' online- maintaining his social networks and updating his blog.
Worried that others may not be who they say they are he contacted Stephen Fry, Brent Hoberman and Sir Patrick Moore and was relieved to find that they were all the real McCoy (although Mr Fry is having trouble with 200+ friend requests every day)
So if the top end earners are starting to outsource their online networking could this become more and more common? If so, what does the future of social networking hold? We're already dividing between MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, ning and others- will this saturated market fall back in on itself?
5 of the best
Following that Google story above, it is no surprise that we had great trouble paring the virals down to a list of only 5 this month. Creative concepts are becoming more and more original- we hope you enjoy our top 5 this month...
