So, BC, or Before Compete, I worked for a large Media company in their Distribution Group. Therefore, I was not overly surprised when I received a News alert on New Year’s Day telling me “Scripps Networks Pulls Channels from Cablevision Systems.”

Surely, however, the 3+ million New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Cablevision subscribers were much more surprised when they tried to turn on the popular Scripps Networks—Food Network and HGTV—New Year’s Day to a message telling them the content was no longer available.  What is particularly interesting to me is the way both Cablevision and Scripps took to the web to garner support from their customer base as we’ll see below.  To reference an old saying, “Customers just want their…Food Network and HGTV…back.”

Continue reading “Online Food Fight: Scripps vs. Cablevision” »

Because many of our Ad Impact clients ask “How does Compete see ads?” or “What is it you see?” we decided to answer those questions in this forum with a peek “under the hood.”  The “hood” in this case isn’t the one covering our servers or software or algorithms, but the one that covers the big, brilliant Internet itself.

If you’re not 100% confident in your understanding of how Web pages “work,” any site will provide a quick lesson and illustrate what Compete “sees.”  Let’s say you visit LinkedIn to check up on a recent business contact.  From your perspective, you might type “linkedin.com” into the browser’s address bar, and the page appears in a few seconds.  Then you sign in and click ‘submit.’  What you see next would look (something) like this:

Continue reading “A look under the hood of Ad Impact” »

Warner Brothers recently released the movie about a well known children’s story called Where the Wild Things Are.  This movie is based on a popular book written by Maurice Sendak that has sold over 19 million copies worldwide since it was first published in 1963.  In the months leading up to the theatrical release, Warner Brothers used various forms of advertising to promote the movie.  Based on Compete’s data, traffic to the movie site wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com peaked in October with over three hundred thousand visitors to the site.

On the day prior to the theatrical release, Warner Brothers bought a homepage placement on the highest trafficked video site online, YouTube.  The large ad ran for a full day on the YouTube homepage on Thursday October 15^th, the day before the movie hit theaters nationwide.  So how effective was this ad placement?

We looked at consumers who were exposed to the ad on YouTube compared to a group of control consumers with similar online footprint but who did not see the ad.  Below are the activity rates on the campaign day prior to the movie.

Visitors to the YouTube homepage who saw the ad were 23x more likely to visit the movie site, 28x more likely to search for the movie on YouTube, or 1.7x more likely to search for the movie on search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing, AOL and Ask).

So how did the movie do?  Where the Wild Things Are was the #1 movie in the weekend that it opened, raking in $33MM during opening weekend and has grossed $75MM to date.  It currently also ranks #10 in total ticket sales for PG movies released in 2009.

Clearly, Warner Brothers made a wise investment in selecting a social media site like YouTube to promote this movie.  However, you may be thinking that it’s a no brainer that an entertainment ad for a movie would naturally resonate with a social media audience like that on YouTube, but we have seen that entertainment campaigns are not the only category of advertising that works in the social media channel (i.e. read our blog about the Dice campaign on Facebook).

If you are interested in learning more about how to use paid media to drive brand engagement among social media users, please join us for a webinar with YouTube on Tuesday December 8^th.

So what’s going on in my house this month that’s forced this Bandwidth vs. TV question?  One word: Boxee.  I could write a whole post on Boxee (maybe next time) – the short story is that thanks to Boxee, I now have the ability to easily watch videos (Netflix, Hulu, CNN, BBC) through my living room television except my Internet connection can’t handle it.  As Captain Kirk would say, “We need more power, Scotty!”  So, I’ve placed the order with a new Internet service provider for 4x more speed than I am currently receiving.  As a result, I’ll become even less reliant on a television schedule and will bring the instantaneous downloads of Netflix not just to my computer, but to my living room, on the TV, where it belongs.

Continue reading “What’s More Important to You: Bandwidth or TV?” »

Digital 180, Compete’s online “TV” series, spoke with Andrew Davis.  Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with James Cosco in 2002.  Since the early nineties Andrew has been creating valuable content for companies like The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and even MTV.

Andrew spoke with Digital 180 about podcasting and what he sees as an evolution in podcasting.  “I think podcasting as a whole has kind off fallen off the radar screen.  It was something big two years ago.  But what changed I think was the expectation from the user.”

Continue reading “Want a Tip about Podcasting? Digital 180 Speaks with Tippingpoint Labs’ Chief Strategy Officer” »

Digital 180, Compete’s online “TV” series, spoke with Marta Kagan, who leads Espresso’s growing Boston office.   As the outspoken voice behind The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius, Marta writes and speaks frequently about branding and advertising in the digital channel.  Her viral hit What the F**k is Social Media? has been translated into seven languages.

Continue reading “Digital 180 Speaks with Espresso’s Managing Director Marta Kagan” »