Marketing Pilgrim Published: "Facebook and Ticketmaster Create Interactive Event Map Experience" plus 4 more

Facebook and Ticketmaster Create Interactive Event Map Experience

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 04:51 AM PDT

Facebook has teamed up with ticket industry monopolist wannabe Ticketmaster to help event attendees learn where their friends or other people of interest may be sitting for an event. The interactive map using Facebook friends as the way to see who's sitting where (of course, if you are using Ticketmaster you probably aren't one of the cool kids who get the good seats through other channels) was introduced this week. Notice the emphasis placed on privacy concerns in the Ticketmaster video.

Admittedly, this is pretty nifty although I would likely never use it. I can, however, see where the right kind of person could find this a neat tool. As for its actual use? The article from Digital Trends sums it up pretty well.

As we see it, this feature has one — and only one — genuinely valuable function: It makes it easier for groups of friends to buy tickets independently and still make sure they will be sitting near each other. No question, that's a useful feature. What it will likely not do — as much as poor Ticketmaster wishes it would — is make people buy more tickets simply because someone who they vaguely know on Facebook is also attending an event.

So is this something you would find useful? How would it help you when you are looking to get tickets for a concert or event?

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Ivy League Study Offers Social Media and Teen Drug Use Correlation

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 04:37 AM PDT

This one falls into the category of "I can see some dotted line connections here, maybe but to draw broad conclusions like this is stupid" category.
According to a study by Columbia University's (that's right, the Ivy league school that is supposed to be a place for really smart people) National Center on Addiction and Drug Abuse, it's more likely that kids who are active in social networking will use drugs. Gee, I am so glad someone finally put two and two together to get five.
Here's a sample of the findings. The premise is that if teens have seen others drinking and using drugs in pictures on social networking outlets how likely are they to do it themselves or be involved with people that do.

Ok, so let's get this straight. First, I am not a social scientist and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so, in other words, my observations are not based on any science. That may automatically marginalize my thoughts on this subject but it doesn't seem like reason is real high on the list of criteria for this work so why not join in?
Here's the thing. I would rather that kids, especially mine, not be exposed to this kind of thing. I am also not an idiot. It's a part of life and sheltering kids tends to turn them into the equivalent of a caged lion being freed from a cage in pen full of gazelles when they are released to the real world. In other words, the more you keep things from them the more they want to try them and when they get the chance they might really go for it. Education on the other hand, can at least give a kid with a decent sense of self and some brains the chance to realize that alcohol and drugs have little to no upside.
Do I think that seeing their friends or friends of friends who display their alcohol and drug exploits online are influencing them to try it themselves? For some yes but they would likely do it anyway with or without the 'help' of social networks. For a kid that can see that someone who is acting the fool is not very attractive (which more can than we give credit for) seeing this activity on social networks is just as likely to push them further away as it is to entice them to start.
There is a desire for people to paint social networking as the cause and effect of all things negative. If not the cause or effect it is given a prime influencer position which does a couple of things.
1. It creates good headlines and title for reports to push on people (kind of like dealers do isn't it?)
2. Gets people funding for projects that pay salaries

Neither of these are great trust builders when it comes to this area of study. Let's face it, it has been shown time and time again that the bias in research is turning the field into a cesspool of paid for advertising and PR for either products or agendas so if there is anywhere to exercise caution is in research around social media and its impact.
The last bit of information that I gleaned from this report (please look at it in its entirety to draw your own conclusions) was the following finding.

The assumption is that if the child is younger they are less likely to make a good decision and are more influenced in the social media world. That may be true on some levels. People get wiser as they get older. What is likely a bigger concern is that if your kid is friending or hanging out with kids at a very young age who drink and use drugs in the first place you are not paying attention. Sure a social network can exacerbate a bad situation but the root causes aren't likely found there. The less monitoring and discussing of these issues with children in a real world sense from the parents, the more likely kids will take cues from their peers. This one is on the parents more than it is social networking, in my opinion.
So that's my take on some findings that come from the smart folks at Columbia. But hey, I'm just a guy from with a degree from lowly Boston College so what do I know, right?
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My [Music] Space Gets Ready to Relaunch

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 01:53 PM PDT

MySpace has 70 million active global users but you wouldn't know it to look a the site. In the past few years, they've gone from being a hub of personalized social activity, to a billboard for big entertainment brands to. . . the laughing stock of the internet world.
But MySpace's new owners could be laughing all the way to the bank and sooner than you think.
Talking to AdAge, Al Dejewski, the new senior VP-global marketing says that MySpace started out on a clear path but lost its way as it grew. Now, the new owners are ready to clear away the brush and strike out all over again – with music as their one and only map.

"No other music destination online today can claim the breadth of partnership we have with the four major music labels in addition to the tens of millions of independent artists and the libraries of their songs."

Dejewski, who handled marketing at Pepsi and Turner Broadcasting says they have a strong launch planned for later this year that includes several celebrities and tie-ins with major fast food and automobile brands.

With Justin Timberlake working as creative director, MySpace should have no trouble delivering on the celebrity side and that could be the key to bringing users back.
Imagine if MySpace were the official home of Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift? Set up a fan profile and get free music downloads, a shot at VIP concert tickets or a chance to have your questions answered by the star herself. There's something to be said for a narrow field of focus and at this point MySpace has nothing to lose.
Forget Facebook, the new MySpace is going after iTunes, Spotify and Vevo. Says Dejewski,

"While we may have lost some traction to people like Facebook, things like LinkedIn are a very different proposition in my mind. We have a very broad reach and footprint today and one we can capitalize upon, no question about it."

I say, it's going to be the comeback of the year. What do you think?

Marketers Warm Up to the No Clicks Campaign

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 12:18 PM PDT

Have you clicked on a display ad today? The odds are you haven't since, "99.8% of users who view an average display ad don't click." But if you spent any time at all on the internet today, you probably saw dozens of ads and maybe you even remember a couple of them. See, that's the interesting thing, you don't have to click an ad to remember it and clicking doesn't mean you bought something when you got there. And yet, clickthroughs are still our chief means of measuring ad success.
Moat wants to change that with their "No Clicks Campaign." Their position is that an ad can be engaging without being clicked and they use a heat map to prove it.
The simple logic is that the eye follows the mouse. The heat map shows where a person dragged their mouse and how long they stayed where it landed. Ipso facto, spots that show the warmer colors are effectively grabbing a user's attention.
The color map I've added here is from a Bing demo. The point it makes is that the woman getting into the cab is being bombarded with marketing information on billboards, cab advertising, even on the side of a bus that passes by. She absorbs all of it to varying degrees, and may act on some of it when she gets home. Remember us – the highly suggestible creatures – a Pizza Hut ad on the side of a passing bus might be all it takes to make her chose them over competitor Dominos.
Which brings us back to start-up Moat. Their "No Clicks Campaign" is out to prove that there are meaningful metrics beyond the clickthrough. And though we all know it's true, quantifying success in a dollars and cents way without clicks is going to be tough. Will brands pay for display ads based on the number of heat signatures that show up on a page?
mediaForge is also looking past the clickthrough, charging their clients based only on "ad engagement." They've launched a new search retargeting ad program, a system that delivers personalized ads based on specific keywords a user typed into a search engine. CEO Tony Zito says,

"We are a performance-based company, so we only charge our clients when someone buys something, and we can demonstrate we influenced the purchase."

In other words, pay us when we prove our efforts drove a customer to buy your product or service. That's about as fair as it gets. And as long as the customers are buying, it shouldn't matter if they got there by clicking an ad, through a search page or typing in a URL they remember. It's all income in the end.

Next Facebook f8 Conference Announced for September

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 09:41 AM PDT

In true Internet fashion, Facebook has announced its latest f8 conference will happen in San Francisco September 22.
Facebook has used their infrequent f8 conferences to make big announcements with their last one being held in April 2010. As TechCrunch points out

The last f8, which took place in April 2010, was absolutely huge: it featured the launch of Facebook's Open Graph API and the now-ubiquitous Like button, as well as several of Facebook's social widgets.
It also saw the launch of Instant Personalization — a bold feature that allowed select third party sites to access some of your Facebook data as soon as you landed on them (the opt-out nature of the feature drew plenty of criticism).
We expect to see similarly major announcements at this event.

So what did I mean by true Internet fashion? It's the appearance of having it together while flying by the seat of your pants at the same time. With an event of such magnitude being announced with less than a month before it happens it's obvious where Facebook's developer community is centered. Most people need more time to schedule an event for any variety of reasons but when it comes to Facebook yelling "Jump!" everyone is to simply reply "How high?!"
Only a company with Facebook's pull could do something like this and make it successful and, at $400 a ticket, likely profitable as well.