photo credit: jamestruepenny photo credit: jamestruepenny

I engaged in a debate with a friend yesterday regarding commercials for “The Big Game”. (sub note: I find it infuriating that “Superbowl” is copyrighted and marketers are not allowed to use it in advertising anymore but instead use “The Big Game”, especially considering “The Big Game” is actually the name of a college game played annually since 1892 as well as also a name of a high stakes poker game played annually). Superbowl Big Game commercials have taken on a whole new life with social media in the past few years.

We’ve seen usage of the #hashtag in the commercial; Facebook pages created specifically for the commercials; and this year will see apps created specifically to be played during the game itself. GoDaddy.com, possibly considered pioneers, even created an entire section of the business website dedicated to the commercials that aired (sometimes for “unrated” content) and were one of the first online companies to advertise during this game in order to drive traffic to their website. Heck, last year even saw Google produce a commercial (which were a rare commodity to begin with prior to the SB commercial).

These commercials create a lot of buzz. For one, this timeslot is gernally the highest watched timeslot of the year and thus their are more eyeballs than most other times. Second, advertising companies have deemed the “Big Game” as the beginning of the year for advertising, and thus typically all new commercials come out during this game. Finally, it is expensive to purchase advertising time for this game, thus there is a general thought that “the best” commercials are put forth during this time.

I for one am a big fan of the commercials aired during the game. Most of the time. I tend to be a bigger critic of these commercials. Further, I remember going home after the game or maybe the day after and “Googling” to try to find a re-run of the commercial because I couldn’t wait until I saw it again. More recently, I became a fan of websites that would compile the commercials and / or rate the commercials and allow users to give their own ratings. In the last 2-3 years though, the new trend is to “leak” the commercial before the day of the game, typically in the 2 weeks leading up to the actual game.

Not all advertisers do this, but plenty do (there are about a dozen commercials available for viewing already). So does this diminish the value of the ad? This is where my argument began (of sorts). Non-sports fans used to turn on the “Big Game” in order to watch the commericals, so will they still do this now that “the best” commercials can be viewed beforehand? I’m guessing that they still will, because “the best” is an opinionated word as well, people always want to see everything, and further, they want to see it live and experience it like everyone else. On top of this, the number of views generated on YouTube and other portals, is already tremendous, which is probably the main reason for leaking these commercials - Quantification.

Last year some of “the best” commercials had tens of millions of views on YouTube AFTER the game ended. So by releasing the commercials earlier, advertisers will want to see if they can beat the numbers from last year (and in theory this should be fairly easy to do). In my opinion, Nielsen Ratings is a “soft” metric. Sure they can say that 13.5 million people “watched’ the game, based on their machine sampling and extrapolation. But there’s no way to really know how many people watched the game, since there are typically more than the average household number watching the game. Further, there’s no guarantee that just because the TV is on that people are actually paying attention. Thus my “beef” with Nielson Ratings as a measurement tool.

YouTube views are a much more concrete metric. You have to click a button in order to view. Sure there’s a small percent who may begin the video but not finish it, but typically when a user clicks something they are engaged with it, at least for a few seconds. Much more so, than standing around with a plate of meatballs anguishing over a missed fieldgoal with a friend. Further, the video will probably include a link to a website and the viewer can more easily navigate to that site. Thus you also get a “visit”, if not more!

A second and almost as equally important reason for “leaking” is the viral marketing that this does. When someone says, “You have to see this”, you watch. It annoys me that, the full commercial has been leaked because I think you can achieve the same or at least similar viral success by just leaking a part of the commercial. But for those who have seen the full length commercial they can give a fully credited review of the commercial and recommend it (or not recommend it).

The purist in me hates all of this. “It’s ruined the game!” Technically, the ads themselves have ruined the game, as the game has become more about the glam and the glitz and less about crowning a champion of the NFL season. But similarly to how websites such as TripAdvisor have taken a lot of the surprise and adventure out of “trying something out” by giving testimonies and personal recommendations, I think leaking the commercials ruins the surprise of what commercial will come out next.

The marketer and analyst in me loves all of the integration and progress that has been made! I look forward to the apps and use of mobile with this year’s commercials. Although I’ve seen several commercials, I look forward to watching them with others. Finally, I get it from an advertising perspective. The buzz and viral marketing that is generated is worth every cent spent.

My only question is, why pay the $3-4 million for the timeslot? Why not just create a commercial and put it up on YouTube, market it through the major media channels and then not actually have a commercial that is aired? Sure they would come out and state that this commercial is not airing but that will just create more buzz for the commercial. Not very ethical, I guess…
photo credit: JohnSeb

We have had overwhelmingly positive feedback from our book: A Strategic Framework for Emerging Media. Have you read it yet? This week we are offering a promotion price of $20 for the book if you buy through this link: Buy the Book. That’s $10 off the regular price!

If you are a business owner with questions about emerging media practices such as mobile marketing or social media, or if you are a marketer interested in knowing more about how you can utilize the data coming from your emerging media channels this book provides details, case studies and a step by step instruction on what you need to do.

This deal is good this week only and you must buy through our website (link above)!

Thanks,

Carlos and Jeff

It’s amazing how fast paced the internet and in particular the social media / geo location / mobile app spaces are moving. Thanks to hackathons the companies who own these spaces are able to make adjustments, updates and new additions much more quickly than your typical website. While this is not always viewed as a positive thing by the users, it does lend the ability for flexibility and creativity. The days of saying, “wouldn’t it be great if we could do X” and then having to wait 6 months for that to happen are over. X now takes a week to be created by a developer and is then tested, approved and released.

Ok, maybe it’s not tested, which could be a part of the reason why there is pushback when redesigns happen and become more annoying than helpful. Then again, when Facebook went through a major redesign several months ago, the users pushed back initially, then accepted. Now they push back again with their most recent redesign, but my guess is that it will be widely accepted within a few weeks.

What’s more interesting is how quickly things are merging together. These new media are learning how a shared space is better than a separate space. Mobile and Geo-location almost always go hand in hand, but being able to add in the social aspect really starts to pay dividends for companies. In our latest book “A Strategic Framework for Emerging Media”, we provide some ideas for improvement between social, mobile and geo location media. Many of the ideas are things that co-mingle these technologies. Unsurprisingly, some of these ideas must have been common ideas because they’ve been mentioned or have been put into place by these technologies before our book was put into publication or is being released just weeks after our book publication.

I discovered an example of the types of ideas that we talk about in our book while checking in on Foursquare last night. Upon check-in I noticed that I had unlocked a deal. When I opened the deal, I was informed that there was a ‘Groupon Now’ deal for the restaurant that I was at. I was able to save $5 off my meal, just by checking in! Had I not checked in, I would not have known about this deal. I probably could have checked Groupon and possibly would have seen the deal without going to Foursquare (geo-location app). I could have even checked Groupon from home and possibly would have seen the deal without using my mobile device. But in this perfect storm, I checked into a geo location app, using my mobile device, and made a purchase through a social site.

I talked to the manager of the restaurant about this and told her how cool it was that all of this transpired. She mentioned that in a month I could repeat the process. This is where there is still a step missing which we talk about in our strategy section of our book. You most likely have my info through Groupon, so why not either email me in a month, or start serving retargeting ads with a new Groupon deal for repeat business? Most likely the people that use these three technologies are going to be comfortable with a company targeting them.

Find out more about these types of strategies in our book!

Regardless of your role in an e-commerce or non-commerce web company, you rely on data and technology in order for you business to survive. As such, there is always a chance of critical failure for any particular portion of your business.

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Critical failure could be any number of things: server/technology failure; data loss; corrupt test environment; broken coding deployment; hacking; third party issues; act of god; etc. While you’ll never be able to prepare for every possible scenario, it’s advisable that you develop action plans for some of the more common scenarios.

In this post we’ll review some possible technology and data loss issues that you might run into.

Your website probably consists of multiple pieces of technology – data storage server, sequel search engines, motherboard processors and miles of cables, just to name a few pieces of equipment. You should keep multiples of each type of equipment on hand in case the one in use decides to quit working. Further, you may want to keep a backup system with a duplication of all data active and ready to be deployed. You might consider keeping this backup in a separate location – in case this issue is some sort of emergency such as a fire or water damage.

Technology issues can often lead to “site down” time. This will frustrate your customers and could cause you to loose some retention. A good suggestion is to have adequate and clear messaging if possible. The last thing you want is an error500 page to pop up (though with certain technology issues this is unavoidable so do your best to get the issue fixed quickly).

A brief message such as “Our site is currently down” along with an anticipated time of being fixed can go a long way toward easing the pain of your customer. It could also create some positive anxiety if you have customers who need to constantly have access to your site.

Site down time also leads to inconsistencies in your data when comparing vs. another time frame.

If you rely on a 3rd party to collect your data, you should consider keeping a “hard copy” on hand as well. Typically a daily file transfer of the previous days’ activity will be sufficient. If the 3rd party data is unavailable or seems suspicious when viewing it you’ll need to verify several things: a) verify any processing issues with the 3rd party; b) verify tagging code on your site; c) verify any supplemental actions required by your 3rd party; d) verify data is being received by your 3rd party site.

Thorough testing is the best way to avoid data loss due to tagging errors. (Ok, technically using log files might be the best way to avoid, but log files can be cumbersome) Ensure that your test environment matches what will go into production and make sure that you utilize all tools to make sure that code functions properly and indeed gets passed to the 3rd party (if applicable). For most third party analysis tools, the javascript calls themselves are not enough to render data, most vendors also require a library file which helps define the javascript actions.

More often than not though, test environments seem to not have an exact replica of the production environment. Or even more oddly, sometimes your data my render in test, but not in production. So it may be worth your while to “go live” at a low point in the day where you can do a live test to ensure that production data is rendered properly, with the lowest chance of data loss.

Finally, another common reason for a technology/data loss issue is a spike in volume. You will need to prepare your hardware, and/or your 3rd party for any anticipated increases in data volume.

Data loss is a critical pain point for your business users who use the data to make decisions about your site. Having inconsistencies in the data can bring forth questions about legitimacy of the data, or questions about why the data falls outside of an accepted level. Good documentation of dates and times of data loss will help alleviate those questions. Unfortunately, there’s usually nothing you can do about data loss unless you have a back up storage.

Technology issues and data loss can lead to a lot of frustration for many roles within the company. Having an action plan in place, or just simply having the proper backup tools in place can help ease the pain of these types of critical failures.

The NFL is back in business. Though if you solely judged it’s functionality based on it’s social prominence, you probably would not have known any different since the overall volume of mentions of @nfl and #nfl have stayed consistent. Thanks to our friends at Rowfeeder, we were able to monitor the term NFL on Twitter from just after the Superbowl (in February) through Monday July 25, when both the Players Union and Owners agreed on a new Collective bargaining agreement. Supplemental data was found on Tweetstats and Twittercounter, however Rowfeeder allowed us to actively monitor each and every mention – roughly 4 million data points when it was all said and done.

We decided to look at three key things to see if we could glean any info: mentions of @nfl or #nfl in tweets, actual number of tweets from @nfl, and the follower count for @nfl. Actual tweet counts from the main account allow us to understand how active @nfl was during this period. Follower counts show whether @nfl’s effort resulted in an engagement increase. Total mentions allows us to gain a robust understanding of the effects or “social prominence” of a term such as “NFL”.

Let’s review some key dates that will give context (all of this takes place in 2011):

• 2/6 – Superbowl
• 3/4 Proposed Lockout date
• 3/5 and 3/11 extended Lockout dealines (24-hour extension was announced on 3/3 and on 3/4 a 1-week extension was approved)
• 3/11 NFL Players Association Decertifies
• 3/12 “Lockout” begins
• 4/25 Judge rules in favor of Players and temporarily lifts lockout
• 4/28 Day 1 of the NFL Draft
• 4/29 Lockout is reinstated
• 7/21 NFL Owners vote to approve a new Collective Bargaining Agreement
• 7/25 NFL Players Association approves new Collective Bargaining Agreement
• 7/26 Free Agency Begins – the NFL is back

Based on these dates, I would assume that the mention counts might look something like this:

Further down is a graph showing how accurate or (inaccurate this graph is). However to gain further understanding of the affects that the lockout might have had on the term “NFL”, we explored actual tweets from the @NFL account itself. The tweets were mostly news based tweets with links to stories about which teams might draft which player: (summing the Rowfeeder data by month)

• ~310 tweets in February (mostly during the Superbowl)
• 100 tweets in March (no football related events this month, but lots of news about the pending lockout)
• 500 tweets in April (NFL draft at the end of April, court rulings)
• Roughly 200 tweets per month for May
• Less than 100 in June and July
• 200 tweets a month seems to be the rough average throughout NFL season, not counting February (which is when the Superbowl is held) and April (which is the NFL draft) – thanks to Tweetstats for the monthly info prior to our data collection

Finally looking at total mentions, from mid February through mid April traffic for the term “NFL” averaged between 15-20K tweets per day. Peak days were as follows:

• 40K on 3/3 when it was announced that the deadline for the lockout would be extended 24 hours
• 34K on 3/4 when no deal is reached again and the deadline is pushed out one week
• 90K on 3/11 – the day that the NFL Players Union decertified
• 58K on 4/25 when a court ruling  temporarily lifted the lockout)
• 198K on 4/28 – Day 1 of the NFL Draft
• 77K on 4/29 – Day 2 of NFL Draft; Lockout is reinstated
• 52K on 4/30 – Day 3 of the NFL Draft
• 50K on 7/21 – NFL owners vote to approve the collective bargaining agreement
• 74K on 7/25 – Players Union votes to approves the collective bargaining agreement

Our prediction was a little off but was surprisingly accurate for most of the data (ok, maybe a cheated a little bit).

So what this seems to indicate is that the lockout news definitely generated social buzz and helped produce additional followers that might not have been gained had there not been a lockout. The NFL draft seems to be the biggest news interest for NFL fans, though we have no mention data for the time during the Superbowl or playoffs preceding, so we cannot say that it is the overall biggest story of the year. A follow up post might show that the days following the lifting of the lockout and corresponding signing of Free Agents/start of training camps and pre-season games will probably also show a larger volume of traffic. Also, it would be interesting to visit these numbers next year and see how the averages compare when there are no labor issues to discuss over the off season and also compare it to playoffs and Superbowl week.