Unicast

A lot of controversy has come up surrounding Apple’s recent change to its developer terms prohibiting Google and other third party affiliates from collecting analytical data from iPhone and iPad apps. We will leave it for the courts to decide, but it’s not completely clear if this is an attempt by Apple to monopolize an emerging market, protect their stake in the smart phone market from Google and others, or just Apple being “different” (which doesn’t seem to be so different anymore). Despite what tricks Apple may have up their sleeve, there are a few daunting realities surrounding this information collection that are no secret to all parties involved.

The sheer volume of data collection coming from mobile users is going to increase exponentially. With the growing popularity of mobile computing, marketers are going to want to start looking at things like location, time, and previous interactions within the mobile device.

The value of this data is going to increase. With new metrics being collected, data will be used to create more innovative ways of ad delivery, and of measuring success. In a dynamic online advertising environment where tiny changes to ad design or placement can mean a world of difference in performance, it forces marketers to buy in, or bust.

And lastly, Apple clearly wants to collect and do things with this data that it doesn’t want Google to know about. This is really no surprise from Apple, but does create artificial barriers to competition and stirs up even more bad blood between fierce competitors, who most certainly will be required to play nice at some point in the future. However, for the foreseeable future, Apple has the tablet market cornered, and doesn’t want to provide information to anyone who may infringe upon that.

Competitor AdMob’s CEO Omar Hamoui wrote in a blog post, “"Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress."

This may be true Mr. Hamoui, but is it “an attempt to monopolize, combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations” as prohibited by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890?

This will have to be left for Washington to decide, and with a law originally written in 1890 with no concept of “information” as a commodity or mass marketing in general, it could really go either way. In the meantime, the data keeps rolling in.

What do you do when Apple reports that two million iPads were sold in less than 60 days? You create the first-ever tablet task force, duh!

With the debut of iAd fast approaching on July 1, 2010, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has created the Tablet Task Force to help create an infrastructure that would help support a variety of rich new advertising opportunities for the inevitable emerging technologies of tablets and e-readers. In the short period of time the iPad has been on the market, developers have created over 5,000 apps that take advantage of all its features and not to mention more than 200,000 apps already in the App Store that were created for the iPhone or iPod touch. The objectives of the Tablet Task Force are to explore and define the best practices in the area, build a solid foundation for ongoing growth and provide guidance on the development of ad standards.

“The ad market is developing for tablets and e-readers as the excitement builds for those devices.” said Bob Carrigan, CEO, IDG Communications Inc., Co-Chair of the Tablet Task Force and a member of the Executive Committee of the IAB Board of Directors. “Their growth will create new revenue for media companies, agencies and technology companies and new experiences for users.”

Although, IAB was the first to create a tablet task force, they won’t be the last to create a support group that will help developers answer all their questions, especially with the current controversy and skepticism surrounding applications such as iAd. In just the last month, Apple has had a number of potential antitrust cases arise regarding its developers terms to exclude analytics companies from collecting data on users.

One thing’s for sure, we wouldn’t love Apple without a little bit of controversy along with a little bit of smoke and mirrors. Let’s just hope that the Tablet Task Force will help bring clarity to this rapidly growing market. In the mean time, let’s kick back with a bucket of popcorn and a coke and see what is in store for us in the next few months.

For more information on the Tablet Task Force, and to download “tabvertising—iPad and other tablets: the advertising and marketing opportunities,” please go to: www.iab.net/tabvertising

Recent research from eMarketer is showing that ad spending is bouncing back at a faster rate than previously expected. We have seen this scenario before, the economy turns south and marketing budgets and staffs get cut to the bone only to later come back stronger than ever. It’s a typical reaction and not the last time we will see this in our careers unfortunately.

So now that the money is flowing back, what have we learned? Ad dollars are flowing into search and video advertising at the highest rate with banner advertising having the third highest growth rate. Advertisers are really taking hold of video advertising and harnessing it’s power to engage and deliver their brand message. Video players abound on the web and video content seems to be everywhere making for a crowded marketplace. The next struggle for these advertisers will be how to differentiate their message above the rest of the video content. Creative departments will be pressured to come up with unique videos and partner with best-in-class vendors like Unicast who can provide custom formats and features to deliver the creative message.

The growth in video advertising will spark a new wave of creativity online and Unicast is ready and able to bring new creative solutions to the marketplace.

OK, got my morning beverage, time to get to work. Oh wait, first I’m going to throw on some Pandora. Hmm, says something about Facebook…eh, I’ve got a ton of email to read, figure that out later. Oh good, the Killers. Love this song.

Whoa.

Apparently Greg likes this song too. How does Pandora know that Greg and I are connected? Hmm, and what information about what me is going to show up when Greg goes to Pandora?

OK, starting to get a little creeped out, internet.

***

This was my actual reaction upon my first foray into Facebook’s Open Graph. Working where I do, I like to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on out there on the internet, so I had heard a bit about Open Graph. But even after hearing about it, I was not prepared for how unnerving it would be to simply open up Pandora. I love Pandora, but that morning made me wonder if I should even be using it. And if I decide later not to have Pandora connected to Facebook, where do I go about undoing that? And why didn’t anyone ask me if I wanted this to happen in the first place?

Not being asked what I do and don’t want has been a common theme lately. Recently, I ordered some Mother’s Day flowers from a typical website. I SCOURED every page during the process looking for the automatically checked checkbox that says “please bombard me with email every two days about special offers until I am so sick of you I can hardly stand it” (OK, it doesn’t say that, but that is what I see). There was no checkbox. There was no option for it at all. OK cool, maybe I’m lucky and these guys get it and aren’t going to automatically opt me into a bunch of email that I don’t want.

Cue the emails.

Great, now I have to scroll to the very bottom of the page. Click Unsubscribe. Yes, attachments and links are OK, blah blah blah… Click Unsubscribe again on the landing page.

I’ll have to keep this in mind for next Mother’s Day.

Now on the one hand, if I had opted in to the email list and got one at, say Thanksgiving, I might think, “Ooh, since I’m not going to see my grandmother for Thanksgiving, I should maybe send her a bouquet to let her know I’m thinking about her,” then boom, very effective use of email. But sending me stuff two days later? With no new holidays in sight? I smell a lack of restraint, so I better unsubscribe now.

Finally, I went to buy a Camelbak this weekend at a retail store. The store had one of those sign up to get a discount card deals where you get to carry around a plastic card with all of the other discount cards that all of the OTHER stores make you carry around, not to mention the little plastic keychain thingies, and now you can’t even close your wallet or get it back into your purse and at every single store you go to you have to remember if you have the card or not and then try to figure out where in the heck you put it and WHY CAN’T YOU JUST GIVE ME THE $1.62 DISCOUNT???? And sure, you can say no, I don’t want the card. But they never just drop it on the first try. And the next time you walk in here, they’re going to do the hard sell on the card AGAIN so don’t think for a minute that this matter is settled by you already having decided that you don’t want one!

OK, sorry, that was a bit of a rant. But my point is this: I am much more likely to come back to your store if I don’t get asked about the card every time. I’ll even tell my friends about it if I just automatically get the savings without having to submit to junk mail and email and little plastic cards.

And I’d be more likely to sign up for floral updates if I know you’re reminding me about something useful instead of burying me in spam. Do you think I purchase flowers weekly? Then why would I need to hear from you that often?

And I’m a lot more inclined to remember the time you creeped me out on Pandora and completely rewrote my profile without asking me if I was OK with either, Facebook. And no, most people aren’t quitting yet. But we remember all the times you screwed up. We remember every time someone passes along a message urging you to go to your Privacy Settings and turn something off that you never turned on in the first place. We remember every instance of it, we store that away, and one day we’re going to be spending more time figuring out how to turn off things in your application that we don’t like than enjoying the things we do like, and that’s when we leave; is that what you want?

Consider your audience. Put yourself in their shoes. You know how busy you are and how much you wish everything could just be easier and less cluttered? Keep that in mind next time you come up with the next bright idea, and make sure your users have the OPTION to decide what they want from you, and then follow it up by respecting that.

On May 6th Caleb Hill, SVP of International Business, was a featured panelist at this year’s Digital Hollywood Spring to discuss Advertising Innovation around Broadband, Mobile, In-Video, In-Game, Social Networks, Blogs and Podcasts. Caleb had this to say about the experience:

“There was great panel energy with a broad spectrum of expertise and insights. The moderator, Rick Mathieson, did a great job preparing the subject matter and organizing a lively debate that the panel participants and audience alike enjoyed. Between all of the discussions we had around how technologies are evolving and where they are heading it seems like Mobile, In-game, i-anything, and dynamic content still lack scalability, standards protocol, and reliable platform support. As a result, I see in-video advertising as the only model with the ability to scale during 2010. I am looking forward to following all of the great contributions from the folks I met at the panel and at the conference in general.”

Check out Rick Mathieson's blog to read about his experience as the moderator and his thoughts on the All-Star panel: Rick Mathieson GENWOW

Click here to learn more about Digital Hollywood Spring and other events coming soon: http://www.digitalhollywood.com/

CPG spending is projected to grow faster than any other industry over the next five years and it’s not just because interactive is a low-cost medium.

Coming out of the recession, companies are definitely trying to maximize their spend and find low cost methods of reaching their customers. While CPG companies are no different, they are also exploring new methods of engaging their customers and building brand loyalty. A recent Unicast CPG client tested incorporating a game into their advertising campaign and low-and-behold this campaign for a simple household product that some might even dare to call boring generated a higher interaction and click through than many of the campaigns with a much more exciting product.

This year Pepsi did not participate in the Super Bowl in favor of putting that spend to work in social media. Many might call this a mistake, others might think this is a move based on the recession and cutting back to protect the P&L. I think the CPG companies are on to something much larger and their increasing spend in this category is a direct result.

To view the entire Forrester research report click here:

Consumer Goods Interactive Spend Outpaces Other Industries.pdf (159.15 kb)

So, if you haven't yet read Steve Jobs official and lengthy dismissal of Flash as "the past", here are his Thoughts on Flash.

Since they have been dissected here and there by all kinds of tech pundits, many coming down on one side or the other, I won't bother with examining the individual points of the essay, or discussing who is "right" and who is "wrong".

I think it's more interesting to look at what one might be able to tell by reading between the lines.

#1 - Apple is prepared to dump Adobe

The first thing we can infer is that Apple is apparently not afraid of any repercussions by Adobe, and doesn't mind throwing whatever partnership was in place into possible jeopardy, including Adobe's development of software for the Mac.

What that says to me is that Apple believes it can (or will) replace all of that software, and/or that a lot of it will cease to be relevant within the next 18 months or maybe a bit longer. I say 18 months because that's generally Adobe's development cycle for their suites, and interestingly enough this announcement is timed just as the release of CS5, the latest (and first fully Cocoa-ported) version, is about to become available. This could be because Apple does in fact intend to replace the key components of what Adobe offers, or that they think the whole OS landscape will change enough to make software like Adobe's irrelevant, or that they just don't think it is that valuable compared to what other developers can offer - or a combination of all three.

Apple already has video editing covered, and Aperture covers a lot of the functionality of Photoshop. As I mentioned in an earlier article, I think there's a good chance we could see Apple produce an HTML5 authoring application, which would overlap with Flash and perhaps Dreamweaver as well. That would leave Apple with only Illustrator to replace.

Or, let's say Apple believes strongly enough that the world is going mobile and multi-touch that they are planning to shift their whole OS effort in that direction. Maybe they are in a position where all of Adobe's current software will then be obsolete if not rewritten by Adobe. And maybe Adobe has already made it clear they have no intention of porting to keep up with another Apple OS transition.

OR, let's say Apple has just looked around at the software landscape and would just as soon nurse some promising new software into dominance as continue to deal with Adobe - Pixelmator over Photoshop, Lineform over Illustrator, and Coda, Espresso or Flux over Dreamweaver. At some point it would seem that a full rewrite/rethink is in order by Adobe. Maybe in Steve Jobs' opinion, that point has been reached.

#2 - Apple wants Flash gone off more than just its own mobile platforms

The second thing we can take from the letter is that Apple apparently has a vested interest in undermining Flash, not just keeping it off their platforms. I don't remember Steve Jobs writing an open letter about why floppy discs were no good. Apple just decided to go without it and moved on. The open letter means Apple wants it gone, not just unsupported on their mobile platforms.

As I've mentioned before, I believe this is about control of the video marketplace, not about the OS, although ultimately video may be enough of a part of the OS experience that this is splitting hairs. If content publishers everywhere are streaming their video using Flash, then Apple, and others, will be forced to deal with Flash. There have been signs aplenty that Apple may have something big up its sleeve related to video (front and back cameras on iphone, giant server farm in North Carolina, etc), and I believe whatever it is will probably go off a lot smoother if Flash is not the defacto means of video consumption for consumers.

#3 - There's something we don't know

The third item we can assume based on the letter is that something has to have gone on behind the scenes here between Apple and Adobe that is not public knowledge at this point. It may be just that a combination of Apple treading on Adobe's feet with Aperture and Final Cut Pro finally got to Adobe, or that Apple asked Adobe to yet again make a change to whatever OS shift they have planned next and Adobe said no. It's very hard to believe that this shot was fired out of the blue, as Adobe would have us believe.

Adobe at one point was surprisingly forthright with sharing a vision of the future in which Flash ran on every device and made the OS irrelevant. The mobile market was key to this strategy. With Microsoft also recently coming down on Apple's side, it seems perhaps both major OS makers have finally decided to cut Flash off at the knees. While I think Adobe will and should fight against this, I hope they don't completely bet the farm on Flash at this point. Adobe should have a strong future with or without Flash - hopefully they are not so hell-bent on world domination via Flash that they let their core strength of making tools for designers and other content creators wither. Regardless of what is going on with Apple, I think Adobe is at an inflection point where they may need to choose which is more important - Adobe's future as an OS challenger and enterprise software provider (embodied in initiatives like Flash as a platform, Acrobat and Omniture), or its future as the pre-eminent maker of design tools.

Follow Michael Tuminello, Director of Product for Unicast on Twitter @mtumi

Now that Adobe has officially retired from trying to make Flash an authoring application for iPhone apps, many may be thinking the scuffle is over. However, I'd say it's FAR from over, and in fact I think there is a good chance that this is just the opening salvo by Apple, who plans to carve out yet another piece of Adobe's space in the marketplace for creative content authoring, as it has already done with Final Cut Pro and Aperture. This time it will be web design, and will be more akin to Flash than Dreamweaver.

Here's why I think there's a good chance we could see an app from Apple to author HTML5 content that ends up being competitive with Flash.

1. They own enough of the necessary technology pieces to make this happen. They have Motion, Dashcode, iWeb, and iDVD, which all intersect with Flash in some sense and the pieces could be put together to make a pretty nice HTML5 authoring tool for building ads and certain kinds of websites. They're not going to actually smush all these apps together, but they can take what they know from having developed or worked on each of these and leverage it to make a professional tool that includes the necessary functionality.

2. There is a pro version of all of the iLife apps now EXCEPT iWeb. iPhoto has Aperture, iMovie has Final Cut Pro, and Garageband has Logic. iDVD also has nothing, but iDVD is no longer featured prominently on the iLife page, no doubt because in a few years iDVD may as well be i8TrackTape for all the relevance it will have to the marketplace. Having a professional web tool will round out their suite of professional apps for content creation, and provide a path from consumer to prosumer and beyond with each one of the iLife applications.

3. There are no tools (that I know of at least) to author equivalent experiences to Flash using HTML5. Whatever Apple's reasons to focus on expunging Flash from their platforms, the movement will not happen without at least one serious creative tool that allows users to create similar experiences. (Why they want Flash to go away is a story for another post, and there have been a lot - the most credible posts IMO are linked to at the bottom of this article.)

4. Apple has said that they will initially handle all ad production for iAd, and then open it up. What will drive this switchover to agencies producing the kind of "engaging and emotive" content Steve Job deems worthy of advertising on the iPhone and iPad? A burning interest in learning to code HTML5 amongst the international art director set? I think not - probably a tool provided by Apple.

4 1/2. This is half a reason because I'm unconvinced that Apple cares about the format at all, but if the iTunes LP is to live on, it desperately needs an authoring tool.(Speculation has been that it was a bone thrown to labels worried about single sales replacing album sales, and the fact that it does not seem to work at all on the iPad certainly lends some credence to it not being the apple of Apple's eye.)

5. For a company that wants to own the creative professional market, as Apple seems to want to, they can only leave out the web for so long. For professional photographers, filmmakers and music producers (and those who aspire to be these people), the web is more and more the key means to present their work, and an export to iWeb will not cut it - not to mention all the web designers and interactive designers making brand new creative content for the web.

There are probably a few other reasons people could come up with. The market is hardly unassailable. There are a few monolithic web development applications that are growing long in the tooth, and a number of promising smaller applications that handle some aspect of web development well, and have a long list of additions forthcoming, with limited resources to get there. None of them are likely to have full support for HTML5 at the top of the list, and Adobe, the most likely contender to be able to build something substantial, has a vested interest in not doing so, for fear of helping to upset the Flash egg-cart.

So, I would not be at all surprised to see Apple introducing a new creative tool by the end of the year, outputting HTML5 and JS, including support for animation, vector graphics using the canvas tag, and certainly video. They will build it just in time to start to transition out of the ad building business themselves (which could be a beta period for the tool) and provide agencies with the means to stop building content for Flash, to follow up on the reasons for doing so they have already begun to circulate.

After all, if they're not going to build it, I'm not sure who is, and if no one builds it then Flash isn't going anywhere.

PS: Addendum - the two reasons I think are the most likely behind Apple's Flash-hating: preventing Adobe from owning the video market, and preventing Adobe from locking down their iPhone/iPad platform by generating too large a percentage of the content . There are also some merits to the it-performs-badly-on-Mac argument about the Flash player, but I think Apple has been too vehement for that to be the only issue.

PPS: I'm sure they will give it a better name than iWeb Pro.

Follow Michael Tuminello, Director of Product for Unicast on Twitter @mtumi

I am a former Apple employee who adores pretty much everything that they come up with (although I am still trying to wrap my head around why I’d ever need an iPad). I remember the sheer glee of unwrapping my new MacBook Pro a few years ago and the little flutter I felt when I sat in that darkened auditorium and listened to Steve Jobs tell me about his fancy new phone. I immediately wanted it. I drool over hardware specs and software alike. I got my husband switched over and he’s never been happier. It’s safe to say, I am a Mac.

But I also love Adobe. I cannot wait to get my hands on the Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5. Flash has changed my world entirely because now I can make things MOVE! Heck, the word “Flash” is in my job description. I use AfterEffects for video editing almost every day. Adobe has made products that have changed industries, and I think they’re geniuses.

But there’s conflict! Adobe’s Flash versus the Steve Jobs-backed HTML5: who will win this epic battle? Is this battle even epic? Message boards are lighting up with the debate.

I don’t know how it’s all going to end up, but I would like to speak on behalf of creative types like myself who hold both companies and their products in very high esteem when I say: work together!

Can you imagine how great it would be to have you two powerhouses on the same side of the fence? Why do battle when you could join forces and use your powers for the good of the creative types that you’ve embraced so much and who have embraced you right back? Why do we have to choose between just one way of doing things when the modern digital age offers nothing but options and alternatives? Why couldn’t we take what’s best about HTML5 and Flash and merge them together to create some impressive new hybrid version that would make both companies money? Something that would run on iPhones and iPads as well as Droids and Nexuses (Nexi?) and plain old web pages without battery vampirism, slow performance, or huge overhead! Something with a nice UI that works with both sides of the developer/designer brain! Imagine the possibilities when you take competing efforts and turn them towards a common goal. Instead of one side winning, one side losing and the rest of us having to pick sides, everyone wins, most of all us creative types.

So Apple and Adobe, let me know if you’re interested-I’m happy to mediate!

Thanks to the fact that I work at a pretty awesome company, I can log into Pandora every morning and delight myself in endless hours of music while I work intently on my day to day projects. Listening to everything from Beethoven to Beyoncé helps me power through my countless emails, all the while keeping me in a great mood and my energy levels up!

Over the past year, I have seen the ads on Pandora transform from simple 300x250 ads that sit awkwardly on the page and often overlap the player to enormous and elaborate designs that transform the entire page into something almost magical. The ads are impressive to say the least and as much as I want to hate them for interrupting my music experience for 15 seconds, I have to admit they capture my attention. Just recently, I saw an ad for the movie “Kick Ass” on Pandora. This ad allowed users to choose stations designed to evoke the supposed musical preferences of each one of the super heroes in the movie. I couldn’t help myself and chose “Hit-Girl’s” station. To my surprise the music was actually very good. The station played everything from The Grateful Dead to Joan Jett and the blackhearts.

This ad was insanely clever! They didn’t interrupt my music experience but offered me the opportunity to make it better and try something new, while still effectively promoting the premiere of the movie. In addition, the design caught my eye instantly. It was huge and colorful but didn't cover the player- essentially it didn't come between me and the content I care about. In an age where technology is evolving at the speed of light and consumer’s attention spans are steadily decreasing it’s important for publishers, marketers and agencies alike to keep their finger on the pulse. Online ads should not only promote your product or service but they should also seamlessly integrate into the publisher page and compliment the content on the page if possible. I think Pandora and those who choose to advertise on it are definitely on the right track. These new ads show that they understand the importance of sharing their message through innovative designs and features while creating a positive user experience without stopping the music!