Visiting NASA in Second Life

One of my summer resolutions was to learn to get around in Second Life so I can see what’s going on. So when I saw that NASA had developed a cybertwin for its Phoenix rover, I gritted my teach and took a shot at it.

Fair warning; when you register you have to complete a four-step tutorial in order to get the bare basics of how to function in Second Life. It’s a bit annoying, especially if you’re too impatient to read the directions and have to keep going back. But once you complete four basic steps you have the key to Second Life and you can move around.

Still ignoring the directions as much as possible I searched for the NASA island and after a couple of failed tries (maybe I should have taken some of the advanced tutorials!) I teleported to the Nasa Explorer Island.




Here I am—or at least here my avatar is. There’s nice music playing; sounds like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I walked around the island and saw the main Jet Propulsion Laboratory Building and the Media amphitheatre. I wasn’t there when there was an event going on, but there’s stuff to do. I was going to try to launch Mars airbag, but I never found the mountain. There are also scheduled events—launches and demonstrations.









For those of you who don’t want to spend several hours figuring out how it all works, there’s a video on the site of MyCyberTwin, the developer of the “twin” (avatar?) of the Phoenix rover. It’s fun, but since it works off a knowledge base, it doesn’t seem to have a large repertoire. (View video here.)

It’s interesting and sort of fun. I plan to continue my explorations and report on them. But it also highlights the problem for most marketers. Do they have several hours to learn how to use something like Second Life, just because they want to see something in particular that’s going on?

Probably that’s not high on their priority list. Many of them could ask their teenage (or younger!) children who will be able to give them a tour, maybe not of Second Life, but of a virtual world that’s more age-appropriate. But some are just going to have to invest the time to understand what their target audiences are doing and how they can participate and create engaging events/activities/locations. Maybe a worthwhile summer activity for a lot of us!

Local Media-Global and Close to Home

Borrell Associates recently released its 2008 survey of local media. The two largest shares go to pureplays (57%) and newspapers (25%). According to Borrell’s 2007 survey newspaper had a share of 40%, “but pure-play internet companies (Google, Yahoo!,Monster et al.) are hot on their heels, with 33.2 percent.” Right on both counts! I wonder if anyone anticipated the rapidity of the shift (download both 2008 and 2007 here).

It is happening globally, in case you have any doubt. Yesterday’s MarketingCharts featured a report from the World Association of Newspapers that shows a remarkable move to digital media. As I read the chart, it also shows a large increase in the time people are spending with media overall, which should bode well for an informed population. TV’s global share of advertising dollars is pretty stable, but newspaper’s continues to decline. According to the report, though, “Despite the slowdown of global print advertising spending, print remains the second most popular advertising medium, and by far claims the lion's share of spending over digital media” (download the executive summary here). For the time being anyway.


Put those data against a recent article in the WSJ (subscription required) about the struggling “hyperlocal” site LoudounExtra.com, a product of the Washington Post that focuses on a single Virginia county. I took a look at it, and have some observations.


It’s certainly focused. There’s a link to the Washington Post home page, but the content is exclusively from Loudoun county. And it’s pretty exclusively news—take a look at the main nav bar if you don’t have time to visit the site itself. All the articles in all the sections except Deals (where it doesn’t make sense) have a comment function. There are very few comments; that shows on the individual articles and on their “Most Commented” tab on the home page.

I took a look at the blogs page, because that seems the obvious place for a lot of interaction. There are many personal blogs about the local community linked here, but they don’t seem terribly active either.

The site seems to be doing all the right things—except maybe one. There are ads and listings but no ability to make comments about specific businesses or venues. For instance, on the Museums and Historic Sites you can submit a comment on that page, but I can’t find a way to submit a comment or to rate my visit to Mount Vernon, one of the sites listed. That seems to be one of the more popular activities on other local sites, and I can see why a newspaper site might not want to take a chance on offending advertisers. I also can’t find an opportunity to upload photos of my visit to Mount Vernon, and that’s another popular activity on local sites.

So not only is this site perhaps too focused on a specific local area, I’d suggest it’s too focused on news and not enough on user interaction. My sentiments only, but it’s an interesting hypothesis. For whatever reason, this doesn’t seem to be the business model as print newspapers work to expand their digital franchise.

Any other examples of local sites, successful or otherwise, and insights about the reasons?

Social Media Data--Free?

Social metrics service Sometrics launched in beta last fall and was opened to developers in March. The stated purpose was to allow developers to track the performance of their apps on selected social networks. The new firm received venture funding in May amid questions about the viability of their business model. This is what they said in an early press release:

The Sometrics analytics solution will always be free and we'll never share or make your data public without consent. As FB developers ourselves, we understand that privacy is a major concern. Therefore, Sometrics doesn't collect any personal data such as names, contact info, etc. and all aggregate metric data (gender, age, etc.) cannot be linked back to an individual.

The question about how they intend to monetize the service became clear today. They’ve launched an ad-serving network and say they hope to raise the CPMs from ads placed on social media sites. CPMs overall have been going down. PubMatic, another relatively new firm, provides free data—do we see a trend here?

The downward trend is pretty obvious. They add:

•On average, Web site monetization dropped by 23 percent from 49 cents in March to 38 cents in April.
•Among the verticals, Social Networking led the plunge with monetization dropping 47 percent, from 37 cents in March to 19 cents in April, below January lows of 22 cents. Entertainment monetization dropped 17 percent from 40 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Gaming and Sports were down marginally (4 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Technology remained relatively flat at 83 cents in April vs. 82 cents in March, but is still off January highs of 92 cents.
•In April 2008, 77 percent of Small Web sites garnered net publisher eCPMs from ad networks of under $1.00, compared with 95 percent of Medium Web sites and 100 percent of large web sites.
•Across all Web sites, the range of eCPMs was $0.002 to $18.45.

Their AdPriceIndex is free and looks as if it’s going to be worth watching. How do they do it? Their business is optimizing ads for publishers and they collect data from those activities to construct an index of ad network pricing. It’s not representative of all advertisers (the data presently comes from 3,000 publishers), but it’s instructive—and previously hard to find.

Back to Sometrics. Media Post says:

By virtue of its social hyper-targeting, Sometrics expects to be able to deliver CPMs of $1 to $2 for application-based ads, which typically command rates of 10 cents to 80 cents today. The company's system could also be used to serve premium and remnant display advertising on social networks.

Comparing that with the PubMatic stats, $1 to $2 would be highly attractive—if they can pull it off. Marketers have not been entirely satisfied with advertising forays on social networks (subscription required). An article in Ad Age earlier in the week says some high-profile campaigns on social network have total media spend approaching $25,000 per viewer film submission. That’s not advertising per se, but it’s a really high acquisition cost! In terms of CPM itself, a post on the Inside Facebook blog quotes reader/advertiser CPMs from over $4 (grain of salt) to 4 cents. The post drew interesting comments with more reader submitted CPMs. But you get the idea.

Several things are going on here:

Business models: New marketing services firms in this space are providing paid services and generating free data about the space, presumably with the full knowledge of their customers. Is that good for the growth of social media as a marketer communications channel? Assuming the data is valid, absolutely! Reliable data is one of the missing components in this space.

Cheap inventory on social networks: We’ve probably all read statements to that effect. These data appear to confirm that. They may also support the assertion that cheap inventory on social media sites is driving down CPMs across the web.

Ad targeting and tracking: Advertisers have been looking for opportunities that really work in social media and it seems evident that careful targeting is part of that equation. Tracking is essential to know what is working. What strikes me on several of these sites/posts is that they are talking about developers tracking the success of the apps they write for social sites. Where are marketers? These are our emerging channels; are marketers deeply involved in these programs? I hope so!

The beat goes on, with no end in sight to developments in the social media space. Data that helps us understand trends is welcome—especially when it’s free!

Social Banner Ads?

This morning’s Media Post reports on a keynote speech at the IAB Social Media Conference by Seth Goldstein, CEO of Social Media Networks. His agency is preparing to introduce a new type of “social banner” ad format, so he is not unbiased. That doesn’t make what he says less relevant.

"Social media is killing advertising," Goldstein said. "A few years ago people started to become more interested in each other [online] and less interested in advertising." With response rates for standard banner ads under 1% and search not geared to brand advertising, social media is the next frontier for major marketers to attack.

Even Google admits that its deal to serve ads on MySpace “is not monetizing as well as we had expected.”

In his talk Goldstein mentions advertising for the BMW Series 1, which I’ve mentioned before. I looked around to see what was going on specifically on Facebook and this is what I found; a contest on the Facebook Graffiti Wall app. The shot of the top looks pretty much like other contests we’ve seen, particularly in that viewers can not only participate (note that participation is directly on Facebook) but they can also vote on the winners. The bottom half shows product information that’s part of the page. According to what’s on the page the contest (now over) drew 9006 entries and 2143 fans who presumably followed it closely. Ok, so you’ve looked at the top of the page and you see entries by 2 highschoolers. What good does that do BMW (think tomorrow vs. today when answering that one)?


I looked further to see how much I could find about the entrants. You can see the Top 150 and the Winners. Do take a look—a screen shot just can’t do these justice! If you click through on the names of some of those who placed highest, you find that you can’t see their full profiles unless you “friend” them (which requires their permission if you aren’t a denizen of Facebook). So there’s a vote here for a modicum of privacy among these young adults. And from their pictures, it’s obvious that the winners and top entrants are young adults, not teenagers messing around. Young adults, remember, is the target market for the BMW Series 1.
Is this a digression? Maybe not. I found a hint about what social banner ads might look like on Goldstein’s corporate blog. He describes the evolution of online advertising as being, first, display then behavioral with social on the horizon. I know you can’t read what’s on that section; I had to blow it up so much I couldn’t copy it, but here’s what it says:

•“Where do you want to take a test drive?”
•“Have you seen Indiana Jones yet?”
•“Have you heard the new Goldplay (?) CD yet?”

You get the idea, especially once a social banner is on a targeted site. Where do you want to test drive (virtual or real?) the BMW? Let’s talk movies. Let’s talk about some band (that I’ve never heard of, so don’t target me!).

Engage people in a subject that interests them and begin a dialog with interested prospects. That’s the theme song of social media! Here are a couple of interesting ways to think about doing just that!

What Do Consumers Want from Mobile?

A few weeks ago I made a post on a mobile service that caught the attention of Sachendra Yadav, a product manager in the Indian telecommunications industry. He posted a reply on his very interesting technology blog, “What I Want from My Mobile Social Network.” If you missed his comment and the link, it’s a formidable list that is well worth considering.

We all know that the US is well behind on the mobile curve and can look to mobile services in other countries for insight. Two recent studies are helpful.

Accenture uses Forrester data to point out that “there is currently a huge gap between what users would like to do on the mobile Internet and what they actually can do” (page 4; download the full study here). Sachendra is apparently not alone! Most respondents in the Forrester survey don’t find the mobile Internet very useful or easy to use.

Another 2008 study, this from the IBM Institute for Business Value, concentrates on strategy for MDMs (mobile device makers; download the full study here). In the process it gives some interesting data from a survey of about 700 consumers in the US, Japan, India, China and Germany. They didn’t include South Korea, another advanced mobile economy which should be watched. These consumers want many services from maps to games. The chart divides the services up between Utilities and Entertainment—interesting. Note that browsing the Internet sits squarely on IBM’s dividing line between the two. Note also that if you combine “very interested” and “somewhat interested” a majority of their respondents are interested in the services from maps, most desired, to mobile TV, desired by just over half the respondents. That represents a large opportunity for providers of both services and content.

It provides a widespread opportunity because these respondents are more interested in services than brand. They prefer a mobile device that “Lets me choose andconfigure which mobile Internet services I want to use” and continue to “be able to install additional applications and services as desired” (page 9). Lack of brand loyalty is also displayed. When asked about brand preference for the same set of services, a substantial majority chose “Would take up ANY brand as long as I find service valuable” for all the services listed in the second chart (page 11). However, these respondents also find the mobile Internet expensive, slow and generally inconvenient.

How to improve? Accenture recommends:

1.Innovate from the customer’s perspective
2.Own the customer experience
3.Serve the social needs of customers
4.Develop the ability to cater to individual needs
5.Look for value in aggregation

Both these studies stress the need for personalization and usability in the mobile experience. They also suggest that the mobile Internet has a long way to go before it provides these desirable features and becomes a staple in the lives of most of us. That’s even more true of the US, which is already behind but can use the experience of others to quickly move up the learning curve.

The importance of the customer perspective and customer experience also indicates that marketers need to take an active interest in mobile applications. A number of target audiences are already aware of what should be possible and eager to have those services. Others will join their ranks. It’s the job of marketers, whether they are services providers or users of mobile applications, to keep developments customer-focused, not technology-focused.