The Praized Blog

(via Joystiq and Gamasutra)

“What burger-backed trio of minigames reached the 2-million-in-sales mark faster than Gears of War (the fastest-selling Xbox-exclusive ever)? That’s right … Burger King’s Value Meal threesome! Well, technically, 2 million is the number of combined sales (of the three games: Pocketbike Racer, Big Bumpin’, and Sneak King); and each is only $3.99 with the purchase of a (BK Value) meal.”

“Gamasutra recently conducted an interview with Blitz Games’ Philip Oliver (the game developer) in which he spoke in detal about the Burger King advergame deal, noting: “Well, I think Burger King obviously has been looking at the fact that they’re trying to connect with today’s youth, and that means gamers, fundamentally.”

What it means: what a great way to rejuvenate your brand image while targeting an age group that’s difficult to reach.

Following on the previous Gannett reorganization story, Jeff Howe gives us an update on his blog.

“It seems that one of Gannett’s larger newspapers, the Indianapolis Daily Star, has hit a snag on its way to implementing the company’s “Information Center” newsroom, aka the Seven Desk Initiative (which I wrote about on Wired.com as well as in a series of blog posts). Part of the Star’s plans for reinventing its operations included asking its editorial staff to write advertorials. In a memo to management obtained by Editor & Publisher, the union representing the paper’s writers and editors strenuously objected to the violation of ethics guidelines that require the union to uphold a “high wall of separation between editorial and advertising.” Management then modified its request to include only copy editors and designer, but those “non-bylined” positions are also covered by the guild’s guidelines. ”

What it means: it’s important not to underestimate resistance to change within your organization especially when going through a major overhaul like the one Gannett is going through. It’s a fundamental change that needs to happen but I wonder why is the newspaper insisting that its editors write also advertorials? They must want more flexibility out of their staff but this seems more like a cost-cutting measure than a strategic overhaul.

Meta-Praized is a collection of links & stories we’ve “dugg” on Digg.com in the last 7 days. Feel free to add us as a friend: PraizedDotCom

• “Computers could store entire life by 2026″ via The Daily Telegraph
• “Auditions Come to YouTube” via the Wall Street Journal
• Time’s Person of the Year is You! via Time Magazine
• “10 Reasons Why Microsoft Will Acquire Yahoo In 2007″ via ShoeMoney.com
• “RUMOR: Apple ‘iPhone’ may include JAJAH VoIP software” via MacDailyNews.com
• CraigsNumber: an auto-expiring, FREE anonymous phone number via the Voice 2.0 blog
• “New NYC taxis to have TV and tracking” via SiliconValley.com
• “Google teams up with NASA” via CNN.com
• “Ask X – New UI for Ask.com Secretly Launched” via Read/WriteWeb
• “2007 Web Predictions” by Read/WriteWeb
• “Google axes search API” via the Register
• “BBC moves to file-sharing sites” via BBC News

I was just “blogtagged” by Peter over at Local Onliner. Blogtagging is the equivalent of the old chain letters (see Mitch Joel’s description here) but done through blogs. In this case, I now have to disclose five things you may not know about me.

1) My first job was as a parking attendant in Quebec City in the 1980’s. I lasted three weeks…

2) I was selling stuff on the Internet before eBay even existed (circa 1994)! Should have moved to Silicon Valley then. Proof here…

3) As bullet #2 shows, I used to be a comic book geek. Nuff Said!

4) I spent the second year of my life living in France, while my dad was attending university.

5) The first Provencher that came to North America was named Sebastien Provencher, like me. He’s the Sebastien Provencher that keeps beating me in the Google results!

I now tag Harry Wakefield, Sylvain Carle, Michel Leblanc, Eric Baillargeon and Martin Lessard.

The Praized blog’s publishing schedule for the next two weeks will be lighter to allow the Praized team to enjoy a well-deserved rest. We’ll be back to our regular schedule starting Monday January 8th.

Happy holidays and may 2007 bring you health and happiness!

One of my first blog posts mentioned Cyworld, the social network from Korea with an interesting freemium business model. The Financial Times (via Joshua Mack’s blog) has a follow-up on their US introduction.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

“At seven years old, Cyworld is a veritable veteran in the world of social networking. A dominant force in South Korea, where up to 90 per cent of under 20s are believed to be Cyworld members, the website is now looking for eyeballs in other parts of the world. Top on the list of new targets is the US, the world’s biggest media market. But the US market is already dominated by a younger rival, MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought last year. It turns three years old next month and is by far the world’s biggest social networking site, with 140m members.”

“At first Cyworld was not sure if it could attract a US audience in light of MySpace’s dominance. Research showed that many people have two to four social networking sites, says Michael Streefland, director of marketing for Cyworld. “There is a site for the real you, a rite of passage site that you would join during a particular phase of your life, and the fun, hot, new trend site,” Mr Streefland says.”"Cyworld is betting that it will appeal to the “real you”, making it part of people’s lives for many years. Facebook, the second biggest social networking site in the US, fits in the second category. Mr Streefland believes that MySpace falls into the latter segment, meaning that people will stop using it after a few months as they get bored or exhausted of the effort of having to maintain “cool” personas.”

“One of the biggest threats to the popularity of all three sites are technological glitches. Already, News Corp’s internet executives scrutinise a weekly report that shows how long it takes for MySpace users to access new pages. Indeed, Mr Streefland attributes the success of Cyworld, owned by SK Telecom,and MySpace to the fact that both have corporate parents with expertise and deep pockets. “”Another is the risk of driving users away with over-commercialisation. To this end, most sites are limiting the amount of advertising, and other sources of revenue such as deals with mobile phone operators or e-commerce – 80 per cent of Cyworld’s income in South Korea – are being pursued.”

What it means: I’m still fascinated by Cyworld’s business model, i.e. micro-transactions of “acorns” (the Cyworld currency) to decorate your mini-room and avatar. There are also major opportunities for brand sponsorships. What I don’t understand though is Michael Streefland’s positioning statement. I don’t know if Cyworld is really this site for the “real you” or a rite of passage one like MySpace. I believe Reid Hoffman is trying to make LinkedIn the social networking site for the real you. And I think he might be right for anyone over 30.

By the way, we’ve created a basic avatar and mini-room at http://us.cyworld.com/Praized . Feel free to add us as a friend!

Catching up on my backlog of reading material, I just found this interesting analysis in McKinsey Quarterly (registration required):

Summary:

“McKinsey research finds that bottlenecks in supply could limit the pace of online ad growth and raise prices over the next 24 months. The study also suggests that a dearth of ad agencies that can manage both traditional and digital campaigns could further slow the shift in spending to online ads. ”

Here are the best excerpts:

Video Ads:

“According to many of the video suppliers we interviewed, very little unsold advertising capacity remains today. Assuming that marketers don’t increase the number of ads they place in each video stream, the maximum supply of video ads is currently about $600 million a year—far less than future demand, which we expect to reach $1.4 billion to $3.2 billion in 2007.”

Paid Search:

“The situation is similar for paid search. Annual growth in the overall number of searches is slowing, from 30 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2005. Without significant changes in consumer click-through rates or in the prices advertisers are willing to pay, we estimate that the maximum current value of paid-search advertising is about $7 billion. Meanwhile, our analysis (…) suggests that advertisers will want to spend $9 billion to $12 billion on paid search in 2007, up from around $5 billion in 2005.”

Banner Ads:

“Although the inventory of banner ads—$4 billion to $8 billion—appears more than sufficient to accommodate the likely demand of $2.5 billion, advertisers probably won’t be interested in much of what’s available. The complex task of spreading media spending across thousands of small Web sites, many with different ad formats, means that advertisers tend to return to heavily trafficked sites, where supply is at a premium. Even on the big portals, marketers are leery of having their ads placed near consumer-generated content that might be objectionable. In fact, advertisers currently direct 96 percent of their spending for online display ads to pages that represent just 30 percent of overall Web traffic. ”

Additional findings:

• “Most advertisers expressed frustration at the small number of ad agencies with the skills to manage both traditional and digital campaigns. Many advertisers have no choice but to employ separate agencies and to coordinate cross-media efforts themselves, which makes it more challenging to manage—and evolve—their marketing mix.”
• “The absence of a widely accepted independent metric for digital media (such as the NielsenTV ratings) makes it difficult to compare the results of online campaigns and to measure their impact—an uncomfortable fact for marketers considering major spending reallocations.”

What it means:

1) This analysis supports the need of traditional media to capture more traffic within their network of sites in order to fulfill the growing appetite of advertisers.

2) It also shows us the opportunity in video ads. It seems like there’s a massive gap between supply and demand in that ad format (not surprising given the popularity of TV advertising).

3) It also shows us the opportunity in the Long Tail of advertising, which might explain the rise of blog ad networks like Federated Media and B5 Media.

4) As the study says, “audiences and vehicles are highly fragmented” I wonder if fragmentation and lack of inventory in local online ads prevented the segment from growing as fast as people expected in 2006?

Bob Heyman covers five social search sites in MediaPost’s Search Insider (sign-up required).

“The premise (of social search) is that the next big thing is to harness the power of communities to generate more relevant search recommendations.”

1) Yoono “describes itself as “instant people-rated Web,” meaning, that when you surf, Yoono displays a list of Web pages that others have classified as “favorites.” It works with a toolbar or plug-in. See more in TechCrunch.

2) Gravee “is a social search application that differs from others in that it is trying to change the economics of search by sharing advertising revenue with content owners, with a rev-share business model. The site shares up to 70% of all ad revenues with the natural listings that appear on the same page when an ad occurs, as well as with the referring Web site.” here is TechCrunch’s take on it.

3) Jookster “is a community-driven social search tool that works primarily through the browser toolbar. Jookster collects photos, video and bookmarks from sites like YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us into one place that can be searched, saved and shared with friends. ” Mashable covered their relaunch a month ago.

4) StumbleUpon “employs user ratings to form collaborative opinions on Web site quality with the goal of helping you “stumble upon” great sites. When you “stumble,” you only see pages that friends and like-minded “Stumblers” have commented on. ” Many people love StumbleUpon (they have over 1M users), see the description here.

5) Otavo “describes itself as not just a search engine, but a community of users and staff members who participate in your quest to find answers quicker. As an Otavo user, you can ask any question or seek a quest of your choice.” TechCrunch covered them a while back.

What it means: Not sure what to think of “social search” yet. I think it might work for a very specialized topic or as a recommendation tool but I’m not sure you can be become a truly successful generalist search engine using a community (unless you count Yahoo Answers in this category). of these 5, I had heard of Otavo (because they’re based in Ontario, Canada) and StumbleUpon. The later is generating a lot of good buzz and is already a great source of traffic for many sites. I wonder if social search is more a feature than it is a destination… It could be a great add-on to any shopping or directory sites (which is a little bit what Aggregate Knowledge does).

Via the Google Operating System blog:

“Google has bought Endoxon, a Swiss company focused on web-based geo information services. The company provided imagery for map.search.ch, a successful map service, and local.ch, a local search service – both limited to Switzerland.”

“Endoxon has been working on a technology called “blue”, that extends their products to the whole world. “blue is visualized information on the web. blue is the clever linking of a world map server, a search engine and a GIS. blue is a high-quality, comprehensive points- and map server, a virtual worldwide marketplace, a search and services platform. The user can search for information or he can visualize his own collected information. The download of selected blue data onto the mobile phone is possible. But blue is not only a vision. Its reality: Endoxon has been collecting, enhancing and geo referencing worldwide satellite and aerial images for a couple of years now.”

“Google acquired Endoxon’s internet, mapping and data processing business units. Google says the acquisition “will enable us to leverage their analysis capabilities and will help us build out and improve the functionality of Google Earth and Google Maps across Europe.”

GoYellow.de the German directory publisher known for its Paris Hilton TV ads, also uses Endoxon’s “Blue” technology.

What it means: maps are a key element of local search and Google certainly wants to improve their European user experience with this acquisition. In their FAQ on the Endoxon web site, Google explains why they’re buying Endoxon: “Endoxon’s assets and its European network bolster engineering and technical resources for Google. This acquisition of Endoxon will enable us to leverage their analysis capabilities and will help us build out and improve the functionality of Google Earth and Google Maps across Europe.”

I’ve recently discussed in this blog a list of online media predictions for 2007. I’ve decided to take the plunge and offer my own predictions in the Local and Social Media space for the year to come.

1) Atomization: 2007 will see the acceleration of content/functions/applications atomization (decentralization) via the adoption of multiple syndication methods like RSS, XML and APIs by a majority of web sites.

2) Verticalization: The success of generalist social networks and online video sites in 2006 means that we will see the arrival of a multitude of new specialized players in these two fields.

3) RSS: a clear business model for RSS will emerge. It will start replacing e-mail marketing as a way to communicate directly (and better) to your customers

4) Local will become more social / Social will become more local: A good example of the later is the addition of maps (often Google Maps, the poster child for Atomization!) in FiveLimes or Flickr.

5) Traditional Media will continue to realize that they desperately need to capture eyeballs online, leading to more online acquisitions and/or investments.

6) Long distance & local calls will continue their move towards free. Model might actually reverse itself and we might finally see the strong emergence of pay-per-call as a legitimate lead model for advertisers.

7) Traditional media will create SEO job positions. Search Engine Optimization is a key success factor for traditional media to be well positioned in search engines. Innovative companies will create Social Media Optimization (SMO) positions.
Video Monetization: a clear business model will emerge. Either Google’s acquisition of YouTube or the launch of the Venice Project (don’t bet against Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom…)

9) The proliferation of destination sites without clear business models will lead a lot of them to adopt the B2B business model, i.e. software licensing or ASP to traditional media companies.

There you go! Anything you would have added? Do you agree, disagree?