Activate Media Group Merges with SundaySky - The Global Leader in Automated Video Production

January 02, 2011

 

New York, NY – Activate Media Group, a Los Angeles based video marketing agency announced today that it has merged into SundaySky. SundaySky is a provider of automated product video production at mass-scale and studio quality to drive website traffic and increase online sales. Bill Palmer, Activate Media’s founder and president will join the SundaySky team as Director of Sales. The move supports SundaySky’s strategy to quickly expand its market penetration in eCommerce and gives Activate better team infrastructure and financial backing to support new client growth initiatives. The timing and synergy involved in the deal are ideal given the alignment of goals, the momentum in the current online video marketplace, and the recent closing of SundaySky’s series B round of $9 million in October from leading venture capital firms.

Activate’s offices in Los Angeles, CA will become the west coast regional headquarters for SundaySky. “We are thoroughly excited to join forces with Activate and Mr. Palmer. He brings a depth of relationships, sales ability, and creative thought leadership to our global team,” stated Shmulik Weller, SundaySky’s CEO.

It is clear by now that video is an effective sales tool: it increases sales conversion rates, increases order size, boosts traffic to the site and drives user engagement. The challenge online businesses are now facing is how to scale this success: how to generate tens of thousands of videos to fully cover their online catalog and truly capitalize on the benefits of this medium. SundaySky Automated Video Platform addresses that issue by allowing mass generation of video without compromising on the quality of the production. With live deployments from leading brands such as Overstock, History Channel, and Discovery, SundaySky is poised for rapid growth in 2011.

Activate’s President, Bill Palmer, remarked, “Our approach has always been to optimize speed and scalability while maintaining a very light organizational footprint on our client’s internal resources to maximize value creation. SundaySky has built these virtues into the DNA of both their solution and their organization. We are proud to be a part of it.”

About SundaySky
With over 10,000,000 unique product videos produced, SundaySky is the world leader in dynamic video content production. SundaySky produces and manages branded video content designed to increase eCommerce sales and website traffic by 20%+. Leading online retailers, such as Overstock.com, AT&T, GAP, Organize.com, Discovery Store and Adorama use SundaySky's turnkey video content solution to drive engagement, organic traffic, and online sales conversion growth through their product pages, search engine marketing, video email, social media, and mobile video programs. Visit www.sundaysky.com to learn more. 
 

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Shop.org 2010 Annual Summit Reflects Purposeful Use of Technology and Renewed Focus on Customer Expe

October 28, 2010

Article for Apparel Magazine
By Bill Palmer

According to Forrester’s 2010 State of Retail report, online stores and warehouse stores were the only growth sectors in past 5-10 years. Is this trend due to a flight to value pricing, discounts, convenience, or a preferred shopping experience? The reasons for the trend are interconnected, but one thing is clear, online shopping experiences are getting more unified, personalized, and relevant to the overall customer experience and companies are actually listening now.

I recently attended the 2010 Shop.org Annual Summit in Dallas, Texas to gain some additional insight into the rapidly maturing and ever-changing world of eCommerce. Shop.org is part of the National Retail Federation (NRF) and represents a great mix of both pure play online retailers as well as traditional brick and mortar retailers. The conversations, networking, panels, and sessions were excellent.

The summit kicked off on Monday, September 27th with an interactive boot camp that focused on social media and search engine optimization. More than 250 people attended the boot camp, laptops blazing, for some real time workshop activities. Mitch Joel, author of “Six Pixels of Separation”, discussed recent stats and tools showcasing the fact that leveraging web 2.0 means active engagement and community participation. The breath and depth of current web usage now impacts all types of consumers as an integral part of daily life.

After the boot camp, attendees celebrated the official kick-off of the Summit and EXPO Hall with an opening reception where we mingled and networked with a "who's who" of digital retail. The expo featured a wide variety of innovative eCommerce solutions and services spanning the full spectrum of the modern retail world. Here is a full list shop.org exhibitors. While infrastructure and eCommerce platform companies still have a strong presence, it was clear that mobile and location-based retail, online video solutions, social commerce, and personalization solutions were the hot ticket for invigorating discussion with industry leaders.

Tuesday and Wednesday featured inspiring keynote presentations in the morning, followed by an afternoon filled with concurrent sessions, one-on-one tutorials, roundtable discussions, and numerous networking opportunities. Each afternoon focused on four major tracks: Mobile, Cross Channel Optimization, Tactics and The Customer Experience.

The keynote speakers were excellent and shared unique perspectives on some of the most popular topics in the world of digital commerce. Glen Senk,, CEO of Urban Outfitters, may lead a $2.5 billion company representing iconic fashion brands like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie, but he clearly still considers himself a merchant at heart. Senk began his retail career as an assistant buyer at Bloomingdale’s, so when an attendee at today’s Shop.org Summit asked a question about the future of merchandising, Senk’s eyes lit up. His insights – about why customers shop, how merchandising has changed, and why the best companies leverage technology to make decisions – held the interest of the Summit’s 3000+ attendees.

While much of what he said was riveting, some of Senk’s most compelling insights came when he was talking about mobile retail. Mr. Senk believes that mobile technology is revolutionizing the in-store retail experience even more than online. By synergizing labels and merchandizing tactics to include mobile applications that allow customers to research, check inventory, review, and check-out in-store via smart mobile phones, a unified shopping experience that empowers customers, enriches experience, and potentially cuts cost is the future or cross channel merchandizing.

The keynote address from Scott Savitz of Shoebuy.com was equally engaging and showcased his key lessons from the entrepreneurial trenches on how to trust your path and focus on the customer through constant improvement. A year after Mr. Savitz started Shoebuy.com in 1999, it seemed that every “dot.com” company was failing fast, but Shoebuy.com weathered the storm. Shoebuy’s success through the highs and the lows and have positioned the company as one of the largest online footwear retailers in the industry and #86 on the Internet retailer top 500. Some of the most notable lessons from Mr. Savitz are as follows:

1. Always remember why you got into the business in the first place. “Everyone will tell you how you should be doing your business…but don’t forget why when you started your business it was important to you.”

2. Don’t ever stop innovating and building value. “There are no rules in how you innovate, just that you need to never stop innovating.”

3. Every dollar should be spent as though it is your last; maximize opportunity and minimize risk. “You are not being frugal, you are being smart and responsible.”

4. Go for better than good, be in it to win it; maintain a refuse-to-lose mentality across your entire team. “It is your customers, employees and partners that make you succeed – it is them that allow you to thrive, during good times or bad.”

5. Help others. “Small or big – everything makes a huge difference.”

Clearly the online world is maturing both in terms of technology utilization, integration to the physical world, and underlying focus on the fundamentals of always keeping your eyes and ears focused on the customer and fulfilling their desired experiences. The clear message I got from the keynote speakers and throughout the conference was that in order to prosper outstanding customer service and unified brand experiences across all communication channels is the key. It is the core human skills of listening and responding to customer needs while offering them richer experiences that still makes all the difference.

 

Tags: fashion marketing , shop.org , web 2.0

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TED Talks: Chris Anderson: How Web Video Is Driving a Revolution in Global Innovation

September 15, 2010

TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter ...

 

About Chris Anderson (TED)

After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas

Transcript:

If nothing else, at least I've discovered what it is we put our speakers through: sweaty palms, sleepless nights, a wholly unnatural fear of clocks. I mean, it's quite brutal.

And I'm also a little nervous about this. There are nine billion humans coming our way. Now, the most optimistic dreams can get dented by the prospect of people plundering the planet. But recently, I've become intrigued by a different way of thinking of large human crowds, because there are circumstances where they can do something really cool. It's a phenomenon that I think any organization or individual can tap into. It certainly impacted the way we think about TED's future, and perhaps the world's future overall.

So, let's explore. The story starts with just a single person, a child, behaving a little strangely. This kid is known online as Lil Demon. He's doing tricks here, dance tricks, that probably no six-year-old in history ever managed before. How did he learn them? And what drove him to spend the hundreds of hours of practice this must have taken? Here's a clue.

(Video) Lil Demon: ♫ Step your game up. Oh. Oh. ♫ ♫ Step your game up. Oh. Oh. ♫

Chris Anderson: So, that was sent to me by this man, a filmmaker, Jonathan Chu, who told me that was the moment he realized the Internet was causing dance to evolve. This is what he said at TED in February. In essence, dancers were challenging each other online to get better; incredible new dance skills were being invented; even the six-year-olds were joining in. It felt like a revolution. And so Jon had a brilliant idea: He went out to recruit the best of the best dancers off of YouTube to create this dance troupe -- The League of Extraordinary Dancers, the LXD. I mean, these kids were web-taught, but they were so good that they got to play at the Oscars this year. And at TED here in February, their passion and brilliance just took our breath away.

So, this story of the evolution of dance seems strangely familiar. You know, a while after TEDTalks started taking off, we noticed that speakers were starting to spend a lot more time in preparation. It was resulting in incredible new talks like these two. ... Months of preparation crammed into 18 minutes, raising the bar cruelly for the next generation of speakers, with the effects that we've seen this week. It's not as if J.J. and Jill actually ended their talks saying, "Step your game up," but they might as well have. So, in both of these cases, you've got these cycles of improvement, apparently driven by people watching web video.

What is going on here? Well, I think it's the latest iteration of a phenomenon we can call "crowd-accelerated innovation." And there are just three things you need for this thing to kick into gear. You can think of them as three dials on a giant wheel. You turn up the dials, the wheel starts to turn. And the firs thing you need is ... a crowd, a group of people who share a common interest. The bigger the crowd, the more potential innovators there are. That's important, but actually most people in the crowd occupy these other roles. They're creating the ecosystem from which innovation emerges. The second thing you need is light. You need clear, open visibility of what the best people in that crowd are capable of, because that is how you will learn how you will be empowered to participate. And third, you need desire. You know, innovation's hard work. It's based on hundreds of hours of research, of practice. Absent desire, not going to happen.

Now, here's an example -- pre-Internet -- of this machine in action. Dancers at a street corner -- it's a crowd, a small one, but they can all obviously see what each other can do. And the desire part comes, I guess, from social status, right? Best dancer walks tall, gets the best date. There's probably going to be some innovation happening here. But on the web, all three dials are ratcheted right up. The dance community is now global. There's millions connected. And amazingly, you can still see what the best can do, because the crowd itself shines a light on them, either directly, through comments, ratings, email, Facebook, Twitter, or indirectly, through numbers of views, through links that point Google there. So, it's easy to find the good stuff, and when you've found it, you can watch it in close-up repeatedly and read what hundreds of people have written about it. That's a lot of light.

But the desire element is really dialed way up. I mean, you might just be a kid with a webcam, but if you can do something that goes viral, you get to be seen by the equivalent of sports stadiums crammed with people. You get hundreds of strangers writing excitedly about you. And even if it's not that eloquent -- and it's not -- it can still really make your day. So, this possibility of a new type of global recognition, I think, is driving huge amounts of effort. And it's important to note that it's not just the stars who are benefiting: because you can see the best, everyone can learn.

Also, the system is self-fueling. It's the crowd that shines the light and fuels the desire, but the light and desire are a lethal one-two combination that attract new people to the crowd. So, this is a model that pretty much any organization could use to try and nurture its own cycle of crowd-accelerated innovation. Invite the crowd, let in the light, dial up the desire. And the hardest part about that is probably the light, because it means you have to open up, you have to show your stuff to the world. It's by giving away what you think is your deepest secret that maybe millions of people are empowered to help improve it.

And, very happily, there's one class of people who really can't make use of this tool. The dark side of the web is allergic to the light. I don't think we're going to see terrorists, for example, publishing their plans online and saying to the world, "Please, could you help us to actually make them work this time?"

But you can publish your stuff online. And if you can get that wheel to turn, look out.

So, at TED, we've become a little obsessed with this idea of openness. In fact, my colleague, June Cohen, has taken to calling it "radical openness," because it works for us each time. We opened up our talks to the world, and suddenly there are millions of people out there helping spread our speakers' ideas, and thereby making it easier for us to recruit and motivate the next generation of speakers. By opening up our translation program, thousands of heroic volunteers -- some of them watching online right now, and thank you! -- have translated our talks into more than 70 languages, thereby tripling our viewership in non-English-speaking countries. By giving away our TEDx brand, we suddenly have a thousand-plus live experiments in the art of spreading ideas. And these organizers, they're seeing each other, they're learning from each other. We are learning from them. We're getting great talks back from them. The wheel is turning.

Okay, step back a minute. I mean, it's really not news for me to tell you that innovation emerges out of groups. You know, we've heard that this week -- this romantic notion of the lone genius with the "eureka!" moment that changes the world is misleading. Even he said that, and he would know. We're a social species. We spark off each other. It's also not news to say that the Internet has accelerated innovation. For the past 15 years, powerful communities have been connecting online, sparking off each other. If you take programmers, you know, the whole open-source movement is a fantastic instance of crowd-accelerated innovation. But what's key here is, the reason these groups have been able to connect is because their work output is of the type that can be easily shared digitally -- a picture, a music file, software. And that's why what I'm excited about, and what I think is under-reported, is the significance of the rise of online video.

This is the technology that's going to allow the rest of the world's talents to be shared digitally, thereby launching a whole new cycle of crowd-accelerated innovation. The first few years of the web were pretty much video-free, for this reason: video files are huge; the web couldn't handle them. But in the last 10 years, bandwidth has exploded a hundredfold. Suddenly, here we are. Humanity watches 80 million hours of YouTube every day. Cisco actually estimates that, within four years, more than 90 percent of the web's data will be video. If it's all puppies, porn and piracy, we're doomed. I don't think it will be. Video is high-bandwidth for a reason. It packs a huge amount of data, and our brains are uniquely wired to decode it.

Here, let me introduce you to Sam Haber. He's a unicyclist. Before YouTube, there was no way for him to discover his sport's true potential, because you can't communicate this stuff in words, right? But looking at video clips posted by strangers, a world of possibility opens up for him. Suddenly, he starts to emulate and then to innovate. And a global community of unicyclists discover each other online, inspire each other to greatness. And there are thousands of other examples of this happening -- of video-driven evolution of skills, ranging from the physical to the artful. And I have to tell you, as a former publisher of hobbyist magazines, I find this strangely beautiful. I mean, there's a lot of passion right here on this screen.

But if Rube Goldberg machines and video poetry aren't quite your cup of tea, how about this. Jove is a website that was founded to encourage scientists to publish their peer-reviewed research on video. There's a problem with a traditional scientific paper. It can take months for a scientist in another lab to figure out how to replicate the experiments that are described in print. Here's one such frustrated scientist, Moshe Pritsker, the founder of Jove. He told me that the world is wasting billions of dollars on this. But look at this video. I mean, look: if you can show instead of just describing, that problem goes away. So it's not far-fetched to say that, at some point, online video is going to dramatically accelerate scientific advance.

Here's another example that's close to our hearts at TED, where video is sometimes more powerful than print -- the sharing of an idea. Why do people like watching TEDTalks? All those ideas are already out there in print. It's actually faster to read than to view. Why would someone bother? Well, so, there's some showing as well as telling. But even leaving the screen out of it, there's still a lot more being transferred than just words. And in that non-verbal portion, there's some serious magic. Somewhere hidden in the physical gestures, the vocal cadence, the facial expressions, the eye contact, the passion, the kind of awkward, British body language, the sense of how the audience are reacting, there are hundreds of subconscious clues that go to how well you will understand, and whether you're inspired -- light, if you like, and desire. Incredibly, all of this can be communicated on just a few square inches of a screen.

Reading and writing are actually relatively recent inventions. Face-to-face communication has been fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution. That's what's made it into this mysterious, powerful thing it is. Someone speaks, there's resonance in all these receiving brains, the whole group acts together. I mean, this is the connective tissue of the human superorganism in action. It's probably driven our culture for millennia. 500 years ago, it ran into a competitor with a lethal advantage. It's right here. Print scaled. The world's ambitious innovators and influencers now could get their ideas to spread far and wide, and so the art of the spoken word pretty much withered on the vine. But now, in the blink of an eye, the game has changed again. It's not too much to say that what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication. So, that primal medium, which your brain is exquisitely wired for ... that just went global.

Now, this is big. We may have to reinvent an ancient art form. I mean, today, one person speaking can be seen by millions, shedding bright light on potent ideas, creating intense desire for learning and to respond -- and in his case, intense desire to laugh. For the first time in human history, talented students don't have to have their potential and their dreams written out of history by lousy teachers. They can sit two feet in front of the world's finest.

Now, TED is just a small part of this. I mean, the world's universities are opening up their curricula. Thousands of individuals and organizations are sharing their knowledge and data online. Thousands of people are figuring out new ways to learn and, crucially, to respond, completing the cycle. And so, as we've thought about this, you know, it's become clear to us what the next stage of TED's evolution has to be. TEDTalks can't be a one-way process, one-to-many. Our future is many-to-many. So, we're dreaming of ways to make it easier for you, the global TED community, to respond to speakers, to contribute your own ideas, maybe even your own TEDTalks, and to help shine a light on the very best of what's out there. Because, if we can bubble up the very best from a vastly larger pool, this wheel turns.

Now, is it possible to imagine a similar process to this, happening to global education overall? I mean, does it have to be this painful, top-down process? Why not a self-fueling cycle in which we all can participate? It's the participation age, right? Schools can't be silos. We can't stop learning at age 21. What if, in the coming crowd of nine billion ... what if that crowd could learn enough to be net contributors, instead of net plunderers? That changes everything, right? I mean, that would take more teachers than we've ever had. But the good news is they are out there. They're in the crowd, and the crowd is switching on lights, and we can see them for the first time, not as an undifferentiated mass of strangers, but as individuals we can learn from. Who's the teacher? You're the teacher. You're part of the crowd that may be about to launch the biggest learning cycle in human history, a cycle capable of carrying all of us to a smarter, wiser, more beautiful place.

Here's a group of kids in a village in Pakistan near where I grew up. Within five years, each of these kids is going to have access to a cellphone capable of full-on web video and capable of uploading video to the web. I mean, is it crazy to think that this girl, in the back, at the right, in 15 years, might be sharing the idea that keeps the world beautiful for your grandchildren? It's not crazy; it's actually happening right now.

I want to introduce you to a good friend of TED who just happens to live in Africa's biggest shantytown.

(Video) Christopher Makau: Hi. My name is Christopher Makau. I'm one of the organizers of TEDxKibera. There are so many good things which are happening right here in Kibera. There's a self-help group. They turned a trash place into a garden. The same spot, it was a crime spot where people were being robbed. They used the same trash to form green manure. The same trash site is feeding more than 30 families. We have our own film school. They are using Flip cameras to record, edit, and reporting to their own channel, Kibera TV. Because of a scarcity of land, we are using the sacks to grow vegetables, and also [we're] able to save on the cost of living. Change happens when we see things in a different way. Today, I see Kibera in a different way. My message to TEDGlobal and the entire world is: Kibera is a hotbed of innovation and ideas.

(Applause)

CA: You know what? I bet Chris has always been an inspiring guy. What's new -- and it's huge -- is that, for the first time, we get to see him, and he can see us. Right now, Chris and Kevin and Dennis and Dickson and their friends are watching us, in Nairobi, right now. Guys, we've learned from you today. Thank you.

And thank you.

Tags: video social media , video social media , viral videos , web video

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Roundup of eCommerce Video Marketing Statistics - Impact of Online Video on Sales

September 10, 2010

 

eCommerce Video Drives Conversion, Sales and Traffic While Reducing Returns

* Internet Retailer reports that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not, based on OnlineGolf.com results. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)

* Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)

* In tests merchants such as Archie McPhee experienced conversion rate increases averaging 30%, with a range from 12% to 115%. (Practical Ecommerce, November 2008)

* According to Internet Retailer, Shoeline.com saw a 44% increase in online sales conversions by using videos to showcase their products. “With such positive results on our existing videos, the goal right now is to add video to as many of our products as possible,” says Frank Malsbenden, VP and GM of Vision Retailing Inc., the parent company of Shoeline.com. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

* Zappos reports a 6% to 30% increases in sales for products with video. (ReelSEO, December 2009)

* Discovery Channel increased video streams 123% by properly implementing video sitemaps

* 20% of all males surveyed cited online video as a significant influence in recent purchases of jewelry and watches. (Ad-ology Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey, September 2008)

* Ice.com found that viewers who chose to view video converted at a 400% increase over those who did not. Ice.com also credits video with decreasing returns by 25%. (Internet Retailer, December 2009)

* Implementation of video decreased returns by 27% for PFI Western. (Videocommerce.org, December 2009)

* Simple video merchandising best practices can nearly double the impact of eCommerce video (Invodo research, February 2010)

* Shoppers who view video at Onlineshoes.com convert at a 45% higher rate than other shoppers, and the site has seen a 359% year-over-year increase in video views. Product pages with video have higher conversion rates than product pages without video. (Internet Retailer, February 2010)

* With proper optimization, video increases the chance of a front-page Google result by 53x. (Forrester, January 2010)

* Video in email marketing has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96%. In response, the number of marketers planning to use video in email campaigns has increased 5x since the beginning of 2009. (Implix 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey)

* Consumer packaged goods firm Reckitt Benckiser found that online video delivered a 6% increase in in-store sales. (Reckitt Benckiser / Nielsen, May 2010)

* Rich media ads containing video increase purchase intent by 1.16% and drive success more than four times that of Flash animation. In addition to the increase in purchase intent, video ads appear to increase consumer brand loyalty. Viewers favored a brand 2.30% more when exposed to rich media with a video ad opposed the tiny 0.15% increase simple Flash animation experienced. (DoubleClick, The Brand Value of Rich Media Ads, June 2009)

Consumers Use and Trust Online Video

* From July 2009 through July 2010, the number of US video viewers on retail sites grew 40%, outpacing 17% growth in the number of total US online video viewers. 96% of online shoppers also watch online video. (Comscore, August 2010)

* Video views doubled from 14.8 billion to 33.2 billion between January 2009 and December 2009. 86.5% of all US Internet users watched online video during the month. The average viewer watched 187 videos and 12.7 hours of online video during the month. (Comscore, February 2010)

* A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. (Forrester, January 2009)

Online Retailers are Implementing eCommerce Video

* 33% of online retailers plan to add video to their sites in 2010, making it a higher priority than any other advanced feature. (eMarketer, March 2010)

* Leading online retailers added video to their sites in 2009 to increase online sales. PetsUnited, the owner of 10 eCommerce sites, saw a 50% jump in average sales when shoppers made a purchase after viewing a video. (eMarketer, January 2009)

* eCommerce video success can be clearly measured. Conversion rate, cart abandons, increased traffic and View Through Rate (VTR) are key to demonstrating success. (Practical Ecommerce, March 2010)

* eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau characterizes the benefits of video as including “…a lower number of abandoned shopping carts, reduced return rates, and higher sales.” (eMarketer, January 2009)

* Search engine optimization (SEO) and online video were the two top priorities for online retailers in 2009. Online shoppers who viewed video had a larger shopping ticket than those who viewed traditional rich media such as flash animations. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

Tags: comscore , e-commerce video , online videos , video social media , web video

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The New eCommerce Reality: Every Company is a Media Company

September 09, 2010

In "Every Company is a Media Company" author Tom Foremski accurately points out "When every company is a media company this changes more than just a company's PR/communications department -- it changes nearly every aspect of an organization." He adds, "'Every company is a media company' is the most important business transformation of our times because every company is affected. It is also a massive business opportunity for so many businesses."

In this week's Jack Myers Media Business Report delivered yesterday to subscribers, I shared proprietary economic insights on companies ranging from Wal-Mart and Whole Foods to Johnson & Johnson and P&G that are investing significant organizational and financial resources in building media properties. These media assets are not intended only to deliver marketing value, but to generate enhanced economic value and enhance the companies' shareholder value. While websites, mobile applications and social media are the visible tip of the iceberg for many companies' investments in media ownership, they are also developing place-based digital media and expanding their event and experiential marketing commitments, which will represent nearly $18 billion of marketers' expenditures this year.

Event and experiential marketing has traditionally been approached as a series of one-off consumer outreach initiatives by marketers. Now they are being reconsidered as renewable and sustainable media properties that can often be partially or completely self-funding.

As mobile scanning capabilities in the U.S. become as developed as they are already in several Asian and European countries, both retailers and brand marketers will invest in building direct marketing, couponing and promotional apps that are designed to drive traffic and generate real-time response. These apps will increasingly put marketers directly into the media business as they seek to generate ancillary revenues from endemic and non-endemic partners.

With consumers living in a mash up of apps, blogs, RSS feeds, links, text messages, tweets, self-generated content, social networks and location-based promotion, strong media brands will extend off the screen and page into merchandise and consumer services, while strong product and service brands will morph into media properties. Progressive media companies and marketers will become indistinguishable and undifferentiated.

To comment, visit www.jackmyersthinktank.com. JackMyersThinkTank and MediaBizBloggers are free and underwritten as an industry service by corporate subscribers to Jack Myers Media Business Report. For subscription information, visit www.myersreport.com. Visit the archives of JackMyersThinkTank and MediaBizBloggers. Jack Myers can be contacted directly at jm@jackmyers.com .

Tags: online advertising , social media , web 2.0

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