Tag: media

IPG Lab Releases 2015 Outlook

Posted on by Lab Team

Check out our brand new 2015 Outlook here.

Every year here at the IPG Media Lab, we round up the ideas that animate us: the market forces, new technologies, and consumer shifts that are changing the ways we evaluate, buy, and create media. And today, we are happy to present you with our 2015 Outlook– “Let’s Get Intimate”—which takes a look at the increasingly personal (and important) world of contextual media placement and the challenges and opportunities for marketers. Trends and themes covered include:

  • The Internet of Thrills – You are emotionally and physically connected to your devices
  • Peak Distraction – In this mobile age, it’s harder and harder to be heard
  • Measurable Intimacy – Focuses on performance-based advertising, where results are measured by total business outcomes, not just conventional metrics
  • Next Level Awkwardness – How do brands fit into a world in which media is hyper-personal, data is everywhere, and our ability to target is ultra-precise

Take a look and let us know what you think @ipglab; we’d love to hear from you.

Check out our special interactive Outlook webpage here: https://ipglab.com/outlook2015/

If you prefer, you can also download our Outlook 2015 as PDF file here.

 

Event Recap: AdWeek — What Is Newsworthy?

Posted on by Lab Team

On Monday, Michael Roth, the Chairman & CEO of IPG, moderated an Advertising Week panel with Rebecca Blumenstein, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Wall Street Journal; David Pemsel, Deputy Chief Executive, The Guardian; Pete Cashmore, CEO & Founder, Mashable; and Greg Coleman, President, Buzzfeed; in which they discussed the future of the news and advertising’s role.

Trust and Mission

Throughout the event, panelists kept returning to the importance of trust—the need to consistently deliver timely but reliable information. Building and maintaining that trust with the audience is a challenge for both traditional publishers and digital upstarts; as Cashmore explained, “new media companies got the business model and distribution right and are now trying to get trust right; others got trust right and are trying to move into digital.”

If “trust” unites publishers, “mission” distinguishes them from each other: Mashable believes its community is an essential part of the platform, whereas The Guardian emphasized its 200-year history and commitment to independence.

Native Advertising

Of course, advertising remains a crucial (though sometimes controversial) revenue source for news publishers. Ideally, native advertising is simply a story about a brand. At Buzzfeed, in fact, “the creative team talks to the client… Sounds kind of like an agency,” according to Coleman. Brand sponsorship can translate into longer lead times and higher production budgets, resulting in high-quality content; Cashmore noted that some of the ads on Mashable are shared twice as much as original content. That said, panelists agreed that it’s important to maintain trust by making clear what’s sponsored content.

Organizational Culture

Attracting the best talent has always been difficult, but the popularity of startups has made it even more of a struggle.   Ultimately, though, it comes back to trust and mission: if people believe in what your organization stands for, they will be inspired to produce the high-quality content publishers seek to deliver.

Event Recap: AdWeek—Programmatic Sophistication: Riding the Next Wave of Innovation

Posted on by Lab Team

The IPG Media Lab kicked off Advertising Week bright and early on Monday, attending a panel on the future of programmatic featuring Matt Seiler, the Global CEO IPG Mediabrands; Vivek Shah, CEO and Chairman, IAB; Neil Vogel, CEO, About.com; and Tim Cadogan, CEO, OpenX; and moderated by Alex Kantrowitz of Ad Age.

Complementing, Not Competing

The hot button topic on everyone’s mind was Facebook’s announcement that it was relaunching the Atlas ad platform. Far from being concerned about a formidable competitor, the panelists believed that having access to more data would be better for everyone involved. As Shah noted, “If they can bring data that makes our inventory more valuable, I think publishers will line up.”

Context and the Audience

Far from mass standardization or “bulk buying” that the term implies, programmatic can actually serve to make advertising more personal and customized. “I loved the simplicity and honesty of a brief, but it always too broad of an audience, ” noted Seiler. “Now you can write those briefs to very specific audiences.” Most importantly, data can provide context to the consumer’s decision-making process. “If we can append data to how real people are behaving, that’s the future for us,” said Vogel.

The New Normal

Just as other marketplaces have shifted to more automated processes, the advertising industry will becoming increasingly programmatic. Yet these changes aren’t anything to fear—if anything, programmatic will simply be the way things are done. Within the next two to five years, in fact, Seigel predicted “session like this one won’t even happen.”

 

NBC News Purchases Stringwire

Posted on by Lab Team

Stringwire, a web service that enables live video streaming by broadcasters, was purchased by NBC News to try to compete with real-time, Internet-based news that’s often breaking faster than traditional networks can handle. Stringwire works by trawling Twitter for messages about breaking events, and sends an automatic tweet to that poster asking them to click a link and point their phone (or camera, as the case may be) at what they’re seeing. That video can then start streaming to NBC without any additional feedback. NBC says that the video submissions will be vetted like any other NBC material, but ultimately the goal is relying on crowd-sourced, live video streamed right into its control rooms to build out its coverage in a world increasingly used to interactive, quick-fire news. 

CNN & Buzzfeed Announce Social Video Studio

Posted on by Lab Team

Buzzfeed and CNN announced a partnership with a video clip that appeared on Buzzfeed’s site this morning. The new combination of media outlets aim to bring news to younger viewers by launching a news-based YouTube channel. Buzzfeed will build out a social video studio that is designed to create news, entertainment, and other video content that can be posted on the channel. The goal seems to be to bring viral energy to CNN while building out Buzzfeed’s place in the crowded media marketplace. 

A brief history of our brains and screens

Posted on by Lab Team

Originally published in Media Magazine.

A screen is defined as a surface where pictures can be projected for viewing. This term is not just related to media, it defines it; the screen is the membrane that “mediates” or stands between, an image and the individual viewing it. What happens without a literal screen? That image simply pipes directly into our mind’s eye so that we can “see” it in the same way we “see” a dream.

Before we discuss the future of the brain, let’s look at the history of screens. Plato talked about “The Cave,” a thought experiment about ancient people projecting flickering shadows on the wall of a subterranean dwelling – although we should focus more on the past 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, cinema, in the form of nickelodeons began to replace live theater. By 1950, television screens had become predominant, ushering in the golden age of broadcasting yet still connecting many brains to a single story. Continue reading “A brief history of our brains and screens”