Gallup: Ad Folk Still At Bottom of Honesty and Ethics List

According to Gallup's annual honesty and ethics poll, we all still suck. The poll says advertising practitioners rank below congressmen and just above car salesmen and telemarketers Just as in past years, there's not much respect out there for us ad folk. We'd venture to say purveyors of pop up/unders sure haven't helped our cause. Anything to say in answer to that FastClick, ValueClick, Casale Media?

Syndicated Programming Immune to DVR

A recent study by the Syndicated Network Television Association claims 80 percent of DVR viewers view syndicated programming live versus 48 percent for network prime time. During the day, 73 percent of DVR users view syndicated talk shows live versus 46 percent of DVR users viewing soaps.

Donny Deutsch to Announce 'Media Person of the Year,' Voting Closes Sunday

Donny Deutsch will announce the 2005 "Media Person of the Year" on his CNBC show, "The Big Idea," this Monday, Dec. 5. Each year, I Want Media runs a poll to find the "Media Person of the Year" defined as the figure who had the most impact on the media landscape. Last year's "Media Person of the Year" was the Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart.

This year's 10 candidates, submitted by the site's readers are CNN's Anderson Cooper; Gawker Media's Nick Denton; Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Apple's Steve Jobs; Author Judith Miller; media mogul Rupert Murdoch; Craig's List's Craig Newmark; Viacom's Sumner Redstone; Howard Stern and Martha Stewart (who was named the 2002 "Media Person of the Year").

I'm voting for underdog Nick Denton. You should too. He, and blogging, have significantly altered the media landscape in recent years. The online poll closes this Sunday evening.

Firm to Measure Blog-Based TV Buzz

Eluded to at a recent ad:tech conference in New York, Word of mouth research and planning firm BuzzMetrics has launched a syndicated service to measure television discussion on blogs, message boards and other social media. Called TV*BuzzMetrics, the ratings service will provide television executives and advertisers "ongoing qualitative insights that help explain key drivers of viewer engagement, and understand potential value of new programs." Making this all possible, BuzzMetrics is a business affiliate of VNU, owner of research brands ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research.

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Generation Y Ripe For Experiential Marketing

A recent survey of 2,574 US consumers commissioned by Jack Morton and conducted this year found Gen Y consumers - also known as "millennials" - respond strongly to live marketing events, which they prefer over TV and Internet advertising. While self serving, the study found 70 percent of 13 to 23 year olds say experiential marketing is extremely or very influential on their opinion of a product or brand. Sixty Five percent of 13 to 23 year olds say participating in an event would cause them to act more quickly to purchase a product. Seventy six percent of this demographic say participating in an event would make them more receptive to the brand or product's advertising. Seventy four percent of 13 to 23 year olds say participating in a live marketing experience is something they would tell others about.

Whether or not Jack Morton is drumming up business for it self with this study is irrelevant. What's very relevant is the fact Gen Y, and other demos for that matter, don't respond well anymore to traditional media. The emerging field of experiential marketing - a fancy name for event marketing - appears to be gaining traction and success at reaching elusive, traditional media-averse audiences.

New Email Marketing Guide is Da Bomb

Newly researched, MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 is out and includes 310 charts, tables, and heatmaps featuring data on open rates, clickthrough rates, email budgeting, typical conversion rates, business-to-business email marketing, and ecommerce email campaigns. Seven eyetracking heatmaps are also included which reveal the results of eyetracking lab tests conducted by MarketingSherpa to determine how the human eye interacts with email, including text versus HTML formats.

For you email marketers, this is the bomb. Oops, we can't say that because we're only , so we'll just say, "You gotta get this report, homies!" Oh wait, that's not right either. Let's try, "This report kicks ass!" Hmm...too blunt too eighties. How about, "Get this report and you'll be counting clicks all the way to the bank." Nope. Way too cheesy. Well, perhaps we'll just say, "If your marketing department sends out email newsletters and/or sales alerts, the new MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 is a practical must-read." There. That's it. When in doubt, just copy what the press release says.

PR Firm Lures Survey Respondents with Striptease

While it's quite common for marketers to offer incentives to insure completion of a survey, the Hungarian office of PR firm Sawyer Miller has swept aside those less than motivating one dollar bill, Amazon coupon and free iTunes download offers for what really matters: a stripping hottie. Answer a question, off comes a piece of clothing. Get an answer wrong, no matter. Just keep clicking until you get the right answer and...off comes a piece of clothing. Of course, it's less of a survey and more of a presentation as there's only one correct answer to each question. Not that it matters but it has something to do with Hungarian economics. Have fun but turn the volume down if you're at work lest you want co-workers to think there's a lunchtime quickie rockin' your cube. Thanks, Rick.

Gaming Medium Growing in Pervasiveness, Not Fully Tapped

By now, it's widely known gaming, although far from fully tapped by marketers, is fast becoming a killer marketing app. More and more studies point to the medium pervasiveness among all age groups.

According to a soon to be released study of 4,000 adults and 1,000 teens conducted online for Jack Myers Media Business Report, 62 percent of all males and 47 percent of all females played video games either on consoles or online in the past week. Males spent an average of one hour and six minutes daily and females 42 minutes daily. Eighty percent of males 18-24 played video games in the past week as did 55 percent of females 18-24.

Among teens, 71.5 percent of all males and 47.7 percent of all females played video games either on consoles or online in the past week. Males spent an average of one hour and 54 minutes daily and females an average of 36 minutes daily.

List Size Affects Best Email Day

A recent eROI study which examined open and click rates of mailing lists of all sizes across all the days of the week found, on average, Sunday was the best day with an open rate of 30.8 percent and a click rate of 7.2 percent. Before all marketers rush out and clog up everyone's lazy Sunday afternoon with e-trash, the study also indicated that the best day to mail varies with list size. The bigger the list, the less efficient. Lists over 200,000 do well on Saturday. Micro mailers (extremely small) do best on weekends. Small mailers do best on Friday. Mid-sized lists do best on Monday and Friday.

Nielsen Measures Minutes, Scraps Commercial Measurement

We don't profess to have a clue how the inner working of the Nielsen measurement conglomerate works but common sense tell us if they can measure a minute, they can certainly measure 30 seconds. Answering the industries call to measure what matters, the commercials rather than the programs in which they air, Nielsen has announced new minute by minute ratings but has also scrapped plans to measure smaller chunks of time in which most commercial actually air. The new system will allow for matching a measured minute to the time an ad ran but why not simply measure the actual ads? Oh, because most suck, no one watches them and it will quickly become apparent that placing a :30 on TV is no longer a wise decision thereby causing a dramatic drop in television revenue, part of which goes to pay the hefty sums Nielsen charges for its measurement services. Sort of a catch-22 situation.

This old system of measurement really should be dumped and replaced with a system like Ad ID and other "marker" technology used by viral marketers to track viewership of viral video. The thing gets viewed, it gets counted. It doesn't get viewed, it doesn't get counted. That doesn't happen with Nielsen. And yea, yea, there's the whole thing about matching viewership to demographics but hey, we just write about this stuff. We don't profess to be able to figure it out.