This is Violence

An awesome/sad tale of Google advertising gone very wrong.

How wrong? What you need to know about this story is that solution to the problem involves the author emailing the following to herself.

“I tried again with, ‘I am going to kill myself. I love cupcakes.’”

That wrong.

“…and this is where things get interesting. Instead of being taken directly to the site, those who click the link are first shown an image selected from roster the bre.ad user has designated in advance, for 5 seconds. This can be likened to an interstitial ad of sorts, though the ‘bakers’ at Bre.ad prefer to call it a ‘personal digital billboard.’ In those few seconds, the ‘clicker’ has an opportunity to ‘toast’ the image — or in Facebook terms, to ‘like’ it.”

I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t an article from The Onion, except that I’ve worked in advertising long enough to know that reality in this industry is often indistinguishable from parody, and so I’m forced accept this as real. As such, I’ve been staring at this quote for a little while trying to figure out how to respond without coming off like a dick.

No way comes to mind.

What I’m having a hard time with is trying to understand the conversation in which bre.ad was conceived of, and then how it could be considered a good idea.

“You know what the world needs?”
“A way to show people interstitial ads after they’ve clicked a link?!”
“Yes! But also, what if they could ‘like’ the ads they saw?”
“Perfect.”
“God this is good cocaine!”

“Kim Kardashian tweets a picture of her new engagement ring but upon clicking, her fans are first taken to an ad for Carl’s Jr”

Do the people who come up with these ideas not use the web? Do they find themselves wondering “why is there no ad attached to this link I just clicked?” Or are they just able to will the sort of cognitive dissonance required to imagine that somehow brands will benefit by putting up barriers between people and the content they want to see in a medium where there is basically no precedent or need for such things?

People like the web because it gives them immediate access to what they want. Be the thing that gives them what they want, and they’ll love you for it. It’s really pretty simple. Or, you know, interstitial ads. Either way.

Also, ‘liking’ is called ‘toasting’. I just want to point that out again.

“Heineken’s global advertising campaign is taking a different route to attract consumers, debuting commercials online rather than on TV. Alexis Nasard, chief commercial officer at Heineken International in Amsterdam, said brands must: Think digital at the inception, not as an afterthought…the digital element must be part of the brief and the creative presentation.”
— Heineken’s Digital Gamble - PSFK via pakyouare

The fact that I really can’t stand these commercials aside, I also feel like there is a fairly large disconnect between the sentiment of the quote - which is correct - and the execution of the campaign.

In my mind “thinking digital” means more than taking your commercials and putting them online. Save the commercial remix concept, which isn’t what I think any one would consider revolutionary, the whole thing is just about as traditional as possible. None of which is to say that the campaign isn’t an effective one - I really have no idea. More that I’m just not sure any of this really required any sort of unique strategy other than “put the videos on YouTube”.

An interesting look at the philosophy and economics behind Marco Arment removing the free version of Instapaper from the iOS App Store.

I’ve taken a pretty strong position on ad supported apps on my phone - I don’t download them. My point of view is that I want my dollars to be dollars motivating the developers of apps I use, not advertisers. Every other product I’ve ever bought works this way and I don’t see any reason why apps would work differently. Further, every product I’ve ever seen that was ad supported ended up either being a bad experience for me, and bad experience for the products creator or, most likely, bad for both of us. My feeling has always been that ad supported business models result in lowest common denominator type products, which isn’t the sort of world I want to live in.

With that in mind, it was create to get the perspective of the creator of one of my most favorite apps: Instapaper.

In five sections Arment catalogues his rationale:

“Bad economics
So Instapaper Free has an ad from The Deck in its list screen. It’s unintrusive, its advertisers are respectable, and it pays well. It’s the best ad unit I could ask for.

But it still makes far less than paid-app sales — the increase in app sales with Free’s absence exceeds this many times over. The math to explain this is simple: most Free users won’t give me anywhere near $3.50 worth of ad impressions.”

“Undesirable customers
I don’t need every customer. I’m primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?”

“Low conversions
If I don’t have a free app for a long time, I’m certainly going to miss out on some potential long-term conversions. But how many, really, and what would it cost to chase them?”

“Image and product-design problems
If you have a free version of your app, that will be the only version many people will ever see. So, for the Free users, that app — that extremely limited app that lacks almost all of Instapaper’s best features — is what they think Instapaper is.”

“Minimal demand
When there’s no free option, and the only way to try an appealing app is to pay a small amount of money, people do. Not everyone will, but enough will.”

“Open on three totally cool BROS (2 white, 1 black) having a cool time watching SPORTS on a sick television! One bro starts to freak because they are out of BEER (!) until another bro gives a totally “GOT IT COVERED” look and reveals the coffee table is actually a COOLER FULL OF DELICIOUS BEER! Whoa! The bros high five.”

Only very marginally NOT an actual script for a beer commercial. At least until Super Bowl 2012, at which time: YES!

Now, according to Deadline, the talks are being hung up because Weiner refuses to accede to three of AMC and Lionsgate’s demands: integrating product placement into the show, cutting two minutes from each episode to make room for more commercials, and “eliminating/reducing two regular cast members to save money.”

Nothing in Lionsgate’s demands have anything to do with making a better product. In fact, each one is about making the product worse to increase margins. I would love to see world where TV and movies could get funded Kickstarter style, that is, paid for by the actual customers of the writers, crew, and actors - viewers - instead of the customers of distribution houses- advertisers.

adteachings:

“For one thing, they don’t involve linear storytelling. There’s no beginning, middle or end, and there’s no build to a climax. Rather, the user arrives on the scene and understands almost immediately what action, if any, he’s supposed to take. All good advertising makes the target say, “What’s going on here?” For an Internet-dependent idea to work, that question must be answered almost immediately. Otherwise, your visitor will move on to something else.”

Yes to all of that.