Month: March 2010

Specials On The Streets Of San Francisco

My San Francisco visit highlights the need for location-aware online ads.

It may be jet lag or hallucinations brought on by an overdose of blue cheese dressing, but my visit to San Francisco during the last week has convinced me of two things: there are some very smart people in the online ad business, and they’d better have a location-aware ad play by the time you’ve finished reading this. If they haven’t got one soon, then my first point was wrong.

My predictions landed on your screen on 1st January, didn’t they? Well, 109,440 minutes later (or 17th March as some know it), I’ve seen my three key thoughts in action. If they can achieve mass-market penetration, there’ll be substantial new advertising revenue around. Having seen the pieces come together now, I can really foresee huge opportunities for companies that can get scale and reach on mobile devices. And although I am in the spiritual home of internet start-ups, the tool that proved my point was created in New York, and I’ve been using it in London for some time, believing there was something in it. It’s the tool that made me the unelected mayor of two coffee shops (who should read what I have to say and get me a free coffee): Foursquare.

Foursquare is a location-aware social network mobile game (just count those buzz words and cash your VC cheque now). In a nutshell, tell your friends where you are, collect points and leave tips about great things to do. Check in (identify your current location) on your mobile phone wherever you are (my check-in stats are here). The game elements, points, value and status add to the fun. Wikipedia says there are 450,000 members/players as I write this.

As I wandered through San Francisco, I’d check in occasionally. You get more points the first time you check in, so, as I hadn’t been in town for 10 years, every check-in was a stack of points in my own personal game. But here I saw something new. A little “Special Nearby” flag would appear. Check the special, and you’ll discover offers on places nearby: $1 drinks, a frozen yoghurt discount or something for the mayor. Visit the location, check in, and show your mobile phone to the retailer to claim your discount or freebie. Simple, elegant, and it really works. There should be no reason London isn’t offering as many specials right now, but if it is, I’m going to the wrong places. In Frisco, I just kept coming across them in the central area.

This all ticks at least three of my prediction boxes just 10 weeks after I wrote them down (I’m not claiming to be Mystic Meg, just that the collision of these ideas proved themselves to me a little sooner than I thought they would)! Tick one: it is location-based, and the specials are near where you are now. Tick two: most specials are, effectively, coupons which you show to redeem. Tick three: it’s real time (by which I mean the offers are available near you now). I haven’t determined if the venues offering the reward are always open when you see the “Special”. Tick, tick, tick.

I have no idea if it will be Foursquare that goes big with this (they need more people in more places playing), but it is showing what a world of location-aware advertising could be like, and that’ll be a very appealing world to a lot of retailers. As the number of advertisers grows, a little user targeting (to ensure, of all the offers here, it’s the right one for me) will be needed, but generally, the people who will see your advertisement will be in the right place at the right time. It’s an ad proposition with lower waste and greater measurability, which is what most businesses want.

Now, I’m checking in at the airport to head home to try a check-in at Paul A Young Fine Chocolates, which are, apparently, offering free award-winning chocolate truffles if you prove you’ve checked in.

Pay Walls Will Save Newspapers

Every man and his dog, if he works in digital media, has an opinion on this one. Pay walls will, or will not, save newspapers, magazines, books and any other form of printed word. E-readers, iPads and digital paper are, or are not, the saviour of the free press. So, why shouldn’t I wade in here? I may as well be shouted down by those who think that paper has, or hasn’t, got a future.

Every man and his dog, if he works in digital media, has an opinion on this one. Pay walls will, or will not, save newspapers, magazines, books and any other form of printed word. E-readers, iPads and digital paper are, or are not, the saviour of the free press. So, why shouldn’t I wade in here? I may as well be shouted down by those who think that paper has, or hasn’t, got a future.

And so as not to be sidetracked, I’ll repeat my first prediction that pay walls will lead newspapers and magazines into a better digital world (which may, or may not, save their business models in the long run).

My second prediction is that pay walls will be removed after, for argument’s sake, twelve months.

In my end-of-year predictions, I suggested pay walls would be good for advertising because an engaged, paying audience is, generally, attractive to advertisers. And it’s far too early in the year to be retracting such suggestions, so I’ll be sticking with it. But, upon further reflection, I think there will be a second advantage to short-term pay walls, and it’s not the pay bit that’s useful but the wall itself; the act of registration and identification that will aid newspapers’ business models.

The subscription money may or may not be insignificant. But in a world where advertising is highly targeted to us as people, be that by our tracked behaviours or the things we write – or the games we play -in social media, knowing more about audiences is becoming a necessity to deliver advertising online. But most media organisations don’t know much about me as a user at all. I read anonymously with only an IP address acting as a proxy for who I am.

But look at the market they are playing in. According to Hitwise, getting on for 6% of all UK web visits are to Facebook. And Facebook knows a lot about me because I tell them through all my daily interactions. Google accounts for nearly 9% of all visits, which, while admittedly being search-based (i.e., en route to somewhere else), is still giving them tremendous insight into my behaviours.

Pay walls will start to give newspapers a better insight into their audiences, and with that data, they’ll start to be able to attract much more highly targeted media. Once that data is put to use, newspapers will realise they need to tear down the walls to grab a big audience, but those people will start to be given reason to identify themselves so that advertising can be targeted properly. And then another of my predictions will come true: it’ll be all about the data.

It is for that reason that I think pay walls may save newspapers and magazines.

I also predict that personal jet packs will be the future of transportation by 2011.