Old Spice is a name that has been around for years. Primarily associated with after-shave, the company has reinvented its products over time. Over the past few weeks, Old Spice has been posting videos to YouTube that directly target certain individuals. These range from celebrity bloggers (Perez Hilton) to Digg’s Kevin Rose.

It’s an interesting technique in a number of ways, primarily because each of these messages are custom-tailored and use the same on-camera performer for TV ads.

By featuring highly visible individuals, Old Spice is almost guaranteeing greater viewership of their overall message.

The company is also actively using social media to interact with its audience across various platforms — Twitter, Reddit and YouTube.

As a marketing and communication company, we get a lot of questions regarding social media. What Old Spice is doing is some of the best — they’re engaging users and acknowledging their audience. Very few company, despite their resources, do that effectively.

As mentioned at the beginning of the year, licensing disputes are going to increase over time. This year, the largest one was between Cablevision and WABC during the highly-anticipated Academy Awards.

Today, it’s between AT&T and Rainbow Media, the company behind AMC, WEtv and IMC. Just like the Cablevision and WABC dispute, Rainbow Media has established a site (http://www.iwantmytvchannels.com/) that asks users to persuade AT&T into not dropping the channel line-up. It also allows them to look for new cable providers. A statement from Rainbow Media :

It is troubling that AT&T is threatening to yank AMC, We TV and IFC and leave their customers without the hottest show on television, AMC’s ‘Mad Men,’ just before the premiere of the new season,” Rainbow Media wrote. “AT&T is acting in an aggressive manner that puts their corporate interests ahead of their customers. We are negotiating in good faith with AT&T and are hopeful that we can reach an agreement as soon as possible so that our viewers don’t lose out.

Why AT&T is doing this: Most cable disputes resolve around pricing. And, this is no different. AMC wants more and AT&T is not willing to do give in.

The media and entertainment space has to undergo a vast structural change. As digital properties continue to expand and licensing contracts no longer reflect market conditions, these disputes are going to increase.

Yesterday various outlets published a story indicating that MSNBC.com, in its new redesign would be eliminating banner ads. While banner ads will still remain on the site, there won’t be as much inventory. In a quote from MediaWeek.com:

“We looked at all the stuff we have,” said Ashley Wells, the site’s creative director. “Video, photos, comments, that stuff was all disparate. When you bring it all together on the page, you need to load things dynamically, it’s no longer about page views. But page views were always a proxy for ad impressions. So you have to figure something else out.”

A lot of digital media pioneers have maintained the same stance for the past few months. While it will take a long time for pageviews to transition out of the digital ad culture, the trend is definitely starting. For example: comScore released its May 2010 U.S online video report last week. YouTube still dominates in amount of content and audience. However, Hulu is a close second — only in number of streams. When it comes to total audience size, it is at # 6. Interestingly, that is lower than Fox Interactive Media, which is owned by NewsCorp, which has a stake in Hulu. On average, Hulu viewers watch 27 streams a month compared to Fox’s 7.4 and YouTube’s 101.2.

In this scenario — should Fox charge a higher ad rate because it reaches more people or should Hulu charge more because it delivers more videos?

The online video space has long struggled with selling ads because many agencies still expect to see high-pageviews while purchasing media. Hopefully this trend will help content creators and advertisers alike.

Mobile advertising is growing by leaps and bounds. With recent acquisitions from Google and Apple, it’s clear that the potential is large. However, today, mobile advertising is ineffective at best and has a negative ROI at worst.

Why Mobile Advertising is Ineffective:

Compared to web advertising, mobile ads are still primitive. Advertisers have to take into consideration the smaller screen size as well as technology differences, most notably the lack of Flash on Apple devices. While these 2 factors are certainly a hinderance, advertisers and ad networks (including Google) haven’t taken proper initiatives to make these ads highly visible. If you browse any website with mobile ads, you’ll realize that the ad disrupts the browsing experience. Furthermore, people browse the web less frequently on a mobile device and for a shorter period of time as compared to desktop devices.

People also browse the mobile web to gather information or to entertain themselves. Not to purchase products. Specifically, not to purchase high-value products. If you do a Google search for “Digital Media” on the iPod touch, Google displays the following ads: an ad for Google AdWords, an ad for HP Media Centers and a Best Buy ad for TVs.
Even as an agressive user of the mobile web, I’m very reluctant to purchase anything after clicking on a mobile ad.

A Negative ROI:

Continuing the scenario above, pay-per-click advertising means that an advertiser pays once someone clicks on their ad. As a user, I would definitely click on an ad to gather more information. However, the likelihood of purchasing the advertised product is close to zero. In other words, an advertiser will get a visitor. But, a tiny fraction of those visitors might even consider following up on that ad.

Improving Mobile Advertising:

With mobile advertising, the potential is large, especially when it comes to highly targeted location-aware ads. In the case above, if the ad indicates that a Best Buy is less than a mile away, I might walk into a store to check out the item.

Take a look at another scenario below — the first set of results are nearly useless to me because I haven’t provided my location to the search engine. However, the second set of results are extremely useful because most of these places are within walking distance.

Apart from location aware advertising, mobile ads also need to be creative. Today, most mobile ads are poorly designed and are being repurposed. Mobile is an entirely different platforms and as such requires different messaging.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled ‘Netflix: A Strong Buy.’ The post referred to the vast business opportunity for Netflix and its ability to execute and deliver.

• It was the first company to start delivering DVDs via mail. It succeeded. Others, not so much.
• It was the first company to start streaming content. It succeeded. Others are still trying.

With the recent release of its mobile application, the immediate opportunity is tremendous. However, in the future, that increases significantly.

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings recently published the following slides about their business. It’s a good read:

A few points of interest:

• Netflix focuses only on one type of content – TV & movie. No news, no instructional, no sports, etc.
• Unlike other hybrid solutions, Netflix has only one revenue model — subscription.
• Over time, Netflix’s biggest cost is going to be licensing, not postage.

Following up on my post from yesterday, I had an opportunity to discuss Facebook Advertising with Shelly Palmer on NBC’s “Digital Life with Shelly Palmer.”

Thanks to Shelly and Amanda for the invite.

There has been a lot of debate over the past few days regarding Facebook’s new social features and how they impact privacy. Many privacy advocates have come out against Facebook settings for a good reason — users have to opt-out by default.

On the web, users have gotten used to opt-in services. That is, they can voluntarily choose to receive information, rather than be forced to receive information.

For example — I can’t send an email newsletter to contacts in my address book. They have to sign-up to receive this email.

With Facebook, it’s the opposite — by default, anytime a user interacts with a product or brand, some of their information is made available to advertisers and publishers. In order to stop this from happening, they have to edit the privacy settings.

While some people consider this a breach of privacy, advertisers and publishers see it differently.

Being a publisher and marketer, these new Facebook policies help me expand my reach in ways that wasn’t possible earlier.

For example, you might have noticed that the Facebook ‘share’ button on this site has now been replaced with the ‘like’ button. While I’m not collecting any user information, anytime someone ‘likes’ a post, the post information as well as the URL of the site is automatically published to a user’s Facebook feed, which is Facebook’s most valuable real-estate.

Similarly, with these new enhancements, Facebook becomes an even more attractive tool for advertisers. If you’ve advertised on Facebook, you’ll know that you can really drill down and target a very specific audience.

Very few advertising platforms offer marketers the ability to reach a highly targeted audience. The only company that has come close thus far is Google and they’ve done exceedingly well.

For a majority of the consumers, I don’t foresee this being a problem. However, for those users that actively modify privacy settings, I would highly recommend modifying these settings to ensure that none of your information is made available to a site that you’re not comfortable with.

There used to be a time where newspapers were the only source of information.

For many, that’s still the case.

However, as time evolves, newspapers will no longer be necessary. News will still be required. Newspapers, as a medium of distributing that news, will not.

Why? Because of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other online mediums.

• Blogs: From the early AM to after dinner, I always have access to content published by blogs via feed readers. These are blogs I’ve selected because they write about topics that I’m passionate about. Newspapers don’t do that. They cater to a general audience. And, in a digital world, generalizations don’t work.
• Twitter: Similar to blogs, I follow certain people that write about interesting things. It doesn’t all have to be about business. By using Twitter lists, I can immediately sort out people that I read occasionally vs. people I read every day. For example, I learned about Saturday night’s bomb scare in New York City via Twitter. And, as Twitter applications continue to improve, I’ll be using Twitter as a news and entertainment source.
• Facebook: I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. These are people I’ve either spoken with or have met in-person. They share photos. They share videos. They share jokes. Above all, they share information. This information is relevant to me, because my Facebook connections have similar interests.
• Other: Today, a lot of my news is also derived from audio podcasts. As someone who commutes 10 hours a week, audio podcasts are a great way for me to keep up with analysis and debates.

There’s no doubt that the web has put a significant financial strain on newspaper models. However, the future of newspapers is still unpredictable. By focusing on what’s relevant to the consumer, publishers can jump start newspaper businesses.

Publications like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times are better-off today because they focus on a niche. While that niche is still broad, it’s better than something like the New York Times.

Apple has remained quite over the past few weeks regarding the Flash vs. HTML5 discussion. Today, in a rare note, Steve Jobs posted an explanation as to why the company does not permit Flash on mobile devices. A great read.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Ask anyone in the media industry and they’ll say that Netflix has had an impact. A few achievements:

• Deliver movies to your mailbox. Often times, more than once a week.
• Vast library of mainstream content and selective independent titles.
• Pioneer in paid online streaming.

At a time where most of the music business has gone digital and a vast number of people have mobile devices, Netflix has stuck to their core business of delivering movies. If you’re looking for an English language TV show or movie, there’s a good chance that Netflix has it.

However, the transition to digital has started. Although TV and films aren’t going away; digital is growing. And only a handful of companies are generating more revenue today than they did in the past. Netflix is one of them.

Netflix has some excellent opportunities on the horizon that could have a significant impact on how people consume content across multiple devices.

• TV: Netflix, through its partners, streams content to TV sets. While this is spread across a number of devices, the potential for growth is large.
• Mobile: With the release of the Apple iPad, the company released a streaming application for the device. According to Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings:
  

  In less than 60 days they created an amazing iPad application and it is only a beginning. The technical issues to expand from the iPad to the iPhone and iPod Touch are not material, but we’ll take a few months to get the user interface right for the smaller screen.

  This statement implies that Netflix is in the process of developing an application for Apple mobile devices, which currently command a significant share in the “full-browser” category. By introducing the Netflix app for the iPhone and iPod touch, Netflix will be able to market to nearly 75 million users at a fraction of what they pay today for customer acquisition ($21.54 as of Q1 2010).

• Streaming only: Netflix has been able to create a subscription model for premium content that is far superior to anything else offered today. Introducing a streaming-only model would reduce their costs and could improve margins in the future.

For Netflix, the possibilties are endless. And, its growth potential is large. A very strong buy.