Better Call A Second Screen

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

The other night, I settled down to watch one of my favorite shows, AMC's "Better Call Saul", the spin-off to "Breaking Bad" that stars veteran comic genius Bob Odenkirk in a dramatic role. This column is only tangentially about that, though. I did something fairly rare for me; I watched it live. And in so doing, got the note for the "second screen experience", in which you can go to a web site and get additional points and trivia while the show plays out. So I did.

The content is fairly low-level, and doesn't really add that much to your enjoyment of the show. But what is being offered is a reason, however thin, to continue to separate yourself as a viewer, from the less lucrative on demand or subsequent streaming service, along with a greater share of voice for the show's lead advertiser. (Acura, and it says something fairly impressive that I remembered that, right?)

Now, the BCS crew is clearly making all of this "extra" content for later DVD release, so dishing out the additional behind-the-scenes filler doesn't seem to be causing them any undue strain. From an advertising standpoint, maybe it spikes the live ratings a bit, or helps to retain the audience a little more in subsequent episodes. On a personal level, I can't say it's going to work on me, because my professional basketball jones is strong, and a live game will always trump a canned drama. But I digress.

The point is that by using the now ubiquitous technology, the live show is made slightly more DVR-proof, and greater branding awareness of the network and advertisers is generated. If it works, and that's easily determined through live site traffic, we'll see more of it, on more shows. Maybe it will make the difference between what kind of shows are given the green light, and which ones are renewed or canceled. It's not just using tech to go beyond the traditional screen. It's using tech to fundamentally alter the business.

Which, of course, opens up all kinds of interesting marketing and advertising plays in the here and now, and much more so later, if the site ever becomes more interesting than the channel. Maybe more content unlocks on desired activity, like viewing longer ads. Perhaps you could get the season ad-free with, say, the acceptance of a test drive. Or the site uses retargeting tech to re-engage the viewer on show night. I'm pretty sure I'd notice, and probably even click on, banners for Saul Goodman. After all, I work in online marketing and advertising. I might need his services someday. (This is where people who are familiar with the show are, with any luck, chuckling darkly.

Now, something that has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, or advertising, but seemed to me absolutely fascinating.

After the show was over, AMC broadcast a talk show with Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn, who plays Odenkirk's love interest on the show. After a complimentary question about the chemistry that she and Odenkirk displayed, where the couple just feel like they've been together for years and years, Seehorn talked about an incident in which she tailed her co-star for hours, early in their working relationship, when Odenkirk was under the weather and unable to speak. Rather than fill the time with her own voice, Seehorn matched Odenkirk's silence.

You'd expect that to be awkward, and I'm sure that on some level it was... but it also made both actors very aware of each other, and to get beyond the need to impress, entertain, amuse and look good. Because, well, not talking. So they just became very aware of their body language, quirks and non-verbal emotions, the way that, well, people who have been in a long relationship with each other get.

Which also led me to the following realization. Many of my hobbies and day to day life lend themselves to similar experiences. Poker games. Going to a game. Playing a round of golf. And so on. All of these skew a little more traditionally male, and all of them can be done without a great deal of chit chat. It makes me wonder if this is at play in career advancement, personal networking and the like. And whether it's just easier, for one group of people.

So if I'm quiet near you, in one of my consulting or office gigs?

Might just be a compliment.

And the start of a very long-term relationship...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Banners Up, Criminals Down

Not So Fast, Grabby

Two notes from the social feed this week that made me wonder if we've got a trend. And if we've got this one, it's a pretty big one.

First, news out of Paris that Criteo, the market leader in B2C retargeting for years, passed $1B in sales. That's a whole lot of ads, and the remarkable thing about that amount is just how deep and sustainable it is. Criteo is a worldwide operation, with banner ads working on a CPC basis, and placements in any number of languages and consumer categories. They also were leaders in monetizing mobile, and making the utterly correct move of having their own publisher relation and media buying team, rather than relying on the same old automated indexes that everyone else used. When ad fraud and viewability went from niche to world-changing problem in 2014 and 2015, Criteo didn't just have better and more exclusive ad inventory. They had the only placements that anyone felt good about having. The doom and gloom probably helped their sales, not hurt.

Next, the report from Integral Ad Sciences, the ad monitoring business that's been reflecting the doom and gloom in the sector for years now. Funny thing: they think this world has turned the corner as well, with a sharp rise in media quality in Q4 of last year, and fraud dropping by as much as a third in programmatic display. Viewability also kicked up for programmatic, and even did so on the dirty old exchanges, and while the numbers are still not where they should be -- honestly, when you know there's fraud and non-viewable ads in your campaign, the idea that there is less of it is not a great feeling -- it's still on the right side of the trends.

Why? Well, because Web advertising is best understood as a Google / Alphabet product, and that company isn't going to let a revenue stream go to ground, just because a bunch of criminals want to make it so. Pretty smart people there, and reasonably well-capitalized. They might be able to fight against the tide of crime.

And while this isn't probably going to be a smooth arc to perfection, since ad fraud is such a target rich environment with worldwide access, the fact that the world got better in 2015 is, just by itself, incredibly encouraging. It proves that there is not an ocean of malfeasance, and the good actors are not armed with brooms. It's more of a fair fight than that.

But hold on. Aren't banners still something that no one ever clicks on purpose, and built on the current user experience mirage of error clicks on mobile? Well, there's some of that, especially for low brands and pure acquisition moves, and marketers that are dumb/lazy enough to think that anything, even a premium ad campaign in the safest of environments, is truly set and forget.

But for good brands on solid content sites, for advertisers that know enough to run A/B tests to show lift, and use the medium for a constant stream of learning engine goodness?

Well, they probably never stopped running ads. Because ads work. Always have, always will, especially if you've got the right list, offer and execution. T'was ever thus, t'was ever will be. Even in a world with fraud.

Oh, and one last thing for all of the people who seem so invested in the death of a medium...

What medium were you hoping would gain from the demise of this one?

And hasn't someone else declared it's dead yet, too?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Too Slow Tech

Faster, Please

As I was scraping the ice off my car the other day -- it's been a mild winter, but it's still completely fine by me if it ends soon -- I was left to think, as always, about technology. How nice a remote starter would have been, so my car could have begun the job without me. How close that tech is, really. And lo and behold, when I got to my desk and checked my social feed, there it was: the app to not just remote start your Tesla from your Apple Watch (well, OK, missing both of those things), but to have it open your garage and come on down the driveway to meet you. Next, of course, will be when the car drives me to work, and lets me get more sleep, because hey, more sleep. And it's not as if driving is that much of a pleasure. I'd happily take another half hour nap. Naps are great. (I'm kidding, I'd probably just use the time to do more work. It's a sickness.)

Now, all of that tech is pretty much at our fingertips, and if it was our top priority as a nation, it would probably be legal in months. But it's not, and if I had to bet the over/under on when it would actually happen in my MidAtlantic part of the world, I'd want at least a decade. That will be a decade of unnecessary deaths from driver error and fatigue, preventable fatalities where the car could have taken over for someone who was intoxicated or suddenly ill, increased greenhouse gases from the inefficient use of transportation, and, dammit, a decade of naps that I could clearly use.

It's not just the driverless car that's going to come slower than you might want. Wearable technology has a clear use in remote monitoring in healthcare, but it will probably take a really long time, because, well, inertia and billing and the medical establishment's lack of regard for patient competence, or tech they don't own and operate. We've mapped the human genome years ago, but the clear and present advantages of such a breakthrough don't seem to be very apparent.

Want to go beyond the health sciences? There's traces of water on Mars, and the ability to draw replenishable power from solar panels, and... no timeline for when we're going to have more than probes up there. There's an increasing amount of water on moons in our solar system, which means that there might even be alien life within reach, but once more, no clear timeline on when we might move than from conjecture to proof. 3-D printers and the Internet of Things and all of these next level businesses that you read about in the Gartner Group or see valued in the markets, all of it tantalizing close, but slow, slow, slow. We were supposed to have flying cars and robot laundry and so much more by now, right?

Why? Well, we're spoiled. The tech that's in our hands every day -- phones and screens and the like -- has gotten so much better, so quickly, that we're lost all perspective on how fast things actually happen, and how it all has to be backwards compatible with the existing infrastructure. Also, how many parts of our world are *not* like the Internet, or able to take down years of venture capital before it can exist without clear profit.

Sometimes, the pace of change and technology all seems to be going so bewilderingly fast, especially when it runs against ethics or employment or the environment. But in reality, it's not going fast enough, and we will, someday, wonder how we managed to put up with life as we knew it.

Tomorrow comes fast. With another forecast for snow to clear off my car.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.