Digital marketing intelligence provider AdGooroo recently announced it added search marketing intelligence data on the Yahoo! Bing Network for clients. As part of this news, the team also published a special report on the performance of Yahoo! Bing that's essential for any digital marketer.

Full disclosure: AdGooroo, like SRDS, is part of Kantar Media.

Remember when March Madness basketball brackets were on paper and took hours of the coordinator’s day? This is one thing the Internet has obviously made easier for us. (OK, there might be a few others, too.)

Now the office basketball brackets are online. Phew.

Over the last three or four years, more alternative interactive brackets are popping up. In addition to capturing all the eyeballs that make March Madness a huge advertising event, it’s expanding to all different interest groups. Sure they don’t all involve winning money, but it’s a fabulous way to bring together a community for a few weeks. The objectives are different for each – traffic, ads served, collecting voter info. And hopefully fun.

I did the Allstate BFF brackets on Facebook in 2011. It matched up random FB friends of mine and pitted them against each other to end up my BFF. Friends met friends from different parts of my life, which as you know can be good, or bad. (High school crush vs. Aunt Helen vs. work mentor.)

The ‘GoFugYourself” authors, Jessica and Heather, have put out Fug Madness  for a few years. Anyone can vote on different celebrities based on just how badly you think they’ve dressed in the last year. With links to different outfits throughout the tournament that review the year. You can watch voting live, just like the real games. The 2012 champion Vanessa Hudgens barely beat Lindsay Lohan, in a contest that surged back and forth for hours.

I’m always excited to see how our industry jumps in, both for our clients and our work.

Today I got an invitation to fill out brackets tied to our advertising world – one that pits cereal mascots against each other. It’s from Thrillist via Facebook.

Of, course I had to login to Thrillist and see all the ads, before I could get to FB and vote. And vote I did, via “Like” or “Comment.”

(I do think they skewed the results by switching up if a mascot on left got a like or mascot on right from pair to pair. Maybe it’s their seeding process?) And now I’m hungry for cereal, the ‘good’ kind.

Best of luck to the marketers behind each mascot,. I’m sure you’re hoping for the trophy. Or at least bragging rights.

One list of 11 alternative brackets is going around, and you can check out a list of 12 alternate brackets here. Famous beards? Boy bands? Saddest movies?  Beer? Careful, some are NSFW.

And if I don’t answer your email quickly in the next few weeks, you’ll know I’m busy watching my brackets.

Have you worked on an alternative March bracket for a client?

Tell us which brackets you’re doing.

Online advertisers and publishers have been using behaviorally targeted ads to track, reach and serve ads to their target online demographic. It’s about time that digital radio got into the game.

According to an article by PaidContent, marketers will soon be able to target online radio listeners based on their Internet browsing habits. Currently, you can only track this user base by zip code and gender.

This important development is the result of a deal between radio service provider Triton Digital and data provider eXelate. Marketers and advertisers shouldn’t disregard this agreement. It will have a big impact on advertising plans and results—and not just for sites like Pandora but for traditional radio station sites as well.

For example, if I’m looking at an exercise website, the next time I’m listening to my Classic Rock Pandora station, I may hear an ad from a local fitness center.  Or if I’m searching for a good Mexican restaurant in my area, a targeted audio ad might come up for Chipotle.

Mike Agovino, Triton Digital COO, told PaidContent that radio ads represent a $17 billion industry but one that depends on archaic metrics and that offers little accountability to ad buyers. He believes that letting brands sell to listeners based on their Internet browsing behavior will drive automated ad buying and grow the value of the radio ad market.

Marketers/Advertisers: Will you be more willing to advertise on digital radio now that you can target your ads? 

Twitter users who see tweets from retailers are more likely to visit that company’s website, according to a study from Twitter and Kantar Media Compete, a research firm that looks at the online behaviors of consumers. The study found that Twitter users who see retailer tweets are also 44% more likely to make online purchases than average Internet users are.

While this isn’t jaw-dropping news, it does give retail marketers and brand managers a stronger argument as to why they should use Twitter’s advertising products. Not only will they extend their reach, they have the ability to refer more traffic to their sites, reach new prospects and drive online sales.

The study measured 2,600 U.S.-based internet consumers who saw tweets from nearly 700 retailers such as Amazon, Nike and Walmart from August to mid-October. It’s important to note that only desktop Twitter use was included. That’s too bad because mobile would have been an interesting differentiator. From my experience, most Twitter usage happens via smartphone and most online shopping happens via desktop.

On my Twitter feed, I’ve seen countless promoted retailer tweets recently (see below) and they’re pretty creative. While I haven’t clicked on any of them, these tweets do remind that I need to finish my holiday shopping soon. That alone may be a win for the brand because even though I may not be clicking on their tweet, at a minimum the tweet convinced me to consider their store as a holiday shopping destination.

Do you think promoted tweets are effective? Have you ever used them for your brand?

Full disclosure: Compete, like SRDS, is part of Kantar Media.

Of the more than 4,100 brands advertising on national TV and leading online video sites in October, 23% used online video, 12% used both media and 11% advertised only on online video, according to insights from Kantar Media Intelligence. The overwhelming majority of brands (77%) continue to use national TV advertising exclusively.

The restaurant and automotive industries were the most likely to use both national TV and online video ads, while Internet communications and content companies (as well as resort and travel companies) were the most likely to use online video advertising exclusively.

This data comes from the newly-launched Kantar Media Online Video Measurement service, an online video ad tracking service that is the industry’s first to monitor actual occurrences and creative for video ads appearing on more than 90 top online video sites.

Key takeaway: This service is essential for marketers looking to monitor competitive activities within online video advertising as well as media companies looking to determine which industries and brands are top users of online video advertising.

Find out more information about Kantar Media’s Online Video Measurement service here.

Full disclosure: Kantar Media Intelligence, like SRDS, is part of Kantar Media.

A few months ago the online ad industry was in a panic when Microsoft announced that “Do Not Track” would be the default setting in its new version of Internet Explorer. But rather than sit back and let Microsoft have its way, online publishers and advertisers rebelled.

They complained during Ad Week, they wrote letters, they even promoted ignoring Do Not Track. And they’re not just all talk; many publishers (most notably Yahoo!) are actually going through with their threats, and by ignoring “Do Not Track,” they effectively render it useless.

In a recent Ad Age article, Kate Kaye details her experience with IE 10 and that she was behaviorally tracked despite using the Do Not Track setting:

“DNT should have made me invisible to ad trackers, thus turning my online-browsing experience from relevant-messaging bliss to a belly-fat-ad nightmare. The reality was quite different.”

Considering that advertisers and publishers have said that they will ignore Do Not Track, this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Kaye’s experience is telling in that it demonstrates that Microsoft and other web browser developers may have the ability to default to Do Not Track, but publishers don’t have to adhere to the practice.

So what does this practice mean for online advertising? Kaye isn’t sure but she thinks Microsoft may actually have a bigger problem on its hands:

“I had trouble loading several sites, including CafeMom, CNET, Hulu and CBS.com, in IE. And on sites including WashingtonPost.com and Weather.com, ad-landing pages did not load in IE, either.”

It’s important to point out that the online ad industry isn’t opposed to the idea of “Do Not Track,” per se. Publishers just don’t appreciate the fact that Microsoft would choose to make this setting automated rather than allowing users to make the decision to enable it.

Further, they would rather have self-regulations rather than one sanctioned by Microsoft. AdChoices is a good example of this.

In the coming weeks, I hope the Microsoft execs behind this initiative release a statement or blog post on how “Do Not Track” has fared so far with any statistics or examples of success. Or perhaps they’ll announce that it didn’t quite live up to the hype and change the default setting.

We’ll make sure to keep you posted, but before you go, we want to hear from you:

Do you support the defaulted “Do Not Track” setting?

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the Millennial generation (Americans age 18 to 29) consumes media differently than Baby Boomers and Generation X.

In the last decade, there has been a shift among this generation toward digital media, like Internet news and digital radio. This forced advertisers and marketers looking to reach this demographic to add digital to their marketing mix.

Scarborough, a local market consumer insights company, released a study to uncover the unique ways Millennials engage with the media along with their general attitudes and demographics. Addressing the importance of the study, Deirdre McFarland, Scarborough Vice President of Marketing and Communications, said:

“It is essential to realize that Millennials have a natural orientation toward social media especially since they are a demographic who came of age during a time of rapid technological advancement. By understanding that Millennials still consume news, but that ease of access in engaging with the medium is critical, marketers and advertisers can craft a more intuitive marketing mix to appeal to this young audience.”

Download the full study here or simply check out our top takeaways from the study below. At the least, you’ll be armed with a few key nuggets that may help you craft effective campaigns in 2013.

1. Millennials feel hyper-connected to both their local neighborhoods as well as to the world at large.
2. They are proud of their ethnic heritages. About 62% of Millennials say that their cultural/ethnic heritage is an important part of who they are.
3. Millennials spend just over 82 minutes a day on social networking activities.
4. Millennials are the first generation for whom mobile phones have always been a part of life.
5. They want the news to come to them. Millennials are 53% more likely than all U.S. adults to feel that social media sites are very important for finding info about news and current events.
6. Digital media is a part of how they consume television. Millennials are 86% more likely to have listened to radio online and nearly twice as likely to have watched or downloaded TV programs online.

How are you reaching Millennials? Maybe through social media ads or messages specifically targeted based on their attitudes?

A few weeks ago, we wrote about tablet commerce and how publishers are trying to find new ways to make money while offering readers a more interactive experience through e-commerce offerings.

Thanks to Esquire Magazine, we now have a real-world example of this taking place. The December issue of Esquire uses the iPhone app, Netpage, to convert paper print magazine pages into ones that are digitally interactive on your smart phone.

According to an article on Internet Retailer:

“Readers can use the Netpage app to interact with the print edition of Esquire and do things such as purchase items in ads, play videos, and digitally clip and save any article, photo or ad and share it via e-mail, text, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.”

And this isn’t just a test run for Esquire. All forthcoming issues will function digitally using the app. Hearst Corp., Esquire’s publisher, also announced that its other magazines (Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Elle) will use Netpage in the future.

How Netpage Works:

When a reader hovers over the print magazine pages with a smartphone, the app recognizes each page and sends a digital replica of the page to the reader’s mobile screen. As the reader moves the phone over the page, the app tracks it, and then sends instructions to its web servers on what to show the reader based on how the app interacts with magazine pages.

What Readers Can Do With Netpage:

In this issue of Esquire, for example, a user can watch a video of actor Bradley Cooper, buy featured items from internet retailer MadeMovement, share a recipe on Pinterest and save articles to read later on a smartphone.

Advertisers also benefit from interactive publications like Esquire’s in that they can make their ads interactive and flashy. Lexus is the big winner in this issue. The magazine includes a two-page ad spread for a new Lexus sports car. When readers scan the ad using the Netpage app, it’s almost like you’re emerging from the darkness into the light. The scene begins to animate on your iPhone, the car’s headlights flash on and then the screen morphs into a 30-second video ad.

This may be the first instance of a publisher pushing the digital envelope to enhance print reader experience and drive revenue, but it won’t be the last.

What will be interesting though is whether or not Hearst’s competitors will end up with a digital publication/e-commerce model similar to this or one that is radically and creatively different.  

What do you think?

(image source)

With all this talk of mobile being a crucial piece of an effective marketing/advertising plans, it’s a little worrisome that there’s new software with the ability to block all ads on mobile.

On November 27, Adblock Plus, the popular downloadable online ad-block software, launched a version of its software for Android phones. More than 10 million people have downloaded the computer version of the software, but right now only 3% of Internet users in the U.S. have installed it, according to the Financial Times.

Till Faida, Co-Founder of Eyeo, owner of Adblock Plus, said:

“This will be the first app to remove all adverts on your phone. There is a great need for it.”

I doubt advertisers feel the same way. The mobile version will block ads on the phone’s Internet browser and in other apps, such as the ads you would see on Facebook or Words with Friends.

The scope of the tool is quite outstanding, but the real question is, should advertisers worry?

In America, the answer seems to be not quite yet. The percentage of Adblock Plus users in the U.S. is fairly low, but it does pose a serious advertising question in fairly uncharted territory. Should advertisers and marketers devote time, money and resources into mobile advertising when there’s a possibility users can just block the ads?

What do you think?

Digital marketers and advertisers should be very familiar with the “AdChoices” icon, a lower-case 'i' inside a triangle and complemented by the phrase AdChoices. These icons appear in in the top corner of many behaviorally targeted ads. When you see the icon on a webpage or near a banner ad, it lets you know it is gathering information to understand your interests and/or improve the ads you see.

The icon has been the cornerstone of the online ad industry's attempts to self-regulate and give users the ability to opt out of online behavioral targeting ads if they so choose. Once you click the icon, you are sent to a website where you can learn more about interest-based ads and how to opt out of whether you receive them and from which companies.

In theory, it sounds like a fantastic idea and it’s definitely a step in the right direction for digital advertising, but so far the stats don’t prove that it works.

Only one in five Web users says they notice the AdChoices icon, according to an article on Media Post. The article cites research by the University of Pennsylvania's Joe Turow.

Furthermore, more than half (55%) of Internet users say they don’t know if they’ve seen the icon and 24% say they have not.

While Turow believes that the 20% awareness rate is low, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's general counsel Mike Zaneis disagrees. He believes that the study shows that the program is making headway:

"Twenty percent of market awareness for an icon program after a little more than one year in operation is progress that any brand marketer could envy."

It’s still early in the game for this effort, but digital advertisers should at the minimum be aware of Ad Choices and the fact that the vast majority of Internet users don’t notice the icon, so far. At the least, behaviorally targeted ads still seem to be an effective way to track, reach and serve ads to your target online demographic.

In a recent blog post on iMediaConnection, Penry Price advocates that the rise of programmatic buying shouldn’t kill media planner creativity. I’ll take it a step further. Programmatic buying should actually enhance creativity.

When I had my first media planning job, the Internet was just starting to become an advertising medium. Back then a “roadblock” on the MSN homepage was a really big deal, and no one had ever heard of optimizing the plan, never mind doing it in real time. 

But that’s what programmatic buying now offers; the ability to reach consumers based on changing data in real time. As a former media planner, that’s exciting to me and it should be to you too.

I know what you’re thinking, how can I be creative when I’m staring at campaign dashboards all day? Price says it best:

“You can be more creative and serve your clients better (and be a hero at work) if you work to align your efforts to truly understand the journeys of your client’s potential customers.”  

Look at the matrix of web traffic data on the dashboard as a person and not as a slice of a customer segment.  For example, think of it as a person desperately searching for the season’s hottest Christmas toy and appreciate their journey as your own. Then recognize that programmatic buying platforms give you the ability to make that toy appear right before that person’s eyes.   

So what’s next? Look around for more interesting ways to connect your clients to people and their journeys. Everything is a potential entry point to the journey, from the ways people interact with products to their media consumption habits throughout the day. You can be the expert in the room; all it takes is some creativity. There, I said it.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, meaning that Black Friday is right on its coattails. While I’ve never had the experience of shopping the day after Thanksgiving, it’s widely practiced in the U.S.

Even during the past few years when our economy has been on the rocks, shoppers have still trekked out in the cold with their bellies filled with turkey and stuffing, ready to get the best deals on electronics, toys and more.

In 2011, Black Friday sales increased 6.6% over the same day of 2010, according to ShopperTrak, a retail technology company, resulting in $11.4 billion in retail purchases – the largest amount ever spent on the day. Retail foot traffic rose as well, increasing by 5.1% over Black Friday 2010.

That means if you haven’t already, you’ll soon see ads everywhere on the hottest Black Friday deals.

ShopperTrak released a press release earlier this month predicting that national retail sales, as compared to the same time period last year, will rise 3.3% during November and December, the peak holiday shopping months. They say retail foot traffic will increase 2.8%.

The National Retail Federation also predicts a rise of just over 4% in store sales during the holiday season. NRF CEO Matthew Shay says:

“In spite of the uncertainties that exist in our economy and among consumers, we believe we’ll see solid holiday sales growth this year.”

Online shopping continues to grow and for the first time, more than half of shoppers say they will use the Internet for gift buying, according to the NRF.

But these forecasts don’t mean that advertisers and marketers should sit back and relax and just let the sales pour in. They’re going to have to put in the work too.

ShopperTrak says retailers will have to earn the expected sales increases of 2012. Bill Martin, ShopperTrak founder, says:

“Those 32 days provide extra time for consumers to shop more frequently and to visit more stores during the holidays. But retailers must prepare to capitalize on the holiday opportunity while managing the increase in operating costs that go hand-in-hand with extended store hours on more shopping days.”

One thing that this group needs to be extra mindful of is that there are two extra weekends this holiday season because Christmas falls on a Tuesday and the fact that there is a weekend between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

One thing is certain, Black Friday is sure to be just as crazy – if not more so – then last year.

Marketers and advertisers need to be creative in their ads, where they place them (many are using SRDS.com data to help make their decisions!), as well as the deals they’re offering.

Happy Holidays!

Online Hispanics are more engaged with social media than non-Hispanics, according to a report from eMarketer.

Almost 7 in 10 Hispanic Internet users will or have visited social networks at least once per month this year, which is quite a few percentage points higher than the number for all Internet users.

In 2012, there have been 23.9 million Hispanic social network users, a huge number to say the least, but what may be even more intriguing is that social media usage makes up a significant chunk of the overall Internet usage of Hispanics.

Further, a March 2012 comScore poll for a Terra Networks report revealed that online Hispanics average 4 hours per week on social networks compared to 3.7 hours for online non-Hispanics.

"Online Hispanics’ above-average time spent social networking is particularly striking when one adds a bit of context: The same study found them spending nearly three hours less per week than non-Hispanics using the internet across all screens (8.7 hours vs. 11.6). Putting all of these numbers together, it’s evident that social networking plays an outsized role in Hispanics’ overall digital lives."

So what does this mean for ad agencies and marketers?

If you’re looking to reach a Hispanic audience, you might want to consider more social advertising versus more traditional online display.

Read more about the full eMarketer report, “US Hispanics and Social Networking: A Digital Space They Make Their Own,” here.

In only two days, ad:tech will take place in New York City. If you haven’t heard, ad:tech is one of the best digital marketing events around and it’s worldwide.

Our Kantar Media SRDS team will be there at Booth 1803 along with team members from Kantar Media Intelligence, Audiences and Compete. We’d love to see you, so if you’re at the show stop by to introduc yourself.

We love media and all things digital, so the ad:tech conference program looks full of excellent topics. Here are some of the sessions we’re most excited about:

1. Follow the Money: Investors Place Their Bets on the Future of Advertising - Will the digital advertising bubble pop? Depending on who you ask, we’re already seeing it happen. This session will include a discussion about the future of advertising from the perspective of the people that fund it. They’ll talk about the new products, services and technologies that they’re backing – the startups they think will change the ad business moving forward – as well as how the financial performance of industry darlings post-IPO has shifted their thinking.
2. Cross-Platform Media Strategy: Advanced Reach & Targeting - There are real challenges when it comes to buying different types of media and integrating them into a single plan – but when it’s done right, a cross-platform campaign can be one of the most effective tools in digital marketer’s toolbox. The session will include examples of how to bundle search and social with TV, radio and print for maximum reach and engagement, and they’ll also explain how to measure the effectiveness of each disparate medium.
3. Mobile Marketing: Best Practices for Cracking Today’s Most Intimate Channel - According to a recent study by Ericsson ConsumerLab, more than 1/3 of smartphone users get online before even getting out of bed. So how do marketers engage these mobile consumers on a meaningful level? Senior marketers will bring you up to speed on mobile, relate it to other topics like search and social, and explore ways to take advantage of today’s technologies to extend the platform and engage consumers.
4. New Marketing Platforms: Wearable Devices, Advanced TV & More! - Google and Apple are both working on wearable devices, nearly 40 percent of American households have at least one TV connected to the internet, and location-aware mobile apps can track shoppers and send precision-targeted ads when they’re within a certain radius of a store. The “future” of advertising is now. In this session, you’ll get a first look at the cutting-edge platforms marketers have begun adding to the mix – some at scale – as well as glimpses into the products and services coming down the pike in the next 12 months.
5. Publishers and Tablets: New Strategies for Monetizing and Creating Content - Is the love affair between publishers and tablets fading? No, but is because a more mature relationship. We’ve lost the breathless headlines about new tablet apps, and feverish pushes to buy tablet-specific ads. Now the focus is on creating sustainable tablet revenue streams, including figuring out subscription models that entice print subscribers, as well as developing unique tablet content in a cost-effective manner. This session will present some of the newest strategies for creating and monetizing tablet content and audiences.

[Note: be sure to check out the SRDS Tablet Media Library to see some of the best apps from business, consumer and newspaper publishers.]

6. Next-Gen Ad Attribution: Make the Most of Effective Accountable Measurement - Click-through rates, post clicks, impressions, tracking mechanisms and site analytics all serve their purpose, but don’t always accurately account for the various influences along the purchasing path. Today’s marketers must analyze how various channels interact to determine where attribution makes sense. Much has been said about different ad attribution models. What is the best way to measure and should marketers restrict themselves to these pre-determined models? Leading brand and technology experts will share insight into today’s ad attribution and where marketers should look next.

Sensing a pattern here? All of these sessions involve some aspect of digital advertising or online marketing, two topics that we’re always trying stay at the forefront of.

What sessions look the most intriguing to you?

Click here to see the full ad:tech NY schedule.

Dan Kennedy wrote an interesting piece on the rapidly changing "alternative weekly" landscape for MediaShift, titled "Alt-Weeklies Struggle to Reinvent Themselves for the Digital Age."

Kennedy covers the decline and occassional rebirth of alt presses, noting:

"As it turned out, the alternative press was just a few years behind the dailies -- and when the Internet apocalypse hit, it hit hard."

He also points to The Phoenix (an appropriately named rebirth of The Boston Phoenix) as a prototypical example.

It seems to me that if alternative weeklies are going to survive and thrive, they need to play to their traditional strengths -- progressive politics, long-form narrative journalism, and deeply intelligent coverage of the arts -- while seeking out new ways of making money. Reinvention as a glossy magazine, the route The Phoenix has taken, is one way, even if the new publication can no longer be considered an alt-weekly in the strictest sense. Separating the journalism from the adult ads, as the Village Voice and its sister newspapers (and The Phoenix) have done, is another.

Half a century ago, the alternative press represented something fresh and exciting. The excitement is long since gone, but the need for a diverse range of high-quality local media is as great as ever. Alt-weeklies -- or whatever we should call them -- can still be a vital part of that. I hope they are.

Read the full article at PBS MediaShift, and keep abreast of changes to alt-weeklies across the nation with the continuously updated Newspaper Media Advertising Source from SRDS.

New research from the Media Behavior Institute bolsters what many of us have long suspected: that we—the media and advertising pros who claim to best understand consumer behavior—are rather different than the consumers we often represent. As reported in MediaPost:

While the data is based on a small sample, the findings are striking, because the media pros reporting were so dramatically different than average consumers, especially when it came to their use of Internet-connected computers and mobile devices.

Amazingly, the media pros spent 53% of their waking day interacting with email, vs. 20% for the general population, and they spent 28% accessing the Internet vs. 15% for average consumers.

Their use of mobile apps and social networks were similarly distorted, which may go a long way toward explaining Madison Avenue’s obsession with those media platforms.

Ninety-two percent of the media pros utilized mobile apps, and they used them for 11% of their waking day, on average. Only 25% of consumers utilize mobile apps, and use them for 6% of their waking time on average.

Exactly half of the media pros used a social network and accessed it for 19% of their waking time vs. 19% of consumers who used it for 7% of their waking time.

Also notable was the finding that, "When it comes to 'traditional media,' consumers utilize all forms—especially radio—more than industry pros with the exception of print."

The research was presented by the Media Behavior Institute during MPG’s Collaborative Alliance session during Advertising Week.

(Note: Kevin Moeller, Executive Director of Research & Analytics for the Media Behavior Institute is a speaker at the fall 2012 Chicago and New York Media Mixology events.)

Broadcast media has changed forever. No longer a passive feed for couch potatoes, TV has become an interactive, on-demand experience.

As Kantar Media's Jeff Boehme and Jon Swallen point out: "The internet may grab all the headlines, but advertising spend on national TV in the United States is still growing faster than  the rest of the market."

This emergent landscape offers plenty of new opportunities, and new metrics are evolving alongside them.

In an article for Kantar Media's Momentum Review, "TV Breaks Out of the Box," Boehme (Chief Research Officer, Kantar Media Audiences North America) and Swallen (Chief Research Officer for Kantar Media Intelligence North America) examine the opportunities for measuring television advertising and creating powerful new experiences for clients.

They write:

Measurement has a growing role in the evolving TV ecosystem. Advertisers are demanding greater accountability for their investments and return path data (RPD) provides second-by-second usage information to help value a campaign based on actual audience to the commercials. Unlike traditional ratings, RPD enables marketers to understand how viewers consume their ads and what factors can ensure the best environment for their success.

The drumbeats of Local! Local! Local! seem to keep getting louder, although they also seem to be more and more difficult to distinguish from the competing cries of Digital! Digital! Digital!

As Mark Ailsworth points out in a post for iMedia Connection, 

According to U.S. Census data, 75 percent of consumer spending occurs within 15 miles of the average American’s front door, meaning 50 percent of the nation’s GDP is dependent on consumers buying locally. 

Increasingly, of course, local and digital campaigns share objectives, audiences, and resources. More than half of total retail sales in the U.S. are influenced by the Web.

Ailsworth points out some of the factors advertisers should consider as more of their local advertising dollars shift away from "traditional" local marketing channels and move into digital and internet advertising.

What about from the planning side? How can planners help clients to best integrate their local and digital budgets? 

Last week Microsoft announced it intends to launch Windows 8 with Do Not Track (DNT) as the default setting set for the included version of their web browser Internet Explorer (IE10). It has caused much controversy and gnashing of teeth among digital advertising proponents.

What is DNT and how does it work? 

To answer that, first a little bit about the way browesers and web servers work:  any time you tell your browser to navigate to a web address, your browser makes a call to the server and asks the server to send back data. So when I type www.espn.com into my browser it contacts the servers at ESPN and asks them to send back the information I know to be ESPN.com.  What the servers at ESPN can also send back is some tracking software to see where else I go and what I do on the web, and to store any preferences I may set for that site. (I don't know if ESPN does or does not track its visitors, but I do know this is very common to web publishers.)

DNT is a setting on the browser that tells the web server not use that tracking technology with this user. 

What does this mean? 

That's part of the problem—no one really agrees what it means when a DNT signal is received by a web server from a browser.  Does it mean collect information on what I do on your site but not the rest of the web? Or does it mean don't watch what I do at all? What kinds of tracking mechanisms are affected by this signal?  It's not yet clear.

As Microsoft's Chief Privacy Officer, Brendon Lynch, states in his blog post from May 31, "At the moment there is not yet an agreed definition of how to respond to a DNT signal."  Adding to the confusion is the fact there is also no mechanism forcing web servers to obey the DNT signal.  Which means they can simply choose to track you anyway.    

Why would Microsoft do this? 

In 2007, several consumer advocacy groups asked the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track list for online advertising. Microsoft says it's responding to these requests and "putting people first" by placing privacy controls in the hands of the people.

Suppose for a second that the DNT signal means no publisher is allowed to collect any information on you or your web travels. Then consider that IE market share hovers between 30% and 55%. Add to this the low probability most users will look for or change the DNT settings on their browser.  This would mean personalized experiences on the web would go away for those of us with the DNT signal set to "on."

Online advertising would go back to the days of scattershot ads. Because advertisers wouldn't be able to gather insights from your behavior on the web, they can no longer tailor their offers or experiences to you. 

I suspect this is a move designed to generate goodwill for Microsoft with consumers now, all the while striking a galancing blow to Google. In the end, I'd guess IE10 will ship with the DNT signal off, with very explicit intstructions on how to turn it on. 

We'll all have to stay tuned to see how this all shakes out. Just today, Ad Age reports that W3C, the international organization that sets standards for web protocols, "is preparing to label Microsoft's browser as 'noncompliant,' setting up a showdown between Redmond, web-standards creators and the rest of the online-ad ecosystem."

How do you think this controversy will affect the online advertising world?