ADTECH FULL FRONTAL: Is real time the new prime time?

Turning up the heat on marketing campaigns by turning up the spend on prime time TV is fast losing its oomph. Instead, we all need to start dialing up the live and real time aspects of a campaign to generate impact. That’s where the new marketing energy can be found.

There are lots of examples of media programming and campaigns that use a sense of live urgency – a perishable not to be missed experience - to generate interest and keep an audience. Whether it’s a real time promotion like My Wishlist for American Express during the holiday season or the ever increasing importance of big live sports events or the live aspects and audience participation in many reality TV show formats, real time urgency helps stop marketing and programming go cold or disappear into the long tail of fragmented excess.

The live nature of the web in terms of social networks is another dimension for dialing up the heat of a campaign. TV used to be a social network too, when we all watched the same programmes at the same time. Now it’s the networked nature of users online that can create shared experiences and extend a campaign’s reach.

If live is one side of the real time coin, then on-demand is the other. When customers do nowadays want to talk to a brand or want content about a brand, we better make damn sure we are there for them in real time where and when they want us. This means more money spent listening and responding to customers rather than pushing ourselves onto them. I guess prime time also now means your time. As Mark Burnett said recently, the new prime time is 9 to 5 when people are at their computers.

Finally, behavioral targeting is surely another example of the shift from old world analogue mass marketing to a real time digital approach that’s big still in terms of its ultimate reach but not mass.

- Mark Beeching, Digitas Chief Creative Officer

Comments

[Thomas Spicer]

It reminds of some of the discussions that have been circulating on that fact that time, or attention, is a limited and increasingly scarce resource. Time is certainly not a common consideration, but one that should be. Certainly making a transaction as easy as possible is one way to recognize this, but I wonder if there will be other models gain hold that involves more direct compensation to users.

Some interesting reading on the topic over at http://bubblegeneration.com/

[John Young]

I believe that a bunch of the new stuff that's getting called "web 2.0" is a response to what Siva Vaidhyanathan at NYU is calling the "Paradox of Abundance." If the Internet is like the biggest high-school cafeteria that ever was, where do you sit?

Users are taking numerous cuts through the ocean of the Internet to create smaller communities. Organized by highly-focused communities of enthusiasm (Japanese death metal sung in Swedish), or even by a replacement for the limitations of distance (buy a 512 meter plot of virtual land in Second Life, and your neighbors will show up and bring you pie just like in a Norman Rockwell painting,) my guess is that "real time" is one of the powerful ways to funnel down the sheer, crippling amount of choice available out there. Not "what are people doing out there?" but "what are people doing RIGHT NOW NOW NOW?"

Now, as a developer, real time scares the hell out of me - I have grey hairs from the American Express Wishlist promotion, where we have The Entire Intarweb banging on our door at once - but it's a fun challenge, and certainly a good way to learn all the time zones :)

[David Kenny]

The best way to respect a consumer is to respect their time. And the response is often for consumers to buy time savings with their money. The increased personalization of the card finder on americanexpress.com drove higher responses because they saved time in finding the right card. Similarly, the personalization on delta.com is driving more ticketing because its faster to book a ticket with pre-populated screens and prior preferences noted. Google Checkout will drive more online commerce because you can go from search to placing an order in seconds. To consumers, all time is prime (and valuable) time. Let's show the more respect for their time, and they'll love us for it.