Digital Hive

Broadband is the Operating System for your life

I attended the Yahoo summit series the other day.  Among the speakers, I found Rob Norman of CIA Mediaedge to be enourmously compelling.  He had a couple of soundbites that just hit me right between the eyes and I feel compelled to share them with a wider audience. 

Before I do, a bit of background: the focus of the conference was broadband penetration and its implications.  We have reached a watershed moment for broadband.  70% of all US homes have the internet, itself a significant number, but the real "aha" is that 56% of that 70% now have broadband access.  This is significant because it turns out that broadband is not just about more bandwidth (quantity) - it heralds a fundamental qualitative shift in what people consume online and how they consume it.  It has the potential to quite literally blow the doors off the advertising industry. 

Apple reworking iTunes for podcasts.

William Seabrook has been talking to a number of us (no, this is Steve Jobs in the picture, not Billy) about the growing use in marketing of "podcasts."

Podcasts were a grass roots development when amateur DJs started to record shows (music or dialog), save them as MP3s and distribute them for use on iPODs (and other MP3 players). "It's such a big deal now," says Billy, "that Apple is reworking the iTunes application to stream podcasts and allow people to subscribe for automatic downloads. It's not just for wannabe radio personalities though; a lot of big brands are jumping on the bandwagon too." This is a screenshot from Steve Job's keynote address available at apple.com. It shows a sample of the companies embracing the format. As Billy says, "it's viral, inexpensive and targets a technologically savvy audience."

[If you don't know William Seabrook you're missing out. He is one of our most creative and innovative digital marketers at Digitas and was a key player behind successes like Seinfeld and IN:NYC for American Express.]

No one wants to be a sucker

Consumers are more resourceful and empowered than ever before. But just how savvy are they in cyberspace? Consider this: the E-tail landscape is still in its infancy. And in any new marketing frontier (think Wild West) there are bound to be suckers. That’s what researchers at U. Penn discovered in their recent study, “Open to Exploitation”. Almost two-thirds of adult Internet users believe incorrectly that it is illegal to charge different people different prices (price customization). More than two-thirds of people also believe that online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible.