IanSchafer.com

Sponsor My Twitter Profile/Feed! (Updated)

OK folks. Here's an experiment.

I'm auctioning off sponsorship of my Twitter profile and feed. No in-line ads like @scobleizer. This is full graphical integration.

Check out the ebay auction here.

Here's the text of the listing:

This is an auction for a one-month sponsorship of my Twitter feed and page that lives at http://www.twitter.com/ischafer. I've got hundreds followers, many of whom are amongst the interactive advertising industry elite, including numerous journalists.

This one-month sponsorship includes replacing of the existing background image with the image(s) of your choice, as well as replacement of my handsome photo with another image of your choice (ie. brand logo).

I average about 8-10 outbound 'tweets' a day, and your brand would be represented in each.

I'll be blogging this experience at http://www.ianschafer.com.

Lets experiment together.

Any questions? Ask in the comments below.

Someone's got to figure out some kind of business model with Twitter. And I'd rather be part of the solution.

**UPDATE: The amount paid by the winning bidder will go as a donation to The David Wright Foundation.

My Upcoming Speaking Engagements.

Want to keep up with all of my speaking engagements? Well why didn't you just say so?

Just keep an eye on my Google Calendar. I'll keep you up to date.

(Note: Skip to June. That's where they begin...)

Adweek Heaps Praise Upon Deep Focus. We Curtsy.

The effervescent Brian Morrissey and the gang over at AdWeek have profiled 5 agencies to watch, and Deep Focus is proud to be one of them.

You can read our profile here. But here's an excerpt:

Few could doubt Ian Schafer's belief in social media. The Deep Focus founder blogs and uses Twitter daily to connect with others and share his thoughts.

This close affiliation with social media flows throughout the New York digital shop, which boasts an array of social-media firsts for clients: the first MySpace and YouTube film promotions, a Google Maps mash-up and a campaign on Photobucket and Gaia Online.

"If we see something we think is going to pop, we can turn it around really quickly," Schafer said.

The willingness to experiment is paying off for Deep Focus, which Schafer, a former director of new media at Miramax, started six years ago. He saw agencies siloed around specialties. They were not structured well for a world where consumers control the brand messages they receive. Deep Focus was formed with not just creative and media together, but also public relations, drawing on Schafer's experience marketing films, which rely heavily on PR.

The approach has helped the indie shop attract attention from movie studios and media companies, and marketers like Nike, Johnson & Johnson and Glaceau. It is typically called in as an innovation SWAT team. For Glaceau's Vitamin Water, for instance, it crafted a Facebook campaign in March that integrated Vitamin Water into Slide's SuperPoke application. It led to the brand being passed along 9.7 million times in a week.

Read the rest here!

Thanks to Adweek for the honor! BTW, if you're not following Brian Morrissey's twitter feed, you should be. And follow mine whilst you're at it.

The New York Times API: Coming, But Is Revenue?

As ReadWriteWeb reports, the New York Times is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper 'programmable'.

From the post:

In addition to the API, New York Times CTO Marc Frons told mediabistro.com that internal developers at the paper will use the platform to organize structured data on the site. Following that, the paper plans to offer developer keys to the API allowing programmers to more easily mash up the paper's structured content -- reviews, event listings, recipes, etc. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

The effects that this might have could be far-reaching. The NYT is still a morning (and throughout-the-day) mainstay for millions of readers (and bloggers), and giving others the ability to use its content as they see fit may result in even more readership.

But access to content will no doubt be limited. What the NYT really wants is for people to visit its website. Not extract content from it. It's the great Newspaparodox. News has become a commodity. Blogs are beating newspapers to the punch, often because it doesn't have to deal with a bureaucratic fact-checking system (for better or worse). Analysis, features, and 'exclusives' are still the things that set the NYT apart.

The questions that still need to be asked are:

* Will opening up an API result in more readership?
* Can that increased readership be monetized?
* Can this be an additional/incremental revenue stream, or one that just aims to offset losses from the newspaper?

The Times' facebook application has only attracted 1,200 users, but then again, the successful facebook apps tend to skew heavily towards the silly.

'Opening up' is a trend, finally. But trends can become fads very quickly without a responsible business model. If you're a content publisher or media company, the least you should be doing is API-enabling your content. The next thing you should be doing is figuring out how to turn that openness into incremental revenue.

If you're an agency, you should be proactively bringing ideas to your clients that can take this API-mentality to its advertising and brand positioning. And if directly increasing revenue is not your goal, then you should be understanding and explaining how getting more open can yield positive results in other ways. But as in any case, to quote Glengarry Glen Ross, 'never open your mouth unless you know what the shot is.'

American Apparel Gets Called Out.

Happy Friday. This cartoon skewers American Apparel (and then its customers) for its use of titillation to sell clothes. Or something.

Ad-related humor lifts all ships.

Enjoy the long weekend!

Was Anyone Thinking Ahead About the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery?

I was engulfed in work tonight, and realized that I missed a night I've been waiting for for a while -- the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery. As a Knicks fan, it's all I had to look forward to this season.

11:43pm: Where did I go first? ESPN.com. And no list of the lottery results on the homepage. Ah, but there was a small link to the story about the draft. But no list of the results. Argh!

Google Search on 'nba draft lottery results'? Turned up nothing. Nothing!

So then I go to NBA.com.

A link to a video recapping the top three picks. But I WANT A LIST! It was only until I got down to near the bottom of the site (which I only realized existed by doing a Firefox 'find text' function) that there was a link to the results.

11:51pm: Going back to those Google results made me realize that I missed the fact that Yahoo's coverage of the results were, in fact, indexed -- but it was the very last result on the first page of results.

This was way too hard to find. So maybe I can help everyone by just posting the list here. Maybe I'll linkbait have better luck getting indexed by Google than NBA.com did:

Results of the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery

SECAUCUS, NJ, May 20 – Following are the results from the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery, which was conducted Tuesday at NBA TV’s studio in Secaucus, New Jersey. The Chicago Bulls, who had a 1.7 percent chance of obtaining the first selection, will have the first overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, which will be held in New York City at The WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, June 26, 2008.

1. Chicago

2. Miami

3. Minnesota

4. Seattle

5. Memphis

6. New York

7. LA Clippers

8. Milwaukee

9. Charlotte

10. New Jersey

11. Indiana

12. Sacramento

13. Portland

14. Golden State

Following is the order for the remainder of the 2008 NBA Draft:

15. Atlanta (To Phoenix)

16. Philadelphia

17. Toronto

18. Washington

19. Cleveland

20. Denver

21. Dallas (To New Jersey)

22. Orlando

23. Utah

24. Phoenix (To Seattle)

25. Houston

26. San Antonio

27. New Orleans

28. LA Lakers (To Memphis)

29. Detroit

30. Boston

2008 Second Round Draft Choice Order:

31. Miami (To Minnesota via Boston)

32. Seattle

33. Memphis (To Portland)

34. Minnesota*

35. LA Clippers

36. New York (To Portland)

37. Milwaukee

38. Charlotte

39. Chicago

40. New Jersey

41. Indiana

42. Atlanta (To Sacramento)

43. Sacramento

44. Philadelphia (To Utah)

45. Toronto (To San Antonio)

46. Portland (To Seattle via Boston)

47. Washington

48. Cleveland (To Phoenix)

49. Golden State

50. Denver (To Seattle)

51. Dallas

52. Orlando (To Miami)

53. Utah

54. Houston

55. Phoenix (To Portland via Indiana)

56. New Orleans (To Seattle via Houston)

57. San Antonio

58. LA Lakers

59. Detroit

60. Boston

* Pick may be conveyed to Detroit.

Watch My Full Appearance @ IAB Leadership Forum on Online Video.

Watch me talk about the upfronts, the future of online video, branded entertainment, and oompa loompas from my appearance earlier this month at the IAB's Leadership Forum on Online Video, moderated by my good friend (even though he's a Phillies Fan) Patrick Keane from CBS. Also featured is Steve Robinson from Panache.

Let me know what you think:

Have We Run Out Of Viral Video Ideas? Or Just Directors?

Ok. So I'll admit. I never really saw the beauty (well, maybe 'cuteness') of the Ray Ban viral video done by Cutwater.

It lost its charm after one view, and lets not forget that it got 1.6 million views in a week, and a year later only has 1.7 million more. Doesn't say much for any kind of staying power, and a rather inefficient use of money (even though I have no idea how much Ray Ban paid for this).

Well, here's a new video by the same director, this time for Levi's.

Look familiar? Well this clip has 3 million views already, but to me, is even less impactful. And unlike the Ray Ban video (which uses Wayfarers that are iconic Ray Ban style) there's really nothing calling attention to the fact that these are Levi's jeans. Not even in the title (in which I would have used the word Levi's instead of 'jeans'.) This clip has the same director, 'Benzo', and it leaves me wondering how this was sold into the client...

(Tip o'the hat to Adverganza for pointing me in this direction.)

Watch Me On Today ’ s 3 Minute Ad Age.

To my surprise, I was featured in today's '3 Minute Ad Age' video regarding the future of the Upfronts.

A (allergy-riddled) star is born.

YouTube ’ s ‘ Buzz Targeting ’ : Interesting, Flawed.

Today, YouTube announced a new program called 'Buzz Targeting'. This program basically allows advertisers to target their overlay ads to videos that are 'about to go viral' (YouTube hyphenates that as 'about-to-go-viral'. Please, let's come up with a better phrase -- like 'pre-viral').

Now, it's not all videos, though. It's only videos of YouTube's content partners, which are mostly (if not all) created by professionals. Lionsgate was the first advertiser to use this program, as the press release states:

"With so many videos going viral on YouTube at any given time, buzz targeting allowed us to reach a very large, diverse audience,” said Danielle DePalma, Director of Digital Media, Lionsgate. "By running ads against some of the most prominent content on the site, we were able to place our brand at the center of the experience that millions of people have on YouTube every day.” Ads for "The Forbidden Kingdom" ran against more than 500 of the most popular partner videos in music and entertainment, including content from major music labels and videos from users in the YouTube Partner Program.

The problem is that this runs afoul of an answer that Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave me when I asked him (at the AAAA Leadership Conference) how YouTube was going to be able to share more revenue with content producers. His answer can be paraphrased as "by improving targeting, we improve performance, which allows us to charge higher CPMs and share more revenue with those content producers, both amateur and professional."

Isn't advertising on the most pre-viral videos on YouTube (and using that as your inventory pool) sucking all of the demographic and contextual targeting out of it? It just feels to me like such a blatant attempt to lure advertisers into the 'flavor of the minute', while setting the effort up for failure in terms of ad performance.

Here's the question I'm left asking: Is this going to be an effort that can command and justify higher CPMs? Or is this just another shortcut to associating ads with 'cool' content? We all know the 'coolest' videos on YouTube are created by non-professionals...