Aventine Partners

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We ran across this presentation by David Gillespie featured on the Slides that Stick blog (an excellent resource for good PowerPoint presentation tips and ideas) and wanted to share this well-done vision of where the internet is and where it is going.  

Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)

View more documents from David Gillespie.

This supports much of what we are experiencing day to day, give us some new things to think about, and impressively packs lots of ideas into an easy-to-absorb presentation.

Impressive Interactive Data Visualizations from NY Times

Despite the troubles in the newspaper industry, some -- notably the New York Times and Wall Street Journal -- have been exceptionally innovative in the area of data visualization.  Both have really raised their game in their widespread presentation of data in both the print and online versions.

A couple of recent visualizations from the New York Times team caught our attention as great examples of using motion charts to display change over time and interactivity to encourage exploring data.

An analysis entitled Turning a Corner?, uses a sequence of motion charts to display business cycle data and describe patterns found in past cycles and the current downturn.  What is interesting about this analysis is how nicely the analysis is explained and the story is told using nine 'frames' to the story.  This combination of i) an appropriate application of motion charts and ii) good story-boarding communicated the complex data, reasoning, and conclusion across in an very efficient fashion.

The Shifting Consumer

Identifying how consumer attitudes are shifting in this downturn and which shifts will stick is an important, but tricky, task.  John A. Quelch and Katherine E. Jocz tackled this issue in the Financial Times with their Managing in a Downturn.  

I can recommend this article as thought provoking, and it contains some good insights.  But there's some bad mixed in with the good.  First the good.

Key takeaways:

"What is certain is that the market segmentation scheme you were using to plan your marketing budget and programmes this time last year is obsolete. You need to listen to your customers and possibly develop a new segmentation approach."  

Very true.  The authors recommend an overlay segmentation that adds insights to how consumers are reacting to the current environment.  This is likely a good first step.  

In Online Ad World, "Value" Doesn't Drive Price, Supply Does

Despite the increasing ability to deliver highly targeted marketing messages, the online advertising market will never, ever command premium rates.  

We love that our clients are able to put analytics to work with campaigns in the online world that take advantage of increasingly sophisticated targeting capabilities and highly segmented audiences.  But it's astonishing to hear the never ending lament from the online publishing side that rates are low and ad buyers just don't place a high-enough value on their product.  The inescapable implication is that the marketers and media buyers just don't get it; that they're somehow not bright enough to see what targeting can do.

I'm sympathetic to being passionate about the value one brings to the table, but I think the ones who don't "get it" are those that believe buyers who are getting a great product at a low price are dim witted.

An Ad Age report this morning, Online CPM Prices Take Tumble, continues to attribute ever falling online CPMs to confusion about the superior value of the product.  Here's the analysis, in brief:

Problem:

• CPM rates are in the basement, below $1 for remnant inventory.
• Sell through rates are so low, around 30% for some online publishers, that remnant inventory pricing is driving the market.

Diagnosis:

• Marketers who have become accostomed to using the web for high-volume, low-yield campaigns never developed the sophistication to take advantage of the better targeting that can generate higher yields.
• Too few publishers have the discipline to "stand up for themselves", sell to the value, and hold the line on pricing.

Solution:

• Better educate buyers about the superior value of highly segmented audiences and ever-better-targeted impressions.
• Be more disciplined about pricing, and refuse to give away inventory below its true value.

This analysis might hold water if not for the most critical characteristic of this industry: nearly unlimited supply at a marginal cost of effectively zero.

Marketing Analytics Jump Start for Publishers

For some time at Aventine we have done work with newspaper and magazine publishers on customer analytics addressing a variety of problems.  Increasingly, economic consitions in these sectors have made it more difficult for circulation marketers to make investments to increase their use of customer insight and targeting analytics.

Fortunately, for most publishers that are just beginning the process, the issues, questions, and approaches are similar.  We have been able to take advantage of these similarities to develop some standardized, and therefore cost-effective, approaches to getting started.  This has led to the launch of our Marketing Analytics Jump Start for Publishers solution.  The video below provides some more detail.