Advertising During The Simpsons More Expensive on Hulu than TV

We'll laugh at this headline in the not so distant future, but for
the first time, buying a 30-second ad during a Fox broadcast of The Simpsons costs less than buying the same ad on Hulu.

Television broadcast ads during The Simpsons cost $20-$40 per thousand viewers. On the web, the rate jumps to $60.

Shows like The Simpsons and CSI are now commanding
higher ad rates on Hulu and TV.com than on television. It's a byproduct
viewers being twice as likely to recall web ads than TV ads, according
to Neilsen. (Which I would argue is a byproduct of Hulu showing us far
fewer ads.)

But before we all declare TV dead, remember that Hulu has only 37
seconds of ads per "30-minute" show while a Fox broadcast includes a
whopping 9 minutes of sales pitches. So there's still technically more
money in TV, which will change as soon as Hulu begins cramming 9
minutes of ads into each program.

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Opportunities For Entrepreneurs, New Venture Intermediaries

If AdSense is in decline, that leaves open a big market for
entrepreneurs. Publishing is not a winner-take-all market. Google will
not control all online inventory. Advertisers and their agencies like
choice. And users click on whatever is relevant.

We see two plays in this environment:

1. Match relevance. Match relevance means parsing
   content to deliver more relevant ads. This is easy to say and hard to
   do. A lot of smart semantic tech ventures are focusing on this problem.
   This is smarter use of search technology than Quixotic tilting at
   Google's search bar dominance.
2. Connecting CPM to CPA. This is another hard
   problem to solve but promises a huge payoff for the winner. Publishers
   like selling CPM (cost per mille): it is easy for them, and the burden
   of performing lies with the advertiser. Advertisers, on the other hand,
   like CPA (cost per action or acquisition): it is easy for them,
   and the burden of performing lies with the publisher. Both parties look
   at the CPC (cost per click), because that is trackable from both sides
   of the transaction. But CPC is just a proxy for what each really wants:
   CPM and CPA, respectively. Any venture that brings publishers and
   advertisers together with a deal that satisfies the needs of both will
   do very well. There is a huge opportunity here. High-quality websites
   that really engage with their audience will certainly do well by CPA
   metrics, but the solution will have to be really easy to implement.

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The State of the Market in Semantic Technologies

Tools

• Semantic data mgmt
• Semantic data generation
• Databases
• Integration and workflow

Tague said that tools are important, particularly in the enterprise.
He sounded a note of caution to tools vendors: they need to simplify
their stories, along with have "simple basic tools."

Social

• Semantics-powered link sharing
• Network mining
• News sharing
• Tweet mining

Tague said that we shouldn't focus on providing "frosting" on top of
current social Web tools. He advised to focus on commercial
imperatives, such as the categories above.

Advertising

• Semantic ad placement
• Contextual ad placement
• Semantically driven landing pages
• Mashup ads

There are clearly opportunities to improve advertising using semantic technology, said Tague.

Search

Tague noted that semantic search may be "the answer to the question
nobody is asking." He said that we should look at general "semantic
search" vs domain specific semantically-enhanced search. The latter is
where the commercial opportunity actually is, but he questioned the
economics of general semantic search.

Publishing

He put this into 3 sub-categories:

• A-Content Producers - from back office to user experience
• B-Editorial + Aggregation Publishing Models
• C-Robotic publishing - aggregation only

Tague explained that Calais has really focused on this over the last
8-9 months. He said that classic publishers can get an enormous amount
of value from this. Right now the big focus is "back in the bolier
room," for example to cut editors from 3 to 2. He expects that later on
more focus will go on enhancing the user experience.

Tague thinks that B is the biggest opportunity, using Huffington
Post as an example. He said that it gives a "near newspaper like
experience" at perhaps a 5th of the cost. It's an area where they're
seeing adoption of Calais.

Interface

Tague noted that gaming is a huge industry that the semantic technology industry can learn from. He listed these attributes:

• Great story line
• High interactivity, immediate responsiveness
• No interuptions
• Graphically engaging
• Seamless
• Fun

So he asked who out there is trying to really change the user
experience in semantic technology? He listed 4 companies (all of whom
we've profiled on ReadWriteWeb):

• Zemanta
• Apture
• Feedly
• Glue

Tague told the audience that the next big innovation in interface
will be something that stays with the user where they are, which will
be mobile and in the browser.

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Report on Mobile Web Use Displays Apple/Android Usability Issues, Successes

According to the Admob release, "While Gartner estimated global
smartphone sales represented 12 percent of total device sales in 2008,
35 percent of AdMob's worldwide ad requests in April 2009 came from
smartphones. This means that smartphones accounted for nearly three
times more usage than their relative market share." This might seem a
bit of a no-brainer; mobile web browsing on traditional handsets is
nothing short of torture and leaves the user less in the mood for
checking out ads and more in the mood for bloodsport.

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Mobile Ad Spending to Grow to $5.7 Billion

Advertising budgets for spending on mobile channels will hit $5.7 billion by 2014, according to UK-based market research firm Juniper Research. That will be just 1.5 percent of global ad spend, the firm predicts. Still, it looks like a good enough opportunity for Google and upstarts such as AdMob.

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