links for 2008-11-18

Ampersand : The Changing Face(s) of K Street

Interesting insight from an expert influencer (Norman Mineta, Chair of Hill Knowlton and frmr Sec Trans & Sec Commerce). Backlash against career lobbyists and the rise of the democratic platform will almost certainly affect who holds the "pole" position on a range of issues. It also suggests fundamental change in political PR in general and K Street lobbying in particular is afoot. It would seem that traditional business lobbyists: 1. Will need to expand their communications toolset as traditional paths may be less productive, 2. May need to “front-run” the legislative process anticipating resistance and affecting compromise with key constituencies in advance, 3. Adopt political campaign tools in terms of tapping into traditional, vocal support groups, and. 4. Find folks who can create new, issue-specific constituencies from scratch. 5. Leverage paid advertising, earned media, grassroots mobilization and coalition building.

(tags: PR lobbying washington)
Social Targeting - AdAge

Do you buy the same products your friends do? If so, you may validate early findings by academic and commercial researchers. Marketers at Yahoo and Razorfish argue that social affiliations (as represented in your “social graph”) are as good or better than demographic variables in predicting marketing responses. Don’t have a network? No problem. Some companies are using cookies and ad-serving data to determine who you interact with. Others have announced all manner of “deep math”. Of course, the obligatory social targeting ad network is imminent. It strikes me that there is "can" and there is "should". If you asked the average consumer whether he/she wants marketers reverse engineering his/her social graph so that they can then use his/her purchase or affiliation history to better target ads at his contacts, I think you would get pushback.

(tags: social_network ad_targeting social_graph yahoo razorfish)
P&G's McConnell on Social Networks - AdAge

McConnell's comments point to social networks’ Achilles heal. No, not that consumers think less of brands found on networks. Whether ads on my email account, IM client, Facebook page, iPhone app, or cereal box, I can separate the conversation I’m having from the ads around it. Social Networks’ Achilles' heal is that brand advertisers perceive the display context tainted. Social network inventory IS underperforming - see falling CPMs. But, Facebook and MySpace are smart. They’re layering in revenues that leverage their social nature. That means gift referral, app placement, digital product, bulk buying, and premium service revenues. It also means less reliance on display. While it’s one thing to hope that future apps will yield fertile ad ground, the question for CPG sellers is: As consumers shift to these networks, what are they doing to influence the ad outcomes? Is swearing off a pub’s inventory good enough? VC’s, with arguably worse odds of a payday, backed iPhone’s iFund and Facebo

(tags: social_network p&g display_advertising brand_advertising cpg)