Out With A Bang

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on here about the difficulty ‘top down’ ad networks had in delivering national ‘brand’ into those prized, local spaces.

They were, they insisted, the only way that this could be done; they just needed a few ‘locals’ to give them the appropriate ‘keywords’, and they were away…

‘National to local only works in a top-down model…’ was the claim.

‘AdMarketplaces’ Adam Epstein used the upcoming presidential election to illustrate this challenge. A national campaign headquarters might not understand all the local keywords they should be buying to tap into what motivates voters…’

Rather you can’t…

But I now can.

For the last few weeks we have been ‘collaborating’ - in the best traditions of @DigiDave – with James Rudd and his AboutMyArea platform.

All 2,700-odd of them. One for nigh-on every postcode district in the UK.

Wire our new Addiply baby into the back of his new baby and map the resulting ‘pins’ in his own, branded ‘blue’ look… and together we can now offer national brands an advertising opportunity in every postcode district in the UK. We can bring a little order to the challenge of herding the ‘6,000 cats’ that inhabit this hyper-local world of ours.

We can build a new, open and collaborative network model. From the bottom up… Click onto our ‘Network’ page and pick a postcode, any postcode…

Well, almost. One of our Ian’s jobs today is to round up one or two ’strays’; one of which – for reasons best-known to Google, long/lat codes and a possible input error – now sits in Northern Iraq.

But whilst we can now offer TescoExtra the chance to ‘find’ the nearest neighbourhood blog to their store in NR14 or wherever, for me I’d like to think that we can now set out with a rather higher social intention.

We can now deliver appropriate HM Government and regional health authority ‘messaging’ into those postcodes that matter; into estates of genuine need and want… not shower the posh people of Ponteland with teenage pregnancy ads; save those for the rougher ends of Britain’s troubled cities.

Equally, we can now offer the regional health authorities the chance to ‘map’ the progress of the Blood Transfusion Service through the postcodes of NR12, NR13, NR14 and NR15 over the next four weeks… a tenner for a £10 CPM banner ad in each of those postcodes.

And repeat for the Breast Cancer Screening Clinic as it winds its way through SL4, SL5, SL6 and SL7.

We can find – and the regional health observatories already have (Jan 09) – postcode ‘clusters’ of cancers, of heart disease of industrial legacy issues. All of which can now be targetted – simply.

There is no need for an algorithm; nor to wine and dine the London ad agencies with all their clever kit in the hope they can somehow get your message off a lunch table in Charlotte Street and ‘down’ to an estate in Sunderland, SR2.

Now you, the Department of Health, can place that ad yourself…. and take both cost and middle man out of the loop.

Because the other side to this particular coin is that if – at last – we can enpower national brand to drill into local and we’ve always had locals finding locals on the Addiply platform, now – possibly – we are starting to see where a sweet spot of at least a part-time hyper-local living could be found…

…where TescoExtra/Bootle and DrugAwareness/Bootle meets the Bootle butcher, baker and candlestick maker.

In between sits the local publisher; BootleNews. Taking home 90% of any advertising income that we can now punt his way – now that both Tesco and HM Government know where to find him.

I was re-reading a piece that quoted Claire Enders the other day in which she looked around the world of ‘Local TV’… and took Jeremy Hunt and Co to task:

“He is not understanding that there will be a deficit [in content] at a regional level that cannot be filled by his local plans as they don’t deliver ubiquitous coverage…” she rightly proclaimed (Jan ‘11).

And that’s the phrase that haunts so many in this brave, new world of ours – particularly for the embattled regional newspaper groups stuck fast in their provincial silos of content and commerce.

They can’t deliver ‘ubiquitous coverage’ for a national brand seeking nation-wide local advertising space.

We can.

The challenge for existing hyper-local publishers is very simple – own your postcode. Own it audience and engagement-wise and if this Government has even half a brain, they can now come and find you…

For the next 40 minutes until I head to Liverpool Lime Street station and my train home, I’m sat in Leaf, in Bold Street – gathering my ‘take-aways’ from today’s gathering of the #LocalTV great and good at John Moores University.

As ever, far, far away from the madding London crowds as they dance on the grave of ol Rupes – now officially an unfit person to run his global news empire. Or at least in this little corner of the world.

‘Getta’ out of town…’ was the gist of Michael Wolff’s piece in The Guardian this afternoon as that paper, in particular, had every reason to ‘celebrate’ the Old Man’s discomfort.

‘The reality is that the cost, real and psychic, of operating in the UK far outweighs the rewards. On top of that, the constant paralyzing media and legal distractions, make it virtually impossible for the company to function in the UK. Management can’t manage.

‘…Understanding that Britain is a lost front, he will retreat to his US stronghold. From New York, the process of disposing of the British papers, which, by reliable insider accounts, has begun, will hasten…’

The Old Man will, finally, abandon his love of staining wood.

The morality play that has – and continues to be Leveson – is fast running its course; the Murdochs have been shown the door; Rusbridger, Davies and Co have swept the Augean Stables clean; the field is left wide open to them and The Daily Mail. We are, therefore, a nation in The Guardian’s debut; a society cleansed of the Murdoch family and all their nefarious works…

Really?

That, of course, is the London view. Out here in local I’d beg to differ.

Star performer at today’s LocalTV gig? Simon Bucks. Of Sky.

The big news? That in April SkyTyne&Wear was pulling 250,000 monthly uniques – little more than three months after its launch; that the ‘pilot’ project has been extended for six months.

Bear in mind that The Guardian’s foray into all things ‘local’ pulled in c50,000 monthly uniques for their three platforms in Leeds, Edinburgh and Cardiff. And that was after a year of brand and personality development by Hannah, John and Mike out of their respective outposts.

Looking at the platform, I don’t see any ‘individuals’ working their P2P magic on that ‘local’ space on the banks of the Tyne and Wear; rather the on-going strength of the Sky brand in this provincial world of ours.

Viewed from the ‘bottom up’, I don’t see a news organisation in full retreat; I see a news organisation on the march – *getting* the whole space that is LocalTV more than anyone else in this country.

The Guardian certainly included who deem that the future is America; not Sunderland or Newcastle; that it is James, son of Rupert, who is currently delivering the future of LocalTV in this country as DCMS/OfCom and Co still insist that the answer will be ‘top down’ and off the nearest TV mast… the use of which will drive a horse and cart numbers-wise through the best-laid plans of the 20 or so cities currently bidding to move into the ‘LocalTV’ space.

It is the Murdochs who are riding to the rescue of LocalTV in this country. As has been mentioned in these pages before…

They don’t need a TV aerial; they’ll run it off The Cloud… and play on the fact that our lives will be mobile. And social. And local. Just as Eric Schmidt maintains.

And they won’t be deploying a Gaffer, a best-boy or a make-up department in their bid to crack the LocalTV nut.

Instead, to quote Bucks from his presentation at John Moores today, ‘we are inventing a whole new breed of journalist – the MoJo…’

The mobile journalist.

That is brilliant.

I do not for one moment ‘buy’ the argument that BSkyB and the Murdochs are in full retreat; ‘run out of town…’ by a gleeful Guardian.

Both father and son might give the London social whirl a miss for a while, but right now they are kicking everyone’s ass in local.

One platform; with – for now – no locally-focussed advertising.

How much is 250,000 North-East uniques worth every month? We’ll see.

But if I am TrinityMirror or Johnston Press and I’m running the ads out of the Evening Chronicle (Tyne) and the Sunderland Echo (Wear), I’d be sweating.

And as for The Guardian, their view of the Murdoch’s ‘defeat’ is one that owes everything to the fact that they are up York Way and viewing the world through a London lens *only*.

Viewed from ‘local’, they’re kicking your a*se… and laughing all the way to that local ad bank.

I’ve been running around a little of late – including a great chat with a man about his roof – but two pieces from the wonderful world of AdLand did cross my desk this week.

Both of which are worth a wider airing.

If we agree with Eric Schmidt that the world is trending in three ways – towards all things ‘mobile, local and social’ – then that presents a number of challenges to those out there in AdLand.

It also offers a number of opportunities as The Guardian’s Matt McAlister has been swift to appreciate; he, too, echoed Schmidt’s thinking in a recent interview, setting a new direction in amongst all that is ‘Open’ at King’s Place…

‘A part of my role is to look outside the Guardian and across the market at what some of the big shifts are happening and to see how we can play on some of those spaces, and this is a demonstration of a different way of thinking about open journalism,’ The Guardian’s digital strategy chief told Shona Ghosh, as he explained the thought process behind n0tice.

‘I think the single biggest one we’re working within is the convergence of social, local and mobile…’

But that convergence isn’t always easy for those that view the world from the top down; for those that I once shared a stage with in 2007 at Jeff Jarvis’ NewsInnovation.com gig at CUNY.

The big ad network boys for whom the world tends to start – and end – around Madison Ave and Charlotte St; for whom CPMs, algorithms and the smartest of smart tech are the very lifeblood of their industry. It makes them the very masters of their universe… to them anyone in ‘local’ will have to come to call if they ever wished to be graced with a WalMart or a Tesco ad.

This is their landscape; they ‘own’ local. As the four panellists here agreed… ‘national to local only works in a top-down model…’

Which they would say; to say any different would be turkeys voting for Christmas.

But it’s bull-sh*t. For as that same panel then admit, they are clueless as to what is going on at ‘local’. And they need people locally to give them that clue before all their smart, smart tech can be brought to bear on that local market-place.

‘AdMarketplaces’ Adam Epstein used the upcoming presidential election to illustrated this challenge. A national campaign headquarters might not understand all the local keywords they should be buying to tap into what motivates voters…’

More tellingly, Epstein delivered the traditional rallying cry of all things ‘top down…’ That you, little local folk have to buy into what we clever, clever metropolitan people are doing…

‘Local has to buy in to what you are doing…’ he said. Only they have the way to deliver national brand into local spaces.

‘You can’t herd 6,000 cats and come up with a digital strategy…’

Rather you can’t…

Anyway. Let’s just suppose some kind local soul does give you the keywords to make your clever, clever tech work.

This piece was fascinating. Confessions of etc…

And for any one in that local space thinking the time was ripe to bend over and take what the big boys with their big boys toys give them, it doesn’t make for re-assuring reading:

Should, for example, publishers worry about ‘programmatic buying’?

‘Anytime you’re putting yourself in a swimming pool with the lowest-common denominator inventory you’re going to be diluted. All it takes is one person to piss in the pool…’

So what’s a secret about targeting that no-one admits publicly?

‘Intender cookies are inaccurate in regards to gender. We’ve seen agencies run tests against the validity of cookies on a data exchange. The gender is wrong 30-35 percent of the time. There’s a huge amount of discrepancy…

Which explains why I’m offered big bra ads off a Fabrice Muamba story. Unless it thinks I work for MI6, I suppose.

The big boys and their tracking toys got it half right when it came to The Guardian’s James Ball; he is at least male; just not 65…<

‘Google’s ad preference page believes I am interested in online video, TV reality shows, printers, Egypt, politics and England. From this, it has concluded I am likely to be over 65 and male… he wrote recently.

It is clearly, likewise, clueless when it comes to the weather. Getting a ‘full house’ of solar panel ads in the current monsoon doesn’t strike me as particularly big or clever.

Go back to that great ‘Confessions of…’ piece and this line is telling: ‘If I were a buyer, I’d buy everything direct. I’d probably stop there. I’d want to cover my ass…

And the whole sense that their world is getting far too complex.

‘It’s unnecessarily complicated. You could bucket people into transactional relationship managers, transactional technologies, and buyers and sellers. Relationship managers are DSPs, ad networks, etc.

‘Transactional technology providers are ad servers, Appnexus, Operative…

Time and again you return to Mr Shirky and his thesis on the collapse of complex business models.

And that would be my gnawing fear if I lived in AdLand; that if the world is, indeed, trending towards local, is our kit and our thinking really fit for that purpose?

*Really?*