Viral Ad Network

You may have seen seen this before… tickled me even if I don’t believe Twitter (great tool by the way) will save the world (or even business).

Twitter of course excels at short succinct messages. So do cartoons. Me, I’m hoping for the cartoon equivalent of Twitter. I would use it to Kill Birds. There’s a free web-app idea for someone. Let me know when it’s done…

I’ve been arguing for a while that some marketers massively over-rate twitter when trying to measure on-line opinion. A majority of the “social media monitoring tools” put far too much emphasis on twitter in my opinion; and now two press release from Hitwise strongly support my argument.

To summarise, I feel that focusing on twitter ends up creating a very bad sample for any kind of opinion research, practically ignoring the effect of Facebook, Beebo, Myspace, Youtube, Search engines, News sites, Email,  Blogs, Forums, Instant messaging, and all the millions of other websites on-line.

What is more, I believe that focusing on twitter so strongly is what throws twitter’s collective opinion out of line with the rest of the internet. Online marketers going to twitter to measure internet opinion is like a market research team only inviting people who work for market research companies to give feedback on a product.

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I posted earlier in the year about some madness from the Newspaper Licensing Authority who are proposing to charge agencies a fee for sending urls to clients.

Fair revenues for publishers is just fair; but having my arm twisted up my back by a dying industry and their army of lawyers…that I do not like.

Lis Anderson from Corixa has an interesting update on this story: NLA vs PRCA on charging for weblinks – round two : PR Bristol (Thanks to Caroline at Bristol Media for the link

The US FTC recently updated their guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, bringing in specific examples regarding bloggers who are endorsing a product as part of an advertising campaign.

The guidelines were last updated in 1980, and it appears they wanted to clarify the implications to online advertising.

An example from the updated guidelines:

The advertiser requests that a blogger try a new body lotion and write a review of the product on her blog. Although the advertiser does not make any specific claims about the lotion’s ability to cure skin conditions and the blogger does not ask the advertiser whether there is substantiation for the claim, in her review the blogger writes
that the lotion cures eczema and recommends the product to her blog readers who suffer from this condition. The advertiser is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made through the blogger’s endorsement. The blogger also is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of her endorsement. The blogger is also liable if she fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously that she is being paid for her services.

In order to limit its potential liability, the advertiser should ensure that the advertising service provides guidance and training to its bloggers concerning the need to ensure that statements they make are truthful and substantiated. The advertiser should also monitor bloggers who are being paid to promote its products and take steps necessary to halt the continued publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.

According to the Wall Street Journal,

Regulators say they haven’t seen a wave of abuses involving endorsements by bloggers but wanted to establish clear rules to prevent any problems in the future.

The FTC announcement can be read here, where you can also find the full FTC guidelines.

This video is a great example of fun, interactive and social design. Interesting experiment too!

Pithy comment from Adam Tinworth:

Officially bored of the phrase “social media” now. I’m just going to call it “media” and everything else can be “anti-social media”.

…read his full post.