6 Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011. Jesse Thomas is the CEO and Founder of JESS3, a Creative Interactive Agency.
JESS3 designs products and experiences for brands like Google, Nike, Facebook, MySpace, C-SPAN, Microsoft and NASA. "Likes," views and followers were all the rage in 2010. Despite the social media community emphasizing engagement instead of reach, media agencies quickly learned that engagement doesn’t scale easily, making it difficult to sell. Enter Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As consumer use of social media spiked, the leading social networks retooled their advertising products to satisfy the newfound demand from brands. On the flip side, as consumers incorporate social media more into their daily lives, alternatives to the “big three” in the form of niche and location-based social networks have increased in appeal. Below are six predictions for digital advertising in 2011. 1. Location-based advertising will continue to grow in 2011 as Facebook expands the technology with its location platform, Places. 2. Can open source reinvent the music business?
Under the traditional music model, bands create an album, sign their distribution rights to a record label, and the label distributes the music and benefits from the majority of sales.
Recent economic problems and the advent of digital distribution and file sharing have squeezed labels for cash, which has limited distribution and marketing. Consequently, bands have suffered by losing their distribution rights to companies that no longer have the funds to effectively distribute their music. This poses a few unfortunate outcomes for bands. First, they lose control over their distribution, and if a label is not doing a good job, this can cripple a band’s ability to spread awareness of their material.
Second, labels typically provide tour support if a band sells a certain number of units. It’s widely acknowledged that the music industry is broken, but I believe the black clouds we’re under actually provide a tremendous opportunity for bands, record labels and fans. Changing the rules. Facebook.
4 must-have social-media dashboards for your business. Connect with leaders from the companies in this story, in real life: Come to the fourth annual VentureBeat Mobile Summit April 14-15 in Sausalito, Calif.
Request an invitation. While big brands and agencies have the luxury of resources and money, local businesses don’t. What they need is a social-media dashboard — an all-in-one, Web-based monitoring tool for Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites where customers hang out — that can optimize their online presence, engage with users and manage social campaigns. But that tool needs to meet three criteria: cheap, easy to use and automated. With that in mind, here’s a list of the top four that I find particularly well-suited for business use. HootSuite One of the original players, HootSuite allows users to monitor all of their social profiles, including popular networks Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Netvibes This neat little tool started as an RSS feed reader, but it now allows you to create a custom dashboard based on your interests.