ADOTAS

• In other news of things that make sense, Facebook‘s blog today mentions a Journal of Consumer Research study that says people identify more personally with brands whose ads pop up on their own Facebook pages than they do with brands whose ads appear on strangers’ pages. To take it a step farther, the higher a person’s self esteem, the more they’ll identify with those brands advertised on their own pages. The concept this hinges on is implicit self-referencing, and the premise goes like this: If you have healthy self esteem, you’ll feel positive emotions when you look at your own Facebook profile. That lends itself to a positive association with the brands whose ads show on up your profile, especially if those brands have some connection to your self-identity.

• Google’s being sued for patent infringement, and the way buySAFE, the company bringing the suit, puts it, it sounds strikingly personal. Here’s the gist: buySAFE offers a secure online shopping service, which the company says is unique and protected by patent law. Since 2006, the lawsuit says, Google had tried to partner with buySAFE. buySAFE eventually shelved those talks, but, says the suit, those discussions plus Google’s 2010 recruitment of the then-COO of a buySAFE client company granted Google enough proprietary information to launch its own copycat service. You know it as Google Trusted Stores. Or maybe you don’t — Google Trusted Stores just launched in October. And yet, the lawsuit goes on to accuse Google of timing its launch of Trusted Stores to “impede buySAFE’s effort to raise additional capital,” as well as giving retailers that participate in Trusted Stores a higher search ranking and telling retailers they could use either Trusted Stores or buySAFE, but not both. Here’s a copy of the lawsuit. If buySAFE is right about this, Google pulled a few pretty brazen maneuvers. And if buySAFE isn’t right, it at least put in a good hustle: They’re laying the smack down on Google Trusted Sites before the latter is even remotely a household name.

When Kelt  first started contemplating the group-buying segment in 2009, he saw a lot of parallels to the development of the display space. Media companies have fantastic raw assets — targeting was basically built into the business model, Kelt comments — but need assistance entering the market. The key component MIA was is the technology — the underlying platform to deliver massive scale while also offer granularity and segmenting.

Sound a little similar to the evolution of the display space? That’s probably why former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt is chairman of Group Commerce and DoubleClick lead engineer Andrew Glenn is CTO.

Group Commerce’s white label platform was designed to enable “audience owners” — online publications, newsletters, blogs, celebrities — to move into the e-commerce space,  the operations with raw audience assets — to enter and succeed in the group buying and discount market, effectively bridging the gap between media company and e-commerce company.

The latest major audience owner to join up with the company is automobile-focused publisher network Edmunds.com, which will use Group Commerce’s platform to share exclusive offers from carmakers and dealers with its readership. Edmunds joins the respectable company of Daily Candy, The New York Times and Boston.com on Group Commerce’s impressive client roster.

But Group Commerce offers audience owners more than just a platform. ”We teach a website how to offer deals from start to finish,” Kelt says.

In particular, the Group Commerce team helps media companies develop merchant strategies, which Kelt calls the service’s top differentiator. The experienced staff — including former higher ups from 1-800-Flowers and Gilt Groupe — works with site owners to decipher what kind of offers to serve, which audiences to target and — way more important than you may think — optimum presentation. The data for making these decisions can be extracted from media company data analyzed against e-commerce opportunities.

For a larger slice of the revenue cut, Group Commerce employs its 15-person sales team to source offers for media companies. It also offers add-on services such as customer service (for the deal-grabbing consumers — of course Group Commerce services its clients!) as well as deal copywriting and design.

However, Group Commerce is picky about the publishers it works with — they must have several of the following six qualifications.

1. High brand engagement.

2. Verticality (via audience segment and/or content).

3. Strong local voice.

4. Locally segmented (i.e., publication knows where its readers live).

5. High user transactional intent.

6. Size (of course it matters!).

Since launching, Group Commerce has raised $18 million in funding, including a $10 Series B round with participation from Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures and Bob Pittman that closed in May. Currently a 62-person team, Kelt said the company plans to expand to a staff of 100 by the end of the year (always looking for more engineers and sales people). By that time, the platform will be available in 15 cities.

What’s that Rockwell? — somebody’s watching you?

“Retargeting has helped turn on a light bulb for consumers,” privacy advocate Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy told the NYTimes. “It illustrates that there is a commercial surveillance system in place online that is sweeping in scope and raises privacy and civil liberties issues, too.”

Well, yeah — I’ve wrote before about the Internet surveillance state when the Free Art and Technology Lab unveiled their “Google Alarm,” which goes off on every site where Google collects your data — which is most of the web. Everything you do on the Internet is being watched. Hate to pee on your party, people, but the Internet is not free: you trade the data you input (except for personal private information) for a wealth of services.

The U.S. doesn’t have strong legislation or regulation surrounding data privacy management because the marketing industry has been trusted to self-regulate. They think they’ve been doing a pretty good job, but they might be biased…

The New York Times story begins with an anecdote from Julie Matlin, who was stalked by a pair of shoes she looked at on Zappos.com. She notes that retargeting is a “clever marketing tool,” but “It’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.”

What actually seemed to creep her out was that Internet display advertising was effective. Her banner blindness was overcome! But at heart it’s the same old story for the interactive advertising world: consumers are scared because they don’t understand how it works.

“It’s not a debate whether this is effective, it’s a challenge of users not being informed,” said Dean Vegliante, general manager of NetMining. “If it’s not clear, people are going to always assume the worst. Let’s be clear, proactive and educate whenever possible. This will help provide additional comfort across the board.”

Also what creeps people out is retargeting done badly. Matlin mentions getting barraged by retargeted diet pill ads that made her feel fat — a fail whale should be awarded to that advertiser. Vegliante noted that real problems arise when users are too targeted and advertisers make aggressive assumptions in their creative.

There are a few best practices retargeters should follow, Vegliante said. First, make sure the data being employed is as real-time as possible and the creative is directly tied to the interest level. Second, learn when it’s best not to show an ad. And finally, never wade into territory that could be viewed as sensitive or personal in any way.

“Being overly conservative is the best approach,” he adds.

Loyalty Lab Executive Vice President David Rosen acknowledges that retargeting done badly can cause more harm than good. “The best way of using retargeting tools is with an audience that has given you permission to engage with them in this way. It’s a great way to trial and fine tune these type of targeting techniques.”

For advertisers wary of irking consumers via retargeting and behavioral targeting, Rosen suggests loyalty programs as an alternative. “By leveraging those who have engaged with your brand before they begin a relationship that allows for more frequent communications and allows you to engage more frequently. By creating these type of loyalty programs brands can engage with these potential buyer beyond a banner and be multichannel.”

But also how much more transparent must retargeters be? The NYTimes article notes that Zappos uses Criteo for its retargeting and banners include a link titled “Why am I receiving these ads?” A click will take you to a customized Criteo page that specifically tells you why you’re seeing a certain ad, how to disable retargeting from Criteo and what your current Criteo cookie status is.

Criteo, which just moved its headquarters to the U.S., flourished for a decade in Europe before entering the States. Do you know how freaked out Europeans get about data privacy?

In response to the NYTimes article retargeter TellApart made disabling retargeting even easier — all users have to do is click on a little red box. A further option allows them to withdraw from all of TellApart’s campaigns.

The New York Times story is good in that it will help educate the masses, but is retargeting really creepy? Is behavioral targeting really rooted in online spying? I mean there are plenty of companies legally spying on us offline. Funny how it’s newspapers, which have been suffering from declining ad revenue for years, that always “break” such sensational Internet advertising stories.

ADOTAS – Only one in five U.S. consumers is willing to pay for online news, according to a recent Pew research study. Pay-per-article or subscription fees simply drive readers elsewhere. These findings are bad news for newspaper and magazine publishers intent on charging readers for online content. But the creative juices are flowing at such cash strapped publishing houses.

For example, the New York Times recently announced a hybrid plan in which readers will be able to view a certain number of free articles each month, but they’ll have to pay a flat fee for full access to the site. By comparison, the Wall Street Journal Online has a flat $79 per year subscription fee, which they are able to charge because their content appeals to a specialized and motivated readership. And that quintessential capitalist, Rupert Murdoch, has indicated his intentions to build pay-walls around News Corps. many other information outlets.

For consumers to fork over the cash, news organizations will have to offer “content that is unique, and this may require specialization and investment by news organizations,” Pew reports. A creative approach is obviously needed. To date, the advertising of online print media has been more closely related to the traditional print forms. But the online versions of broadcast television networks reflects their traditional video commercial advertisements.

Print media online has ample opportunity to expand beyond traditional methods of generating revenue for the invaluable service they provide to our public discourse. Readers may have the patients to watch a video commercial prior to being able to read a news story. But anything beyond a few seconds of attention and savvy online readers simply go around the pay-wall.

But Whedon bypassed the networks — cable and broadcast — for one of his most creative efforts, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” a three-part musical comedy starring Neil Patrick Harris as a wannabe evil genius. The show was released in three hilarious installments on the web, thus highlighting the potential for highly original and well-produced content introduced on the Internet.

Former NBC executive Ben Silverman is not blind to the potential here, hence why his new studio Electus has signed a distribution deal with Yahoo! to produce content — shows, he says — in collaboration with advertisers.

In an interview with The New York Times, Silverman was vague about the kind of programming he intends to develop for Yahoo, but noted the potential for “episodic storytelling.” He boasted that he’s working with actors like Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and America Ferrara and said he’s “tapping into the A-list storytelling engine.”

We’re talking “Lost” brought to you by Coca-Cola (somehow I doubt an airline would sponsor that show) and exclusively on Yahoo!.

Silverman has a rep for being the executive producer of such television hits as “The Office,” “Ugly Betty” and  “The Biggest Loser.” After a two-year stint at NBC, where he failed to deliver the network from the ratings slump it has experienced since the expiration of monster hits “Friends” and “The West Wing,” Silverman jumped the network ship in 2009 for the open fields of Internet content, partnering with Barry Diller and IAC/InterActiveCorp to form Electus.

This would be an interesting new gateway for brands, especially as advertisers bemoan the lack of original video content online. Brands have been sponsoring online videos for some time — I particularly enjoy “The Onion Sport Network’s” Sweat Room brought to you by Coke Zero — but this is a creative leap. Online video is ripe for highly original content — rather than the glut of cheaply produced how-to content.

What better way to lure advertisers away from TV than by high-quality, Internet-based content that they get to help create?

But he doesn’t have such unkind words for Yahoo! — normally he’s pretty mum on the subject, which is strange because according to data from comScore, more people around the world are headed to Yahoo! News than Google News.

Yahoo! News boasted 138 million unique visitors in November, compared to a bit over 100 million for Google. Both Yahoo! and Google’s news sites have been sloping upward over the year, with Yahoo! jumping from 120 million unique visitors in November of last year.

Google News has actually had the biggest bounce, with only a little over 60 million unique visitors last year. It took second place from the New York Times digital publications around September; NY Times came in at 92 million in November 2009, while CNN.com limped into fourth with 66 million. Still, the latter two both improved over their stats for last ear.

However, within the U.S., both CNN.com and NY Times digital saw more unique visitors in November 2009 than Yahoo! News and Google News. Google News just tipped 20 million unique visitors in the U.S.

Beyond the headline-grabbing loss of $37 million for the quarter, it should be noted that online ad revenue slipped 8.2% year over year. Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound so great, but it’s a lot better than second quarter’s drop of 15.5%. In other words, it seems we’ve seen the bottom of the canyon and we’re making our way back up.

But the real promising news bolsters a trend that appeared in Gannett and McClatchy’s earning reports — online advertising makes up a larger portion (23.5%) of total ad revenue than the year before (18.6%). Despite sharp print ad losses, Gannett and McClatchy noted a healthier online ad environment. Add to that The Wall Street Journal Office Network — a service that combines the Journal online with stock updates and scrolling news — reports that ad revenue is up 100%.

It would seem that advertisers are forgoing the old gray lady and her print brethren for their sexier digital grandchildren. Some of this may be the result of a faster recovery in online advertising, but the environment seems to be pointing to a sea change favoring Internet advertising over most other mediums.

CEO Tim Armstrong’s new direction for the faltering and every-changing company is to corner the market on original digital content, and it seems to be working. According to the Times, of the more than 80 Web sites, ten are ranked in Technorati’s top 100, and Politics Daily, which began in April, already has 3.6 million unique users a month. In the aggregate, the media properties at AOL have about 76 million unique visitors. The amount of good talent out there has helped AOL as well.

“I’m not going to deny that the availability of talent has accelerated many of our efforts,” Martin Moe, who is in charge of the news sites at AOL, including Politics Daily and DailyFinance, told the New York Times. “Suddenly, in the last 18 months, this huge pool of talent has become available.”

It’s unclear if good content alone is going to help revive AOL and bring in advertising. I’ve become a firm believer that it’s good content and an engaged audience that will win the day.

The newspaper seems to think what works for traditional journalism is the same way it should for blogs, it doesn’t, and time after time foists another silly blog-centric story on readers. This past weekend it was how blogs are rumor-sponsoring coffee klatches that are so tired most of them fail. (Even more than restaurants, it exclaimed.)

Certainly, editing, fact checking take a high priority at the Times. But Jeff Jarvis wrote that all journalism is in beta. Online enables reporters to turn that to advantage with transparency, collaboration and news as process. (He even points to a couple of blog posts that appear to be also fueled by rumors.)

I think they are both right and wrong. Traditional newspapers do have a higher standard, not that they always reach it, and blogs are evolving the way journalism can be written. Bloggers sometimes put out news that are not totally verified, allowing for crowdsourcing factcheckers. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but the Times condescending angle makes it look like the elitist out-of-touch empire that it sometimes is.

Howard Kurtz at least comes at the evolving blogger role with a light touch writing about the official launch of True/Slant:

“With newspapers and magazines laying off and shutting down, journalists are increasingly turning to the Web to promote themselves and their niche. Rather than toil for a single corporation, some are doing a little of everything: blogging, book-writing, TV-guesting and Twittering. That means sites such as True/Slant will spread like viruses, mutating into different forms.”

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Take Gawker. Prompted by what appeared to be a straight forward press release, Alley insider reported that the media company acqured a blog called BloodCopy.com. Later it was discovered that the news was fake and part of a “viral” campaign by HBO for a show. Gawker was leveraging its brand for use in an advertisiment.

Now it’s true that readers don’t really go to Gawker for the news value; they want to feel superior to others, regardless if the information is true, a rumor or just good enough of a lie to be worth posting. People go to the Times to get the truth. (I hear critics spitting up their coffee, but it’s true.) So how far does the Times go to leverage its brand without crossing the line?

According to Forbes, an Intel spot, which was designed in part by the Times’ ad sales team, used the newspaper’s own brand in the actual marketing message. A Times front page rolled over readers’ screens, revealing a date from the year 2040 and a headline, “President converses with dolphin, develops new environmental plan.” Readers who clicked on the strange article were sent to the homepage of Intel.

News media brands need to be held to a different standard than other brands. The Times brand stands for more than just some product being sold over the counter. It stands for a trusted news site. Links into content, takeover ads, videos, interactive advertisement, etc should all be far game in an industry that is grasphing for ad dollars. But the wall between Gawker leveraging its brand and the Times experiment is not as thick as it once was.

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