By Chris Minas, Nimbletank

Many have hailed augmented reality (AR) as a passing fad with no real beneficial use bar novelty value. This however comes as a surprise to marketers who see AR as a vital tool to generate brand excitement and believe it will become a mainstream technology in the near distance future.

To financially ailing industries such as music and publishing, this couldn’t come at a better time. By incorporating AR technology they will once again be able to provide the customer with desirable extras they’d struggle to find elsewhere. Already, AR technology can allow readers to hold their phone in front of a printed page and see extra content on their handset. The opportunities are endless and we just need to look to huge brands such as Nokia and Google to understand the full potential the medium offers.

"Yeah, everyone's not me."
Carrie Matthison, Homeland

Premium is becoming an overused word like amazing (is that sandwich really amazing?), or a misused word like literally (most people are "literally" using it wrong). Just because a company uses the word premium to describe its product – it doesn't make it original, high quality, distinctive or even valuable to the consumer. As any fan of Homeland, Shameless or even,Gigolos will tell you, Showtime is definitely a premium cable channel, worth every extra dollar you spend for entertainment. Any car owner who spends more at the pump for premium gasoline understands higher-grade fuel means better engine performance.

But for every real premium experience, there are plenty that aren't. An entrepreneur in Malaysia has launched a premium coffee served at luxury hotels in Asia and the Middle East, that sells java to connoisseurs for $50 a cup. The "premium" refining process? The coffee beans are fed to Thai elephants, plucked from the pachyderms' dung and, then, prepared for roasting. Makes you reconsider any grumbling over paying more at Starbucks.

The same holds for premium content. Almost every publisher believes their content is premium. And yet, too often a premium content experience for readers means articles about a topic you care about surrounded by stories of moisturizing jeans and cross-dressing virgins.

The definition of premium should be overhauled before this awesome term literally becomes irrelevant. At a basic level, premium content must have a point of view, tell a compelling story and be visually engaging. Depending on the intended audience, premium content can be a recipe for whole-wheat blackberry scones on 101 Cookbooks, a list of the top 10 epic tech gadget failures on ReadWrite or a DYI for a sequin bracelet from Honestly...WTF. The quality of the content is determined by something that's too often taken for granted: reader engagement. Not pageviews or clicks, but real engagement. Did the reader leave a comment? Were they moved enough to "like" it? Tweet it? Pin or share it? If they did, that engaging content deserves the title of "premium."  

Provocateur Jane Pratt of xoJane has mastered the art of reader engagement. The loyal audiences at Sassy and Jane magazines are as responsible for establishing Jane's no-holds-barred editorial style as she is. It’s not unusual for a story on xoJane to elicit hundreds of enthusiastic reactions. Jane created a viral tsunami when she asked readers to submit pictures of themselves when they first wake up, resulting in hundreds of entries, participation by Courtney Love and major media coverage. By making her readers part of the story, Jane ruled social media before it was even called that.

Every publisher and brand online looking to be considered premium needs to determine the value of the relationship between content and reader. That is the only way the true essence of premium can remain pure and doesn't become a matter of quantity over quality. As digital media becomes more fragmented and increasingly personalized, premium content is signified by its intrinsic value to the reader and its ability to motivate someone to take action. It means rethinking the idea that bigger is better for brands, and embracing the power of environments where people are talking. It’s the  choice between screaming one’s brand message at half-million bustling pedestrians in Times Square or addressing a captivated audience 5 percent the size in Madison Square Garden. 

The highest rated show currently on network TV has an average of five times the viewers of the season two finale of Homeland. And no disrespect to those wacky nerds Leonard and Sheldon, they entertain millions of people each week. But, do they elicit any morning-after, water cooler talk about their latest hi-jinks at a Star Trek convention?  Not likely. Now try bringing up Carrie, Brody and Abu Nazir in conversation, and like that coffee from Malaysia, that's some premium ... stuff.

Thom Allcock is the publisher of Style for Say Media.

By Paul Saville, Ignite

The way brands market themselves has changed. Gone are the days of relying on traditional advertising, where a brand would attempt to influence an individual to buy a certain product or service solely using the creativity of a catchy slogan and beautiful images delivered by TV, print and OOH.

By Cream Editorial

Looking at the top 20 viral ads (yes, the 2012 Unruly Global Viral Video Ads Chart is out), I can clearly say compelling content wins over brand legacy/popularity. Hands down. the annual ranking of the year’s most shared video ads reveals that in 2012, a viral video titled ‘Invisible Children’ by a little known non-profit organisation reigns at the top spot, beating the likes of Google, P&G, Coke, Nike and Red Bull.

Red Bull has been awarded the number one spot as the best global brand in social video strategy in Goviral’s new report: ‘The Global Social Video Equity Top 100’. The report measures brands on their effectiveness in branded content within the social media space.

The Red Bull Stratos campaign won huge media coverage and became a viral phenomenon with its video of the highest ever skydive by daredevil Felix Baumgartner who broke the speed of sound with the stunt. Clearly, Baumgartner had the world’s eyes on him, and with it, helped Red Bull pull off one of the biggest global marketing stunts ever.

The top ten social video brands, according to Goviral’s report are: 

Click on each brand name to see the case study and creative on Cream. To unlock up to four other case studies on Cream, register for a free trial.

By Stephanie Shkolnik (Digitaria, part of SoDA)

Decades ago, television was a delicate, communally appreciated experience predominantly used to broadcast mass market entertainment and important messages about current events.

Fast forward. It’s 2012 and social media has influenced the way people communicate and even consume television content.

According to EMarketer, 1.43 billion people will use social media in 2012, while 38.4% of the world's population will purchase smartphones. Discussion will spring up outside of the plot, diving into character traits, on-screen chemistry and feelings, shared in real time by the masses as if millions are people are in the same living room.

And that’s just the beginning of social television. Broadcasting can be extended on mobile devices, tablets and computers, as networks look to meet the ever-evolving SoLoMo consumer (social, local and mobile) at every touch point.

Networks are in the game

Networks that understand the value of real-time interaction are using the social graph to gauge effectiveness of their marketing dollars and understand audience behavior and interests. Shows such as American Idol have integrated pre-defined hashtags on television sets in the form of light watermarks, serving as call-to-actions for viewers to become a part of the discussion.

TV personalities are leveraging social to generate compelling user generated content. Jimmy Fallon features a ‘Late Night Hashtags’ segment related to current events to garner viewer participation – bringing ordinary people the opportunity to be mentioned on television. Fallon’s summer hashtag #WorstFamilyTrip resonated so well it trended worldwide in just 10 minutes.

Advertisers have also leveraged commercials to drive viewers to their social presence for awareness and promotional activities - often to publish user-generated content or participate in social experiences. According to Nielsen’s State of the Media in Sports (2011), brand recall was 33% higher for Super Bowl ads with a social media tag directing viewers to social channels.

TV specific social networks are on the rise

GetGlue allows people to check-in to television shows, movies, books and music to see what friends are watching and doing. Participants are rewarded in the form of both virtual and physical stickers, a gamificiation element that is integrated across screens, providing users with recommendations based on their interests to create the most relevant compelling experiences.

Leading up to the U.S. Game of Thrones premiere, 90,000 people checked into GetGlue, while 50,000 checked in during the actual premiere. As check-ins cross-populated to Twitter, social TV analytics provider BlueFins reported 60,000 comments were generated during the premier alone - signifying a direct correlation between viewership and social media engagement.

It doesn't stop at the TV screen

To maintain high levels of engagement when primetime television seasons conclude, networks are developing new ways to retain fan relationships through extensions of television. Gamificaiton is driving fan loyalty by rewarding social media interaction, as brands like CBS launch Fan Award programs online. Social enables viewer voting for their favorite categories such as "Best Use of Corpse,” where fans can simply participate through Facebook or Twitter hashtags to simplify the entry process.

Social television buzz is trackable

Alexander Daas, a luxury eyewear brand, went to market in Q4 of 2011, launching in conjunction with the American Music Awards. TV personality Jenny McCarthy wore the brand's eyeglasses on stage and within minutes sparked hundreds of conversations about her eyewear. By monitoring these discussions, the Alexander Daas team answered consumer and media questions leading to the introduction of the brand through social, generating nationwide awareness, sales and stronger partner relationships all tracked through traffic, sentiment and discussions.

Specialised services such as Social Guide provide comprehensive analysis of social television activity to extract insights and make them actionable - creating truly data driven opportunities based on fan interests.

Social television is increasingly becoming the norm.

By Larry Allen (Real Media Group)

Pretty much every January since 2006, someone in the advertising sector has gone on record predicting that ‘this will be the year of Mobile’. And pretty much every December, the industry has looked back and thought to itself, ‘Errr...nope, that wasn’t it’.

There’s no doubt that mobile usage, and in particular, mobile internet usage, have exploded.  According to research from Strategy Analytics, the number of global smartphone users went past one billion for the first time at the end of the third quarter of 2012. And a recent study by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) in the US found that 68% of smartphone owners report that they “cannot live without” their smartphone, and 93% of smartphone users access content and information above any other activity.

So, it’s probably fair to say that "the year of mobile consumption" has definitely arrived. 

However, the adoption rates of mobile advertising are not nearly as impressive. The screens are now bigger, better and fully interactive, so with consumption soaring so dramatically what on earth is the hold up? Despite the efforts of many major brands to kick start the mobile advertising revolution, it seems that there are three key factors still holding us back:

1. Advertise like it is 1999: Back in the late nineties, web advertising was just starting to develop. Ad units were both small and ugly and slow connection speeds (thanks to dial-up modems) led to the infamous term “World Wide Wait”. Everything about digital advertising was a challenge: file sizes were restricted to 10k or less, animation was still a thing of the future and most ads didn’t even link back to the marketer’s web site.  Back then, most marketers simply put their brochure online and called it advertising.

Similarly, the mobile web today is noticeably slow (although getting better with the promise of 4G and an increasing number of Wi-Fi access points) and so advertisers are focused on building apps or HTML5 mobile sites to enable customers to engage with branded content. Why advertise if you don’t have some compelling content with which to engage – and why bother with an incredibly impressive ad if it won’t load in time to be seen?

2. A lack of standardisation: We see many different creative formats in mobile advertising today, and yet no industry-wide standard exists for building and delivering these units at scale across all the various devices, screen sizes, and capabilities available.

This presents a real issue for creative agencies trying to create consistent messaging and deploy ads quickly on mobiles. Each vendor they work with will have a recommended set of creative formats, but limitations arise when you stretch your plan beyond publishers that are certified. 

In order to enable scaled buying, it is essential that app developers and mobile websites adapt a simplified and standardised set of engaging ad units. Once this happens, and we solve the device support issues (iOS versus Android versus Windows Mobile), true creative design can begin to take shape.    

3. Targeting and tracking: For mobile to capture its fair share of ad spend it will need to easily enable the same level of targeting that advertisers find on the web. Additionally, mobile campaigns must be easily integrated, measured, and managed holistically across platforms so that users are not overwhelmed with the same message again and again on their PC, their mobile and video.

This cross-platform management is a critical step for brands. Hyper-local targeting was the big discussion last year and geo-targeting works best when it offers added value to the consumer. But that doesn’t mean they should randomly alert customers with a banner just because they’re walking past a Starbucks — they may be in the area but they’re not necessarily in the mood for coffee. 

Thankfully, there are companies and industry groups working tirelessly to solve these problems – and to create a mobile advertising environment that works for all brands and publishers across all platforms. So perhaps 2013 will be the year of mobile advertising after all; that would be a nice change of pace.

By Roger Hyslop

The number of festivals may have dropped due to the Olympics, but this year nearly 150 music events will take place and it seems brands are still battling for a piece of the action.

Nikon UK, for example, announced this week its sponsorship of the Reading Festival which takes place from August 24-26. It made this last minute commitment with the main objective of promoting its ‘I AM Nikon’ message to a younger audience. Luckily for the camera giant, recent research shows that around 65% of music festival goers believe brands improve the festival experience.