It may be a toss up today whether the talk around the office will be more about the game (way to go Giants) or about the commercials. The commercials of course are a big draw for many and at least an entertaining bonus for others. Big name companies employ big name ad firms to come up with something that will hopefully be extraordinary and memorable. And at $2.7 million for 30 seconds, getting the most bang for the buck should be a no-brainer.
But unlike some of the popular TV shows, if the Super Bowl ads are any indication, it appears that many big companies and ad firms just don't get it and continue to deliver "Ads 1.0." Perhaps it is the big brand mentality that we so often see when dealing with the Web, but I'm not even talking about full-blown social media campaigns here--how about just getting the URL up on the screen.
After re-watching the commercials from the game over at MySpace, I saw that more commercials had URLs shown than I remembered. But the fact that it took another viewing and perhaps a freeze frame of the video to catch it is very telling. What's more amazing is that many of these advertisers spend huge amounts year-round on brand advertising--just building up impressions, maintaining that top-of-mind presence of keeping the brand out in front of people. This type of advertising should be all about capitalizing on building that connection with the audience, and what better way to do that than to get them to the Web site.
Never mind whether the commercial is a hit or a dud, it is still an impression, and the last thing I'd want to leave the viewer with would be how to see more about the company or the product. A number of the ads didn't feature a URL at all, and for many that did, it was so insignificant to even matter (especially when these end up in small video windows online). Only a handful of the ads made sure that the last few seconds of the precious 30 left the viewer with a clearly readable and hopefully memorable URL.
Thankfully though, not all of the companies missed the mark. There were a couple standouts that do get it, like Tide, with MyTalkingStain.com, and SoBe Life Water, with Thrillicious.com. They developed sites around the commercials to continue the conversation after the season wraps up. With some online interactivity, these are great examples of making the most of traditional advertising in a Web world. Hopefully if or when these standalone sites are decommissioned, they'll also be savvy enough to put 301 permanent redirects in place to capture continued traffic, PageRank, and link love.
The good news is that there is a year before the next Super Bowl for the company and ad execs to start thinking about how they can get more value out of the big game. Here's a little food for thought:
- Get your URL up in the last 5 to 10 seconds and make it big and easy to read, not just on the big screen, but for when they make their way to online.
- Put commercial outtakes or bloopers up on the site.
- Get the commercial out on YouTube or other video sites as soon as it airs.
- Give people a reason to stay on the site--coupons, games, tips.
- Give people a way to interact--put together a blog and have a number of posts ready to launch out of the gate and allow visitors to comment and discuss the ad.
- Look to other social media venues to round out the campaign--MySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.
And that's really just the tip of the iceberg, but at this rate, better to aim at crawling before we worry about running.
After telling you all that Digg was the best social destination of 2007, the column made it onto the front page of the site. And while some comments echoed my sentiment--namely, that other social sites are, well, crap--the vast majority of commenters found a number of faults in Digg.
Although the general opinion of Digg faithful can't be judged based on comments on one story, can it be said that there is a Digg revolt in the works that is led by a group of individuals who are fed up with Ron Paul stories, crazy videos, and a broken comment system?
If the comments on that story are to be believed, a revolt could happen.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
StumbleUpon, a fun Web discovery service, is getting a new feature, SearchReviews, that will take it beyond its historic role of hyperefficient time-waster. It could make it an integral part of the day-to-day browsing experience. SearchReviews pushes StumbleUpon ratings and other information into the search results pages on major search engines and content sites like Wikipedia, Google Reader, Flickr, and YouTube.
Users who run the StumbleUpon toolbar will now see little icons after search results on these sites that show them how popular a site is in the StumbleUpon community, the number of thumbs-up ratings it has, and who of their friends has rated the page.
The new SearchReviews features inserts StumbleUpon icons in your search engine.
It changes the way you look at search results pages. Now, instead of just looking at a sea of links in descending order based on what your search site thinks is most important, you also do a quick visual scan of the results for little StumbleUpon icons that indicate that actual humans have marked the page as worthwhile. If you happen across a site that a friend has flagged, you'll have an even better indication that the site is something that you'll want to check out.
If a page comes up in a results page that you've already flagged, you'll also see that rating (thumbs-up or -down) in the list of icons, reminding you of your own opinion of the page.
Other sites that get the SearchReviews feature: Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube.
This is better than the social search that Hakia offers, for a few reasons. Most importantly, it doesn't require you to change your search engine. The new StumbleUpon icons show up on the search pages and sites you're already used to. And like Hakia, StumbleUpon will link you to discussion pages, but unlike Hakia, you get other social data such as the list of users who liked the page, so you can see what else they also liked.
This new feature makes the StumbleUpon social network much more valuable, so StumbleUpon is also making it easier to add friends from your other networks to it: You can import your friend lists from popular online e-mail services, as well as from Facebook. The service is also getting an Outlook contacts importer as part of this update.
Ironically, while SearchReviews is being integrated in 11 high-traffic sites, it's not going to show up on its parent site, eBay. I got two reasons for this from Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon's chief architect. First, he said, eBay items are "temporal," and StumbleUpon is more about bookmarking long-lived Web pages. Second, the 18-person StumbleUpon team couldn't handle customer support for eBay's giant user base if eBay were to actively promote the service.
For future releases, the team is looking at a completely general version of SearchReviews that could evaluate (and display ratings for) every Web link on a page.
Turn on these options to enable SearchReviews
StumbleUpon makes money by selling sponsored Stumbles. The new SearchReviews feature completely bypasses the ad engine of StumbleUpon, so it won't be a direct revenue generator. However, since it makes the entire service more valuable, it could drive more users to adopt StumbleUpon, and encourage current registered users to use it more. Personally, I uninstalled the StumbleUpon toolbar months ago, but I'm turning it back on so I can use this new feature.
See also: Mahalo Follow and Streakr (review).
eBay released a statement on Wednesday afternoon confirming that, as speculated, it has acquired Web site discovery service StumbleUpon. The price, according to eBay, is approximately $75 million.
eBay's most famous acquisition is arguably Internet telephony service Skype, which it purchased in 2005.
"StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust," eBay's senior director Michael Buhr said in a statement. "StumbleUpon's downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay."
At last count, StumbleUpon had about 2.3 million members, and buzz about the site had spread largely by word of mouth.
The $75 million price tag is more than previously expected. Earlier this month, when eBay was reported to be in "advanced talks" to acquire StumbleUpon, the numbers being tossed around were about $45 million. Rumors about an eBay-StumbleUpon deal first began to circulate in early April.
It was a day heavy with acquisition announcements. Also on Wednesday, CBS announced a $280 million purchase of music social network Last.fm, and Fox Interactive Media confirmed its long-rumored acquisition of image-sharing site Photobucket.
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