Warning: Cannes can make your head hurt

Cannes is still in full swing for some, but I have bailed out. Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I simply can’t keep the pace with the plethora of Young Lions who have descended upon Cannes this year. Parties aside, is our industry getting younger, or am I just getting older? Maybe both? And that’s to say nothing of my memory – I have decided Twitter is my new online notebook. So reading back over my notes, let me summarize my own key take-away’s from Cannes 2009 for you:  

The 10,000 foot view of Cannes shows there is a complete blur across the entire media landscape. Digital has well and truly begun to permeate everything. It throws questions on the various categories when Cumminsnitro from Brisbane’s ‘Tourism Queensland’ campaign – The Best Job in the World – takes the Grand Prix sweep stake for Direct, PR & Cyber awards. Where does one discipline end and another begin? Go Viral’s Chairman, Jimmy Maymann may well have made the case early on when he suggested the ‘median age for TV users are actually now 13 years higher than the general population.’ Nigel Morris, CEO, Aegis could not have put it more succinctly when he revealed research shows that ‘67% of searches online are result of exposure to offline media – 30+% of which result in actual sales.’ The online/offline debate seems to be drawing to a close – the media landscape is truly becoming one.

This is a feeling echoed around various seminars from Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice President Global Marketing Strategy and Creative Communications, Coca-Cola who feels that from here on in, ‘we need to see a lot of consolidation across traditional and digital agencies – all focused around consumer journeys’. Stefan Olander, Global Director of Brand Connections, Nike agrees; ‘It’s time to throw the silos off a cliff and seek to embrace a more holistic partnership throughout media. We must embrace consumer content’.

The very fact that the Media person of the year is Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation, highlights this maturity in thinking that digital no longer represents mere rational technology, but it has reached the emotional connection sought by brands. As Olander revealed in thinking through the problem with modern brands trying to own the conversation, ‘there is now no way to own creativity then allow others to adapt it. We have to place tools in others hands and merely participate.’ It’s not just an admission that consumers are in control, but is a partnership of respect as opposed to dictatorship. Beyond the rar-rar it felt rather like a sixties woman’s movement for equal rights was being formed there in the famous Debussy theatre, but this time it was in favor of the consumer. Morris’ case study for Adidas Originals obtaining 1.4m fans on Facebook – with each person a potential sale of $200 per year per user – ‘that’s a tangible business case for Social Media, right there’ he said.

Turning to revenues and recession, Marcel Fenez, Managing Partner, Global Entertainment & Media Practice – PricewaterhouseCoopers opened with a very bleak overview ‘This recession is not cyclical – it’s structural. In 2013, ad spend will still trail 2007 levels. Advertising spending as we know it is not coming back.’ Backed up with the recession is driving many to seek a bargain online, Fenez said there is now ‘no place to hide from the digital transformation’.

So what does that mean for the advertising industry – has our illustrious budgets truly gone and a smaller Cannes the future new world order – shall we forever reminisce about the ‘golden era’ from here on forward? Steve Ballmer thinks so; “I don’t think we are in a recession. l think we’ve reset. Recession implies a recovery.”

According to research, Ferez suggests that people are prepared to accept ads, even targeted ads as trade off for privacy in exchange for great entertainment content’. Interestingly this seemed to be counter to what Steve Balmer said; who argued that creation of digital media is cheaper than other media. With special effects, and high statistical analysis costs am not convinced these truly offset the distribution of print for example as any agency would agree given struggles in day-to-day process. So should falling CPM costs and pressure on publishers be the order of the day?

Digital advertising offers a targeted message that reduces overall wastage afforded by traditional means of delivery. This means that better ROI will be achieved with less overall spends as there will be less redundancy. Volume and associated cost of distribution will indeed be less, but that in no way should devalue the media content in which it sits. Good quality content which advertising needs to sit against costs money. To take a short-term view of making a quick buck on reduced CPM will kill content creation and hamper the entertainment content of the future. Will brands really want to become content providers and all associated costs of doing so? There needs to be a balance.

Yes, brands are engaging more with their customers. But walking around the print and outdoor or TV showcases shows that advertising has always been about good content in its own right. It’s an incredibly powerful form of art, and truly beautiful to behold. It offers information and education, not just intrusion. Long may we protect this craft and seek to embrace this thinking in an ever increasingly digital world. Log on to http://work.canneslions.com/ and take a look for yourself.

See how the Grand Prix Outdoor winner, the Zimbabwean’s ‘Trillion Dollar Billboard’, seeks to usurp a fascist regime. Contrast that with the Jewish Council for Education and Research ‘the Great Schlep’ for motivating votes for Obama, a truly cross media campaign. See the use of mobile in ‘Let it Ring’ for Road Safety Awareness in Belgium and tell me that advertising is dead, in which ever form. Then check out ‘Banner Concerts’ from Boondoggle, or even one of my personal favorite’s ‘Atrápalo’ from DoubleYou for how to push the humble banner ad way out into the stratosphere. If you are still taking this all too seriously, Warner Bros’ ‘Why So Serious’ will certainly bring a smile to your face.

So whilst I digest all this and try and get my head around it all, my gut reaction is ‘no advertising is not dead, it just hasn’t become all it can be quite yet.’ Andy Berndt, Global Creative Director, Google nailed it when he admitted the ‘role of advertising as an interrupt model is a challenge for Google; who will search for something they don’t know about?’ Thanks Andy, I wholeheartedly agree, content and advertising flowing seamlessly around the consumer, causing them to stop and take note, discuss and then investigate more information.

Meanwhile the only searching I will be doing tonight is to ‘search’ the cupboards for an aspirin…

Reproduced as appeared on iMedia Connection

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BadMen – mature thinking needed in Digital Advertising

The last 24 hours I have been presenting some new global data findings to various members of the industry press; namely do people “see” and “like” ads online – and is there a way of measuring this in better ways then the archaic concept of ‘click thru’ in relation to display advertising.

I mentioned that I think offline there is a key distinction between “advertising” and “design” agencies – the former focusing on strategy over function. Digital often gets a rough ride in my opinion with agency folk supposed to know everything from e-commerce to brand building. FAIL! A good designer does not equal a good art director or copywriter – these are wildly different skill sets. I for one therefore am championing the call to see Madison Avenue marketing moguls fully embrace digital media and bring a much needed maturity and wisdom on how to better develop consumer relationships in the 21st Century, alongside all our technical know-how. I really do believe over the next few years we are going to see more and more the growing distinction between digital design agencies and digital ad agencies, and in truth you already can with a lot more strategic concepts beginning to be discussed.

Brian Morrissey from Ad Week just picked this up on his own blog “Are designers to blame for bad Web ads?”

So here’s my thinking based on ad strategy over creative execution; rather than utilise budgets for microsites, we spend time, energy and budgets building better ads. A concept I have could name several global advertisers already shifting towards. The bottom line is all advertising exists were users are and brings the message to them – TV to sofa, etc. Most advertising actually enhances content – people buy magazines to discover cars/clothes, etc shown off in glossy double-spread ads. Ads in most media are both physically large and plentiful, yet all are enhancing stories that create desire. None of them expect you to go elsewhere…

Online has perpetuated the misconceived notion that you need to “change the channel” to see the ad, i.e. go to a microsite, and we measure this by CTR. Can you imagine doing that on TV? “Click here to watch the TV ad”… good luck!

Now that CTR is failing, to those who suggest display advertising will die to widgets is suggesting all TV, Print, Outdoor is ineffective and will die also. Hogwash. Display advertising hasn’t even evolved into what it could or should yet… I wrote about this before following a high profile argument on whether advertising online would fail?

I am convinced, it’s not the format or channel that’s failing, it’s the metric that is floored. Clicks work great for search, appalling for display. Interaction Rate tries to compare a video ad with a single interaction point, to a game ad with tens of interaction points – you cannot. Period. Its creative dependent, so all benchmarks for Interaction Rate are floored.In fact I just wish Interaction rate would be erased from any discussions surrounding benchmarks. That is why there is huge need to move towards measuring online display ads the same way as we measure web visits – in terms of numbers of arrivals, and amount of time they spend there. Hence “Dwell Time”.

It’s a fallacy in people’s thinking that digital is purely constrained to websites; that “online” means web-browser… especially when I spend half my life checking online from my iPhone or seeing more and more digital outdoor panels. Similarly it’s a fallacy to think that the golden age of advertising is over and the maturity of those who tread the path for many years before and understand how to build a brand no longer matters; worse, they are being bad mouthed by code-junkies. Look, consumers are media-neutral, clients are media-neutral – and TV, Print, Outdoor works and will ALWAYS work – it’s just that they will evolve as they embrace an element of audio-visual interactivity following receiving an internet connection. Dwell Time in turn offers a potential way to port across media channels as they become interactive, thereby offering advertisers a genuine way to measure display advertising and answer “yes the consumer SAW your ad” in a way TV or Print currently cannot.

So my argument is that if we created better ads where people are, better engaging stories – utilizing what we have learned offline and entwined it with the potential of online – people would not be annoyed so much, but rather enjoy ads. We discussed last night at dinner how many times TV ads are searched on YouTube and then posted on Facebook, for example. But we DO need to justify online advertising, as we have created a rod for our own back. We need a metric. We need some way of convincing clients, as that is what they have come to expect from online; it’s measurable. This is what I have been doing for the last couple of years in trying to develop “Dwell Time” on the back of some discussions with agency folk a couple of years back – a simple catch-all metric that works across all display formats and gives us something positive to say against declining clicks. Dwell Time measures the number of people who touch an ad (rate) and for how long in seconds (duration) discounting all those who leave the ad before one second. It also only tracks user behavior, so as soon as you mouse out, counter is stopped and restarted if you mouse back in – all per impression/exposure.

Having monitored well over a billion impressions globally over last few months, and spliced data from all formats, to time of day, to publisher environments, and by industry verticals, to global regions – comparing to click-thru and monitoring effect of video in relation to creative impact – I have been utterly blown away by what I have learned as I have poured over the data. A lot of misconceptions I had thought have been corrected especially in regards to the most effective formats.

When we look at all data, we find some startling truths. Nearly 10% of all ads are “touched” and those that are, are actively played with for about 1 minute – slighly less for ads without video. Compared to your 0.5% CTR is saying that for every 5 people who click on an ad, 100 will play for one whole minute! That means consumers are 20x more likely to explore a brand next to content, then click thru to advertiser’s site. Not only that, but they will spend twice the length of average 30 sec TV ad, with the potential to actively explore the product and strike deeper emotional connections that result in greater brand recall. It also means that with a shift to pre-roll 15 second ad formats, in Banner video is doing the exact opposite – its driving more interactions and creating longer periods of time to hold their attention as they are done on user request, not forced upon. Afterall, if user is not interested, they leave the ad and hence ‘zero’ Dwell Time, not a 60 second Dwell Time.

That alone is a HUGE incentive for advertisers who want to engage with consumers. It also suggests that people do not dislike advertising online at all, any more then they dislike ads in print – in fact the opposite – and should be the confidence we all need to discuss ways of better engaging with consumers, and demanding bigger creative budgets from clients.

That is not all; desktop ads out perform all other ad formats with the exception of floating ads. Yes that is right – floating ads both attract consumers to interact and hold their attention – not for as long as other formats, but enough to prove to me that people are prepared to accept, interact and respond to the format – 3x more than ANY other format. How many times have I stood up and said that high CTR on floating ads was driven by people trying to close the ads? How wrong I have been…

I am going to hold other findings till I publish the research in a few weeks time in the next Eyeblaster Analytics Bulletin.

Or of course you can still build microsites and just hope people “change the channel” and try and justify to clients the dwindling CTR and dwindling budgets with demands for greater ROI, whilst the rest of us realize post-impression is more powerful then click-thru, that huge amounts of search is driven by display ads, that offline sales are drive by online display, and people online both like ads and play with them – for a whole minute – and they would do so a LOT more if we could just build bigger, better ads that actually enhance the consumer experience.

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Understanding a consumer’s path to conversion

The importance of display and search is best seen as a conversation that happens between a consumer and the brand – you become aware of something and seek information, often from 3rd party independent reviews. Consumers and brands are media neutral; a TV ad drives online search drives in store purchase… So with this in mind we cannot lock all consumer experiences into simple robotic conversions, like click-thru to site. Less than 0.5% display clicks followed by a 70% onsite abandonment rate is grossly inefficient. Whereas at least 5x conversions happen as a result of post-view compared to post-click, the art as all advertising is in that striking emotional connections that push a consumer through a conversion cycle – just not always seen immediately. 995 out of 1,000 ads are not clicked, yet 30% of all paid searches can be attributed to happening after being exposed to a display ad first. Think TV driving laptop searches, for example.

Online goes deeper than mere exposure; at least 10% of all ads are touched – and this sees 5x conversion in banner over on site conversion if you include such functionality as you are hitting a wider target group and facilitating them to respond where they are. Taking this further, understanding if the consumer has been exposed to the brand message or is already a “client” facilitates different messaging to be shown to them that is more relevant – but the real sequencing effects happen with display and search. “That’s a great phone, where did you get it… is it available as pay as you go… how does it compare to contract” we see a consumer exposed to a message (display), the desire is investigation (search) which is targeted in sequence (comparison site) which all drives a consumer through a conversion life-cycle towards conversion. Allowing the system a degree of auto-optimization, sequencing messaging, adapting to each individual and allowing conversion in banner, on site or in store is the heart of the channel connect strategy.

It’s about taking knowledge from video content streams, frequency of standard display, enhancement of interactive creative’s, consumer desire to research before purchase, as well as discovering prior exposure and as a result of this more targeted message, being able to claw back greater ROI and reduce those inefficiencies – on a macro global cross-agency level, down to a micro campaign exposure per consumer.

Eyeblaster Channel Connect for Search (CC4S) is open source connectivity to “any” paid search provider to consolidate conversion data across all display and search exposure.

Capitalizing on the open-source nature of the development of the web, Eyeblaster’s CC4S means you are not locked down into having to serve display and search through the same vendor. This means it allows advertisers and agencies the flexibility to work with multiple partner relationships in existence whilst monitoring the consumer life-cycle. It works alongside a global campaign management system to allow multiple agency relationships across territories, so being able to consolidate disparate sources of data and assist analysis by language or region. It is a totally independent solution away from publisher ownership to give you a unique perspective, whilst confidence in the only ad server to achieve compliance for IAB’s Media ratings council across the breadth of online display. Integrated into live campaign dashboard, simple customizable reports, Excel interfaces and PowerPoint summaries to give you and your agencies the insights you need.

Will it change things? I think we are just scraping the surface of linking all display and search media, such as TV to PC search or Outdoor to mobile search – all delivering the next sequenced message across channels. Search and display is what online marketers have been waiting for since pay-per-click went mainstream 10 years ago – a real value proposition linked to actual consumer behavior, and places click effectiveness in its natural environment – i.e. search. I think we are only just entering a whole new phase of consumer understanding to deliver advertiser benefits.

Related info:

http://tinyurl.com/cc4s-conversion-analysis

http://tinyurl.com/imedia-value-of-display

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Welcome to the Machine

Video snippets to both sides of the RFID debate.

Wave-and-Pay contactless payment systems using RFID technology – the same technology in your passport, travel cards, products in shops, etc

Think of the huge benefits and cost-efficencies. Think of the crime that could be eradicated. Think of the ease and simplicity it affords our busy lives.

But where will it all end? Cards can be stolen – and who wants to carry around multiple cards anyway, when one single number stored on a chip could link everything together? Afterall, we chip cats and dogs…

The 2,000 year old concern:

“He forced everyone—small and great, rich and poor, free and slave—to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark”
Revelation 13:16-17

Warning: “Anyone who accepts his mark on the forehead or on the hand must drink the wine of God’s anger… The smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night, for they have worshiped the beast and his statue and have accepted the mark of his name”
Revelation 14:9-11

More on RFID; NothingToHide.Us

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Implantable Brain Chips and the Future of Social Communication

Knowing just how far we can push communication technology is one of those questions that often blurs science-fact with science-fiction. I used to get excited seeing James Bond’s gadgets, like his tracking system and car phone in the famous Aston Martin DB5 – now two-thirds of the planet has mobile phones, and every single one of them is personally identifiable and trackable, it’s a very different story. Not bad for 15 years implementation when you think of it. So just how far have we got?

A couple of years ago I highlighted a few new concepts around technology relating to “Human Computer Interaction” which does indeed seem cool to most. Yet behind the concept of touch screens and surface computing is the need to identify every product with a unique number stored on a microchip.

The push for integration along with huge potential savings by global organizations has ensured we now have this relentless invasion of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) facilitating the “Internet of Things” otherwise known as Ubiquitous Computing. Regular readers here will know some of my ethical challenges surrounding that. Way before I started my own blog, people were already discussing controlling devices by implanting microchips in humans – and I for one think this is the way advertising in the future will be targeted to every individual and not via an iris scan as seen in the film ‘Minority Report’.

Well it seems as though whilst people are trying to tackle whether RFID really is the ‘mark of the beast’, I want to truly take this to the next level, and highlight an interesting, if not alarming, discourse on the Ethical Assessment of Implantable Brain Chips.

“Computer scientists predict that within the next twenty years neural interfaces will be designed that will not only increase the dynamic range of senses, but will also enhance memory and enable “cyberthink” — invisible communication with others.”

It’s known as a brain-computer interface (BCI) and is expected to be rolled out en masse by around 2035 – microchips hardwired into your brain to ‘enhance’ your senses.

Let me walk you through this.

Apparently three million of us already rely on some kind of artificial implants – to improve hearing or sight for example. Yet what we are talking about here is the merging of prosthetics with computer science through tiny components linked to radio communication. It is beyond the concept of “wearable computers” that MIT have been kicking around for some years now, i.e. portable computers built into your clothes linked to glasses with video cameras, etc.

“Through miniaturization of components, systems have been generated that are wearable and nearly invisible, so that individuals, supported by a personal information structure, can move about and interact freely, as well as, through networking, share experiences with others. The wearable computer project envisions users accessing the Remembrance Agent of a large communally based data source.”

So the first aspect of what is being discussed is that of “Wearable Computers”. Think of a spy-cam in your shirt pocket, linked to an iPhone and then a pocket projector like Aaxa’s P1 or 3M’s Pico.

Next we need to link this to a Remembrance Agent (RA) which is ‘a program which augments human memory by displaying a list of documents which might be relevant to the user’s current context.’ It is an information retrieval system running wirelessly over the internet, continuously without user intervention and unobtrusively ‘allowing a user to pursue or ignore the RA’s suggestions as desired.’

What we end up with is this recently patented wearable computer that projects its display onto a nearby surface that’s being dubbed as the Internet’s “Sixth Sense”.

The concept is just by looking at your boarding card; information about your flight can be projected on to it. Or pick up a book or product and you are able to find out more information about it by linking what the camera sees to information stored online about it. It’s an automatic search which is similar to you asking a shop assistant to tell you more about something – it’s already recalling everything known online right there on the product packaging.

But this technology is not just limited to everyday things; “When you encounter someone at a party, the system projects a cloud of words on the person’s body to provide more information about him— his blog URL, the name of his company, his likes and interests…”

This means you will never forget someone’s name ever again; facial recognition software will not only tell you who but what, how and why. It is the ability to transfer information; contact details, community groups – even their birthday, interests or medical issues – without even uttering a single word. Think of it like a car license plate reader for every single human on the planet that pulls up an entire history of data about every product or person you wish to investigate. Suddenly that talking billboard in Minority Report seems so passé.

When you consider the fact that pharmaceutical manufacturers are already considering implementing microchips inside every single prescription drug, which will then communicate to the internet via your mobile phone – implanted chips are no longer science-fiction but a present-day reality.

Combine these technologies, and what we find here is a two-way continuous transmission program intrinsically linked to everyday human behavior and our interaction with objects and each other; all being continually broadcast, monitored and modified.

“Suddenly technology has given us powers with which we can manipulate not only external reality — the physical world — but also, and much more portentously, ‘ourselves’. Once networked the result will be a collective consciousness, the hive mind. The hive mind…is about taking all these trillions of cells in our skulls that make individual consciousness and putting them together and arriving at a new kind of consciousness that transcends all the individuals.”

Yes you did read correctly. There is a very real discussion around ‘brain chips’ which will probably function as a prosthetic cortical implant to enhance our senses and communication/control to improve our performance. It has already envisioned that “general adoption will take roughly twenty to thirty years”. The arguments for this gross invasion of humanity already stem from the widespread use of drugs to ‘improve’ people’s moods as many are unable to deal with their emotions/depressions/tempers in and of themselves, so in that regard this is merely the technological next step of scientific development. If prosthetics, drugs, psychotherapy and cosmetic surgery are all accepted forms of assisting individuals in their interaction in the world, ‘for the good of the whole’ as well as that of the individual, what should be so wrong in this logical progression?

Microphones hardwired into the brain to enable deaf people to hear, or a camera hardwired to allow the blind to see seems the stuff of movies, yet it is very real. In fact in 2005 the BBC reported that a paralyzed man in the US had been implanted with a brain chip that allowed him to control everyday objects by thought alone; i.e. he could think the TV on and off or change channel or control the volume. Am sure there would be many people who could initially react “wow, how cool would that be?” without thinking through any implications. You can guarantee gamer’s can’t wait to get the heads locked into mind-controlling devices by companies like Emotiv when they are released later this year.

It was back in 2007 I highlighted ‘psychocorrection’ being used in Russia and explored by the US Department of Homeland Security to manipulate people beyond their will using ‘subliminal messages to bend a subject’s will, and even modify a person’s personality without their knowledge.’ According to Wired last summer, Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes; the DHS sees a real threat on the battlefield of ‘enhanced’ bionic people being able to resist pain, or know things about the enemy immediately, etc – basically they are going to make sure they get the technology implemented first to maintain advantage. We can fully expect the military to push adoption of brain chips into those serving in the armed forces.

It is these teleontological arguments where the “end justifies the means” that seems to be rife in society today. There is no regard for a higher moral code outside of ourselves and no regards for the Creator or His creation – which is now seemingly proven by science to be some kind of mystical fairy tale. Yet the very removal of a higher entity allows man, any man, to make judgment calls on behalf of other men in as much as a general of an army can demand his soldiers to follow orders even if faced with certain execution. It all stems back to can we trust any human at the top of the chain to be perfect continuously and be beyond reproach? History proves there has been no such mere human –and certainly not with the power to control the conscious mind, via an automated “hive” to dictate and modify as ‘it’ sees fit?

Consider that “in thirty years, it will be possible to capture data presenting all of a human being’s sensory experiences on a single tiny chip implanted in the brain… The most frightening implication of this technology is the grave possibility that it would facilitate totalitarian control of humans.”

Combine these technological advances to what we know of dictatorial human behavior throughout time manipulating the masses for their perverse gain and we really do have a very terrifying glimpse into a frightening future that could be nearer then we all think.

Assuming, of course, you are still allowed to think – independently.

This article also appeared on; We the People will not be Chipped

More on RFID; NothingToHide.Us

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Our very near future

I want to show two different angles of the near future. This is something that is beyond a vision of the next ten years, it is the very system being implemented.

Microsoft Office Labs Vision 2019
The first is a very fine vision of a connnected world with some of the most tastiest technological concepts that are just waiting in the wings of deployment. Think how far we have come in the last ten years, is it really so wild to envision this in another ten?

CNBC’s Big Brother, Big Business
Its a fascinating and exciting world for sure, and it sure is being painted very rosey. Yet equally I feel those of us in the know have a responsibility to give the full facts and to embrace such ethical questions for the good of humanity, and not just for commerce sake. So consider this second video I want to share looking at some of the ethical implications in bringing in this technology.

For the record, Scott Silverman actually made me laugh out loud in this interview when he says “RFID chips are not linked to GPS.” Maybe the chips aren’t but the readers are! It’s like saying the chip doesn’t house your medical records or your ATM card doesn’t contain any cash… correct, it’s just a linking device. Of course the system has location-based tracking, its the whole point. The first video could not be acheived without it…

As someone said to me this week, it is not inconceivable to think that Google has more data and knoweldge of global citizens then the US and EU governments combined – and if not now, then VERY soon. So when I hear of them taking their servers “off-shore“, it does make me wonder if the pretty-face of water turbines is really more important to them then being outside of ‘regulations’.

More on RFID; NothingToHide.Us

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Apple, Playboy and the future of comics

So no sooner do I start to round up my thoughts on e-Paper then someone alerts me to all sorts of rumors’ becoming rife around a possible Apple eBook/iTablet. I had heard of Apple and Google both “scanning” in books recently, assuming Apple for eBook sales and Google for searching. With an anticipated new iPhone v3 hanging in the wings to complement the software upgrade, it would indeed make sense that apple would favour a device they could sell “stuff” for, like “iBooks”, over merely pushing out a new Apple NetBook.

Apparently Apple are already considering things like eComics, complementing eBooks with iTunes becoming the central hub for all digital media sales; you can just see it can’t you – log in to iTunes to download a copy of Wall Street Journal’s ePrint edition and pull down Harepr Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, alternate between the latest TED’s videos or lose yourself in collecting Batman eComic’s, play Kylie Minogue tunes whilst browsing Vogue Magazines, or pretend to watch the latest episode of 24 whilst secretly thumbing through an interactive version of Playboy Magazine… I dread to see the ads in ePorn – but I guarantee they will be a lot more interesting then Esquire’s Ford ad!

Whatever this device is called, an “eBook”, an “iBook” or a “TouchBook” (cue old MacDonald ‘e-i-e-i-touch’), some interactive sharp screen from the Apple stable will sure as heck get the rest of us craving reading again on our commute whilst we are listening to music on our iPod/iPhone.

Just please Apple – can it be bundled with Flash & Wi-Fi?!

Further reading a must; Newsrama: Comics Sleeping Giant? Apple, e-Books, and the Future and Is Apple getting ready for an ‘iPad’

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Full-colour, flexible e-Paper is finally here

At a Tokyo trade show, the tyre company Bridgestone (no less!) has dazzled the crowds with its o.3mm flexible e-Paper that has got to have Sony and Amazon feeling like they are soon to become the future of fish-and-chip wrappings!

Resembling a flexible piece of plastic, and complete with a touch screen surface provided by a WACOM tablet, the A4 sized full-colour capabilities are jaw-dropping. The ability to scribble-on-screen is ensuring Bridgestone’s 13” colour screen ‘has the future written all over it’. Though screen refresh (0.8 secs min) and price ($500+) is a little prohibitive presently, this is the first stab at a revolution for the print industry that has got Rupert Murdoch himself excited. Suddenly updateable newspapers and magazines are well within reach.

According to ePaperCentral, “unlike other e-paper devices like the Kindle and Sony’s 505/700, the Bridgestone model does not use E Ink based technologies. Instead, it uses a powerful technology built in house that could completely revolutionize e-paper called QR-LPD.”

When you contemplate that anywhere between 60% and upwards of all magazine content is advertising based, the potential for a hybrid online print media is mind-blowing. Magazines and newspapers currently account for over 30% of global media spend, and this technology will see the convergence of print and digital agencies as opposed to the current threat that print feels.

Consider the fact that consumers are willing to pay for magazines with such vast advertising exposure – often full screen, as the advertising enhances the experience as opposed to detracts from it – there is no reason to expect ePrint ads to be any different. Women want to see the latest Jimmy Choo’s or Gucci handbags, men want to see the golf clubs and gadgets – we are talking the most natural place for information with not just full-colour photos, but full-screen interactive video; I am talking full on product demos at a user’s choosing, served by your friendly, global ad management platform!

Now the OPA are pushing for larger formats, we may still find a backlash on current PC & laptop monitors as consumers are used to much smaller “banners” online, but e-Paper is the best bet yet at taking an already established advertising model and enhancing it with real-time insertion of measurable full-screen videos. Taking something small and making it big could be seen as intrusion, yet taking print and making it interactive I predict will no doubt be seen as enhancement, in the same way as digital outdoor currently is.

With HP and Fujitsu already pushing e-Paper, Bridgestone is the latest Kindle-killer to the market. Expect normal paper to go the way of papyrus very soon – and then feel happy about saving the trees…

Bridgestone QR-LPD Color E-Paper Review

Bridgestone QR-LPD Color E-Paper Demonstration

Bridgestone Color E-Paper Featured on a Japanese Show

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Spend quality time with your target audience

Discussions around Digital Advertising from iMedia’s Branding Summit in San Diego, September. Looking at innovation, adpation and how to get there.

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The display ad opportunities you’re overlooking

Discussions around Digital Advertising from iMedia’s Branding Summit in Florida, February 2009. Looking at innovative campaigns and conversions in trying times.

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