Our Indelible Lives

by Gord Hotchkiss, Thursday, June 3, 2010, 11:00 AM

It’s been a fascinating week for me. First, it was off to lovely Muncie, Ind. to meet with the group at the Center for Media Design at Ball State University. Then, it was to Chicago for the National Business Marketing Association Conference, where I was fortunate enough to be on a panel about what the B2B marketplace might look like in the near future. There was plenty of column fodder from both visits, but this week, I’ll give the nod to Ball State, simply because that visit came first.

Our Digital Footprints

Mike Bloxham, Michelle Prieb and Jen Milks (the last two joined us for our most recent Search Insider Summit) were gracious hosts, and, as with last week (when I was in Germany) I had the chance to participate in a truly fascinating conversation that I wanted to share with you. We talked about the fact that this generation will be the first to leave a permanent digital footprint. Mike Bloxham called it the Indelible Generation. That title is more than just a bon mot (being British, Mike is prone to pithy observations) — it’s a telling comment about a fundament aspect of our new society.

Imagine some far-in-the-future anthropologist recreating our culture. Up to this point in our history, the recorded narrative of any society came from a small sliver of the population. Only the wealthiest or most learned received the honor of being chronicled in any way. Average folks spent their time on this planet with nary a whisper of their lives recorded for posterity. They passed on without leaving a footprint.

Explicit and Implicit Content Creation

But today — or if not today, certainly tomorrow — all of us will leave behind a rather large digital footprint. We will leave in our wake emails, tweets, blog posts and Facebook pages. And that’s just the content we knowingly create. There’s a lot of data generated by each of us that’s simply a byproduct of our online activities and intentions. Consider, for example, our search history. Search is a unique online beast because it tends to be the thread we use to stitch together our digital lives. Each of us leaves a narrative written in search interactions that provides a frighteningly revealing glimpse into our fleeting interests, needs and passions.

Of course, not all this data gets permanently recorded. Privacy concerns mean that search logs, for example, get scrubbed at regular intervals. But even with all that, we leave behind more data about who we were, what we cared about and what thoughts passed through our minds than any previous generation. Whether it’s personally identifiable or aggregated and anonymized, we will all leave behind footprints.

Privacy? What Privacy?

Currently we’re struggling with this paradigm shift and its implications for our privacy. I believe in time — not that much time — we’ll simply grow to accept this archiving of our lives as the new normal, and won’t give it a second thought. We will trade personal information in return for new abilities, opportunities and entertainment. We will grow more comfortable with being the Indelible Generation.

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps we’ll trigger a revolt against the surrender of our secrets. Either way, we live in a new world, one where we’re always being watched. The story of how we deal with that fact is still to be written.

Is Facebook Bad for Business?

Mediapost’s OMMA Magazine

By Mike Bloxham

For a business that is all about building community and that has grown on its ability to facilitate communication between ever-larger numbers of people, Facebook continues to do a pretty poor job of communicating, itself. Apart from consistently over-claiming for its brave new commercial initiatives before proving that users will even accept them, much of the negative response Facebook generates every time it changes something or introduces a new protocol could be nullified if it actually behaved like a company that cared about its communications and the loyalty of its users.

Study shows viewers less likely to switch channels during commercials than commonly thought

Broadcast Engineering

Could the widely held belief that TV viewers, by and large, switch channels or leave the room when commercials are on be all wrong?

That’s the conclusion of a recent Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study sponsored by the Council for Research Excellence.

Study shows 86% of TV viewers watch commercials

RICG

It’s a common belief that most people either change the channel or leave the room during television commercials. But a new study finds this may be just a myth.

According to the Video Consumer Mapping study, conducted by the Council for Research Excellence, the large majority of TV viewers – 86 percent – actually remain with live TV during commercial breaks instead of leaving the room or changing the channel.

Research Study Shows TV Viewers Really Do Watch Commercials

Participant

This is a great article on a Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study sponsored by the Council for Research Excellence (CRE). Although it does not go into brand and messaging detail, it is important for all advertisers and marketers to realize people ARE watching television commercials. However, many brands are finding that their commercials are not working as well as they hoped. As you can see below, this is not a matter of media and whether or not the commercial was viewed, it has to do with how relevant and engaging your message and call to action is to your intended audience.

Research Study Shows TV Viewers Really Do Watch Commercials

Nielsen Wire

It’s always been conventional wisdom that people watching TV don’t watch commercials. They flip channels, get something to eat or otherwise ignore the ads. In fact, it turns out the conventional wisdom is all wrong: TV advertising and program promotions reach 85% of adults daily, and viewers typically see 26 advertising or promotional breaks — accounting for 73 minutes — each day.

Ad Bonanza: Most Viewers Are Watching Commercials

Mediapost’s Media Daily News

New dramatic research suggests the majority of viewers don’t leave the room during commercial breaks — or even change channels.

What are they doing? It may come as a shock to TV marketers that have been told otherwise: Viewers are watching TV commercials.

Where’s Mobile Advertising?

News & Tech

By Marc Wilson Special to News & Tech

I have a near-60-year-old friend who says he now spends more time with his iPhone and less time watching television and reading his local newspaper. He’s not alone. After years of anticipation, mobile technology is taking the nation – and the world – by storm.

Captiva-Ting Conversations From The Search Insider Summit

MediaPost Blog – SearchInsider

by Gord Hotchkiss

I promised MediaPost a wrap-up (from the programming chair’s perspective) of last week’s Search Insider Summit. Honestly, from the moment that Brett Brewer from Microsoft first fired up Pivot to the final moments of day three, when Jen Milks and Michelle Prieb from Ball State gave us a glimpse into the minds of Gen Next, I couldn’t have asked for anything more from my presenters. I’ve programmed a lot of these shows now and have never had as much positive response as I have from this one. Well-done, each and every one of you.

A lot has been said about the new TED-style format. I actually had a few TEDsters reach out to send best wishes prior to the summit. They also wanted feedback about the success of the show. I think it’s fair to say that the adopted TED format was a hit. Attendees loved the pace of the presentations, the varying perspectives presented — and, most of all, the conversations that were catalyzed by the content.

Here are a few of the many highlights from three days of SIS:

College Students Redesign Google Into Personal Assistant

MediaPost Blog – SearchBlog
by Laurie Sullivan

Members of the generation raised on Google wants search engines to know how they think and feel. They want visual search, and for engines to serve them ideas based on personal information stored in social sites across the Web.

For example, when they search for movies after they’ve had a bad break-up, they want search engines to filter out romantic comedies. That might mean processing brain waves and reading physical movements through a PC camera, similar to Microsoft’s Project Natal.

That’s how a handful of Ball State University students would rethink how they find information online and offline, as well as redesign search on a variety of platforms and devices, according to Jen Milks and Michelle Prieb, project managers at Ball State University. The two shared their findings during the closing session Saturday of MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit.