New Media Users Confused, The Ad People Are Watching

Michael Hedges December 20, 2012 Follow on Twitter

The advertising world is constantly moving. Those who would like to touch some of that largess, ad-supported media, are in a race to keep up. Readers, viewers and listeners generally take this in stride; it’s the cost of free media. New media users seem not to believe the old rule applies to them: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.

Social media, yet to prove itself as an advertising vehicle, took a public relations hit as Facebook-owned Instagram changed user terms of service. Instagram is popular a web-based photo sharing portal and a clause in its terms and conditions, published December 17, would allow the company to turn uploaded photos into ads without approval or compensation. Obviously, the folks at Facebook would like to generate a bit of revenue from user generated web content and the revenue stream of choice is advertising.

Within hours outrage from users caused a slight retreat with a promise from Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom to remove the offending passage. “It was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation,” he wrote in a blog post (December 18). “This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing.” 

Users have free access to Instagram, just like Facebook, Twitter and other in the social media milieu. None of these portals operate in basements or university dormatories any longer. They have engineers, marketing people and lawyers to pay. They have investors who’d like to see some kind of return.

Advertising people are certainly interested, seeing social media as a high potential message vehicle. The Instagram terms of service gave the company access to users photos “along with any associated metadata,” meaning geo-tracking tags. The ad people absolutely salivate at the marketing advantage of knowing a potential buyer’s location, the more precise the better.

Advertisers, marketers and media buyers have pushed measurement suppliers for more and more “granular” data. Technology advances have made this magic possible. Sophisticated multimedia analytics are a very big business.

Twitter and TV measurement giant Nielsen announced, vaguely (December 17), a Nielsen Twitter TV Rating to analyze a new quantum, viewers watching TV and engaging social media. A certain portion of TV viewers watch surrounded by laptops, smartphones and tablets, texting, Tweeting and whatever. The ad people want to know, expand their knowledge, place instantly customized messages across multiple platforms.

“For the first time, engagement,” said Nielsen spokesperson Steve Hasker, quoted by TechCrunch (December 17), “will come out of the shadows.” Details will be known by all in May, ahead of the Cannes Lions ad fest. The Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings should first appear in time for the fall 2013 TV season.

Nielsen is a major supplier of television ratings, not limited to the United States, and it will, subject to the requisite anti-trust examination, add the services of radio measurement provider Arbitron to its basket. The companies announced (December 18) agreement whereby Nielsen will acquire all shares in Arbitron for US$1.26 billion…in cash. In addition to supplying radio audience measurement in the US, Arbitron owns patents it developed over more than a decade for passive electronic measurement of encoded audio – the Personal People Meter (PPM), which is used in a number of European countries.  The company attempted to diversify its customer base outside of radio audience measurement, concentrating on technology solutions, with little impact.

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