Nobody Wants To Watch Your Video

It feels like everywhere you turn these days, there’s a news story about the importance of online video. 

"People Now Watch 1 Billion Hours Of YouTube Per Day" is today's top headline.  But are they watching more hours of videos by choice, or because that's what social media networks, publishers and advertisers are pushing? 

E-Marketer breathlessly reports that “digital video audience will grow by 8.2% in 2017” and that “62% of the world’s internet users will view digital video in 2017.” 

Cisco estimates that by 2018, 69% of all web traffic will be video. And it seems like publishers think that video is the answer. More and more, I keep seeing these video slideshows (looking at you, Snopes Video, among others) that are just a more irritating way to get the same information as I might in an article. 

And advertisers are stoked about online video. Recent (2016) research found that 38% of US advertisers planned to draw funds from their broadcast budget to support digital video advertising. 

We're told that although Facebook is discontinuing the practice of paying publishers to create live videos, they are encouraging these same publishers to create longer videos. 

Netflix saw an enormous jump in popularity this year - but they did that on a platform based on providing an ad-free experience (and which, apparently, meant they left $2 billion on the table). They are also reportedly going to be spending $6 billion/year to create new content. 

And while the implication is that people are absolutely clamouring for more and more video, I think we need to read into this a bit further. The common thread of these stories is a focus on quality content. 

45% of people are watching videos of six minutes or less on their mobile devices...but the flip side of that is that the majority of them are watching videos longer than six minutes. 

Facebook's own shift from live-video to longer form video from publishers means that they see opportunity in the quality content space more so than than quick-hit live content (the site has seen a massive decline in public sharing/content creation from users as well). 

Yes, people do want to watch online video. But they want to watch high-quality online video. They want to watch epic TV like Game of Thrones, The OA, Westworld and The Man in the High Castle (to name a few of my personal favourites). While the research is a year old (and with a younger focus not necessarily indicative of the entire population), this study that says millennials primarily want to watch TV shows, full-length movies, music videos and sports. At the very least, I'd guess that they want that studio-quality content. 

If ads were so great and something users actually wanted, YouTube wouldn't be getting rid of 30s unskippable ads. And of those 1 billion hours watched per day mentioned earlier, how many of those hours are ads? How many of those are ads that are watching willingly vs unwillingly? And if those ads were really so great, would YouTube really have rolled out YouTube Red (Ad-free), or YouTube TV (that's almost exclusively quality network content)? 

A few years ago  I did a research project to better understand what the completion rate of some client videos was (and which videos were most likely to be completed). After going through all of the available data on video completion for both YouTube and Facebook, across about 20 different clients, I found that video length didn't matter. What mattered was the level of quality of the video. It's not surprising that the big, beautiful pieces of storytelling content were mostly likely to have the highest completion rate, while short promotional pieces (or ones that were overly commercial) had much lower completion rates. 

So what does it all mean? 

Video shouldn't be the default answer for every online campaign or publishing approach. 

It should be a carefully considered aspect, and advertisers should ensure it's relevant to the audience and material. And if video will be produced, ensure that there is enough budget to actually produce a piece of quality content. Otherwise, you'll end up the laughing stock of the internet. 

DRONE WEEK - February 27th

I used to write a fairly regular series of posts here called "Drone Week" that would 

Anyways, with a ton of interesting news in this space, I thought I'd bring it back. 

First up...

What is a drone? 

I've been pretty loose with the term drone, and and I figured it would be good to dig into the etymology of it a bit. Based on the dictionary definition, a drone is specifically "remote-controlled pilotless aircraft or missile." I suppose that the usage comes from the drone in a bee colony, which is one that doesn't have stingers, doesn't gather nectar and pollen and whose job seems to be to fertilize the queen. So, basically a lazy, pacifist. Which is the exact opposite of the original drones used by the military. 

So why did the military call them drones in the first place? Apparently it's because the first unmanned aircraft used for target practice was called "Queen Bee."...all the way back in 1935. Later versions were called drones...out of respect, I guess? 

Still, that definition should work for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Quadcopters. 

But what about our autonomous cars and bipedal robots? Is a quadcopter that makes use of Artificial Intelligence (rather than being remote controlled) still a drone? Is a remote controlled  (or RC) airplane still a drone? 

I guess I might have to rename this category of posts on my site to ensure I can cover it all. 

The Latest Boston Dynamics Monstrosity

Boston Dynamics has a long history of unveiling new robotic servants that fit pretty squarely in the "creepy" section of the uncanny valley, and their latest one, called "Handle" follows the same trend. Based on our definition above, it might not be considered 

via the description on their video: 

"Handle is a research robot that stands 6.5 ft tall, travels at 9 mph and jumps eet vertically. t uses electric power to operate both electric and hydraulic actuators, with a range of about 15 miles on one battery charge. andle uses many of the same dynamics, balance and mobile manipulation principle found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only about 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs Handle can have the best of both worlds."

Drones At The Movies

It will be interesting to see how drones will be portrayed in the media and movies over the next few years. Good Kill is apparently very good, and on my must-watch list, but I'm also very interested in the potential of Skywatch. It's currently in the process of being crowdfunded.  

Robo Racing

Self-driving cars have been in the news a lot lately. So much so that it's all starting to feel a bit boring, and that most of the news is about regulations rather than technological innovation. 

And that's why RoboRace is so exciting - it feels like that big, next step. It feels like the video-game future I've been looking forward to. The gist of it is that RoboRace will develop a chasis, and that it will be up to teams to optimize software to make it race faster/driver better. With human lives no longer at risk during high-speed rashes (and the ensuing crashes), this might take the thrill out of watching it. 

This post was written by me, Parker Mason. I'm a digital strategist who is fascinated by technology but also worried about the singularity . Get in touch with me at ParkerMason.net

Ten Years Of BlogCampaigning

I used to have a line on my resume that said I'd been blogging "since before it was cool." 

I think I changed that line at one point to something about how I had been maintaining a blog for "almost a decade." 

More recently, I removed reference to maintaining a blog altogether. I think I might add something back in about it, now that BlogCampaigning is officially ten years old. 

And it's been a pretty amazing ten years since Espen Skoland launched a Wordpress site to share his research on the use of blogs in American political campaigns, and asked me to proofread the English on his posts. 

I'm not going to go back and try and count how many posts or words I've written here in the past ten years. And I'm not going to try and add up the hours I've sat in coffee shops or late at night at work writing and re-writing posts, tweaking the CSS or trying to get a Wordpress plug-in to work. And I'm definitely not going to try and compare all those hours to the number of Unique Visitors BlogCampaigning has had in the last ten years (or, at least the last 8 years because we somehow lost the data for the first 2 years). 

Instead, I'm going to reflect on the connections I've made in those ten years and what I've learned. I've got BlogCampaigning to thank for where I ended up today in my career. It paved the way to introductions, via that early blogging community, with people to get my first few jobs.

Researching and writing posts helped me understand what else was happening in the world of social media and digital communications, and BlogCampaigning became a case study library that I could refer to. I learned a little bit of HTML in school, but most of my technical knowledge of how the internet works comes from moving the original BlogCampaigning onto a self-hosted Wordpress site, customizing the CSS, dealing with (and understanding) domain name registration, updating DNS settings, managing the hosting and all the other fun stuff that comes with maintaining a website.  

I thought about trying to create a snappy list like "5 Things I Learned From Blogging" but everything kept coming back to the following thought: 

Learn By Doing

As much as I learned about the world of marketing, social media and the internet by writing blog posts, it was by actually working on projects for clients while at CNW Group, Maverick Public Relations and DDB that I really l learned. 

I learned about the difference between the theoretical and the practical. I learned that client needs, what users want (and how they behave!) and the idealized campaign didn't all necessarily align. In fact, they rarely, if ever, did. 

BlogCampaigning certainly gave me a good starting point, and back in the day it was a great way to connect with people in the industry. But writing articles about the best way to communicate online and how to a "Social Media News Release" (hey, remember those?) should be used wasn't the same as actually executing a campaign. 

I'll continue to update BlogCampaigning infrequently. When I do, it will be mostly just be photos from recent trips I've been on (like this awesome hike, or this one) or a recap of something I've worked on. Like this post, they'll be reflections of the past. I'll save my forward-thinking work for clients and projects that will hopefully see the light of internet day at some point. 

-Parker 

 

 

Hiking Tasmania: Quamby Bluff

IMG_5815.jpg

These photos are all from the Quamby Bluff hike in central Tasmania. It's only about 7km, but there are a lot of steep sections and there is one section that requires you to scramble up a scree slope. The hike is totally worth it, though, 

If you liked these photos, you might also like photos of a few other hikes I went on: 

Haleakala, Maui: Re-entering the House of the Sun 

Casades Kauri Park: Waterfalls and Sand Dunes

Pinnacles, New Zealand: A Foggy, Moody Hike

My Listserve Email: A Story of Surfing and Friendship

The Listserve is an email list with about 22,000 subscribers. Everyday, one of those subscribers "Wins" it, and they get the opportunity to send an email to everyone else on the list. 

The rules are simple: 600 words, max, text-only, no links. Otherwise, you can pretty much write about whatever you want. 

Last week, I won the Listserve. The email I wrote is below. 

When I first got the email saying I’d won The Listserve, I asked my friends in New Zealand what I should write about.

“Write about us,” Johannes said.

And so here we go.

I met Johannes, Gui, Woonie and Jim at the advertising agency we worked together at in Auckland.

On my first day of work, I was taken on a tour of the office. When we went by Jimbo and Woonie’s desks, the two of them were watching a surfing video. I asked the person giving me a tour to leave me there, and within two weeks we were out surfing the coasts of New Zealand together.

A month or so later, Gui and Johannes started working at our agency, and they joined us for surf missions.

At first, I think it was a friendship of convenience and sympathy: I didn’t have a car at the time, and the other guys saw how badly I wanted to make it out to coast to surf so they gave me a ride.

But you can only spend so many long car rides down twisty, New Zealand roads and so much time braving the icy New Zealand water with people before they became more than just work colleagues.

Some of the best days of my life were spent in those New Zealand waters with those guys.

Like the time Jimbo drove us up to Pakiri Beach and we had a section of an amazing little beach break all to ourselves.

Or the time Woonie met me up at Piha on my birthday, and I caught one of the biggest lefts of my life, then bailed on it, and came up out of the water to see Woonie laughing.

Or the time Johannes and i went down to Raglan for big, messy (but otherwise almost empty) waves for a Sunday afternoon.

Or the time four of us somehow managed to cram into Johannes’ car with our boards to surf North Piha, right next to the cliff, and I dropped in on Johannes (sorry, buddy).

Or the time Gui and I went out on the coldest day of the year and had the entire beach to ourselves. (the waves weren’t great, but it was still an amazing experience).

Or any of the other times where we paddled out into the ocean off the coast of New Zealand to watch each other catch waves, or to disappear from each other’s sights when the rip was strong.

Or the Friday nights spent talking on What’s App about where the waves were best, and how early in the morning we’d want to leave.

Or on the Monday mornings at work, when we’d talk about the waves we caught over the weekend, and would start looking at the forecast.

You can only spend so many days like that, so much time spent seeing the smile on someone’s face after they’ve caught an amazing wave, or having them see one on yours, and not consider them friends.

So there you go, Johannes. I wrote about you guys. I miss you dudes and hope we connect for a surf mission again soon.

I guess if there was a moral to this story it would be to enjoy the moment.

Or maybe that the friends you make today will be your friends for life.

Or maybe that you should just get up early to go surfing. Preferably with some good friends.

-Parker
Sydney

PS: Message me if you're in Sydney and want to go for a surf.

Goodbye Auckland, Hello Sydney

if you've been following my life on either Instagram or LinkedIn, you might have seen that last month I left Auckland to move to Sydney and join DDB there as a Senior Business Director. 

I've never had such a hard time leaving a job as I did when I said goodbye to the team at DDB New Zealand. They are an incredibly talented and passionate bunch, and I was lucky to have been a part of the energy that I felt for the year I was there. I'm pretty sure the world will see some amazing creative projects come out of that office in the next few months to years on top of the great pieces that have already been seen. I'll miss the people there a lot. 

But at the same time, I'm happy to still be in the DDB family here in Sydney. It's only been a (busy!) few weeks, and the Christmas holidays are around the corner, but I can tell 2016 is going to be big. 

Below are a few photos of the DDB Sydney office - it's a really interesting space and a great place to work. 


Waterfalls, Rain Forests and Sand Dunes: Another Amazing New Zealand Hike

Yesterday, I hiked from the Cascades Kauri Park through to Bethells Beach, and back. I think it was the Montana Heritage Trail for most of the journey, but I also think I went off that a little bit. 

Highlights of the hike were the green rain forest, some massive inland sand dunes, a waterfall (that I wasn't expecting), and some great views of classic, rolling hills. 

According to the iHealth function on my iPhone, I walked about 30km and the entire journey took me just under 5 hours. I'd highly recommend it if you've got a spare day in Auckland, as it's a great way to see some awesome and varied New Zealand scenery. 

If you liked these hiking pictures, you might also like the ones I took last week when I hiked The Pinnacles or this post with more general pictures of New Zealand.

A Foggy, Moody Hike In New Zealand: The Pinnacles

Below are a few photos from a hike I did on the weekend called The Pinnacles. It's on the Coromandel Peninsula and is about a 90 minute drive from Auckland. You can find more info about it here. It was a misty day when I went so the views were great, but the conditions made the hike almost more interesting and mysterious. The first half of the hike was through jungle-like terrain that involved crossing back and forth over a stream and waterfalls, with swinging bridges and stepping stones. The second half was alpine hiking and bare rock faces. 

The entire hike was about 20km round trip, with some seriously steep sections. 

See more photos from my time in New Zealand here

Intel:Idea:Impact - Ad Blocking

We've been writing a series of emails around the office lately called Intel:Idea:Impact in which we look at some interesting insights or data (the Intel), share an example or two of this in real life (the Idea) and then tie it to a broader trend or business results (the Impact). The following is one that I wrote the other day on the topic of Ad Blocking. 

Ad Blocking is not specifically a social media topic, but as it has the potential to affect almost everything we do, we thought it worth talking about in this week’s edition of INTEL:IDEA:IMPACT. 

INTEL//

In the last few years, the advertising industry has championed personalised ads, better targeting, and retargeting but Internet users aren’t impressed: the 2015 Ad Blocking report estimates that 16% of the US population blocked ads in Q2 2015 and that the number of people using ad blocking software grew 41% year over year globally. The same report finds that as of June 2015, there were 198 million monthly active users of browser extensions that block ads. On the day it launched, an ad blocker app for iOS 9 became the top paid app.

 

That same report found that in 2015, ad blocking software has so far resulted in a loss of $21.8 billion for internet publishers, but it’s not a one-sided argument: research by the New York times found that ad-heavy websites are costing users in the form of slower load times, and that they can eat into a mobile phone user’s data plan. 

IDEA//

Online publishers are meeting the challenge of ad blocking in a few different ways. The first ones to make a move were technology sites, whose regular readers were more likely to use ad blocking software. 

The Guardian is appealing to users of ad blocking software with a message asking them to support the site by donating. Similarly, TechDirt allows users to turn off ads if they don’t like them, but also appeals to visitors to support the site by becoming a member. 

Ars Technica, a technology news website, famously stopped showing any content to users with ad blocking technology five years ago in a failed experiment. More recently, they’ve integrated advertising more directly with the site so that while they still have ads, they’re not able to be blocked. The Washington Post, failing to learn from Ars Technica’s approach, has also recently blocked all of its content to anyone with ad blocking software. 

While it’s a few years old, we really like Bud Light’s approach: They gave users an ad blocker that replaced banner ads with live-scores from the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament (suitably branded to become ads themselves). 

IMPACT//

Getting users to pay for content that they’re used to getting for free is a lofty goal, and it probably won’t be a long-term solution to ad blocking software. Already, anti-ad-blocking companies like Secret Media are cropping up with purported solutions, and even Ad Block (the most popular ad blocking extension for the Chrome browser) has sold to an anonymous buyer and will start letting “acceptable” ads through. 

The greater business impact beyond unseen ads and revenue loss for publishers has yet to be fully realised, but what’s obvious is that internet users are voting with their browser plugins.

The advertising industry has two choices: We can either continue to ignore this shift,  or we can embrace change, and use this an opportunity to work more closely with internet users, content creators and publishers to create something that truly benefits everyone. As The Guardian reminds us in their take on the subject, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” 

,

What do you say to people who say they aren't influenced by advertising?

,

Via the user ShamelessMendacity on Reddit in response to the question "Ad people, what do you say to people who say they are not influenced by advertising or branding?"

Great advertising changes your behaviour. It doesn't change what you want - doesn't even attempt to. It changeshow you want.
An example: If you ask people what they want to have five years from now, most of them will give you a list that's essentially an upgrade of things they currently own, or that their friends and colleagues have. A better car. A bigger house. A nice kitchen. Better furniture.
That's all fine - but then you should ask them what they're picturing when they say "a better car."
Chances are they're not thinking of a slight upgrade on their Ford Mondeo - they're thinking of an Audi. Or a Lexus. And when they say "a nice kitchen" it'll have a specific set of features that approximate to something made by Viking.
It's legitimate to want "better" things, but one of the most powerful effects of branding is that people have learned to benchmark quality based on brands with which they're already somewhat familiar. And even if the choice is negative, buying an Acura specifically because it isn't a Lexus is still a choice made with Lexus in mind.
By advertising themselves and branding themselves in a certain way, brands can completely change your relationship with their entire category.
Oh, and if someone says they're not influenced by advertising, they're actually admitting that advertising has the power to influence. Just that it doesn't influence them. And people don't make their choices in a vacuum. Even if you never watched TV or listened to the radio, never read a magazine, or surfed the internet, and only read books written before 1914, and were completely immune from the influence of advertising, you're still going to be influenced by what everyone around you is doing. You may not care about pop culture, but it cares about you.

You can read the rest of the thread on Reddit here. 

 

 

DRONE WEEK - September 14

It's been a little while since I've written a Drone Week post here, but I want to get back into it. I'll ease back into it with a mix of fact and fiction. 

Glitch Noir is a short video about privately-built weaponised drones gone rogue. It's done in an a pretty interesting style, but I'm not sure I could watch an entire movie like that. See if you can pick up the Neuromancer, Blade Runner and Gundam references (and I'm sure there are a few others in there that I'm missing). 

Have you or someone you know been injured in a drone or quadcopter accident? Maybe it's time to check out Drone Injuries Lawyer (as Tweeted by William Gibson, who probably couldn't have even made this up if he tried). 

 

I know I wrote about Surfing Drones a few weeks or months ago, but the World Surf League just posted this footage from the Lowers contest and it's absolutely beautiful: 

 

If you want to keep digging in to drone-related news, it looks like Bruce Schneier and Techdirt have a couple of link roundups of their own: 

Bruce Schneier - Animals vs Drones

Techdirt - Our Crazy Drone Filled World

Check out other drone-related posts on BlogCampaigning here. 

All About Instagram

I’ve been pretty Instagram-obsessed lately. It’s always been one of my favourite social networks because it's a place to escape into the world of somewhere else. It's a place I follow my favourite athletes (mostly surfers or the photographers that follow them) as they travel the world to amazing destinations, and it's a way to keep up with my more interesting friends and brands with agencies that understand how to make a beautiful image. 

Like a lot of people, I'm sure I've always thought of it as a more pure social network: it was simpler than the alternatives, and limited ways to engage kept the experience truly focused on the photos in your feed.

With Instagram removing the restrictions on image dimensions and giving it a more robust direct messaging system, a lot of that simple purity is about to change. Another big change is that ads are coming to the platform (or have already come, depending on where you live). 

Our team even did a bit of analysis, and found that comments on an ad from Instagram itself, letting Kiwis know that advertising was coming to the platform, were over 80% negative or extremely negative. People are always reluctant to change, but even more so when it's to something they've probably considered their own for so long, and when the change is so potentially invasive.

While I'm excited to be part of the DDB team working with Instagram and our clients to be launch partners for the advertising platform here in New Zealand, it's also a daunting task. How do we create something that will suddenly appear in what was such a personal, pure space for users that they'll want to react positively to, with a smile, like, or comment? 

We will have to see what the results are, but I'm really proud of the work that went into our launch plan and the amazing pieces that our creative team made for this launch, what we're calling Quotography. 

Our client, NEON, is a streaming video on demand service here in New Zealand, and we used some of the more famous quotes from shows available on the service and worked them up in pulsating NEON lights. If you can see the examples below, check out the links here and here. (though you'll have to click "play" on the videos to get the auto-play cinemagraph experience that users coming across posts on the Instagram app would get). 

A video posted by Neon NZ (@neon_nz) on

 

I'm really happy with the work that DDB New Zealand did on this (and our clients at NEON for working through it with us and making it happen),  but there are also a ton of other great Instagram accounts out there. Below are a few of my favourites, presented without commentary (the images link through to the accounts, so click and follow): 

 

Nike Lab

 

Astron

if you made it this far, you might as well follow me on Instagram as well: I'm ParkerNow there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow The Ley Lines

If you follow me on Instragram, Twitter or on my personal portfolio site you’ll see that I’ve used the phrase “follow the key lines” as a description or bio. 

The theory of ley lines says that certain prominent sites, like mountain tops and trees, line up with each other in such a way that they imbue the space between them or near them with mystical power or that a combination of natural and manmade landmarks helped guide ancient travellers across the landscape.

Although you can easily draw a straight line from one random point to another and connect a number of random points in between (giving the illusion of order from chaos), I think that using  cultural ley lines is an important way of arriving at insights.

We often have a lot of data points or information to look at, and it isn’t always easy to connect the dots. Sometimes doing so takes a few leaps, and you'll have to use another piece of data as a reference point. At worst, you'll come across some interesting territory you might not have explored before. 

So to that, you’ll always find me following the key lines. They might not always take me to my destination, but I know I’ll learn something along the way. 

Why Squarespace?

If you read the previous post, you'll have noticed that BlogCampaigning has moved over to Squarespace.  

We started out on Wordpress.com in 2006, and sometime around 2009 I moved the site over to a version of Wordpress hosted using Dreamhost. 

At the time, going with that fully customisable version of Wordpress made a lot of sense. It taught me how to code CSS. I learned a little bit about designing, and installing plugins on the site, and I also learned a little bit about design. 

Things have changed since then. It's an old excuse, but I honestly don't have as much time for blogging as I used to do (I chalk it up to the fact that these days I spend a lot more time DOING the cool digital projects I started out admiring, and so don't have to write about them as much). Our old version of Wordpress got outdated, and it would have taken a lot of work to bring it up to speed and designed the way I wanted it. 

What really prompted the change was when I checked BlogCamapigning on Google's test of mobile friendliness and got the results below

In our increasingly mobile world, a change was needed. 

I'd heard of Squarespace, and first did some testing with it to set up a personal portfolio sit (ParkerMason.net) to see if it had the features. 

Mostly what I wanted was the following: 

1.) Mobile-friendliness: I wanted to ensure that posts on the site were easy to browse and read on a mobile device. 

2.) Simplicity: I don't think I need a lot of fancy features on this blog - I wanted a platform that was easy to use so that I could focus on writing, rather than spending my time with code and updates. 

3.) Aesthetically Pleasing: I've tried my hand at designing sites a few times, and am willing to admit that it's not my strenth. 

When I first started blogging, there were only a few choices:  Wordpress, Livejournal, and Blogger. Now, I'm sure there are hundreds of choices and many of them would probably meet the needs I've listed above. I could probably even start fresh with Wordpress, but I wanted to try something new with this. 

Let me know what you think of this new version of BlogCampaigning, if you've got any great Squarespace tips or other blogging/content platforms you like to use.