Tocquigny

There is a lot of hype around Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) in the media world. It seems that the majority of media folk are not completely sold on DSPs, and/or do not fully understand them. Are DSPs just a more automated way to buy media? Do they provide any other value beyond minimizing my work-load?

To fully understand the function of a DSP, it’s important to know the differences between DSPs, ad networks, and ad exchanges and their specific points of differentiation.  From my research, ad networks are the most well-known and understood, so let’s start with those.

He loves me…

·         Ad networks use third party data providers for their targeting capabilities and are able to target behaviorally, contextually, or demographically or filter on the site level.

·         They are 100% accountable for fully delivering impressions. If a network under- or over-delivers, the advertiser is compensated in return, reducing the liability.

He loves me not…

·         Ad networks pre-buy their inventory up to a year in advance before they know the demand.

·         They purchase hundreds of site’s remnant inventory.

·         Ad networks cannot guarantee that every impression bought is being seen by your specific audience.

·         You are stuck with paying on a flat CPM basis.

Clearly, an ad network isn’t someone you’d want to bring home to meet the parents. But maybe an ad exchange can get us closer to someone worthy of being classified as “boyfriend material.” Similar to a pay per click model, an ad exchange allows you to:

·         Dynamically bid on what you believe is the value of each visitor or impression.

·         Rather than buying impressions in bulk, an ad exchange allows us to pay for only the impressions we want and value.

So is a DSP your knight in shining armor? I wish I could tell you it would solve all your media planning/buying nightmares, but this is not the case.  A DSP does allow for you to bid, optimize and make overarching plan changes instantaneously. Sounds great, right? Sadly, not every site is onboard with DSPs. What I mean by this is that you may not be able to solve all of your media buying needs on a DSP if some of your niche sites are still requiring you to buy their inventory directly through them. This still creates a management and reporting nightmare. Nobody enjoys aggregating 17 sources of data into one pretty weekly report.

So is a Demand Side Platform really love at first sight?  Hardly. If there ever comes a day that all publishers are required to sell their inventory via DSPs then we might actually get a media planning/buying “Happily Ever After.”

Yesterday…
I got the chance to build a real-world project with jQueryMobile alpha 3 earlier this year, and I’m quite excited about the future of this product. jQueryMobile framework allows you to quickly create a single web application that will work on all popular smart phones and tablet devices using very simple HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery code. The project wasn’t completely without frustration. Our initial design called for static headers and footers, and while version A3 did have this feature, it was too buggy to use. The other frustration was trying to deviate from the jQueryMobile default styling. We wanted to create a unique design and style of our own, so the first obstacle for me was to craft a CSS reset that would allow me to have more of a blank slate to implement our design. What I’d really like to see is a CSS separation into functional styling and visual styling to make it easy to get creative with the design. Frustrations aside, jQueryMobile was very simple to implement and integrate with our content management system, Expression Engine. It was incredibly easy to add swipe navigations, custom content on device rotation and sliding page transitions. See the project at http://m.tocquigny.com

Today…
This week, version A4 is out. There were many fixes, but a couple of key updates included greatly improved floating headers and footers and Windows Phone 7 support. Upgrading for us was a simple case of swapping out JS and CSS files, but I would recommend reading the documentation to see if the features you use have been changed in this release.

Tomorrow…
If you aren’t following @jquerymobile on Twitter, then take the time to add them. Following them on Twitter will give you a better idea where they are currently in their coding process and where they are headed. jQueryMobile beta will be bringing us a much more stable and constant interaction between mobile platforms and an even broader set of supported mobile devices. I’m really looking forward to where the jQueryMobile team will bring us by the time version 1.0 is released. My wish list would contain simple hooks for premium device features such as location, gyroscope and multi-touch, and easy device targeting.

Conclusion…
jQueryMobile is already a great product today and has a lot of potential for tomorrow and in the future. Check it out http://www.jquerymobile.com

“Caring is scalable.” — Gary Vaynerchuk, The Thank You Economy

I frequent a downtown restaurant around the corner from where I work. The food isn’t anything special and the service is slightly above average, but when I walk in they greet me and they generally know what I am going to order. Last year when I waddled in eight-months pregnant, they asked how I felt and when the baby was due. Today they ask if the new baby is crawling and getting along with her older sister.

This year at SXSW in the panels and talks that I attended, I observed similar themes related to service and caring. Companies are using social media platforms to share and promote their stories and products. But are they doing it in the right way? Most companies are currently using new media channels to reach their current and potential customers. But they are only PUSHING their message out, thus creating one-way conversations. It seems like these companies are overlaying traditional marketing best practices on all online/digital communications. Most companies aren’t engaging their customer in an interpersonal way, and they can’t see the benefits of responding and listening to their end users.

In Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book The Thank You Economy, Gary uncovers opportunities for even more personalization — individual attention that will perhaps change the way some companies relate and communicate to their customers (Zappos) and create new business models such as TOMS Shoes, which donates one pair of shoes to children in need for every pair sold.

As Vanderchuk points out:

“Now customers’ demands for authenticity, originality, creativity, honesty, and good intent have made it necessary for companies and brands to revert to a level of customer service rarely seen since our great-grandparents’ day, when business owners often knew their customers personally and gave them individual attention.”

It’s exciting to think that existing and emerging companies will use innovative technologies to invent new ways to create more opportunities for relationships, growth, and profit based on caring. As a design professional with a new interest in service design, I can’t wait to see the impact that these new communications/interactions have on the way we relate to the places and products we use everyday.

The birth of BuzzBrawl — from ideas on paper to pixels on a screen