Re: [projectvrm] Multifunctional Advertising

[Mary Hodder < >]

Hi,

Taking a cue from calculating the options for places for humans to live outside earth:

The Drake equation states

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

BUT calculated for the number of planets that can support life as we know it:

N^* = the number of stars in the milky way

f_p = the fraction of those stars that have planets

n_e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

f_â„“ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point

f_i = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life

f_c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

based from:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Then    N = 100x10⁹ Ã— 100% x 4% x 13% x 10% x 10% x 1% = 52,000 space bearing civilizations (a scientific guess)

SOOOO What does this have to do with Ads?

Change the equation to calculate Ad Relevance to the average person (not factoring for class or choices):

N = the times a person might find a relevant ad that could possibly affect their decision in the "now"

N^* = the pools of available "nows" per day per person

f_p = the fraction of those "nows" that a person can give attention = ((3.2 attention hours / 16) x X/100) = 20%

n_e = the average number of ads that can be shown online at any given moment (per my discussion with an Ad person last week who said they have a pool of 1000 ads they can show)

f_â„“ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to be shown at any given "now" moment

f_i =  the fraction of the above that are likely to be intelligently targeted based upon behavioral information from the site an individual is on

       (per the ad person I talked with who said behavioral data from their own site and app use gives a 2% lift)

f_c = the fraction of the above that are likely to be intelligently targeted based upon personal information from other sites 

       (per the ad person I talked with who said personal data gives a 2% lift)

L = the length of time for which behavioral and personal data information is relevant to the individual  (my guess). 

N = 19,200 Ã— 20% x  1000 x .001 x 2% x 2% x 1% = .01536 ads per now that could possibly be relevant or every 68th ad they come across.

If 20% of ads are Brand Ads.. then .0098304 ads per now could possibly be relevant, or every 105th ad.

Ok.. this is a joke.. and I made up numbers (or plugged in stats based upon meetings recently with Ad people who told me the amounts of times people click through -- like with personal data targets or behavioral targets.. that 2% of the time there is "lift,") so yes, I'm basically making this whole calculation number up, but it doesn't seem too far off.... feel free to refine this.

However, I could be persuaded that every 105th ad has a chance of being relevant or providing something useful, outside of Brand Ads.  So that's a lot of waste for everyone involved.. and annoying to individuals who have to wade through all that noise or ignore much of their experience.

What if VRM turned the whole thing around and got sellers connected to seekers, researchers and buyers, every time instead of every 105th time?

:)

mary

On Feb 18, 2013, at 8:04 AM, Doc Searls wrote:

One additional point: most of the time we aren't buying anything, or even considering it. That also narrows the windows of "now."

But there are times we are shopping or buying — or dealing with issues of ownership. Then what? Well, VRM should be there to help with that. 

Doc

On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:01 PM, Chris Savage < "> > wrote:

Well, a couple of things that build on this.

1.  I read of a psychological study that found that the subjective experience of "now" lasts about 3 seconds.  That is, if you ask people about whether some stimulus or whatever the researchers were looking at was happening "now," the general response was "yes" as long as the thing occurred plus or minus 1.5 seconds or so of the time of the asking.

2.  This actually can be converted to a measure of how much attention people have in a day.  If at each quantum of "now"-ness a person can only effectively be attending to one thing, then in a 24-hour day, if we assume 16 are conscious and available, that's roughly 19,200 "moments" of "now" a person has each day.

3.  Advertisers well know how to command (literally, as in, what we are hard-wired for) our attention: loud noises, quick movements, flashes of light, attractive women (to get male attention) etc.  So, on the "tragedy of the attention commons" I was postulating earlier, what we have is a large but non-infinite number of opportunities for folks who want our attention, to grab it.  By going from traditional print to the Internet, we have created a lot more opportunities for that.  There are 19,200 "nows" per day per person, that can input either signal or noise.  Increasing ads (including directed ads) means more noise and less signal, net.  Key point: The pool of available attention is very limited.  (Note: if it's really 3.2 hours per week, that's only about 3,840 moments-of-attention available.)  That very limited pool is what more and more advertisers are trying to colonize.  So it's no wonder, it seems to me, that people are both building taller defenses and getting more exhausted in maintaining them.

4.  There are some behavioral economic studies being done by a guy at MIT that analogies the lives of people in poverty that indicates that their choices are harder to make than non-poor folks, in an analogy to what is called the "suitcase problem."  Suppose you are packing for a weekend trip, and you have a very large suitcase.  Packing is easy: you put in stuff you know you'll need and stuff you might need.  Very little mental effort.  Now imagine going on a one-week trip and all you are allowed is one carry-on-size bag.  Now you have a hard problem: you have to decide what is essential and what isn't, what has to go in first in order to make sure everything will fit, etc.  It's a harder mental task (which various studies have shown truly use up biological energy).  The MIT guy points out that the entire task of facing the economy is, for a poor person, like trying to pack for a week-long trip with too small a suitcase: the suitcase is their money, and the clothes, etc., to go in, are their needs.  Every day is mentally exhausting for poor people, because poor people actually have to do a lot more mental work to get through a day than does a middle-class or rich person.

5.  A similar phenomenon occurs with the issue of allocating our attention.  Figuring out what is signal and what is noise takes work, and it takes more and more work the more noise there is -- like listening to your favorite radio station as you drive further and further away on the long-distance highway.  It gets scratchier and fuller with static, but if you keep listening harder (interesting idiom there...) you can still hear what they are saying.  With more and more informational static being thrown at us for our 19,200 "nows" per day, it takes lots of mental work just to try to keep focused on what actually matters in a life (kids ... job ... spouse ... spiritual practice ... hobbies/interests).  Fitting all of that into the mental time suitcase can be really hard.  Adding all the noise makes it harder.

Do advertisers ever think in terms of their effects on a limited, shared resource, aka, my brain cycles?

Chris S.

2/17/2013 5:07 PM, Iain Henderson wrote:

" type="cite"> Thanks Katherine, your point re number of hours in the day reminded me of a key quote sent to the list a few months back (by Richard Bates, Consumer Focus, UK).

“Consumers are however pressed for time and spend on average only 3.2 hours a week on all consumer tasks. To ensure that consumers remain empowered in the face of the growing information overload and increasing lack of time for shopping, new shortcuts and comparison tools need to be found.â€�

That quote came from a research study across more than 55,000 individuals, so pretty robust. European Commission Staff Working Paper (2011): Consumer Empowerment in the EU (SEC [2011] 469 final), Brussels: European Commission –  http://bit.ly/J45aRl

Add to that, one of the main effects of The Internet on the individual being that they typically have an awful lot more supplier/ service provider relationships to manage than they did before, and you therefore have a huge volume of 'permissioned' advertising being squeezed into what amounts to a very small amount of time.

In that respect, our job is to build tools that help get a better return out of those 28 minutes, and maybe even one day increasing the time spent because the return on it is much improved.

Iain

 

  
3.2 hours a week is 192 minutes, or almost 28 mins per day.

On 17 Feb 2013, at 15:28, Katherine Warman Kern < "> > wrote:

Sylvan and Chris,

As a practicing planner who takes pride in being a trusted advisor, I'd like to share some insights from the perspective of my clients.

The reality the consumer has an overabundance of choices and a marketer has an overabundance of tools to choose from.

But the number of hours in a day to make those choices has remained exactly the same.

As the number of choices have increased, the odds that bad choices are made increases.  

Share of Voice, as many measuring sticks, is flawed from the start because there is no truly accurate way to measure or project it.  One marketer can spend the same amount of dollars much more effectively than another.  And since few marketers publish their mistakes, no one really knows what really happened. In fact most published accounts of marketing case studies have very little resemblance to what really happened.

I continue to be shocked that no new entry capitalizes on digital technology and social media to offer an improvement over Nielsen to monitor integrated marketing in real time.  

K-

Katherine Warman Kern
www.comradity.com
@comradity
203-918-2617

On Feb 17, 2013, at 9:37 AM, sylvain willart ">< > wrote:

This "tragedy of the commons" made me think when you first posted about it.
The sheep example you mention is well-studied in economic game theory,
and there are some writings as well in Public Economics sudies dealing
with scarce resources,
But I very rarely read this kind of thinking in advertising/marketing.
Only perhaps in "Store Wars" (Corstjens & Corstjens , 90's). Actually,
the hypothesis of the consumer brain being a scarce resource is
sometimes discussed, but never measured. And media planning relying
heavily on measures and metrics, this hypothesis does not well fit in
traditional approaches.
Moreover, you can expect people to protect scarce natural resources
(even if they loose direct advantage) for the sake of a "bigger cause"
involving altruism (a long studied effect in game theory); but who
really cares about the exhaustion of conusmer brain? there is nothing
here a good night of sleep can't fix... (the consumer himself may be
the only one to care, hence the importance of VRM tools IMHO).
Media planning is also competitive by nature, and while planning you
have to care more about your competitors' expenses than your
consumers' ability to process all those ads. An important metric in
media planning is for example the "share of voice" (your expenses
divided by the market expenses), perhaps the dumbest metric ever
invented, as it is known from long it is not robust at all (meaning it
can lead you to make stupid planning choices)
The entropy hypothesis however may be quite appealing, and this metric
is often used in other field of marketing (for measuring variety of
assortments for example). I'll try to dig into it to see wether it has
been used in advertising/intrusiveness research.

Sylvain


2013/2/17 Chris Savage ">< >:

Sylvain,

Thank you, this is very helpful.  I will ponder a bit more.

I have mentioned, perhaps on this list, my sense that there is a "tragedy of
the commons" effect going on among those who would sell me stuff.  Just like
in the Garrett Hardin story where each shepherd looks at the common field
and thinks, "Oh, letting one or two extra sheep from my flock graze won't

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blog: www.iainhenderson.info
twitter: @iainh1

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