Twitter’s new capability is a well needed platform move and is similar to Google’s ability to target in “real-time” whoever searches for “buy shoes.” One could argue that searches have clearly better intent than tweets. For example, “Justin Bieber’s new song is awesome!” (and getting served an ad for his album). Keyword targeting doesn’t provide any timing advantage on any other platform, without understanding the sentiment and context of the entire tweet.

Twitter is right, timing means nothing if you are unable to react to things that happen right now. The big opportunity for advertisers is how to engage users in moments that matter to them. Advertising is about being in the right place and in the right time, yet finding the right users who have explicitly expressed interest isn’t scalable, it requires an intelligent approach to finding new users who also may be interested but haven’t expressed it via tweets. Exactly like Google search advertising or of Facebook interest targeting.

For example, an airline wants to sell tickets for a flight to London, they already know that they should buy “Flights to London” on Google search and now you can also buy the same term on Twitter. But the real challenge is how to find even more people who care about London. But, let’s just say, that all of a sudden there is news regarding Princess Kate’s pregnancy, people who talk about that might have great affinity to England and might be interested in a ticket to London in the future. Advertising to them is a key benefit. However, the news may be in the headlines for a few hours only. Timing is about being agile enough to monetize this moment, making sure you are buying the keywords around Princess Kate, and no one said they are even talking about London.

My previous example is simple if you’re in the performance space, and have specific goods to sell. The challenge is even greater if you’re a packaged goods company or running a branding campaign. What would Coca Cola buy on Google search or Twitter’s keywords? “Coke”? How is this beneficial to them? What would GE, Unilever, P&G will buy? They are all about being there for their audience in the right place and in the right time to create a connection between the brand and what their audience cares for.

Twitter’s keywords targeting is a great feature on Twitter’s platform, but it doesn’t solve the big problem of making your timing works.

An estimated 108.4 million people watched the Baltimore Ravens' defeat the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl XLVII. Source: The Nielsen Co. Fans watched 55 valuable commercial spots, worth investments of almost $4 million, per 30-second slot. But, this year, marketer’s ROI included new opportunities to connect, and real-time lessons in response.

Following the #SocialOlympics there was little doubt that fans would be active within social media during the game. Trendrr.com tracked 47.7 million social media posts, with total social activity at 52,556,473 during the Super Bowl, more than 3 times higher than last year’s game. Branded content was integrated across platforms optimizing the ability to capture fan attention and support social engagement. This year brands were able to seize our attention, respond to 30 minutes of disruption (e.g. #poweroutage) and encourage us to search for more information.

Real-time media offered advantages. Brands were engaging fans, and starting conversations, but this level of connectedness required marketers to pay attention and respond with real-time relevance. In one, now famous example, a fantastic collaborative strategy put real-time response into play for Oreo and 360i during the power outage. Oreo took advantage of the Super Bowl's third-quarter blackout, sharing the now legendary, "You can still dunk in the dark" caption, and simple image on Twitter and Facebook. The results, the post has more than 21,000 likes, 800 comments and 6,000 shares. The tweet has been favorited by thousands and re-tweeted more than 15,000 times.

Key Plays in Twitter’s Game

Critical moments measured in Tweets per minute (TPM) Source: Twitter

· Power outage: 231,500 TPM

· 108-yard kickoff return for Ravens TD by Jones: 185,000 TPM

· Jones catches 56 yard pass for Ravens TD (end of 2nd quarter): 168,000 TPM

Real-time media created the competitive difference. Oreo had the right content, and delivered it at the right time. Their response also supported lasting connections and learning. Imagine thousands of comments and shared connections that can be mined to assist new product development and innovation.

We also wanted to see what brands were actually responding, directly to fans.  Moving beyond engagement, interacting with fans and fan content in real-time. Twitter was certainly the priority platform for marketers. Hashtag strategies were incorporated into ads for most brands. Brand standard #hashtags performed best.

· #Doritos was able to garner more than 33,000 mentions via Twitter and with 50% positive sentiment from Facebook and Twitter.

· #Calvin Klein reached more than 29,000 tweets and received a 31% positive sentiment rating within Facebook and Twitter. Source: Bluefin Labs

Surprisingly, we found limited examples of brands directly responding.  A few RTs were noted, but even less comments within Facebook posts. And, very little effort to share real-time consumer generated content.  An excellent example of co-creating content,

Oreo shared fan-inspired masterpieces across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as part of their Cookies or Cream challenge, but content was created specifically for this contest and not in real-time. Fans tag Instagram photos #cookiethis or #cremethis, and Oreo re-creates a portion of the image.

Acknowledge People who Create Unimaginable Brilliance

Fan-generated content can be very powerful simply because it is authentic. Consider sharing content that is naturally emotional, not too perfect and from the imagination of real-people. A key element of our response strategy enables people to feel a part of the experience. When their personal masterpieces are shared a very strong connection is formed.

Brands need to support occasions to celebrate original ideas and respond by sharing fan-generated content. The emotional connection of sharing fan-generated content should be orchestrated to motivate sharing. By celebrating authenticity, brands develop emotional connections and let fans know they are experiencing the games, in real-time, along with them.

Preparation for Next Year

Create content and plan messages that not only engage fans, but also enables encounters that let people feel they are personally a part of the Branded Message...The Experience…The Super Bowl. Fans become the reporters, storytellers, and their heart-felt excitement will be celebrated and shared.

Moving from a “The-Super Bowl” to a “Our-Super Bowl” mindset…

Also posted via Communica Inc...

What’s great about the Olympics is that it is the only sporting event that is made up of hundreds of amazing “moments”, each that become personal for viewers whether by country, event or athlete.

For some, it was…

• Gabby Douglas giving her coach a hug after becoming the first African American to win the all-around in gymnastics

Or, maybe it was…

• Michael Phelps biffing (taking 4^th ) in his first event but still walking away winning 4 gold and 2 silver medals to become the all-time Olympic record holder with 22 medals

Or, maybe it was when…

• Kirani James from Grenada exchanged his name tag with Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, the first Para-Olympian to ever compete in the Olympics, right after James won the gold medal in the 400 meters

Or finally for others (say the more cynical) it was…

• In badminton (love that as an Olympic event) where the #1 team in the world from China was disqualified for trying to throw their match so they could play a weaker team in the next round

All of those Olympic moments were amazing.   For me, however, being more a marketer than an Olympic caliber athlete (refer to my last post as reference), it was the Olympic advertising moments that were amazing!

The Super Bowl gets all the advertising hype but the Olympic Games are like the Super Bowl on steroids (okay, bad pun) with over 3,500 hours of streaming coverage generating nearly $1.2 B in advertising.

So what was the Olympic moment for advertising?

Was it the epic BBC 3D animated mini-movie commercial where animated athletes swim, dive, box, throw the javelin and of course run really fast, with the back drop of London buildings and landscapes of the English waterways and country side, all to an orchestral musical score that even composer John Williams would be proud of?

Or maybe it was the classic “shot (soccer) heard round the world” commercial for Samsung Galaxy where David Beckham drills a soccer ball into a ginormous gong being pulled by a truck from about 300 yards away that triggers people from around the world playing street sports while others video them on their, what else, Samsung phones.

Nope.  It wasn’t even the heartwarming Procter & Gamble ads with vignettes of little kids being woken up by mom early, early (did I say early?) in the morning to make their little darlings breakfast, then drive them to the pool, gym, track or court (badminton court for the cynical) where mom sits in attendance, then cuts away to a shot of a now grown up athlete competing at the Olympics with mom in the stands.  Tears flow.  For all the moms in the world, the tag read: “Thank you, mom.”

These are all great ads – ads that focus on the people that made the athletes great or on connecting people from around the world.  These ads take viewers away, suspending time and place.  The real Olympic advertising moment, however, didn’t take viewers away, it kept them right in the here and now.

The real advertising moment of the Olympics was the AT&T commercials.  These ads took actual footage and results from events as they JUST happened and seamlessly inserted them into pre-produced commercials.   The “shock and aw” part was that they aired these spots in the commercial pod shortly (within hours) after viewers saw the live event.  And in some cases, like in Seattle, the ads aired immediately after the actual event.

The commercials are called “real time” ads.  There were six AT&T ads produced in all.   From Ryan Lochte winning gold in the 400 IM to Sanya Richards-Ross winning the 400 meter dash, the ads celebrated events of the games just after the event happened.

This was my experience.  I am sitting at home watching the woman’s 200 meter breaststroke.  As expected, Rebecca Soni wins the race but in the process breaks the 2 minute 20 second barrier by 1 second.   NBC cuts to a commercial.  A teenage girl is walking into her house.  She drops off her bag.  She’s focused on her smartphone and you can tell she’s watching a video.   Camera pans down to her screen and you see’s watching a swim race.  You notice her hair is wet.  Camera zooms into the screen and both audio and video tell you it was the 200 meter breaststroke you just saw.  You hear the announcer say Soni breaks the world record.  Then the kid walks up to a whiteboard in her kitchen and writes “Goals: 2:19.59.”

I recall when I worked at Saatchi and Saatchi in NY, the process to create a 30 second television spot was akin to planning a wedding.  It took months to develop (and approve) the creative concept, months to map out the production schedule, and weeks to set up, shoot, edit the commercial and traffic it for airing.

Dubbed “Here’s the new possible” this marketing campaign showed the power of messaging in context, delivering 100% relevance and doing it in real time.

Much like Usain Bolt breaking the world record in the 100 meters, AT&T’s ads are a breakthrough for marketers.  The ability to offer real time broadcast advertising that is hyper-relevant is huge.   And it was based on leveraging data.

AT&T did a longitudinal analysis of both the athletes and historical performance in that event.

They knew an ad featuring one of the athletes competing in an event at a scheduled time was a critical longitudinal piece of behavioral data that they could use to then highlight that same athlete in their advertising at a later context – right after the scheduled event.    They then took other data points, like which athletes were most likely to make the finals, their historical performance times, and predicted the likelihood of who would win and if they could beat the world record.

In short, data on athletes’ prior behavior (personal bests) was used to predict future behavior (gold medal winner). They prepared for all the possibilities based on the most probable outcomes: 1) Male or female?  2) Potential winning athlete?  3) Likely times?   4) World or Olympic record?

They then developed templates to splice into the ads based on those probabilities.  And finally they purchased the commercial pod right after the event they created the commercial for so they could run the ad with that exact athlete and their performance.  (And depending on your time zone and tape delay you could see that ad as close to under a minute of when the event aired!)

The AT&T ads illustrate that the world of advertising (and marketing) is changing.  Data combined with prediction and capabilities that create multi-variant options to create 100% relevant communications that are delivered in context is happening.   And this is just the beginning.

Just as the Olympic flame has been passed from London to Rio, the marketing torch has been passed from the mass market campaigns based on gut and feel for “mom’s around the world” to ones based on contextually relevant targeting driven by big data, longitudinal analysis and expedited delivery.

It’s time for more Olympic marketing moments like the one brought to us by AT&T where marketing is hyper-relevant and personal.

To steal AT&T’s line, it’s time for “the new possible.”

Let the games begin.

2010 isn't even here yet, but there's already a hot new buzzword waiting for us to get back to our desks from midwinter recess: The Real-Time Web.

What is the Real-Time Web? According to Wikipedia, "The real-time web is a set of technologies and practices which enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates."

It's making big news this week because Google has announced it is adding posts from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to its search results. These posts will now become part of the searchable Web instantly—in real-time, actually.

"Wait a minute?" you might ask, "I've been able to instantly see real-time updates to the Web for quite a while now. For years, in some cases."

Right you are. Truth is that like it's predecessor, "Web 2.0", the phrase "Real-Time Web" is window-dressing for something that's really nothing new. Instant Messages, texts, wikis and Tweets have all been with us for years. But 2009 has been a miserable year, and if a little smoke and mirrors gives us something to be excited about for 2010, so be it! VCs—Get your checkbooks out!

Real-Time is nothing new
Like "Web 2.0," "Real-Time Web" is absolutely amorphous in definition. Everything from Google Wave (real-time collaboration) to Four Square (real-time location-sharing) will have a "real-time" label slapped on it causing great confusion and fretting from marketers who are just starting to get their heads around social media. I predict a wave of "real-time agencies" will announce their arrival to save the day and dozens of people you are connected to on LinkedIn will change their job titles from Social Media Guru to Real-Time Web Guru. It will be a frenzy.

And a frenzy is just what we need right about... NOW!