Digital Pulp Blog

We’ve all read the wikipedia definition of FAIR USE and have spent more hours than we would care to admit reviewing the four factors in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. But we still struggle with how to apply the rules in the real world. This weekend NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed Joel Rose in an attempt to bring clarity to the issue of what exactly is ‘fair use.’

Mr. ROSE: Artists, filmmakers, reporters and commentators have the right to take copyrighted materials without permission or payment, says McIntosh, as long as they’re using those materials to make something new. It’s the same principle that the producers of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central employ every night.

What we found really interesting in this interview was how important the Sony-Betamax case was back in 1984.

Mr. ROSE: That applies not just to content but to the devices that deliver it. Sohn says fair use is what gives you the right to record TV shows and watch them later, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the so-called Betamax case.

Ms. SOHN: Imagine if in 1984, after the Sony-Betamax decision had come out, we had said, OK, we’re going to stop there. You can record things for home use, and that’s the limit of personal fair use. You wouldnt have MP3 players like the iPod; you know, we probably wouldn’t have TiVos that could send things to your computers.

Read the Full Story at NPR | Wikipedia Definition | U.S. Copyright Office Definition

Because this blog post is meant for educational purposes and we only published a small portion of the interview with the goal of driving users to the original work, we see providing excerpts from this interview as fair use.

NPR’s show On the Media interviewed Nicholas Kristof on the psychology of selling soap and how those tactics could be used to get people to care about some of the most compelling causes of our day. What surprised us was research by psychologist Paul Solvic showing the number at which we tune out… it’s not hundred… it’s two. Here is an excerpt from NPR:

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, I came across social psychologist Paul Slovic who has done a great deal of work in this area, and the experiments typically involve exposing people to a particular scenario and then seeing if they will contribute.

One of the classic experiments involves a seven-year-old girl from the country of Mali who’s starving and asking if people will help her out. Everybody wants to help Rokia. But if you ask people to help 21 million hungry people in Africa, nobody particularly wants to help them.

Maybe what I found even more depressing is that the moment you even provide more background information to Rokia, if you say that she is hungry because of a famine in her country, then interest in helping her tends to drop.

You know, we all know that at some point people tend to get numbed and tune out, but [LAUGHS] one of the things that I found fascinating was the number at which we tend to tune out. It’s not a million, it’s not a thousand, it’s not even a hundred – it’s two.

Listen to the Interview at NPR

As more and more people become comfortable with transacting business over their mobile device, mobile giving is becoming a critical factor that fundraisers ignore at their peril.

Though the size of a mobile gift is limited ($5 and $10), the audience is generally younger, the size of the market is potentially millions of smartphone users, and the speed with which nonprofits and their supporters can react to a crisis is dazzling.

This is clearly reflected with the current earthquake disaster in Haiti. Through mGive, one of the providers that facilitates mobile giving, the Red Cross has already raised $3 million dollars (as of Jan. 14th 9 a.m.) via ‘text-to-give’ and is reportedly collecting $200,000 per hour. By comparison, during Hurricane Katrina the Red Cross raised only $400,000 in total via this channel.

A mobile giving strategy, as part of a nonprofit’s Online Fundraising Plan, is the first step. Whether an organization provides emergency aid or ongoing support, it is important to establish a plan at the outset that clearly establishes how the organization can take advantage of mobile giving to support the mission. Then, it’s building the structure, communications, processes and assigning resources that will make it all work.

To donate $10 to Haiti relief, text “Haiti” to 90999.

Making a donation doesn’t just feel good. It is good. And a gift donation, made in someone’s name, is one of the few things you can still get in time for the holidays, without standing in line. We asked DP’ers to send along their favorite charities for this year –and got back a list of organizations that provide needed aid to fight disease, hunger, climate change and poverty, in New York City and all over the world. If you want to give a gift that matters this holiday season, please think about supporting them… [MORE]

Pete Blackshaw, customer service guru and Nielsen executive, spoke at the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) Conference recently and during the Q&A he listed some best practices on how to approach negative bloggers. In short…

• have the right message
• be perceived as credible
• be prepared for backlash
• be conservative

Before approaching a blogger, Blackshaw recommends empowering them to find your side of the story online. Post a video or article responding the the issues on your site and make sure to a search function exists to make that content quick to find.

If you do engage, Blackshaw recommends being respectful and not to try and turn the conversation further emphasizing that you should solve the problem and not advertise. If their facts are incorrect, clarify the data. For more: Watch the video

A mobile marketing shop that has run over 60 mobile campaigns in the last two years for P&G, General Mills and American Express has found some very interesting trends from female iPhone users. After clicking a mobile ad they tend to tune out the advertisement. Some specifics from AdAge’s article.

Excerpt from Female IPhone Users More Likely to Tune Out Mobile Advertising:

Overall, users of conventional cellphones average 3 to 3.5 more post-click page views than iPhone users, who average 1.3 post-click page views. Post-click page views refer to the actions users take after clicking through a banner ad, such as viewing a video.

Similarly, iPhone users leave a branded web page without taking additional action about 80% of the time; only 12% of non-smartphone users, on the other hand, desert their destination. The study measured users who were clicking through to those destinations from a mobile banner ad.

According to Neislen, only about 18% of women age 18-49 have a smartphone and approximately 721,000 of those are iphone users with children (M: Metrics).

Major League Baseball president Robert Bowman spoke at the Apps for Brands Conference and says both are important. Apps are richer and faster, have more features and can be a revenue stream. But the initial download inherently limits the total number of application users. Mobile web pages solve that problem by being accessible by everyone but each page view relies on the mobile user’s data connection and the more advanced capabilities such as multimedia and transactions are severly limited.

MLB has 750,000 mobile app users compared with 4,000,000 unique mobile web page users.

Check out:  MLB Mobile

We know how hard it is to locate a new business opportunity, convince a prospect of your value and win a competition. This is especially true in a project-based business like ours. Clients often come to us with a specific need and we deliver on it. Most projects have a beginning, a middle and an end… but it can’t stop there.

In the last 10 years we’ve probably built well over 100 websites. Every one of those clients is a potential advocate for us. We see these long term relationships with our clients as the key to our success in any economy, good or bad. And this concept is not unique to us. It applies to every business. So when you’re knee deep in acquisition tactics or trying to convert just one more customer, take a moment and think:

• How should the conversation start if we were building a relationship?
• What would I do differently if I took the longer view?

So never lose focus that your best prospect for new assignments are likely those you’ve touched in the past or the current clients right in front of you.

What is your metric of success? Given the myriad of data choices you need to determine what is the best one to look at for your online ad campaign. It all starts with your campaign goal. An online branding study is ideal when measuring brand awareness and attitudinal changes. Ad tracking and site tracking software are insightful when direct response and audience engagement metrics are required. It’s tempting to look at all of the data together but be aware that sometimes the data conflicts. You might see that one ad is a top performer on click-thru or view-thru but then might not move the needle on brand awareness. Be care not to optimize on the wrong data, or if it’s just too tempting, re-evaluate your campaign goal and make sure your media and creative are in-line to maximize your success.

AdAge reports a drastic drop in the number of Internet users clicking on display ads – down 50% since 2007 and now representing a mere 16% of all Internet users. And, half of those clicking are lower-income young adults, not exactly the target market that your company is looking for online. 

So does that mean that display ads are no longer working? No, the good news is that the studies conducted by ComScore and Starcom also showed that display ads may not be drawing clicks, but are still significantly increasing site visits, searches and purchases among users exposed to the ads. For example, those viewing a display ad were 65% more likely to visit the advertiser’s site within one week. And consumers exposed to both display and search ads were almost twice as likely to purchase from that site.

So clicks don’t tell the whole story for display ads and advertisers will need to consider a more complex set of data  to assess the performance of their campaigns going forward.

Read the Full Article: What to Measure? Only 16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads