My Twitter feed is full of people talking about the rain in Austin and the Highlight app. Love or hate the rain and Highlight - it's been the talk of the town at SXSW this year. Highlight is the latest location based app that scans your social profiles to find commonalities between you and users around your present location. Wow, an ambient location based social app?!

Wait...I've heard this pitch before...what was it called? Oh, yes Color. Anyone remember Color? It was voted one of the worst pieces of design behind the plastic clamshell on Quora. I asked one of my VC friends last year why Color had so much hype around its launch. He defended the ridiculous $41MM investment by stating VC firms felt the technology was amazing enough to invest - not necessarily the product itself. Some argue the technology was too futuristic for the public to 'get' as Jason Calacanis stated in an interview with Color's CEO, Bill Nguyen. I'd beg to differ as history has shown time and time again that usability and design trumps technology. Apple is the prime example that everyone points to when making that argument. I'd also point to these as great examples of usability and design: Snake (mobile game popular/native on Nokia), Pinterest, and Converse's Chuck Taylor shoe. None of them did anything groundbreaking in terms of innovation - they just stuck to a solid design and natural user experience. Are there better mobile games than Snake? Yes. Are there better basketball shoes than Chuck Taylors? Yes, but it hasn't changed since the 20s and still remains one of the most popular shoes without putting a pump in its tongue. I'm not saying Highlight is the next Color, but from what I've been hearing from friends - it could be.

What Highlight has going for it is also what could lead to its demise quickly: hype. Every tech blogger and VC has tweeted or blogged about Highlight and people either love it or hate it. The main gripes are around either too many people in their vicinity and others (not as popular, clearly) state the exact opposite - radio silence. Highlighter needs traction. It could very well get there. This is just version one. I expect to see a version two that works out the kinks people are complaining about at SXSW. What people need to do is step away from the Hype Kool-Aid and ask themselves "does this thing actually work and is it going to annoy me in two weeks?". If the answer is no, then you're onto something. However, if the answer is "perhaps" then it could end up being the next Color.

Two years ago we saw Foursquare and Gowalla battle it out for the LBS app of the show. Last year was the year of the group messaging service with the likes of GroupMe, Kik, and Beluga battling it out. This year is the year of the ambient, social discovery apps. (worth noting that five I've listed - three have been acquired since their SXSW prom).

When I started learning how to drive I received a driving manual from the DMV. It had chapters on everything from unprotected left hand turns (which still scare me) to driving safety. One of the last chapters was four pages of signs. Road signs like “No U Turn” and “Falling Rock Zone”. I passed my driver’s license at 16 like every other teenager in my neighborhood and we (for the most part) followed road signs. If it wasn’t so important to me to learn what all those random road signs meant in order to drive and blast Britney Spears from my speakers - I probably wouldn’t know what a weird shaped arrow sign in the shape of an upside down U meant. There’s another weird sign popping up on my laptop screen I find odd – it’s a triangle with an ‘i’ in the middle. I’m in Digital and it still looks foreign to me let alone my 70+ year old grandma (she looks good for her age though so let’s call her 50+ because sometimes she reads this blog).

The ‘i’ logo is better known in the industry as the ‘AdChoices’ program in the EU and the Digital Advertising Alliance's (DAA) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising in the US. This is the IAB’s answer to the EU Cookie Directive and the Do Not Track bill going around Congress at the moment. Although I align with the efforts the IAB and its partners are trying to accomplish in regards to the self regulatory efforts, I find there’s something missing. They’re missing the manual they give to everyone to tell them what the hell the ‘i’ and the triangle means. Education, my dear.

I looked at Google Insights in the last 90 days regarding the terms ‘Privacy’ and ‘AdChoices’ and what I found was a bit disappointing. There’s been an 850% increase in searches in the last 90 days for the term ‘ google privacy policy’. However, the term ‘adchoices’ doesn’t even register for the last 90 days. One of the only posts to mention AdChoices online was in MarketWatch, while Privacy has been covered by everyone from the New York Times to Washington Post giving the issue mass reach and the proposed industry resolution a splash in the pan. In the States, AdChoices campaign was developed and deployed pro bono by an agency in Salt Lake City. Where were the big media agencies in NYC? Too busy?

People fear what they don’t understand. It’s a mantra applicable to many issues and very pertinent to the ePrivacy debate. As an industry, we’ve done a lackluster job of informing the user – not Media savvy people about AdChoices, ePrivacy, cookies, targeting, etc., but the average internet user. Grandma Janet texts me on her iPhone, has a Facebook page and likes any status in which I look fabulous or discuss my dating life, and IMs me to catch up. I’d consider her a very savvy internet user, however if I said ‘cookie’ she would assume I meant Toll House Nestle and if I said ‘AdChoices’ she would assume I was referring to a new “Woman’s Right To Choose” campaign. If AdChoices is unrecognizable to the most savvy of ‘average’ internet users, then how can we fully back an IAB led solution to the ePrivacy regulations in the US and EU?

Media 101 – know your audience. Know your audience enough to educate them on things they don’t understand and potentially fear. We need to do more than a brief campaign and it starts with the networks that signed the IAB Self Regulatory document to pledge X amount of value add (awareness quality) inventory to run from now until at least Summer to inform users. The reason people search ‘google privacy policy’ wasn’t because they were all of a sudden intrigued with their privacy – it was because that damn banner on your Gmail and YouTube said “Our Privacy Policy Has Changed – Find Out More Here”. AdChoices needs that level of reach, frequency and disruption.

My recent blog post on The Makegood:

When I first started out in media planning I used to make fancy slides smothered in Smart Art. The conversion funnel slide showing high impact buys and how it filtered down the funnel to remessaging. Delicious. One of the last slides would always be the snapshot of the media plan and media mix. Usually it listed all the publishers we wanted and a rationale for each. I’d even include a nifty pie chart to show the publisher spend breakout and amazing media portfolio management skills I had as if I was some sort of financial advisor recommending an investment strategy to a client. The mix would include a few networks, a popular news site and vertical specific direct buy, etc.

I saw a media mix slide the other day with a line for our trading desk with the rationale throwing out buzzwords like Prospecting and RTB. We also included a hot, new ad tech startup that’s able to optimize a client’s YouTube video based on shares, and lastly we recommended a revamp of our remessaging program with tiered pools based on user journey triggering dynamic creative utilizing a third party rich media vendor.

More and more discussions we have with clients are around audience mix rather than media mix these days. Historically, the media provided the means to get in front of the target audience, but now we have technologies that are nonpartisan to any media platform making scale of niche audiences fully realized. As such, we now brief in our ad operations team as well as technology specialists to create a media plan that reads more like the Y Combinator or TechStars alumni roster than a who’s who of media owners. Look at the percentage of ad spend dedicated to RTB YoY and you’ll see a similar story of ad technologies taking more of a cut into what used to be ‘traditional’ digital media ad spend. And it’s not just with our industry – take a look at VC firms pouring money into digital media and ad tech companies to see this is a trend that transcends media specialists into mainstream.

Read the rest and my suggestions on the subject here.

Check out two posts featuring myself, Jayne JPim Pimentel, and you'll be forever in my good graces.

AdExchanger post on cross-digital buying:

http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/reaction-cross-channel-buying/

The Makegood Feature:

http://the-makegood.com/2012/02/09/razorfishs-jayne-pimentel-joins-the-makegood-as-a-columnist/

Thank you for your support!

JPim