the web simplified what was complicated into a standard protocol
1993 – Tim Berners-Lee – made access of info available to everyone
mobile now primary access –> what does this mean then for online advertising?
Hyper Text Markup Language
Commercialisation of the internet
advertisers sought to monetise consumers
WIRED magazine – how technology was affecting culture – first web ad for AT&T “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.”
portals, eg netscape
opportunities for commercialisation of search
online ad banners generate high volumes of interest displayed by high percentages of user click-through rates
Digital industry players
marketers have more choice than ever in terms of where they can advertise and run their marketing messages
digital has exponentially increased choices
advertisers have to sift through and ask: where is the best place to spend my money?
buyers: agencies primary buyers
issue that there is no standard structure for the way advertising is bought and sold
sellers:
pure play = a media company that has no legacy property (eg TV network, newspaper), it is online only, eg Amazon, Yahoo
traditional = eg, print publishers having websites
creatives: more interested in allure of TV than small postage-sized ads online
technology companies – SEO etc
New players and traditional outlets repurposing themselves
How digital complements print media
magazines with apps with additional content in editorial and advertising – can bring print to life – online enhances print
not competing medias but complementing
channel isn’t as important as the content
not tied to physical product anymore
How digital complements broadcast media
TV expensive, so video online may be more feasible
TiVo etc, fast forwarding ads is a major challenge to industry
tablet use in front of TVs offers opportunities for networks to connect with these audiences
TV show shareability over social channels
ads with Shazam embedded at the bottom for us to use over phones while watching TV
Online audience measurement
every medium has an agreed standard audience currency, eg TV ratings and viewershio, radio listenership, print readership and circulation
difficult for online to settle on a particular standard currency
Australia one of the first countries to establish the standard
Nielsen had a couple of different methodologies:
site centric = based around code to measure activity counting browsers as people – challenges because often more than one person uses a computer, and people often use more than one device
based on panel = track activity of panel members – challenge as may under represent
every measuring metric has inherent flaws, the importance is that the industry agrees on a methodology
Nielsen combined both to create UA – Unique Audience
Still not all websites use this system when reporting audience members to agencies/advertisers, may use Google Analytics
Digital jargon
hits = one of the first measurement metrics on the web
outdated and irrelevant
it doesn’t mean visitors but the load on the webpage, ie each element that needs to load (this means nothing to advertisers)
be confident enough to ask what someone means by hits, eg visitors, pageviews, etc
I just found this article from The New Yorker about comprehension with online reading and training to read deeply on the internet. An interesting market: digital apps to train students in the tools of deep reading.
We read more quickly when lines are longer, but only to a point. When lines are too long, it becomes taxing to move your eyes from the end of one to the start of the next. We read more efficiently when text is arranged in a single column rather than multiple columns or sections. The font, color, and size of text can all act in tandem to make our reading experience easier or more difficult. And while these variables surely exist on paper just as they do on-screen, the range of formats and layouts online is far greater than it is in print. Online, you can find yourself transitioning to entirely new layouts from moment to moment, and, each time you do so, your eyes and your reading approach need to adjust. Each adjustment, in turn, takes mental and physical energy.
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Julie Coiro, who studies digital reading comprehension in elementary- and middle-school students at the University of Rhode Island, has found that good reading in print doesn’t necessarily translate to good reading on-screen. The students do not only differ in their abilities and preferences; they also need different sorts of training to excel at each medium. The online world, she argues, may require students to exercise much greater self-control than a physical book. “In reading on paper, you may have to monitor yourself once, to actually pick up the book,” she says. “On the Internet, that monitoring and self-regulation cycle happens again and again. And if you’re the kind of person who’s naturally good at self-monitoring, you don’t have a problem. But if you’re a reader who hasn’t been trained to pay attention, each time you click a link, you’re constructing your own text. And when you’re asked comprehension questions, it’s like you picked up the wrong book.”
Conglomerates and reality TV as a hybrid: Big Brother is not just a TV show, but a website with extra footage, a voting system, etc.
Why do we like reality TV so much? Adrian suggested because “we live and die by our constraints“. Reality TV certainly plays on constraints and expectations: the constraints of living in a house with 14 others and the expectation to do dishes or compete in games and tasks for example. These constraints and expectations mirror the modern world, eg the “Nanny state” which constrains us.
Public and private spheres: how have they changed? We now hear half a phone conversation instead of our conversations being held in a private phone booth or within the home.
Making mischief – why not talk into someone’s phone? It’s not a private conversation after all!
So what are the boundaries between inside/outside, safe/dangerous, legal/illegal?
TV has an insatiable need to see –> the desire to see is much more important than the camera quality. Content is more important that an HD image.
Jasmine mentioned that the individualised nature of our devices has changed the public and private spheres. iPad, iPhone, iPod: these are named for the individual.
Adrian questioned if the internet allows us to build walls further around us or whether it allows us to open our minds. The internet is capable of doing both, it depends on what the individual wants to use it for.
It was asked whether new technology/phones ruin TV/film making, and I immediately thought of the recent iPhone 5 film starring Scarlett Johansson:
Adrian proposed that the more tools the better off you are, which I tend to agree with. But this idea does avoid our need for constraints and the creative liberation found in putting constraints on our work.
Our language can’t even keep up with the rate of technology change: it’s not ‘film’ and it’s not a ‘video’ for instance.
This week’s reading Digital video and Alexandre Astruc’s camera-stylo by Bjørn Sørenssen begins with asking whether “expanded access to digital production means and distribution channels of audiovisual media also imply an enhancement of the democratic potential of these media“. These changes in media production and distribution certainly change the way we think about film: as discussed in the first lecture, film isn’t scarce anymore and this has many implications. We can record on our phones to brainstorm and think through ideas, not necessarily making polished pieces as we may once have considered the use of film. Similarly, a writer can brainstorm on the back of an envelope.
Sørenssen makes an compelling point that it is “always interesting to review old utopian visions, as they remind us of our part in fulfilling or failing to fulfill the expectations of earlier generations“. I found this an amusing sidenote to consider how we have stacked up to Plato’s Republic or whether we will measure up to Star Trek.
Utopia – sourced from michaelromkey.typepad.com
Sørenssen notes Astruc’s thinking that Descartes’ philosophy “would today be of such a kind that only the cinema could express it satisfactorily“. Are there ideas that can only be expressed through certain mediums? Undoubtedly there are times when I am lost for words trying to explain something, maybe it could be better expressed through film. What about the combination of words and image – does film in that way lend itself to better understanding simply due to the combination of factors?
Similarly, how does expression through art come into play? Image sourced aestheticamagazine.com
Sørenssen mentions the personal computer and its importance on how we view content; similarly the mobile phone. What does this mean for content creators and how is it different to imagining creating for a big cinema screen? More personal = more intimacy?
Habermas is quoted within the article lamenting that the “use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication”. The Internet recently celebrated 25 years of the web, and in a commemorative article on the Irish Times Davin O’Dwyer notes the Internet ” has revolutionised communication to the point where most people can publish and disseminate information within seconds. This unhindered ability to communicate and disseminate information has also led to powerful citizen-driven movements, such as the Arab Spring in 2010″.
We no longer have to go into an office to work or go to the library to find information. What impact is this having on our culture? And what about implications surrounding our privacy?
Astruc’s “vision of the future author who writes using a camera instead of a pen” certainly opens up new possibilities for expression through audio-visual mediums, however I have to edit this vision for myself as I can’t see a future without written memoirs: that authors write using a camera and a pen.
What is your canvas for expression? Image sourced from guestonplanet.blogspot.com.au
Reading Weinberger’s ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined’ I’m drawn to the idea of the internet allowing you to “‘try on’ a personality.” Although AOL’s golden era of 1999 has passed, we’re still able to ‘try on’ different personas, or even simply act/write/share differently depending on the audience the medium might afford. Personally I have two Tumblrs, both anonymous, with one themed and one that is basically used to waste time scrolling, reblogging gifs and over-sharing my at least 12 feelings late at night. In contrast, different personas are experimented with over other platforms: Twitter, Facebook, different blogs. Similarly, .Zannah has her two web pages, which Weinberger fittingly describes as “the views two different friends might have of her.”
a majestic stealthy cold blooded killer
This idea of experimentation and play threads back to design fiction, and could prove a useful tool in these diegetic prototypes.
Weinberger does raise the question that may well keep me up all night tonight though:
The very basics of what it means to have a self-identity through time – an “inner” consistency, a core character from which all else springs – are in question on the Web.
What is my online identity when I have so many facets online, or even day-to-day? I know I act differently around different audiences, my parents versus my best friends versus strangers for example, just as I post different content on distinct platforms.
This reading also alludes to four key ideas which I find quite interesting that disconnects the Web from ‘the real world’:
Space – the Web is a space that occupies no space.
Time – we determine when and how long we will participate based solely on what suits us.
Self – as mentioned above, we adopt names, identities and personas.
Knowledge – the lively plurality of voices sometimes can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts.
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The article also explores if the internet is making us more or less social, which reminded me of a post I made in early 2012 on Media Musings. I’ll post it below:
It’s a little bit (or a lot) one-sided at the moment, but you have the ability to reply to what I say, and I can respond back again in the comments section. I can find my peers’ blogs, and we can converse and share our opinions there.
“We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”
“The internet connects us to the entire world, but it is a world bespoke, edited, deleted, sanitised. … There is no time for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation.”
It’s a concept that’s been around for a while: The Week’s 2010 blog laments that “twenty-somethings are just illiterate in the nonverbal language that much of our social and workplace lives runs on” because of iPhones and Facebook, while Socrates even had an aversion to the newest technology of the time: ”[It] destroys memory [and] weakens the mind, relieving it of…work that makes it strong. [It] is an inhuman thing.” (Socrates was talking about writing!)
The apparent long lost art of conversation courtesy of Search Engine People Blog via Flickr
It seems every so often an, dare I say it, ‘older’ person, perhaps a generation or two above the generation they are criticising, will bemoan the technological devices of the present day and idealise the past. There’s always the “good old days,” the “back in my day,” the pre-text, pre-email, pre-writing era.
But I think what they look past is that the internet is a whole different world for everyone, and is especially beneficial for those who need an outlet of expression or support not afforded to them in the physical world.
Forums allow everyone from students to transgender people to those living with mental illness to converse, perhaps in a way that is impossible in the ‘real’ world. To say these conversations are less fulfilling and important than face-to-face ones, ignores and dismisses the reality and worth of these people’s lives.
Modern day “conversation”? Courtesy of Bright Meadow via Flickr
Personally, I feel increasing portals of social media (ironic it’s called “social” media, no?) herald the death of connection over conversation.
Social media means the conversation never stops, never sleeps. It’s being connected to someone on a real and deep level that seems to have been misplaced.
I’m talking connecting, not in the technological sense, not in the weird Avatar connecting your hair to a tree/animal/other person sense (unless you’re using that metaphorically, then that could be quite nice), but in the deeply humanistic sense.
As much of a dork as I sound, I mean on the mind, body and soul level.
I can count my close friends on my hands, and most of them are the people I went to school with and saw every single day for five years, while my Facebook friends number into the hundreds.
Heaps of Facebook friends, how many real ones? Courtesy of dan taylor via Flickr
I never find myself stumped for conversation with these Facebook friends, or with the people I follow on Twitter or Tumblr, but I don’t feel truly connected with any of them.
