Category Advertising
Forrester Research: Mobile marketing companies lack ethnographic capabilities
In June 2015, Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how prepared mobile marketers are to deliver to consumers during quick mobile “moments” – i.e. — instances when they reflexively turn to their devices to act on a need to learn,…
MIT Technology Review special report on persuasive technology
The MIT Technology Review has just published a special business report on persuasive technology, i.e. how technologies from smartphones to social media are used to influence our tastes, behavior, and even habits. Free registration is required to read all the…
Facebook uses ethnography to deliver more relevant ads
“As researchers focusing on Facebook’s advertising, we led research trips with a cross-functional team of product managers, marketers, and engineers to Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa to develop a solid understanding of cultural differences across these countries. […] Forming a…
Screen Life: The View from the Sofa
A new study carried out for Thinkbox by COG Research and designed to help the advertising community understand the context of multi-screening (watching TV and simultaneously using an internet-connected device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet). Using a combination…
Is UX design the next big thing?
UX design explained for advertisers: “Here is where the world of communication and the world of computing starts to merge in intent. Systems are to be used. Products are to be experienced. Users and consumers are the rulers. Technology, if…
Interview with Michael Griffiths, Director of Ethnographic Research, Ogilvy & Mather China
Michael B Griffiths is Director of Ethnography at Ogilvy & Mather, Greater China, Associate Research Fellow, White Rose East Asia Centre, and External Research Associate, Centre for International Business, University of Leeds, UK. He is also the author of the…
How research misses the human behind the demographic
Deutsch’s Douglas Van Praet discusses how focus-group feedback, and the whole notion of the consumer, are misguided and how research should focus on understanding the unconscious and improving human lives. “How [market] research studies are done is at sharp odds…
Anthropological study by Google on our magic relationship with mobile devices
What is the emotional relationship people truly have with the mobile space and how they make meaning there? To answer this, Google conducted an anthropological study to gain a better understanding of how people feel about, relate to and find…
Marty Kaplan: From Attention to Engagement (video)
Barcelona Media, an interdisciplinary center of research and innovation, hosted Lear Center director Marty Kaplan to speak at its 10th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2012. His talk was titled “From Attention to Engagement: The Transformation of the Content Industry.”…
Does your phone know how happy you are?
Kit Eaton explores the coming of age of the emotion-recognition industry. “Because the smartphones we all carry contain sophisticated computing power, cloud computing connections and, increasingly, a front-facing webcam, it’s easy to see that the next generation of advertising will…
I’m being followed: how Google (and 104 other companies) are tracking us on the web
Who are these companies and what do they want from me? Alexis Madrigal’s voyage into the invisible business that funds the web. “This morning, if you opened your browser and went to NYTimes.com, an amazing thing happened in the milliseconds…
How to determine what media airline passengers will choose while travelling
Kevin Miller, global head of insight at in-flight magazine publisher Ink discusses how the environment impacts airline travellers psychologically and in turn affects their choice of media. “The airline passenger journey, from home to boarding the plane and beyond, is…
Peter Merholz on advertising and marketing agencies delivering UX design
Peter Merholz, president of Adaptive Path, has written a long and eloquent rant against advertising and marketing agencies proclaiming to do user experience design. These agencies, he says, do not come at user experience from an honest place. “Ad agencies,…
AP’s ethnographic studies look for solutions to news and ad fatigue
A new study by the Associated Press has come to the conclusion that consumers are “tired, even annoyed, by the current experience of advertising,†and that, as a result, they don’t trust very much of it. But at the same…
Bill Buxton, Martin Raymond & Anna Kirah presentations – Imagine 09
Bill Buxton, Martin Raymond and Anna Kirah were some of the speakers at Imagine09, a conference organised by Microsoft Advertising on 28 October in London. Living in the age of turbulence Anna Kirah, partner, CPH Design (and former senior design…
The Times’ Innovation Portfolio
The New York Times interactive group creates an online encyclopedia of all their stunning inventions, reports Cliff Kuang on Fast Company. “The Times interactive team has been creating path-breaking experiments in infographics and interaction design. All of which are now…
Mapping a new, mobile internet
Business Week reports on how a nascent industry involving the likes of Google and Nokia is pinpointing the movements and behaviors of millions of cell-phone users. “Marketers have long dreamed of zeroing in on shoppers, whether in a mall or…
Whitepaper: The glittering allure of the mobile society
Mobile advertising specialist Alan Moore, founder of the communication consultancy SMLXL, was asked by Microsoft US to write a paper on the future of the mobile society. It is available as a whitepaper. “When it comes to mobile telecommunications, it…
Nokia on somebody else’s phone
Somebody else’s phone is a new Nokia campaign advertised in London that does a great job of depicting the life of an early to mid twenty year-old through their text messages, MMS and pictures. (via Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino)