ChasNote

The voice post technology arrives just in time for John Battelle at Searchblog, who broke one of his typing hands last week at camp with the kids. I know what you’re thinking — I made him break his hand as part of the HP sponsorship deal, but, alas, I didn’t.  Also, Ken Fisher at Ars Technica debuts his site’s voice post series with a review of Tivo HD.

Earlier this week, several FM sites rolled out their first “voice posts,” a new series of editorial segments served up as audio files on blog sites. HP is the sponsor of the series, meaning their logo appears under the audio file with copy that says “voice post technology sponsored by HP iPaq 510.” HP also bought banner ads on the sites. Beyond that, though, HP has no relationship to or influence over the content of the voice posts — a brilliant stroke on their part. Why? Two reasons.

First, by giving blog authors a new, easy-to-use platform to talk to their readers (listeners?) about topics of their own choosing, HP stands a much better chance of creating a “voice post habit” among top independent bloggers. Mark Frauenfelder, for example, one of Boing Boing’s editors, reads an excerpt from his book, “The World’s Worst.” According to Amazon, the paperback edition is 176 pages long. If Mark gets good feedback from Boing Boing readers, he’s got a lot more book to read — in his own voice! — for voice-posting on the site. Not that HP’s logo will necessarily accompany hundreds of future voice posts on Boing Boing (their current sponsorship runs for 2 months); but presumably the HP and the iPaq brands benefit if more bloggers and more online media consumers get comfortable with voice-to-text and text-to-voice activities.

Second, not every visitor to these sites will understand what’s meant by “voice post technology sponsored by HP iPaq 510.” So David Ponce at OhGizmo used a voice post to explain to his audience exactly what HP paid for (ads on his site and the HP logo under voice posts), and what they didn’t (his editorial content). Transparency and full disclosure, never bad things, are enormously important practices for independent publishers (who tend to face greater, or at least more vocal, scrutiny than traditional publishers, see this or this) and for publishers exploring marketing that goes beyond standard ad banners. And while HP didn’t pay OhGizmo to write or “voice” a disclosure, they benefited from it: It’s impossible for an author to disclose a sponsorship relationship without naming the involved sponsor. In OhGizmo’s case, David mentions HP or iPaq five times in the voice post and another five times in the accompanying text post, both under the headline “Voice Posts On OhGizmo: An Explanation, A Disclaimer And An Example.”

Nice going, HP.

(Disclosure: FM represents OhGizmo and Boing Boing and takes a commission on advertising that runs on those sites, and I work for FM.)

Update 7/24: The voice post technology arrives just in time for John Battelle at Searchblog, who broke one of his typing hands last week at camp with the kids. I know what you’re thinking — I made him break his hand as part of the HP sponsorship deal, but, alas, I didn’t. Also, Ken Fisher at Ars Technica debuts his site’s voice post series with a review of Tivo HD.

Update 7/31: Boing Boing uses voice posts to add the soundtrack to their site.

Update 8/14: As voice posts add to content, readers demand access. Here’s what the editors at Boing Boing are doing about it, according to David Pescovitz.

Update 8/31: HP marketing staffer and blogger Tac Anderson asks the question, Is This Really Advertising?, to which he replies:

“Technically yes. The better answer is that this is the way new media advertising *should* be done. It leverages ad dollars to bring additional value to a community that is not interruptive. I don’t know who on the HP side came up with this but I think it’s great.”

Update 9/15: Here’s a handful of comments from readers of Battelle’s Searchblog.

Yes, yes, we’ve heard it all before: Bloggers are really influential! But two stories I read this weekend — about relatively small websites operated by one and four people, respectively, affecting enormous impact on storied offline institutions — made me sit up straight, and smile.

First, Jeff Jarvis (of BuzzMachine) shakes up Dell’s corporate culture, marketing tactics and approach product design (Ad Age).

“Back in the summer of 2005, Dell ignored Jeff Jarvis’ complaints about a lemon laptop at its own peril. The blogger’s ‘Dell Hell’ rants teed up a mainstream story starring the PC manufacturer as an arrogant giant that became a case study in how one man’s website could shred a corporate reputation.”

Second, the crew at Boing Boing is credited with the success of Boston-based Gardner Museum’s new podcast programming — the strategy they hope will save the museum as its membership base ages — according to Boston.com.

“We were optimistically hoping 25,000 would download this thing in a single year,” Landrum said. “Now it’s going to be about 10 times that.”

A new study by the OPA reports :30s work better than :15s, and that news content is a more effective environment than comedy content.  Especially good news: Online video ads appear to work tremendously well:

“Of the 80 percent of viewers that have watched a video ad online, 52 percent have taken some sort of action, whether it’s checking out a website (31 percent), searching for additional information (22 percent), going into a store (15 percent), or making a purchase (12 percent).”

More at PaidContent.

From SJ Merc News:

“‘Ask a Ninja’ is one of the most popular independent video podcasts on the Web, averaging between 300,000 and 500,000 viewers for each new episode (released bi-weekly) while collecting more than 3 million viewers for popular episodes such as ‘Ninja Love’…. What started as a small production with 40 Internet subscribers skyrocketed into a Web phenomenon when the ninja duo developed a ‘niche audience that pushed back’ in the question-and-answer format with the ninja as moderator.

“Getting a specific audience and creating your own brand is important, and ‘Ask a Ninja’ has managed to do that,” says Derek Gordon of Technorati.com, a Web site tracker. According to Technorati.com, ‘Ask a Ninja’ ranks in its top 100 blogs, and there are more than 3,100 sites linked to it.”

Late Thursday night, video-podcaster (and FM partner) Ask A Ninja rolled out the first episode in a series of nine that will be sponsored by Ask.com as part of their recent re-branding campaign. At the end of each episode, the Ninja invites his viewers to go to Ask.com (by clicking on an Ask.com banner alongside the video window, or by going straight to Ask.com) and to enter a made-up word. The Ninja tells viewers who do this that they’ll get either the definition of “ninjuice” (via a custom video skit by the Ninja), or — so threatens the Ninja — a sword in the head.

The campaign is smart at one (very simple) level in that it ties together banner ads with integrated, co-branded messages in the video programming. At another level, it’s even smarter in that the Ninja (the featured act) rather than Ask.com (the marketer) makes the call-to-action.

The data from the campaign’s first 20 hours are astounding. One out of every twelve viewers of the Ninja’s “Ninja Sayings” video skit went to Ask.com, queried “ninjuice” and watched the bonus video that the Ninja produced especially for those “certified search ninjas” who completed the assignment. An 8.3% rate of conversion. For comparison, imagine a conventional banner that delivers a terrific click-through rate, say 0.4%. Then assume a whopping 25% of those clickers actually test-drive the product. Even that record-breaking performance would add up to only a 0.1% rate of conversion. The team effort by Ask.com and Ask A Ninja did 83 TIMES better.

Digital marketing has become a martial art!

This concept was a collaboration of FM’s James Gross and Ask’s Sean X Cummings.

More coverage at GigaOM’s NewTeeVee, Clickz (twice) and AdRants.

Update 5/28/07: Ninjuice has made its way to Wikipedia.

That according to Comscore (Media Week):

“More than half of Internet users who possess mobile phones are not interested in, are unaware of, or have no interest in Mobile TV, according to a new survey conducted by comScore, illustrating just how far the medium has to go before it becomes mainstream.”

Jeff Jarvis helped coordinate a creative online ad program for Dupont: Short videos profiling Dupont technologies like Kevlar, starring the original host of Rocketboom, Amanda Congdon (BuzzMachine). In an interview with Clickz, Dupont’s Gary Spangler is pleased with the results.

“‘We were looking for a hostess or host that would be interesting to the viewers,’ said Spangler. ‘I was familiar with Rocketboom and knew Amanda has … online viewership and is already skilled in video blogging. Her experience and acceptance by a large audience around her delivery and appeal led us to think she was a clear choice for delivering these messages.’”

Dupont is running the spots on several FM sites (thanks, Dupont and Starcom!): Digg, Boing Boing, the Athanasius Kircher Society, Left Lane News and Boompa.

At the second annual Podcast Peer Awards, Ask A Ninja took home “two of the most prestigious awards,” Favorite Video Podcast and Best Comedy Video. What a day for the Ninja!

Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne (NPR) interviewed Rob Walch this morning, author and analyst behind the site Podcast411 and the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters.” Walch called out Ask A Ninja as one of the handful of independent podcasters (among the 90,000 total) who’s starting to make a real living off his program. Oh, but that’s only the beginning!