This column was written by Richard Stalzer, CEO of Voltari, a company that develops predictive analytical solutions for the mobile space. Voltari optimizes mobile advertising campaigns from the start, learns and optimizes automatically in real-time, and provides insights.

Over the past several years, mobile lifestyle has become about so much more than the smart phone. The prevalence of an overall connected lifestyle and perpetual mobility have yielded new modes of viewing and consuming across a multitude of screens and devices. This requires us to use more sophisticated approaches. As today’s marketer thinks about the day-in-the-life of the average consumer — a brand in many ways has to crack a code on much more wide-ranging connected behavior to get their consumer in store, in environment and engaged in a real life way. Today’s consumers are very much in control of what, when, how, and how deeply they engage. So, it’s not as easy as running a system or leveraging an automated tool. Before you even go there — you’ve got to buy into two key tenets: personalization and localization.

New Consumer Paths

While it may seem like a lot of path to track, there are positive implications for all of us, as consumers move across time, location, device and content. Where we might have planned and bought media based basic demographics in the past, and endeavored to glean our best customer prospects over time — there’s a whole new incredibly effective model to consider as we strive to engage our consumer on the run. It’s all based on a more granular look at paths and behavior. And the data and mechanics are available to execute. Thanks to today’s tools set, we are able to use audience targeting, propensity modeling, messaging, and creative combinations to increase the effectiveness of our marketing. And we can do this even within the new expansively mobile, connected state that we are living.

Personalization is Infinitely Doable Today

With all that it is possible to know about your consumer today – why would you not use the systems and intelligence at your disposal to optimize messaging, creative and frequency – to draw and satisfy your probable consumer in a very personal way? Most marketers now understand that there are data points beyond pure demographics to examine. They get that we must study behavior across day, time of day, content affinities, and device to infer more about our most likely customers and then work with that information on the fly, in real time, to optimize our efforts accordingly. The potential is enormous and at our fingertips. The only thing standing in the way of working with these more robust data sets to the full extent of their potential may be complacency. If serious about this, it is essential to equip with the right systems and train our staffs to think, plan, test, and optimize based on the new more complete available picture of your consumer. The agency or marketing team that skips over and fails to take advantage of ready personalization opportunities, will effectively skip over entire consumer pools, both known and still to be discovered.

Localization Juices the Formula

Personalization alone does not inform our total potential. When you can also localize at a very granular level – on top of personalization factors and across all devices – you suddenly have the immediate opportunity to drive across channels and drive to store. Attribute driven targeting that is personalized and localized to unprecedented geographic precision, for example, using creative, messaging, and targeting is more likely than ever to drive desired commerce activity. If you are able to in real time, personalize and localize to capitalize on your prospects’ most decisive moments – you are as close as you can be to cracking the code.

While there is still some way to go to the perfect formula, never has the marketer been closer to their consumer and able to drive that consumer to store from other channels. There is still much to learn. But there is incredible opportunity in that learning. And, yet, we’ve seen way too many marketers stand back idle from the opportunity – focusing only on demographics. Or, perhaps embracing either methods around personalization or localization – but not both and not to the extent of their combined potential. Embrace the learning and both tenets together and your brand will realize a new cross-channel marketing reality – and you will be armed with more applicable understanding of your consumer than ever before.

My typical stimulant is the Internet Movie Database app, which is always a tap away when we’re watching TV. I’ve always had a strange obsession with searching on IMDB, realizing that so-and-so actor was also in that, or that so-and-so director wrote the screenplay for this. And the IMDB app is the perfect tool for fulfilling this obsession in real time. Why does “Game of Throne’s” Sandor “The Hound” Clegane look so familiar? Oh yeah, he was the heavy who said nothing but “Yurp” in “Hot Fuzz.”

My only complaint – I want my info faster. I’ve still got to type in the name of the show I’m watching (or trust that Siri won’t distort my words into something embarrassing), and sure, after I’ve typed in a few letters the search engine typically realizes what I’m looking up and offers suggestions that are on the mark. But why couldn’t IMDb employ audio recognition software along the lines of Shazam (or even use Shazam’s technology) to realize what I’m watching in a matter of seconds? (By the way, I’m also a pretty big Shazam user, especially when I’m at a bar and hear a tight tune.)

IMDb, you can run with that idea – it’s a freebie from me.

I was pondering this the other night as I was assembling our second-screen session for OPS TV, July 18 in NYC. One participant is whip-smart Stacy Jolna from ConnecTV, a social network revolving around TV interaction. My colleague Joshua Weaver recently interviewed Jolna for an illuminating look at the second screen’s rapid development, where I learned how ConnecTV uses content recognition technology to sync commercials with mobile advertising. I’m also hoping to soon announce a broadcaster joining that session to give its perspective on the best course for second screen monetization.

I believe we’ve past the novelty point with the second screen and are now actualizing its potential – whether that means monetization or pushing data garnered toward multiple purposes. At last year’s OPS TV, Shazam’s Evan Krauss gave an excellent keynote laying out potential uses of its technology platform that became realities over the year – think about Super Bowl and Olympics integration. Twitter acquired Bluefin Labs (another OPS TV speaker), a social TV research firm, because it can see the mammoth data opportunity opening up.

Second screen seems to be in huge discussion wherever I go – an IAB special panel featuring Viacom, ABC, Discovery and more, or the jam-packed MaxxCom Global Media Collaborative, which stuffed my head full of new ideas.

Serious Research, Heavy Findings

Conference organizer Mitch Oscar always puts together a sharp agenda – his opening slide typically is a pertinent New Yorker cartoon reminding us that the fire is far more important than the smoke.

Hence the agenda was focused on what’s burning rather than the fumes: following a fascinating examination of digital and cross-platform subscriber behavior from Conde Nast (subscribers to 12 digital editions grew from 1.7 million in 2012 to 2.7 million in 2013; 40% of all subscribers read the tablet version at least once a month, with 10% using that platform to consume every day) and details about Project Blueprint from ESPN (a expansive cross-platform measurement initiative finding the overlap between TV, desktop Internet, mobile, tablet and, coming soon, radio), Time Warner Cable shared the results of an intense study of second screen behavior.

Researchers in the company’s media lab used biometric, eye-tracking and other post-viewing tests to measure the engagement of a millennial crowd (18-34, which includes me – I can’t believe I’m part of that lousy generation on no-gooders) while they watched TMZ and Conan – with ad breaks. TWC broke them into several different groups, such as solo viewing with no second screen; social viewing plus social networks; solo viewing with synced apps, and more.

The findings were chin-scratch worthy – those viewing by themselves and using social apps were as equally engaged as those viewing in a social setting. Also, social viewers’ dips in attention during commercial breaks were far less severe than those viewing without; during some ad pods, attention actually went up.

Finally, sync apps seriously boost engagement with the program, and brands can leverage that through sponsorship. AT&T sponsored the Conan app, and brand favorability with those users (58%) was definitively higher than sans app (25%).

But these results also have a lot to do with the kind of TV experiences studied. I groaned when I saw a headline the other week asking if the second screen was going to kill the “Mad Men” experience. “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones,” “Breaking Bad” and other critically acclaimed hits have brought cinematic qualities to episodic television, basically transferring the ability of a good film to suck you into another world and make you forget your surroundings. Social interaction with such TV shows tends to be delayed – for old-schoolers, think next-day water cooler conversation.

People watching a late-night variety show, on the other hand, want to be social in the now, hence TWC’s highly engaged test subjects. Even though this space is quickly maturing, there’s still a ways to go in understanding the best ways to engage consumers through the second screen. Experimentation is in bloom because content engagement strategies need to be developed before their monetization cousins. However, don’t think the latter is that far off.

Where Are Ye, NFC?

Speaking of other developing mobile technology, my band Libel ordered a slew of download cars prior to our participation in the 2013 Northside Festival in Brooklyn. The front of this plastic rectangle features our logo while the back invites recipients to a website where they can enter a code to download our music. It’s better than a CD because it bypasses the music importation step and reduces clutter (I can’t tell you how many CD “gifts” I threw away unheard because they were taking up too much of my desk space).

Giving out the cards, it occurred to me that a scannable QR code on the back could delete one more step, enabling users to skip typing in the link and code and just download the music. QR haters, I can hear you moan, and no, I don’t think this is an ideal solution. Frankly, I’m annoyed at the sluggish adoption of near-field communication (with my harshest glare pointed at one fruit-loving company). I figured by now I could share samples from my albums with potential fans with just a wave of my smartphone – regardless of what I was hoping I could sell an album then and there

The smartphone has become the central location for music consumption, and the tech to streamline the transfer from artist to consumers exists, but I still have to limp through traditional steps like handing out physical cards.

I can’t wait to debate the potential of NFC further at OPSMobile, July 18 in NYC, with representatives from Yelp, HopStop and Fresh Digital Group. As Isobar’s Michael Nicholas showed during his keynote at the previous year’s event, NFC’s potential is nearly limitless, but how are we bringing that potential to life?

CohenMartin is COO and co-founder at Dynamix, a NYC-based digital video advertising company. The Makegood recently spoke with Jack about digital videos, targeted ads, and Dynamix’ patent-pending digital advertising technology.

The Makegood: Jack, you have been in the digital industry for over 10 years. How do people consume TV today and where is the trend going?

TV has moved well beyond the living room couch and TV. Increasingly, consumers are watching TV and video content on mobile devices – tablets and smartphones. Mobile video will be the big growth story of the next 3-5 years. We’re just at the very beginning of consumers using their smartphones for watching video content. Several converging trends will drive this increase.First, video-content providers and established cable channels are rushing to provide mobile apps to deliver content – from YouTube to Netflix to HBO Go. In addition, you’re starting to see many video apps that offer video content specifically designed for mobile consumption, apps like Vine or NowThis News. Second, smartphone hardware gets more powerful every six months, giving consumers more sleek screen technology that makes the video experience better and better on small devices. And, third, public wi-fi and cell networks are increasing their speed and data to provide the pipe for all this video content.

The Makegood: At Dynamix, you localize advertising. Can you elaborate on your services and how these help companies to be more successful?

Large Fortune 1,000 brands spend millions of dollars every year creating and filming TV commercials. When many of those companies turn to digital video advertising, they naturally re-use or re-purpose those TV commercials that they spent millions filming. That’s very understandable. It also allows those companies to continue their branding online as consumers see familiar brand images, messages, and advertising both online and offline.
However, when repurposing their TV commercials, most companies want to take advantage of the unique capabilities of digital advertising – targeting specific demographics and delivering relevant ads. For example, an automobile commercial is much more relevant digitally if the standard TV commercial also offers directions to the local retailer and a specific offer such as a 30-day zero-percent financing offer. While that sounds easy, adding that type of relevant info and targeted offer, it’s not. And, if a company wants to roll out that targeting nationally, suddenly you would need to create 300 or 400 individual ads – all of them offering directions to a local auto dealer in cities across the U.S..
That’s where Dynamix comes in. Our patent-pending digital advertising technology, allows advertisers and ad agencies to create dynamically rendered video ads affordably, so that an advertiser can deliver 300 different targeted ads to consumers across the U.S.

The Makegood: Your clients are large brands including Chrysler, Dove, and JetBlue. Can you tell us about a campaign or project you are especially proud of?

TJ Maxx/Marshalls wanted to serve their video ads with a dynamic location rendered into the video. The unique challenge was that if a user was in a specific zip code where both a TJ Maxx and Marshalls was located, which creative version and address gets served?
We were able to quickly render all of the store locations into their :30 video ad for both stores and add the geographic and business decisioning on the back-end using our proprietary decisioning algorithms.
The campaign requirement was to support multiple variations (one for each DMA) of the ad and then traffic it in a targeted way. Turnaround time for this unit had to be quick. Our rendering engine rendered the multiple variations automatically and the geo-targeted trafficking part was done automatically on our ad servers.
The ad versioning and geotrafficking alone would have required a lot of time and effort from the client, our service made this campaign possible.

The Makegood: Besides entertaining ad ideas, what are the ways to prevent customers from skipping ads? In the future, will we see more product placements or technology that disables ad skipping?

As mobile video increases, we think advertisers will have to look at how consumers are using video on these devices. We don’t think typical 30 or 60 second pre-roll ads are going to work well in mobile video. But, if you look at how some select brands (Lowe’s for example) are already experimenting with Vine – creating, eye-catching informative commercials in 6 seconds. We think you’re going to see an a lot of creativity in this realm. For example, when Apple releases their next product, what about a 6-second video with a reveal of the product that fades into the iconic Apple logo. And, we’re not a creative agency, we give creative agencies the digital video technology they need to make compelling ads. We think there are going to be a lot of innovative uses of short, eye-catching videos that leave an impression.

The Makegood: How do new habits and devices affect your work and what will we see coming from Dynamix?

The one constant about digital advertising technology is change. No one predicted the dramatic rise of programmatic ad buying and now it’s a pillar of the industry. Publishers and advertisers are exploring ways that native advertising will work well, and we think you’ll see a lot more in that area. The same with mobile video. I don’t think anyone predicted that consumers would latch onto this technology and content so quickly. At Dynamix, our technology is focused on digital video advertising, and a core part of our technology is that our dynamically generated video ads will run on any device – desktop, phone, table, or internet-connected TV. We pay close attention to the needs of advertisers and agencies in digital video, and we’ll continue developing our technology to meet their needs.

The Makegood: Thanks, Jack.

We are pleased to welcome Ragini Bhalla as a monthly contributor to The Makegood. Ragini is Director of Content and Communications for

For those of us born before the 1990s, there’s a scene in the all-American flick, “Field of Dreams,” where Kevin Costner’s character ‘Ray Kinsella’ is walking through cornfields (yes, cornfields) and hears a voice whisper, “If you build it, he will come,” and then he sees a baseball diamond. In the world of advertising and marketing, that adage rings true in more ways than one. As someone who has been planted in the communications and PR business for the last 8 years, I can wholeheartedly point to the importance of building great content so that they (in my case, reporters and analysts) will come.

We as consumers come into contact with countless brands and their products/services multiple times throughout every day in the form of advertising in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, online and now on the smaller screen via our smartphones and tablets. That’s a lot of content, a lot. And we (consumers, that is) aren’t too understanding when a brand gives us bad content – when I say bad, I mean content that offends, angers, disrespects and misleads us. And that means more pressure for brands to get their content right.

Joe Pulizzi from the Content Marketing Institute said it best: “Remember, customers don’t care about you; they care about themselves and their problems. We often forget that point when we describe how wonderful our widget is (which no one cares about).” Essentially, brands need to think of themselves as the parents of a petulant child – if you don’t give your child what they want, how they want it, when and where they want it, be prepared for a serious temper tantrum. That temper tantrum might look a bit different from an angry child kicking, screaming and turning red from crying for hours; it’ll look much more like decreased site traffic, less clicks, lower conversions, and ultimately, less revenue. That’s the kind of temper tantrum brands just can’t afford to let happen.

Since this is my first column for The Makegood, I won’t go on and on about why consumers (I’m no exception) are so finicky, impatient and demanding. Instead, I’ll share three of my favorite brands that are on the right track to building great content so that they (also known as consumers) will come.

Makeup.com doesn’t force-feed you L’Oreal products.

If you took a peek inside my vanity, you’d know that I love makeup, a lot. But that doesn’t mean I want to have big flashing banners or calls-to-actions pushing me to “purchase” their products. One of the reasons I actually enjoy clicking my way through the Makeup.com website is that they aren’t trying to shove their makeup products down my throat. Instead, the product purchase falls behind my needs and what makes me happy. That makes me want to click more, spend more time learning about quick fixes to those summer beauty blunders we all face and eventually, when I’m ready, I’ll make purchases.

As a communications and PR professional, there’s a lot to learn from this site. Brands need to consider what content they share with consumers (if they want to convert them into buyers).

Fab.com is both delightful and absurd, in a good way.

Who doesn’t love Fab.com? If you scroll through the site’s home page, it’s bursting with a beautifully curated amalgamation of colors (or as Bravo’s famed fashion stylist, Brad Goreski, calls “POC” aka pop of color) and equally delectable, “must-have” products. The website says so much about how the customer shopping experience is fast shifting from a simple “purchase” experience to a combination of editorial shopping and content curation.

The New York Times rules.                                                                             

I can never forget that my professional roots come from the world of journalism and news. It’s where I learned one of the most important content and communications lessons (that I still use to this day): Get to the point, better and faster. So of course I’m a big fan of The New York Times not only because each and every news story feels real, talks to you as if you’re right there inside that Congress panel hearing or army barracks. And when this beloved news giant decided to go digital, they did it in a big way. But as much as some skeptics of new media and journalism models scoffed at their decision to launch digital paid subscriptions, the plan is working. They now have close to 700,000 paid digital subscribers and a nine-figure revenue stream – that’s a win-win for both The New York Times and readers like me.

One thing that I always valued and noticed in the mentors and great leaders that I’ve worked with over the years, was their commitment to creating a positive work environment, one where people are happy, inspired and motivated.  Work is stressful enough, and in a client-facing business such as ours, it’s hard not to get caught up in the demands of it.  With this in mind, when I became CEO at MEC, I was passionate about shifting the focus to our people. Let’s face it, people are a company’s most important asset, so understanding what drives each to personal fulfillment is key to keeping them happy.When I decided that we needed to take more specific action to foster this type of environment, it happened rather organically.  One of our senior leaders shared his experience working with executive coach, Helen Mumford Sole, leading him to both personal and professional development.  Having spent the last ten years exploring and studying various facets of Happiness, Helen’s message is simple – happiness is not something we are born with, but rather something that we can learn, manage and cultivate like any other skill.  Inspired by her thinking, last year we invited Helen to speak on the subject of happiness at an MEC all-staff meeting.

After an outpouring of positive reception from our talent after the meeting, we decided to take the concept of “happiness” a step further and launched a six-week pilot course, which we dubbed “Inspiring Happiness.” Twenty employees in our New York office were selected to participate in the pilot program that focused on teaching tools and techniques to help discover happiness in both their personal and professional lives.  Not only did our before and after surveys show that 100 percent of participants found the course useful or very useful, but 100 percent enjoyed it very much, and 100 percent would recommend it to their friends.  We also saw an overall shift in how employees approached their work, with one taking it upon herself to launch a media tools training initiative aimed at junior-level staff. We’re currently in the midst of our second round of the class, and have plans to roll it out to other MEC offices around the network as well.

The Makegood: MEC employs almost 5,000 people in more than 150 offices across 84 countries. How does the agency manage distributed teams and can you provide tips for global companies?

First and foremost, it’s about empowerment. I believe it’s important for the leaders inside global companies to feel empowered to make decisions and decide what is best for their teams and regions. That said, connectivity and communication is also extremely integral to creating one voice, one culture across borders.

At MEC, we are highly effective at using digital channels to stay connected. Our intranet, PlanetMEC, is a place where we share updates on employee achievements, personal stories, and client work, keeping us connected to our colleagues overseas. We also have a program called “Global Ideas,” an internal awards competition across the entire network where teams enter their best client case studies. Not only does this strike up healthy competition among the offices, but it’s a way for us to share learnings and best practices, and provide employees an outlook of innovative strategies from across the globe.

Talent-wise, we’ve put an emphasis on hiring people in North America with not only diverse skill sets, but diverse global backgrounds. In New York, our executive committee not only represents a good mix of men and women, but also different countries and global experiences. We have people from the UK, and Samoa, and many of us have worked on different continents. We also invest in sending our people to other offices around the global network, as well as conferences in different parts of the world. It’s no surprise to anyone that mobility is helping us all stay connected more than ever these days, but I think it goes beyond that.  When people get outside of the office, meet new people, see different things and places, their natural sense of curiosity is piqued. That’s a good thing for the type of work we’re doing, and keeps us on the cutting edge.

The Makegood: What is important when measuring and ensuring happiness, goals and performance of employees?

People tend to equate happiness with achievement of key milestones or accomplishments such as getting a promotion to VP or winning a new piece of business. But day-to-day work happiness goes beyond that immediate satisfaction. It’s the ability to approach things with a positive outlook, to deliver inspired work, to enjoy the people you work with and what you do.  While we haven’t yet quantified the overall long-term impact of this initiative, happiness is a fairly basic practice.  It’s a domino effect – without happy people, we won’t have happy clients.

At MEC, it starts with the overall sentiment pervading all our offices. You ultimately know you got it right when people are happy to come to work, and feel motivated and connected to a larger vision of delivering inspired work for our clients.  Those who have completed the course credit it with helping them manage stressful situations, some found joy and passion in new areas of business, while others have shared that they are now equipped with tools to help tackle those personal issues that had been restricting their development.  The end result – more inspired, motivated and positive talent delivering for our clients.  We still have areas where we haven’t cracked the code, but the most important thing is letting your people know that you’re working on it, and it’s a priority.

The Makegood: Comparing the generations in today’s workforce, what are differences in keeping employees happy?

It’s easy to make blanket stereotypes on how each generation defines happiness. But for me, it goes beyond generational differences to effectively help our talent find happiness.  The key is to address and understand what fulfillment means to each person.  While you may well find similarities across the generations, there are certainly vast differences. For example, many of us seek a balanced life, meaning an equal focus on career and family/friends, but to a young mother or father fulfillment may mean ending the work day early to have more time to spend with family. To someone else of the same generation, fulfillment may mean the opportunity to participate on a special project or to be challenged with a new experience at work.  By placing people in predefined buckets, you risk oversimplifying the solution. Ultimately, it’s about cultivating a culture that allows for each person to discover and pursue what makes them happy.

The Makegood: Thanks, Marla. 

The Makegood: How does Live Nation Network help companies to build relationships between brands, bands and fans that last longer than a concert?

Music is universal and provides brands an incredibly powerful platform to engage with passionate fans in a very personal way.  Live Nation is the only company in the world that has the size, scale and experience to help companies build relationships between brands, bands and fans that extends the fun of concert beyond the event itself, because we have many consumer touch points before, during, and after the show.

Last year we went a step further with the re-launch of LiveNation.com. Designed as a one-stop music fan community, we’re creating a hotbed of engagement such as original music content and interviews with artists, which ultimately helps fans discover and share new music and artists before they even consider purchasing a ticket.

Another component of the site uses proprietary geo-fencing technology that captures fan-generated social content at shows and curates them as social streams on LiveNation.com. This provides opportunities for fans to relive, share, or vicariously experience the performance after the concert. The site has become very attractive to marketers, and we’ve already created several custom programs such as the Sonic Firsts campaign for Chevy Sonic that included artist and fan interview content featuring product placement and editorial direction around Chevy brand themes.

A great example of how all of these offline and online elements come together for a brand, is the Pop-Tarts “Crazy Good” Summer campaign that we ran last summer. Pop-Tarts wanted to engage with teen consumers, and music was the best platform to connect with them.

The program consisted of two “secret” concerts at the beginning and end of the summer plus numerous sweepstakes and promotions driving social media engagement in between. Prior to the shows, Pop-Tarts engaged teens by dropping hints on the artists and locations of the shows.  We followed it up with live chats with the artists on Twitter and Facebook to build excitement leading up to the events.  At the events, we activated photo booths and Just Dance stations to entertain the crowds, and handed out thousands of samples. After the concert, Pop-Tarts continued to engage fans with sweepstakes awarding concert tickets and other music prizes.  The campaign helped Pop-Tarts earn over 250,000 new Facebook likes and provided the brand with the content and context to engage fans for an entire summer and beyond. The program was so successful that we actually just launched a second “Crazy Good” Summer.

The Makegood: What are the biggest challenges the industry is facing and how do you address these?

The biggest challenges we see are the ability of publishers, networks and content providers to measurably impact consumer behavior. The traditional metrics of success: impressions, click-through rates, etc. are being re-examined, and new metrics such as engagements, shares and conversations are getting more brand attention.

These challenges are magnified when trying to reach to Millennials, a demographic group that consumes content and media in a fragmented way across numerous channels and platforms. We’re seeing the most success when using a balanced media approach that reaches consumers across paid, earned, and owned channels.  Music is an ideal focal point for such programs because it provides a natural convergence of content, community, and reach.  According to a recent LiveAnalytics consumer survey, we found that over 90 percent of Millennial concert-goers use Facebook. One example of a program developed with Millennials in mind was our partnership with Samsung last year. The brand wanted to celebrate its milestone of reaching 5 million fans on Facebook, so we created a private concert with Santigold in New York City, where Samsung customers could attend live or watch via a live digital stream that was linked into the brand’s Facebook page. Paid media on Facebook and Live Nation channels, including a targeted email sent by Live Nation to past purchasers of Santigold tickets, drove awareness of the campaign and event. The live stream on Samsung’s Facebook page provided compelling owned media, and the significant PR coverage and social media buzz surrounding the show delivered hundreds of millions of earned media impressions.

The Makegood: How can brands integrate their values with artists and tours and what marketing activities around the live music experience have the highest impact?

When approaching any type of music marketing program, brands should strive for authenticity above all, and that goal should be taken into account when picking the right artists with whom to align, as well as programming the best activations for the partnership.  We’ve found that matching brands and products with the right artists is as much a science as it is an art.  When we work with brands on music marketing programs, we tap into event purchase history analysis as well as the latest digital and social trends. For brands to borrow on the equity of the fan-artist relationship, the message has to be consistent with the essence of the artist and their music, and the activation itself needs to be relevant and aim to improve or enhance the live music experience.  Brands need to provide a tangible value proposition to the fan to get them to engage or convert.

When Skype wanted to drive mobile and tablet usage of their service, we developed a program that paired the brand with one of the most beloved artists of our time, Lady Gaga, and her Born This Way Ball tour. Skype became an official tour partner and leveraged the alignment to promote the social functionality of their mobile app. The partnership made a lot of sense because Lady Gaga’s fans are socially-savvy Millennials, which is the target Skype most wanted to reach. Skype was able to demonstrate the power of their Group Video Chat capability by offering lucky winners a chance to Skype with Lady Gaga herself.  #Skypeball and #SkypeWithGaga trended worldwide on Twitter during the chat. Then, when Lady Gaga had to cancel the end of her U.S. Tour due to injury, Skype repositioned its sponsorship into a “Get Well Gaga” platform where fans could submit get well photos and artwork to Lady Gaga using Skype Photo Share.  The promotion spiked a significant increase in usage of the app, and resonated with the target as an extremely organic alignment of artist and brand.

The Makegood: Your team greatly expanded and you are building out your digital sales and market team across the country. What can companies learn from your people management strategy?

Personal relationships are still very important in this business and we’ve found that having salespeople throughout the country with heavy concentrations where the biggest brands and agencies are headquartered gives us better exposure and access to marketing decision-makers. Also, the notion of sponsorship has greatly changed over the past several years. It’s gone so far beyond slapping a name on a tour or a building, to really taking the brand’s business problem into account and coming up with a solution to not only reach their target audience but positively benefit fans. Our programs often create once in a lifetime opportunities to meet their favorite artists, concert tickets, private concerts, etc.

Philosophically, we emphasize collaboration within our sales organization.  We have tied compensation to teamwork and team goals.  While we have resources dedicated at the local, regional and national levels as well as experts focused on sponsorship, online, and mobile platforms, everybody is encouraged to work closely together to deliver the best possible solution for brands.  That flexibility: the ability to deliver marketing solutions at local and national levels, through online and offline channels, makes us a unique partner in the digital advertising and sponsorship space.

The Makegood: Thanks, Russell.

The Makegood: There is currently a Series A “crunch” where startups are having trouble getting their next round of funding. Why is this happening?

If you want to scale a startup quickly, achieving a Series A raise from a venture capitalist firm can be useful. The issue is that only 86 VCs made investments in 2012 and there are thousands of startups being founded each year. So the odds of a startup raising a Series A round from VCs are very low—perhaps less than 1 in 10.

The Makegood: So how were you successful with your raise?

There were a few factors. First, we developed a product that customers seemed to like and were willing to pay for. Revenue is important to most VCs. Second, B2B SaaS companies focused on the enterprise are attractive investments right now. Third, I met with a lot of firms. You need many good intros and meetings to increase your odds of success.

The Makegood: How long did it take to raise the money?

From the first formal VC meeting to having money in the bank it took about 90 days, which is pretty fast. But the raise was the culmination of 17 months of hard work. Our engineering, customer service, sales and marketing people got us to the point where I could raise funds thanks to their tireless effort.

The Makegood: What is it like to raise money for a startup?

The process can be difficult, even for the most seasoned entrepreneur. Founders love their startup, otherwise they wouldn’t be dedicating their life to it. VCs, on the other hand, get pitched a lot. They need to say “no” 99% of the time, even if they like you or your idea. Sometimes the timing is wrong, other times they can’t get all of their partners on board. There are a hundred possible reasons for a VC not to move forward.

Fortunately, in our case had multiple firms that wanted to invest and were able to choose the one that was the best match for our vision and culture. We intend to spend the next decade building Namely so fit was really important. We’re really excited to be working with Phil Black and Adam D’Augelli at True Ventures.

The Makegood: How will this investment help your company?

Money equals time for a startup so this investment enables us to complete our product roadmap and add to our core team. We’re excited to build a significant enterprise technology company right here in New York with some great partners.

The Makegood: Thanks, Matt.

Here are ten tips for getting hired:

1. DO what is asked. Read the job listing carefully. If the listing asks for a cover letter then write a cover letter. It’s crucial to be able to follow direction, especially if you are going after an entry-level position.

2. DO your research. If you get an interview spend as much time as possible learning about the company and the industry. You should also know everything you can about the people you will be meeting with, including the CEO. I like to spend at least a few minutes with everyone we hire so be prepared.

3. DO arrive on time. Don’t show up to an interview all sweaty and frazzled because you didn’t give yourself enough time to get to the appointment. Interviews can make people stressed out so arrive a few minutes early and give yourself some time to get composed.

4. DO have relevant experience. It’s easier to be employed in a position that is relevant to the one you’re interviewing for. If you currently work in an unrelated job then have a good story as to why you are qualified to make the leap. If you are unemployed then talk about how your previous experience prepared you for the position you want.

5. DO ask relevant questions. During an interview it’s always nice to get a couple of smart questions from the candidate about the business we’re in. This shows that you’re interested in what we are doing. But don’t overdo it and flip the whole interview around. And DON’T bring up compensation until the employer broaches the subject.

6. DO stay focused. Don’t check your phone for messages or shift around a lot in your chair. Maintain comfortable eye contact during the interview and good posture.

7. DO show enthusiasm. It’s important to show that you’re enthusiastic about the position, the company and the industry. And remember to smile—no matter how nervous you may be.

8. DO dress appropriately. We’re staffing a tech startup—not a nightclub—so don’t wear a shiny suit or show a lot of cleavage. A hiring manager needs to add people that can fit in with the rest of the team.

9. DO stay positive. An interview is not a therapy session. Denigrating your current employer is unprofessional and can make a prospective employer wonder if someday you will do the same to them.

10. DO follow up promptly. I met with some candidates recently and only couple sent a follow up email. Guess which ones are more likely get an offer?

The entire hiring process is part of a larger test—it’s not just about the interview. Do these ten things right and you’ll be more likely to land the position you want.

This quote is awfully popular with the anti-advertising crowd.  You know the type.  They believe that the Internet was once successful as a non-commercial medium and it can be so again, if it weren’t for all these pesky advertising companies cluttering up the landscape.  Many of them will download ad-blocking software, block cookies or wipe them regularly, and do pretty much whatever they can to avoid being digitally advertised to.

Those who go to such lengths are typically outliers – an extremely vocal minority – and comprise such a low percentage of a typical digital community’s user base that publishers have been able to effectively ignore them for years.  But with controversies over third-party cookie blocking, the continued uptake of ad-stripping browser plugins and an increasing diversity of operating systems and browser types, a publisher or community owner might wonder whether the core of ad-accepting, engaged visitors will always continue to be there.  But that is another column for another time.

What I’d like to delve into is the oft-repeated assertion that the Internet was just fine as a non-commercial medium and that we can somehow press forward without a viable ad model.

Folks, it’s easy to set up a blog, forum, mobile app or some other presence in some deep, dark corner of the Internet and ensure its continued existence with change from your couch cushions.  However, as soon as that thing in that dark corner provides utility to a significant number of Internet users, there are costs that can quickly grow beyond what one can reasonably expect to find in the cushions.

Speaking from experience, traffic can grow to levels where a shared webhost can’t keep up with demand.  Suddenly, your $9.95/month shared hosting plan is inadequate and you need to upgrade.  Databases get too big and need to be upgraded, too.  Maybe the forum software you’re using for your community of hobby enthusiasts needs to be relicensed or moved to another platform because the original authors of the software couldn’t protect it against hackers anymore.  Or maybe you’re supporting more users of your mobile app than you ever thought possible, and you simply need to upgrade your systems.

If it scales, it costs money. Without an ad model to defray costs, you might find yourself trying to bridge a very wide gap.  Without an ad model, what’s really open to someone who wants to scale a digital presence?  You’ve got, essentially, two or three options:

1)   Paid Access.  There are various ways to implement a paywall, but the model has a tough time working for digital products that people don’t use on a near-constant basis.  People are hesitant to pay for something unless it’s providing regular utility. If you happen to be moving from a free model to a paid one, it’s likely that only a small percentage of your most engaged community members will pay to use the community.  And with the sheer number of people who will run in terror once a paywall goes up, a community can easily stagnate and die. You can allow tiered access, restricting the access of non-paying members, but even if you succeed you’ll hamper growth severely.

2)   Extended Functionality for Paid Users.  This is really just a fancy paywall, but the thinking is that you keep functionality and access the same for all your users, but offer some sort of enhanced functionality or permissions to people who will plunk down their credit card for the privilege.  This can be a risky proposition, as it puts you in the position of having to predict whether or not existing users will pay for a higher level of service or not.  If not, you may end up investing in development of Gold-level features and payment systems you might not be able to monetize.

3)   Virtual Tip Jar.  You can beg your users for contributions in order to cover costs, but there are problems associated with it.  For one, it’s tough to project whether your users will donate at all, much less donate enough to offset your costs.  How many publishers or community owners can we point to who have made this model work?  I mean, other than Jimmy Wales?

If you’ve ever had a grassroots community or publishing organization, you know that not only does advertising provide the ability to avoid angering your user base by not providing a free access model, it also plays an important role in a digital entity’s life cycle – it’s the one thing on the paid publishing continuum that lies between the free model and directly appealing to users for revenue.  In other words, it’s the training wheels many free communities and applications need in order to access the proving grounds for a paid access model.

You see those training wheels in action all over the web, from the community leader who serves ads to users until they see enough value to cough up a subscription fee, to the app developer who provides both a paid download and a free ad-supported version of the same app in order to provide utility to the widest audience possible.

Now, tell me with a straight face that digital media can survive without a viable ad model.  Picture what might happen if, every time you searched on Google, the majority of the sites behind the search results had their hand out for an access fee.  How many of those sites would continue paying for bandwidth and technology out of their own pockets, as a labor of love?

Tom Hespos is a contributor at The Makegood and Founder and Chief Media Officer at Underscore Marketing, a boutique firm that creates and manages digital marketing programs.

Founded in 2000, I would say that the inaugural member’s summit was a milestone event for both the NAI and its member companies; it was also long overdue. The day’s discussion dug deep into everything from the arms race unfolding between ad technology and web browser companies to thoughts on life (for third parties) beyond cookies.

Throughout it all, one theme came up again and again: the crucial yet grossly unaddressed need to educate consumers on what third party cookies do and why it matters. This glaring communications failure has allowed consumer misperception to flourish and in the process has directly contributed to the third party cookie’s precarious future. It is this very ignorance that is used to lobby our lawmakers, many of whom are uninformed themselves.

While we ironically all work in the “advertising” industry, articulating the socioeconomic value of the third party cookie in terms that anyone can immediately understand and relate to has somehow eluded us.

Public criticism of the third party cookie has led many ad tech firms to resort to a defensive position in communications and otherwise remain tight-lipped about their practices concerning data collection and use, isolating any disclosures to the fine print of their web privacy policies. This obscurity only serves to further propagate the negative stigma associated with cookies.

We live in an age where consumers are in the driver’s seat of their experiences and expect to be active participants in the marketing dialogue. Lack of transparency is profoundly at odds with this reality. Our approach needs to respect the consumer if it is to be successful. Transparency about data collection, control, and choice mechanisms including DNT is nowhere near the place it should be. By and large we are keeping consumers in the dark.

It is human nature to fear what we don’t know or understand. Without effective proactive communication about what data is collected, what the actual mechanism is, and what is done with it, the mind is left to wander…“if somehow, some company knows that I looked at (fill in the blank), what else do they know? My email password? My credit card number? My address?” What the general public needs to know is that the cookie cannot contain any of this information by its very design. The only time a cookie can be tied back to personal information is when such information is freely given by the user – and stored in a first party context. How it is used at that point is a matter of first party policy.

The cookie is probably the most elegantly private way to make the Internet work for both marketer and publisher, while keeping control directly within the consumer’s grasp. Many of the summit delegates agreed that if consumers actually understood what third party cookies did, it’s likely that they wouldn’t care.

As a whole, our industry has been ineffective at translating how online advertising improves our lives in meaningful ways through tangible examples. The third party cookie is the backbone of a multi-billion dollar industry. There are mid-to-small sized publishers whose very business models rely on the revenue generated by third party placed advertising. With so much supply and fragmentation, interest based advertising has been an effective way to capture value and sustain the free web. Considering what is at stake it’s amazing that we are in this position today.

While we are slowly witnessing the beginnings of improved trust measures thanks in large part to self-regulatory efforts being spearheaded by the DAA, a tipping point in consumer perception has yet to be reached.

Industries outside of the ad tech space have both faced and successfully overcome similar challenges. For example, the American Plastics Council, who in the face of plummeting market share and rising environmental activism launched a ‘Plastics Make It Possible’ campaign to stop the decline in consumer attitudes towards plastics and overhaul the industry’s image. In the end, equity was restored by focusing communication on the positive emotional reasons for supporting plastics, making it possible for the plastics industry to redefine the debate.

Does ad tech need to take a similar approach? A consumer privacy campaign of that magnitude would require not only the right brand positioning, but enough funding and cross-industry support to reach the masses at scale. Brands, agencies, ad tech firms, and publishers all have a stake in consumers’ perception of digital advertising technologies; we should be combining our collective funds, and generously donating premium media, and strategic communication and creative services to harness the wealth of expertise within our community to incite positive change.

If we are committed to transparency and a higher bar, what are we doing to convey this? Trust is reinforced when we communicate openly, proactively and in simple terms.

As technology evolves to address new requirements and a changing ecosystem including areas in which the cookie itself may be inherently limited—privacy issues and the matter of consumer transparency and choice will prevail. Cookies have been our friend for a long time, but new technologies will inevitably rise up to replace it.

The big problem for consumers is that new technologies will not be as elegantly simple, transparent or secure. There will be no universal standard. There will be no inherent level of user control, which will put the industry and consumers back at least 15 years. The challenge once again becomes consumer education—a necessity to demonstrating value and building trust.

This is an opportunity to raise the bar about how we approach privacy; an opportunity to do a better job at communicating the value of data to consumers. Ultimately if we can shift the issue of privacy from law-based to a matter of corporate governance and embrace as an industry shared values of promoting privacy rather than getting hung up on the difference between tracking in a first party vs. third party context, we will all stand to benefit.

Julia is a contributor to The Makegood and Chief Marketing Officer at Casale Media.