The IAB have endorsed some new mega-ad formats, to sit alongside the more common suite of skyscrapers, banners, etc. Masthead example below was lifted from the Myspace homepage yesterday.

It’ll be interesting to see how these new formats fair – it certainly gives more scope to visual creativity. Which, is kind of what I am worried about - that we as an industry use this as an excuse to brush under the carpet the fact that there is no real future for advertising online.

Ok, know that’s a pretty drastic statement – but I just can’t see it any other way.

The web is not only a communication device, a format to push information to a customer who is sitting waiting to consume whatever it is you have to offer. It is a utility, and when accessing the web people are in this mode. They are doing something.

However large you make your distraction, it will always be just that. No matter what creative genius you apply to the arrangement and execution of your ad it will be an annoyance – and you probably only ever get your .05% CTR by accident because someone’s mouse slipped on jam (happens to me all the time).

The question that is often raised on the back of this type of declaration is “so, what else can we do to get our message across?” – and this is where the real issue is. Brands still believe that the end-goal is to “get their message across”.

We need a complete mind-shift. Brands should be asking “how do we engage with customers and support them in a useful way?” – I’d certainly be more inclined to react to a brand who appreciated that I am online to DO something, and they may even be able to help me.

[interest in Big Brother was for research purposes only!]

I was interested to hear, and slightly excited - a normal amount, not throwing a big tizzy in the office or anything - that the Guardian launched their API recently, giving access to their archirve of features and data. It’s an innovative move by what some might see as a very traditional company.

I was asked by someone as to what this meant? Was is a good thing, bad thing or irrelevant thing? 

Obviously releasing an API means a great many things - free outsourced NPD for one, but for me it shows an appreciation within the brand that the power of the authoritative/corporate domains is dwindling. The trust online is shared and fragmented amongst a great many independent publishers.

Opening up an API means that your brand and its content can be colonised into a great many environments online where trust is invested. Customers who may not have previously accessed a brands content or product will now be able to do so in an online space in which they are comfortable.

The customer journey online always historically lead to a ‘destination’. That destination should not be a URL- it should be an enhanced experience the customer shares with the brand.

Thanks to Herd for pointing out the work of Philidelphia institute, I like the way the good citizens here are more concerned in navigating themselves over and/or round a fallen body.

Anyway, here’s how it should be done.

One app built on the BB API already that I think is particularly clever is CamelBuy, which allows you to trace the price of an item over time - you can set a target price and get alerts when your wishlist item reaches the amount you want/can afford to pay for it. Quite neat.

I really like the way the new US administration is using the web to channel openness and transparency. Their latest site takes things a bit further by asking the population to set the agenda, allowing key issues to float to the surface and using Facebook connect to help users communicate what they feel are issues and priorities to their social connections.

Facebook moved in this direction too last week, by allowing users to participate in the definition of their terms of use – a pretty decent move considering the backlash they got for [albeit briefly] changing their policy on data ownership recently.

Moving back to politics for a second though, this all makes me think – what’s the point of having a core set of human beings in control anymore? If we, as a populace, can suggest, rate, short-list and decree which policies are goers, all we need is the implementers. Policies can be defined using a combination of wikis, feedback and voting systems. If you’d like to know more I suggest we have weekly rallies down by the docks, under the cover of darkness.

Vive. 

I was pointed in the general direction of something last week that reminded me of a project I once worked on, to develop a social analysis tool that defined the sentiment, in positive and negative terms, of what people were saying in the social space(s).

Things moved on pretty quickly back then, suppose they still do, but it meant that the time it would take to get the project off the ground would handicap it’s ultimate success - I got a crash course in DTI funding though, and met some amazing talents and characters along the way, so it wasn’t all for nought. 

A friend of mine sent me across to Scout Labs, which looks remarkably similar to what we were aiming for in functionality. Twitter have their own sentiment search engine, and loads of cool apps will surely be developed on that platform.

This lead me on to looking a bit further and discovering that Facebook are planning their own sentiment search engine, add that to the launch of the Friendfeed-esque ‘Like’ feature and you can piece together a little of what Facebook plans for our data.

On the same note, but a slightly more human execution, We Feel Fine pulls together some truly gorgeous visualisations with anonymous sentiments of people from across the web. From a marketing level it is useless, but as data-art it’s definitely worth a look.

The reason these things are in my head recently was that I’d been thinking a lot about how ROI can be measured on social campaigns, and I’d lead myself to the conclusion that it can’t - not well or easily anyway. However, these tools and others like them provide me with some level of consolation. I’ll live.

Here’s a few…

Desktop sight-seeing…

Nokia pac-man type game…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Making of Mini Cabriolet ad…

Augmented reality iPhone pet

Sure there’s more to come.

I am determined to not write stuff about twitter for a while - think people are starting to suffer from twitter-overload just now, however, something I was pointed today looks really nice in that all the main Peep show characters now have twitter accounts.

I’m following Jez, Mark and Superhans now and I am really interested to see what the team behind the Peep show do with this. It’d be cool to see how the dialogue between the characters evolves into sub-plots, will the authors of the accounts be brave enough to dialogue with other users, let’s see…

On another note, the image makes me think there must be some use of twitter to the sex-industry? One for me to investigate in my spare time I’d say.

The fact that I couldn’t text or call, meant that I had to use any means possible to get in touch with people. Aside from emailing chaps in the office, this broke down into:

* semi-connected business contacts and networkers - Twitter

* recruitment consultants, headhunters, ex-colleagues, etc - LinkedIn

* more distant friends and psycho ex-girlfriends - Facebook

* close friends and confidants - IM

* bills, business and a bit of spam - Gmail

* really old distant colleagues and a whole bucket-load of spam - Hotmail

The list goes on actually…

I thought technology was meant to bring us closer together? Now I spend far more time commnuicating across a number of channels, and as a result miss messages, piss people off and sometimes even lose touch with people who I could easily keep in touch with using my old Nokia 3210 way back when. 

To save a little time in navigating my communication labyrinth, I am following a new personal policy.