Reflections on Media, Advertising and Social Graph Data

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending my second Monaco Media Forum.   As in past years the delegates attending the conference were a virtual who’s who of web technology, advertising and media industries from all corners of the globe.   It was also great fun to bump into old friends who I haven’t seen in a while.

The highlight of the event for me was helping lead a conversation on “User Generated Data” moderated by Esther Dyson.   Other panel members were;  Richard Cooperstein, Head of International Business Development & Strategy, Facebook; Matteo Fabiano, General Manager, TagLift; Auren Hoffman, CEO, Rapleaf; and Lisa Sounio, CEO, Dopplr.

It’s clear that most people are now truly beginning to understand the tremendous value in the profile and social graph data that comes readily from the natural interaction with social media applications like the ones provided by KickApps. The initial focus for use of the data has been to inform more intelligent ad serving but all acknowledged that the various ad solutions and ecosystem required to take full advantage have not materialized yet.

In many ways the advertising industry consists of some of the most creative, innovative minds but when it comes to process operational advances they tend to be stuck in the Stone Age.  There are very few positive things to be drawn from the current global economic crisis but if it causes the advertising industry to finally throw out its dated, inefficient methods and replace them with new and more effective approaches where relevance is informed by social graph data, and formats are highly engaging, interactive and viral, we have the chance of exiting this current crisis stronger than ever.

KickApps has been focused on delivering an approach for utilizing data which respects end-user rights and allows publishers to establish trusted relationships with their sites’ audience.  Additionally, with our approach, the publisher retains ownership of this trusted relationship, not KickApps, and this is an important key to the accelerated adoption of the KickApps platform. It’s also why I tend to believe that the data portability efforts from Google, Facebook, and MySpace and the branded namespace approach of Ning will never satisfy the needs of the serious publisher looking to add rich social media experiences to an existing web site or as part of a new niche oriented social network or UGC site.