Second Life - Who’s Marketing “In World”

Large corporations and Entrepreneurs alike have been quick to see the potential of Second Life. Second Life Residents are well-educated, creative and innovative early adopters. With the explosive growth of this virtual world smart companies are finding successful marketing and PR strategies come from experimentation.

Second Life Entrepreneurs have cropped up selling everything from hair and clothing for avatars, to furniture and cars… anything you would want in the real world. The biggest success story to date is that of virtual land developer and Entrepreneur Anshe Chung (the Avatar of Ailin Graef) is the first online personality to become a real world millionaire by buying and developing virtual real-estate.

Through activities such as buying islands, building venues, distributing items and running events corporations like IBM, American Apparel and Toyota have successfully begun promoting brands to Second Life Residence creating a corporate presence in the virtual world.

Not every marketing venture in Second Life has met with great success. The “World” is still evolving and markets are feeling their way. While there is no magic formula to successful promotion in SL, I have notice that there are a few things that those who are getting it right seem to have in common.

Letting go of your Brand

One of the main attractions to Second Life is the ability of Residences to customize, build and distribute multiple copies of anything and everything. This means that fans of particular brands are going out on their own and creating objects “in World”. If someone is enough of a fan of your brand let them evangelize it. Toyota did a wonderful job of this last year when they offered Residence a virtual edition of the Scion xD to fully customize.

Crossing Worlds

Second Life has the ability to hyperlink to real world ecommerce sites. The best of breed SL marketing initiatives take advantage of this. It only seems logical if a Second Life Resident is interested enough to seek your presence out and buy your goods “In World” then they might then be inclined to visit your ecommerce site as and purchase your real life product.

Nurture your Community

It is not enough to for corporations to build large and impressive venues. Offering Residents activities and holding events regularly is they way to hold their attention. The entertainment industry has the right idea. Musicians like Suzanne Vega and Uncle Seth have Second Life outposts where they play live concerts and sell merchandise. By holding “Live” Shows “In World” artists are able engage Residents, promoting in the virtual world and generating buzz outside of Second Life.

The Future of Second Life

Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick may have summed it up best when he wrote “…what it (Second Life) really may represent is an alternative vision for how to interact with information and communicate over the Internet.” This sift will mean great opportunities for the Internet marketers who best reflect the SL Residences… creative and innovative early adopters.

When I set out to see exactly what all the fuss was about I figured I would quickly pop into Second Life and take about a half hour looking around, get the lay of the land so to speak. I was mildly surprised when 3 hours later I reluctantly emerged. It was fascinating but a bit overwhelming.

If you are looking for a primer on the key features of SL Gwyneth Llewelyn of http://gwynethllewelyn.net/ has a nice little overview covering the basics. Today we’ll take a brief look at some of the basics including your avatar, things to do “In World”, Second Life economy and land.

Your Avatar

When you join Second Life you immediately get an Avatar which is yours to customize. Your avatar is an expression of some facet of personality and the vehicle you will use to explore and interact with the World and it’s residents. Second Life’s tag line is “Your world your imagination”. No where is this more apparent than the avatars.

Don’t always trust your eyes. At first it is a bit disconcerting when a 6 foot tall, blue, bobcat-type creature crosses your path but you quickly acclimatize to all of the weird and wonderful people that you meet “in World”.
This raises an interesting question. How does a marketing message change when it is targeting a user’s avatar? Advertising has always appealed to consumers’ alter egos so my feeling is that the avatar represents some important facet of the personality of the consumer behind the avatar.

Things to Do “In World”

Residents can explore, meet and socialize with others, participate in individual and group activities such as contests, discussion groups, concerts, casinos, games, pageants, shopping malls, movies, charity events… the list is nearly endless.

It is the live events I find particularly intriguing. Twenty four hours a day, there are events running in Second Life, held by residents. These are anything from coffee shop style discussions to virtual motor cross, job fairs, live music, Second Life educational events residents are taught a wide variety of Second Life skills and real life University classes.

Wednesday night I attended a Q&A help by the popular Showtime TV show the L-Word. The venue was packed with die-hard L-Word fans. In chatting with some of the residents I learned that many of them had actually signed up for Second Life specifically for the opportunity to attend these cyber events. It is a chance for them to interact with their favourite stars that they would not have in the real world. Any medium that has the power to draw fans together in one spot like Second Life does is worth exploring.

The Economy

Second Life’s marketplace supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. Transactions are actually micropayments handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar (L$), which can be converted to US dollars at a number of online Linden Dollar exchanges including the Second Life stock market called the LindeX. The amazing thing about these transactions is that over 85% (just under 4.5 million) of them are conducted for amounts under a dollar.

Land

Anyone can own land in second life. Individuals tend to actually rent smaller plots of land that they can customize to some extent. A good example of how people are using rented land is the Canadian band Uncle Seth. The band has set up the “Uncle Seth Store” on SoHo Island, a hip and happening SL destination similar to New York’s own SoHo Village. The band plays “live shows” here via streaming audio and Residents can pick up a free (virtual) rock posters or concert T-shirts. The ban is also selling real world merchandise like CDs or music downloads by sending users to traditional ecommerce sites.

If you wanted to buy an island for your self it will run you a USD$1675.00 setup fee, then a maintenance fee of USD$295.00 per month thereafter. There is no shortage of land to be had in the Metaverse. New land is created to keep up with demand. In 2033 Second Life was around 64 acres. Now there is over 65,000 acres and it’s growing. everyday.

Corporations have started purchasing islands in Second Life and are building some amazing spaces. Coldwell Bankers have even set their own island and it seems they are one of the first big name virtual real estate broker. There are varying degrees of success in how they are using those space to market their brands.

Tomorrow we will discuss a few things that Second Life marketers those who are getting it right seem to have in common.

Part of a three article series discussing Second Life:
Part One: Second Life – The Wild West of Internet Marketing
Part Two: Second Life - A Closer Look “In World”
Part Three: Second Life - Who’s Marketing “In World”

Last week we had an opportunity to attend a seminar hosted by the Association of Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS) about the growing phenomenon of Second Life (SL) and what the advent of virtual worlds means to marketers.

What is Second Life?

Attending a Q&A Event in Second Life

Second Life is an Internet based, 3-D virtual world developed by Linden Lab. Although it is Linden Lab that is supplying the framework SL is a vast, ever changing and expanding virtual world created by its residents.

More than just a game, Second Life has similarities to massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) but it is more than a game. In fact, hard core Second Lifers don’t like referring to SL as a game at all. The distinction is a game can be loosely defined as a recreational activity involving one or more players and is structured with challenges to overcome and defined goals to achieve. While there are games to be played within Second Life, Second Life itself can’t be ‘won’ like a traditional game. So what is Second Life? I would define it advanced social networking.

The New Wild West

People are streaming into Second Life. With thousands of residents joining each day this new frontier is beginning to quickly populate and evolve. The total number of SL residents hit 5 million this week. With outlaws (called Greifers), sheriffs (Second Life Abuse Team) land barons, business men, brothel owners and all the regular folk in between,SL truly is the new wild west of the Internet where the possibilities for marketers are only limited to the imagination.

Over the past six months, the paid search engine marketing industry has gone through some dramatic changes. Not uncommon in such an evolving and dynamic industry, but noteworthy nonetheless.

The ‘smaller’ search engines are attempting to compete with the big G with the launch of revamped and Canadian-specific platforms. And in what I consider a reactive attempt to combat this increasing competition, Google has been making some enhancements to their paid search interface and advertiser tools. Also, partnerships with North American and international engines are beginning to take shape. (Take for example, the partnership between Google and China-based Baidu).

The face of paid search as we know it will never be the same. Navigating this changing terrain can be likened to Dorothy’s trip down the yellow brick road – you never know what or who you’ll encounter, and sometimes things are not always as they seem.

Yahoo and MSN and Ask, OH MY!

In my opinion, by far the biggest impact on the paid search marketplace has been the re-emergence of the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th place engines.

In an effort to gain valuable market share and perhaps fill some gaps in the market, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask have all made some in-rounds with their paid search platforms in the past 6 months.

Yahoo! Launched its new search marketing platform in Canada in Q4 2006. It comes loaded with a nicer interface, more control over targeting (e.g. geo-location) and a stronger emphasis on quality for bid placement. Canadian advertisers were not using Yahoo! Much before as the capability to target English Canada was not available. With this new geo-targeting capability, Yahoo potentially stands to capture more of the market share in Canada.

Microsoft launched its Canadian version of adCenter just last month, with a swanky party we blogged about. The Canadian adCenter also enables geo-targeting, but also comes along with some additional and unique targeting features – by age and gender. For those looking to hone in on a particular market, this may prove extremely useful. While the search inventory is still quite low, as MSN continues their aggressive foray in this area, the searchers may soon follow.

Finally, Ask.com revamped their sponsored listings platform in October 2006, renaming “Asked Sponsored Listings (ASL)” to ASL 2.0. (As in ‘Web 2.0’, as in ‘next generation search’, as in the last blog post I made.) Basically, they have made their sponsored listings easier for advertisers to manage and optimize with the addition of bulk upload and API tools, as well as more detailed budgeting and reporting functionality.

What does this mean for marketers? Basically, you will have more choice of engines in which to advertise, and the tools at your disposal will only get better as the engines attempt to ‘out-do’ each other. This will make your job potentially easier, or potentially more complex, but in all likelihood, more effective.

What does this mean for the search engines? Ultimately, Google is going to start facing some actual competition in Canada. All of the engines will have to try that much harder to gain searcher and advertiser loyalty through both providing the ‘best’ solutions to marketers and promoting the hell out of their engines to up search volume. Let the race to the Emerald City begin.

I was lucky enough a few weeks ago to receive an invitation to join the beta test program for Joost. Haven’t heard of it yet? Don’t worry, you will. Joost (pronounced “juiced”) is free internet TV. Joost was created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, and offers professionally produced, high quality streamed TV. For free. From a marketing point of view, this service has enormous potential.

Last month, Joost successfully negotiated a contract to distribute content for Viacom (the parent company of the Comedy Central network). Already you can watch MTV, Much, and National Geographic channels. There are voices that suggest that Viacom may not have been so bold with it’s recent Google/YouTube suit if it didn’t feel it had a winner with Joost. Certainly, Joost has managed to generate a lot of buzz and get some good content on board in a relatively short period of time. Even BitTorrent thinks the idea is a good one.

The Service - First Impressions

Joost does not run in a browser, and it’s not a website. Instead, it’s a streaming video platform that you can install on your desktop. I have to say that Joost easily installed on my home machine and runs beautifully (as it should on a 2.8GHz dual-core).

A word of warning - when you first load it, Joost starts in full-screen mode, and neither the resize window or exit buttons are entirely obvious. This could be a real problem for people who are not so savvy, and could turn people off in frustration if they can’t resize or exit. Once you do re-size however, you can move the window wherever you want and work on the side. If you hover over any of the buttons, an explanation generally appears. Otherwise, the interface is smooth and pleasant to use.

The quality and content is really very good. If you’ve ever wasted time researched videos on YouTube or other video sharing service, you know that the quality leaves something to be desired. Joost’s content however, is professional and easy to watch. So far, there is very little time spent waiting for shows to load, and channel requests are completed quickly.

There are ads, which I don’t mind in the least, especially since the number of them are actually kind of sparse and well within my admittedly short level of tolerance. The ads can be a little abrupt - they just kind of cut in and leave you wondering if you’re missing anything. But so far, I don’t think I’ve missed anything.

If a show is really interesting, you might find it more comfortable to lean back and watch the show full screen. In this case, the quality is still quite good on a 19″ LCD.

Content

There are some good channels on Joost, however, my personal feeling is that more channels will have to be added before Joost is really ready for the mainstream. However, it is still in beta, and so a little patience is warranted at this point. And there are many things worth watching - last night I was trying to work on this review, and I found myself distracted for almost an hour. Between Top 10 music videos, Indy car racing and professional organic cooking shows, there’s really something here for most of the average TV viewing audience.

Due to the Viacom deal, more content should be added in the future. According to Playback Mag, the deal should add shows like Laguna Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World and Punk’d, along with full-length episodes from Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, CMT, Logo and Spike TV.

Here are a few of the channels you can find on Joost so far:

• National Geographic
• IndyCar Series
• MTV Staying Alive
• Live @ Much
• Lime (”Healthy living with a Twist”)
• Other Channels such as: Bridezillas, Lassie, Explora & Docs on Demand

For Marketers

If content is really King, then Joost may be the dais.

Joost offers higher quality TV, professionally produced, relatively fast to download and available for free. It’s on-demand, and the commercials aren’t excessive. The content is streamed and distributed peer-to-peer so there’s less piracy liability and strain on servers. I am assuming that each viewer’s habits and likes can be recorded for better targeting.

There are already advertisers active in Joost, and ads seem to be tailored somewhat to the content. I saw an ad for Garnier during a Sarah McLaughlin video, and ads for T-Mobile during a Lime cooking show. You can’t skip or fast forward through the commercials.

Whenever I look at a new product or platform and want to know if it’s going to resonate with the average consumer, I show it to my Mother. If she can understand it at all, it’s got a shot. I showed it to her, and she thought it was “neat” but couldn’t see herself sitting around the monitor in the evenings. So if Joost is to succeed, it may be wise to start with younger audiences… as it does indeed seem to be doing.

It’s too early to say if Joost is the “next big thing”, but if I personally had relevant video ads to run, I wouldn’t be waiting too long to get them on Joost.

Finally…

We appreciate you reading to the end of our blog posts! That’s why those of you who made it this far get the following reward: According to their official blog, the last day to sign up for the beta program is late midnight (GMT), Thurs March 22/07. Those of you who apply before that time should receive your invite within “the next couple of weeks”. Sign up here, and Have Fun!

(Guest Post by Andrew Goodman)

As a working marketer toiling in the sometimes-less-than-glam world of paid search, I forget how much disparity there is in terms of corporate understanding of the fastest-growing segments of online advertising and online user experiences generally. Some folks are racing ahead of the curve. Others don’t even know what a curve looks like.

Given all the statistical information that is out there, there really should be no excuse. However, a lot of it is pretty disparate, and understandably some marketing veterans are simply not up to speed on all facets. For example, today I had a talk with a traditional marketer who actually needed to ask me about what paid search meant. Indeed he seemed fairly unaware of how search worked, period!

I was also surprised recently talking with a recent hire at one of the major search engine companies. Turns out, after I’d given quite a lengthy overview of my thoughts about paid search, that I had completely missed the fact that he knew nothing about how search engines worked. He knew ad sales because he’d been in radio, but had never even heard a Search Engines 101 type of overview. (On that — more in my next post, coming very soon. Stay tuned.)

So the race for talent is on, and the talent on the (Canadian) soil is pretty thin. People with some marketing background and a passion for search are being snapped up by top companies, so it’s understandable that in the ordinary corporate ranks, there is a lot of education left to do about online marketing trends.

But as far as education goes, more info is definitely being put together by companies like Google, Yahoo, and yes, our friends on Wall Street. Soon, there should really be no excuse for not knowing which way the wind is blowing.

Check out Greg Jarboe’s timely take on this massive new Piper Jaffray study, titled elegantly, The User Revolution. It truly is, and marketers ignore these trends at their peril.

Is the Internet a “mass” medium, or a postmodern medium that allows Long Tail purchase and interaction behavior in an age of flexible specialization and unprecedented two-way transparency? Frighteningly for traditional media, it’s both.

‘Search 2.0’, ‘next generation search’, or ‘social search’…all of these can mean the same thing or very different things. Whatever name you use, what it really means is that the face of search is changing.

From my understanding, there are two separate but closely connected trends in this space:

1. Traditional /established search engines (like Google, Yahoo, etc.) are releasing second generation version of their search, employing tools like personalization and social networks to improve relevancy.
2. Third generation search technologies from new start-up companies (like Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty) are being released which use sophisticated technology to sort through data in a way that is different than traditional meta-search.

Traditional Search Engines

The ‘big guys’ (a.k.a. Google) are currently delving deeper into next generation search by focusing primarily on personalization. Personalized search not only enables you to have your results tailored by IP location (so if I’m searching in Toronto for shoes, I get local retail stores), it can also now employ past behavior and tweak the results to meet your ‘anticipated’ needs. (That is, if you’re signed into your Google Account).

This has the potential to create much more relevant results for users, but at the same time making SEO efforts that much more difficult for companies wanting to ensure they have top visibility in the search engines. At the Profectio search marketing seminar a couple of weeks ago, we spoke briefly on the potential impact of personalized search for businesses.  Some other important technological developments for Google as of late have been Google Base and the Google Custom Search Engine. Read/WriteWeb recently did an interview with Matt Cutts on the topic of Google’s “next-gen search” plans. He talks about many of these important technologies with Matt, as well as things like vertical search, ‘internationalization’, and video search. It offers some great insights into where Google has been and where they’re hoping to go in this space.

New Search Technologies

Everyone wants to be the next Google. And why not? In the last quarter of 2006, Google reported a whopping 3.21 billion dollars in revenue!

The lucrative potential of the search marketplace has time and time again wooed small players to try to bring something different to the table – something to set them apart from the rest.

Many of these start-ups are taking a different approach to search – one that comes at it from a new perspective. Many of them use social or community based collaboration, thematic clustering, pattern recognition and linguistics to provide more relevant results to the users. Read/WriteWeb provides a great summary of the emerging search 2.0 engines.

Conclusions

Whether big or small, old or new, all search engines have the same ultimate goal: provide more relevant search results for their users. (Of course, they are not entirely altruistic – they are indeed in the business of making money). But regardless of whether this is a purely altruistic goal or not, search engines will persist in ‘re-inventing the wheel’ in order to continually improve the ability of users to find what they are looking for. Because if I can’t find what I’m looking for in one engine, I will surely find another that meets my needs. The emergence of the start-ups with their slick technologies and user interfaces is a good thing in that it keeps the ‘big guys’ on their toes. They have to deliver the same level of sophistication and continually adapt their methods to stay on the cutting edge. For searchers, that will likely mean better results and less spam in the indexes across the search engines. For businesses, the real impact still remains to be seen.

If you haven’t already heard, NLC recently hosted a free webinar that discussed useful online tools that help improve SEM effectiveness. Speaking at the webinar were NLC’s Director of SEM, Julie Batten and SEM Specialist, Helen Overland.

Helen headed most of the presentation by introducing the tools that are used by industry experts and the value they bring to your SEM initiatives. Below is the list of tools which were introduced and discussed:

Benchmark and Competitive Analysis

• SEO Tool from SEOBook
• Link Popularity Check
• Webuildpages.com cool seo tool

Keyword Research and Analysis

• SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool
• SEO book keyword generator

Link Worth and Traffic Patterns

• Alexa
• Text Link Ads Calculator

Site Structure & Internal Linking

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Xenu Link Checker

Searcher Behaviour and Demographics

• Google Trends
• MSN adlab

The audience turnout was great and lots of great questions were answered. Not only did this presentation provide fellow SEM practitioners with helpful resources, but also introduced the many aspects of SEM and how to approach these challenges.

If you missed out on the webinar, fear not. As promised, you can download the presentation here: Improve Your Search Marketing with Online Tools

NLC’s SEM solutions group will continue to host webinars and speak at industry events, so stay tuned.

There’s been a buzz recently in the SEO community about Google’s new position on the indexing of search results pages. In response to a query on Google’s webmaster group, the Google team modified their quality guideline page to include the following:

“Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines”

A simple sentence with large implications.

What The Google Guideline Means

We see three categories of sites that this change in guidelines might affect:

1. Sites that design search results pages specifically to increase their traffic from search engines.These are easy to find and we assume they are the key target of Google’s guidance. My own pet peeve is a group of whitepaper-oriented sites that create search results pages with the apparent aim of obtaining search engines listings. Which would be fine, if the pages actually contained helpful information. They rarely do.For an example, perform a search at Google for google search appliance cms. Somewhere between the third and fifth result, you will find a link to vnunet.com The associated snippet on Google.com promises “KnowledgeStorm provides free research of Google Search Appliance Implementation In Cms Sites related enterprise software and services.”As is immediately apparent, the Vnunet.com page is simply a search results page of documents held by KnowledgeStorm. And none of the documents returned speaks to the declared topic of “Google Search Appliance Implementation in CMS Sites.” Deeply frustrating for the user.
2. Retail site that use faceted search as their primary navigation structure
   
   Endeca popularized the use of “guided navigation” by retail sites. Today virtually every significant online vendor allows visitors to browse their catalogue by clicking on dimensions. Every click on http://shop.pcmag.com/, for example, returns a page generated by the Google Search Appliance. Similarly the dimensions of Home Depot navigation are auto-generated by Endeca technologies. Each page on these sites is a “search results page.”
3. Sites that use search to generate audience-appropriate portals.A good example of this technique is the portal operated by Services Alberta. This site is designed as a single interface through which citizens can find the information they need, regardless of the Ministry generating the content. None of the core content is maintained by Service Alberta – both technically and practically, each page is a search results page.

Value is in the Eye of Google

Google restricts the advice to “Pages that don’t add much value.” Hmm. A suitably opaque phrase that reserves for Google the right to penalize any site presenting search results pages that don’t match their expectation of value. In an ideal world, Google will:

1. Penalize sites presenting search results pages that do not address the search performed (such as the vnunet.com example above).
2. Provide a free pass to online stores that employ faceted search to aid customers in navigating their site.
3. Exempt portals that provide real value to visitors.

How Google might differentiate between these three, technically very similar cases is open for discussion. In the meantime, we are working with our clients to review the pages of their sites that Google currently indexes (You can use the site:www.domain.com command to return all pages Google has in its index.) If any of theses pages appears to be a search results page, we evaluate it to make sure it is adding value for the visitor. If it’s not, then we are taking Google’s advice and modifying robots.txt.

Nonlinear was fortunate the other day to speak at Profectio’s Power Breakfast Series - “As the World Searches“.

About 60 Search and Marketing industry professionals gathered to hear Google, Yahoo, MSN and Nonlinear speak about search marketing and upcoming online marketing trends at Toronto’s prestigious Ontario Club.

First up was MSN’s Jason Daily, Lead Search Media Strategist, who shared with us the advantages of using AdCenter to reach Canadian consumers. Jason very astutely pointed out that Search is like a “first date” - a visitor arriving at your site for the first time through Search is really initially flirting with the idea of doing business with you. At the end of the presentation Jason seemed to suggest that the future of Search is centered around the integration of Search with multiple devices and channels.

Next up was Eric Morris, Account Executive with Google Canada. As well as extolling the advantages of advertising on Google, Eric encouraged those with video assets to upload them to Google Video and Youtube, as “you’ll be amazed what people watch”. He noted as an example the fact that when Google Video launched, he made a short video on How to Fold a Shirt, which garnered a fair number of views. Eric also talked about “polite” Click-to-Play video ads on the Google Network.

Yahoo Canada’s Martin Byrne, National Director Search Marketing, took a bit of a different track. Instead of presenting to the crowd on how useful their new “Panama” advertising platform is, Martin talked about the nature of Search Marketing in Canada. Martin notes that Canada’s E-commerce situation is currently something of a disaster (we at NLC basically agree with this sentiment). He notes that Canadians as a whole are online a lot, but there is not necessarily the business investment in Canada to meet this demand. He suggests that the Canadian SEM and online marketing community in general needs to make a better case for SEM marketing in Canada.

Julie Batten, Manager of Nonlinear’s SEM Solutions Group, spoke about upcoming online marketing trends. We may be biased, but we thought Julie did an amazing job presenting tactics like Social Media Marketing, newer tactics in Link Building, Personalized Search, and RSS Marketing. She noted as an example of good social media marketing the asprin that Google sent to a blogger who complained about too many AdCenter changes.

All in all, it seemed that everyone had a good time, learned a few new strategies, and met a few new people. Perhaps we’ll see you at the next event with NLC!

Eric Morris, Julie Batten, Jason Daily and Martin Byrne Speak at “As the World Searches”