Chatterbacking:The Next Big Advertising Wave

A new form of advertising is taking shape, and it's time to give it a name so we can better internalize its consequences, and manage it more responsibly.  The name is “Chatterbacking.” Without fluff or hyperbole, it describes what’s happening in advertising today: advertisers, for better or worse, are piggybacking on the consumer "chatter."

Don’t confuse this with word-of-mouth, viral, or buzz marketing - it's related, but not the same. Chatterbacking has as much to do with “paid” advertising as free WOM. It assumes much of the buzz and "conversation" already exists, and continues to grow. The opportunity for advertisers in this environment is to wedge themselves in-front, between, behind, and all-around the chatter. And in some (less savory) cases, the objective is to co-opt and blend-in with the chatter. 

Chatter, after all, is the new epicenter of both attention and engagement. By and large, it's a trusted space. It's also the new epicenter of reach, thanks to the explosion of consumer-generated media (CGM), which, for the purpose of this blog entry, we'll use to also encompass social media, user-generated content, citizens journalisms, or citizen marketers.  With over 50 million blogs, and the explosive growth of sites like MySpace and YouTube, the "reach" factor is undeniable. Last week, Nielsen NetRatings released data suggesting that CGM sites represent five of the top ten sites on the web.  Who wouldn't want to buy lots of eyeballs where consumers are already attentive and engaged?

The Chatterbacking Parade of Ad Formats:  And so the practice of "Chatterbacking" is taking off, with new variations and forms emerging almost daily.  Traditional agencies in search of incremental impressions are now playing a bigger role in the overall strategy and tactics behind chatterbacking.  We see it in pre-roll video buys.  We see it in buttons, banners, and sponsorships in social-media sites.  We see it in targeted ad buys on blogs. It's clearly assumed in $900 million deal with Google and MySpace.  We see it in regular search buys against "conversational" keywords.  We see it in the dozens of agencies who have suddenly shifted their language and vernacular sharply in the direction of the consumer. We see it in the ads that now pop-up on Technorati in the blog search results.

Mark my word, by year end, we'll have no fewer than a dozen popular forms or formats of piggybacking advertising on top of chatter and CGM.   And the forms will continue to evolve because the nature of CGM continues to change.  Just think about how quickly we migrated in one year from CGM to what I call CGM2, or consumer-generated multi-media. Indeed, the chatter space is fluid and evolving.

Simple Metaphors and The Questions They Raise
I particularly like the metaphor of an advertiser or advertisement riding the back of the consumer because it immediate raises a host of obvious, if not intuitive, questions:

• Load Factor: How much weight can the consumer realistically carry?
• Drag Factor: Will the load slow down the consumer from normal activity?
• Rub Factor: How will the overall experience rub-off on the consumer's attitudes?
• Buzz Factor: Will the experience impel the consumer to speak out positively or negatively.

Interestingly, these are not new questions, but against a backdrop of consumer-control (which every marketer, I'll remind you, insists in the "new" reality), they beg extra levels of sensitivity, a point my colleague Max Kalehoff drives home in a recent MediaPost column.  In the end, the long term interests of advertisers are always served by keeping consumers open and accepting of advertising, and to ensure we don't create yet another ad backlash or "tragedy of the commons". The challenge for all of us is to find the right balance between effective ad models and consumer acceptance.

The challenge around the “load” factor is that the venues in which chatterbacking is considered most effective have often been commercial free, or even anti-commercial in nature. Now ads are penetrating all aspects of the “conversational” space, and this raises real questions about how much consumers will tolerate.  Consumers are already asking tough questions about marketer sponsored pages that look suspiciously like original CGM content. 

Looking ahead, we'll be taking a close look at this emerging trend in advertising, attempting, wherever possible, to provide responsible frameworks for chatterbacking.

Comments

[Brian Kropp]

Pete,

You are right on. Consumer generated advertising or user generated advertising (UGA) (I hear them both all the time) are growing extremely fast as well. Soon enough, agencies will be allocating a percentage of their budget to UGA and Chatterbacking, just as they did with online advertising. UGA is very similar to WOM, because it is empowering the consumer to take action and be a champion (or not) of their brand. Now that video is extremly popular, it is very easy to shoot your very own commercial.

[Gary Stein]

The thing that brands seem to be slowly getting is that chatter (in your terms) already exists. Very few companies need to start WOM. In fact, it already exists.

So, what you're talking here is a very pragmatic approach. The first (necessary) step is that you need pay attention to is what's already happening. Then you can begin to think about how you can affect the discussion.

Maybe that "affecting" step can be Chatterhacking ;-)

[Meikah Delid]

This is an interesting development indeed! When was it that people were buzzing, and then buzzed about WOM and CGM growing? Well, I am for everything and anything that brings more value to the choices and rights of the consumers.