If nothing else, this past year has been a year where buzzwords evolved faster than Cro-Magnons in a Geiko commercial.

In the beginning of 2007, the buzzword was: viral, “Web 2.0″
By the end of 2007, it was replaced by: social media

Why? Because marketers began to understand that in the maturing new media landscape, there’s more value in creating and sustaining relationships and conversations than in getting a video of your slightly dorky executive playing guitar maximum traction on YouTube.

In the beginning of 2007, the buzzword was: mobile marketing OR online video OR widgets
By the end of 2007, it was replaced by: cross-platform, integrated campaigns

Why? Because once we got over the cool factor of these shiny new channel toys, we realized that for now, they’re pretty much only ready to augment existing channels, rather than replace them.

In the beginning of 2007, the buzzword was: Digg
By the end of 2007, it was replaced by: StumbleUpon

Why? Digg started out the year strong, but towards the end of 2007, scandals regarding Digg’s treatment of their most valuable asset–the community of power users–had seriously tarnished the social media site’s reputation. Meanwhile, StumbleUpon brought back a sense of wonder, exploration and surprise to jaded web surfers.

In the beginning of 2007, the buzzword was: Myspace
By the end of 2007, it was replaced by: Facebook

Why? Mike thinks it was Virginia Tech. I think it was massive eyestrain from annoying banner ads and exceptionally poor user experience. Either way, while Myspace still has the numbers, by the end of the year, Facebook owned the buzz. Even their missteps (**cough**Beacon**cough**) were more newsworthy than what Myspace was finally getting right.

In the beginning of 2007, the buzzword was: Second Life
By the end of 2007, it was replaced by: MyBlogLog / Twitter

Why? Hmmm… spend hours and cash creating an animated virtual self, and hope you run into someone you’d want to network with while running around Second Life, or spend a half hour creating a profile and start building avatar recognition where the best and brightest minds in the blogosphere are converging and conversing? What sounds like a worthwhile use of your time, in retrospect?

So that’s our recap of how the biggest buzzwords of 2007 evolved over the course of the year. What’s the big picture in all this? That marketers are beginning to both adopt the new tools that the web (and Web 2.0) offer and understand how they fit in a long-term, sustainable interactive marketing and digital advertising plan.

That’s a huge jump to make in only a year, and obviously, not everyone has made it. However, overall these trends are great news for those who work in marketing and advertising on the web, and the brands and companies they represent.

The more we all get on the same page in terms of strategy, goals and value, the better we can all be in effectively contributing our part of the effort.

The last month has been rife with both speculation and confirmation of the “side projects” the geeks at Google have been focusing on for the balance of 2007. Two big announcements involved new, open source platforms for web development in two of the hottest and fastest-growing arenas in interactive advertising: social media and mobile.

We’ve included a video with WSJ reporter Amol Sharma above. Sharma does a great job of presenting, in layman’s terms, the implications of Google’s newly-announced mobile platform, Android. Android is the real-world version of the heavily rumored “gPhone.” Rather than a hardware device, Google has announced an open-source (and presumably ad-supported) mobile application platform.

Mobile advertising has been a major buzz item in interactive advertising circles for most of 2007, however, it has also mostly failed to live up to the hype surrounding it. U.S. numbers for mobile web access continue to lag far behind Asia and Europe.

While the prospect of a near-universal, open source development platform means that interactive developers have a new foothold in getting their applications onto the mobile web, it doesn’t guarantee that there will be an audience to monetize once they arrive. It also seems unlikely that an influx of new “cool mobile apps” from independent publishers and developers will significantly increase the number of Americans accessing the web via their mobile devices.

However, as is often the case, the saving grace for mobile may be more traditional media channels, most notably the television, film and music industries. If the new Android platform lowers the cost and time-frame for mobile applications enough that these industries begin releasing more highly-sought mobile-only content (such as mobisodes for extremely popular shows Heroes and Lost).

Please join Katina and Mike as they discuss the hottest spots online and the major social media growth being experienced currently by Facebook and others.

 LeapCast - LFI Trends 9.24.07 - Top 10 Online Hot Spots: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this episode of LFI University, Katina and Mike discuss Geek Gods, Karma Queens and Innerpreneurs - a new marketing book from Ron Rentel.

 LeapCast - LFI University: 9.10.07 - Book Review and Discussion: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Join Mike and Katina as they talk about the latest trends in Interactive Marketing. From Google to Facebook and back again, the team covers topics such as behavioral targeting and moms using the internet as their primary purchasing platform.

 LeapCast - LFI Trends: 8.29.07 - Interactive Trends: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I recently received an invitation to beta test the new social bookmarking app RSS feedreader, Streamy, thanks to Mashable.com (thanks, Pete!) I’ve been taking it for a test drive this morning, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Do you like the sweet Ajax user interface of Ma.gnolia, but not the slightly girly design? Then you’ll like Streamy.

The interface is beautifully slick and clean, and it has truly excellent usability. The “Start” page is the typical social bookmarking “most popular” list, which appears to be personalized (possibly based on your expressed interests, or possibly based on the subscriptions you’ve chosen). The next navigation link takes you to your subscriptions–and this is by far the slickest and most fun to use feed-reader I’ve seen so far.

You can browse for subscriptions by most popular, by topic, or you can enter your favorite feeds manually. Of course, when I say “manually” you might be cringing, imagining yourself dealing with some clunky form page. Au contraire, mon frere. The Ajax pop-up is clean and simple, a joy to use, pretty much (unless you subscribe to a few dozen feeds–I didn’t notice a place to import your feeds from another feedreader.) After your subscriptions are all in, your subscription page lists post excerpts in date order. You’ve also got a sidebar that lists your subscriptions individually–so if you want to only look at one particular feed at a time, it’s simple to do so.

Clicking on the title of a post excerpt opens the full post in another nifty Ajax pop-up. There’s also a “launch” button if you want to launch that particular site in a new window or tab. You can comment on posts internally within Streamy, which other Streamy users who are logged in and looking at that story can read–but it doesn’t appear to post those comments outside of Streamy on the originating site.

Of course, because it’s a very web 2.0 site, you can join networks, groups, and add friends. Wouldn’t be much of a social bookmarking site without that. You also have the obligatory profile page, chat, and IM functionality. Drag ‘n Drop sharing of stories and other media is a nice interesting touch. You can even drag another user into an IM window to create an instant chat room (although the metaphorical implications of literally dragging a friend into a chat room are more than I want to contemplate at the moment. It reminds me vaguely of being dragged into a nightclub to socialize when I really wanted to get some sleep. Ah, well.)
On the whole, I think Streamy is an incredibly well-made and well-thought-out application. Kudos to the gang at Streamy for building a great tool. If you can finagle an invite to join the beta, I highly recommend it.

Well, the news is out.  LeapFrog Interactive has opened a new office in Boston. 

After many months of hard work, by an amazing Team that I cannot say enough good things about, I am pleased to announce the opening of the Boston office of LeapFrog Interactive!  We are opening this office to better serve our clients located in the Northeast corridor.  We will initially support business development and client services from that location.

Liz Hill (lhill@leapfroginteractive.com), VP Business Development, is a Boston native who has come on board to help us launch and run the office.  She has a deep background in interactive agency services and has worked in Boston and New York for most of her professional career.

The Boston location also puts us closer to a number of global online media providers.  This is becoming increasingly important as we offer an ever-greater mix of online media buying and social media marketing services.

Regardless of location, our focus will remain adding value to our clients’ business, whom we would like to thank for their continued support.  We highly value and appreciate it. 

Like many in interactive advertising and marketing, I’m encouraged by the recent report that Nielsen is switching to a more practical and relevant criteria model for their online ranking system (http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/07/10/nielsen-shuts-window-on-pageview-rankings/).

While pageviews were a benchmark for the early days of the Web, in recent years it has become increasingly obvious that a more useful criteria should be used. Particularly as technologies like AJAX become more widely used, pageview statistics become of less and less use to interactive marketers.

However, I don’t know that the new criteria, length of time spent on a site, is a perfect solution, either. For one thing, it actually penalizes the sites with the best usability in terms of navigation. Google dropped in importance because users quickly find what they’re looking for and leave the search page. Does that speed and ease of use decrease Google’s relevance?

It also gives possibly undeserved weight to sites that are music and/or video heavy. How much of that time you spent on a video-intensive site was spent waiting for the media to load? Should the site get credit for that time? Actually, you could possibly make the argument that if the content is worth users waiting out the load times, they should get credit for that time.

While it’s not a perfect benchmark, it was definitely a step in the right direction and a timely one. As online ad budgets continue to grow in comparison to offline spending, the metrics that determine where those dollars are spent need to be based on more relevant criteria than pageviews.

A recent study found that 96% percent of teens and tweens check in with a social networking web site at least once a week. That’s an insane penetration rate for any media channel, and a very desirable advertising market.

However, winning points with those teens and tweens is not as simple as a display ad campaign on myspace. The social networking generation is notoriously resistant to being “sold” anything. Interrupt-driven advertising designed to be disruptive to their use patterns can cause their primary response to your brand to be annoyance, rather than recognition and positive vibes.

In seeking to get past the basic “advertising insulation” that kids seem to be born with in the current century, advertisers are increasingly offering value not just with their products and services, but with their company messaging vehicles themselves. Downloadables, widgets, desktop images and advergaming are a few of the ways that companies are wooing younger users by enhancing their online experience. If the disruption is sufficiently valuable or entertaining content, even jaded millenials will stop and take notice of it.

Burger King has effectively become the King of Advergaming, even going so far as to sell branded console video games such as Sneak King, Pocketbike Racer, and Big Bumpin’.

When it comes to younger users, you don’t have to simply be in the right place. You have to be in the right place with the right message delivered in such an engaging way that it feels like entertainment rather than advertising.

Join Mike and Ryan today as they discuss updates to popular web analytics programs as well as recent Microsoft moves.

 LeapCast - Interactive Scoop: 5.30.07 - Analytics: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download