Archive for the ‘Public Service Announcment’ category

Open Government Innovation: Better Citizen Outreach and PSAs through a .Gov Ad Exchange

January 26th, 2010

A central problem and budget issue for the federal government is how much to spend on public service advertisement campaigns (PSAs)? How much is viewership worth? This bears very much on the effectiveness of government outreach which will be more and more important for as a more open government explores ways to acheive participation and collaboration from citizens.
So first how unequal are the .Govs? Very.. Take a look at these visitor stats for the month of August..

Not all .Govs are create equal:

IRS.GOV 5,483,624
FUELECONOMY.GOV 3,054,628
DOL.GOV 1,209,052
CANCER.GOV 641,526
DRUGABUSE.GOV 81,646
HEALTHFINDER.GOV 60,425
NAUTICALCHARTS.GOV 311

But while some .Gov domains are woefully lacking in public awareness, there are others with plenty of awareness and regular visitors  as you can see from the table above.

So why cant the .Gov’s cross promote? Website visitors to .Gov domains are an under utilized natural digital resource. Just like the water on government lands which could be potentially used for hydropower or natural gas or coal.   Except there is no major environmental cost to its exploitation. (Unless of course you are a purist who will decry an anti-drug message soiling their NPS.gov landscape of old growth fonts – just a joke guys.. NPS.gov looks pretty hip!).

I propose a banner exchange system for .Govs websites (perhaps at first only federal .govs as that is easier to get started) which would allow cross promotion using a banner ad type system.   This would allow new public service campaigns, programs and other news to be promoted where there already is a lot of interest without having to start from scratch for every new program or campaign.

So here are some of the issues to be resolved. How many impressions does each agency get for its banner ads and how much mining of visitor information is allowed to determine which ads get delivered to whom.

A credit system would be better than purchase system to distribute ads. This way the agencies with bigger PR budgets and visitors rates would still have to give up space and couldn’t just purchase their own ads. In fact there should be minimum requirements for cross-agency promotion because, after all, that is the idea to expose audiences to new messages from agencies they don’t otherwise interact with.  Later on state and local .Govs might be able to become a part of the system but offering their own natural digital resources…visitors and webscape to the system.

Give agencies with larger number of visitors larger credits but give all agencies a minimum number of credits.   Like the senate and the house combined representation.  Texas gets more than Wyoming, but Wyoming still gets 3.    Notice I say agencies not domains.   If we give out credits based on the domain then it will start a gold rush of .gov domains which is not necessary going to improve the ability to get messages to the american people.

Of course the credit system doesn’t just depend on how many visitors you have but also on how valuable the landscape is that you are willing to give up. Most agencies probably would not give up a full banner ad but maybe a right side tower banner starting just above the “fold”.    (Sorry I am not up on all the official IAB terms). So the credits you earn would become adjusted based on relative value of the page real estate that you give up.  Again in a way which forces all agencies to give up significant real estate, so that the more popular sites can’t stick the less popular agencies in their footer.

Secondly, and here is the tricky part, do we tap into a commercial banner ad exchange system and get the rich demographic data which it can offer.  For those who don’t know, commercial banner ad systems can guess at demographics, income and other factors based on the behavior of a person as they go from site to site.  Of course in the government this opens up all sorts of privacy issues.  So in the short term, until these get resolved, use a simple IP lookup table to get an approximation of the Nielsen DMA or basically metro area for visitors. (All privately kept of course).   We can also use commercially available free statistics to determine the approximate demographic breakdown for each .gov domain so that agencies with targeted demographics can make informed decisions on where to place their banner ads.  Of course I am glossing over the complexity of different demographics for different sections or pages but lets crawl before we walk.

Bidding? Why not.
The exchange would basically allow agencies to bid with their credits on the metro areas and preferred .gov domain and pages they desired to make their ads seen at with the credits given and based on the outcome of the auction (think Google Adwords) get a proportion of the domains. I don’t think the bidding will get too crazy since a lot of federal messaging is geographically neutral and the demographics probably do not vary too much from site to site.   They would bid with their credits which they earn by giving up web real estate and having web visitors. Isn’t it great that getting ads in this systems is in itself and incentive to get more visitors on your website? :)

Reporting. Don’t forget centralized clickthrough reporting which hopefully has the ability to attach a conversion goal to it, such as a download, registration or video play. This will provide an additional set of visitor information to agencies deciding where to place ads and again be an incentive to give up good real estate as then people will bid higher on your spaces. Basically which visitors from which .Gov domains are more likely to make sure of your agency’s advertised information.

Is this moving forward? I know in the world of Web 2.0, this seems very Web 1.0. Then again some people still watch TV commercials too. Yes and its a bit oversimplified but I think its a start to a plan.  The proof will be in the clicks.

One more thing.. make sure these are no-follow links… don’t want the federal government to get in trouble with somebody with real power… Google!

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Posted in Building Better Government Websites, Outreach, PSAs, Public Service Announcment, iPSA, open government

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Impact of Engagement: Traditional and Interactive PSAs

March 7th, 2008

Traditional media measures impressions, the number of times a viewer saw your message for a certain time. What does that mean? How does that translate into a PSA serving it’s purpose of informing the public and resulting in positive changes in behavior.

Recently we started measuring the impact to a website which is featured in the PSA. Also calls to a dedicated phone line featured in the PSA can also be used to some measures to correlate the PSA to those specific actions. A visit to a website and a phone call certainly shows definite interest but this is information gathering behavior in most cases. Was the PSA adopted by audience members in a deeper way which changed their behavior and had a lasting effect?

So how could we PSAs link more tightly to measurable behavior to have a hint about long term effects and deeper changes than just measuring information gathering?

We would need a media which allowed for a behavior to be captured and for it to be clear that the behavior has a relationship to the PSA. Behaviors which we would want to measure include:

  1. Asking for additional information, (not just once but whether is done repeatedly and in depth)
  2. Telling a friend about the information and measuring whether the friend responded.
  3. Giving input about the message such as comments or relevant past experiences.
  4. Checking for updates or news concerning the message.
  5. Creating personal goals to adopt or spread the message.
  6. Providing visual or written examples of how the message has been adopted.
  7. Discussing, adopting or spreading the message.
  8. Continuing these behaviors over time.

All of these are behaviors which can be measured using new media or Web 2.0 techniques through an iPSA or interactive PSA. The set of behaviors above and others correspond to what is termed engagement in new media parlance. Engagement constitutes a deeper connection between the audience and the message and message provider. Engagement behaviors while not a direct measurement of the everyday behaviors which the PSA is intended to effect, do measure behaviors which demonstrate significantly more effort than traditional information gathering behavior.

For example if we wanted to spread the message of exercise, we could create a widget which allowed audience members to:

  1. Get more information about exercise, drill down in depth and return for additional information later.
  2. Send the information about exercise to others
  3. Express preferences for types of exercise or examples of how it helped them in the past or outcomes which they hope to change through exercise.
  4. Create an easy to find location where they can check on updates or sign up for updates to be sent to them.
  5. Create personal exercise goals.
  6. Announce whether they have met exercise goals and provide photos or video of their progress.
  7. Provide discussion boards for audience to discuss their exercise efforts.
  8. Maintain a location for these activities and measure the return of the audience or the active audience members.

We can measure all of these behaviors and know for certain they are directly related to the original message because the behaviors were only possible by encountering and acting directly on the message content.

The interactive PSA or iPSA allows more measures of behavior change which the traditional PSA on its own, cannot offer. The iPSA or new media component of a PSA campaign will be a critical component of any successful PSA in the near future because it allows for the audience to become engaged and for the ais more measurable.

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Posted in Engagement, New Media, Public Service Announcment

Evolution of the Public Service Announcement (PSA)

February 20th, 2008

So what is a public service announcement (PSA)?

A nonprofit message distributed voluntarily by commercial entities outlets through media outlets in order to expose the audience to a message.

Goal: Send information to the audience so they are informed by passive viewing.


Problems:

  1. The audience is leaving the broadcast media.
  2. The free time and space in commercial media is shrinking.
  3. The audience is paying less attention to passive commercials and they are by nature fleeting.

A solution would need to:

  1. Find an outlet where the audience is migrating to.
  2. Remove commercial considerations from distribution.
  3. Create an active message which engages audience members for a long period.

Solution to fit these needs:

1. Online Social Networks (OSNs) as distribution channel for interactive PSAs.
The audience across all demographics is moving to OSNs faster than to any other online media. The news here is what friends, associates and colleagues are doing, reading, thinking and writing. Some OSNs have a large percentage of members who spend more time on the OSN than on watching TV.


2. OSNs put distribution decisions in the hands of audience members.

Individual audience members are the sources for the most valued and trusted content on online social networks. They make decisions based for the most part on personal considerations when it comes to public interest messages. The messages most interesting to the audience at a personal level will get the most distribution.


3. Online widgets can contain interactive messages and create long term engagement with the audience.

Online widgets can be placed on the online social networks at no charge and can be very interactive. They also can stay so long as the audience finds them interesting. They can be updated and even take on a life of their own through new media content which the audience itself contributes.

Interactive and long term engagement create much stronger connections between the audience and the PSA.


4. Added Benefit: OSNs have the potential to spread behavioral change

Recent scientific studies have begun to quantify the power of social networks to spread behavior (See the July 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study on obesity spreading through social networks). Online social networks are after “social networks.” So if behavioral changes can spread through social networks, at least online behavioral changes can spread OSNs. And changes in online behavioral will presumably have an impact on offline behavior.

Social networks can act not only as a distributor channel for a message but also as channels to spread behavioral change, which is something traditional media distribution channels only attempt when their commercial interest is involved.



So what is the new definition of this interactive PSA or (iPSA)?

An interactive message distributed virally by individuals through online communities in order for the message to become part of the conversation between audience members and create long term engagement between the message and message provider.

Goal: Change the behavior of the community by changing the conversations within the community.


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Posted in New Media, Non Profit, Public Service Announcment, Web 2.0

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