Jump Technologies has been expanding it’s Nabbit service a lot in the past while. To begin with, you could only “nabb” music from the radio. Then it spread to TV, so viewers could use interactive features on a dedicated channel during their favourite show. Now Nabbit has moved into advertising, so consumers can “nabb” ads that appeal to them. What is nabbing? Sorry, forgot to explain that…
Basically, Nabbit is an application on your phone that allows you to tag something in real life. It began with songs on the radio. If you were listening to a song you liked on, you made sure your Nabb app was tuned to the same channel and hit the “nabb” button. The app would then download information on that track from it’s database, and save it for you to go back to later.
Nabbit Ads does the same thing for radio and TV ads. If you see an ad that you like, you can bookmark it with Nabbit. The app the saves the ad to your Nabbit account, so that you can come back to it later. More than that, it can share information on your saved ads to your various social networking sites. All the same processes can also be applied to billboard and print ads. Nabbit claims this is a great deal for advertisers who want to gather metrics on their campaigns. By it’s nature, Nabbit only records definite ad impressions.
From the release:
“Nabbit Ad’s proprietary platform allows advertisers to build integrated broadcast, print, online, mobile and social media advertising campaigns in a highly measurable way,” said John Freund, CEO of Jump Technologies. “Nabbit Ads can help advertisers partner with media and create an incentive for consumers to watch and listen to shows and advertising in real-time. Nabbit Ads allows media buyers to track campaign outcomes and develop more effective media placement. For years marketers have tried to figure out the effectiveness of their traditional media campaigns. Nabbit Ads reports exactly how many people Nabbed your promotion. It provides information on the success and performance of the chosen media, in addition to reaching individuals that really want your products or your message.”
Nabbit user Anthony Farzaneh, of Alexandria, VA explained: “Being able to quickly grab the info on songs that peak my interest is invaluable. The most interesting feature is being able to “Nabb” commercials I like. If you hear a radio commercial for something that you like and there is a phone number or website for it, you have no way of taking down that information if you’re driving or otherwise occupied; with Nabbit, I can grab absolutely anything I want off the radio.”
What we think?
This service really sets off all the buzzwords. It’s “viral“, it’s “social networking“, it targets 18 – 34 year-olds, it effectively measures ROI. But does it really? I can imagine using a service like Nabbit to find out something about a song or TV show I’m interested, but I’m unlikely to use it to record an add for groceries I just heard on the radio. And what about this social networking connection? Do I really want my Facebook friends to know that I’m interested in a local car insurance agency? This just sounds like the kind of thing that’s designed to whip advertising agencies into a frenzy, while remaining somewhat disconnected from reality. People don’t relate with advertising this way.
While I think the best use for Nabbit currently is tagging music from the radio, I can also see it being very useful if, for expample, Taco Bell gave away a free taco and I wasn’t able to text in the offer and wanted to still get the taco at a later time. Also, if my buddy heard about the free taco, he Nabbs it and I see it in his Facebook update or Twitter stream I could then get the same deal. Seems pretty useful to me. I guess it completely depends on the offer. Car insurance… probably not… but then again if the offer is compelling enough getting the word out in a viral way makes sense.
Large, national promotions would be an ideal fit for something like this. Run a print ad, Nabb the offer and it gets inserted into Facebook and gets tweeted. Depending on what they charge it could be a very inexpensive way to spread an offer vs. trying to reach the same number of impressions with traditional marketing.