The Coming Ad Revolution - WSJ.com

Esther Dyson can kick your ass before breakfast. We should take heed of what she predicts in this WSJ opinion piece. Remain skeptical only inasmuch as reason mandates. Change is in the air. It's going to take big brains to figure out how to sort this out.

While the big news in the online world focuses on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, a more profound revolution is taking place on the online social networks: The discussion about privacy is changing as users take control over their own online data. While they spread their Web presence, these users are not looking for privacy, but for recognition as individuals -- whether by friends or vendors. This will eventually change the whole world of advertising.

The Coming Ad Revolution - WSJ.com

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CBS Outernet Expands to Pharmacies

CBS Outernet is expanding its portfolio of digital media networks at retailers to pharmacy locations, CBS announced Wednesday. Through a partnership with Lifeclinic International, which operates freestanding, automated vital signs monitoring stations in more than 25,000 pharmacies, CBS will manage, program health-related content and sell advertising for a network of digital video screens in and around the pharmacy.

CBS Outernet Expands to Pharmacies

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MediaPost Publications - Convenience Stores Gets Digital Network - 02/28/2008

THE BURGEONING DIGITAL OUT-OF-HOME MARKET is getting yet another new player with the creation by Transworld Media of a new digital network serving over 1,200 independent convenience stores. The network includes convenience stores in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago.Some 100 stores in the Dallas area have already had the equipment installed by Real Digital Media, which created the technology. The rest slated to receive the digital displays on an aggressive schedule over 2008.Advertisers can buy 15-second, 30-second and one-minute slots through media agencies and third parties, including SeeSaw Networks, which operates its own national network of digital signage and has entered into a strategic partnership with Transworld.

MediaPost Publications - Convenience Stores Gets Digital Network - 02/28/2008

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Apple is the #2 Music Retailer in the US

iTunes Now Number Two Music Retailer in the US
Apple today announced that iTunes is now the number two music retailer in the US, trailing only Wal-Mart.* The iTunes Store — now with over 50 million customers — has sold over four billion songs. In fact, it sold an incredible 20 million songs on Christmas Day 2007 alone. And with over six million songs from all of the major and thousands of independent labels, it offers the world’s largest music catalog. *Based on the latest data from the NPD Group. [Feb 26, 2008]

Apple - Hot News

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Makes Me Want To Say, ITYS

The term “convergence” may sound retro, a notion tossed around in the 1990s that never really came to pass. But don’t be fooled.Today, the bulk of video consumed online is snackable video—bite-sized entertainment—rather than a complete meal of full TV episodes or full-length movies.

The most popular online video content, watched by 40% or more of the US online video audience, consists of short pieces of five minutes or less: news clips, jokes, movie trailers, music videos, clips from TV shows and entertainment news.

Online Video: A Changing Picture - eMarketer

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Is TV Time Caught in the Web? - eMarketer

Wow. This is happening faster than even I thought it would. Gee, I'm surprised but not surprised by this report.

"The time spent using the Internet will continue to increase at the expense of television and, to a lesser extent, print media," said Karsten Weide, program director at IDC. "This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising."

Is TV Time Caught in the Web? - eMarketer

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MediaPost Publications - Nielsen Funds Most Ambitious Ethnographic Study Ever, Will Benchmark How People Actually Use Media - 02/25/2008

I have been describing the need for a new media anthropology for the past year or so. Advertisers and agencies need to feel confident about exactly how people are using media. There is a great deal of complexity in all of this; and agency people are infamously allergic to complexity. We're going to have to get over that. Prediction: Agencies will embrace complexity and drive value for clients by absorbing media complexity and translating it into effective integrated marketing communications. (Or go home!)

IN WHAT IS LIKELY THE most ambitious ethnographic study ever observing how people actually consume media, Nielsen Media Research is funding a highly regarded academic research group with $3.5 million to follow hundreds of people around to see how they use both traditional and emerging video platforms inside and outside their homes.

MediaPost Publications - Nielsen Funds Most Ambitious Ethnographic Study Ever, Will Benchmark How People Actually Use Media - 02/25/2008

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TV ads losing steam, marketers say

The Hollywood Reporter

Traditional television advertising has become less effective in the past two years, according to 62% of marketers, and a majority are trying new ad formats and new video platforms, according to a study by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research.The complete survey results will be revealed during the ANA's TV & Everything Video Forum on Feb. 28 in New York.

TV ads losing steam, marketers say

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MediaPost Publications - Millions Unprepared For 2009 Digital TV Switch - 02/18/2008

Follow me here ... If younger people are less prepared for the digital TV switchover, then they will turn more readily to the Internet for more of their entertainment needs. Of course, they already are. The recent writer's strike moved that needed as well.

Demographically, older Americans ages 55 and up are more ready than younger TV viewers. Among viewers age 35 and under, 12.3% are not ready for digital conversion. For viewers 35-54, the percentage is 9.6%. Only 9.4% of viewers 55 and older aren't ready for the digital change to occur next February.

MediaPost Publications - Millions Unprepared For 2009 Digital TV Switch - 02/18/2008

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Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain - New York Times

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain - New York Times

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Companies Can Make Money With Widget Ads - GigaOM

Selling advertising on entertainment-focused widgets such as Scrabulous or Zombies is about as easy as spinning straw into gold, yet there are plenty of people trying. And there are ways of generating revenue through specially focused widgets designed solely to sell rather than toss sheep. Brand and comparison advertising done through ad-focused widgets is emerging as a viable way of using the ubiquitous applications. Widgets’ interactive features, their ability to be virally distributed and potentially be placed on a target’s own page makes the creations appealing to advertisers.

Companies Can Make Money With Widget Ads - GigaOM

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Digital TV Countdown Made Easy

Bose Newsletter -- February 2008

On February 17, 2009, analog television signals—the mode of TV delivery since the 1940s—will be completely replaced by digital. Here are the basics behind this monumental change, and what it means for TV viewers.

The Evidence Keeps Mounting ...

IF EYEBALLS ARE GLUED TO any tube, it's more and more likely to
be YouTube rather than the Boob Tube across the room.

Tech and media consultancy IDC, which has published a study on consumer online behavior, reports that the Internet is where
people spend the most time browsing--32.7 hours per week.

Results are based on a sample of 992 U.S. residents 15 years of age or
older, who frequently use the Internet, including quotas by gender, age group, ethnicity, region, and income.

The firm says people spend 70.6 hours per week on average with all
media. They spend 16.4 hours glued to television and 3.9 hours with
newspapers and magazines.

Karsten Weide, the study's program director of digital media and
entertainment, confirms what the ad media market has been doing for the
past few years, as broadband Internet access has mostly supplanted
narrower conduits making the Web a video medium. "This suggests that
advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television,
newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising."

Full article here.

Who Says Women Don't Use The Net?!?!

More than 1 million copies of Suze Orman's "Women & Money" were downloaded after the announcement last week on Winfrey's television show that the e-book edition would be available for free on her Web site, http://www.oprah.com , for a period of 33 hours.

- Associated Press News

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TURNHERE: internet video

TurnHere is a full-service Internet video solutions provider. We provide video production and distribution services, produce high quality low-cost Internet videos and develop and execute plans to distribute those videos across the Internet to the right audience.

TURNHERE: internet video

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Contextually-Placed Video Ads ... Finally!

This is exceptionally important - all video advertising needs to reach the right eyeballs at the right time. But how can the network have the "intelligence" to dynamically place "spots" in adjacent locations to "content" YOU are viewing/reading/watching? Google's got an answer.

MediaPost Publications - Google Expands AdSense For Video, Sets Deals With Tremor, YouMe, Others - 02/21/2008

AdSense program has focused mainly on enabling Web publishers to serve text-only ads. The video beta version, enables publishers to serve targeted, contextually-relevant video graphical ads and text overlays, and is seen as an alternative to the pre-roll an post-roll advertising clips that have become the industry's default standard advertising format.

Here It Comes ...

Are we really surprised by this? Let's be clear - TV advertising is not going to go away. There is no "end of advertising as we know it." There is a serious re-calibration (of sorts) going on RIGHT NOW. We're in the midst of a shift in our own business model. This is what it was like to be in the recording industry back in 1999 or 2000. We have the opportunity to seriously embrace "new digital platforms" and get a jump on MONETIZING our work; or we risk losing the financial footing we've grown to take for granted.

MediaPost Publications - TV Advertising Hit By Digital Competition - 02/21/2008

A recent survey by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research says 62% of marketers believe TV is less effective since 2006. Not surprisingly, many TV marketers are interested in exploring new digital platforms for video commercials.

Sprint expected to undercut rivals' call plans - Yahoo! News

Finally, there's some movement in the US mobile phone marketplace. Consumers will benefit from falling prices for plans. And though "Wall Street is worried" (see below) the European and Asian mobile phone markets show us a way forward. Consumers pay less for having a handset and service while the telecoms make lots of money selling in lots of interactive services.

Wall Street is worried about a looming price war, even though Tuesday's new plans were not seen in and of themselves to have a big impact on service revenue as only about 5 to 10 percent of consumers now pay more than $100-a-month for calls.

Sprint expected to undercut rivals' call plans - Yahoo! News

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Mind Over Matter

Advertising creative has been tested to death. Many critics, pundits and agency pros cite testing as the cause of advertising's current low state of affairs. Perhaps, it is the testing. Perhaps the tests are themselves outmoded and unreliable. Maybe what we really need are just better tests.

Can neuroscience and biometric research really help advertisers craft better ads? While marketers have debated that question for years, the costly and cumbersome nature of the research (e.g., MRI machines, electrodes attached to scalps) means they've relied instead on second-hand information such as surveys to help decide what does and doesn't work.

Mind Over Matter

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700 MHz wireless spectrum auction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's what is going down right now: The FCC is auctioning off the bandwidth that here-to-fore has been known as UHF television. These "channels" won't be needed for broadcasts when, in one short year from now, all over-the-air TV converts to digital (i.e. free over-the-air HDTV).

Who's buying? It's a silent auction. But reports come out daily. The wireless carriers are kicking each other and Google in the teeth to win the rights to operate this portion of the "broadcast" spectrum.

What's it mean for consumers? What was once known as UHF television becomes over-the-"air" programming on your mobile phone.

So, in one short year from right about now (well, Feb 17, 2009 to be exact), all "three screens" will be ready for prime time.

And how exactly are we supposed to run advertising on that?

The 700 MHz spectrum was previously used for analog TVs, specifically UHF channels 52 through 69. The FCC has ruled that the impending switch to digital television means that these frequencies are no longer necessary for broadcasters, due to the high spectral efficiency of digital broadcasts [1]. Thus, all broadcasters will be required to move to channels 2 through 51 as part of the digital TV transition.

700 MHz wireless spectrum auction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Study: Web Video Audience Differs Widely by Segment

comScore, has identified four key segments of the online video audience that should help marketers better plan media and target creative. The four groups include:

-On Demanders – this group is 30 percent more likely to a heavy video users. This 18- to 34-year-old skewing group gravitates to DVRs and video on demand, and are 89 percent more likely to pay for content to avoid ads than the typical user.
-Sight & Sounders – this group skews toward the 55 and over demographic, and are mostly unimpressed with video content and video ads. Nearly half have been watching online video for less than a year, and most prefer TV.
-Television Devotees – this female-skewing segment frequently use the Web to catch up on TV – and are fans of the broadcast and cable networks Web offerings. They appear to accept online video ads.
-Content Explorers - they are platform agnostic, and will watch pretty much anything on the Web – from long-form drama to short, user-generated clips. Perhaps surprisingly, this group skews toward 35-54, higher income category.

Study: Web Video Audience Differs Widely by Segment

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MediaPost Publications - Newsstand Mags Drop Circ, 'Time' Plummets - 02/12/2008

The writing's on the wall ... everywhere I look. Where are all the eyeballs now? I'd be guessing, but I might say, oh, gee, may-be, um, the Internet. (Just a theory.)

Time magazine received a body blow in the latest circulation report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, leading a round of bad news for consumer magazines in a variety of categories.

MediaPost Publications - Newsstand Mags Drop Circ, 'Time' Plummets - 02/12/2008

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HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web - New York Times

Note: This widget is offered by HarperCollins to help spread the word about its new free online book reader.

In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine.The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through books in a bookstore.“It’s like taking the shrink wrap off a book,” said Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. “The best way to sell books is to have the consumer be able to read some of that content.”

HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web - New York Times

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What Women Want (on the Net, That Is) - Advertising Age

This is required reading for anyone who works on a brand that is purchased by women. (Um ... everybody.)

Last year, "women's community" was the most visited and fastest growing internet category, tied with politics, according to a ComScore Media Metrix year-end report. The number of unique visits to women's community sites jumped 35% to almost 70 million from 52 million.

What Women Want (on the Net, That Is) - Advertising Age - Digital

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Bluetooth to piggyback on Wi-Fi - Yahoo! News

Let's embrace complexity for a moment; it may lead to clarity. When the FCC flips the HDTV switch in one short year, several technologies will converge to forever change our media experience at home. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth working together only increase the - big word warning - INTEROPERABILITY of heretofore dis-connected devices.

So, what's that mean? Your TV will get HD content over the airwaves. An AppleTV or Tivo box will let you record your shows. Simultaneously, that device's Wi-Fi will let you rent movies, purchase movies, buy TV shows and season passes, watch online videos (via iTunes or Amazon). Then, Bluetooth will let you transfer content between your TV and phone and/or PC.

Magically, the whole process works in the other direction - from your digital camera, digital camcorder and/or digital phone.

What's this all mean for advertisers? Exponential increase in potential advertising inventory. Many more surfaces upon which to run ads. But ... with an exponential diffusion of the audience. Therefore, all media is becoming like the Internet - a "mass medium" of myriad niches.

Is this the end of advertising as we know it? Or the beginning of a renaissance in consumer advertising as we know it?

Linking Bluetooth and Wi-Fi may make it easier and faster to transfer large amounts of music between computers and cell phones, or send pictures from a camera phone to a printer, or video from a camcorder to a TV.

Bluetooth to piggyback on Wi-Fi - Yahoo! News

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The Next Small Thing

The Next Small ThingBits of code called widgets open the door to viral marketing across social networks. Silicon Valley sees them as a Web revolution in the making

The Next Small Thing

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Forrester: Agencies Need to Reboot

This is a grim assessment of the state-of-advertising-as-we-know-it is, well, grim.

In a new report, the research firm paints a grim view of the current state of advertising, which it believes is in "a world of hurt" because consumers are tuning out the messages the industry is predicated on producing. Instead, it believes shops need to be organized around communities, not disciplines. What it is calling "the connected agency" would not only know certain communities but also be active members of these groups. Pushing messages would give way to encouraging voluntary engagement, and ongoing conversations would replace time-based campaigns. "I can't say there's an agency now that's the agency of the future," said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst and co-author of the report.

Forrester: Agencies Need to Reboot

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Cars.com Viral Video

Cars.com Viral Video

Practically hiding in plain site, the Cars.com campaign that launched during the Super Bowl includes a series of viral videos that tie-in perfectly.

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Virtual Barbershop

Must listen through headphones only.

Close your eyes, play along, and enjoy.

Unintentionally funny emerging platforms, Chapter XLIV

SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock review at Kaboodle

Wake up to the smell of...Animosity... Connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!

Barack Obama "Yes We Can" YouTube Video
A word or two; I know many of my colleagues in the advertising agency business choose freely to vote for conservative and/or liberal candidates. However, this election season is electric with many interactive firsts, including this music video set to the text of a candidate's stump speech. Nicely done. I've never encountered anything quite like it.

Excuses, excuses, excuses ...

If you don't understand a word of this (below), you need to read the newspaper. Yeah, that's right. I found this in the Sunday Chicago Tribune. It's fascinating and very, very practical for anyone who works in a professional services office -- though it's still in beta. So you can sign up for access, but it's strictly by invitation only.

about us @ twine

Well, in a nutshell Twine uses the Semantic Web, natural language processing, and machine learning to make your information and relationships smarter. But if that’s all Greek to you, just think of Twine as your very own intelligent personal Web assistant, working for you behind the scenes so you can be more productive.

I'm F***ing Matt Damon Video

If you're not this f***ing funny, then don't f***ing try to make a f****ing viral video!

Sarah Silverman got Matt Damon to sing and dance in a music video for her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel. She presented what may be the funniest video ever to Kimmel on Thursday night's show.

I'm Fucking Matt Damon Video

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