MediaPost Publications - How Seeding Can Produce Viral Velocity For Widgets And Social Applications - 07/29/2008

The best approach to attaining viral lift-off is an active seeding strategy. Seeding is the process of tapping people with a known propensity for sharing your content. Seeding significantly increases the probability that a widget or social application will find an audience, get installed, and be shared.
MediaPost Publications - How Seeding Can Produce Viral Velocity For Widgets And Social Applications - 07/29/2008

I don't like to toot my own horn. But, geez, it's not like I haven't been saying this EXACT stuff for the past 18 months. Oh ... except for the math part from Forrester. Levity, friends.
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P&G Changes Its Game


"Design thinking" may seem like just another new buzzword in the lexicon of innovation, but Procter & Gamble (PG) is using the approach to change its culture. Leadership is listening, learning, and deploying; cross-functional teams are cracking vexing problems across its business landscape; and visualization, prototyping, and iteration are facilitating communication internally and with customers like never before. Here's a look inside one of the most intriguing change management efforts going on in Corporate America today.
P&G Changes Its Game

Every time I see an article about what P&G is doing, I find myself compelled to read it. This must've been what it was like to read about GM's approach to advertising in the 1970s.
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As the Search Engine Turns

When a search query comes into Google, it is handled by many hundreds of separate computers, each of which compares it to a portion of its vast index of almost every word on the Web.Mr. Costello’s insight, as Ms. Paterson explained it, is a series of formulas that let 90 percent of queries be handled by only one machine. As the system crawls Web pages to build its index, it has a way of putting links to pages on similar topics on the same computers, she explained. The upshot is that Ms. Patterson claimed that Cuil has searched 120 billion pages using only 140 servers.
Cuils New Search Engine: Cheaper Than Google, but Not Better - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

From the department of esoteric interactive technology stuff that's really interesting but doesn't have an immediate impact on marketing communication.
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Gaming Goes Mainstream

According to a new survey by the Entertainment Software Association, forty percent of gamers are women, and usage behaviors indicate that the average age of game players has risen to 35.

Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, representing computer and video game publishers, said "No longer is there a stereotypical gamer... This data underscores the fundamental principle that computer and video games are a mainstream entertainment form... "

Among the survey's main findings, says the report:

65 percent of American households play computer and video games
38 percent of American homes have a video game console
The average game player is 35 years old
One out of four gamers is over age 50
Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent)
41 percent of Americans expect to purchase one or more games this year


The research shows how involved parents are in the way their children buy, rent and play games:

94 percent of parents are present when games are purchased or rented
88 percent of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children play
63 percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their children's lives


The 2008 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry includes statistics on the top selling titles and genres of 2007, provided by The NPD Group.Based on unit sales:

85 percent of the games sold last year were rated Everyone (E) Everyone 10+ (E10+) or Teen (T)
15 percent of the games sold in 2007 were rated Mature (M)


The complete 2008 Essential Facts booklet is available online here.

New Ads on Last.fm Respond to Music - ClickZ

A redesign of Last.fm, the CBS-owned free online music platform, is giving advertisers the ability to create "smart ads" that can, among other things, move to the beat of whatever music a user is listening to.
New Ads on Last.fm Respond to Music - ClickZ
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Media Life Magazine - Flight of the young from gossip shows

These days younger viewers who might have watched these shows a decade ago are turning instead to the internet and sites like TMZ.com and Perez Hilton for their celebrity gossip, driving up the age of the remaining audience.
Media Life Magazine - Flight of the young from gossip shows

The new generation gap is upon us. This time it's not defined by the music, hair styles or fashion. Now it's media usage. The young use the Net. Their elders -- including pretty much everybody 35+ -- use TV and email. The evidence is everywhere. Viva la difference!
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MediaPost Publications - NBC's DealMeRss.com Explores Lead-Generation Rev Potential - 07/24/2008

NBC Universal's online offerings last week included a "Biggest Loser" cookbook, "Saturday Night Live" magnets and Hollywood studio tickets. Also on sale: a 70-inch HDTV for $28,000. Less costly were a laser printer and portable keyboard. "Heroes" T-shirts and "Friday Night Lights" DVDs? No-brainers. But NBCU challenging Best Buy?

While the products may be similar, NBCU has no such ambitions with its fledgling DealMeRss.com. The austere site--resembling e-commerce circa 1995--is an experiment by NBCU's emerging digital businesses group. It hopes to gain insight into how to capitalize on growing "lead generation" revenue opportunities online.

Over time, any conclusions could be applied to its current ventures--such as Petside.com and DriverTV--where ad revenues may be principal drivers, but other revenue streams would be welcome. With lead generation, site operators can collect a fee--perhaps up to 60 cents a pop--for directing consumers (or "qualified leads") to another site, where they might make a purchase.

MediaPost Publications - NBC's DealMeRss.com Explores Lead-Generation Rev Potential - 07/24/2008
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To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click - NYTimes.com


A number of retailers — including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites, creating a surprising bright spot during an otherwise gloomy time for sales in brick-and-mortar stores.
To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click - NYTimes.com

The way these things usually go is something like this: change happens slowly, reaches a tipping point and then SHAZAAM! It's off the chart. Big name retailers -- two of which I've worked for in the past two years -- have learned to live with diminished expectations for their online stores. It's common to throw around the anecdote that the entire e-commerce site tallies the sales volume of only one or two superstores (not wholly grounded in fact, but you get the point).

Two important conditions are bringing rapid change to this equation. First, economic necessity is making ecommerce more convenient and budget wise. Second, people are familiar with interactive media now. It's become normal.
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Quote of the Day

Generally speaking, the ad agencies continue to demonstrate an unconscionable level of ignorance toward the power of search. Yes, there are a few brave souls championing search as the linchpin of tomorrow’s marketing successes (several write for MediaPost), but they’re lonely voices in a wilderness whose inhabitants still speak in the outdated acronyms of Gross Rating Points and think that online advertising means banners that nobody clicks on.
Search Insider » Blog Archive » No Time For Gloom Or Doom!
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Nielsen: Shoppers Remember, Appreciate Mall Advertising


"Nearly half of mall shoppers (47 percent) viewed content provided on the Adspace Mall Network, and of those viewers, 34 percent had an average recall of specific ads they saw on the network, revealed a new Nielsen Media Research study commissioned by Adspace Networks.

The results show that shoppers viewed the Smart Screens an average of 3.3 times per visit with an average total viewing time of 1.9 minutes (or 114 seconds). During that time, the average length of each view is 34 seconds. With advertisements on the “Smart Screens” lasting 10-15 seconds, each shopper sees nearly three spots per view. By the end of their mall trip, viewers of the Smart Screens will have seen nearly 10 spots on the network."
Nielsen: Shoppers Remember, Appreciate Mall Advertising - Media Buyer Planner

Another example of how "mass media" is moving outside. Personal media will dominate the home and devices. Now, my beef with reports such as this is that they tend not to provide comparative metrics. Is 47 percent good or bad compared to standard mall media?
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The Great Escape Is No Longer The Silver Screen

Game-playing in all of its emerging digital forms appears to be the one media sector that could be impervious to economic malaise. It has even slowed the meteoric growth of online advertising and caused Google to miss some of its quarterly targets for the first time. As it turns out, video games have become the escapist elixir for hard times that moviegoing and television once were in a passive, analog world.
Diane Mermigas: On Media » Blog Archive » Money Spot: Video Games Are Having Banner Year
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Content is Content. But Can Content Replace Advertising?

From the Wall Street Journal: "...Model.Live tracks three models as they navigate casting calls, catwalks and airports for fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris. The first of 12 eight-minute episodes will debut Aug. 19 on-demand on Vogue.tv, a site that runs advertiser-sponsored videos and allows consumers to buy the featured products."
Vogue Models a New Reality Series - WSJ.com

Content like this is beginning to prove that online "shows" can attract a verifiable and sizable audience. The question remains if advertisers should strive to produce this kind of content -- as Holiday Inn Express has recently begun doing -- or just sponsor it. Should it be scripted like LonelyGirl15 and Quarterlife? Unscripted seems to be the more popular format, at least so far.

At least advertisers and content producers have a common goal. They both want to land a big audience. Though it appears the content producers are making most of the investment in R&D.
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Creepy, but Brilliant ... Spokeo

http://www.spokeo.com/

Spokeo is in the neighborhood of Friend Feed, but it has a leering peeping Tom undertone that just makes my skin crawl. Either that, or Spokeo is the greatest invention of the Web 2.0 era.

Film at 11 ...

Earthscape.com Demo - iPhone Earth



This is the beginning of something extraordinary. Having a robust media device on your person that can do amazing things is a game changer. But it can mean many things, and its benefits can manifest in myriad ways. Navigating the new media space is becoming quite complex. If we embrace the complexity, we can define it and harness its greatest assets for building brands and businesses. Everything else is eye candy.

blog.vortexdna.com » Blog Archive » The Internet's Hierarchy of Needs

VortexDNA’s Internet Hierarchy of Needs
The Internet follows a hierarchy similar to Maslow’s. There are basic needs that must be fed before higher needs can be addressed. If we don’t have computers connected to the Web, if we don’t have any documents online, if those documents can’t be searched and indexed in their entirety and link to each other, then it’s futile to begin a conversation about the Semantic Web.
blog.vortexdna.com » Blog Archive » The Internet's Hierarchy of Needs

My colleague and I were making this exact comparison between Maslow and the Net.
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Spending on online advertising surpasses TV, report says | Technology | Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Everyone knows that online advertising keeps growing and growing. But according to a report being released today, it's growing so fast that in 2008 it is projected to surpass ad spending on TV, radio and movies combined for the first time ever.

To be sure, Outsell Inc., based in Burlingame, Calif., tallies the numbers a little differently. It counts the money companies spend on their own websites as part of their advertising budgets, because websites are ostensibly used for marketing. Its data indicates that companies are expected to spend $105.3 billion online in 2008, which beats the $98.5 billion they’re projected to spend on TV, radio and movies. But that isn’t quite as much as the $147 billion they’re likely to spend on print media, up 12% from the previous year.
Spending on online advertising surpasses TV, report says | Technology | Los Angeles Times
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Big Idea ... for a Milkshake Beverage?!?!


Last week we brought you a teaser of milkshake brand Frijj’s sinister web campaign, which featured sinister little girl Martha explaining that the town of ‘Four Ridges’ (a pun, we think) must be destroyed. Contagious caught up with creative team Ed Kaye and Alex Mavor, planner Ollie Gilmore and chief creative officer Jon Williams from Grey, London, to find out how…www.fourridgesmustbedestroyed.com
Contagious News Article
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Digitas is on a Roll. First Holiday Inn, now Gummi Burst

A new digital campaign for Gummi Burst, the latest addition to Mars' Starburst candy line, has Digitas flexing its creative muscle in a number of ways.

Using the premise that the individually-wrapped candies are ideal for sharing, the "Share Something Juicy" features Starburst in a new animated Web series, a Starburst channel on YouTube featuring videos made by Digitas's brand content unit The Third Act, and partnerships with several popular video bloggers.

"It really is a fresh look at their digital strategy," said Digitas Senior VP of Marketing Todd Stanley. "It's targeting a very fickle and hard-to-reach...audience for Starburst."
Care to Share? Digitas Launches Campaign for New Mars Candy - ClickZ
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RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS - Google Code


In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows", no cameras or lights were used. Just data.
RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS - Google Code

How exactly this admittedly stunning visualization technique can be used in marketing is an open question. I can see it appropriated by filmmakers for commercials or features. No sweat. It holds promise for banner ads, too.

But it's a treatment, not an idea. And the difference between the two is monumental.
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Personal Web Page as Social Necessity

The Wall Street Journal Home Page

Plenty of people have personal Web pages. But are we reaching the point where you need one?

The answer is still "no" -- but that "no" is no longer quite so firm as it used to be. And sometimes that hesitation is a sign that the wheels of social change are starting to turn -- that "no" will turn into "maybe" and then from there move quickly to "yes" and then finally to "it's weird that you don't." If you're a thirtysomething, you've seen answering machines, voice mail, email addresses and cellphones complete the journey from curiosities to perceived necessities, just as our elders saw the same thing happen with TVs and phones.
Real Time - WSJ.com
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Our Next Brain is on the Web

You MUST Read This Today - Not Kidding.

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
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Business Not Heeding the Social Media Call

Jeffrey Mann vp at Gartner research

BBC NEWS | Technology | Firms 'miss' social site success
"... look deeper as to why these people are using these networks. It's to keep up with their friends, to mobilise them, to get involved in everything from politics to cleaning the local park. If you look at those reasons, then there are a lot of business counterparts ..."

DIY Commercials via Google AdWords

SpotMixer screenshotSpotMixer, which offers self-service tools to
small- and midsized-advertisers for creating TV commercials online, said Wednesday that customers can now distribute their ads through Google AdWords and its TV Ads service.

Google recommends a variety of specialists to produces commercials, but they are now promoting the notion of do-it-yourself production through SpotMixer. As soon as customers have created ads on SpotMixer, they can setup their campaign using Google TV Ads with existing AdWords accounts.

Is this the end of advertising as we know it? Not likely. Sounds more like the end of cable-access-advertising as we know it.

fios tvMediaPost Publications - Unilever Goes 'Understated' With Interactive Films - 07/10/2008
Unilever this week started running short comedic films on interactive TV to promote its Axe Proximity products. But consumers will have to watch the films all the way through to figure that out. Taking its own tag line to heart ("Make an Understatement"), the campaign only mentions the Axe brand in passing, and only at the end of the videos.

ON THE OTHER HAND ...


Digital TV switch will boost subscriptions
Observers say that overall, cable companies -- rather than their satellite TV and telecom rivals breathing down their necks -- look best positioned to sign up a portion of the estimated 14 million U.S. homes who still only get free over-the-air television rather than paying monthly fees to multichannel providers.

- I have thus far thought that the HD changeover will spur demand for free over-the-air HDTV; and that the cable and satellite providers may suffer further declines. I could be mistaken. Or I could be a "genius"!

Top 10 Wireless Service Providers by Subscribers, Q1 08

1. AT&T
71.4 million subscribers
2. Verizon
67.2 million subscribers
3. Sprint Nextel
52.8 million subscribers
4. T-Mobile
30.8 million subscribers
5. Alltel
13.2 million subscribers
6. US Cellular
6.2 million subscribers
7. Metro PCS
4.4 million subscribers
8. Leap Wireless
3.09 million subscribers
9. Centennial
662,700 subscribers
10. Rural Cellular
790,431 subscribers

There are 222.2 million subscribers with the top four mobile providers alone.

*Source: RCR Wireless News

Majority Prefer TV on TV Sets

According to new research conducted by The Nielsen Company for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, 94% of adults who subscribe to cable or satellite television services prefer to watch television on traditional TV sets rather than Online.

35% of the adult broadband users surveyed said they had watched at least one television program originally shown on TV via the Internet. Of those who sought out video content online:

  • 87% watched television programs directly from a TV network Web site
  • 82% of those who watched video content online said they went online to find a specific television program that they had missed when it first aired on TV.

This indicates the success that major networks are having by taking popular programs to the online platform. Online television viewers are catching up on their favorite shows, while 40% report using the Internet to learn about actors and upcoming episodes.

Research Brief » Blog Archive » TV Better on TV Sets
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Digital Outsider » Blog Archive » Channel M’s Dennis Quinn: ‘We’re Better than TV’

“We’ve got sight, sound and motion, all the traditional advantages of TV,” Quinn observed, “plus we’re at the point of purchase, with a captive audience, and we give advertisers the opportunity to associate themselves with hip retail brands” like Namco, a national chain of video arcades, and bars and restaurants in the Buzztime network, one of Channel M’s partners. Further, Quinn boasted that the audience is already segmented along behavioral lines through self-selection. Another key advantage, according to Quinn, is recency, referring to the length of time elapsed since a consumer was exposed to an advertisement.

That’s another strike against traditional TV: “As a media planner, where’s the most logical place to start building your campaign? Are you going to build it forward from the living room, hoping your message somehow survives hours and days later, or do you start at the point of purchase, so your product is the last thing the person sees while shopping?”

Digital Outsider » Blog Archive » Channel M’s Dennis Quinn: ‘We’re Better than TV’

Inspired by Blade Runner, I have believed for a long, long time that mass media are moving outdoors. Meanwhile, at-home media are becoming more and more personal.
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MediaPost Publications - Nielsen: Mobile Reaches Critical Mass - 07/09/2008

With 15.6% of its mobile users actively using the Internet, the U.S. has reached a critical mass for mobile Web marketing, according to a new study by Nielsen Mobile.

Helping to drive mobile Internet adoption is the growing popularity of unlimited data packages, which 14% of U.S. cell phone users have signed up. Half of data users say they prefer the unlimited pricing model, according to the Nielsen report titled "Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web."

The top U.S. mobile sites as of May were Yahoo Mail, with 14.2 million unique visitors, followed by Google Search (9.1 million) and The Weather Channel (8.6 million). More than a quarter (26%) of mobile Internet users view ads and overall are more receptive to advertising than average mobile data users.

MediaPost Publications - Nielsen: Mobile Reaches Critical Mass - 07/09/2008

I predict that many agency clients will remain reluctant to spend much for a good while longer. Too bad.
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How Lively? Google’s Me-Too Virtual World - GigaOM



On first glance, Lively seems too similar to several existing (and very large) MMOs, making it an also-ran without a key market distinguisher to be truly compelling (besides being from Google). You can stream YouTube videos in these rooms and embed rooms on websites, and it’s got appealing cartoon visuals and a fairly intuitive interface, but that’s true of numerous online worlds already out there. Of course Google is the Net’s dominant force, but then, that probably won’t matter to the tens of millions already happy in existing virtual worlds. Without some special magic that I’m not seeing as yet, it could easily wind up being a virtual world version of Google Video, easily eclipsed by the YouTube-level dominance of Habbo Hotel/Club Penguin/Gaia Online/etc.
How Lively? Google’s Me-Too Virtual World - GigaOM
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MediaPost Publications - VideoEgg Hatches New Ad System - 07/09/2008

In the interest of increased consumer engagement, video ad network VideoEgg today is expected to unveil additional Web 2.0 features to its AdFrames program.

The features fall into five categories, including "Live," which uses real-time RSS feeds to continually update ads; "Local," which delivers zip code-specific messaging; "Rich," which lets advertisers deploy and track multi-video ads; "Shop," which turns banner ads into shopping browsers and "Viral," which allows consumers to share and embed the ads they see.

MediaPost Publications - VideoEgg Hatches New Ad System - 07/09/2008

Read about VideoEgg's AdFrames offering here - http://www.videoegg.com/adnetwork/adframes

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Advertising - Networks Try New Ways to Keep People Watching During the Break - NYTimes.com

This year, for the 2008-9 television season, the networks are betting on a panoply of pod-busters — unconventional content meant to entice viewers to pay attention during the commercial breaks, which are also called pods.

Making pods more alluring has become a necessity since the networks agreed last fall to use ratings for commercial viewing, rather than for programs, as the standard for sales to advertisers. Results for the 2007-8 season were skewed by the writers’ strike, but in homes with TiVos and other digital video recorders, viewers increasingly wander off during long, cluttered pods.

Advertising - Networks Try New Ways to Keep People Watching During the Break - NYTimes.com

So "long form" content is the new 30-second spot?! Is this the convergence? What I like about this is the de-cluttering of conventional television advertising. Fewer commercials that have a better chance to engage the viewer. Still, it smacks of a soon-to-be tried-and-failed trend of the moment.
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It's the Beginning of the End for the TV Biz, Says Analyst | Epicenter from Wired.com


The TV and video business is about to face a nasty downturn, and it could happen faster than most people expect -- like, over the next two years. So says Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente, who published an alarmingly bearish report on the entertainment sector this morning.

"We believe the feature film and TV content businesses are on the verge of structural changes that appear to impact the core revenue and profits of entertainment business models," wrote DiClemente.

If the television or video business model is broken, you can blame the internet for that: Digital distribution, audience fragmentation and widespread file-sharing are eating into network and studios' profits, and those profits may not come back, says DiClemente.

The big winners? Digital distribution, such as Apple's iTunes and Google's YouTube.

It's the Beginning of the End for the TV Biz, Says Analyst | Epicenter from Wired.com

It's getting to the point where I'm no fun anymore ... oops ... where I'm not sure what to make of this economy and these projections about the entertainment industry. Obviously, advertising relies on entertainment in print, tv, movies, gaming and music. If the structure of the entertainment industry collapses, well, then what?
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Scrabble Comes To Facebook, Way, Way Too Late

Scrabble is finally coming to Facebook this month. Of course, Facebook users have already been playing Scrabble for a long time -- they just haven't been playing an official version game. Instead they've been playing Scrabulous, the probably-not-that-legal clone that has more than 450,000 daily active users on the network.
Scrabble Comes To Facebook, Way, Way Too Late

This is an all-too familiar story: major content owner ("Scrabble") fears online distribution and holds back all online distribution. Meanwhile, consumers flock to an online faux-but-fun facsimile ("Scrabulous" on Facebook) while the giant slumbers. Finally, the giant caves and puts an "official" version online. Too late. Too lame.
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Advertising - Whichever Screen, People Are Watching - NYTimes.com

The first in a series of new “three-screen” reports by the Nielsen Company shows an emerging shift toward a more video-centric use of the Internet, but not at the expense of television viewing. The report, an initial effort by Nielsen to “follow the video” as consumer viewing habits shift, is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The average American spent 127 hours of time with TV in May, up from 121 hours in May 2007; and 26 hours on the Internet, up from 24 hours last year. More than 282 million people watch television in a given month and nearly 162 million use the Internet.

Perhaps most important, the data reaffirms that online video viewing is no longer a novelty. Two-thirds of Internet users in the United States, 119 million people, watched video in May.

The amount of online video viewing is low compared with TV — 2 hours and 19 minutes a month on average — and Nielsen does not have a comparable estimate for last year. But given its popularity, it has attracted much interest from media companies and advertisers. All that viewing, 7.5 billion streams and 16.4 billion minutes in total, amounts to new advertising time for the taking.

Advertising - Whichever Screen, People Are Watching - NYTimes.com
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3 tactics to make Web 2.0 work - iMediaConnection.com

Marketers may argue they need a sexy or cool product to go viral…but even content for laundry pre-wash, if appealing enough, can hit the distribution/YouTube jackpot. SC Johnson and DraftFCB did a stellar job creating a breakthrough content piece for Shout Pre-Wash product. And users exponentially reward the humorous, imaginative or provocative. An interesting point -- count the number of seconds the Shout product is actually on camera.
3 tactics to make Web 2.0 work - iMediaConnection.com
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MediaPost Publications - Digitas' Third Act, Holiday Inn, Reel In Biz Travelers - 07/08/2008

screenshot of Smart ShowThe first official project out of Digitas' newly formed content creation and distribution arm, The Third Act, is the second season of "The Smart Show," Holiday Inn Express' Web-based video series geared toward business travelers. New York-based The Third Act worked with production giant Endemol USA to develop all 40 of the 2- to 3-minute Webisodes, which go live at http://thesmartshow.blip.tv/ today. Viewers will also find business travel and tech blogs, a crowd-sourced Deal of the Week (D.O.W.), as well as the chance to win a new car through the "Ultimate Road Warrior Challenge."
MediaPost Publications - Digitas' Third Act, Holiday Inn, Reel In Biz Travelers - 07/08/2008
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Nike Goes Mobile in Hong Kong

adweek/photos/stylus/31942-Nike.jpg

Consumers point their camera phones at a series of codes, placed in locations such as Nike stores and subway stations, and 3-D images of the T90 next to a soccer ball appear on their screens.
Nike Goes Mobile in Hong Kong

Another emerging platforms coup by The Hyperfactory. Nicely done.
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MediaPost Publications - Forrester: B2B Blogging Takes Nose Dive - 07/07/2008

Corporate bloggers are apparently struggling to sustain a conversation, while many B2B marketers are failing to realize that good blogging style should resemble a coffee shop conversation, not a whitepaper.

As a result, most B2B blogs are dull, drab, and don't stimulate discussion, according to the Forrester report. More than 70% of the corporate blogs it reviewed stick strictly to business or technical topics and don't share much personal insight or experience.
MediaPost Publications - Forrester: B2B Blogging Takes Nose Dive - 07/07/2008

Corporate culture discourages the kind of openness needed to make a blog -- corporate or not -- worth spending time reading. A better starting point for would-be corporate bloggers is to focus on their centers of expertise. Let's take corporate equipment leasing. That's a dry topic, right? Well, for business decision-makers to become knowledgeable there are only a few options: trial-and-error, trade pubs and the Internet. On the Net, a supplier with a well stocked blog gains competitive advantage simply by publishing its ideas. Unfortunately, most corporations simply post white papers. The opportunity is to engage a niche audience that desperately needs information and guidance. The upside is acquiring new customers through engagement to an audience that is allergic to sales calls.
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WPP Offers New Schematic For Watching Olympic Games: Live, On-Demand Web Player - 07/03/2008

Created using Microsoft Silverlight 2, the video player is expected to deliver 2,200 hours of live streaming coverage from NBC to millions of U.S. viewers with a high-level picture quality, interactive features and user control.

Likewise, the player is designed to help NBCOlympics.com visitors to access roughly 3,000 hours of on-demand video, including full-event replays, highlights and interviews.All of the content will be available free of charge, and the video player will feature more than a dozen live video streams at peak times to ensure that fans will be able to watch favorite athletes across 25 Olympic sports.
MediaPost Publications - WPP Offers New Schematic For Watching Olympic Games: Live, On-Demand Web Player - 07/03/2008

We should all recall that Live8 was watched by 1.1 million viewers on MTV while - simultaneously - more than 5 million people streamed the uninterrupted concert on AOL Video. Do the math, folks. This may be the first Olympic Games for which more viewers watch online versus broadcast television. We shall see ...
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Fiber Optic Internet - Peek Into the Near Future

For the first time, more people around the world are signing up for fiber-optic broadband service than for cable Internet service, according to a British research firm.

Fiber providers added 4.2 million customers in the first quarter, while 2.5 million customers signed up for cable modems, according to a report released Wednesday by Point Topic.

The bulk of the new fiber subscribers are in China, where 2.5 million signed up, for a total of 16.7 million. The United States is in fourth place after Japan and Korea. Point Topic counted 303,000 new U.S. fiber customers, for a total of 2.6 million.

Fiber-optic Internet connections provide faster speeds, but the cost of the buildout is daunting. In deregulated telecommunications markets like those of the U.S. and Western Europe, carriers are unsure if fiber is worth the investment because they are competing there with cheaper technologies like cable and DSL, and it's unclear how much regulators will let them profit.

"It's difficult to persuade operators to make the sort of commitment needed when they can't guarantee their returns," said Oliver Johnson, chief executive of Point Topic. Without government funding, it will be a long time before fiber connections are widespread, he said.

Verizon Communications Inc. is the only major U.S. telecommunications company to pull fiber all the way to subscriber homes. Verizon accounts for slightly more than two-thirds of total U.S. fiber hookups. The rest of the fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, deployments are by small phone companies and by municipalities.

Cable modems are far more common, at 79.6 million worldwide, according to Point Topic, compared to 42.1 million fiber connections. More than half, or 40.1 million, of all cable subscribers are in the U.S., which has a comparatively extensive cable infrastructure.

Broadband over phone lines remains the most common means of Internet access. Globally, 238.1 million households had DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, an increase of 9.3 million over the quarter, Point Topic said.

MSNBC Articles
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Big-name brands booking ads on Facebook

With millions of users riveted to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, big-name brands are venturing into the newly charted territory of social media advertising, seeking to unravel the real opportunities from the flurry of hype."They are reading about it a lot, their children are using it," said Ian Schafer, CEO and founder of Deep Focus, an ad agency that created Facebook campaigns for HBO, Coca-Cola and New Line Cinema. "And they are finding that the social media networks are too big to ignore."
Big-name brands booking ads on Facebook
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Oh ... This hurts ...

The sad truth is that the blogosphere is as hit-driven as the rest of the world, with a tiny percentage of blogs getting a huge chunk of the traffic, and with many blogs simply going unread.
Portals - WSJ.com
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Q&A: Robert Rasmussen

Robert Rasmussen understands the challenges of creative integration better than most art directors from traditional agencies. The 39-year-old R/GA executive creative director on Nike made the move to the digital agency last July after working at JWT and Wieden + Kennedy.

At W+K, Rasmussen led one of the first "fractured narrative" campaigns for Sega Beta 7 in 2004, using various Web sites, viral video, blogs, TV, print and direct mail. For JWT's JetBlue account, he combined digital and traditional creatives into a single team that conceived "Story Booth" in 2006, an interactive video installation that gathered stories from airline fans for use across multiple online and offline channels.
Q&A: Robert Rasmussen
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About Us | Peer39* Semantic Advertising Solutions

Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39's patented algorithms understand page meaning and sentiment, and deliver the most relevant and effective brand safe display and text advertising.
About Us | Peer39* Semantic Advertising Solutions

Do yourself a favor and re-read that sentence a couple more times. Let me try to translate: the "patented algorithms" are computer program calculations that "understand page meaning and sentiment" -- literally reading the content and understanding it -- by using "natural language processing" and "machine learning" -- so the computer program processes language the same way our brains do, and the computer gets smarter, better and more accurate as it goes along.

This isn't science fiction. Get your head out of the sand. It's a wonderful, phenomenal breakthrough in being able to target advertising messages to people who are receptive to the offer in the moment.
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Skype Laughter Chain



Skype Laughter Chain

Here is another brilliant experiment in social media marketing. It's a smart twist on an idea we've seen used by Nike and Cuervo, for soccer and tequila shots respectively. However, by tying laughter to the Skype brand it raises the relevance of the Skype brand and brings the core product -- online telephony -- into sharper focus. The Viral Factory had a hand in this one. And it's an apt example of viral marketing.

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