ClipBlast will use the Clearspring platform to distribute widgets that provide custom video content, channels and playlists. The widgets will feature the ClipBlast Intelligent Index, which enables users to pull video from thousands of sources and play the content from any Web page, social profile, blog or other Web location. Clearspring's real-time analytics tools will track and monetize the widgets and their activity.MediaPost Publications - ClipBlast Partners With Clearspring For Widget Distribution - 09/29/2008
MediaPost Publications - Texting Outpaces Calling On Mobile Phones - 09/23/2008While the number of calls has remained relatively steady, text messages have shot up 450% in the last two years.
Not surprisingly, the biggest gap between calls and text messages is found among teenage mobile customers. Those ages 13 to 17 sent or received on average 1,742 text messages a month, compared to only 231 calls.
For those ages 35 to 44, the ratio was about even at 223 to 236. And for mobile users 45 and over, voice is still the preferred method of communication.
In the continuing tug-of-war between what drives the train--creative or media--a top Unilever executive Thursday came out in favor of creative. While there is an argument that lackluster ads can still deliver a message with shrewd placement, Babs Rangaiah said if the creative does not drive demand, a strong media plan is not likely to save the day. Rangaiah, the director of global communications planning at Unilever, said if the creative appears banal, it's time to yank the media spend and use it somewhere else.MediaPost Publications - Advertising Week: The Future Belongs To Creative - 09/26/2008
Indeed, just 12% of searchers that converted into buyers had clicked on both branded and non-branded terms. The majority (51%) of conversions stemmed from branded terms alone, while 37% came from non-branded terms. "Most companies pick one or the other," said John McAteer, Google's industry director, retail. "Very few are spending accurately on both their branded terms and the category terms, and I think this info should be surprising to them."MediaPost Publications - Retailers Search Report: Use a 'Portfolio' of Search Tactics - 09/26/2008
"People go online to do many things," says early Internet pioneer Esther Dyson. "One of the reasons they go online is to create a presence. With Geo Cities, you had your presence in one place. With Facebook, you are distributing your presence to anyone who is your friend."MediaPost Publications - The Future Of Media: The Internet - 09/23/2008
Dyson says this extends well beyond the cross-linking aspect of Facebook pages to include widgets and even real-time applications such as Twitter.
"With Twitter, people are distributing their presence incessantly. Personally, I think that is a little obsessive, but what people are really doing is collecting social interactions," she explains. "If we had a biological urge to spread our genes, now people have the means to spread their presence."
|
So what's the future of the Internet? Well, technology, regulation, business models will surely be important factors, but if you look at what has really been shaping the Internet - both past and present - it is people. And some day, we may even send one over the Internet.
Ever since the first friend-of-a-friend proposed that the first web developer build him a site (for no money), the effort and cost associated with digitally driven creativity has been a misunderstood and, sometimes, thorny issue. Unlike TV-commercial production, where there are some established cost parameters and you can typically see the budget on the screen, it's tough to price innovative web work.Putting a Price on Digital Production - Advertising Age - Digital
"Some 70 percent of consumers who have responded to a mobile marketing offer say they’ve responded to a marketing text message - compared with 41 percent who’ve responded to a survey and 30 percent to email offers - according to the Direct Marketing Association"Among Mobile Marketing Techniques, Text Messaging Responded to Most Often - Media Buyer Planner
but ...
"One-third (33 percent) of the group that did not respond to any mobile marketing (76 percent) reported that they had never received an offer; lack of interest and cost of airtime was cited as the leading reasons by those who haven’t responded to mobile offers."
Today, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we believe the volume will continue to grow exponentially.Official Google Blog: The future of online video
Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.Porn passed over as Web users become social: author | Technology | Internet | Reuters
Adults Depend on Email as Source of Shared Content; Younger Generation Embraces Instant Messaging, Social Networking, Video Sharing and Text MessagingNew Independent Study Highlights Differences in How and Why Adults and Youth Share... | Reuters
Assume that, in the near future, connections between marketers and consumers will not be principally forged via display advertising but will be otherwise cultivated online. Assume that technology will offer more and more highly refined means for the marketer to learn about the consumer and the consumer to enjoy a real benefit in exchange -- search and widgets being exhibits A and B.Your Data With Destiny - Advertising Age - Digital
Thank you for so stipulating. But if the lingua franca of our online future is indeed personal information, where will that come from?
Consumers will be able to use digital products they buy on cell phones, set-top boxes, computers and other devices made by a slew of manufacturers. A virtual locker will store those digital products remotely, and the system will permit some copying onto physical media like DVDs.Entertainment, tech cos. to unify digital media - Yahoo! News
The technical details are still being worked out, so consumers aren't likely to see products until at least next year.
A recent study conducted by NewMediaMetrics found a significant difference in the types of digital behavior embraced by the X and Y generations when it comes to child raising. Gen Y is much more attached to media that connects them to other moms (online communities, blogs, video-sharing sites, etc.), while Gen X moms are more likely to embrace the web for task-oriented activities like shopping online and uploading photos. The study concludes that this might signify a shift in the way that marketers should be targeting the next new generation of moms online.Research Brief » Blog Archive » Y Moms Connect Through The Internet; X Moms Task
During the debates, the network bent on viewer-created content will broadcast Twitter messages — or "tweets" — from viewers. In close to real time, Current will display comments on the screen while Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama face off.Current TV to broadcast `tweets' during debates - Yahoo! News
BannerBlog : Where Banners Click
Um. It's a blog. About banners. And it's one of the most useful sites to show people how far online advertising has come.
BusinessWeek: Digital Content Wherever You Want ItHow do you make digital entertainment more entertaining? A sprawling consortium of Hollywood content providers, consumer electronics companies, and Internet players said on Sept. 12 that its members are planning to develop a standard that will let consumers buy movies and other digital content once and play them almost anywhere, on any type of device, without the onerous restrictions that have hobbled the growth of digital downloads.
The consortium is called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). Its members have been working since May to create rules that will let consumers share their purchased content on a number of devices in the home, or stream them over the Internet to laptops, cell phones, or other electronic gear. "No matter where you are in the world, if you previously purchased Spider-Man 3, you should be able to access Spider-Man and stream it," Mitch Singer, the group's president, said in an interview.
3M Beats Everyone to the Micro Projector Business | Popular Science
Why get excited over a micro-sized projector? Well it's a portable television - with a cable to our iPod Touch or iPhone (or Zune, I suppose).
So what might be a strategy going forward? As an avid watcher of television, particularly political news, complex dramas, and reality shows, I could imagine many scenarios in which incentives are created to watch shows in real time – viewers pose questions for the guest, guide alternative dramatic scenes, or decide what challenge the players have to perform. How cool would it be to watch Donald Trump, Sr. using Twitter on a BlackBerry in the middle of the live Apprentice finale? And the advertising underbelly is that you are statistically more likely to purchase paper towels, basketball sneakers, or a dream vacation cruise.Will New Media Save Television Ads? - Mashable
When a Zune owner hears a song on the radio that s/he likes, the user can immediately tag and download that song, or — if not connected to the internet at that moment — queue it for later purchase.Zune Goes Wireless, Sells Music on FM Radio - MarketingVOX
HBOlab Rides 'Cewebrity' Coattails in New Online Drama - MarketingVOXHoping to win online street cred (and a n ew captive audience), HBO cobbled together a collection of popular online entertainers for a new web series, Hooking Up, which debuts this fall.
Produced by experimental department HBOlab, the first episode goes live on October 1st. It will appear on video portals like YouTube and MySpace, as well as on its own website.
Earlier this year, Matthew Inman had achieved the notable distinction of vaulting a Web site called JustSayHi high into the results for a search on "online dating." But after he expanded his effort to new areas, Google obliterated the site from its search results.Want top search results? Tread carefully | News - Digital Media - CNET News
Inman had used an aggressive technique called widget bait to get good search results, but had to scrap a site that had been used for years and start from scratch. He was caught in a gray area in a sometimes-shady industry called search engine optimization (SEO) where it can be tough to distinguish a clever trick from a dirty trick.
People over age 40 participate heavily in word-of-mouth and value personal recommendations and expert opinions, but they have not embraced social networking or blogs despite being heavy users of other online services, according to a ThirdAge/JWT Boom study.Boomers More Traditional Online - Not into Blogs, Social Networking
As we develop new ways to dedicate on-screen real estate to delivering captivating, engaging ads, whether via banner, rich media or emerging formats, I fully expect online display advertising to become an increasingly important component of the media mix. We don’t require a click-through from a magazine ad or a TV ad or a newspaper ad or a radio ad, and all these impressions are valued by advertisers. Impressions online should have at least the same value, wholly independent of the direct linkage to a click. The opportunity to generate that action online is a profound value-add, but let’s make sure that we properly value the ad before we overlay the value-add. Advertising can have immediate effect, but it can also have quantifiable mid-term effect, and profoundly valuable long-term branding effect. And that is as true for online advertising as for any other medium.Metrics Insider » Blog Archive » In Praise of Online Advertising
Procter & Gamble is placing radio-frequency identification tags on products at a Metro Extra retail store in Germany so that when a customer pulls the product off the shelf, a digital screen at eye level changes its message.The Ad Changes With the Shopper In Front of It - WSJ.com
...
Most of the experimentation by marketers is being done with the new digital screens that are appearing next to cash registers and in store aisles. Because cameras are embedded in many of these digital screens displaying the ads, marketers are hoping to serve up ads based on the consumer's appearance.
For big media companies, the revenue raised by Web shows is "not the kind of money they are used to," Herb Scannell, a former president of Nickelodeon, said.Web TV producers struggle to find formula for success - International Herald Tribune
Jay Mariotti, the opinionated and polarizing sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has resigned after 17 years with the paper, he told the Tribune on Tuesday night.Controversial columnist Jay Mariotti resigns from Chicago Sun-Times -- chicagotribune.com
Just back from Beijing, where he covered the Olympics, Mariotti said in a phone interview that he decided to quit after it became clear while in China that sports journalism had become "entirely a Web site business. There were not many newspapers there." He added that most of the journalists covering the Games were "there writing for Web sites."
Mariotti, whose public battles with fellow staffers, team owners, managers, coaches and rival columnists are legendary, didn't disclose any specific plans except to say he will continue doing his regular stint on ESPN's "Around the Horn."
He said he "is talking with a lot of Web sites" and added that the future of his business "sadly is not in newspapers."
TV Land's "Generation BUY" study also found that 40 and 50-somethings are more open to new brands and less brand loyal than people under 40 making 40-59s "Free Agent Shoppers." Twenty-six percent of Boomers said they are not at all brand loyal versus 21% of Gen X and Millennials. In fact, Gen Y are the most likely to say that once they have made a commitment to a brand, they will stick with it, no matter what. The willingness of 40 and 50 year-olds to buy new brands carries over across virtually every product category including electronics, personal care products, restaurants, automobiles and more. And when compared to the Generation who came before them these "Free Agent Shoppers" have very different spending habits. No longer will this age group buy the same products based on lifelong brand decisions and spend less as they age. This demo is redefining brand loyalty and determining purchase decisions based on the effectiveness of products. Today's 40 and 50-somethings stick with a product for as long as it's good and fulfills their complex needs. They are not afraid to change for something they feel will improve their lives.Viacom
Diane Mermigas: On Media » Blog Archive » TV’s Salvation: Hyper-Local Cross-Platform ContentWith the door on innovation wide open, the government-mandated switch to digital could not have come at a better time. It will prove a saving grace for TV stations that proactively seek to redefine their local agendas and utilize interactivity to benefit consumers and advertisers. KWTV’s Web site is clear in its mission to keep its Oklahoma City constituents safe with its comprehensive storm and tornado education and alerts.
The Feb. 17, 2009 switch will be a make-or-break time for local TV broadcasters that are looking to thrive in a transitioning business. The Federal Communications Commission says 97% of all commercial TV stations are on the air in digital or will be ready by the deadline. Some of the new dollars are siphoned from local-market direct mail, television and newspapers. Some of it is new spending and an infusion of marketing and advertising dollars that would not be spent, particularly in an economic downturn.
"It's a country whose average broadband speed is 30 times slower than the world's leader. Some say that online video will cause its Internet service to grind to a halt. And its population lives in ignorance of the wide choices available to the rest of the world. Welcome to the United States of America."MediaPost Publications - [In]Sight: The Great Divide - 09/02/2008
TNT is turning to one of the more persuasive promotional techniques to drive tune-in for a new series: a freebie. The network will cover the toll charge for drivers in four metro areas this weekend in support of the premiere of drama "Raising the Bar."MediaPost Publications - TNT Uses Tolls In TV Marketing Ploy - 08/29/2008For two-hour periods in the afternoon, drivers in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta--all top-10 DMAs--and Orlando will be able to go through without having to forage for cash. The promotion runs today in Atlanta and on Monday in the other markets in advance of that night's 10 p.m. Labor Day show debut.
The booths across the toll plazas will be covered in signage. In Atlanta, drivers will sail right through. In the three other markets, they will stop and be handed a card reading, "Your free toll was courtesy of TNT and 'Raising the Bar.' 'Raising the Bar' premieres tonight on TNT."
