IAC/InterActiveCorp is launching a contextual ad network to complement its existing search ad distribution network. It hopes the offering will become a viable alternative for publishers to Google's AdSense network.
The ads, which will be incorporated into its Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) platform, will launch at the end of May on several IAC-owned properties, such as Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch.
Delicious Library
This is how it works. You hold up a package barcode to your webcam and it retreives product info via the Internet. You keep scanning and build your own personal library or home inventory. This desktop app is Mac OS X only. But the idea for how it works is extensible to practically any platform. For example, somebody else already make a Palm OS app that essentially does the same thing.
THIS SEASON'S SURPRISING DIP IN broadcast ratings has many analysts digging deeper into the reasons, exploring type of programming, DVR usage, the Internet and even the usual suspect, cable TV.
Live-only broadcast ratings are down anywhere from 11% to 15%--a steep fall off from the last three years, when broadcast viewership has been basically flat versus the seasons before.
Just a handful of network prime-time shows have seen ratings improvements over a year ago, such as "House" and "America's Funniest Videos." But the list is long on the other side of the ledger. Shows like "24," "Desperate Housewives,' "Lost," and "CSI" have taken sizable dips.
"Emotive's flagship product, the patent-pending "Push Ringer", reverses the common ringtone model. It enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone allowing the caller, not the called person, to set the tone. The chosen Ringer is transmitted to the recipient's handset and temporarily overrides the phone's pre-set ringer. The ringers can comprise audio, video, animations, avatars or flash files." Fortunately, only works on 3G, 4G and VoIP services.
The Momentum Effect, a metric for gauging what's more commonly known as Word of Mouth, is what comes into play when people spread the word about products via social networking services such as MySpace, according a research report published Monday by Fox Interactive Media (FIM).
FIM said the Momentum Effect is "a new metric coined by Marketing Evolution," one of the companies that conducted the study, which investigated social networking sites and marketing. Joining marketing consultancy Marketing Evolution in the study involving about 3,000 Internet users were marketing services outfit Isobar, agency Carat USA, and research firms TRU and TNS.
Gaia Online, a San Jose-based virtual world and social networking site has managed to keep under the radar while attracting troves of teens - clocking two million unique visitors last month, with 85 percent living in the U.S., according to GigaOM.
Some 250 challengers shunned the warmest day of the year for a dark ballroom where they battled it out for a chance to take on the reigning West Coast champion, 21-year-old Eli Tirosh, for the title of US Texting Champion.
Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever's message -- checked for exact punctuation -- reached the judges first.
The text tests ranged from "faster than a speeding bullet..." and "what we do in life echoes in eternity" to the less poetic "OMG, nd 2 talk asap," which for those over 30 means "Oh my God, need to talk as soon as possible."
Thus ends the name Froogle as a Google brand. It was launched in 2002, never really went anywhere, and was unceremoniously dumped from the Google home page last year in favor of video search. Traffic to the site fell dramatically.
See? Not everything Google touches turns to gold. Some of it actually can fail. Sometimes, it does.
Here's an introduction to 10 of the most successful entrepreneurs in Second Life. All financial figures are converted to U.S. dollars from Linden dollars, the currency of Second Life, using current exchange rates
THE Association of National Advertisers has found, that marketers' main goal continues to be building and maintaining brand equity. In a new survey with market researcher Guideline Inc., 75% of marketers say their brand equity is the most important element to a company's success, and that the best way of building that equity -- for 76% of the survey's respondents -- is television.
In looking at a key subset of all brands -- younger skewing products -- the survey says Internet brand-building is the most important. In particular, for young and emerging or strong brands, Internet banner advertising, ranked third overall, 56%, as most effective.
What are the tell-tale signs of a brand gone wrong?
Seventy percent of the time, it results from the customer rate of return business waning; it goes to the competition. High on this critical list: when consumers knock down a brand from a rating of "excellent." Additionally, consumers don't think much of products that are sold through promotions, discounts or price reductions.
To combat this devaluation of brands, marketers suggest product innovation, exploring new target consumers, starting up new researching with focus groups and refocusing overall marketing.
The DVR programming via cell phones allows U-verse TV and Internet customers to schedule shows to be recorded, as well as delete programs. The new service augments an existing option to program U-verse DVRs remotely via computers.
"Any television viewer can relate to the frustration of forgetting to program his or her DVR," says Rick Welday, chief marketing officer-AT&T Consumer. "Now, whether they're at the airport or stuck in traffic, AT&T U-verse customers can rest assured they won't miss their favorite shows."
The online company hosted more than 500 advertising executives and media planners at a "First Look" showcase Tuesday — what Chief Executive Randy Falco described as a "coming out party for AOL" as a major online advertising platform.
"What we're interested in is making sure when advertisers and agencies are deciding what their budgets are for the coming year, they understand there's an enormous shift going on," the former NBC executive told The Associated Press.
Last week Google announced a free voice beta called Google Voice Local Search, which is a telephone information service. Arnold referred to the effort as "Google baby steps," but he sees it as pointing the way for the company's future in voice search.
Users call 1-800-GOOG-411 to search for business titles. Some calls are connected to Google's maps database.
Marketers are finding themselves in an increasingly frantic race to get people talking about their brands. The desire to produce something "viral" is nearly ubiquitous in the marketing world. But it's unclear who exactly "consumers" are these days. We don't even know what that word means any more. Can consumers be producers? Yes. Can they be users? Yes. Can they be active participants, members of niche communities, or even critics capable of effectively mobilizing others? Yes, yes, and yes.
As TV stations prepare for the switch to all-digital broadcasting by February 2009, new ways of monetizing the spectrum are being explored, including pushing content to scores of new mobile vide devices entering the market. In 2007, the sale of portable and mobile devices capable of video is estimated to reach 100 million units.
A company called ShopText has introduced a system that lets people buy products instantly using text messages, a process that eliminates the need to go to a store or even visit a Web site. For instance, a woman seeing an ad for a pocketbook in a magazine can order it on the spot simply by sending the text code found beside the item through her cellphone.
Google says it has agreed to buy online advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. The acquisition will give Google the ability to sell online ads that appear on Web sites other than those in its network. The deal will mean that Web site publishers will get access to new advertisers, and agencies and advertisers will be able to manage search and display ads in one centralized spot, Google says.
... So, that 1.6 billion for YouTube was just chump change!!!
MEREDITH IS LAUNCHING BETTER.TV, the company's first broadband video network, gleaning content from its array of home-making magazines. Better.tv will also offer original content and programming from the company's television stations, book division and other areas. With some 20 video channels--spanning food, family, home, style, remodeling, entertainment, relationships, fitness and health topics--Better.tv can mine material from its magazine stable.
Those publications include Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies' Home Journal, More, Family Circle, Parents and Fitness.
Like other media companies, Meredith wants to be a "360-degree" company for its advertisers, encompassing all relevant media extensions, including a broadband Internet channel. Meredith Publishing Group President Jack Griffin says the company currently reaches 75 million women through its media properties and has a "unique understanding of how to deliver service-based information to them..."
Better.tv will also film on location. One of its first efforts is a behind-the-scenes look at the Family Circle Cup women's tennis tournament.
From Mediapost
Problem: TV watchers don't want their shows interrupted by ads. Solution: Make the show the ad.
That's one approach being used by marketers as they try to keep consumers' attention.
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The application requires a PC or other server to act as an intermediary but will allow people to log in to Second Life and control their avatar from their cellphone.
More at Comverse.com
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A market research firm has won a contest looking for the most realistic and profitable business model for execution within the virtual world of Second Live, reports CNET. The firm, Market Truths, was determined to have the most potential for profit of the business plans submitted to the contest, which was sponsored by public relations firm Edelman and Second Life-services provider Electric Sheep.
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As technology allows consumers to access the Internet with their cellphones, many big companies have launched mobile versions of their Web sites, including big media brands like MTV and ESPN and news sites like USA Today and The Weather Channel.
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More than one-third of TV viewers spend some part of their week watching TV at a location other than their own home, most typically in another person’s home, according to an Arbitron study released Wednesday.
Of the Arbitron out-of-home survey respondents, 25% watched TV at someone else’s home; 11% watched at a restaurant or bar; 7% at work; 5% at a hotel/motel or vacation home; and 12% at any other location away from home.
Nearly equal percentages watched a sporting event, 20%, as a local station’s newscast (19%) and an episode of a TV series (18%) away-from-home.Arbitron also found that women are almost as likely as men to watch TV in some place other than their homes.
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An Alpha Mom typically has money to spend, and — key for marketers — she is, as the label implies, a leader of the pack who influences how other moms spend.
She's also wired — online 87 minutes a day, estimates ComScore Networks, an Internet market research specialist — and she spends a hefty 7% more than the typical Internet user. The impact of her purchases or what she touts can spread on the Internet far beyond her e-mail list or blog.
If your product or service passes the Alpha Mom test, it's gold. That's why the nation's biggest marketers, from Procter & Gamble to General Motors to Nintendo, are focusing on this remix of the modern mom.
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CLEAR CHANNEL OUTDOOR IS EXTENDING its digital billboard network to four new markets, the company announced today, bringing high-tech billboards to Akron and Columbus, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Wichita, Kansas. All four cities are located on or near major interstate highways, which are crucial for reaching a large commuter audience. The additions bring Clear Channel's network of digital billboard markets to 10.*The billboard shown above is NOT part of the digital billboard network. Just testing.
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HISPANICS ARE AVID CONSUMERS OF all media--more so, in fact, than the general U.S. population. And they expect TV and Internet content to be delivered in tandem, according to a new joint study titled "Connected Culture" from the Yahoo-Telemundo partnership, with Experian Simmons Research. The data--gathered in an online and phone survey of more than 2,600 Hispanics ages 18-55 who regularly use Spanish at home--should stoke advertisers' already burning interest in the Hispanic market, the nation's fastest-growing ethnically and linguistically defined demographic group.
According to the study, the average Hispanic consumer spends more than half of each day somehow engaged with television, the Net or communications devices, like mobile phones--often simultaneously. Respondents record an average 13.5 hours spent with media out of a total 51-hour multitasking day. Fifty percent of U.S. Hispanics also use the Internet while watching TV--in what Jose Rivera-Font, general manager, Yahoo North Latin America, referred to as "media meshing" behavior.
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It sounds like something straight out of a futuristic film: House hunters, driving past a for-sale sign, stop and point their cellphone at the sign. With a click, their cellphone screen displays the asking price, the number of bedrooms and baths and lots of other details about the house.
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Emerging Internet publishing technology Ajax, which promises to make Web sites more dynamic, is threatening to make one of the industry’s core metrics—the page view—irrelevant. And as the Web gets more interactive, the way online advertising—estimated to hit $20 billion this year—is measured and sold is set to undergo a dramatic change.
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Twingly Screensaver Beta
Burned by the Windows-only requirement again, darn! Click through to this page and see a YouTube video that demo's what Twingly does though. It's fantastic. I've seen a similar visualization at Google's office wherein they show vertical bars ascending from points on a spinning globe to quantify search activity. Twingly does it for blogging activity. Very cool.
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Brand Monitoring - Yet Another New Marketing Practice
Online Reputation Management Basics | WebProNews: "Companies that want to protect their brand visibility on the web would do well to make optimizing their brand content a best practice. Optimizing all digital communications including: PR, marketing, SEO, HR, investor relations and related electronic content that is publicly available on the web as well as social media: text, images, audio, video will produce more branded content in the SERPs. Doing so doesn’t necessarily put the brand in control, but it’s a much better situation than scrambling after the fact."
My top list of Brand Monitoring service providers -
Advertising Age - Bob Garfield's Chaos Scenario 2.0: "Maybe you'd better lean forward. Presently you will be given five reasons to consider something barely imaginable: a post-apocalyptic media world substantially devoid of brand advertising as we have long known it."
This is a tough read. It's long for Garfield. And it rings more than one bell - the final one for advertising as we know it. I have to date downplayed pronouncements about the iminent collapse of the marketing communications agency vertical. This article is the first to give me pause.
Second Life Loses Luster: "'The most successful business people in Second Life have taken a look at the commercial landscape and determined where needs exist,' said Catherine Smith, Linden Labs' director of marketing. 'If you are not authentic and do not offer anything to the community, you are likely to be ignored.'"
TV, Print Trigger Online Searches
Traditional advertising plays a key role in prompting consumers to search for merchandise online, according to a study by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) and BIGresearch.
Roughly half of the consumers told researchers they take cues from TV, magazine and newspaper ads to determine when and where to shop online. In order of preference, 47% said they turned to magazine ads, followed by TV commercials and newspaper ads at 43% each. (Respondents could choose more than one medium.)
In-store promotions motivated 27% to search for products online. When it came to coupons, far more women than men used them for online guidance, at 42% of women versus 29% of men.
The survey findings seem to reinforce the evidence that many marketing agencies are collecting, which indicates online and offline marketing programs work better than online-only or offline-only campaigns.
Microsoft Launches Clickable Video Ads for Kohl's: "If the Daisy Fuentes shirt in that online video ad looks like something you'd want to buy, go ahead and click it. Microsoft has made it possible for viewers watching ads for Kohl's department stores to click the images they like for more information, or even buy the items directly from Kohls.com.
The Video HyperLink (VHL) technology was developed by Microsoft's adCenter Labs, and is the group's first stand alone product. The Kohl’s ad (click to view) is currently running only on the MSN Video portal."
Kohl's and Microsoft have launched spots that let you click on specific items (in this case clothing) while watching the commercial.
This is online-only at the moment. Remember though, Microsoft is deep into Gaming via Xbox Live. Plus MS is going deep into on-demand video via your TV at home. Also, MS is delving into TV via your smart phone/PDA with Windows Mobile (like the Moto Q and Palm 700W, for example).
All this adds up to clickable commercials on three screens - Internet, TV and phone.
Not a pipe dream. It's already here.
IS VIRAL JUST A FAD?!?!
MediaPost Publications - Viral's Not For Just Anyone: 50% In Survey Rate It Fad For The Lucky Few - 03/19/2007: "'What it means is a lot of people are asking for viral campaigns because they see a lot of free reach and the creators getting a lot of PR. There's a lot of desire to do it, but viral is dependent on something big, outrageous or new. Dove already did 'Evolution.' How many more can do it now?
"
MediaPost Publications - Say Hello To Mobile Change - 03/16/2007: "Although mobile devices have penetrated nearly 80% of U.S. households and SMS has penetrated over one-third of all users, data services drastically lag behind. Only a fraction of consumers report using data services and the mobile Internet. It seems that in the rush to advance the mobile market, the consumer is the holdup."
Harris Interactive | News Room - Harris Interactive Reveals New Research on Consumer Acceptance of Mobile Advertisements:
"Incentive-based advertisements
According to the study, a surprising 35 percent of adult cell phone users are willing to accept incentive-based advertisements. Of these adults, 78 percent say the best incentive would be cold hard cash, followed by free minutes (63%), free entertainment downloads (e.g. ring tones, games; 40%) and discount coupons (40%).
Preferred method of delivery
The survey further reveals that over half (56%) of those who are at least somewhat interested in receiving ads on their cell phone say they would prefer to receive them via text message, while 40 percent would like to receive them as a picture message. Less than one-quarter of adults would choose to receive them as videos (24%), while others would have them transferred automatically to email (23%), as a voice message (22%) or something else (7%)."
Also, MediaPost wrote an overview with additional insights - Read it here.
The days are numbered for the 30-second TV spot - Mar. 14, 2007: "'There's no question that one of the problems with the traditional 30-second TV ad is digital video recorders. The whole market is under threat from TiVo-like functions. And it's going to get easier to avoid commercials with Apple TV,' said Tim Wilson, a general partner with Partech International, a venture capital firm that is looking to invest more heavily in online video and other forms of new media."
Uh oh. Here we go again. The "end of advertising as we know it." This is bound to come up once a decade. When was that Wired magazine cover story anyway? Oh yeah ... 1994!
More "end of advertising" pronouncements -
Advertising Age (2006)
Sergio Zyman's book from 2002
and without further ado,
The amazingly prescient Wired (issue 2.02) article "Is Advertising Dead?" from 1994
Priceless | Golf | MasterCard®
Those maniacs at Oddcast have done it again. This time they've synchronized Web video with phone-based audio in real time. How it works: You call a toll free number to speak with one of four golf pros (Ben Crenshaw, Arnold Palmer).
When you connect, the online video syncs in real-time with the voice on the phone. Caveat: It's not flawless. There's a lag if you're on a cell phone, for example.
MyStrands Mobile Adds Community To Streaming Audio: "Symbian Series 60 users should take a look at MyStrands mobile, a compelling music sharing app that creates social playlists - you and your buds can share music - and discovery though tags and search. It even supports multiple languages so you and your friends in France can share your Serge Gainsbourg playlists.
The service accesses a collection of six million songs, so hopefully there’s something out there for you, and connects directly to your MyStrands page."
Bracket-O-Matic
This makes a good case for doing something interactively engaging when otherwise the brand has no real fit in a massive sponsorship.
It's a stretch, but I suppose I'd draw a link between Coke Zero's re-formulation of the classic Coca-Cola ("we should sue ourselves") and configuring the NCAA Tournament Bracket.
Might be jumping the shark. But in my online promotions experience that's often as much of a link as you get.
Tech Firms Push to Use TV Airwaves for Internet - washingtonpost.com: "A coalition of big technology companies wants to bring high-speed Internet access to consumers in a new way: over television airwaves. Key to the project is whether a device scheduled to be delivered to federal labs today lives up to its promise.
The coalition, which includes Microsoft and Google, wants regulators to allow idle TV channels, known as white space, to be used to beam the Internet into homes and offices."
Get the Internet with rabbit ears. Welcome to the weird wide web, friends.
Viacom sues YouTube over copyrights - Yahoo! News: "Viacom claims that YouTube has displayed nearly 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube and represents the biggest confrontation to date between a major media company and the hugely popular video-sharing site, which Google bought in November for $1.76 billion."
And now ... the sound of a bubble bursting ... or maybe not!
WHAT IS VIRAL?!?!
MediaPost Publications - Dairy Queen Hopes FlameBlower Advergame Will Go Viral - 03/13/2007: "DAIRY QUEEN LAUNCHED THE DQ FlameBlower advergame, and will award a $25 gift certificate daily to a randomly selected player to encourage participation. "
Another glowering example of the confusing misuse of "viral" in marketing. DQ's online game is plainly an interactive promotion, not a viral marketing campaign. Of course they hope it "goes viral." Why not just say they hope it catches on?!
Study: U.S. game console ownership rising rapidly | CNET News.com: "Media research company Nielsen released a study Monday showing that the number of U.S. households supplementing their televisions with video game consoles has risen more than 18 percent since 2004.
The study, detailed in a report called 'The State of the Console,' was conducted from the fourth quarter of 2004 through the fourth quarter of 2006 by the company's Nielsen Wireless and Interactive Services division. Nielsen found that the number of U.S. households with televisions that also have video game consoles has risen from 38.6 million to 45.7 million homes over those two years."
Notable: There are 110 million TV households in the USA. That means gaming consoles have reached nearly half of all US homes.
MTV Networks embraces Web chaos to regain viewers: "The network, which already has 150 Web sites in 162 countries, plans to build literally thousands more, hoping to draw viewers by letting them watch, contribute and even re-edit its television shows.
'People tend to find content on the Internet through thousands of front doors as opposed to one,' said Mika Salmi, the new digital president of MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom Inc."
Is this an admission from the former music video network that its audience has moved on? YouTube, MySpace and Facebook account for hundreds of millions of video views per day. The most popular are (1) movie trailers and (2) music videos. MTV risks overreaching and overspending to launch "thousands of sites" in this strategic move to recapture some of its audience.
The end of analog TV broadcasting | Chicago Tribune: "For the 15 percent of American households that rely on over-the-air broadcast signals, their sets will just go dark, unless they have tossed that analog TV set in favor of a digital one or have purchased a digital-to-analog converter box."
On Feb 17, 2009 all over-the-air TV signals in the USA will convert to digital. Yes, television will remain free. But the rabbit ears of yore will no longer capture the signal.
Importantly, once all TV is digital then every tuner, every set and every show will be linked to some kind of database. That means we can potentially track every show on every set in every household. Whoa.
No Rest for the Wiki
BusinessWeek is consistently on top of new media tools and trends. Not only am I surprised that BW's hotter than, say, Wired on all this stuff, but I'm impressed by how smart BW is IT. (Now if I could only get more colleagues to read it.)
To wit, this excellent report :
"Welcome to the world of corporate wikis. The sites that make it easy for people to add and edit information have revolutionized encyclopedia creation, evidenced by the growth of Wikipedia (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/7/04, "Wikis' Winning Ways"). And though they've been used by corporations for a few years, they're making deeper inroads lately and are gradually rewriting the rules of collaboration at companies as varied as Sony (SNE), Xerox (XRX), Disney (DIS), and Microsoft (MSFT)."
"Yahoo Answers, with the ‘flick of a switch’, has now become the Answers Network and in terms of social network size, is now one of the largest social networks online. Yes, Yahoo Answers now rivals MySpace and Facebook in terms of International reach and active member numbers.
But size is not all the Answers Network is about, it’s about niche social networking and in the tradition of other Yahoo social properties like MyBlogLog, Flickr’s “Contacts” and del.icio.us’ “Your Network”, the Yahoo! Answers Network Beta is working to enhance the overall user experience by helping people connect to the information they care about most through others with similar interests." (from this Search Engine Journal article)
Search Wars 2.0
There's a new global war a-brewin' again over the search space. This time it's about relevance and people-assisted intelligence versus the late '90s blitzkreig of pure indexing power (which Google won after we all crowned Yahoo!).
Look out for these upcoming "major" players:
- Wikia
- Cha Cha
- Divvio
THE WEBCAM WAVE ARRIVES!
CNBC's Fast Money and Logitech invite you go "Face 2 Face" with your webcam: "For the first time on primetime television, you can go on air via your webcam to ask your question. "
Watch out! Here comes the Webcam wave ... it's a trend-in-the-making.
