E-tracking through your cell phone | Perspectives | CNET News.com
Read this for background on how your cell phone is - by default - a device that beams your location to anyone with the technology to track it (namely telecoms and, er, the government). Now, how many brainstorming sessions have YOU attended in which someone offers up the wish to "beam" offers to consumers via their cell phones based on the owner's location (near a store, mall, etc.). Well, the technology certainly exists. But the government has been using it secretly; and the press (and public who aren't living in denial) is creeped out by it. So ... don't plan on tracking consumers via mobile phone anytime soon. It's, um, creepy.
On Advertising: Putting Tube in the picture - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Viacom Outdoor, a billboard operator, is preparing what it calls the biggest deployment yet of digital video technology in the service of 'out of home' advertising, investing 72 million pounds, or $136 million, over the next two and a half years to install 2,200 screens in the subway network.
The screens will be placed alongside escalators and in hallways and other high-traffic areas of the Underground. Starting next year, Viacom plans to install devices that can project billboard-size moving video onto the curved walls of the 'Tube,' so passengers will be able to see the ads as they wait for their trains."
Girls Just Want to Be Plugged In -- to Everything - Los Angeles Times: "Julia's voracious appetite for all types of entertainment — and the tech-savvy ways she consumes it — is typical of girls her age, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll that surveyed the habits of 12- to 24-year-olds. Girls ages 12 to 14 are the most deeply motivated by TV: 65% say they are influenced by a TV show or network, are more likely to multi-task than boys of their age group and are easily bored — 41% say there are too few choices of entertainment."
Read on ... girls are also very, very much using instant messaging, e-mail, their iPods and ... yes ... even the Web. While they track with their boy peers in turning "multimedia" into "polymedia," they're still into the ol' idiot box. Worth the time to read ...
R.I.P. "Easy Tech/Gadget Shop for 'Mom'"
Best Buy to Close Studio D: "Best Buy Co., Richfield, Minn., plans to close its Studio D concept store in Naperville, Ill., when the lease expires at the end of the month, according to the Chicago Tribune. Best Buy opened the 5,000-sq.-ft. specialty store in 2004 in an attempt to capture middle-income to upper-income female customers. The female-friendly environment was created to educate its customers on how to use everyday gadgets like camcorders, digital cameras and MP3 players, or how to enhance photos with digital scrapbooking. It was the only such store in the country."
A Wake Up Call ... or Click?!?
MediaPost Publications - Web Spending In U.K. Surpasses Magazines, Outdoor - 08/14/2006: "ONLINE AD SPENDING IN THE United Kingdom came to approximately ?1.3 billion pounds (or $2.5 billion) last year, according to Ofcom, which regulates the U.K. communications industries. The agency also reported that Web spending surpassed outdoor advertising and consumer and business magazines last year, coming in fourth to newspapers, TV and direct mail."
Macworld: Music video made entirely from 16,000 digital pics
"Over 16,000 digital photographs were taken in the making of this stop animation music video. The video was shot entirely on a Canon EOS 5D digital stills camera. The result is an intriguing and strange fairy tale where nothing is what it seems. Tale of life, death and the infinite." - Australian singer-songwriter-digital artist Yunyu
No Big Demand for Small Screen - Los Angeles Times: "Entertainment purveyors may be scrambling to package their content into mobisodes, video downloads and podcasts, but a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that teens and young adults — the generation most likely to be the early adopters of this new technology — have yet to fully embrace it.
About half of young adults and 4 in 10 teenagers said they were uninterested in watching television shows or movies on computers, cellphones or hand-held devices such as video iPods, the poll found.
While more than 2 out of 5 teens and young adults indicated they were open to viewing this kind of content online, only 14% of teenagers said they wanted to watch television on a cellphone, and 17% said they would view programs on an iPod.
The findings suggest that networks are rushing to package content for these new platforms before even tech-savvy young consumers are hankering for the 'third screen' experience."
Viacom to buy Atom Entertainment - Yahoo! News: "Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks on Wednesday said it would buy Internet video and games company Atom Entertainment Inc. for $200 million as big media companies move to compete with online upstarts such as video leader YouTube.com."
MediaPost Publications - Oneupweb Launches Podcast Tracking - 08/08/2006: "Oneupweb on Monday unveiled a new podcast tracking service that will run on its servers rather than through metering technology linked to a panel of users.
Geared toward the corporate market, the PodTractor technology will provide data such as the top podcasts and episodes, the top referring podcast directories, and subscriber versus non-subscriber downloads. It will also include weekly and monthly trend graphs and audience loyalty tracking."
Vodafone Mobile Viral - Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts
Almost forgot this one. It's a great site, but it's NOT viral. It's video. Word of mouth is in effect. But this is a great Web site with great Web site content. Viral means content that engages people by entertaining them and persuading them to pass that content along to others who trust them.
Poor Customer Service Drives Consumers Elsewhere: "Retailers suffered the greatest number of customer service defections due to poor service, which was selected by 18 percent of respondents, followed by Internet service providers (15 percent), banks (14 percent), home telephone service providers (12 percent), wireless/cell phone companies (11 percent) and cable/satellite TV companies (10 percent). Utility companies and life insurers suffered the least at 3 percent. Other interesting findings showed that 57 percent of consumers said customer service technologies such as automated phone service and live online chat had not done anything to improve service levels. Satisfaction was lowest for automated phone service and highest for in-person services. Additionally, women were more likely than men to ask to speak with a supervisor when dealing with a bad customer service experience over the phone, while men were more likely to hang up the phone and call back. Consumers were most frustrated by being kept on hold too long (72 percent), having to repeat information to multiple service representatives (70 percent), the inability of agents to answer questions (66 percent) and customer service representatives marketing more services or products (60 percent). Younger consumers--those under 40--were the least loyal and significantly more likely to change providers because of poor service (54 percent versus 37 percent)."
Founder of BitTorrent unlocks the secrets of online file sharing / He figured out how to break up video into small pieces that can quickly be sent over the Net: "BitTorrent has become the most popular peer-to-peer tool on the Web, more so than the music file-sharing site Napster in its heyday, according to BigChampagne, a research firm. It has nearly 70 million users and takes up 30 to 40 percent of the world's Internet traffic, according to CacheLogic, a technology company that measures bandwidth use."
MediaPost Publications - Online Video Market To Surge Tenfold by 2010 - 08/03/2006: "THE GLOBAL MARKET FOR ONLINE video content will expand tenfold by 2010--topping 130 million households, according to a new report released Wednesday by market research company In-Stat.
The report, titled 'Online Content Aggregators--AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple--Slowly Defining the Future of Television,' asserts that consumers will very soon be able to access on demand a vast store of video programs. In-Stat predicts that this consumer-controlled delivery will be dominated by major content aggregators like AOL, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Apple."
Toyota Readies Comedy Series for Mobile Phones: "Toyota is spending more than $10 million to create and promote a comedy series designed specifically for multimedia mobile phones. "
How the Web Was Won: "While dot-coms came and went, and the Internet passed through periods of boom, bust and rebirth, the trends I wrote about in 1998 are surprisingly alive and intact today. The Web is still empowering individuals to be more creative , spawning new electronic middlemen and struggling to make advertising more personal."
This is a MUST read article !!!
ADFLOW Networks - Digital Signage - Dynamic P.O.P. With Zero I.T: "ADFLOW Networks provides dynamic digital signage solutions that leading retailers are using to deliver messaging to their customers where it matters most: right at the point-of-purchase."
DVR Users Watch More TV: Nielsen - 08/02/2006: "A NEW NIELSEN CLIENT ADVISORY on DVR usage gives some credence to the broadcast networks' contention that DVR users watch more television, perhaps as much as 29 percent more in prime time among the key 18-to-49 demo.
Adults with a DVR in the demo watched on average 6 hours and 14 minutes of live prime-time content per week, and an additional 1 hour and 49 minutes in playback mode with the device--a 29 percent increase. In total-day viewing, the Nielsen report shows that 18- to-49-year-olds averaged 25 hours and 9 minutes a week of live viewing, and an additional 3 hours and 54 minutes in time-shifted mode--a 16 percent increase."
MarketWatch: More companies trying to profit from online video - MarketWatch: "There is no doubt that 2006 will become known as the year online video became a hit."
These are among the results of the Girls Gone Wired survey by market researcher TRU for Oxygen. TRU surveyed 1,400 women and 700 men 15 to 49 years old to compare tech attitudes among the sexes.
The findings suggest advertisers need to address a broad audience and not talk down to women. Advertisers are best served communicating lifestyle benefits of tech products by showing what's useful about them, rather than focusing on specifications, Oxygen says."
About VoiceIndigo: "If they exist as a podcast, you can use VoiceIndigo to organize them into your own personal channels, listen on your Mobile Phone or PC, and share them with your Friends."
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