techPresident – Ask Sarah Palin: CA Dems' Interactive Billboard Goes Live [UPDATED]

techPresident – Ask Sarah Palin: CA Dems' Interactive Billboard Goes Live [UPDATED]

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MediaPost Publications - ClipBlast Partners With Clearspring For Widget Distribution - 09/29/2008

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

Note to self: Call them up and see what we can do together. Note to readers: There's absolutely no pain in reaching out to companies you read about in the press to start a conversation about working together. It amazes me how few businesspeople, especially agency people, actually do it. No wonder agencies are lagging behind.

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Texting Outpaces Calling On Mobile Phones

While 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.

MediaPost Publications - Texting Outpaces Calling On Mobile Phones - 09/23/2008

And, as I beat this drum over and over, here is more evidence of the new generation gap.

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Bob Garfield: Your Data With Destiny

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.

Thank you for so stipulating. But if the lingua franca of our online future is indeed personal information, where will that come from?

Your Data With Destiny - Advertising Age - Digital

I assume most people who see this will be reading Garfield's Ad Age column. That's why I don't repost it here. But every now and then, Bob's got something big and important to say. Today's column fits that bill.

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Will New Media Save Television Ads? - Mashable

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

What a great, original thought. In order to remain competitive in an increasingly time-shifted environment, TV content developers and the networks themselves will adapt. Of course they will. The audience can be given incentives to watch live. Only some formats will stick. But it's adaptation that drives innovation. Or vice versa.

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Ugh ...

Teens would seemingly be the prime target for mobile advertising, be it via text messages or the mobile Web, but research from comScore reveals that while U.S. kids ages 12-17 are cell phone-savvy, they are not particularly receptive to mobile ads. In fact, the relative simplicity of their phones and the fact that nearly 70% of teens need their parents to pay the bill (and thus, green-light extras like data plans) makes them poor campaign targets.

MediaPost Publications - Mobile Teens: Savvy, Chatty And Don't Like Ads - 08/29/2008

Articles like this one make me unhappy. I want and want and want to sell mobile campaigns to my agency clients because I genuinely believe the platform can make an impact. But the metrics make it tough. How much to spend? What's going to be the ROI? How to test the most effective messaging? Interestingly, if teens aren't exactly the best target, maybe Mom is.

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TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

TV advertising is poised to change dramatically over the next decade, embracing the kind of targeting and user control already common on the Web, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
 
Forrester lays out a decade-long evolution that will ultimately result in most programming delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions.
 
This "Personal TV," as Forrester calls it, would also deliver a Web-like experience for consumers, with a portal-like menu of programming options and search functions.

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

More evidence for one of my favorite media conspiracy theories -- "mass" media out of home while "personal" media moves indoors.

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Fox to stream premieres for dorms

In a first, Fox will stream the premiere of "Fringe" and season opener of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" online at the same time as they bow on TV.

But there's a catch: Only computer users on college campuses will be able to log in to watch the simul-stream.

Move helps Fox expose the trend-setting college audience -- who are more likely to have computers than TVs in their dorm rooms -- to the shows. 

Computers logging into Fox.com from a college-based .edu domain will be given full streaming access to "Terminator" on Sept. 8, the same night it returns on Fox, and the series premiere of "Fringe" Sept. 9, when it launches on the net.

Fox to stream premieres for dorms - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety

This is great. Audience segmentation has been greatly enabled by the roll out of client-server database technology. We can apply segmentation to nearly every form of communication we design. Why not!?!?

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U.S. on Track to Top Mobile Web Market, Study Says

After years of lagging behind European countries, the U.S. is poised to take the top spot for mobile Web usage by month's end, according to data collected by technology firm Bango, which provides mobile Internet access platforms to 100,000 Web sites worldwide.

In July, Bango reported the U.K. was top ranked in mobile Web usage, accounting for almost 19.4 percent of the worldwide total, just ahead of the U.S., which collected about 18.9 percent of total usage. Rounding out the top five were India (10.8 percent), South Africa (8.8 percent) and Indonesia (4.1 percent).

U.S. on Track to Top Mobile Web Market, Study Says

But can we trust Bango's numbers?! Don't get me wrong, I really want to. In fact, I want to sing the mobile gospel in every meeting and brainstorm.

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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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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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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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Internet Advertising Revenues Up 18.2% YOY, $5.8 Billion for Q1 ’08, Second Highest Quarter Ever

“We continue to experience significant growth and vitality in interactive marketing, media and advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “We expect growth to continue, as consumers spend more and more time online, and marketers find more – and more innovative – ways to reach them through digital media.”

Internet Advertising Revenues Up 18.2% YOY, $5.8 Billion for Q1 ’08, Second Highest Quarter Ever



Quietly. Slowly. This enormous industry has grown into a beast. This is an exciting time in the media space. However, it is volatile. Hang tight.

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Cannes Fringe

CannesFringe reports from the Advertising Festival

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Tracking Video: How Audience Behavior Measurement Works

How It Works
Our patent-pending data collection approach captures every video interaction in every video from every viewer, from play to pause to rewind to forward-to-a-friend and more. When you're planning online video marketing and advertising strategies, Visible Measures VisibleSuite provides precise performance measurements including how audiences find, view, interact with, and share each online video.

Tracking Video: How Audience Behavior Measurement Works

I may have blogged this before. The URL is cached in my Flock browser. So ... pardon the redundancy. But this company has new news. And they're the only one I've seen that promise (at least) to track the impact of online video beyond counting views.

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Advertising - Shows Created by Brands Walk Tightrope With Viewers - NYTimes.com

Dos Equis beer will present a reality series on the Mojo HD cable network that will chronicle the search for an assistant to a character who is featured in the brand’s advertising campaign, a person of wealth and taste known as the Most Interesting Man in the World.

Advertising - Shows Created by Brands Walk Tightrope With Viewers - NYTimes.com

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The Location Is The Message

To illustrate how the new life pattern research can be applied, Bowen provided the “Digital Outsider” with detailed data on the “mobile millennials” cluster. If you look at the illustration on this page, you’ll see a map with push-pin icons highlighting key intervals for reaching the valuable consumer targets, starting when they leave their homes in the morning and fill up their tank at a local gas station, to the video rental store they stop at on their way home from work or school in the evening.

“The idea is to map that back to where advertisers can most effectively intercept them during their daily life, so that they can reach them in the most contextually relevant environment,” Bowen explains.

Digital Outsider » Blog Archive » The Location Is The Message

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FT.com / Companies / US & Canada - ‘Lifestreaming’ challenges social network hierachy

FT.com / Companies / US & Canada - ‘Lifestreaming’ challenges social network hierachy

A new generation of social networking sites is gaining support in Silicon Valley, challenging the established models of leaders MySpace and Facebook.

FriendFeed, a service founded by the creators of Google Maps and Gmail, is at the head of an anarchic counter movement of “lifestreaming”, where users themselves aggregate and order their online social activities from multiple sources.

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Helpful. Or Creepy?

What if you could look at your cell phone and see a heat map of where everybody in the city was at that very moment? The more people at any given location, the redder it would appear on the map. That’s what Citysense does. It is a mobile application that is supposed to help you figure out where the hottest clubs and night spots are so you can go there (or avoid them, depending on your preference).

It senses where the most popular places are based on the location information emitted by everyone’s cell phones, shows the places with the most activity, and then links into Yelp or Google to help you find out what is at that location. Over time, it learns about where you like to go (fancy restaurants or punk rock clubs) and shows you other people like you, and where they are—right now. And it does all of this anonymously. (You can’t see your where your actual friends are). Citysense only works in San Francisco right now. It is available as a mobile download for the Blackberry and soon for the iPhone as well.

The application is essentially a demonstration for a startup called Sense Networks that is emerging from stealth mode today. Citysense is built on top of the company’s main technology platform, Macrosense. The company ingests billions of data points about people’s location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time).

Location-Tracking Startup Sense Networks Emerges from Stealth To Answer the Question: Where Is Everybody?

The question is, Is this an advertising medium? Because you can't advertise ON it. But if you're an advertiser with a product that can benefit from the buzz of being "hot spotted" in real time, then this is thrilling. From TechCrunch. Thanks to Mike Brooks for the tip.

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Lifestyles Condoms Aim for the Funny Bone

Lifestyles Condoms new series of online videos entitled Noah and Baron Talk Man Sh*t. The Webisodes, posted at www.lifestyles.com, run three to five minutes and depict American stand-up comedians Noah Starr and Baron Vaughn as they venture across Europe.

Lifestyles is looking to inform consumers about their product both by using humor and with open discussions about sex. "The Noah and Baron videos embrace the idea that safe sex can be fun sex at the same time," said Carol Carozza, vp of marketing at Lifestyles Condoms, Red Bank, N.J. "Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, but safety and open lines of communication should always be top priority."The video shorts are representative of Lifestyles Condoms' advertising theme, "What's yours?" Agency AMP, Boston, handled production, which took place in The Netherlands, Sweden and Slovakia.

Lifestyles Condoms Aim for the Funny Bone

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