Alpha Moms leap to top of trendsetters - USATODAY.com

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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MediaPost Publications - Clear Channel Expands Digital Billboard Network - 04/02/2007

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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MediaPost Publications - Advertisers: Hispanics Love Media, Like TV/Net Bundled - 03/29/2007

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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New Bar Codes Can Talk With Your Cellphone - New York Times

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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FastCompany.com - Perceptive Pixel Showcase

You may ask yourself, "What's this got to do with advertising?" Well ... let's say you've got a really big flat-screen TV in your house. Who said you have to navigate the thing with an infrared remote?! Isn't that sort of so 20th century?!?

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Mediaweek - Ajax to End Page View Metrics

Ajax Puts Page-View Math, Web Ad Sales in Peril

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 -

• MotiveQuest
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics
• Cymfony (TNS)
  
• New Media Strategies

Advertising Age - Bob Garfield's Chaos Scenario 2.0

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

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.'"

"ATT said it was working with Atlanta-based mobile banking firm Firethorn, online commerce website CheckFree and a set of US banks to fulfill the vision.While people in parts of Europe and Asian already have the option of using mobile telephones to make store purchases or tend to banking, the innovation is in developmental stages in the United States.

"This is revolutionary," industry analyst Jeff Kagan told AFP.

"This is the first wave for cell phone banking here in the United States. We've been watching for years overseas. It is a proven system. People love it.""

From MarketingVOX.com
"Video ads within online TV programming is great for brand awareness but repetition is watering that awareness down, according to a new study from MillwardBrown, reports ClickZ."

One line of thought is to jump early because every new wave comes fast and fades faster. Smirnoff's "Tea Partay" viral video killed in August 2006. Would it have a chance today? Not with about 150,000 YouTube uploads a day. It's just part of the clutter.

Now we know for certain that hundreds of millions of US Internet users are watching video online. Many are downloading favorite shows. And already ad effectiveness is eroding. That's too bad. It hints at one important point, though. Effective interactive campaigns provide engagement and "lean forward" experiences. Just watching video - whether it's online or on TV - is neither.

Finally, Somebody Is Measuring Mobile
M:Metrics is trying become the Nielsen of the mobile phone advertising world. "MeterDirect, the service is targeted to programmers, media planners and advertisers needing to know details about the way people are using mobile devices." Read more here.

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.

MediaPost Publications - Viral's Not For Just Anyone: 50% In Survey Rate It Fad For The Lucky Few - 03/19/2007

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

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

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®

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

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

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 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!

MediaPost Publications - Dairy Queen Hopes FlameBlower Advergame Will Go Viral - 03/13/2007

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

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 | Technology | Internet | Reuters

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

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)."

International Social Network of 90 Million Users

"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.

iMedia Connection: The Value in Mobile Marketing

iMedia Connection: The Value in Mobile Marketing
When executing integrated campaigns, allow mobile to play a prominent role in the campaign. This will allow interactive channels the opportunity to perform at their best, and it reduces the overuse of more disruptive media channels. For example, McDonald's recently executed a mobile campaign to promote the Big Mac. As a part of the campaign, the company integrated a mobile call-to-action alongside a website address on Big Mac packaging to allow customers to register and participate in the promotion. To McDonald's surprise, 40 percent of the customers that participated in the campaign opted-in via their mobile phones. Needless to say, the program was deemed a tremendous success.

TheNewsRoom
The Web 2.0 phenomenon continues to solve many of the mundane problems associated with publishing Web sites for corporate brands that have little if anything of substance to say. Now there's the News Room, which lets publishers agregate, stream and publish lots and lots of news "items" from a long list of content creators. I will post a News Room "news item" for you to see here (directly below this post; you can't miss it for its vertical ad banner).

motionbox: Videos
Motionbox is the Web 2.0 video editing and posting site that promises to be "the easiest way to store, share and make themost of your personal videos." Different from YouTube, Motionbox is more like the video version of Flickr in that it's free, it features all consumer generated videos and it offers baked-in tools for editing video (like iMovie on the Web).

loopt - Live In It

loopt - Live In It

Exclusively on Boost Mobile (Virgin Mobile), unfortunately.

Wired: AP Technology and Business News from the Outside World on Wired.com

Wired: RFID Tags the size of powder: "Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller. Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips that are just 0.002 inches by 0.002 inches and look like bits of powder. They're thin enough to be embedded in a piece of paper, company spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said Thursday."

WIRED Blogs: Game | Life

IPTV for XBox360 Coming to Europe
WIRED Blogs: Game | Life: "Microsoft will debut it's OMG_I-Want-It IPTV service for the 360 at The Connected Home expo in London March 5-7. IPTV can act as a digital recorder, a la TiVo, allowing gamers to record their favorite shows whilst they're playing a game. Players could also chat over Xbox Live while watching TV, which would be an easy way for long-distance friends to hang out without running up huge phone bills. Just grab your headset, turn on Gray's Anatomy or 24 or Project Runway and it's almost like you're sharing some couch."

Mozes

Mozes

The endless march of Web 2.0 services continues with Mozes, a social networking thing that relies on text messaging to organize "mobs" of like-minded individuals and spread information around between them. Low hanging fruit for launch phase is music. So if, for example, you text the keyword "Mudvayne" to 66937 (m-o-z-e-s), you almost instantly receive a text message inviting you to join the Mudvayne (a heavy metal band, btw) "mob."

All manner of info that's shared by all members of the Mudvayne mob come to and from you via your mobile phone. It syncs your postings to your MySpace page, your Facebook page, etc.

Virtual Worlds 2007 - Virtual Worlds Conference - produced by Virtual Worlds Management

Virtual Worlds 2007 - Virtual Worlds Conference
Hey look kids, even Second Life gets a trade show now! In all honesty, it looks good because it's got an impressive line-up of speakers. March 28 + 29, 2007 in NYC.

The Next Big Ad Medium: Podcasts

The Next Big Ad Medium: Podcasts: "Remember podcasting? While marketers have been busy uploading commercials to YouTube, the once-buzzed-about medium has spent the past two years building its audience and enhancing advertising capability. Now, podcasts are finally poised to grab a larger slice of the multibillion-dollar online advertising pie.

Research firm eMarketer expects that advertisers will spend more than $400 million on podcasting by 2011, up from $80 million last year, according to a report scheduled for release later this week. Fueling the anticipated growth is the expected entrance of Google (GOOG) into the podcasting arena, as well as new podcasting services focused on answering advertisers' most pressing questions: How many people are tuning in to the hundreds of thousands of online podcasts, and who are they?"

motionbox: Videos

motionbox: Videos
Motionbox is the Web 2.0 video editing and posting site that promises to be "the easiest way to store, share and make themost of your personal videos." Different from YouTube, Motionbox is more like the video version of Flickr in that it's free, it features all consumer generated videos and it offers baked-in tools for editing video (like iMovie on the Web).

ViralVideos.com - The Web's Most Shared Viral Videos

ViralVideos.com - The Web's Most Shared Viral Videos
Incredibly, the site that aggregates, lists and ranks almost all of the Web's viral videos has no RSS feed.

Shout Wipes Rescue Mission

Here's a twist on what it's like to spill a condiment on your clothes and have to do something heroic to clean it off. Watch this and you'll never dip your napkin in your water glass ever again. Ha ha!



read more | digg story

MMA Global -

Advertising is creeping onto cellphones around the globe - International Herald Tribune: "Already, ads are creeping onto cellphones around the globe. At this rate, experts say, it won't be long before the world's 2.2 billion mobile phone users think it natural to tune into a 15-second spot before watching a video, sending a message or listening to a downloaded song in between phone conversations."

Link: MMA Global

VBS.TV

VBS.TV
Director Spike Jonze is the in-house creative director for VBS.TV, the online video channel founded by VICE Magazine.

Study

Nearly two-thirds of US households (62%) have more than one cell phone in the house, ICR Study: "Household characteristics that correlate to having multiple cell phones include:

-- PC access the internet: Those households that use PCs for internet access are more likely to have multiple cell phones

-- Digital Camera Ownership: those households owning a digital camera are more likely to have multiple cell phones and/or one of the cell phones may, itself, be a digital camera

-- Marital status: those households including married couples were more likely to have multiple cell phones

-- Household size: those households with more people are more likely to own multiple cell phones

-- Number of children in the household: the greater the number of children, the more likely the household was to own multiple cell phones. This relationship is particularly pronounced among households with children aged 12-17 and is probably due to those children being provided with cellular phones themselves."

eMarketer.com - Looking Around the Whole Online World

eMarketer.com - Looking Around the Whole Online World: "By 2008, two-thirds of the population ages 3 and older will be Internet users in the US, and this will rise to over 70% of the population by 2011.

'But while the US Internet population continues to grow,' says Mr. Macklin, 'the rest of the world is growing even faster.'"

Market Wire News

The MySpace Generation Expands Its Range to Mobile; With Italian Teens Leading the Charge

Market Wire News: "Teens are expanding their social networks to the mobile realm, according to the latest monthly statistics from M:Metrics, the mobile market authority. The measurement firm found that with 70 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds engaging in social networking or otherwise creating content, Italian teens best their peers in Western Europe and the United States."

'Content' is king again — this time, on the cellphone - International Herald Tribune: "User-generated content, typified by the video- sharing Internet site YouTube, is now invading the mobile phone. Vodafone, for instance, struck deals last week to bring YouTube, the social-networking site MySpace and the online auction site eBay to the cellphones of its subscribers."

eMarketer.com - Innovation Overload

eMarketer.com - Innovation Overload: "The AAF surveyed ad execs worldwide, and more than half said that they expected significant changes to the media landscape to happen even faster than they did last year.

YouTube, mash-ups and Second Life were among the innovations that ad execs said took them by surprise in 2006."

OfficeMax Unleashes Guerrilla Marketing Campaign

http://www.cleaninghunk.com/

Looks like a smart strategy can go awry. Women need to take a break during their busy days. And they spend lots of time online. So, you make video content on a site plus some viral videos starring hunky dudes doing the housework. Sort of like payback with soft-core tendencies.

Meanwhile, the videos make their way to YouTube -

And, jeez, they get a quarter million views. But from the OTHER core audience who wants to watch "hunky" muscle-bound he-men male models wiggle their hot bodies while wearing skimpy costumes like the Village People's maid service from hell!

Pheedo Adds RSS Updates to Multimedia Ads

RSS advertising firm Pheedo is now providing the ability to push not only text updates to regular online ads using RSS, but also video and audio elements. Pheedo's FeedPowered Ad platform will also allow viewers of the advertisements to click to e-mail it to someone, bookmark it for later use, comment on it or tag it using services like Digg, Del.i



read more | digg story

OfficeMax Unleashes Guerrilla Marketing Campaign

OfficeMax Unleashes Guerrilla Marketing Campaign
The OfficeMax campaign will implement a combination of global positioning satellite technology and a mobile projection system to create a giant, animated, multicolored rubber-band ball, which is the new OfficeMax logo. The ball will be seen, at various points, spinning in place, bouncing off sidewalks and flying several stories high as it goes down Michigan Avenue. The image will be projected from a system in a vehicle traveling down the avenue.

This story also appears in Adweek and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ogilvy, Technorati Combo Helps Clients Track Blogs @ Media Buyer Planner

Part of the partnership will include the use of Technorati's "Conversational Marketing System," which helps clients build sites and online communities around relevant issues, and by incorporating blog content and links to blogs, MediaPost reports (via MarketingVox). Technorati will also incorporate videos, photos, and other forms of social media.



read more | digg story

Pontiac Wants to Create Car Culture in Second Life

Hoping that the love people have for their cars in real life can follow them into Second Life, GM has bought an island in the online world and hopes to build a community of car aficionados around it.



read more | digg story

Digital Network Reaches Skiers at Lift Lines @ Media Buyer Planner

A company called Sitour USA, headquartered in Kingston, NY, offers ads on digital signage at lift areas and other outside locations, writes Media Life. The ads include text messages, logos and animated ads, all displayed on four-color LED screens which have light sensors that make them visible in bright light as well as dark conditions.



read more | digg story

PC World - Kodak's Restructuring Plans

Also today, Kodak announced it would partner with Mozilla to improve Kodak's online photo gallery by allowing users to access it from Mozilla's Firefox Web browser. The companies hope to generate more income from the 83 million U.S. users who are predicted to upload, share, and print their photographs by 2010.



read more | digg story

PC World - Kodak's Restructuring Plans

Also today, Kodak announced it would partner with Mozilla to improve Kodak's online photo gallery by allowing users to access it from Mozilla's Firefox Web browser. The companies hope to generate more income from the 83 million U.S. users who are predicted to upload, share, and print their photographs by 2010.



read more | digg story

Pontiac and Yahoo! Leverage Social Media to Create New Form of Dialogue

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Pontiac division of General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM - News) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO - News) today launched a new online destination for Pontiac owners and enthusiasts, Pontiac Underground (www.pontiacunderground.com). The Web site combines some of the best social media content from Yahoo! including Flickr



read more | digg story

General Motors takes Pontiac brand into the world of Second Life

Pontiac will debut a virtual place called Motorati Island where consumers can "create a vibrant car culture within the community".Ultimately the goal of this is to have Pontiac's new virtual island feature a dealership that sells customizable versions of the new Pontiac Solstice GXP 2-seater.



read more | digg story

Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/06/2007 | Post it on Facebook, see it on Comcast

Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/06/2007 | Post it on Facebook, see it on Comcast: "Seeking a piece of the 'look at me' generation, Comcast Corp. today unveiled a partnership with Facebook that will let the social networking site's users create and share videos that could become part of a new TV series."

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory

Fast Releases White Label Adsense/Adwords

Fast Releases White Label Adsense/Adwords: "Norwegian enterprise search provider, Fast, released its AdMomentum product today. The new product is private-label contextual advertising platform similar to Google’s Adsense and Adwords platforms paid for by a software licensing fee instead of a revenue split."

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
Dump Cupid is a viral video Valentine's card promotion from Herbal Essences that's been launched with a fully branded YouTube channel plus a microsite at dumpcupid.com, which shows that you'd better launch big online these days or don't launch at all.

Wireless: Cellphone movies introduced on very small screen - International Herald Tribune

Wireless: Cellphone movies introduced on very small screen - International Herald Tribune: "In a move designed to shine a spotlight on the fledgling business of mobile multimedia content, the GSM Association will next week distribute a free a collection of short films made for cellphones by directors commissioned by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute.

The short films, including one created by the husband-and-wife team that directed 'Little Miss Sunshine,' will be viewable on most video-capable phones."

MediaPost Publications - Toyota Harnesses Mobile Video For FJ Cruiser - 02/05/2007

MediaPost Publications - Toyota Harnesses Mobile Video For FJ Cruiser - 02/05/2007: "The campaign blends text, banner, mobile TV and video advertising, while making use of Hyperfactory's recently launched Mobile Media Network--an integrated 3G branded mobile platform.

Users will be driven to branded video--documenting the FJ Cruiser racing team competing in the Baja 1000--with banner ad takeovers of the Sprint Wireless Web Sports home page and ESPN Mobile immediately following Super Bowl Sunday, as well as an exclusive two-month takeover of Go2's sports mobile channel, Go2WinterSports."

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Hyperfactory - Mobile Space Marketing

The Hyperfactory was founded in New Zealand in 2000 and now has offices in China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), New York and Auckland, with a development team based in Hyderabad, India and a network of operations spanning the Asia Pacific, Americas and Europe.

Bloggers - Fifth Estate of journalism - MarketWatch

Bloggers - Fifth Estate of journalism - MarketWatch: "Ad agencies and media buyers are trying to gauge what to do about bloggers and other online media. Since bloggers are looking for Web links to include in their reports, marketers are weighing whether to spend all their money in traditional media or to take some to build a fuller Web site for the brand."