MediaPost Publications - Site Seen: URLs Prove Valuable In Print Ads - 05/28/2008

The Magazine Publishers of America is set to release a new study showing that including URLs in magazine ads drives readers to advertiser Web sites. The analysis of 833 print ads in seven magazines, performed by VISTA's print effectiveness rating service, showed that ads with Web addresses were up to three times as likely to drive readers to a Web site, depending on the magazine category.The biggest increases came in the home, women's service and travel categories, where ads including URLs were 103%, 98% and 186% more likely to drive readers to an advertiser Web site. Ads with URLs in the fashion category also did well, producing a 52% bump.New research from VISTA Print Effectiveness Rating Service, based on an analysis of 833 ads in seven different magazines, reconfirmed that ads with URLs are more likely to drive readers to advertiser sites overall, as well as across the range of magazine genres. Less spectacular gains were found in the financial category, with a 22% lift, and men's, with a 38% lift.According to the MPA, the VISTA findings corroborate a meta-analysis of nine earlier studies by Marketing Evolution. This meta-analysis showed that when URLs were included in magazine ads, they boosted the percentage of study subjects who visited the advertiser Web sites 6%, to 19% of the test group.

MediaPost Publications - Site Seen: URLs Prove Valuable In Print Ads - 05/28/2008

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Gaming The System - Forbes.com

Justin Hall, chief executive at GameLayers, is busy turning Web surfing into a game. PMOG (Passively Multiplayer Online Game) layers game mechanics--via a Firefox extension--on top of daily browsing activities. Players can scatter booby traps and rewards across the Web, stumble across Web pages annotated with links and notes, or construct trails to favorite sites that entertain or inform the PMOG masses.

Gaming The System - Forbes.com

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Advertisers to Consumers: We'll Text You - WSJ.com

Analysts like to make bold predictions about the growth of mobile advertising. Most have overshot reality.But at least one slice of the business appears to be catching on, according to marketers: ads sent via text message. A growing number of companies are using cellphone text messages to lend more interactivity to their ads. For instance, Coors Brewing's Coors Light beer recently added a text-message component to its traditional sponsorship of the NFL Draft. Football fans opted to receive draft alerts, and each message contained a squib about Coors Light.[graph]Some marketers like text-message ads because -- unlike most ads -- viewers asks to receive the message, which means the marketer doesn't bombard the viewer with unsolicited commercials. The potential audience is also attractive: Almost all cellphones can send and receive text messages. Finally, marketers say, the results of text-message ads are much easier to measure than those of mobile Web ads.

Advertisers to Consumers: We'll Text You - WSJ.com

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HD Day Conspiracy Theory - Update

The set-top box, a necessary appendage for millions of cable television customers for decades, is moving toward extinction.A leading television manufacturer, Sony Electronics Inc., and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said Tuesday they signed an agreement that will allow viewers to rid themselves of set-top boxes, yet still receive advanced "two-way" cable services, such as pay-per-view movies.In most cases, cable viewers also could dispose of another remote control since they could use their TV's control rather than one tied to the set-top box.

Wired News - AP News

So the cable companies are okay with letting us jettison our horrible set-top boxes. Nice. And once the functionality of receiving, recording, storing and retrieving our favorite programming is encased in the idiot box itself, then we can also receive, record, store and retrive over-the-air HD programs on demand. Cable remains valuable insomuch as it delivers dozens more channels through its pipe. But Xbox Live and Apple TV bring me everything through the Net. Tough call.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet"

Eric Schmidt: MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you´ll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought. We are trying new ways, new approaches all the time.

FAZ: The share of the social networks in the online advertising market is very small. Which role will social networks play in the future?

Eric Schmidt: It is obvious that people spend a lot of time in social networks. I believe there will be some new advertising products, that will work, but I don't think they are invented yet. We and others are working on social advertising products.

FAZ: Which sort of social advertising do you mean?

Eric Schmidt: The advertising has to be more entertaining, more interesting, more immersive compared to what we have today. That is my opinion. We are not there yet but I am optimistic that it could work very well. What it needs to get there - trial and error. That´s the way we do it at Google.

Netzökonom : Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet"

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drupal.org | Community plumbing

Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform.Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.

drupal.org | Community plumbing

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About Us - Overview of the Turn Smart Market - Turn Inc.

Turn—the world's first Smart Market for online advertisingTurn is transforming the huge, yet highly inefficient display advertising industry through advanced technology that optimizes performance, provides greater control and insight, and—bottom line—yields greater profits for advertisers and publishers alike.Turn addresses the challenges and inefficiencies of earlier generations of simple CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per impression) advertising by providing a smart market that: * Blends and automates multiple targeting approaches to maximize performance * Goes beyond the click in measuring consumer response to online ads * Gives unprecedented control to advertisers and publishers in an auction market * Shares market data to provide insight that leads to greater effectiveness

About Us - Overview of the Turn Smart Market - Turn Inc.

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Prototype - Cloud Computing - So You Don’t Have to Stand Still - NYTimes.com

What, you may be thinking, is cloud computing? Basically, it means obtaining computing resources — processing, storage, messaging, databases and so on — from someplace outside your own four walls, and paying only for what you use.

It’s a mushy term that is being applied loosely to many things on the Web. Salesforce.com is now called a cloud application — after all, companies let it store their sales data, rather than running it on their own systems. Facebook, too, is a cloud platform, because software developers write applications for it and distribute them on it.

Prototype - Cloud Computing - So You Don’t Have to Stand Still - NYTimes.com

This is a must read article. For marketers, you need to draw a line from computing services to content delivery. The entire media space is moving toward a "cloud" structure in which the content (or equivalent of software) resides in the "cloud" from where any one of us obtains it "on demand." Get it? Not yet?! Then read this.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Timeless. Funny. Sure, it's not exactly new. But it's ... funny!
24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot - CollegeHumor video

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Why Print Coupons?

Hello? Is anybody home? Coupons on your mobile phone ... Yeah. You'd think there'd be a few CPG or QSR companies that would want to try something like this out. Huh? There are?!?! Really?!?!

Goal: To Make Fans Love Hockey - WSJ.com

As the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings face off in the Stanley Cup finals, which start Saturday, Mr. Bettman, 55 years old, is that rare top executive who was behind the wheel when his business went over a cliff and now has the opportunity to put it back together. He is doing so by making a classic management choice: Instead of obsessing over growth, he is concentrating on keeping the league's existing customers happy.

Goal: To Make Fans Love Hockey - WSJ.com

I've heard and read this adage time and time again over the past decade (and more) ... but too many marketers and agencies refuse to execute against the strategy. Acquisition versus retention. Why not do BOTH?!?! Then I hear ... "Well, it can't be done." And I say to myself, "Why not!?!?!" Isn't that what "viral" is all about? And "word of mouth"? You start with a core constituency -- loyalists, influencer, connectors -- and as their enthusiasm grows and affects pockets of the population around them ... the buzz grows and newbies enter the fray. Pretty soon, you've got a movement. It's what I like to call a phenomenon.

Why just be a brand? Your brand can become a phenomenon.

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ComScore Metrics, circa 2008

• 185 million U.S. people age 2+ online in a month, spending an average of 29 hours online per person*
• 80% of 824 million global Internet users now outside of U.S.
• 99% of online population search in a month, conducting 22 searches per searcher**
• 75% of online population stream a video, viewing an average of 70 videos per viewer per month***
• Up 36% vs YA
• 66% of online population visit a social networking site, spending 4 hours per month per visitor*
• 40% of online population visit a blog site in a month*

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Pheedo :: About

Pheedo creates new kinds of profit driven advertising services through distributed content, like RSS, for our publishers and advertisers. Our pioneering efforts have resulted in triple digit revenue growth for leading publishers and have connected millions of content hungry readers to top tier advertisers.

Pheedo :: About

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Number of Online Videos Viewed in the U.S. Jumps 13 Percent in March to 11.5 Billion

Nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (85.7 million), where they watched an average of 51 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.3 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.5 million) and Viacom Digital (26.6 million).

Other notable findings from March 2008 include:

• 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer).
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Number of Online Videos Viewed in the U.S. Jumps 13 Percent in March to 11.5 Billion

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AP About to Release Results of Young Media Consumers Survey

The survey found that young consumers get their news in an irregular fashion, and generally have no ritual of news consumption, like reading the newspaper or watching the evening news every day. However, the survey also found that young people, in addition to facts and updates, wanted the news to be presented with context. “They wanted to find a path to the backstory,” said Kennedy. “And they wanted to find a path to what’s going to happen next.”

Other significant findings of the survey included the fact that most of the survey group shared news with each other, whether via text message, e-mail, or social networks, like Myspace and Facebook. Also, the survey found that 16 of the 18 participants got their news through e-mail, a medium which traditional media like newspapers rarely employ.

AP About to Release Results of Young Media Consumers Survey

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Bloomberg.com: TIME WARNER sells Cable Unit

`Time Warner is a company in the midst of a sweeping transformation,'' said Matt Kaufler, a portfolio manager at Clover Capital Management in Rochester, New York, which owns 1.7 million shares. ``There will be more steps before year-end. This is headed toward being a pure content company.''

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

Okay ... here's another entry in my ongoing "HD Day conspiracy theory" of Feb 17, 2009. Just start connecting the dots and you start to see a pattern. Viacom diversifies and becomes a "content company." Now Time Warner hedges against being a "cable company" and plans to "transform itself" into a "content company." Once all media become digital, the business model or models will shift; and the big players are positioning themselves for what's next.

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Dynamic Logic: Beyond the Click

Analysis from Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms® database shows that advertising on Games & Contest (Gaming) Web sites¹ can be highly effective in increasing brand metrics for various brand sectors and demographics. In particular, CPG advertisements on Gaming sites tend to perform much better among women ages 45+ compared with younger females. And this is not a small audience — in fact, 8.3 million women ages 45+ say they access the Internet to play online games, according to Focalyst².

Dynamic Logic: Beyond the Click

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MediaPost Publications - ComScore: LinkedIn Tops Social Networking Sites In April - 05/21/2008

LinkedIn was the fastest-growing social networking site in April, with traffic increasing 361% to 8.7 million unique visitors from $1.9 million a year ago, according to comScore.MySpace easily remained the category leader with $58.7 million users, but has only grown 3% since last year.

No. 2 Facebook is up a healthy 56% over the last year to 22.5 million. AOL Hometown has seen the steepest fall-off in traffic, dropping 25% to 6.3 million in the last year.Among blog sites, WordPress was the biggest gainer in April, growing 160% to 16.6 million visitors.

Blogger held the top spot with more than 38.4 million, up 40% from a year ago. By contrast, traffic to Xanga.com has slipped 33% to 2.4 million.

MediaPost Publications - ComScore: LinkedIn Tops Social Networking Sites In April - 05/21/2008

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Dish and NBCU Team Up on Interactive Ads - TVWeek - News

TV Week

Dish Network’s satellite television service will provide interactive advertising capabilities to NBC television networks and owned-and-operated stations.Paying subscribers to the Dish service will have the option to use their remote controls to access more information, coupons and discounts from NBC advertisers, who now will be offered ways to reach consumers using the medium.“Inserting on-screen triggers in the full suite of NBCU networks allows viewers the ability to interact with an advertiser’s brand and request more information, a powerful proposition that we know to be valuable to both advertisers and viewers.” Dish Network VP of Advertising Sales Michael Finn said in a statement Wednesday.The service also is available on NBC channels on Dish Network’s digital video recorder service; the two companies say they will continue to work together to develop new interactive products to serve advertisers.

Dish and NBCU Team Up on Interactive Ads - TVWeek - News

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Mobile Insider » Blog Archive » Mobilizing The Mall Crawl

Imagine if you will a smart phone application that locates your current position in the shopping mall, searches for the item you want, and then directs you to the nearest store with your target in stock. Now, imagine if competing retailers knew from your search and eventual destination, where you were headed next and could send you ads keyed to the path you were taking. A competitor could poach you with a special discount, so you might buy those Adidas shoes from Foot Locker instead of the original destination. The mall could turn into an exciting place, where shop keeps actually vie for your business in real time.

Mobile Insider » Blog Archive » Mobilizing The Mall Crawl

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