8 March, 2010

In Outsell’s annual advertising and marketing study released today Outsell Vice President Chuck Richard reveals that U.S. advertisers will be spending more on digital media than on print in 2010. Digital advertising is expected to grow by 9.6% in 2010. The calculated increase is based on data from 1,008 U.S. advertisers, in the consumer as well as B2B segment, gathered in December 2009.
Digital surpassing print.
U.S. marketers plan to spend $368 billion this year, of which 32.5% will go toward digital. Only 30.3% of their budgets is to go to print. In this piece of research, digital includes e-mail, online video ads, banner ads and search engine marketing. So, in 2010, for the first time ever, advertisers will Read on…
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21 February, 2010

New Media Age reports that brands and agencies commit more and more to Facebook as a viable direct response advertising channel, threatening Google’s share of ad spend. In the UK, brands like O2, Virgin Media and Vodafone are ramping up spend on Facebook as it proves to be a valuable channel for direct response advertising, while agencies say spend is shifting away from other channels like… paid search.
Opening up to media agencies
Last year, Facebook opened its site to creative agencies, giving them Read on…
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22 December, 2009
This week, at iHollywood’s Digital Living Room conference a Sony US marketing manager stated that company plans to build out an area on the PlayStation with it’s own, original TV programming. Meaning that with a connected Playstation 3, you don’t need a TV subscription to see the TV shows.
MTV your PS3
Sony already released the Vidzone Music Video application for PS3 this month, offering “your own personalized version of MTV” on the Playstation 3. This free app offers unlimited access to high quality music video streams, and the ability to build custom music video playlists, turning the PS3 into an MTV type station - but one that actually shows Music Videos ;)
From MTV to HBO
The ultimate goal is to transition from a Read on…
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12 December, 2009
Google News was the first step, here is the next; real, solid-bodied content on Google. The just-launched “Living Stories” service from Google Labs shows a new way of integrating newspaper content into a Google page.
Gimme more
This time, instead of taking a snippet and sharing none of the generated revenue with the owner of the content, there is a different model. With consent of the publisher, Google takes more Read on…
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6 November, 2009

This fall, Sunday is the most expensive night of the week on American network television for advertisers, according to data collected by Ad Age.
Top 3
The top 3 shows that brought in the most money on average for a 30 second TV advertisement are, in order, NBC’s Sunday Night Football, Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives.
Making less
Unsurprisingly, with the increasing Read on…
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7 October, 2009

The Association of Online Publishers in the UK hosted its’ Content, Convergence and Creativity Summit today. Being creative content persons, they lovingly call it the AOP 3C Summit 2009.
Of course, there was a session about paid content. Now it is important to realize that most of the large online publishers are really traditional media companies that make severe losses on their activities. They have a huge cost base and they are either getting less public funding or less money from advertisers. Going online seemed to be the solution to make up for those losses a couple of years back, but now they find that their losses can’t be compensated by the proceeds from online advertising alone.
Financial Times
Therefore the Financial Times’s Rob Grimshaw and BBC’s Luke Bradley-Jones stated with infallible logic that Read on…
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26 September, 2009
According to Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP (the worlds largest communications company by revenue) 20% of marketing budgets will be spent in digital advertising within the next five years.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sorrell said digital budgets would increase significantly in the next few years - but would not fully make up for the difference between share of time spent online and share of marketing spend.
Time spend online to be 30% within five years
“Companies are spending up to 13% on digital. We know we spend up to 20% of our Read on…
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27 June, 2009

Nielsen published the report “How Teens Use Media” this week, a report on the “myths and realities of teen media trends ”. It’s a good read, showing that the American Teenager is more conservative in his (or her) media choice than some fast-talking online media experts would have you believe.
Dad knows best
Some of the most interesting points from the research are around the choice of medium, but the media consulted still are pretty much in line with parental choice. In the end “teens” is the word we use for a part of the demographic that is just about to start making their own unique choices, but are in fact still mostly following the lead of their parents.
Report Highlights:
- For TV, American teens today actually watch Read on…
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24 June, 2009

Twitter is being integrated everywhere these days, even into advertising. The best example I’ve seen so far is the “Meet the Volkswagens” campaign, developed by VW ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Of course, Volkswagen of America ordered 5 TV commercials that feature Max the Beetle as well as a brand new character named BUS…. but that didn’t get me excited.
Enter Twitter
What do I love is the solution that Crispin Porter + Bogusky came up with for online display advertising. Please go and check out Read on…
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18 June, 2009
The most valuable skill in conversation (or sales, for that matter) is listening. If you listen well, you learn new stuff. Then you fit that into the relationship you are building. This is how relationships evolve and become deeper.
Listening is the biggest secret.
Now why don’t companies get that it works the same in any remote conversation they have, with their audience? There is no difference whether you are talking to a friend or talking to your audience remotely, via your website.
Want to know the other secrets? Read on…
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13 June, 2009
This week Dell blogged that it has generated more than 2 million U.S. Dollars in revenue from their Twitter account @DellOutlet. This means that they are up one million since late last year, which was the first time they disclosed some information about Twitter-generated sales.
Growth
Looking at the growth rate it stands to reason that the Twitter related sales on Dell’s sites will probably amount to over 3 million dollars in software, hardware and services in the calendar year 2009. Funny thing is that according to Dell, much of the growing interest in this Dell Twitter account growth was actually not driven by Dell marketing, but by Read on…
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18 May, 2009
By many in the industry, Belgium is considered to be the Mecca of iDTV (interactive Digital TV), because of the penetration of digital TV in Belgian households, which is relatively much higher than in surrounding countries.
Many iDTV services like Video On Demand are really taking off in Belgium, and the users are getting used to finding some form of interactivity at the push of the red button on most major channels on their set-top boxes.
Because of this well-developed market characteristic, Microsoft Advertising recently ordered a report on the state of iDTV advertising in Belgium, from which Read on…
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17 May, 2009
Hulu - the American site for complete movies and TV episodes - continues its explosive growth trajectory, increasing a whopping 490% in total streams year-over-year, according to new data from Nielsen VideoCensus.
That translates to 373.3 million streams in April — up from 63.2 million last April — which solidifies Hulu’s status as the fastest -growing premium video brand online.
According to Nielsen Online, the success of Hulu — originally a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.– proves that in the future, the Web will not be as dominated by short video clips as it is today.
Hulu, along with pure-play providers like Veoh and the TV networks, have spent the Read on…
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5 May, 2009
Today, May 5th, Chanel launches their ‘new face’ for the classic No.5 fragrance with a special movie of about 3 minutes released exclusively on MSN, with what probably is the most beautiful homepage takeover I have ever seen.
With this new Chanel campaign, interactive media is the leading medium globally, instead of TV – marking another first for Chanel in the luxury arena. This is a big win for Internet, a big win for MSN and Microsoft Advertising. Yes, I work at MSN, and I am very proud of this campaign and our cooperation with Chanel around this.
Truly global
MSN is one of the few publishers worldwide (MSN beat Yahoo in getting this spectacular account exclusively) that is able to offer this level of consistency in the global ad experience. This is what MSN is best at – providing a great environment for A-brand advertising, blending the lines between content and commerce in an exciting cocktail.
Content vs. commerce
I actually spend a lot of time discussing the Read on…
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1 May, 2009
A quick copypaste of an interesting news item from the UK: Volvo has restructured its marketing budget to focus more on natural search and social media in a bid to reinforce its ‘Life is better lived together’ brand positioning.
The Swedish car brand has appointed Mindshare to manage its search optimisation, social media and online PR accounts full-time, having previously worked with the media agency on a project-by-project basis, including its Volvo C30 campaign.
Last year Volvo spent £19.75m on advertising, excluding paid search. Of this, internet accounted for just 3%, or £695,500
Anita Fox, Volvo UK’s head of marketing communications, said that now, while the company has Read on…
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10 April, 2009

With MSN, Hotmail, Messenger, Facebook and a huge network of other affiliated sites, we have access to a whole lot of internet usage data in Microsoft, where I work.
Research
A study called “Europe Logs On” was just released that looks at a European set of this data (both internal and external) that we had available, and we did get some very interesting findings as a result of it.
Conclusion
The most important conclusion that we can draw would probably be that we see the Read on…
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9 April, 2009
Last week many blogs broke the news that YouTube is about to lose approximately $470 million in 2009. The reason for this was the “Deep Dive into YouTube” report released on Friday that Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena wrote.
The blogosphere echo chamber robbed the news of most of it’s detail and even respectable blogs merrily copied away, tumbling over each other to have the news first. Heck, some even dressed up the story with another $30 virtual millions in cost just to be able to use a $500 million number in the headline.
Challenging
According to Credit Suisse, YouTube is Read on…
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22 March, 2009
The American online music service SpiralFrog that was free to use, missed a critical lily pad this week and has shut down as a result of its debts. The Ad-funded US service signed deals with EMI and Universal some time ago but failed to secure deals with Sony or Warner.
Spiralfrog closed its operation yesterday, unable to pay back a ten million dollar loan in convertible notes. The DRM-protected music service allowed fans to download and play tracks to their computers with a video advert appearing before each play.
Ad-funded model under pressure
Spiralfrog is the second ad-funded music service to Read on…
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14 March, 2009
Recently the results of two American studies on social networkers were released by InsightExpress and Netpop. The studies report on participation trends across social networks, as well as on how receptive their members are to advertising. Allow me to summarize the most important findings before moving to a conclusion on what I think the relationship between social networkers and advertisers should look like.
One out of three
The number of social networkers has almost doubled since 2006. Today, 43% of the online population uses social networking sites. 76% of US broadband users (105 million) are active contributors to the web via social media in general. In addition, approximately 29%, or 40 million broadband users, are regular contributors specifically through social networking sites. Most social networkers also use Messenger, texts, blogs and microblogs like Twitter.
Typical users
Social networkers in the US are most likely to be single, employed women, age 18-39. A typical social networker connects weekly with an average of 18 people one-to-one, and 110 people one-to-many. They spend an average of 36% of their online time Read on…
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