MarketingFix Online Advertising Headlines

Google Rolls Out Content Targeted AdWords
Online Media Recovery: A Different Opinion
Brand Dilemma: To Google or Not To Google
CJ Uses Sleeping Account Fee to Clean Its Affiliate Network
Red Herring Looking to Sell Out
Talking Blogs
Search Engine Ads Try to Extend Their Reach
Limit Your Abandon Rate
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Coke and Pepsi Duke It Out

Coke and Pepsi vying for market share is nothing new. Big ad campaigns, line extensions, and miserable failures (New Coke) are part of the game. Well they are at it again.

Coke is launching Sprite Remix which is tropical lemon lime beverage. Pepsi is launching Mountain Dew Live Wire which is a citrus flavored that will be sold only during Summer months.

Both products will be available in big, fat, calorie laden, American oversized 20 ounce bottles. I don't drink soda so you will have to tell me how they taste.
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WB Shuns Reality Programming Yet Increases Ratings

79% of WB programming is made up of scripted shows...not reality programming. Whereas, at other networks, that figure seems to be reversed. The WB has not jumped on the reality bandwagon yet that has not hurt them in the ratings. In fact, they have increased in their core demos by 30%.

Very smart. More...
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PETA Spews More Bullshit

"It doesn't matter if you're a human, a chicken, a pig, a turkey, a cow, all animals suffer the same," said Matt Prescott, PETA's youth outreach co-ordinator. "All animals feel pain and hunger and loneliness and fear. Every time you sit down to eat -- if you eat meat -- you're supporting a holocaust of the animals."

PETA is at it again with it's publicity stunts. PETA is running an advertising campaign that likens eating chicken to the slaughter of Jews in Nazi death camps. A bit of a stretch in my opinion.

Sure, it's fine to have a position against eating meat or on the treatment of farm animals but to equate it to the worst human tragedy in history is a cheap trick.

"The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent," said Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor and national director of the Anti-Defamation League in a prepared statement. "Rather than deepen our revulsion against what the Nazis did to the Jews, the project will undermine the struggle to understand the Holocaust and to find ways to make sure such catastrophes never happen again."

I'm hungry. I think I'll go make myself a chicken sandwich right now...

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MarketingFix Headlines

Internet Audio and Video Usage High
AOL Tests the Pay to Play Music Model
The Internet and Entertainment Advertising
Cloaking Or Not?
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Porn Stars Added to the "Sex Sells" Advertising Tactic

I suppose sex can persuade just about anybody to do anything so it is not a surprise that we see so much sex related material in advertising campaigns. Recently, there was the famous Miller Lite Cat Fight mudwrestling spot and the Gucci Crotch Shot Ad. Now we have famous porn star Jenna Jameson selling shoes.

Yup. She's in an ad campaign for Pony athletic footwear which will break in March on billboards and in magazines. Read more about this and the increasing trend of using sex to sell in this New York Times article.

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'My Big Fat Greek Life' Plumps Up the Ratings for CBS

NEW YORK (AP) -- The TV series adaptation of the hit movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" drew robust ratings for its premiere Monday night on CBS.

The renamed "My Big Fat Greek Life" not only won its time slot in a special airing at 9:30 p.m. EST but was the most-watched premiere of a comedy on any network in more than four years, CBS said. It had an audience of 22.7 million viewers.

The 2002 film, which takes a lighthearted look at a Greek-American family's reaction to their daughter's non-Greek suitor, has made box office history by grossing $240 million, and counting. It was filmed for $5 million.

The new series, starring the film's writer and star Nia Vardalos, picks up as the newlyweds return from their honeymoon.

Most of the film's major cast members are back, including Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin and Gia Carides. Steven Eckholdt has replaced the film's John Corbett as the husband.

"My Big Fat Greek Life" now moves to its regular time slot, Sunday at 8 p.m.
The last sitcom to premiere as successfully was NBC's "Jesse," which bowed in September 1998.
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Looks Like 'Buffy' Will End After All

So Sarah Michelle Gellar has made it official that she will be leaving 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' at the end of this season. I had picked up on a report earlier that Eliza Dushku would step into the a role and continue the series but it looks like I was wrong about that. Dushku has signed with Fox to do a drama series next year instead.
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Google Won't Kill Blogads

Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, a service that allows placement of advertising on weblogs, comments on the effect Google's purchase of Blogger may have on weblog advertising. While he may be nervous, his Blogads service does offer some unique benefits over what Google Adwords currently offers.

For the forseeable future, we offer bloggers and advertisers certain unique advantages:

a) Bloggers get the bulk of the proceeds from their Blogads sales.

b) Bloggers get to approve every ad before it appears.

c) Advertisers get more options (images, longer text, comments.)

d) Advertisers can use words like "lowest" which are not allowed in Google Adwords.

e) Google kills ads that don't get a 1% clickthru, so its ads are only effective for direct marketers rather than brand-builders.

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Magazines Make Advertising Plans for the War

The major newsweeklies have come up with some proactive plans on how they will handle advertisers if a war breaks out with Iraq. The magazines have received notice from several advertisers that they want ads pulled if shooting starts. So the magazines are reacting in hopes of keeping ad schedules. Some will create separate sections, in essence, dividing the magazine in two: war section and non-war section. Each magazine has it's own plan:

U.S. News and World Report is taking this approach by developing a second section that will have it's own cover and table of contents and will contain no war news.

Newsweek will allow advertisers to move ads into non-war editorial sections.

Time will not make any changes to their format. While U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek have had advertisers indicate canceling schedules in the event of war, Time has not had any advertiser pull out or threaten to. [via USA Today]
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