Writing on his Micro Persuasion blog, Steve Rubel concisely explains why the online metric mainstay, the page view, is becoming useless and predicts its death in 2010. Citing the rise of navigate-within-page technologies such as Ajax, Flash and widgets which negate the need to leave a particular URL to experience new content, Rubel says the media community will need to face the music very soon and stop the chest beating about the importance of page views. While there doesn't seem to be a replacement metric on the horizon, aside from already existing Time Spent and Unique Visitors, the industry may need to come up with one very soon lest the usefulness of online metrics become as useless as traffic count for billboards.
It's no secret we like self-deprecating humour in part because that's half the work done for us, so we couldn't help warming to the print campaign for Juicing the Orange, Pat Fallon's new creativity-oriented business book.
Toying with the defining moment in which a doe-eyed child looks up at mom and asks where babies come from, to which mom immediately spits out an improbable lie, Fallon's print ads add citrusy twist to a domestic nightmare and lend the sense that irreverent ideas remain good medicine for the changing threads of business. Check out variations hither and thither. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
In an amusingly scathing piece about Donny Deutsch's Gotham magazine feature "Deutsch Mark," Copyranter, on a Gawker writing assignment, takes a look at Donny's work and concludes it's all just another piece of fat-headed self promotion. Analyzing article word counts, Copyranter finds the Donny, without surprise, likes to talk more about himself and his Big Idea show than the article's subject matter. But we aren't going to complain because, Speedo aside, we'd love to be as famous as the Deutsch man, have out own TV show and have Gawker crap down our mouth too. Oh wait Jessica's gone and we haven't tasted the new shit yet.
Paul Conley digs deep into an issue about which we have strong opinions. More and more, we are seeing online editorial infiltrated by text link ads from the likes of companies such as IntelliTXT. It, no doubt, crosses the line between advertising and editorial. We don't claim to be perfect here at Adrants. We all need ad revenue to make money but text link ads just go too far. They are annoying with their little pop up bubbles and misleading in that a link in edit should lead to other edit or a referenced website, not an ad.
Conley points out InteliTXT says it uses "in-text placement to cut through the online advertising clutter." Oxymoronic. In-text placements *add* to the clutter. They don't cut through it. In the past, IntelliTXT has asked us if we'd like to use their service here on Adrants. We quickly and politely declined. If humble Adrants can make enough money without text-link ads then one would think a giant company like VNU could live without them as well. Apparently not.
As part of the Global Fund RED campaign to fight AIDS in Africa, The Independent has been redesigned today by Giorgio Armani and half the papers ad revenue will be donated to the Global Fund ro Fight AIDS. It's all part of the Maria Shriver/Bono-created campaign that aims to urge big business to contribute to the fund in an ongoing manner. The companies already involved are Gap, Converse, Emporio Armania, American Express and Motorola. All those companies have developed RED product lines and a portion of the revenue that comes from sales of those lines goes to the Fund.
Maria Shriver explains the effort telling The Independent, "How do you think Magic Johnson [who has HIV] is still around? He takes two pills a day, which he can get from any drugstore. But those drugstores don't exist in Africa, and millions can't get to the drugs Magic Johnson can get. That's where the RED money's going." So far, $10 million has been raised.
George Parker tells us the story of a German magazine that fell prey to the openness of the interweb or, perhaps, was just plain stupid. The Cologne-based magazine, a yet-to-be-launched book aimed at teens, called Objektiv found an image of a model to use in a promotional piece and slapped the headline, "Deutsch Ist Geil!" or "German is Hot!" next to her. While it's very easy to troll the Internet for millions of images that suit any particular purpose, the group behind Objektiv found the image of the girl, 19 year old Czech model, Jaimy, on her site, Sweet Natural Girl, a psuedo, semi-pornish, girl next door type site. These kind of sites, whose sole revenue stream consists of drooling, horny guys who will throw money at anything just to see fleshy hotness, don't take kindly to their images being used in such a widespread manner by a for-profit entity without remuneration. Obviously, legal action has ensued. Apparently, the fact she's Czechoslovakian didn't sit well either but that's for you political types to analyze.
Acknowledging the lowly state of the lonely, unread book collecting dust on the shelves of Barnes and Noble and Borders as kids instead spend hours playing video games, obsessing over MySpace, chatting on AIM and blogging on Xanga, Random Hose Children's Books has teamed with The Book Standard and announced the Teen Book Video Awards. It's a contest in which college students create virally-intentioned :30 videos, similar to movie trailers, which will help Random House promote books through various web outlets and over Sprint's MSpot.
Random House has selected three books for the contest including The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. Oddly, they're all bestsellers. One might think Random House would want to promote books that, well, haven't sold so well yet. Hey, we just write about this stuff.
Here's a beyond dumb but maybe not so much promotional video for Nuts magazine sent to us by FishNChimps which touts its circulation superiority over competing magazine Zoo by featuring a striping females who begins her disrobing with "I've got a figure I want to reveal to you." That figure, of course, isn't hers. It's the circulation figure for Nuts which is greater than that of Zoo's. But hey, women who take their clothes off always seem to attract attention and since its an editorial edict here at Adrants to cover anything involving women who get naked, we figured (ouch. unintentional pun) we'd better tell you about it.
- Copyranter hates, really hates Niche Media publisher Jason Binn and his prickish self importance. W don't know him but we think we hate him too after reading about his recent behavior
- Smaller sized newspapers are better. Especially if your laying in bed and your spouse needs a hand.
- BlogAds Founder Henry Copeland marvels at the Washington Post's description of its new blog ad service as "the next big, slightly-outside-the-mainstream idea."
- Intentional or not, the upside down version of this ad brings a whole new meaning to this flooring company's slogan, "Laid by the Best."
- Not at all related to marketing - unless, of course, it turns out to be some stealth promotion for the next zombie flick which it won't because it's just a fun little flash mob gig - but a mob of zombies attacked San Francisco Saturday. And Vancouver.
- The Environmental Working Group is taunting McDonald's Toy Hummer Giveaway with a site that protests the promotion.
- Freeload Press has come to the aid of college students and will publish over 100 ad-supported text books free of charge.
- Ariel thinks "old men" can't get it up which is why they "erect blogs instead." Hmm.
- Here's yet another one of those anti-cute spots for the Dodge Caliber. This one features cute cuddly things not quite displaying a lot of attraction for the vehicle.
- Production company Indelible has completed some work for Mac lips gloss in which Sandra Bernhard goes on and on and one and..well...on about her lips.
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