Hoping to make a profitable business out of the flurry of activity over digital media asset ownership and the associated royalties tied to the ownership if those assets, Virginia-based Digital Bazaar has introduced Bitmunk, a patented "watermarking and royalty distribution technology" which the company hopes will usher in an eBay-like marketplace for audio, video, documents and games.
As explained on its wiki site, "the Bitmunk software would handle all of the sales, receipt handling, monetary transfer, watermarking and ensuring legal compliance during the sale. The Bitmunk software is also used to transact movies, electronic books, medical records and many other forms of digital content."
Sapient has come to the rescue. Well, at least for people who might not take kindly to others accessing their online ad program data. Following the wave of recent acquisitions, advertisers and marketers who use ad servers from DoubleClick and aQuantive to measure their online advertising - including Google search and MSN - are worried about loss of objectivity and conflict of interest while publishers in direct competition with Google are reluctant to embrace DoubleClick's tools for fear of sharing sensitive information with the enemy. Sapient says these industry developments have accelerated the expected demand for an independent online advertising platform supported by integrated tools and services. Hence, the introduction of the company's BridgeTrack ad serving solution.
In the works for seven years for 25,000 online campaigns, Sapient is now offering BridgeTrack as a standalone product.
Google bought DoubleClick. Yahoo bought Right Media. WPP bought 24/7Real Media. Microsoft, always the follower, never the leader, just bid $6 billion to acquire digital giant aQuantive. It's an information grab as companies wake up and realize their prized and proprietary information is increasingly in the hands of their very own competitors.
American Copywriter's Tug McTighe has some supremely wonderful advice for those working in creative. It's supremely wonderful because it's rooted in common sense rather than the stereotypical egomaniacal lunacy we so love to pin on creatives from time to time. It's not so much that this advice is new but everyone can use a refresher course from time to time. Tug says creatives should bail on concept, copy or layout that's been revised more than three times. By then, it's time to start over. Don't come up with a kick ass concept before you've immersed yourself in research. Or at least let the AE do it for you and summarize.
more »
- PC Magazine editor in chief gives Steve Rubel an earful over a comment he made about the magazine on Twitter. Steve Rubel responds.
- Cynopisis reports, "Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned his company was 'very close' to releasing a new digital filtering system called "Claim Your Content" that would automatically identify copyrighted content via audio and video fingerprinting technology. Speaking at a keynote session at NAB, he claimed two or three partners are currently testing the tools. Schmidt also said that YouTube is also working on a video advertising network that will involve pre-roll and post-roll spot ads."
more »
- Here we go again with yet another million dollar homepage thingy. This time, companies can buy one frame, yes, one frame of a video for $39. It might be cheap but no one's gonna see it.
- All animal rights efforts don't have to be as in your face or as off-putting as PETA. Animal Rights Stand takes a very different approach.
- Adobe's got a cool new site promoting its Creative Suite 3. On the site you can use the tools and build an actual website. EVB created.
- Weird. Just weird. Gremlins in Progressive Direct commercials.
- Former FCB CEO Steve Blamer is now CEO of Creston, a UK marketing holding company.
Apparently believing employees aren't intelligent to find their own industry news sources and laughably calling it "first of its kind," JWT has partnered with Nielsen to create JWT NewsWatch, a customizable "information portal" which will pull news from 40 sites including AdWeek, BrandWeek, MediaWeek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. Obviously they haven't heard of the countless other news aggregation services (NewsPage, anyone?) that have been around since the birth of the Internet or RSS readers which are free and are comfortable paying InfoDesk what is likely to be a hefty fee for creating/managing this service.
more »
Uh, oh. Marketers. Advertisers. Do not use this. Repeat. Do not use this. This being a technology that allows you to use lasers to put temporary graffiti on buildings from hundreds of feet away using a laser wand. If you do use it, you know what's going to happen. The entire world is going to look like Times Square because every building will be turned into a "temporary" billboard. Come on. Admit it. You know you can't resists this. Check out a video of it here.
Whether this goes anywhere or not is anyone's guess but no one thought the online ad banner would become what it is today either. A new online magazine, Dormant Forces, has launched and will be supported by what it calls an AdFrame designed to elicit "curiosity clicks." The Adframe consists of small, subtle squares with nothing but the advertisers name or tagline. Clicking the square takes the visitor to the advertiser's site. The publisher plans to do a similar thing in the printed version of the magazine. Anyone care to predict the future of this venture?
More and more, the advertising business is becoming commoditized with services that make it ever easier for advertisers to circumvent the infrastructure that the industry has built over the last 100 years. Every year, another do-it-yourself service crops up offering companies tools to create their own advertising without the need for an agency. Certainly, these services will not replace ad agencies but they may take a dent out of their revenue stream.
Omnicom Group is hoping to stem any potential loss to this new ad-o-matic approach and launched their on such service through on of its agencies, Zimmerman, called Pick-n-Click which provides automotive advertisers 150,000 components to choose from when crafting an ad. car dealer franchise AutoNation has signed on and is using Pick-n-Click for its 331 car dealers.
more »
|
|
