- Fridge maker (and wine storage maker) Sub-Zero has launched a weblog which focuses on wine.
- A reader writes, "Just read on Candyaddict.com that Altoids is coming out with "chocolate dipped mints." Any truth to the rumor that they bagged Leo Burnett after that awful sour challenge campaign? That's the word..."
- Getty Images made licensing images easier (or so they say) with their new rights-ready licensing service.
- Nokia has a couple of new spots, created by Lowe Singapore, that do the whole individuality is cool, mind/body/spirit thing. (1, 2)
- In the "huh?" and "WTF" categories comes this weblog called Shoot My Blog which exists for no other reason that to solicit from people pipcture of the Shoot My Blog blog.
If you work in agency production, you likely hate the endless sales calls from vendors who waste your time selling you a service you don't want or need at the time. They are kind of the scum of the earth sometimes, right? Oh but wait. When you really, really need to get a quote for that super niche'y idea that freaky creative down the hall came up with, you want every vendor at your beck and call immediately regardless of whether you treated them all like shit yesterday.
A new service called AgencyVendors has just launched to make sure all those vendors are at your beck and call when all those whack job ideas require you to come up with a quote for the meeting that was set up without any regard for how long it would take you to create said quote. Unfortunately, the service is so new there are no actual vendors listed on the site yet so you might want to change your voice mail message to something like "Quit bugging me, freak. Go to AgencyVendors.com and make your pitch there. Don't call me. I'll call you."
In-game advertising company IGA Worldwide and Interpret LLC have announced an in-game ad ratings system using Interpret's Gameasure. Gameasure will provide advertisers such game title, demographics, reach, frequency, duration and deoth of engagement metrics for all of IGA's video games. Ideally, it will best what Nielsen is trying to do for television now and actually provide real ad viewership and interaction data.
MediaPost reports Clear Channel is testing a new outdoor technology, previously mentioned here in 2003, from Magink that will replace vinyl with molecular coated plastic tiles which will react to an electrical current to form an image making changing billboard copy changes a matter of pushing a few buttons in a remote office. The technology will allow for multiple ads to appear on a single board and, with the ability to change images 70 times per second, potentially allow for video. While the cost to install these boards is five times that of vinyl, it will allow advertisers more flexibility, make more money for Clear Channel and eliminates the need for paper, vinyl, printing and labor costs. All you production and vinyl people better find something else to do.
With video the online advertising meme du jour, ad network Bluelithium has launched AdRoll, a streaming video ad network with behavioral targeting capabilities. Much like Tacoda does with banners across its network of sites, AdRoll will allow advertisers to serve video ads, both pre-roll and in-banner, based on a person's navigation behavior across all the sites in the Bluelithium network, of which there are over 1,000 according to the company. The targeting capabilities will also include demographics and geography. If you've got video, it seems bluelithium has the right place to put it.
Seattle-based Worktank created the See Windows Vista site for Microsoft to illustrate how companies are using Vista to develop applications. The site is full of videos and is hosted by Tom Skerritt (where's he been lately?). It's pretty good. Does the job and seems to make good use of video.
Behavioral online ad network TACODA, will begin screening the content that appears adjacent to the ads served through its 3,500 site network for inappropriate content and then determine whether or not to serve an ad. It's being done through a partnership with content filtering firm ContentWatch which will flag questionable content for review and filtering. TACODA President and COO Curt Viebranz says the move is an effort to offer adverisers a "clean, we-lit environment." Now if only the contextual folks could keep the credit card sharks away from the real sharks. Actuially, one company can. Check out Mochila.
- Shaun Irving is traveling across Spain in a truck he converted into a giant camera. He's taking pictures for a project with *S,C,P,F, a WPP agency. The images will be displayed at the PHotoEspana photographic festival in June.
- The 47th international Clio Awards announced three ads selected as its 2006 Hall of Fame inductees: "Bear" for John West, from Leo Burnett, London; "Whassup?" on behalf of Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser brand, from DDB Worldwide, Chicago; and "Turkey (High Dive)" and "China (Tree)" for FOX Sports Network, by Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York.
- It seems sex does sex for Unilever's Axe. Axe deodorant is now the leading brand in the category.
- OnRequest Images has released a new product which can measure the impact imagery has on brand equity.
- Adverblog doesn't like the new Lonely Planet advergame and thinks it's too similar to the previously released Virgin "Exercise Your Muscle" game.
OnRequest Images, provider of custom imagery, today, released a new version of OnRequest OnPro, its patent-pending custom photography production platform, which makes it easy to create, process, manage, and store collections of images more quickly and efficiently. OnRequest OnPro says its claim to fame is that it is the industry's only fully automated, web-based production platform for imagery to build their brand. Some of the features of OnRequest OnPro include an integrated model casting system that ensures the right talent is quickly secured for each shoot, a photographer selection tool set, a production workflow to manage the production process, and a web-hosted image management solution. We don't buy photography but this sure seems easier than some of the other services out there. If you use it, let us know what you think.
We were going to ignore this one because it's just so stupid but we keep seeing everyone talking about that Philips patent that would make it possible for broadcasters to somehow disable the ability of people to skip through commercials. However, we just can't leave it alone and we left a comment over at AdFreak which we'll share with you here.
"It's bad enough now that some DVDs force you to endure move previews...and that DVD manufacturers go along with the ploy. I have mixed feeling about where this will go. After all, if this thing actually took hold, people, as they use to do, would just get up during the commercial break and go to the kitchen or to the bathroom. And, to boot, since research is getting better at knowing when people actually see a commercial versus knowing it was simply broadcast to an empty room, marketers will bail out on this before it goes anywhere."
What do you think?
UPDATE: In an Advertising Age article today, Philips has clarified its patent claiming it meant to offer choice, not force viewership of ads, "We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads. It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."
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