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."
In the sort of "can't we all just get along" category and in a nod to the stressed relationship between people who just want to use their computers to get work done and those who want to lord over every little piece of minutia about that computer making it miserable for the person using the computer to actually do any work, professional services firm, Aquent, has announced a new, Kumbaya-like program to help marketing and IT get along.
The new service will be headed by Aquent Co-Founder Steve Kapner and a new video with American Marketing Association VP Nancy Costopulos covers how marketers and IT can work together to leverage customer data to create better marketing programs. And, yes, Aquent advertises on this site.
Following their logo design screw up that resulted in a logo nearly identical to the Sottish Arts Council logo, Quark has, again, redesigned their logo. Given that the new logo looks like three logos crammed into one another, we think it's unlikely another company will step forward claiming plagiarism.
Avid, that wizard behind commercial creation, is hosting a contest which will send the winner to NAB2006 in Las Vegas. The contest site says, "Cool ideas. Hot technology. That's what turns us on. What are you avid for? Maybe it's snowboarding on fresh corduroy. Or all-night poetry slams. Or your best friend 's band. Whatever it is, if you can convince us to love what you love in a 60-second video, you may win a trip to Las Vegas this April." If you're into the whole Las Vegas thing and you're creative, whip up a :60 and get yourself a free trip.
Hoping to stand up as a model against software-install spyware, Santa-Barbara-based onCommercials has introduced a formalize revenue share model with aims to "official-ize" software-install advertising. Software developers can use onCommercials code to display commercials during the loading process of their software. Each time the application is started a commercial will be shown, dynamically chosen by onCommercials serving technology.
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ad:tech, which hosts three major national online marketing conferences, is launching a new conference series called IMPACT, a ten city, one day show kicking off February, 28 in Seattle then moving on to Phoenix, LA, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Toronto, Cincinnati and ending with Fort Lauderdale April, 6. The shows, as does the three big shows, will focus on all thing online marketing from planning to buying to analytics to search engine marketing to campaign optimization to ad formats to blogging to consumer generated media to behavioral marketing.
The day's events will consist of keynotes, separate tracks with sessions of differing topics, presentations from service providers/vendors, mini expo session where attendees can explore exhibitor offerings and an ad:tech Connect LIVE! Session, an interactive Q & A jam session. We'll be attending the Seattle and Boston events.
While there's plenty of places to search for and look at viral advertising, Viral HQ has gathered together an expansive collection of viral ads and categorized them by name along with the brand they were created for. Like many other viral accumulators, Viral HQ also has plans to offer seeding and tracking services. While hosting virals is a great way to sell other services, Viral HQ has done a respectable job of gathering together a huge collection. That said, it needs a search feature so virals can be found based on the brands as well as the name. Currently, it's just an alphabetical directory.
BlueLithium, TribalFusion, Casale, Tacoda, Claria. To those outside the ad industry, and to some within, these names would lead one to believe we're talking about some new form of drug therapy intervention. In actuality, they are the names of ad serving companies, those wonderful, if difficult to define, operations that help deliver marketers online ads to websites that make sense for the advertiser. With all the buzz words these companies insist upon using, it's a wonder any of us in the industry have a clue as to the real modus operandi of these companies.
With the help of iMediaCommection's Jim Meskauskus, you need not feel like a clueless buffoon any longer. Jim has queried 14 of these companies with a series of questions geared towards helping us all understand just what these companies do, how big they are, who they target, why they're different from their competitors and what kind of ads they serve. So dig in and become an expert on ad serving. Or, at least become an expert at knowing what these companies want you to know versus what you might really want to know.
When we wrote last summer about the test launch of The PreTesting Company's MediaCheck, a passive, digital television commercial viewership measurement service, we knew a new world of television viewership was upon us. Following a test launch in 2,500 Omaha homes, MediaCheck plans to have its measurement service in 35,000 homes in up to seven cities. The company is also in talks with cable operators to embed the system within set top boxes. Bye, bye archaic program ratings measurement systems. Bye, bye Nielsen. Hello commercial viewership metrics that will allow buyers to properly price television buys.
Responding to Strawberry Frog's Scott Goodson who said metrics such as MediaCheck could "rob commercials of edgy creative," AdJab's Chris Thilk took the words right out of our mouths writing, "You're [Goodson] the problem. Advertising is about selling, not entertaining. If you want to entertain go to Hollywood."
Like any inventive new technology, it doesn't take long before the invention is put to use for sex-related purposes. Back in October, 2005, Lexus used 3D video technology to project a moving image of its new model inside a storefront in Times Square. Now, according to The Spunker, a fashion store in Copenhagen Berlin is using the technology to project a very life-like image of a model stripping in the window-front. Hasn't anyone launched iPorn yet? Oh, yea. They have.
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