Here’s an interesting article that gives examples of how some companies advertise by offering a useful service to people. The main example at the recharging stations sponsored by Samsung at various busy airports. I like this idea a lot because it seems like it could be a cheaper way to advertise while endearing more customers to a brand.
Here’s a link to the article.
Microsoft continues on, consumed with Google envy (I really don’t get it, so I will continue to stand on the sideline and laugh my behind off). Search rebates is the latest scheme they are trying in the hopes of disrupting Google. Continue reading Microsoft’s Search Rebates
What? How that that be? This article from Ad Age predicts that as the price of popcorn rises in response to the rise in the cost of the commodities that go into a tub of popcorn — corn, cococut oil, and paper pulp — people will buy less concessions. Continue reading More Expensive Popcorn = Higher Movie Ticket Prices
Here’s an interesting story from Ad Age about some technology Google is tinkering with for TV ads. I actually think I like this idea. The idea is to include “quality” as a metric and to use that to price advertising. The proposed quality metric is based on audience retention during an ad, so the more people who watch the ad completely, the cheaper the ad is for the advertiser. The fewer people who watch, the more costly the ad. The hope seems to be that unpopular and stale ads would get pulled from the airwaves very quickly. This will be enabled by two-way communication as viewers watch TV. The article says that it’s unclear how Google would do this, but I disagree. Largely, it has do with who Google partners with on the content delivery side. Two-way communication is possible to get from viewers with cable and DVR’s because those already have two way communication built into them. The second-to-second aspect is the real problem — but who says you can’t choose a sample of the viewing audience at each second. Also a viewers viewing information can be cached internally on the hardware and sent up to the service provider or Google at anytime of the day. As for the viewing audience, my hope is that this of system will get rid of commercial fatigue. The first two or three times I see an interesting commercial, I will pay attention. As the commercial is repeated, I lose interest and either do something else while the commercial is on, fast forward through it via TIVO or flip the channel. It sounds like under the system that Google is proposing as a commercial becomes stale, it will cost the advertiser more to continue to run the commercial, thereby forcing the advertiser to make fresh commercials. So the good commercials will naturally rise, but after saturation is reached, something new will have to be brought in keep the audiences’ attention.
Here’s an interesting article from Ad Age about the decline in viewership of and advertising during the network news. Some “Duh” points brought up is that fact that the desired core demographic of upper income 18 – 49-year olds are not at home during the evening news hours (4 – 7PM). Consequently, the average age of evening news viewers is 60 — retired folks I imagine. Personally, I don’t bother watching the local or evening news broadcasts because they are neither informative nor entertaining. I get my news from the radio, via the Internet, and reading print magazines — that is if I care to get the news. Sometimes I skip the news that isn’t tech related due to fatique. I know that sounds bad, but honestly has anything really changed in the last few weeks with regards to the US Presidential Election, Iraq, and the US economy? I would like to get some world news, but believe it or not, International news is kinda hard to come by in the US.
Interestingly, Ad Age is also running a series of articles on the decline of the newspapers. The article run today speculates as newspaper readers die, they aren’t being replaced with new readers. I wonder if that’s the case for network news as well.
Moving on, the article is careful to explain that the news is not no longer relevant. Rather, people have more choices for how they consume the news — TV, radio, and the Internet via computers, cellphones, and other mobile devices. As such, it seems that advertisers can diversify their ads efforts. In my own experience, I see that news websites have a lot more videos now. I find the videos to be a pain for news items that could be described in 3 paragraphs or less. This is due to the load time for the video and the unavoidable 30-60-secs of ads that is tacked on to the front of the stream — sooo annoying. So much for high speed Internet … dear gosh the ISPs need to hurry up an upgrade their infrastructures.
On the whole, though, I’d say that the most useful and detailed news comes from online and print magazines. Broadcast and Internet news amounts to a bunch of sounds bites that generally remind people of the major headlines. The print magazines, though, like newpapers have nice long meaty articles. Unlike newspapers thought, most magazines are weekly, bi-weekly, or monthlies. Since they are easy to transport, a magazine can be taken almost anywhere for convenient reading at the reader’s leisure. Perhaps this contributes to the continued success of magazines. Perhaps this, too, could be the future of the newspaper — fewer issues, small form factor, and glossy media. I think I would get a weekly San Diego/San Diego county news magazine if there was one. What about you?
Anyhow, use the link given in the first sentence to read the article.
More Rambling 