Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama began his first full day in office with a moment of solitude in the Oval Office, reading a note from his predecessor, before making phone calls to Middle East leaders.
Obama arrived in the Oval Office at 8:35 a.m., according to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. The president spent 10 minutes alone, reading a note left for him in the desk by outgoing President George W. Bush. The note had been placed in an envelope with a note saying: “To: # 44, From: # 43.”
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met with the president 10 minutes later to discuss the daily schedule, Gibbs said.
Obama called Middle East leaders, according to a senior administration official, including King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
On Sunday, Israel and Palestinian militants declared a cease-fire after 22 days of fighting in Gaza.
First lady Michelle Obama joined her husband in the Oval Office at 9:10 a.m., shortly before the first couple departed for the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral.
READ THE REST—>Obama begins day with moment of solitude, then business
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized ,
Original Post HERE
German ad agency Scholz & Friends releases great video on how the world of Brand Management has changed from the 1940’s through today.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Ad Networks and Analytics:
- All Things Digital surmises that Microsoft covets Google and Yahoo’s display advertising businesses.
Agencies and Marketing Execs:
- Carat was selected to manage consumer and trade media buying and planning for Kohler Co. in North and South America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
- Senior VP Wendy Clark of advertising at AT&T has decided to leave the company.
- Jeff Scott, longtime managing director, board member, finance and executive committee member of Campbell Ewald, has left the company.
Biz Buzz:
Campaigns of Note:
- ABSOLUT Vodka is using online celebrities Tim and Eric of “Time and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job” in an off-beat online video campaign.
- The Mochila has formed a relationship with Barely Political. The latter’s popular Obama Girl videos will appear in the content network.
Legal, Government and Regulation:
- Apple reportedly filed suit against “Mac-clone” Psystar, alleging the latter violated its copyright, trademark and even its shrink wrap license.
- NebuAd faces more congressional critique: a bipartisan passel of Representatives are questioning ISP Embarq about whether it adequately notified consumers of its recent test of NebuAd’s system.
Mobile:
Social Networks:
- Virtual world Minyanland joined the GoFish Network, expanding the latter network to 23 million unique visitors per month.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , GET MORE GREAT MARKETINGVOX CONTENT INCLUDING NEWSLETTERS HERE
Estimated value: $30,000
Ad Networks and Analytics:
- Cost-per-lead firm Pontiflex launched AdUnit X, custom cost-per-lead banner ads. A screenshot is available on the Pontiflex CPL Blog.
- Online ad prices have reportedly fallen for the third consecutive month.
Agencies and Marketing Execs:
- Agencies have cut back on across-the-board ad spend since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to the ever-insightful Telegraph.
- NeverBlue made Mark How its VP of Sales and Business Development. How previously worked with DivX and ACD Systems.
- North American Scientific appointed Robin Gibbs to VP of Marketing.
Biz Buzz:
Legal, Government and Regulation:
- Antitrust officials from the US Department of Justice are issuing subpoenas for information about the sponsored search deal between Google and Yahoo.
- Amgen shall pay $200 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit with Johnson and Johnson. The latter accused Amgen of anticompetitive marketing efforts for cancer medication.
Online Content:
- “Obama HOPE,” a media print by artist Shepard Fairey, is up for bid at CharityBuzz, an online auction house. The estimated value is $30,000; the current bid is $60,000. The auction, which ends July 24, supports Art for Life, which supports disadvantage urban youth.
- LL Bean has added Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews to its website, llbean.com. The company reportedly garnered 13,000 in five days, following its first email promo effort.
- Search engine optimization firm ChaosMap was chosen by Spill.com, an animated movie review site owned by MIVA, to improve traffic, branding and social media expansion efforts.
Publishing:
- Print media groups in Asia, Europe and the US — which lost money to internet publications — have begun to outsource copyediting work to companies like Mindworks in India.
Search:
- To protect its sponsorship deal with Yahoo from further scrutiny, Google testified Monday that the relationship would not expand its already-sizeable lead in search traffic. “We think we’ll make money, of course,” the executive added with haste.
Social Networks:
User Experience:
- Sojern Inc. partnered with five airlines to place local advertising on printable online boarding passes. Participants include Delta Airlines and Continental. “We expect to make a nice profit while delighting customers,” said spokesman Mark Bergsrud for Continental in Houston.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , GET MORE GREAT MARKETINGVOX CONTENT INCLUDING NEWSLETTERS HERE
Ad Networks and Analytics:
- Social advertising intelligence firm Xtract raised 7.5 million euros, the equivalent of $11.74 million dollars, in a series B round of funding. Its clients include Nokia, T-Mobile, BLYK and Vodafone.
Agencies and Execs:
- AOL poached Kate Burns, the managing director of Google UK. Burns is now VP and Managing Director of Bebo Europe, charged with expanding Bebo’s services into Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
- Adap.tv hired Dakota Sullivan as VP, Marketing & Product. Sullivan will assist in “advertising optimization for online video publishers,” said CEO Amir Ashkenazi.
- Marcus Brauchli, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, replaces Len Downie as executive editor of The Washington Post. One reason for his hiring is his ability to change the paper’s structure — or employees — “without overly demoralizing the staff or hurting the product that we put out in print or online,” said Publisher Katharine Weymouth.
Biz Buzz:
- Gannett has acquired ShopLocal, a potentially useful mate to PointRoll, which Gannet purchased in 2005.
- The Kerry Group acquired RJ/RG, LLC, a web-based marketing intelligence firm based in St. Louis.
- Unilever’s United Kingdom arm extended a long-term agreement with new media firm Kaboose.
- P&G set ThermaCare, its brand of heat wraps, on the auction block.
Mobile:
Online Content:
Publishing:
- Halogen launched an ad network targeted to households that earn over $1 million per year.
Search:
- Yahoo has notified the European Commission of its ad deal with Google. Given that the EU Commission passed the Google/DoubleClick merger, they will likely grant Google and Yahoo the right to liaise.
- Microsoft said it would be willing to buy Yahoo if the latter changes its board of directors. Yahoo snaps back: “If Microsoft and Mr. Ballmer really want to purchase Yahoo, we again invite them to make a proposal immediately.” And the beat goes on.
Social Networks:
User Experience:
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Fragmentation alters Internet-LINK
Anick Jesdanun
Associated Press
Oct. 6, 2007 12:00 AM
NEW YORK – The recent rush by major Internet portals to buy advertising companies and extend their sales networks is a sign that the business of being a one-stop shop for information and entertainment isn’t what it used to be.
Gone are emphasizing ways to attract and keep visitors by creating destinations with anything people need for work or leisure.
Instead, those companies more aggressively are trying to follow Web surfers elsewhere – and bring lucrative advertising to them.
As people increasingly turn to blogs, social-networking sites and other sources of user-generated media, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL have spent more than $10 billion collectively this year to acquire companies and technologies that help extend their online advertising networks.
Instead of relying solely on being portals for consumers, the major companies are creating one-stop shops for advertisers, who in greater numbers want to buy ads centrally and place them where the eyeballs are. The networks take care of feeding the ads to smaller sites.
“We’re not interested in building yesterday’s portal,” said Ron Grant, AOL’s president and chief operating officer. “Consumers are finding what they are looking for is coming from more and more fragmented places. We need a way for advertisers to take advantage of that fragmentation.”
That shift is important for the major Internet businesses to grab a substantial share of the marketing dollars expected to flow at the expense of television and print.
Freedom for the surfer
The development means greater freedom and a further erosion of artificial walls designed to keep visitors from leaving sites.
According to comScore Media Metrix, the U.S. audience for the major Internet brands grew in the past year, but total time spent at Yahoo and AOL dropped about 10 percent, while Microsoft’s MSN-Windows Live services saw an 8 percent decline.
In other words, these sites are attracting more people but are keeping them for shorter durations as users find what they need elsewhere.
Google was the exception, with a 57 percent jump in total time spent, but even the company recognizes that “no individual property will have all those products and services” a user might want, said Tim Armstrong, Google’s head of North American ad sales.
In a few cases, the large companies have bought wildly popular sites. Google spent about $1.76 billion last November to absorb the leading video-sharing site, YouTube. It also owns the blogging service Blogger, while Yahoo has the photo-sharing site Flickr.
“Everyone still wants to be your home page. They are always going to battle for that,” said Nick Nyhan, chief executive of market research firm Dynamic Logic. “But they have to think beyond that. Consumers aren’t going to just take your stuff.”
Google, Yahoo and AOL still make most of their ad money from sites they own and operate. (Microsoft did not break down figures in its regulatory filings.) Google and Yahoo even reported relative growth there in the second quarter.
Ad networks set the stage and help the large Internet companies ensure they will have enough inventory to sell in the years ahead.
Ford Motor Co. can, for instance, come to Google and buy ads that run not only there but at the New York Times’ Web site and thousands of others within Google’s AdSense network. Ford wouldn’t have to deal with all those sites individually; third-party sites wouldn’t have to expand their sales teams.
Google gets a cut of ad revenues without spending a dime developing those specialty sites. This concept isn’t new, but the scale is changing.
Sharing the wealth
Yahoo, meanwhile, paid $650 million for the 80 percent of Right Media Inc. it did not previously own and agreed to buy BlueLithium Inc. for $300 million. Microsoft bought aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion.
“It’s not that networks are going to supplant these mass-market sites, but they will have less influence as networks have more,” said David Hallerman, a senior analyst at the research group eMarketer, which projects U.S. online advertising spending at $44 billion in 2011, more than double the $17 billion last year.
Many factors are involved in this shift, including online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace commanding more of a user’s time. Web sites big and small are making features available, through tools called widgets, for direct viewing of sites.
Of course, the major brands still would prefer visitors going to them directly, as they wouldn’t have to share ad revenues with another site.
But as audiences disperse, advertisers have become reluctant to concentrate their spending at a traditional portal.
“Advertisers are going to need to start to use the Internet the way people always use the Internet, spreading out in hot pursuit of the things they need and want,” said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media Corp., an independent ad network.
“It’s much easier to fish where the fish are.”
***If you are a member of LinkedIn , please feel free to join the Dynamic Logic Online Media Measurment group . Your invitation can be accessed by clicking here .
Benoit post puts spotlight on influence of Wikipedia
CASSANDRA SZKLARSKI
Canadian Press
June 29, 2007 at 6:28 PM EDT
Toronto — An eerily prescient Internet post that preceded the discovery of Chris Benoit’s death and that of his wife and son put the spotlight Friday on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and its growing influence as a source of news.
The popular site found itself at the centre of the disturbing murder-suicide case Friday, when U.S. authorities announced they were investigating an addition made to Mr. Benoit’s Wikipedia profile early Monday.
The unsourced entry stated that the Canadian wrestler missed a match Saturday night due to “the death of his wife Nancy.” That was nearly 14 hours before authorities discovered the bodies of Mr. Benoit, his wife and their seven-year-old son.
The post was explained as mere mischief in a confession that appeared on a Wikipedia discussion site Friday, but nevertheless highlighted the power of the masses to share news through the Internet nearly as rapidly as it transpires.
Sue Gardner, a consultant and special adviser to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit group that runs Wikipedia, noted that the encyclopedia is meant to be an aggregator of news rather than a news outlet, since all articles must be credited to an external, published report.
But she nevertheless identified the site as being capable of following current events like few news organizations can, by relying on a vast global network of volunteer editors and contributors to pull disparate reports together.
Ms. Gardner, who previously worked as a journalist in Canada for 10 years, recalled turning to Wikinews to keep abreast of developments in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16 while working for cbc.ca.
“It actually was the first place that I went online because I knew that Wikinews, in effect, aggregates together multiple sources,” says Ms. Gardner, who began working at the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation on Monday.
While Wikipedia has suffered its fair share of credibility problems, Ms. Gardner says users have proven to be adequate watchdogs in keeping entries fair and accurate.
“The community has got a really strong understanding of its own rules and why it does things,” she says, noting that a shared commitment to neutrality guides more than 75,000 active contributors working on some 5,300,000 articles. “They’re committed people who are pretty steeped in it.”
Still, the site weathers a considerable amount of vandalism.
Earlier this year, a prominent contributor who claimed to be a tenured professor of religion was revealed to be a 24-year-old college student in Kentucky, prompting Wikipedia to demand proof of qualifications from users claiming to be experts.
In December 2005, Wikipedia began requiring visitors to register before creating new entries after an article falsely implicated a U.S. journalist in the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy.
Ms. Gardner says that as Wikipedia’s user base grows, so too does the site’s reliability and accuracy.
“There’s obviously still opportunity for vandalism, vandalism happens all the time but it gets reverted pretty quickly and I would say that the bulk of the articles would be more acceptable,” she says, describing Wikipedia as “the living embodiment of the wisdom of crowds.”
In the case of Mr. Benoit, users removed the reference to his wife’s death 47 minutes after it appeared, said Ms. Gardner. That led to a brief online battle between two camps in which the entry was restored and then removed, until administrators locked the site. The Benoit page remains locked until July 8.
An anonymous user said Friday on the Wikipedia discussion page that they had posted the entry based on rumours and speculation.
“I just can’t believe what I wrote was actually the case,” wrote the user, who had the same IP address as the person who made the edits. “I’ve remained stunned and saddened over it.”
Paul Sullivan, who runs the citizen journalism site Orato.com, says the incident highlights the growing need for sophisticated levels of media literacy among the general public.
“We’re always going to trade in error and we have to be careful,” Mr. Sullivan says. “It doesn’t matter what the medium is, although this one has special challenges.”
Old media turns combative against new media
By Kenneth Li
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Leading media executives took a combative tone against Internet companies on Tuesday, suggesting that Big Media increasingly considers new content distributors like Google Inc. to be more foe than friend.
At a panel discussion on the second day of the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference, top executives said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.
While new distribution technologies like the Internet and mobile phones are siphoning television audiences, media companies argued that the Web also brings new revenue streams.
But the discussion quickly moved to criticism of the perception that traditional media businesses are dead, and to the rampant copyright offenses enabled by new digital technologies.
“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand”.
“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”
Time Warner defended its discussions on copyright protection with Internet search leader Google Inc., which another panel member, Viacom Inc., has sued.
Viacom, owner of the MTV and Comedy Central networks, is seeking more than $1 billion from Google and its online video site YouTube, accusing them in a lawsuit of “massive intentional copyright infringement.”
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said on the panel his company had discussed working with Google and YouTube earlier than other major media companies, by virtue of the popularity of its programs on the Web and their resonance with young viewers.
Dauman said Viacom had little choice after failing to reach an agreement, as video clips of its shows were uploaded by YouTube users without its permission.
“So, it was only reluctantly after trying for a long period of time, to reach a deal that we found that we could not tolerate having our content taken, when we’ve got Brian and Dick and others compensating us for it,” Dauman said, referring to Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons.
“We were forced into it,” he added.
Google, whose advances in applying its Internet paid search technology to the television industry, radio and print has spooked traditional media companies, owns a 5 percent stake in Time Warner’s AOL Internet unit.
“We’re in a world where we’re a partner with everybody and we’re fighting everybody,” News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said on the panel.
Despite the attention from Wall Street, the media industry and the press, executives said the percentage of overall sales contributed by digital businesses remained small and they should be mindful of destroying existing lucrative businesses.
“The amount of money we get from those (Internet companies) are a fraction of those we get from the cable industry,” Chernin said. “We have to be careful not to disaggregate.”
News Corp. is likely in a position to know how enemies today could turn into friends tomorrow.
A source familiar with the matter said News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media, which oversees its popular Internet social network MySpace, had reached a preliminary deal to buy photo sharing site Photobucket for an estimated $250 million.
MySpace last month blocked traffic coming from Photobucket after the photo service began running ads on photos displayed on MySpace sites. MySpace said it had violated its service terms.
“You’ll see more acquisitions,” Chernin said. “This is a world where the big get bigger. You’ll see increased consolidation.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Media to move to Web, Gates says
Microsoft thinks the advertising business model for traditional media — venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending — will fall apart faster in the coming five years.
Meanwhile, it’s positioning itself as a prime location for the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web and other digital media.
Chairman Bill Gates spelled out his vision of the future of media Tuesday, in front of about 1,000 advertising professionals in Seattle for Microsoft’s Strategic Account Summit of its top advertising customers.
“We’re saying newspapers will go online, and there will be massive innovation that comes out of that,” Gates said. “We’re saying that TV, the biggest ad market in the world, will completely go online and have the kind of targeting interaction that you only get out on the Web today.
“As dramatic as things happening on the Web are, that’s actually what all advertising … will be in the future.”
Gates painted a grim picture of the transition for traditional media.
“I have a lot of friends in the newspaper industry and, of course, this is a tough, wrenching change for them, because the number of people who actually buy, subscribe to the newspaper and read it has started an inexorable decline,” he said.
With that decline, Gates said, advertisers are shifting their budgets to new areas.
They will spend about $445.5 billion globally in 2007, according to ZenithOptimedia’s most recent quarterly forecast. Of that, online is expected to get 7 percent of the pie compared with newspapers’ 28.3 percent.
By 2009, online is forecast to grow to 8.7 percent, while newspapers dip to 27 percent.
Not everyone agrees on the pace of the transition to digital media and the demise of traditional forms.
“The timeline between now and when that happens I think is questionable,” said David Cohen, executive vice president at Universal McCann. His agency is an arm of the McCann Worldwide ad agency, which counts Microsoft among its blue-chip clients.
“I know that the newspaper industry is definitely going through an evolution, but … there’s still a tremendous amount of circulation in some of these markets,” Cohen said.
Microsoft is developing an array of advertising inventory and media content to connect advertisers with consumers and claim more of the growing online ad market.
The company is also producing the tools and platforms — such as MSN, the Xbox game console, mobile devices and its new online video technology, Silverlight — to create and distribute the ads themselves.
“There are very few companies that have such a wide range of digital assets that you can run messaging across all those platforms,” said Cohen, who works with clients including Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Bacardi and the U.S. Army.
He said Microsoft’s challenge is to link all of those platforms to give advertisers a comprehensive profile of a consumer — her preferences, what ads she viewed in the last month and which ones she acted on.
“That’s the code that they’re trying to crack, and if they do, they’ll be unmatched,” Cohen said.
It makes Microsoft’s rivalry with Google for online advertising more interesting, he said.
Google dominates the search-advertising industry by drawing so many more people to its search engine.
“Google is obviously a great, fierce competitor,” Cohen said. “They’re doing lots of stuff right, but I think you can argue that they don’t have nearly the range of assets that a Microsoft brings to the party.”
Gates gave other specific examples of old media facing withering competition from new technologies.
He said IPTV, the underlying technology for TV over the Internet, makes traditional broadcasting obsolete, supplanting the model in which one show goes to many viewers who may or may not be interested.
The IPTV model presents opportunities for advertisers to tailor messages to viewers.
“In this environment, the ads will be targeted, not just targeted to the neighborhood level … but we’ll actually know who the viewers of that show are,” Gates said.
In a nod to how key the advertising effort is to Microsoft, Gates plans to focus on online services, search and advertising for the remainder of his 15 months working full time at the company. He plans to transition to full-time work at his philanthropy in summer 2008.
In another nod, the company gave each of the summit’s attendees a Zune digital music player and a copy of Office 2007.
Benjamin J. Romano: bromano@seattletimes.com
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Interactive Report Cards
April 30, 2007
By Adweek Staff
NEW YORK We’ve become a little more selective this year, as we chose just 10 interactive agencies to grade, down from 18 last year, in order to expand our analysis of each. In looking at the interactive agency landscape, we wanted to grade not just the largest agencies, but the ones that are defining the sector with the work they do.
Click here to view the report cards.
More often than not, these are the agencies that will compete against one another on pitches.
Numbers: In many cases, we are restating revenue numbers from 2005, to reflect more accurate figures, and dug deeper to come up with true revenue numbers for 2006. Then, with the help of Adweek financial columnist Alan Gottesman, we evaluate the agencies on revenue-to-staff ratio and revenue gains as compared with interactive-industry averages (this year’s aggregate average was about 25 percent) before determining a composite rank in both categories. Grades were determined for all 10 agencies. We also consider the revenue base for each agency in determining the grade. Naturally, if a shop has a large percentage increase in revenue, but is starting from a small base, its grade may not be as high as a larger agency with a smaller percentage increase. Wins and losses in this category are for retainer-based clients, unless otherwise noted.
Creative: Grades are based on design, ease of navigation, user experience and the overall power of the marketing idea. They take into account more than the work described in each shop’s creative section; space limitations prevent us from going into greater detail.
Emerging Media: A new category, which replaces the former “Technology.” This is where the continuing evolution of interactive advertising is most notable. Building microsites and running banner campaigns are no longer enough; clients are asking their agencies to help them push into new areas. We reward agencies for the boldness and success in doing so.
Management: We rate how well executives run their business, including revenue growth versus competitors, personnel moves to and from the company, and strategic initiatives. We also consider what management has done to stay a step or two ahead in an ever-shifting market.
The final grade: We use a numeric formula to average the other four marks.
