aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Imagining some 21st century ad innovations
If Madison Avenue is sooo 20th century, what might the 21st look like?
Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, gave a very interesting and wide-ranging talk last September at Dickinson College. His take on the future of television and advertising is particularly interesting.
He suggests that the broadcast and cable guys are so stuck in their business models that they don’t get it. And the IPTV future propounded by the telcos, “frankly, tries to turn the internet into a cable television system.” He imagines a day when you download a full movie in 30 seconds:
[rough transcription begins @49:20] If your downloading streams of packets, they don’t have to be confined to audio and video in this television environment. In fact, let me suggest to you that the term “television” should be reserved for today’s industry, with its business models and everything else. And the term “video” should be reserved for the medium, video, because video on the Internet is not the same as television because the business models don’t have to be the same. I can download packets with audio and video but they could also have text, they could have books, they could have other digitized information, programs, it could be anything.
So imagine you are downloading a movie. Not only are you getting the audio and the video, but you’re getting information about when it was made and who made it and what was the book it was based on and something about the author. Sucking packets off the disk, you have a programable device which is interpreting the packets - it’s not a dumb raster scan thing, it’s actually looking at the data and deciding what to do with it - if some of that information is advertising information you don’t have to confine yourself to the old television advertising model which is: interrupt the program just at the most crucial part and make sure they hang around watching the commercial before you get back to the who shot John? Instead, you can use the model that Google has so successfully monetized, allowing the customer to be in total control of what advertisements they watch or if they watch them at all.
Imagine downloaded information about some of the things that you see in the movie. You’ve heard of the term product placement where people pay money to put the Macintosh with the logo prominently in the middle of the screen or the car comes up so you can see the grill of the Cadillac. Those are all attempts to monetize product placement. But now imagine that you have a movie playing. It’s being played through your laptop or you have a computer controlled device and you can mouse around on the screen and click on things in the field of view. If the information that was downloaded about that product has activated that object… a window can pop up and tell you something about that product. And if you happen to be online at the time… you can pull back fresh information about the product, who buys it, where is it available and so on.
Suddenly the consumer is in charge of the advertising experience, not the advertiser and not the party delivering the content. This is such a diversion away from the classical business model that it’s very, very hard for some companies to completely understand that they could exercise very, very different mechanisms to monetize the entertainment.
He qualifies that this is no Google plan. He’s just imaging how an alternative way of treating video could be quite different from a user point of view. But it’s an imagined future I could like much better than my cable bill that comes with commercial interruption and irrelevant clutter.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Netscape on Firebrand
This one I watched twice…
Firebrand is cool. Here’s how it can make money!
Firebrand
TiVo found it for us on the ION Network (11PM ET to midnight, Monday through Friday), and we found it strangely addictive. We immediately went to the website, and watched the two, TiVo and web, simultaneously.
Saying that it’s dedicated to “commercial culture,” Firebrand curates the site to include only what it considers to be the best video advertisements from around the world. You can peruse a host of ads from big-brand names like Nike, Apple and Volkswagen. Or you can watch Firebrand Live, which is a lot like MTV circa 1983. A window pops up to give you the commercial credits, and “commercial jockeys” or “CJs” walk you through the programming. This being the web, the host is, of course, a hot woman wearing a cleavage-revealing top. [...]
Firebrand is privately funded by NBC Universal (GE), Microsoft (MSFT) and GE’s Peacock Equity Fund. It makes money by charging advertisers to be on the site. [And they sell ads on this all ad channel!] But the company is quick to point out that it does not just accept any ad offered.
Much as I enjoyed the channel and found it addictive, I won’t likely be tuning in. Rather, when I hear about or want to go looking for a commercial or product, I’ll head there.
When I was a child every mother collected S&H Greenstamps, and spent an inordinate amount of time sticking those stamps in books. Imagine a digital variation. The more commercials we watch the more digital stamps we collect.
The kind and number of “stamps” offered could be targeted by age, geography and a host of other demographic data. Instead of sticking them in books we could have an ad infested webquest game.
Ads as fun; ads we want; winners all around.
RELATED: Read/WriteWeb, Commercials As Content - 7 Places to Watch Ads On Purpose.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Zuckerberg hoisted on his own pertard?
Remember the very thorough article by Luke O’Brien from 02138, an independent magazine aimed at Harvard alumni, that convinced me along with probably pretty much everyone who 
read it that Mark Zuckerberg is not telling the truth about the creation of Facebook?
There are some ugly stories in there that have the ring of truth to them. They are buttressed, no doubt, by the 02138 posting of a series of court documents in a downloadable format.
On Thursday Facebook unleashed a massive legal fury at 02138 after discovering that those documents included Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend and the address of his parent’s house in New York.
The documents have been redacted and reposted. “It was a regrettable error and we have fixed it,” said 02138 executive editor Richard Bradley.
Kara Swisher’s been watching and commenting on the irony of Facebook’s privacy concerns, “given that Facebook is embroiled in a controversy over advertising practices it has unveiled recently that some think are violations of Facebook users’ privacy.”
A Massachusetts judge denied the Facebook take-down request. As questions about Zuckerberg mount:
[H]is company is under intense fire for new ad programs it recently introduced, especially one called Beacon, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed.
While it made some changes in Beacon last week, Facebook has not given users a global opt-out of the controversial marketing system in which the social network is seeking to link behavior and advertising more tightly for supposedly bigger payoffs.
Of course, after more bad publicity, rising user ire and inevitable advertiser pull-out from the program (Coca-Cola has already headed for the hills, according to reports), it’s a good bet that Facebook will be forced into an opt-out for all solution.
But, I am guessing given what as to be simple stubbornness on the part of Zuckerberg, another few rounds of devastating publicity for Facebook.
Let’s just say that this is not a good thing for a company that recently got a $15 billion valuation after $300 million of investments by Microsoft and last week, as first reported by BoomTown here, Asian billionaire Li Ka-shing.
There is little question in my mind-and it has to be going through the minds of all Facebook employees and investors-that all this should be considered a major fumble on the part of 20-something CEO Zuckerberg, whose judgment on how to handle both Beacon and in waging the pointless lawsuit against 01238 seems deeply flawed at best.
More on that key issue for Facebook here in BoomTown next week.
It looks like I’ll be reading more of Kara in the coming days.
RELATED: Henry Blodget parses the NYTimes’ Louise Story who asked Zuckerberg about Beacon and found “a gap between what Facebook said and what it did.”
Blodgett says the Facebook spokesman’s attempts to explain what Zuckerberg really meant only made matters worse. “Time for Facebook to look in the mirror and realize that it’s not a quirky little start-up anymore.”
LATER: Fred Wilson sees it all as Backlash but quotes Umair’s more evil than evil post:
Like I’ve been pointing out - the real strategic problem is that Facebook is a faux revolutionary. There’s little but evil in its DNA. It’s not concerned with making things better, exploding yesterday’s orthodoxies, etc - it’s just concerned with domination, control, subordination and other obsolete massconomy games.
I’m not opposed to behavioral targeting either, Fred, but a global opt-out wouldn’t kill it.
The questions around Zuckerberg are what bug me. If there wasn’t similar scrutiny around Google at this point in its rise (and I’m not so sure there wasn’t) could it be that Sergey Brin and Larry Page had cleaner more appealing “DNA” than Zuckerberg?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Chevron Greenwashing
Chevron buying ads on Google for conservation…
[Google Search]
Saturday, November 17, 2007
War on Christmas ‘Naughty’ company list
The Liberty Counsel’s “Friend or Foe” campaign to keep the word “Christmas” alive in holiday advertising has put out a list of retailers who “are profiting from Christmas while at the same time pretending that it does not exist.”
The Naughties:
Ace Hardware: Holiday Decorations section on web site. Christmas Trees are referred to as Trees.
Banana Republic: Web site: Kick off the party season in style, Holiday Gift Guide. No mention of Christmas.
Bloomingdales: Web site: Gifted 2007, one Christmas ornament, one Christmas makeup kit, no celebration of Christmas made evident, no Christmas e-card or gift card, but there is a Hanukkah e-card.
Circuit City: Web site: Holiday Gift Guide, Free shipping by December 24th. Only mention of Christmas is in the shipping fine print.
Dicks Sporting Goods: Web site: The Gift Center. No mention of Christmas.
Gap: Web site: For the Season. Holiday Doggie Pajamas, Sweet Holiday Dreams Long Sleep Set, Holiday Graphic Bodysuit, Holiday Letters Bodysuit. No mention of Christmas.
Giant Eagle Pharmacy: Mentions holiday, holiday cards, Festive Seasonal Boxed Cards, and the slogan Reach for the Stars this Holiday Season on the web site. No mention of Christmas.
Hollister Co: Web site: SoCal X-Mas video, Holiday Beach video. No mention of Christmas.
Home Depot: Web site: Everything is red and green, but its the Holiday Gift Center, Holiday Decorations, Home for the Holidays, Artificial Trees, not Christmas trees. No mention of Christmas.
J. Crew Outfitters: Web site: Holiday Look Highland Holiday, The Very Merry Gift Shop, and Were Going Home for the Holidays.
K-Mart: Web site: Holiday Shop, Holiday Toys, Get it in time for the Holiday, Holiday Planner. They are calling Christmas The Holiday. Some local store managers may be hanging Christmas signs, but the company does not appear to be celebrating Christmas.
Kohl's: “Holiday shopping list,” no Christmas trees: just Trees, “Hanukkah” section, “Holiday: find the perfect gifts,” “45 days left: shipping deadlines,” “stocking stuffers,” “St. Nicholas station” and “Nativity” section, but never mentions “Christmas.”
Lane Bryant: “Holiday HQ,” “Gift Guide,” “For a truly special holiday gift…” “Holiday Season,” “Holiday Looks,” and “Holiday Style” on the web site. Typing “Christmas” in the search engine brings up nothing.
Marshalls: Front Page of the web site: “Who Wants a Holiday That Looks Like Everyone Elses?” “Holiday Style,” and “Holiday Decorating Ideas.” No mention of Christmas.
Nordstrom: Web site: “Once Upon a Holiday… gifts were given,” “Great Gifting.” No mention of Christmas. Dec 19 “Last day to make Holiday deadline.”
Office Max: Web site: “Great Gifts for the Holiday,” “Snappy Holiday Gift Ideas,” “Furnish your office in time for the holidays,” and “Everything you need this holiday season and beyond.” No mention of Christmas.
Old Navy: “Holiday Favorites,” “Holiday Morning,” “Season in Style,” and “Holiday Gift Guide” sections on the web site. No mention of Christmas.
Pet Smart: Web site: “Holiday Central,” “Photos with Santa Claws,” “Holiday Games,” “Holiday Wrapping Paper,” and “Holiday Shops.” No mention of Christmas.
Sears: Online: December 25 is the “holiday.”
Shopko: Report: Newspaper ad says they are selling “holiday lights”, “holiday trees”, and other “holiday items.” Web site: “Holiday ornaments, trees and lighting.”
Sprint: Web site: “Tis the season to give SprintSpeed,” “Holiday Entertainment,” “Holiday Season,” and “Sprint lights up the Holidays.” No mention of Christmas.
SEE ALSO: Morbo’s urgent War on Christmas update.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Do not track list
Most consumers are familiar with do-not-call lists, which are meant to keep telemarketers from phoning them. Soon people will be able to sign up for do-not-track lists, which will help shield their Web surfing habits from the prying eyes of marketers.
Such lists will not reduce the number of ads that people see online, but they will prevent advertisers from using their online meanderings to deliver specific ad pitches to them.
Today the AOL division of Time Warner will announce a service of this type, which will be up and running by the end of the year. Other programs are likely to be articulated soon, as online advertisers prepare for a two-day forum on privacy to be held by the Federal Trade Commission.
AOL says it is setting up a new Web site that will link consumers directly to opt-out lists run by the largest advertising networks. The site’s technology will ensure that people’s preferences are not erased later.
I won’t be opting out; I want the benefits of being tracked. But to have them we need to build an apparatus that ensures our privacy and appropriately safeguards and regulates and access to information and limits how it can be used. This is at least a start in that direction:
AOL executives say they are happy to give people a way to keep their Internet habits private, even though that would undercut AOL’s own behavioral targeting efforts. In July AOL acquired a behavioral ad network company, Tacoda, that has been promoting opt-out options to users for a year.
“We all have to build toward a future where we are delivering ads people want and not just ads we want people to see,” said Dave Morgan, the founder of Tacoda who now works at AOL. “The only way to do that is to listen to consumers.”
LATER: Sweating Through Fog has fun with last year’s AOL search breach.
Friday, October 26, 2007
GeniusRocket primary
GeniusRocket.com the top user-generated advertising website on the internet that was founded by former members of the Dean internet team, announced their “Genius Rocket Primary” today, calling on the user-generated political video community to submit positive advertisements for any of the declared presidential candidates and a chance to win up to $17,000 total ($1,000) per add.
Here’s how the GeniusRocket Primary works:
Round One: Upload your submission(s) by Friday, November 30th and ask your friends and family to vote on your submission. Spreading the word makes a difference—the number of votes and your overall rating from the community is taken into consideration by our judging panel when determining finalists for Round Two.
Round Two: Primary Voting takes place in early December. During Primary Voting, we’ll ask members of the community to vote for the best ad for each candidate from among the finalists.
The choice of the GeniusRocket community will determine the final winners. (This is a democracy, after all.)
Significantly, they want positive ads. Do it!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Microsoft + Facebook = Social Advertising
Microsoft invests $240 million in Facebook, beating out Google to buy a 1.6% stake:
The deal is rooted in an online-advertising boom that has turned Facebook into the newest Internet darling. In recent years, advertisers large and small that once focused their spending on television, newspapers and other traditional media have started shifting their spending to a host of Web sites. Google has built its fortunes on that shift and others including Microsoft are rushing in.
Facebook presents a big opportunity for online advertising, in part because it collects detailed information about its users—such as their hobbies, favorite music, location, age, and gender—that can be used to place highly targeted ads.
I think no one in the mainstream press has truly grokked what Facebook has a shot at doing - Adsense driven not by search queries, but by personal profile. It could be a major, major new platform, if we, as a culture, take to it. It’s not a given, but it’s a very compelling vision.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Nokia’s anti-Apple ads
The quartet of posters above was photographed in New York city over the weekend by a MacRumors forum jockey. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nokia pounce on Apple foibles, and it certainly won’t be the last. Even if Nokia can’t help but copy the iPhone interface design in their own future-looking presentations.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Online ads we want
On The Media had a piece pushing the party line on the not-really-so-new ad-blocking plug-ins that “raise serious problems for websites and maybe even legal issues for those who use the software.”
C-Net’s Declan McCullagh suggests the global nature of the web makes legal action unlikely but a “technological arms race” wherein the software is defeated and developers come up with counter-measures and sites come up with counter-counter-measures is possible.
He and host Bob Garfield go on to agree that viewing a web page while blocking the ad is morally akin to stealing. Wladimir Palant, the 27-year-old German developer of the open-source Adblock project has heard it all before:
...this guy thinks that he as the website owner has every right in the world and the visitors that pay him indirectly don’t have any rights at all. He would probably prefer if ad blockers were forbidden by law. And the hosts file. And the remote control because it allows you to zap away to another TV channel when the advertisements come. Actually, I don’t think you have the right to turn away from your TV when the advertisements come - you watched the show so now you have to pay.
I’m with Palant; the need to appeal to morality is the mark of a faltering, lazy ad industry. I recall the day when ads were cultural touchstones, all the buzz among me and my young friends for their style and wit and trendy sophisticated appeal. Advertisers have no one to blame but themselves for poisoning that well.
Having lived in the heart of marketing mania and them moved to a place where advertising space goes unsold, I can tell you that I want advertising. As a blogger who’s embedded Apple ads, I am happy to have them online too. I think we all do. But few of us believe it a moral obligation.
Advertisers may want to construct a moral code that makes us watch, but do they really believe that will make us buy or accept the advertisers message? Ads that are well-produced and relevant and that do not interrupt or appear in a cacophony of clutter are effective. Those are ads we want and that’s the advertiser’s challenge.
While on the topic, Om Malik has 5 Ways to Make Web Video Ads Work:
AdAge in its latest issue offers up a few key lessons for brand advertisers and how they can make web video as work. These are tips are based on a recent study of video consumption habits by TNS, done on behalf of AOL and Google.
- Video-sharing sites are getting a bigger share of visits (77%) versus news sites (55%) and broadcast TV sites (49%). Lesson: Good for YouTube, not so good for old tubes.
- 43% of those polled want ads to be interactive and clickable. Lesson: Don’t put stupid TV-style commercials that are not actionable.
- Videos are for sharing. Lesson: Big media, listen to CBS Interactive’s Quincy Smith.
- 52% want ads to be relevant to them, 46% think they need to be relevant to web site’s content. Lesson: Consumer electronics ads next to people being blown up aren’t going to work. Make your ads contextual, relevant and of course tasteful.
- Make ads fun if you want attention. Consumers feel annoyed by videos ads today. Lesson: Simple enough.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Remember: Do Not Call Registrations Expire
Numbers placed on the registry, begun in June 2003, are valid for five years. For the millions of people who signed onto the list in its early days, their numbers will automatically drop off beginning next June if they do not enroll again. “It is incredibly quick and easy to do,” Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week. “It was so easy for people to sign up in the first instance. It will be just as easy for them to re-up.”
But Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., says people should not be forced to re-register to keep telemarketers at bay. Doyle introduced legislation this week, with bipartisan support, to make registrations permanent. “When someone takes the time and effort to say ‘I don’t want these kinds of calls coming into my house,’ they shouldn’t have to keep a calendar to find out when they have to re-up to keep this nuisance from happening,” Doyle said in an interview.
The FTC built the five-year expiration date into the program to account for changes, such as people who move and switch their phone number, Parnes said. Doyle, however, points out that the list is purged each month of numbers that have been disconnected and reassigned to new customers. People can register their home and cell phone numbers or file complaints at http://www.donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382-1222.
Via James Joyner:
Why not simply outlaw the practice, period, except to people who have specifically opted in? This would, I’d wager, result in a much smaller database and make it far easier for consumers while also making it less likely that companies will be fined for accidental violation.
Monday, September 17, 2007
The NYTimes is freed!
A friend writes - all too generously - “as you predicted.” 
Expect lots of crowing from the blogosphere. And lots of bloggers quoting the Times’ columnists.
The story is timestamped in my reader at 9:38. And again as most emailed at 10:22.
The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.
The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.
In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free. [...]
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
Now what about the crosswords?
LATER - Jeff Jarvis weighs in:
It was a cynical act doomed from the start. With it goes any hope of charging for content online. Content is now and forever free. [...]
The bottom line is that the staff of the Times online did the best it could with TimesSelect, creating the richest service they could and probably garnering the largest paying clientèle possible - but still, it was a bad idea from the start. It turned out to be one expensive experiment, one bad investment.
But now everyone else in the content business can learn from the Times’ mistake. Rupert Murdoch has publicly toyed with the idea of taking down the pay wall around the Wall Street Journal online; I’d bet the odds of that just increased.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Hypervideo
The business model is evolving:
One of the great things about the Web is the ability to link to a Web page, or a part of a Web page, from anywhere. Asterpix, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup, wants to bring that same ease of use to the world of video. The company’s technology -— which it calls hypervideo — gives authors the ability to link directly to objects displayed inside video clips.
These so called hotspots track the “objects” linked throughout the entire video clip. So for instance, when explaining the Coverflow features of the iPhone, one can link directly to the relevant point in the video right from the blog post. Hotspots are designated with blinking circles; click on them in the video to access the author’s notes, tags and target links. (See this example)
The service doesn’t require you to download separate software on the desktop. Simply sign up and embed the videos as you would from any video source such as YouTube, MetaCafe, or Blip. Asterpix adds a separate invisible layer on top of the video that contains all the metadata (aka relevant linking information). Then just go ahead and drop it in your blog or on your MySpace page. [...]
Asterpix’s technology could have big implications for online video-related advertising as it would allow advertisers to embed hotspots around products of high commercial value. For instance, Le Bron James videos could link his shoes to Nike (NKE) stores, or Tiger Woods clips could help push golf clubs or even apparel.
“Every object is now clickable and searchable,” says Kausik. Google AdWords, for instance can drive traffic right to the relevant spot in a video clip, giving people a sense of what they are buying. “We hope this will help unlock the monetization of video.”
Monday, September 03, 2007
Ad blockers, advertisers and us
We’re not captive audiences any more and advertisers have to learn to treat us that way. Once they do, not that many of us will bother with ad blocker software:
Adblock Plus - while still a niche product for a niche browser - is potentially a huge development in the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites cluttered with advertisements.
The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.
From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter.
The consumer/advertiser relationship is a symbiotic one, thrown out of balance because ad-people have gone too far and we the people now have the tools to push back. I have no doubt that symbiosis will be restored.
Case in point:
Wladimir Palant, developer of the open-source Adblock Plus project...[and] a 27-year-old programmer in Cologne, Germany, is not an ideological opponent of online advertising. For example, he counts himself a fan of the ads that show up with a Google search, saying they are useful and unobtrusive. That does not mean Adblock will not block Google’s ads, however. It means Mr. Palant has to customize his own version of the program to allow them in.
We want ads. Ad people have to switch from forcing them down our throats to giving us the ads we want, when we want them.
Here, on the other hand, is precisely how not to do it:
For now, the opposition to Adblock Plus has been led by small Web sites who want all Firefox users blocked from Internet sites in retaliation. One such advocacy site, whyfirefoxisblocked.com, taunts a Firefox user with the headline, “You’ve reached this page because the site you were trying to visit now blocks the Firefox browser.”
The page includes the following argument: “While blanket ad blocking in general is still theft, the real problem is Adblock Plus’s unwillingness to allow individual site owners the freedom to block people using their plug-in. Blocking Firefox is the only alternative.”
Mr. Palant responds to that kind of thinking here:
...this guy thinks that he as the website owner has every right in the world and the visitors that pay him indirectly don’t have any rights at all. He would probably prefer if ad blockers were forbidden by law. And the hosts file. And the remote control because it allows you to zap away to another TV channel when the advertisements come. Actually, I don’t think you have the right to turn away from your TV when the advertisements come - you watched the show so now you have to pay.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Google’s Vint Cerf: let viewers decide what ads to look at
Vint Cerf, Internet legend and Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, is warning about security vulnerabilities and the loss of information that is only written in bits.
Within that worry is this optimistic advertising vision:
The internet allows all sorts of ancillary information to be downloaded with video - from subtitles to adverts - meaning that in the future, users could click on a bottle of wine they like the look of and find out where to buy it nearby.
“Google has discovered letting consumers decide what advertising to look at has been a very important part of our business model,” Mr Cerf said.
Via Read/Write Web, “For more of Vint Cerf’s views on the Internet, check out this recent video from YouTube entitled Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century:”
South Park: Matt & Trey get sweet new ad deal
I hope they come up with something good:
Because of the slow entry into the digital realm of Viacom, Comedy Central’s parent, and an almost crippling deal point in Mr. Stone’s and Mr. Parker’s contract, the lewd, rude, crudely animated and mordantly funny series - one that began with a viral video before the term even existed - has barely had a presence as an avalanche of user-generated entertainment hit the Web. Meanwhile, sites like YouTube met the demand for free “South Park” clips without paying for the privilege.
Now, however, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker and their bosses at Comedy Central, a unit of Viacom’s MTV Networks, are attempting to leapfrog to the vanguard of Hollywood’s transition into Web. In a joint venture that involves millions in up-front cash and a 50-50 split of ad revenues, the network and the two creative partners have agreed to create a hub to spread “South Park"-related material across the Net, mobile platforms, and video games.
The deal, signed Friday, begins with a three-year extension of the show and its creators’ contracts through a 15th season, in the year 2011, and gives Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker sizable raises, both in their salaries and in their guaranteed advances against back-end profits from DVDs, merchandising, syndication and international sales.
It also creates an entity called SouthParkStudios.com, to be housed in the show’s animation studio in Culver City, Calif., that is intended to be an incubator not only for new applications for characters the likes of Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny, but for new comedy concepts that could one day mature into TV series of their own.
But the real headline is that they get a 50-50 share of the digital ad revenue:
[E]ven Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone would most likely not have been able to negotiate their new joint venture had they not years ago inserted into their contract what has proved to be a killer deal point. Comedy Central’s boilerplate reserved to the network any income generated by the show through other network divisions. But the pair’s lawyer, Kevin Morris, insisted that any “South Park” revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel would go into the pot for calculating the men’s share of back-end profits.
This was meaningless at first, but it has taken on huge significance of late, Mr. Morris said. As Viacom struggled to change into a digitally nimble media company - making a failed bid for MySpace in 2005, suing Google and YouTube this year, and striking a retaliatory deal with Joost - the exploitation of “South Park” was subject to this nettlesome requirement. It was thus no coincidence that “South Park” was not part of the Joost deal.
Both the show’s creators and the network, therefore, stood to gain if it became easier to sell the show digitally. The brainstorming that led to Friday’s deal began a year ago in Mr. Morris’s office when Mr. Herzog proposed creating a digital animation studio led by Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker along the lines of a similar one at Nickelodeon.
Last year when it was reported that Tom Cruise got Comedy Central to cancel the Scientology episode by saying that he’d refuse to promote Mission Impossible 3, I wanted South Park to kiss-off Viacom:
My advice to Matt and Trey? Announce they’re leaving Comedy Central unless they get, say, the same kind of total control that huge Hollywood directors and stars like Cruise get over the content and distribution of their movies.
Good for them!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
YouTube’s answer to video ads
The three things I hate about ads: irrelevance, interruption, and clutter. The YouTube answer doesn’t violate even one.
It’s totally terrific:
Finally, in a long-anticipated move, YouTube is debuting its solution to video ads — and no, they’re not pre-rolls. The new ads are semi-transparent overlays that cover the bottom fifth of the screen and then disappear after 10 seconds. If you click it, a video ad will play in the same player, only a slightly smaller size. At the end of the ad — or when you click the close icon — the original clip will resume playing. So far, the ads only apply to partner videos (and as of this writing, only a handful of them), and they’re selling for $20 CPMs. Take it for a test drive with the clip here (notice the yellow marker in the timeline when you play the clip). Also, the ads do not play on embedded clips — just when you play them on YouTube. Smart.
Very!
More impressions: I’d like to see advertisers pay out for BOTH branding impressions and clicks. And a link to the ad should be included at the end of the clip. I won’t be clicking mid-clip, and when I navigate back, I don’t easily find the ad. I want a direct (graphic?) link to the ad somewhere easy.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Levi’s straight & gay
More from Commercial Closet. And AdAge.
Truth in advertising?
Interesting comparison of food shown in the menu and the orignal food served to the customer. On the left is the Menu photograph of the food and on the right is the actual food served to the customer.
DCP has more pics.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Unfortunately placed ads
14 more.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Boring and bloody Scion game ad
Toyota’s got an ad campaign game for the Scion xD in which your mission is to use a carload of “Little Deviants” to pummel, slice, and dismember legions of roaming “Sheeple,” a dull, monochromatic race. The target market is 18-to-35-year-old males but this twenty-something reviewer is not sold:
In the first level, you slap the helpless, bleating creatures until they spew blood and pass out. In another, you rough them up in a sewer and watch their body parts fall off. In another, you rough them up in a sewer and watch their body parts fall off. (Your Deviant then “customizes” himself with the scattered pieces.) At the end of the game, the neon-green Sheeple blood that you’ve accumulated is used to fuel a factory that produces the Toyota Scion xD. (You can play the game, Book of Deviants, here.) [...]
The non-Scion-driving Sheeple are boring, dull, and repetitive. The Little Deviants are supposed to be mischievous, creative, and clever-the kind of cynical demons that wouldn’t drive a compact car just because an ad agency told them it was cool. Beyond that, there’s the Deviants’ attitude problem. The creatures are inexplicably nasty and bullying, and they maim without provocation. Even if I don’t identify as a googly-eyed Sheeple, I would also prefer not to associate with a bunch of thugs who commit genocide in the name of nonconformity. I guess I’ll get in line with the grandmas for a Nissan Versa.
It’s a shame the story line doesn’t work, because the game’s artistic design is fantastic. ATTIK’s in-house talent and hired hand Dave Correia have conjured an aesthetic that’s part Edward Gorey, part Insane Clown Posse-images that will look compelling on billboards and in magazine pop-up ads. They’ve also managed to brand the Little Deviants subtly, taking advantage of the emoticon-like shape of “xD” to form their eyes and mouths. The game play, on the other hand, is less spectacular. Anyone who’s played Whac-a-Mole or one of those online putting games will be familiar with the mouse-click-heavy functionality.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet
While I thought my headline was so clever, Doug completely missed it! In case you did, too, here’s the 2006 sequel to the famous and effective Chevrolet ad campaign that ran from 1974 to 1978. Back in those 3 channel TV days we all sang advertising jingles, “Apparently baseball’s changed a little over the years, but not America’s love of the game...”
Saturday, June 23, 2007
American-style Innovation
Ford has reintroduced the Taurus.
Yawn.
What makes it even worthy of my mention is the selling points: a bigger engine, a new grill, and a new ad campaign. Ford President Mark Fields said on the Today Show just now:
It’s very clear as we look at our lineup going forward that we have to have the right consistent marketing message.... The advantage now is that we have a nameplate that has a lot of awareness.
I’m not a car guy, but the sad shame appears to be that instead of innovating, Ford is diagnosing a marketing problem and simply renaming a car that’s been a market clunker. Ironically, the original Taurus was truly innovative:
The Taurus was a milestone design for both Ford and the entire American automotive industry, as well as a very influential vehicle in the marketplace, with Ford selling nearly 7.5 million examples during its 20 years of production - a longer bestselling run than the original Ford Model T. Between 1992 and 1996, the Taurus was the best-selling car in the United States, even prompting Honda to grow the US version of the Accord to a similar size. The Taurus eventually lost its best-seller status in 1997 to the Toyota Camry.
Many industry experts, including executives at Chrysler and even at Ford, believed that the Taurus was going to be a failure. They thought its design was too advanced for many customers during the eighties. This turned out not to be the case, as the Taurus became a best seller, thus making it a sleeper hit.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Taxing broadcasters to pay for elections
A new bill in congress would tax each television station’s gross advertising 2% to pay for presidential campaigns. The proposal is sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Illinois), Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pennsylvania), Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wisconsin) and Sen. Barack Obama (D., Illinois).
“This would cost [broadcasters] a ton of money, but they make a fortune on candidates,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told TV Week. “The broadcast industry does quite well. To ask them to play a part in this is quite reasonable.”
Debate - and commentary - should be interesting.
