Coke is back in the Super Bowl after nearly a decade away from the game. Its two first half spots, one 30 and one 60 seconds in length, will take the soda company head to head with arch rival Pepsi, which is a perennial advertiser.
A pregnant Chicago-area woman who's also a huge Bears fan is offering advertising space on her swollen belly to get the money to try and buy Super Bowl tickets. She's also willing to trade the space for actual tickets if anyone has them.
Tim Nudd points out all the stylistic points included in this year's official game logo and wonders whether we all think it actually works or not.
"Are Super Bowl ads worth it?" asks CNN Money. While on the surface my answer would be no, the article does point out that there needs to be something worth talking about with the ads in order for them to really impact on the audience. Reuters covers much the same territory.
InfoUSA is purchasing its first ever Super Bowl ad to promote SalesGenie and will also be sponsoring the pre-game broadcast.
CBS affiliates have a few spots in each quarter that have been made available for local advertisers who want to get in on the game but don't have $2.6 million lying around. Some national advertisers are buying these spots as a way to get around another company's exclusive ad buys at a network level.
Someone created a kind of funny fake Disney Super Bowl ad.
First, those who didn't win the bidding for 18 of Time's titles were notified that they would not be taking on the huge operating expenses associated with print publishing.
Then, The Bonnier Group was told that it had won the bidding. There was no price specified but it was likely between $200 and $300 million.
Finally, Jonas Bonnier explains what he's going to do with all those titles, including reiterating his belief that the U.S. market still has plenty of potential.
Online ad revenue is gaining major credibility among newspapers who, just a few short years ago, had dismissed internet ads as an inconsequential part of their business model. Now, though, the power balance has shifted to the online world and newspapers are scrambling to keep up. A good number of publishers have joined with Yahoo in the creation of a shared network for the selling of classified and jobs ads. Separate from that, Tribune Co, McClatchy and Gannett have formed their own ad sales network, giving potential buyers one-stop access to all their online titles.
Unfortunately, says one analyst, the dollar amount that can be charged per online reader is miniscule compared to that for a print reader. That will lead to more staff cuts as papers optimize their manpower and declining operating income as the papers adjust to new economic realities. That disparity of ad income per reader will also have quit an impact when you consider many people are abandoning print versions altogether in favor or reading the paper online.
Revenue growth numbers continue to erode every year as it becomes clearer and clearer how much market share has been lost by papers. That might be turned around if the papers tap into what some say is the one remaining growth opportunity available to them, national advertising. The problem with executing on this is that without a network of papers that cross regional lines, national advertisers are reluctant to buy ads in local papers. That's where networks like the one setup by Gannett/Tribune/McClatchy may have an advantage.
Nielsen has released a report saying that, by putting their shows on the web and making them available for viewing there or on mobile devices, networks are allowing more people to watch those shows.
Can I get a "No s**t, Sherlock!" from the congregation!
Seriously, though, digital distribution is attractive to networks because they can either charge for the ad-free download or present online streams whose inserted ads can't be skipped or fast-forwarded through. Either of those are attractive options since ad-skipping on regular TV using DVRs is a major point of frustration for networks and advertisers alike.
It's not just the big-name console games that are cashing advertising revenue checks. Casual games, the kind you play at work when you're avoiding deadlines, are also seeing an influx of ad dollars. Almost 66 million people played some form of online game in December of last year alone, and those games are more popular overall with women than men. Since these games have broad appeal they're perfect for advertisers looking for a mass audience. Some companies, such as Big Fish, are even letting people choose which sponsor they see for a portion of their game-play time.
This sort of sponsored placement within existing games is separate from corporately created advergames, where the marketer creates a game specifically to promote a certain product or brand.
Former Wal-Mart marketing exec Julie Roehm has (unsurprisingly) filed a lawsuit against her former employer saying the retail giant damaged her reputation and broke their contract with her as she was pushed out of the company.
Rupert Murdoch might join the Chandler Family's bid for Tribune Co. He apparently has his eye on Newsday, which has often sparred with the New York Post, which is currently owned by Murdoch.
Wendy's has awarded its creative advertising duties to Saatchi & Saatchi and its planning and buying business to MediaVest. The account is estimated to be worth 300 million Medium Frostys.
The newest ad from Cisco jumps on the viral video craze, but I wonder if it confuses as many viewers who it attracts.
It's the one that shows the kid in the kitchen dancing, and he's filmed via cell phone camera by his dad. The video is put online and it becomes a sensation, a la that Star Wars kid on the "Lazy Sunday" video. Kids are watching it, the entire population of China is watching it, it's even broadcast on the big screen in Times Square.
First of all, I don't think any viral video has gotten that kind of attention. Second, the video seems to be perfect and flawless, on every screen it is shown on. And the way the ad is edited it seems like it's going over the web live, straight from cell phone to the web.
Will most people even know what Cisco is and why they are advertising?
ABC is hoping you will watch the Oscars and has tapped host Ellen DeGeneres to star in a series of spots to help convince you. The ads, according to the New York Times, are humorous in nature as an appeal to a mass an audience as possible. That's a departure from the campaigns from previous years which tried to use the mystique of the Academy Awards as the primary incentive to watch.
In addition to the DeGeneres starring ads there are also TV spots directed by Spike Lee showing movie fans reciting famous movie dialogue. That same dialogue is the central focus of the official poster created for the 2007 awards. Outdoor and print ads featuring individual lines of dialogue will also be released.
The size of the audience, though, is largely dependent on the type of films nominated for awards. Mass market films will draw a larger audience than a ceremony filled with niche films. That's an important point for ABC since projected audience is, of course, the number it will use when negotiating commercial advertising rates with potential buyers. The Oscar telecast is viewed as the second-most important TV ad outlet of the year after the Super Bowl. Because of the more female-skewing nature of the Oscars a different set of advertisers often show up. Dove, for instance, will be promoting its Cream Body Wash during the ceremony.
The price ABC is asking for the Oscar broadcast is a far cry from the Super Bowl's, though, at $1.7 million for a 30-second spot compared to the $2.6 million CBS has listed for the Super Bowl.
So many dumb moments in business, so little time. But Business 2.0 mag has their picks for the 101 dumbest of 2006.
Wal-Mart is #1, for hiring a big firm to create their "Candidate Wal-Mart" campaign. #2 is Northwest Airlines, for giving their employees a "How To Save Money" booklet after laying them off. #3 is the contest McDonald's held in Japan, with the winners getting free mp3 players with a virus on them. The rest of the top 10 are GM, Kazakhstan, Steve Wynn, The New York Times, Spirit Air, Porter County, and Comcast.
There are 101 in all, so grab a hot beverage and get comfortable. You can't see the entire list on one page, which is a little annoying, but there is a handy scroll function at the bottom.
Ad exec Chuck McBride apparently created a rather gruesome video showing a massacre in the TBWA's San Francisco office. Seems he created the video as a way of sort of showing off what exactly he can do.
Current Senator and GOP Presidential candidate Sam Brownback is planning a new set of discussions between lawmakers and food marketers on the issue of advertising's role in childhood obesity numbers. Media companies that rely in large part on those food ad dollars have also been invited to participate.
Yahoo did better than expected in the fourth quarter of 2006 but, at the same time doesn't want people to get too crazy with their expectations.
Yesterday I posted on how people didn't really want to watch ads in exchange for free online video. Similar stories have been written about mobile devices and the slowness with which people have become comfortable with ads being delivered to them.
Next up are GPS devices. While the gadgets are beginning to become more popular, with 30 percent of U.S. households now having one or planning to buy one this year, their usefulness as an ad platform remains murky at best. 75 percent of respondents have voiced extreme displeasure at the thought of receiving unsolicited ads on their devices. That's likely because GPS systems are utilitarian in nature, serving to replace paper maps and make finding things easier because of the ability to search.
Less than half of respondents to the survey, 44 percent, even express a willingness to have directions to restaurants and attractions delivered without their asking for it. While the MediaPost story doesn't give explicit numbers on this, it's easy to assume based on the other responses that a good deal of GPS users would be open to ads being served to them if they were permission-based or were part of a profile the user had filled out signaling certain areas of interest.
You've seen the commercials: a guy puts on some Axe body spray and/or body wash and he goes from being a nebbish to being mobbed in a way somewhere between the way that the Beatles were mobbed by women in the 60s and a Caligula-era orgy. I was wondering: does this really work? Is there some ingredient in Axe that makes the ladies go crazy?
Short answer: no. Long answer: no.
I used the stuff last week for three days in a row. I used the body wash and also sprayed the stuff on, and in three different situations I was completely ignored by females. Unless you count the clerk at the supermarket asking me "Do you have your Shaw's card?" as foreplay. Same thing at Border's Books and Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
Of course, I'm not saying the stuff doesn't work. Maybe I'm using it wrong?
You might recall a post I wrote earlier this month about the British band 7 Seconds of Love. Lead singer Joel Veitch, he of the odd little Web site RatherGood.com and the mind behind those fun but creepy "sponge monkey" commercials for Quiznos, was upset about a South American ad for Coca-Cola that copied the band's song "Ninja" and the music video Veitch himself created for it.
Well, the band sued and Coca-Cola is now going out of business. Wait, I'm sorry, that's not what happened at all. Actually, the band and Coca-Cola settled out of court, and the ad for Coke Light has been pulled from television. If nothing else, this was a nice little bit of publicity for the band.
Using bits of metadata scattered around the internet - including photo-sharing site Flickr - the Ad Generator will create an ad just for you. It's the handiwork of a student named Alexis Lloyd as a way to show how ads are made up of real elements yet say very little. Words and sentence structure are taken from real ads and then paired with a Flickr image to show how really interchangeable these things are. It's an interesting hypothesis and an addictive site to play around with.
Coke is back in the Super Bowl after nearly a decade away from the game. Its two first half spots, one 30 and one 60 seconds in length, will take the soda company head to head with arch rival Pepsi, which is a perennial advertiser.
First, those who didn't win the bidding for 18 of Time's titles 
Online ad revenue is gaining major credibility among newspapers who, just a few short years ago, had dismissed internet ads as an inconsequential part of their business model. Now, though, the power balance has shifted to the online world and newspapers are scrambling to keep up. A good number of publishers have joined with Yahoo in the creation of a shared network for the selling of classified and jobs ads. Separate from that, Tribune Co, McClatchy and Gannett have formed their own ad sales network, giving potential buyers one-stop access to all their online titles. 
Nielsen has released a report saying that, by putting their shows on the web and making them available for viewing there or on mobile devices, networks are allowing more people to watch those shows. 
It's not just the big-name console games that are cashing advertising revenue checks. Casual games, the kind you play at work when you're avoiding deadlines, are also seeing an influx of ad dollars. Almost 66 million people played some form of online game in December of last year alone, and those games are more popular overall with women than men. Since these games have broad appeal they're perfect for advertisers looking for a mass audience. Some companies, such as Big Fish, are even letting people choose which sponsor they see for a portion of their game-play time. 
Former Wal-Mart marketing exec Julie Roehm has (unsurprisingly) 
The newest ad from 
Slashfood has a picture of and some 
ABC is hoping you will watch the Oscars and has tapped host Ellen DeGeneres to star in a series of spots to help convince you. The ads, according to the 
So many dumb moments in business, so little time. But Business 2.0 mag has their picks for the 
Ad exec Chuck McBride apparently created a rather 
Yesterday I posted on how people 
You've seen the commercials: a guy puts on some 
You might 
Using bits of metadata scattered around the internet - including photo-sharing site Flickr - the Ad Generator will create an ad just for you. It's the handiwork of a student named Alexis Lloyd as a way to show how ads are made up of real elements yet say very little. Words and sentence structure are taken from real ads and then paired with a Flickr image to show how really interchangeable these things are. It's an interesting hypothesis and an addictive site to play around with.
