Tag archives: advertising

Movies, advertising and stress

I must start by saying I have a negative attitude towards product placement in movies, because most of the times it’s done in a stupid way. Fortunately I’m not the only one thinking product placement is going to far. Rance Crain, editor in chief of Advertising Age wrote an interesting article yesterday on movies becoming “one gigantic product placement” and consumers getting tired of paying to watch a movie full of advertisements. Now there is also a new source of stress for movie lovers: Bluetooth promotional kiosks eager to connect with their mobile phones while they wait for the movie in theater lobbies. The New York Times reports 20th Century Fox has signed a deal with Loews Cineplex Entertainment to distribute movie trailers, ring tones and pictures through kiosks in three Loews theaters, in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. To me, the only good thing about this kind of initiative is that if you’re really interested in this such goodies, at least you get the content for free. Actually I’m not against Bluetooth technology used to deliver (permission-based!) marketing messages, I’m just against movies becoming an advertising show. If you’re interested in movies and product placement read also this: “Must love dogs” becomes product placement bonanza

Dead man walking (in the ad)

In this post I point you to “In search of the right dead celebrity“, an article where Anna Heinemann investigates the use deceased entertainers as stars in TV spots. Marketing Evaluation even compiled a chart of “dead celebrity likeability”, with Lucille Ball and Bob Hope leading the way. The main question is of course: do people still recognize dead celebrity in ads? Apparently the answer is yes, at least for what concerns the US market.

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Is RSS like the TiVo for the Internet?

If you want to skip the ads, read your favorite news sites through RSS feeds. Maybe I should not write this, considering the fact I’m trying to sell advertising spaces here on Adverblog, but actually I’m just reporting one of the ideas that come out from this article on marketing and RSS on the New York Times. I don’t completely agree with the idea of regarding RSS as the Internet TiVo, however I believe this association isn’t totally wrong. We need to consider that news publishers usually provide only an abstract of the article in the feed, so if people want to read the full story, they have to click and visit the site where they will be exposed to the advertising messages. However, if one uses RSS just to “browse” the content of a news site instead of visiting the homepage, in this case RSS helps to avoid the ads and just get an overview of the articles, so it might be considered as the Internet TiVo. But don’t worry, since rss marketing is becoming an hot topic, advertisers are managing to show up also on feeds.

Making money out of podcasts

All eyes are on podcasting now that Apple has integrated this function in its new iTunes release. We start feeling we could make money out of podcasts, but somehow it is still early to realize which way one has to follow. The main challenge at the moment is to find a way to effectively measure listening. The difficulty is in tracking, because once someone downloads a podcast and puts it on a (portable) player, it is no longer connected to the Internet, and therefore no longer trackable. What if this person shares the podcast with a friend? What if he doesn’t listen to it at all? These questions still have no answer, and advertisers for the moment are just happy to know the number of downloads and therefore willing to pay on a CPM basis.

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We take you back and forth

Hesskiss for VZO (Switzerland). [News via Persoenlich]

Videogames advertising: get ready

Do you want to reach young males? Advertise in videogames, that’s the best place to get their attention. The Seattle Post has a good article by Gary Gentile reporting on the recent E3 videogames trade show where it has become clear that the biggest players in the industry have discovered another revenue stream: the money payed by brands to have their logo placed in the games. Advertising is coming to videogames, and research firms are trying to adapt their methodologies and technologies to measure the players behavior. Of course in-game advertising is not for everybody, but big corporations with a lot of money to spend won’t loose the chance to impose their ads even there.

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Podcasting makes condoms’ marketing easier

Marketing condoms is not an easy job. The target is young and therefore it’s difficult to get its attention, furthermore the product is “delicate”, because of ethics and religion. Trojan did great last year creating the award winning viral campaign “Sex Olympics“, now Durex is trying to do something as innovative buying advertising spaces in podcasts. Advertising Age explains the decision allows Durex to directly connect with its target, which is represented by people who spend more time online than watching Tv. Furthermore the solution sounds pretty inexpensive and, most of all, it enables Durex to avoid FCC strict regulations about what you can and cannot show/say when promoting condoms.

The advertising future is mobile

The Guardian reports the opinion of Andrew Robertson, recently appointed CEO of BBDO agencies’ network, who believes mobile phones will soon start playing a key role in advertising. The article also quotes a BBDO report which found out consumers would give up their television sets before sacrificing their mobile phones or home computers. I don’t know whether this is an imitation effect, or the advertising agencies are really starting taking mobile marketing seriously, but as a matter of fact last week everybody come out last week with statements about the importance of being mobile. I’ve already posted that Foote Cone & Belding which signed a deal with NeoMedia Technologies to develop mobile marketing campaigns. Now I’ve also found on New Media Age (reg. req.) that the boss of WPP Group, “Sir” Sir Martin Sorrell has sent out a formal request for proposals (RFP) to find a global mobile marketing partner.

Don’t delete that cookie!

You could fool a lot of work from advertising and marketing firms… A new study by Jupiter Research found out that nearly 40 percent of Internet users delete cookies from their computers at least once a month. If this is true, it might be a big problem for marketers relying on cookies to track visitors and visitors behaviors’. Quoted on ClickZ, Eric Petersen the analyst who wrote the report said: “Advertisers using lifetime value metrics need to reexamine how accurate that data is. The further away you get from the date the cookie was set, the less likely that the information is completely accurate.”

3: money for nothing?

Everytime I see an new 3′s campaign I can’t help asking myself: why are they wasting their money like this? They keep on signing up celebrities who apparently can’t live without making video calls. As it often happens for tv ads in my country, the spots are simply pathetic. In the tv campaign launched this week (read more on Pubblicit� Italia), 3 has invested 30 million Euros, which is an enormous amount of money to promote a service which is actually not yet available in most Italian zones. Wouldn’t it be better to invest in improving the infrastructure instead of trying to gain immediately disappointed customers?