CBS apparently found success with the ads placed on water coolers in Rite Aid and Duane Reade stores in the New York and Los Angeles areas last summer touting its new comedy, Out of Practice: the network is launching a new campaign, this time for a mid-season show, Mediapost writes.
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According to Bridge Ratings, 22 percent of Sirius sign-ups during the first week of the quarter were due directly to Stern, Radio Ink reports. This number increased to over 50 percent the final week of the Christmas shopping period.
AT&T will launch the biggest ad campaign in the company’s 120-year history on New Year’s Eve, Editor & Publisher reports. The company’s new slogan is “Your World. Delivered.”
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MSN will once again webcast New Year’s Eve from Times Square, but this time:30 spots will be periodically interposed throughout the coverage of the night’s festivities, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVOX). Apparently, several advertisers have already signed on, including some from the entertainment and automotive industries, but MSN would not name them. Viewers will be able to toggle among three co-hosts in various Times Square locations and can email, some of which will be included in the program.
CBS is developing a prime-time soap revolving around a Chinese-American family, Mediaweek reports. Based on the 2005 indie film Red Doors, the project will be produced by Paramount Network TV.
A technology start-up offers answers to questions from business travelers who have no access to the internet, writes The New York Times. Users can register at AskMeNow and download free software onto a cellphone or BlackBerry. Then, they can call a toll-free number at any time to ask a question, and they receive an answer via text message. The answers carry an advertiser message at the bottom, and marketers can choose recipients of their messages based on a detailed profile of user preferences built from the questions they ask. Marketers can also choose who receives their ads based on keywords the users use.
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Marriott International this week began notifying 206,000 people that backup computer tapes containing personal data were missing from its Orlando, FL, office, DMNews reports.
NFL games are posting anywhere from 6 percent to 9 percent increases in CPMs, MediaPost reports. Consistency and the ability to target tough-to-reach male demographics is the reason the NFL has been at the top of the list in terms of advertiser price increases for sports versus other national TV programming.
Through 25 telecasts, CBS’s AFC games have earned a 9.9 household rating/21 share. Fox, with 26 NFC telecasts so far, a 10 household rating/21 share. With male viewers 18-49, CBS scores an 8 rating/28 share. Fox earns a 8.1/28. Fox is slightly better with the young male numbers - a 7/28 for men 18-34. CBS scores are 6.8/27.
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Dave Barry, who was the most widely syndicated humor columnist when he went on sabbatical at the end of 2004, has decided not to resume his weekly column, Editor&Publisher reports.
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Detroit NPR listeners angry over recent programming changes have gone to court, charging the city’s NPR station with fraud, The Chicago Tribune reports. WDET-FM has listeners claim they were tricked into contributing money during a pledge drive while station operators were secretly planning to junk locally produced programming and replace it with national talk and public affairs shows.
“This is a public radio station, and their decision just completely disregarded the public and the community that is loyal to the station and financially supports it,” said Kevin Ernst, the lawyer representing a group of listeners. “People contributed for those local programs, not national programs.”
The proportion of women to men who go online has mostly evened out, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, but their actions on the web remain very different: men are more likely to look at weather and news sites, download music, and find financial information, while women seek health and medical info, email, and look up directions, Mediapost writes. The report, titled “How Women and Men Use the Internet,” shows that 68 percent of men are internet users versus 66 percent of women.
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A Los Angeles company is recruiting area drivers who live, work, and travel in certain neighborhoods to place gigantic decals on the rear windows of their cars, writes Mediapost. The company, Advermotion, began offering the service over the summer, promoting the JP Morgan Chase Tennis Classic and L.A. Kings hockey.
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Sony’s new ad campaign for the PlayStation Portable has some Philadelphians upset, calling the ads “illegal and arrogant,” rather than hip, as the company no doubt intended, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The ads are painted directly onto building walls, look like graffiti, and make no mention of Sony.
The ads are illegal, according to the article, because Philadelphia has billboard regulations requiring that companies must get a permit from the city’s Licenses and Inspections Department before putting up ads, which Sony did not do.
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Forbes missed delivering its rate base by about 0.6 percent, or just over 5,000 copies, based on a report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations released just before Christmas, BusinessWeek reports. The audit disallowed counting just over 30,000 of the magazine’s subscriptions as paid in 2004. A revised audit of Forbes’ 2003 circulation showed a circulation 6.7 percent below rate base.
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List Management Services has been named list manager of three newly released files of direct mail respondent investors, the company announced today. The investor files are: OTC Bulletin Board Financial Network, Equity Street Journal Investors, and Stock Trends Trader. The lists consist of direct mail respondents who monitor current trends in stock and seek out investment opportunities.
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The Advertising Council and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have expanded the focus of the successful “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” public service advertising campaign. The new campaign, launching today, will include television and radio ads geared toward men aged 21 to 34, and conclude with the tagline “Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving.”
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Time magazine is experimenting with making premium online content freely available to those who agree to view a multi-paged, full-screen interactive Chrysler ad that uses technology from Ultramercial, thus far used extensively by Salon since early 2003, writes ClickZ (via MarketingVox). Visitors to Time.com have gained access to the “Person of the Year” cover story and the magazine’s articles archive of articles for 24 hours. If pleased with the results of the test, Time may in the future make other premium content available as ad-supported content.
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CBS, as part of an ongoing exploration of distribution outlets for its television series, will stream episodes of Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother on Yahoo from December 27 through January 2, Mediaweek reports. The shows will be streamed for free and without commercials.
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Official estimates for radio advertising sales for Nov. 2005, released by the Radio Advertising Bureau, topped estimates from Wall Street, though the RAB’s estimates were still relatively dour, showing no growth over 2004 in local and national spot, network and no-spot radio ad sales, Mediapost reports. Local sales climbed 1 percent from the same month last year, while national sales dropped 5 percent during the same period.
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The upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will have an additional focus on branding, AdAge writes. Branding is a brand new topic for the industry in which nifty new gadgetry has usually trumped marketing. This year, “All of a sudden marketing is a hot topic again,” Michael Gartenberg, analyst with Jupiter Research, is quoted as saying.
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