TNS Launches Product Placement Tracker

Hey.

TNS hopes to become the Nielsen of product placement, launching a measurement service called the Branded Entertainment Reporting Service, according to AdAge. The service puts together a database that allows for perusing against product categories or individual brands to see both where they are advertising on measured media, as well as where they get mentioned or shown within programming. The product does not know which mentions are paid and which are “earned.”

Zoom Expands Place-Based Network

Zoom Media announced that it and the U.S. Indoor Soccer Association will partner to establish a network of 300 or more new venues to add to Zoom’s existing Active Family Network, according to MediaWeek. Zoom specializes in backlit screen outdoor and place-based media. The company’s president said the outdoor stadiums, which average 250,000 visitors annually, comprise a “completely uncluttered environment.” Zoom’s previous clients include Target, the NBA and Reebok.

ANA: More Print Accountability, or Ad Dollars Will Go to Online

More than a quarter - 26 percent - of 117 senior marketers recently surveyed by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said they plan to shift dollars away from magazines to other media; 21 percent said they plan to shift dollars away from newspapers.

Snapple Popzilla Unfreezes, Gotham Gets Even Stickier

The difficulty of physics being the very reason why people who wind up becoming PR and marketing people often decide to go that liberal arts route, it may come as little surprise that Snapple’s giant popsicle stunt failed today. It seems that the Snapple marketing folks’ attempt at erecting a Guinness Book record-breaking popsicle was called off when they remembered that old rule about phase changes: ice melts in NYC in June. But perhaps contributing more to the fiasco than the English majors was the group from the other hard science escape route: the lawyers. When one got a load of the Popzilla that was about to be erected, it set off the tort alarm bells, shutting down the event for good.

Manhattan’s Union Square, now even sticker than usual, still smells of kiwi and strawberry after the block was flooded with oozing Snapple as the beast melted ignominiously in the sun. The AP reported that onlookers had to scurry for higher ground, although that might be laying it on a bit thick.

Most Searchers Can’t Tell Search Results from Ads, Use Search to Shop

Big market,
but apparently unread

More than half of internet users - 56 percent - do not know the difference between natural search engine results and paid search listings, and 51 percent of online U.S. adults use search for shopping, according to a Harris Interactive survey of more than 2,000 internet users, commissioned by search engine marketing agency iCrossing. Google users tend to know the difference between natural and paid listings (54 percent), followed by Yahoo users (42 percent) and MSN searchers (36 percent).

Podcasting Seen as Agent of Media Change, Market Pollution

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most begrudgingly positive thing that Wall Street has to say about podcasting is that it might at least hurt the market for online audio purveyor Audible.com. Podcasts, the bloggish audio downloads put into syndication feeds that have proved wildly more popular among journalists than among listeners. Still more positive on podcasts are the traditional broadcast firms who now hold out hope that podcasts may increase their large but waning influence.

MTV Buys NeoPets

Gelert, Meet Snoop Dogg

MTV Networks said on Monday that it bought NeoPets, the 25 million-member online community of young people obsessed with fictional digital pets. NeoPets generates five billion pageviews per month and is one of the stickiest sites around, consistently in the top ten sites for time spent per visit. The site started in 2000, in the midst of the bursting internet bubble and has grown pretty much unaided by media marketing.