Gamers Turning Off In-Game Ads
Two SWAT4 online gamers have figured out a way to turn off the ads served in real time by Massive and have posted the steps online, MIT Advertising Lab reports.
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Two SWAT4 online gamers have figured out a way to turn off the ads served in real time by Massive and have posted the steps online, MIT Advertising Lab reports.
Verizon SuperPages.com has unveiled a new pay-per-call offering as a component of its local and national sales strategy for online marketing products, ClickZ reports. Like other pay-per-call services, each ad gets a dedicated toll-free or local telephone number that rings through to the advertiser’s regular phone line. Each qualified call will cost advertisers $2 to $6, depending on the business category.
The UK’s Olympics Bill, currently in parliament, would bar all but official Olympic sponsors from making any ad reference or allusion to the London 2012 Olympics and prevent the combination of “Games” or “2012″ with any other protected words such as gold, silver, bronze, London, medals, sponsor and summer, The Times reports (via AdJab). As a marketing law specialist points out, the bill would clearly have a large impact on any advertising, such as a hotel wishing to advertise rooms in London for summer 2012.
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Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s new family entertainment unit and the Cartoon Network are teaming up to offer a 26-episode animated series of The Land Before Time, which will debut on Cartoon Network in 2007 and later on DVD from Universal, according to Broadcasting & Cable. The Land Before Time started with a feature film in 1988, followed by 10 more direct-to-DVD installments throughout the years, with another planned for 2007. Universal Studios Consumer Products Group will support the TV series and the new DVD with a worldwide licensing program. This will be the first offering from Universal Studios Home Entertainment Family Productions.
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Clear Channel’s outdoor advertising sales rose seven percent to $684.5 million during the second quarter of 2005, MediaPost reports. U.S. outdoor ad sales jumped 11.2 percent during the quarter due largely to higher advertising rates. The strongest markets included Phoenix, Cleveland, Seattle, Jacksonville and San Antonio. Strong advertising categories were automotive, entertainment, financial services, retail and telecommunications.
A nationwide survey of U.K. women aged 15-72 years old, carried out by female marketing specialists Proficiency Group, have found that shock-value tactics and women as “real people” are turning women off, Brand Republic reports. Ads women have found annoying include: Dove’s “Real women have real curves,” Sharon Osbourne bottom-slapping for Asda, models performing yoga poses in their leotards touting tampons, and Kate Moss’s “Bambi” fake eyelashes for Rimmel.
Unless women feel a connection with the celebrity and brand being promoted, the effect of the ad will be diluted, said Peter Frost, CEO of the Proficiency Group.
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Publishers Information Bureau announced that July’s ad pages totaled 16,236, up 3.1 percent from the same month last year, MediaPost reports. The increase marks the sixth consecutive month that the pages have shown positive movement. Hair products and accessories, concessions and snacks, and personal hygiene products chiefly drove the increase. Total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue, at $1,513,895,866 for July, also increased by 10.1 percent when compared to last July.
CNET, Univision, and Weather.com have all joined Yahoo in completing their compliance with the impression measurement guidelines that the IAB established at the end of last year, according to MediaPost. The guidelines call for measuring only ad impressions actually delivered; if a visitor clicks away before the ad finishes loading, for example, it will not be counted under the new guidelines. Still to complete the process of compliance are the Walt Disney Internet Group, Forbes, The New York Times, MSN, AOL, and Doubleclick, among others.
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In the latest online ad prediction, Jupiter Research says spending will reach $18.9 billion by 2010, up about 59 percent from an estimated $11.9 billion this year, Mediapost reports. Still, Web advertising will account for just 7 percent of all ad spending in 2010–compared to 5.6 percent this year.
Other predictions for ad spending this year range from Forrester Research’s $14.7 billion to Goldman Sachs $12.3 billion.
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The Federal Communications Commission’s chairman has directed the commission’s Enforcement Bureau to review Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s “Payola” settlement with the New York State Attorney and determine if violations of federal rules occurred, Mediaweek reports.
Microsoft has settled a lawsuit against Scott Richter, whom it identified as a former “spam king,” Reuters reports. As part of the settlement Richter and his company, OptInRealBig.Com, LLC, agreed to pay $7 million to Microsoft.
News Corp. is courting an unlikely group to help block Nielsen Media Research’s local people meter: Democrats. While the top-rated cable news network is loved by millions of conservatives who tune in for the likes of Bill O’Reilly, the company has hired a number of democrats to help slow the rollout of the new ratings system, including: Howard Wolfson, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign; Mike Feldman, a top advisor to Al Gore; Chris Lehane, a political strategist for former president Bill Clinton; and Minyon Moore, who helped found the liberal group America Coming Together, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Airplay on Sirius Satellite Radio’s flagship pop music channel will now have impact on the weekly Mainstream Top 40 chart, published in Billboard Radio Monitor, according to Sirius. Traditionally, the Mainstream Top 40 chart panel has consisted of 116 terrestrial radio stations in 99 markets. This is the first time that a non-terrestrial broadcaster has been factored into the weekly results.
Magazine publishers, eager to prove that they can compete with new media when it comes to flash, are offering advertisers new opportunities for showcasing their products. Case in point: next month, Rolling Stone and Us Weekly magazines will include a new ad from the WB network in which the headlights of an illustrated car will flicker on and off, music will play, and characters from the new drama, Supernatural, will offer sound bites about the program, the Wall Street Journal reports (via AZ Central).
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From the U.K. government’s attempt to improve the country’s stock of rundown lamp-posts comes the idea of selling lamp-post space to advertisers. Within a few years, a “significant” number of the U.K.’s five million lamp-posts could carry ads about the size of those on bus shelters, according to the Telegraph. An outfit called Streetbroadcast has apparently had success with the idea, using posters for Wedding Crashers outside cinemas.
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That blog visitors “are disproportionately likely to be affluent, young and broadband-enabled” - and therefore a demographically appealing target for advertisers - is one of the major findings of a pioneering study of the blogosphere issued yesterday by comScore Networks (via MarketingVox). Visitors to blogs are 11 percent more likely to have annual incomes greater than $75,000, 30 percent more likely to live in households in which the head of household is 18-34 years old, and 11 percent more likely to have broadband access to the web, according to the report, “Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences.”
The study also ranks the top 25 blogs by both number of visitors and number of visits (in both categories, the top six are the same, though not in the same order); and it provides “blog share” by blog category.
Universal Press Syndicate will distribute iMedia’s digital publications as newspaper supplements in the form of a free weekly CD that can be packaged in a number of formats, Editor & Publisher reports. Each participating newspaper will get an allocation of advertising inventory on each disc, allowing, according to Universal, newspapers to sell over the ‘print barrier’ and into the multimedia and television budgets of their existing local and regional advertisers.
Distributions will start with Hollywood Previews Entertainment iMagazine, perhaps as early as this January. Meanwhile, iMedia will begin developing new titles covering interactive travel, automotive, fashion, sports, and health/fitness.
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The U.S. Postal Service launched a two-year experiment last week for its Premium Fowarding Service (PFS), to measure interest in a personalized service that allows residential customers who are away from their main address for two weeks to a year to receive their mail at a temporary address, DM News reports. The service could be useful to those who own second homes, do a lot of business travel, have temporary work assignments, or are attending college, among others.
