Tabletop TV have sprung up at restaurants across the country, prompting opponents to wonder whether the intrusion of advertising and television into our culture will ever end. Though exact numbers are difficult to pin down, restaurants with individual TVs on the tables have begun to proliferate, reports the New York Times.
Keyboards were clicking this week as bloggers both hailed and blasted the results of a comScore’s blog-user study (PDF), “Behaviors of the Blogosphere,” issued this week, with the two best-known blog networks squaring off and trading accusations, writes ClickZ (via MarketingVox). The study was cosponsored by Six Apart and publisher Nick Denton’s Gawker Media blog network, which was accused of bias by rival Weblogs Inc. Network (WIN) publisher Jason Calacanis.
Media buyers have long sought the demographic data that the study offers, and all major blog publishers will likely benefit from findings that blog audiences tend to be wealthier and younger than the average web audience. But Calacanis accused comScore of bias and inconsistency.
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VoodooVox, a provider of hosted interactive response services for high call volume industries, has launched a new advertising and promotions network that allows marketers to advertize on automated call-answering services, Radio Ink reports. Companies hosting ads include MTV Networks, Emmis Radio Group, Radio Disney and Sirius.
Ad revenue for online video will reach $321 million this year, up 75 percent from 2004, according to a forecast by AccuStream iMedia Research, reports iMedia (via MarketingVox), citing a report issued last week: “Streaming Advertising and Subscription Media: 2003-2006.” Accustream expects gross ad billings for both streaming video and radio to reach $504 million, a 47 percent rise. Gross ad billings for streaming radio in 2005 are forecast at $22 million, an 82 percent year-over-year increase.
Meanwhile, ClickZ reports that digital agencies are hunting for video talent as advertisers seek to enhance their online ads and websites with video. The trick for agencies is to find people with both offline video and online media production experience who also have the skills to tell a story.
Hitwise reports that Google remains the dominant consumer search engine, claiming 59.2 percent of searches across major engines in July - a 14 percent increase from July 2004, MarketingVox reports. However, visits to Yahoo Local were 4.4 times the number to Google Local in July, although the latter is growing at a faster rate.
The top three search engines - Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search - accounted for 93.5 percent of U.S. internet searches across major engines in July, according to new data from Hitwise, with Yahoo and MSN accounting for 28.8 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.
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HBO announced yesterday that “The Sopranos” will not end with its next season starting in March, but will continue with an additional eight episodes starting in January 2007, The New York Times reports.
Atari will host a graffiti-thon street festival on August 24 to promote the release of it graffiti-based game “Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure,” Adrants reports. Held on 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues from 12:00PM - 8:00PM, the event will include 20 artists who will spray-paint 48 by 8 foot replicas of New York’s blue-bird subway cars. But the announcement has drawn a mixed response.
For the first time ever, The New Yorker magazine will have a single advertiser that will sponsor an entire issue, The New York Times reports. The Aug. 22 issue of The New Yorker will carry 17 or 18 advertising pages, all brought to you by Target. The Target ads will even supplant the mini-ads from mail-order marketers.
AOL says that because of its anti-spam initiatives, spammers know that they’re not going to get spam through to AOL members and are backing off, MediaPost reports. AOL says messages blocked by spam filters have dropped from around 2.3 billion a day in November 2003 to 1.4 billion a day. “They’re throwing in the towel,” said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham.
Google is testing an AdSense program that will allow publishers to submit demographic and psychographic data about their audiences which will be used to determine which ads Google sends, MediaPost reports. The pilot started late last month and it is too early to say when it will be rolled out to all AdSense publishers.
Gannett Co. posted a slight rise in July revenue, based on improved local advertising demand, reports BusinessWeek. Same-property ad sales grew 2.6 percent from a year ago, to $424.1 million, despite overall volume loss of 2.6 percent, to 9.2 million column-inches. Local ad revenue rose 4.7 percent, and classified sales rose 1.8 percent. National ads were down 0.7 percent.
All advertising suffered in Q2 2005, but outdoor less than other media, according to Outdoor Advertising Association chief executive Alan James, writes Media Week. Revenue for the outdoor sector in Great Britain was up 4.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, down from a 14 percent growth in the first quarter.
Cinema advertising grew 7.9 percent overall in the first half of the year, but dropped by 1.7 percent in the second quarter, as compared to the same quarter last year.
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Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Entertainment are collaborating on a study that will look at the factors impacting the effectiveness of product placement in TV programming, Mediaweek reports. The first results will be available later this fall.
ABC’s strategy of increasing ad prices for advertisers by only mid-single digits during the upfront, apparently in expectation of a pullback by advertisers in broadcast TV spending, has apparently worked out, leaving the network with a strong mix of ad inventory available for the scatter market, reports AdAge. Media buyers had expected higher price hikes from ABC, given the network’s hit shows such as Desperate Housewives, but Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co.’s CEO-elect, said the network “read the marketplace very carefully and, I think, in the end accurately.”
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ValueClick said Thursday it had agreed to acquire Fastclick in a stock swap valued at about $214 million, giving ValueClick access to Fastclick’s advertising network of more than 9,000 third-party websites reaching over 112 million U.S. users, reports the AP (via MarketingVox). Fastlick’s ad network served 27 billion impressions last quarter, and the companies say the merger will make ValueClick the largest online ad network provider, writes ClickZ. After the deal is consummated in the fourth quarter, Fastclick will operate as a unit of ValueClick.
Known as the largest player in affiliate marketing, ValueClick has expanded into search, email marketing and comparison shopping through acquisitions - including BeFree in 2002, Commission Junction in 2003, PriceRunner.com in 2004, E-Babylon and Web Clients in June of this year. And, apparently, more such moves are in the offing.
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An overwhelming 75 percent of media buyers and planners, when asked to weigh in on the topic of the FCC plans to deregulate media, answered that deregulation is “absurd,” writes Media Life. In a recent poll by the magazine, 80 percent of media people also made it clear that they feel further consolidation will make the quality of entertainment suffer, with “fewer innovations and less critical thinking. You can already see it on TV and radio.”
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L.L. Bean has narrowed the field in the review for its ad account, from six to three finalists. Making the cut are: Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos; JWT; and DDB. Cossette Post, Saatchi & Saatchi, and BBDO are now out of the running, reports AdWeek. Final presentations are scheduled for September, with a decision to be made before the end of the month.
The account, estimated at $20 million, went into review a month ago, when the catalog retailer split with five-year incumbent Martin/Williams.
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