Conde Nast’s Men’s Vogue launched on Tuesday with a $4.95 newsstand price, The New York Sun reports. To kick things off, the magazine was sent free to 200,000 readers gleaned from Conde Nast’s database, as well as select customers from some high-end men’s stores. Its target is men over 35 with incomes of more than $100,000.
Scripps Networks is launching a 13-part online video series on its own Foodnetwork.com during Thanksgiving week, AdAge reports. Twenty-something Dave Lieberman, of Food Network’s “Good Deal With Dave Lieberman” will host the video series.
Radio One terminated its partnership with Interep and consolidated ad sales for all its stations with Katz Radio Group, Radio Ink reports. Interep says that the loss of Radio One’s business represents about four percent of Interep’s commission revenue.
Georgia-Pacific has launched its first Spanish-language advertising campaign with television ads for its Brawny paper towels in Southern California, Adweek reports. The company dedicated 10 percent of its annual marketing budget to the Hispanic effort this year and says it could double it next year.
La Agencia de Orci & Asociados produced the spot. The campaign includes television, radio, in-store promotions and sponsorship of community events. Another Hispanic campaign, this time for Angel Soft toilet paper, should hit Phoenix by the end of the year.
Starting early next year, the UK’s ITV will offer mini episodes of TV shows, Netimperative reports. The broadcaster said it plans to show two-minute clips of the TV show “Coronation Street,” and will include exclusive mini-episodes showing highlights from the most recent episode. A trial version of the service will go live this Saturday.
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Aegis Group Tuesday upgraded its global ad outlook just a smidgen, in large part because of increased ad spending in Asia, but U.S. ad growth estimates (4.5 percent in 2005 and 5.0 percent in 2006) remain unchanged; however, it confirmed recent reports that fundamental shifts are taking place in advertising demand among major media, with traditional slowing down and digital media accelerating, MediaPost reports (via MarketingVox). Aegis CEO Robert Lerwill notes that online adspend has already overtaken radio’s and says Aegis expects it to catch up with outdoor this year.
Another fundamental shift in worldwide adspend is the deceleration in Western Europe and a corresponding acceleration in Asia, according to Aegis.
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The outdoor advertising industry has responded to the Katrina disaster by placing public service messages on behalf of the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America writes. An image officially sanctioned by American Red Cross headquarters features a toll-free number for donations and a URL, and high-resolution files can be downloaded for use in the production of posters, bulletins, and bus shelters.
The Red Cross asks OAAA members to be sensitive to the placement of the public service message, avoiding affected areas.
Inkjet International has offered to print bulletins and bus shelters for free to OAAA members; shipping and handling charges will still apply.
A report from financial services company Harris Nesbitt says that, while internet advertising continues to grow at 32 percent in 2005, online adspend remains too small - less than four percent of total - to drive overall ad spending, Mediaweek writes. The report lowered its projected percentage increase in U.S. ad spending for 2005 from 5.4 percent to 4.4 percent, totaling $276 billion.
The company says the revised forecast was based on what it sees as weaker than expected radio advertising and reduced automotive advertising at network and TV station levels.
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A new study has found that hard-core gamers (those who bought four or more games in the last six months and who play 10 or more hours of games a week) are spending less time watching TV than they used to, down four hours from last year, to 18 hours a week, AdAge reports. The study, from Ziff Davis Media Game Group, also found that hard-core gamers actually watch more television than general gamers, who watched only 16 hours of TV per week in 2005 - a drop of two hours since last year.
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Clear Channel Online Music and Radio, a network of nearly 400 of the company’s online radio stations, hit the Arbitron/comScore Media Metrix online radio ratings for the first time in June 2005, the Center for Media Research reports. Clear Channel’s network garnered an estimated 861,000 listeners during an average week of June, with an average midday quarter hour listenership of 147,500.
Other networks on the list were America Online’s AOL Network, Live365, Microsoft’s MSN Radio and WindowsMedia.com, Yahoo Music, and RLR Network.
PodShow, the company started by Adam Curry and Ron Bloom to help commercialize podcasting, has acquired Podcast Alley, a grassroots directory that played a big role in stimulating the popularity of the medium, according to Silicon Beat. PodShow promotes podcasts and finds sponsors for them, and also helps mainstream companies produce and distribute them. The announcement comes less than a month after the news that PodShow received $8.85 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia.
For the second month in a row, search engine keyword prices dropped, this time an average of 9 percent, to $1.50 in August from $1.65 in July, led by declines in the mortgage, telecom and consumer services categories, reports MediaPost (via MarketingVox), citing Fathom Online figures. Only the automotive category posted an increase, with the price of clicks rising 13 percent, from $1.49 to $1.68, the highest they have been since Fathom began keeping track in September 2004.
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After only four issues of the U.S. version of the British celebrity magazine OK, publisher Gabriel Fireman has left the company, Media Life reports. The British newspapers say the magazine has fallen far short of circulation predictions, despite the fact that OK owner Richard Desmond has committed $100 million to launch the magazine, touted as the biggest budget in U.S. magazine history. Much of that budget, however, is planned to use in paying stars to appear in the magazine’s pages - Jessica Simpson, for example, received $200,000 to appear on the cover of six issues.
According to Media Life it is unclear whether Fireman left under his own steam. A successor for Fireman has not been announced.
NBC has cut independent Palisades Media Group from its media review, leaving six contenders in the finals, sources say, Adweek reports. The finalists: Horizon Media, Media Kitchen, MediaVest, Initiative, deutschMedia, and Fallon, according to sources. Horizon currently handles buying for the client; MediaVest and Media Kitchen share planning duties.
