Arbitron will delay reporting listening to satellite radio and Internet radio in its syndicated surveys to Summer 2006, at the earliest, Billboard Radio Monitor reports.
The ratings firm originally planned to report satellite listening to individual channels beginning with the Fall 2005 survey but fell under increased pressure from broadcasters.
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Viewpoint will release a behavioral targeting product by Q2 2006 that will work by collecting clickstream data on users who have installed the Viewpoint media player, then using that data, target ads and content on the company’s partner sites ClickZ reports. Viewpoint claims 120 million users have installed its player.
Nordstrom plans to begin a yearlong campaign next week that includes a broadband branded entertainment channel - Nordstrom Silverscreen - and features fashion information and music videos, reports AdWeek. Users can also view new fashions and click through to buy them at its website. Interactive features include the ability to dress a mannequin. Fallon, responsible for the earliest web branded entertainment effort - BMW Films - created the campaign. Silverscreen content will be updated monthly; to access it, users will have to download Maven Networks’ video player.
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TV Guide Channel and on-demand network TV Guide SPOT have teamed up with Premier Retail Networks to broadcast TV Guide programming about what’s on TV onto PRN’s in-store network in grocery and consumer electronics retailers.
TV Guide’s content will be seen by 57.3 million viewers nationwide per month in more than 3175 stores including Albertson’s, Best Buy, Circuit City, Pathmark, Ralphs, Sears and ShopRite. The content will also be made available to run in PRN’s other retail partner locations such as Wal-Mart, SAMs Club and Costco.
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IKEA has renewed its media buying and planning contract, estimated at $50 million, with Horizon Media through 2006.
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ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC Sports have acquired TV rights to the next two World Cups and Women’s World Cups through 2014 for an estimated $100 million, The New York Times reports. Univision is paying $325 million for the Spanish-language rights. The total is 123 percent above what FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, received for the 2002 and 2006 World Cup U.S. rights.
Direct marketing will make up 10.3 percent of the U.S.’s total GDP in 2005, according to an independent study commissioned by the Direct Marketing Association. And, the study says that direct marketing is expected to generate $1.85 trillion in increased sales in 2005, or 7 percent of total sales in the U.S., CRM Today reports. The study takes into account direct marketing for the country as a whole, B-to-B and B-to-C markets, the major direct marketing media, and the economy’s 52 industry groups.
Direct Media Inc. has landed management of 15 retail and internet buyer lists from General Nutrition Center, DM News reports. GNC, marketer of health and nutrition products, caters to buyers with an average age of 40, income exceeding $75,000, and an average unit sale of $55.
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The Colbert Report, the new half-hour Daily Show spin-off on Comedy Central, has received a full-year order, E! Online reports. The satire of cable news talking heads like Bill O’Reilly has averaged 1.2 million viewers across its first four nights, and keeps 86 percent of The Daily Show Viewers. Plus, The Daily Show recently posted its second-most watched week ever in the week The Colbert Report debuted, at least partially thanks to the increased attention garnered from the new show.
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Sirius has joined the lengthening list of media outlets accepting ads for liquor, debuting commercials for Tanqueray gin on talk, news, sports, and entertainment channels such as Cracked Up Comedy, Maxim Radio, OutQ Radio, and Sports Byline, the New York Times reports. Tanqueray chose Sirius for the ads because it wanted to run a music commercial - two-and-a-half minutes of a Tanqueray branded hip-hop song called Get Your Ice On - and traditional radio stations and networks tend not to accept anything longer than 60 seconds.
NBC Universal Cable is launching a new 24-hour cable network in January devoted to crime, mystery, and suspense, Mediaweek reports. The new network, Sleuth, will draw on NBC Universal’s library of film and television titles and will be available, at least initially, to Time Warner Cable’s 5.2 million digital subscribers.
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Some 19 percent of actively online teens create blogs and 38 percent read them; of those, 62 percent read solely friends’ blogs and 36 percent read those of friends and others, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). Girls age 15 to 17 are the most active bloggers, with one-fourth of those online in that age group creating blogs, compared with 15 percent for boys of the same age. “For young people it’s about reinforcing and keeping relationships, not reading opinions of strangers,” Pew senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart told ClickZ.
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Media buying discount club MediaBuys.com has added TV and cable shows to its list of available ad space, allowing the club’s 780+ buying members to access pre-discounted buys for sports, comedy, and other shows in its online media store. The latest media store additions include ad space from the World Championships of Freestyle Motocross, airing on CBS Nov. 27 and on OLN in multiple shows starting Nov. 15.
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After 22 years with the Financial Times, editor Andrew Gowers has left the newspaper due to “strategic differences” with the management, Forbes reports. Numis Securities media analyst Paul Richards said that, while the departure of Gowers is sudden, there have been rumblings about the situation for some time.
Lamar Advertising Co. suffered $14 million in hurricane damage to billboards in Louisiana and Mississippi, and could not project when normal business operations would resume in those areas, Adweek reports. Billboards are expected to be repaired by early next year with a new design that will reduce future storm repair costs. The new designs will be able to withstand winds of up to 140-150 miles per hour, compared to the 110 mph of the old billboards, and will resemble a frame to which vinyl sheets of ad messages will be attached, rather than having a solid face.
In the event of a hurricane-strength storm, only the vinyl surface of a billboard would be lost.
Verizon has launched an ad campaign featuring ads on the backs of seat-back tray tables on USAirways planes, B to B reports. The ads, launched in partnership with Sky Media International, promote Verizon’s wide-area wireless broadband network and wireless broadband access devices, and can be seen on 11,500 passenger trays.
