Cox Communications will carry PBS Kids Sprout, the 24-hour preschool network and VOD service on its cable systems that serve more than 6.2 million subscribers nationwide. Cox joins other satellite and cable operators including Comcast, Insight, and RCN. This arrangement will bring PBS KIDS Sprout, which launched in September, to more than 18 million committed subscribers.
Radio One Inc.’s gospel station in Atlanta, 97.5 Praise FM, has seen revenue grow 35 percent last year, and churches no longer make up the bulk of the station’s advertisers - in fact, about 90 percent of advertisers on the station are supermarkets, retailers, automakers, and other large companies. That’s just one sign among many that marketers, looking for new ways to reach their target demographics, are increasingly turning to the black Christian market, according to MSNBC.
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Mediaedge:cia is cautioning marketers against flooding the gaming universe with ads, Mediaweek reports. Mediaedge’s report praises the effectiveness of well-executed game advertising, but warns marketers not to force messaging into games: “Using games simply to ‘reach’ or interrupt people cannot be regarded as an effective use of a channel with such potential.”
WPP and Hellman & Friedman have announced that they will not make a bid to acquire Aegis Group, according to Adweek. WPP has said that the company submitted an indicative proposal to the board of Aegis on Nov. 16 outlining two offers - one by WPP and H&F, and another by WPP, H&F, and a third party (presumably Vincent Bollore) - but Aegis said in a statement that WPP and H&F’s offer price was below the price in the indicative proposal made by Publicis and that subsequently there was no basis for any continuing dialog.
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McDonald’s is launching its new Arch Card, a reloadable convenience card aimed at gift-givers, by giving away 5 million $1 Cards to Southwest Airlines customers at 61 airports nationwide from November 29 through December 13, and onboard flights from December 14 through December 28. In addition, 8 million $1 McDonald’s Arch Cards will be given away through an American Express consumer card mailing.
More than 17.1 million Web users visited an online shopping site on Friday, marking a 29 percent increase from the 13.2 million Internet users to visit an e-commerce site on the Friday after last year’s Thanksgiving, Mediapost reports.
While podcasting was originally embraced by radio as simply a convenience to listeners, the medium is proving itself to be a new, incremental revenue stream, Mediaweek writes. For example, Premiere Radio Networks, which offers subscription podcasts of high-profile radio personalities such as Jim Rome and Rush Limbaugh at $60-$70 a year, has landed an advertising deal with Starburst. The deal will see Starburst paying six figures to sponsor a three-minute, customized podcast based on the Ryan Seacrest American Top 40 show.
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Google is testing click-to-call (pay-per-call) ads on search engine results pages, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). Users who click on phone icons appearing next to sponsored search listings can enter their phone number; the system first calls the search user then connects with the merchant. Blogger and tech consultant Greg Yardley, among the first to notice the new feature, provides a series of screen shots of the process, which Google describes in an FAQ item.
Fox’s New York Giants vs. Seattle Seahawks NFL game on Sunday recorded a 17.6 rating and 31 share, the largest NFL game regular-season overnight rating on any network since the 2002 season, Meadiaweek reports, and the highest rating of any type of programming on Fox since last May’s American Idol finale.
TiVo, infamous (in some circles) for allowing viewers to skip over ads, is about to cut a deal with ad agencies (Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis) and others (Comcast ad sales) to allow users to search for ads - via keywords (categories or brands) - for products they’re interested in, reports CNNMoney.com (via MarketingVox), citing a Wall Street Journal article. Relevant commercials would then be downloaded to TiVo recorders for viewing. TiVo and the agencies are considering having advertisers bid on keywords as they do when buying web search ads. The launch of the new offering is expected in the spring.
New York City has mandated that its 16,000 cabs be equipped with interactive units, designed to provide city and tourist information, taxi fares, a GPS location system, credit card billing, and, of course, advertising, eWeek writes. Interactive Taxi, a subsidiary of Targeted Media Partners that provides just such a technology and has deployed its interactive screens in cities such as Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, is a finalist for the contract, which will be awarded in early 2006, according to Mediapost.
Local media online has gotten more attention lately, but for national advertisers, it has been difficult to build and scale campaigns on the hundreds of available quality local websites because of the time and effort it involves. Now Integrent has announced that it has a new service that will make it easy and cost-efficient for agencies to purchase advertising on hundreds of local websites at once.
CBS has announced that it will begin airing its new prime-time shows on Jan. 17, Mediapost writes. The network will premiere a show called Love Monkey at 9 p.m. Tuesday in the slot currently occupied by The Amazing Race, and will premiere The Jenna Elfman Show at 9:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 23, in the slot occupied by Out of Practice, which will go on hiatus until March.
CBS will also launch a new drama titled The Unit, coming in March, along with The New Adventures of Old Christine, a sitcom starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
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Two-thirds of U.K. marketers in 2006 will use direct mail and email marketing, according to research carried out by AP Information Services, Brand Republic reports. Over 5,000 marketers responded to questions about their allocation of marketing spend for the coming year, and 69 percent said they will use direct mail. An increase in online advertising was reflected, with 34 percent of companies planning to spend on digital communications.
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The Downtown Media Group, the new owner of “downtown culture” magazine Tokion, plans to broaden Tokion’s appeal and reach a broader audience, writes AdAge. The 9-year-old magazine claims only 89,000 readers, but its quirky style and artsy demographic make it a good media buy for advertisers trying to reach trendsetters.
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The Missouri Attorney General has filed lawsuits against 13 companies based throughout the country to stop the flow of junk faxes to businesses within the state, B to B reports. The Attorney General is asking that the courts prohibit the companies from continued violations of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and that defendants are ordered to pay penalties of up to $1,000 for each fax sent.
