Chef’s has just done its first catalog, its holiday 2005 book, with Home Readers, a nonprofit company which records and mails audio versions of catalogs to the blind and visually impaired, DM News writes. Catalogers like Chef’s pay a flat fee - averaging $500 depending on the length of the catalog - which covers the reader’s fee to record the descriptions, the cassettes, and the shipping materials.
TV Guide’s newsstand sales are way up since October, when the magazine upgraded from digest size to full size and shed most of its listings, Women’s Wear Daily reports. The magazine has sold roughly 524,000 copies per issue since the relaunch, up from 315,000 in the first half of the year. But starting in January, its ultralow promotional price goes up.
Ford is launching a three-month VOD campaign on Dec. 28 that will run on cable systems owned by Cablevision and Charter Communications, putting the ads before roughly 4.5 million digital subscribers, Mediaweek reports. The budget is estimated to be in line with similar VOD deals, which range from $50,000 to $150,000 per month per operator.
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When Green Builder launches in January at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) trade show, it will be the third largest magazine in the homebuilding sector, the Rutland Herald reports. The magazine hopes to target contractors building between 5 and 400 units annually.
Massive has signed THQ, its first top-five developer client, to serve and track dynamic, in-game advertising into its upcoming video game titles, including Juiced, MediaPost reports.
Google users may soon begin to see some heretofore rarely seen sights: not merely overhead views of the Kremlin, but ads with actual logos and graphics instead of plain text - a change prompted by Google’s recent negotiations with AOL, according to the New York Times (via MarketingVox), which cites two executives close to those talks. In addition to paying $1 billion to buy a five percent stake in AOL, Google will give $300 million worth of advertising to AOL on Google websites, including graphical ad units, which would also be made available to other advertisers.
AOL will bid on the advertisements in Google’s auction and will be charged out of its $300 million allotment.
NextMedia Group in Minneapolis will begin offering three-dimensional ads placed on screens in upscale nightclubs beginning in January, helping advertisers reach the “elusive” 21-34 demo, Media Life reports. The 3D ads are 30 seconds in length and are played 15 times within a two-and-a-half hour loop. The rest of the loop contains movie trailers and promotions for the particular bar (drink specials, upcoming acts, etc.). The special technology makes the ad appear to float 2-4 feet in front of the screen, and no special glasses are required. Ten advertisers can be on a single loop.
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AOL, in advance of turbocharging customer acquisition activities for its services, has consolidated its 6 million pound direct marketing account into a single, integrated agency, Brand Republic reports. Previously, AOL’s direct account was handled by an in-house team along with several different agencies, but Joshua will now take over, its first task to create a mailing campaign aimed at potential new customers. It will also handle online and email work.
Nielsen Media Research is adding Univision to its national ratings, a move that is expected to better measure the nation’s growing Latino audience, the LA Times reports. Executives at Los Angeles-based Univision anticipate that next week’s change will translate into tens of millions of dollars in additional ad sales.
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Yahoo, in a move aimed at either easing usability for readers or courting advertisers, has announced that it will limit the number of characters allowed in ads, from 190 to just 70, Mediapost reports. Yahoo has said that shorter ads are easier for users to read, but some search marketers point out that, as Google limits ads to 70 characters, Yahoo is courting advertisers by aligning with Google, making it easier for advertisers to run the same campaigns with both search engines. It will also make it easier for advertisers to test one search engine against the other.
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NBC has said that it has sold 90 percent of its Olympic sales goal of $900 million, according to AdAge. However, some buyers suggest that completed sales are actually 5 to 10 percentage points less than the network has claimed.
