Coors Light is sending its newly created Silver Bullet Train, made to look like the train featured in ads by Foote Cone & Belding, on a 15-city tour, Brandweek reports. The promotional mobile marketing vehicle - actually a 19-ton stretch tractor chassis with a pup trailer created by Vivid Marketing - will travel to 15 markets in the next six months.
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UPS has enhanced several of its web-based technology tools in order to better facilitate global trade, DM News writes.
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Bon Jovi will lend his new hit single ”Who Says You Can’t Go Home” to the state of New Jersey’s advertising campaign, writes the Chicago Sun-Times. Bon Jovi and fellow band member and songwriter Richie Sambora have waived royalty fees for the song in order for the state to use it.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates revealed Friday a software program aimed at offering newspapers a new alternative to digital publishing that makes content easier to read on a computer screen, writes CNET.
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The popularity of reality television seems to be contributing to the slipping hold that broadcast network newsmagazines have on TV viewers, writes Yahoo.
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Media buyers eager to get in on the NFL advertising action are frustrated about the lack of detail on what types of deals are available for the upcoming season, AdAge writes. The NFL is talking about new ad deals, so-called in-game “enhancements,” but the particulars have been difficult to pin down.
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The broadband video advertising upfront has grown from about a $30 million market three years ago to at least a $500 million and possibly a $1 billion market this year - the size of a major broadcast network TV daypart akin to late night, early morning or early evening news, writes MediaPost (via MarketingVox).
Yahoo has released flat-fee “Featured Listings” - which are less complicated than auction-based keyword-targeted ads - hoping to encourage small businesses to advertise on its Local product, ClickZ writes.
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While direct marketers currently have more ways of sending their messages to the masses than ever before, consumers have more ways to ignore those lines of communication as well, according to the keynote speaker John Greco, the Direct Marketing Association president, at the April 27 Direct Media Client Conference and Co-op, writes Multichannel Merchant.
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Despite an apparent newsroom rivalry, MediaNews Group and Hearst Corp. - which combined forces Wednesday in MediaNews’ $1 billion acquisition of four McClatchy Co. newspapers, two of which were in the Bay Area - are considering cooperation among their local operations, according to people at both companies, writes the San Francisco Chronicle.
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At the Daytime Emmy Awards on ABC, Rosie O’Donnell announced she would return to daytime TV this September as a co-host with Barbara Walters, Star Jones Reynolds, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on ABC’s The View, writes the New York Times.
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MSN Live is now powering Amazon’s Alexa and A9 search results instead of previous search partner Google, reports Search Engine Lowdown’s Garrett French (via MarketingVox), citing Aaron Wall at Thread Watch and others. Previously, Alexa’s search results were essentially Google results - tweaked by user data from the Alexa toolbar and post-search refinement buttons.
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With today’s public launch of the 24-hour, all-San Diego-music streaming radio station, the San Diego Union-Tribune’s website, SignOn San Diego, is leading the way for other local media outlets hoping to better serve their respective communities and attract a younger audience, writes ClickZ.
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A promotion for the upcoming movie Mission: Impossible III derailed on Friday when a Los Angeles Times coin machine, which contained a digital musical device designed to play the Mission: Impossible theme song when the rack’s door was opened, was blown up by an LA County sheriff’s arson squad because they thought the rack contained a bomb, the Los Angeles Times reports. Several bomb reports were made by startled newspaper buyers who saw a red plastic box, complete with protruding wires, attached to the interior of racks.
Executives from Mediaedge:cia have been meeting with broadcast and cable network exectuives to try to develop a consensus for having Nielsen begin testing a cumulative rating per TV show for just commercials in the hopes that it could become the new currency for ad buys by the 2007-’08 upfront, Mediaweek writes.
Minute-by-minute ratings, which Nielsen has been offering since last September, are helpful in assessing information on specific commercials for specific clients, and can be used in buying plans for clients, but cannot be used as an industry standard tool for negotiating, according to the Mediaedge:cia executives. One average commercial ratings number per show would make that possible, they believe.
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