Archive for February, 2010

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Online Video Views on ABC


2010
02.08

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Last Tuesday, the season premiere of the hit television show “Lost” aired, and not only was it watched by over 12 million people, but it drove record online viewing at ABC.com the next day, with over 580,000 episode starts on the site. That’s over 34% more than last season’s premiere. ABC shared some details with us.

When asked why they think this particular episode of Lost had such an impact on online views compared with other episodes and other shows, a representative for ABC told WebProNews, “Lost has been a top performer in terms of online viewing since we began making episodes available online several years ago. Fans of the show tend to be very tech-savvy and also tend to watch episodes more than once.  They also frequently go online to review specific scenes.”

On Tuesday, leading up to the airing of the show, ABC.com saw over 1.8 million unique visitors and delivered over 7.4 million page views, a 5% and 43% increase, respectively over the previous year’s premiere date, based on data from Omniture. Visitors to ABC.com logged more than 2.2 million video views of “Lost”-related short-form content on Tuesday, an increase of over 32% compared to last season.

ABC gives viewers more than just the videos though. This season, ABC.com offers interactive, community-driven features including user-created Top 5 lists which allow fans to arrange, rank and share their personalized lists of show-related favorites; and Episode Commentary where fans can access commentaries created by series’ insiders, and create and share their own for each episode.

The site will also soon unveil a Fan Art Wall, an interactive area for fans to upload, view and rate “Lost”-themed art created by fellow fans, and also give fans the opportunity to participate in a promo contest, providing users a “mash-up” tool to create and share their own “Lost” promos with a winning promo to be featured on-air.

There has been some talk about just how well TV shows will perform online in the future as Nielsen makes data available about the viewing of commercials that run in particular shows, whether they are viewed on TV or online. This could lead to online TV shows getting more ad-heavy.

“ABC.com’s full episode player features interactive video advertising,” ABC tell us. “Lost episodes currently feature a single national sponsor. They have 4 30-second spots which can’t be skipped; additionally the local ABC affiliates sell one local spot per episode.”

We won’t be able to compare Lost episodes from this season with episodes after the Nielsen stuff goes down, because this is the final season of the show, but it is going to be quite interesting to see how advertising on popular shows changes, if it does in fact do so.

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Google Maps Used to Track Down Street View Car


2010
02.08

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Posted in Google, SEO, Tech News | Comments Off

Do you hate the Google Street View car for its supposed invasion of your privacy? Looks like this is what drove members of the group Free Art & Technology (FAT) when they’ve attached a GPS device to the Street View car containing Google’s camera used for photographing streets in Berlin.

So, now with the use of Google Maps, the group were able to track down the whereabouts of the Google Street View car in real-time. And what better way of pulling a prank to the controversial Google car than to pull down their pants and play various gestures as the passes by a pre-determined location?  So, whose more evil now?

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Apple’s Mac: If not Intel CPUs/Boot Camp, what’s behind the success?


2010
02.08

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Posted in Tech, Tech News | Comments Off

f you bought your first Mac at some point during the last few years, what was it that drove you to make the switch?

The other day I added my thoughts to a piece written by Chris Seibold over on Apple Matters. Seibold suggested that Apple’s success with the Mac platform is down to the company’s shift to Intel CPUs, and he has data that shows strong correlation. I suggested that CPU brand wasn’t a strong enough driving force and suggested that Boot Camp, an easy way to run Windows on Macs (technology made possible by the fact that Macs ran Intel processors), was the driving force.

But it seems that many of you don’t agree with this at all. Putting aside the pointless ad hominem arguments and the obvious crazy tinfoil hat garbage, I’m curious to hear from folks who were previously using a different platform (be it Windows or Linux) and who switched to Mac at around the time that Apple switched to Intel processors (let’s say from the end of 2006 onwards)

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When PR Goes REALLY Bad


2010
02.05

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Many people will assume that it is only the new PR people who make significant mistakes in public relations. Perhaps they make their fair share, however, sometimes the experienced “professionals” mess up royally and end up paying dearly for it. Here are some examples from Fineman Associates top ten from various years:

In 1996, Structural Dynamics Research Corporation fired a guy on Take Our Daughters To Work Day while his 8-year old daughter was with him in the building!

Southwest Airlines, based in Dallas, Texas, announced during the 2002 year that they would begin charging overweight passengers for two seats instead of one. Big people cried foul and so did many others including many newspaper columnists.

In the midst of 1998’s homerun race, it was made known from our friendly neighborhood taxman that the person who caught the record-breaking home run ball would be subject to a six figure gift tax, even if they returned the ball! Mike McCurry, then White House spokesman, relayed his opinion at a press conference when he said that was “…about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” The IRS quickly withdrew, but not before they showed their image of being stone cold and unforgiving.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers once tried to force the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around the campfire.

Do you see this disturbing trend? Not a single one of these organizations intended to ruin their image. They simply failed to think their decisions through.

What are you going to do when a crisis rears its ugly head? Are you prepared to head off the media in a PR nightmare? It takes a lot to fix a serious media goof up. Just ask any of these organizations. I’m sure it wasn’t an overnight fix.

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HTML vs. Flash


2010
02.03

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Posted in Tech, Tech News, Web Development | 1 Comment »

A difference of opinion among developers has become a high-profile debate over the future of the Web: should programmers continue using Adobe Systems’ Flash or embrace newer Web technology instead?

The debate has gone on for years, but last week’s debut of Apple’s iPad–which like the iphone doesn’t support Flash–turned up the heat. Before that, Adobe had been saying with some restraint that it’s happy to bring Flash to the iPhone when Apple gives the go-ahead.

But Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch took the gloves off Tuesday with a blog post that said Apple’s reluctance to include Flash on its “magical device” means iPad buyers will effectively see a crippled Web. And he played the Google Nexus One card, too.

“We are now on the verge of delivering Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones with all but one of the top manufacturers,” Lynch said, specifically mentioning the Nexus One as one such device and adding that the software also works on tablets, Netbooks, and Net-enabled TVs. “Flash in the browser provides a competitive advantage to these devices because it will enable their customers to browse the whole Web…We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.”

Flash has indeed spread to near-ubiquity on computers, with better than 98 percent penetration, according to Adobe’s statistics. Its roots lay with graphical animations, but its success was cemented by providing an easy streaming video mechanism to a Web that had been plagued with obstreperous and incompatible technology from Microsoft, Apple, and Real.

But a collection of new technologies–including a rejuvenated HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) standard used to write Web pages–are aiming to reproduce some of what Flash offers.

Web standards evangelists for browser maker Opera Software, believes HTML and the other technologies inevitably will replace Flash and already collectively are “very close” to reproducing today’s Flash abilities.

“The Web (including video, games, animation) is too vital a platform for business, communication, and society to be in the hands of any single vendor,” Lawson said. “But it’ll be a while; there is a huge body of existing content that uses Flash.”

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Google searches getting more Social


2010
02.03

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Posted in SEO, Social Media, Tech News | Comments Off

Google’s move to include social networking information in its searches has gotten personal.

The search-engine giant has announced that, with a few tweaks, people using Google can now see search results related to friends, co-workers and other members of their social networks above all other results.

The Social Search feature was introduced to a limited number of Google users last year and was made available to everyone in beta status this week.

“This is just a first step in our ongoing effort to ensure that Google Web search is always as social as the Web itself,” the company said in an instructional video posted to its official blog

The tool requires a Google account. Then, a user can link their profile to friends and family via their blogs or profiles on networking sites like Twitter.

The world’s largest social-networking site may prove tricky, though. Many of Facebook’s roughly 350 million users responded to Google’s addition of results from the site by tightening their privacy settings. The result is that Google

- and other search engines — can only access people’s public profile pages, which usually don’t have much information.

If they choose, Facebook users and administrators of Facebook groups and fan pages can adjust their privacy settings to make their data accessible to others on the Web.

When searching, a Google user can now click a link — “My Social Circle” — to bring up anything members of the user’s network had written or otherwise posted on that topic.

The user would be able to add or remove people from their profile.

In its blog, Google said that enabling Social Search could make results more valuable because they come from sources that the user trusts.

“We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface,” Google said in the blog post.

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Monster.com promotes new search engine relaunch


2010
02.01

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Monster.com launched a multichannel advertising campaign on January 24 to promote updates to its job search engine. The effort is aimed at both job seekers and employers at a time when unemployment is hovering near 10%, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The “Get a Monster Advantage” effort was created by Omnicom agency BBDO New York. Its creative features a boogeyman who can’t scare kids anymore, so he uses Monster.com to land a new job as a certified public accountant. The effort includes social media, homepage takeovers and rich media display ads, as well as print and TV spots.

The campaign is promoting an update to the Monster.com site, using the tagline “Search Better. Plan Better. Connect Better.” The company has also launched a 6Sense semantic search engine to make job searches easier and more relevant to both employers and job seekers. The revamped site also includes career planning tools to help users chart their goals. It also includes a social networking aspect, as Monster has created 17 unique career communities where job seekers can network with others in their field of interest.

“We know that people want help, whether it’s a more efficient way to search for jobs or helping them connect with others through specialized career networks,” said Ted Gilvar, EVP and global CMO of Monster.com, in a statement.

To promote the site, Monster.com is running homepage takeovers on general interest and vertical-specific sites. The company has also created a Facebook application based on the boogeyman creative. The campaign’s second TV ad will run during Super Bowl XLIV on February 7.

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EBay to pay affiliates differently


2010
02.01

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing | Comments Off

Ebay has introduced a new payment structure to its affiliate marketing program, eBay Partner Network, intended to more closely align payment to affiliates with the quality of traffic they drive to eBay.

Quality Click Pricing is designed to further reward affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay and who send value buyers to the site.

Under the existing payment structure, eBay paid affiliates for sales and leads. With the new program, affiliates will now be paid for each click sent to an eBay site. The price paid per click will take into account the incremental value of the traffic that a publisher drives to eBay. The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the earnings per click and total earnings an affiliate will receive.

Earnings per click will be set daily for the previous day’s traffic.

EBay ran a three-month limited beta test of Quality Click Pricing starting in May that involved 25 publishers. The new pricing system will be phased out over the next couple of months. New publishers who join the eBay Partner Network as of September 1 will be paid under the new system while those who joined prior to September 1 will remain on the current system until October 1.

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GSI Commerce acquires Pepperjam


2010
02.01

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing | Comments Off

GSI Commerce has acquired certain assets of Internet marketing agency Pepperjam, which operates an affiliate marketing network and offers search engine marketing and online media planning.

GSI moves directly into the affiliate network business with the acquisition, said Nick Pahade, president at GSI Interactive, the digital marketing services agency at GSI.

“We believe the affiliate marketing space to be a powerful and effective marketing tool,” he said. “By owning our own network, we think we can drive better innovation and additional enhancement to the industry moving forward.”

Pahade explained that GSI was also interested in acquiring Pepperjam for its affiliate network’s transparency system, which provides advertisers with contact data and promotional methods.

“This is a key differentiation in the marketplace that allows advertisers to have more control over the affiliates they are working with,” he said, adding that it also “empowers affiliates to build stronger relationships with advertisers.

Pepperjam, located in Wilkes-Barre, PA, has 48 employees. It will operate as a separate business unit of GSI Interactive.

In April, GSI Interactive acquired Silverlign Group, an integrated marketing strategy and design agency.

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