13. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Many traditional companies are shifting to non-traditional practices since Interactivity seems to be the new form of advertising.  Research is proving this correct.  AAAA researched the effectiveness of Interactive ads and found customers are not only more willing to buy products or services but are being engaged longer as a result.  Gaming, Interactive videos, blogs are all creating a better experience to customers and are resulting in higher sales per dollar.  Since the economy is starting to linger I predict everyone will be focusing on non-traditional advertising soon.

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12. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Lots of gossip is going around the AAAA conference.  One of the big questions surrounds Google and their company DoubleClick.  In the last few months investors have been moving stocks from advertising agencies to Google.  This is going on mainly because investors believe Google will become an advertising giant and take most advertising sales via the Internet medium.  So advertisers are frantic and scared about the software giant Google.  Googles representatives say, “the statements and gossip is untrue.”  But are they?  I really think Google will be taking a larger quantity of Advertising dollars via online and put a number of agencies out of business.  The reason, that’s how Google operates.  Ad spending funds them and unfortunately will eat up a lot of companies like what Microsoft, Wal-Mart and others already have done.

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12. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

AAAA - known as American Association of Advertising Agencies seems to be falling a little behind.  The company has been a great asset to Advertisers in the past for having creative, new and up-to-date Advertising related help.  Recently, at the AAAA conference though things had changed.

American Association of Advertising Agencies seems to be falling behind and is now pushing for Digital content.  Have we not been a digital content world for the last seven years?  AAAA finally jumping onto non-traditional advertising may be too late since AdAge and other publications have advanced forward.  Since the company is running by a more conservative and older-inclined base this makes AAAA a tough sell for new agencies. Could AAAA be pushed out of the picture?

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11. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

A pretty fun post from engadget.com, Ryan Block…

Finally, HD DVD users now have the empirical evidence they’ve been looking for to prove that the universe really is conspiring against them. We figured we’d make ourselves useful over here and give you a list of things you can do with your poor, obsolete HD DVD player — starting with taking it out to dinner, excusing yourself to the bathroom before the check comes… then getting the hell out of there.

Gimmes

• eBay
• Doorstop
• Entertainment center cup-holder
• Destroy it. Office Space style.

Oh, the humanity

1. Mail it to the office of Howard Stringer in protest of Blu-ray’s victory.
2. Plug it into your clothes dryer’s 240-volt outlet. Woops, honey! My bad, guess we have to buy a Blu-ray player now.
3. Finally, replace your Betamax player.
4. Buy the Blu-ray player of your choice, put it in the box, attempt to return it as “defective.”
5. Channel it through Whoopi Goldberg and make some pottery with it.
6. Put a Blu-ray disc in the tray and then call up Toshiba when it doesn’t work. Repeatedly.
7. Put it in a time capsule, just to confuse future generations.
8. Buy a few dozen of ‘em and build a little hut for your Blu-ray player.
9. Lock it alone in a room with a few lethal weapons… let it die honorably.
10. Use it to upscale DVDs, which is all you ever used it for anyways.

Of course, feel free to leave your own suggestions in comments.

Tags: format war, FormatWar, hd dvd, HdDvd, toshiba

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11. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

The electronic giant Sony is now officially going green this spring.  Their hope is to build centers throughout the United States so consumers can dump all their old electronics, so they can be recycled to make new ones.  The promise from Sony is that soon these centers will be 20 miles from every consumer.  Since Sony has won the Blu-ray vs. HD battle this is a great give back opportunity to consumers.  But can Sony feasibly build that many centers in order to reach every consumer within 20 miles?  It’s doubtful since rural areas wont contain a number of Sony products.  Expect all urban cities to have the new centers within the next few months.

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7. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

If I told you that monthly over 67.5 million unique visitors go to YouTube and all U.S. Magazines in that medium receive the same, 67.5 million unique visitors as well, would that impress you or sicken you? Most Advertisers are disgusted and leaving magazines as a medium in droves. Which is why many publications are teaming with advertisers to create better pieces to receive better advertising dollars. Could magazines be headed to where television was a few decades ago? Many analysts say that having advertisers play a vital role in the publications creation could build revenue. My thoughts, go with it. This medium is going no where and fast and needs a whole new reconstruction in order to survive. Could we be seeing more web publications too? My guess is yes.

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6. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Gatorade, Bud Light, Pepsi, Motorola…does sports have too much advertising?  Some say that sports does have too many ads and other advertisers complain that clutter in sports brings down their brand.  I believe that sports right now is just right with the number of brands it has.  Although, in the future I could see even the sports games losing too advertising dollars because of how expensive they are to run.

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6. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Microsoft has had a rough few months. Their new operating system, Vista, was poorly received. The 44 million dollar buyout of Yahoo did not happen and to top it off their firing their most recent ad agency. Can getting a new advertising agency really help the software giant?

As a Gen Y ad researcher I see Microsoft’s biggest problem being how they focus their marketing. First of all Microsoft needs to start freshening up their advertising and make themselves more comical or dramatic instead of being mundane and boring. Next, they need to be able to make better products for their markets by pushing research and development. Finally, Microsoft needs a whole new look that can help trump Apple’s advertisements.

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4. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Google’s AdSense launched in 2005 is now catering to over 70% of the world-wide web users.  As a marketing tool via the Internet medium they are the largest in their field.   AdSense works by providing a “search” tactic, utilizing how the person searches the net to show off segmented ads.  AdSense displays advertisements as objects like: text, video and display to allure consumers.  Another term for this is called object syndication.  These ads when inevitably get more expensive as more consumers drive to the internet but it’s great to see non-traditional advertising is prevailing.  The real question is how monitoring “click” time will effect cost.

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3. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

This last year and this year haven’t looked great for network television.  Viewership keeps falling and the medium as a whole is starting to shrink to other mediums (Ex: Internet and Cable).  Recently, large companies like Unilever and Kimberly-Clark have started cutting back television ads in wake of a dying medium.   Kimberly-Clark (Large paper manufacturer) cut network television ad spending from 60% to 40%.  Unilever has cut commercial spending for most brands from 130 spots in 2005 to 30 spots in 2008.  Non-Traditional advertising for Kimberly-Clark went from 10% of the budget in 2004 to 34% in 2008.  It looks like researchers are going to have to figure out how to go beyond the 30-second spot in order to gain momentum again for the network television medium.

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