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Saturday, September 30, 2006

Blocking Marketscore: Why Cornell Did It

Interesting little article from Cornell university. Shows that Comscore might be a little vulnerable.

Hitwise rely on purchasing data from ISPs, which will also run into a couple of difficulties along the way.

Personally I don't see why doubleclick or atlas can't make some kind of tracking system. They should be able to give decent estimates as to the size of each site from the number of adverts they serve to the sites. They will definitely be able to estimate the crossover with other sites.

There would be the usual privacy concerns, but I think the data will be collected in a reasonable way. We'll see what happens.

BBH launches virtual advertising agency

You can just imagine:

"Hey agency people, we need to look like we're in touch with all these funky new things on the internet. What can we do?"

"How about we make a big viral that everyone downloads"

"We've done that before though"

"How many people use it?"

"About 0.005% of the online population"

"Is it cool though?"

"Yes and we can get the PR people to push it out to all the papers for us"

Friday, September 29, 2006

I wish I owned a media empire

According to Media Guardian, Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi has ordered his TV stations and newspapers not to report his 70th birthday today because he's 'depressed' about it.

North Korea has nothing on him.

Google turns eight this week

Old enough to stop playing around with their logo perhaps.

Even so, here's a link to some of their 'special' logos and details of the days they changed them for. The one for Louis Braille's birthday below is probably the best.

Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy: Punish MPs

This is worth staying up late for...

I'm overwhelmed with a feeling to do something about climate change.

We rock.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

New Nivea Advert

Warning: your childhood memories may be ruined forever if you click the link

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

White House uses YouTube to tackle drug abuse - Digital Bulletin - Digital news by Email - Brand Republic

"One of the first examples of public service announcements following its targt audience online"

Where has Brand Republic been for the last six years? There have been hundreds of public service announcements online in recent years. COI team have been active online thorugh i-level for the last four years.
In those four years there have been literally hundreds of different campaigns running across the internet. They have raised awareness about working from heights, disability discrimination, importing foreign meat, tax returns, drugs education...
Brand Republic are showing their usual ignorance about online marketing.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Beer Cannon Montage

Good use of viral. Been live just over two weeks and received over 550,000 views.

That's quite impressive!

Re: Where's Malcolm?

Where is he?

The Foreign Office

Thoughtful article on the cultural differences between the British, American, German and French versions of the Office.

Apparently in the US "a boss who fails to project at least an outward appearance of seriousness would not be credible."

And the German Gareth is called "Bert" but is derisively nicknamed "Ernie" by his colleagues.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Wikipedia to be made available offline

"The deal will give users access to Wikipedia's more than 3.8m articles even when they are not online, via a searchable six megabyte web pack."

What's the point? Do you remember how useless Microsoft Encarta seemed once people started having access to the internet? Surely this is just as redundant. There can't be many times these days when you're going to need a computer-based encyclopaedia and you don't have internet access. I can’t think of any.

It's also not clear how they're going to fit 3.8 million articles into six meg. But the fact that they can may be the only reason why they're going to.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Jesus: he's everywhere

Check out this advert showing Jesus' face on a beer glass.

Not nearly as remarkable as the image on Jesus found in a real life sandwich. The decade old bit of cheese-on-toast sold on eBay for £15,000.

Source: The Daily Mail - "the new Sunday Sport"

Well it shows initiative

Media Guardian reports that Adidas is offering 8000 limited edition posters of the New Zealand rugby team printed using ink mixed with blood from the team members.

Marketing manager Craig Waugh said, "The DNA of the team is making it extremely personal." Good work, Craig.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

For Daniel

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

That is an actual sentence.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Channel 4 warns of TV advertising gloom - Media Bulletin - Media news by Email - Brand Republic

Channel 4 warns of TV advertising gloom - Media Bulletin - Media news by Email - Brand Republic
Good news for us in some ways - that money for TV must be moving towards the online budgets.
It's a shame really, Channel 4 are holders of large amounts of high quality content (together with large amounts of low quality content). As content makers they need to find new ways to monetise that product.
They are on the way with their much delayed IPTV product, they have started 'simulcasting' their TV channels online. However, they still need to find ways to get a decent amount of money out of the way viewers consume content.
Out of the UK broadcasters though, C4 give the impression of having the best idea of how to get some money out of new media. We'll see how they do whenever the IPTV launch happens.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

New Music Video From David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff - "Jump In My Car"

4 million plays and counting.

The man is a phenomenon.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Daniel's pick of the blogs

Hello and welcome to Daniel's pick of the blogs. Here goes:

1. Postsecret

A New York based "community art project" where people anonymously send in a homemade postcard containing a secret. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, often poignant and always a good read. Updated once a week, usually on a Sunday.

2. The Spine

"News with added backbone". Satirical, mainly politically-focussed, UK blog. Can be a bit hit and miss at times but definitely worth a look. Updated most days.

3. Cute Overload

"Image after image of teeny-weeny furry animals means you’ll never be sad again." Updated whenever they find something cute enough.

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Observer | World | Wikipedia defies China's censors

Yes I know it's my favourite site in the world...

Well done to wikipedia for being principled. Censoring the Wikipedia is exactly opposite the whole idea of it. Jimmy Wales is 100% correct.

Obviously it's easier for the Wikipedia to resist China. China is such a huge market it's impossible for companies to avoid it. Wikipedia only generates cost though, so not entering a huge market of people who will increase it's bandwidth costs isn't a terrible idea.

Power to the Wikipedia!

Nice Piece by BP

While hanging out at my brother's house, I found what looked like a book of matches:

Opening up revealed what they'd actually done:

Quite a clever little idea, the kind of thing someone creative is extremely proud of. From what my brother says, there's millions of the little books of sunflower seeds hanging around in Sunbury. Shame they couldn't find a way to distribute them better.

Friday, September 08, 2006

RIP

Courtney Chadwick
Teampembo member 2004 - 2006

Former Google managing director Burns to join AdLink

Former Google managing director Burns to join AdLink - Digital Bulletin - Digital news by Email - Brand Republic
Why is she doing this? Katie Burns is one of the most respected people in search. She cashed her shares in Google which should have given her a fairly robust pack of notes.
Now she's returning to head up the search arm of Adlink.
Adlink don't have a search offering worth spitting on. Adlink as an organisation are not comparable to Google. I would accept that she might think that it will be a challenge to run the search end of Adlink. However, I think the ex head of Google UK should be more than capable of running Adlink. All of Adlink.
Good luck to her, but I think she's going to find herself struggling to pick up significant bits of business. She must have a big client up her sleeve somewhere otherwise she wouldn't be doing this. I'd be interested to see if she can get much stuff done beyond the first two months.

Amazon.com Unbox Video:

Amazon.com Unbox Video:
Amazon managed to beat Apple to supply (legal) downloadable videos.
Really strong idea, but the DRM supposedly won't allow burning to DVDs. Silly rights holders shooting themselves in the foot again.

I don't think this will herald any significant change in people's buying behaviour. Personally I think big changes in buying behaviour will only happen when things are easy.
Although this is a nice system, it's nothing new. When you can hire a film from your living room (like with Homechoice) that's when you'll see a shift in behaviour.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Paris Hilton Punked

Video of how the Banksy hoax Paris Hilton thing was carried out.
(via talent imitates, genius steals)

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Studio Smack

Nice little animation from some Dutch people. Really highlights the current moaning about 'Urban Spam'.

People think the internet is cluttered with advertising. Look at urban life - you can't move without seeing brands!

(via Russel Davies' blog)

Google: famed for their ad targetting





This appeared as the sponsor link in the RSS feed in my Gmail today. Weird.

Spot the connection: Daily Express headlines over the last 7 days




































You'd think she'd died or something.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Self publishing via the web

I came across Lulu.com via the Google blog.

Not actually a site about the annoying singer, but a service that allows you to upload a PDF and have it published as a real physical book at no sunk cost. The book is then added to Amazon, Google Book Search and various other places automatically.

The actual cost of the book is the cost of production (about $5), whatever royalty you as the author want on top of that, and an extra 25% of the royalty as Lulu's fee. If no-one buys it you don't have to pay anything.

You can also publish e-books, calendars, CDs and DVDs in a similar way.

I really like systems like this that merge the web and other media together. I remember a (now defunct I think) Royal Mail service where you could send an email and have it converted into a real postcard

The site is also pretty ethical with a philosophy of ease of publishing without editorial conflict. It was founded by a guy called Bob Young, apparently, who also started an open source company, and it upholds many of the same ideas. You're encouraged to give your book an open source type license although you don't have to.

If only I had something to publish.

Anti-piracy Foundation: Pirated DVD | Ads of the World

Really good idea by TBWA in South Africa. One of those ideas so simple that you wonder if someone has done it before...

In order to combat piracy, they've flooded the market with these fake DVDs. They stop a small amount of time into the film, telling you not to buy pirate DVDs and telling you that a certain amount of money has been donated to the anti piracy fund.

It's a good idea - it reduces confidence in pirated DVDs. Can you be sure that you will get the full film when you buy it?

I'd like to see how they actually get the money for the film. I'm assuming the street sellers don't actually know that the film is a fake. There must be someone who's being tricked somewhere along the line, and that'll also disrupt part of the 'supply chain' for these DVDs.

It'll be interesting to see if they find a way to extend this to the file sharing community.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

MySpace to sell music from nearly 3 million bands - Yahoo! News

Who needs advertising?

MySpace don't - in one of the less shocking news stories this year, they're going to start offering themselves as a music platform.
They've recovered from the controversy earlier this year about their terms and conditions (similar to YouTube's controversy).

Hopefully we'll start to see some interesting tools to start finding the best bands and the ones with the most origianl music.

One company, two forms of media

Keith Rupert Murdoch's Fox News is well known for its right-wing views and opinion-lead news, with presenters often shouting down guests and terminating their microphones in not so subtle acts of censorship.

Check out this video of one of their reporter's shocking rants against the BBC after the Hutton report came out investigating David Kelly's death. We'd never see something like this on Newsnight.

But compare the video to an article on their website about the same incident. While also an opinion piece (and by a journalist with the same opinion as the TV anchor) it is far more balanced and fact-based, without any of the vitriol.

This is in stark contrast to the stereotype that you can get away with much more on the web than you can in other media.