CIQ Headlines for February 28, 2007

CIQ Headlines

Competition for Video Site Stars–(NYT) YouTube stars are being courted with offers from competetive sites. Some sites offer $5 per 1000 views. CIQ: Never mind the old route of getting an agent and trying to break into the biz.

New Route: MySpace to iTunes–(NYT) Tila Tequila has 1.7 million friends on MySpace, and is now launching a single on iTunes. CIQ: She’s also a former Playboy model, which probably helped. But still, there’s no record lable anywhere in this picture.

Magazine Association: Online Video Will Be Profitable— (Media Post) Forbes online video gets more views than CNN’s on TV, but the CPM is drastically lower. Will this last? The MPA says no. As CPMs catch up, online video will become profitable for magazines. CIQ: Traditional networks lag in posting online video. If mags catch on, they will become the new “broadcaster.”

CIQ Headlines for February 27, 2007

CIQ Headlines

Marketers Go to Digital Shops for Traditional Work— (Media Post) Some dismal facts from a new Forrester report. Only 20% of companies would recommend their traditional agency to another client. Most marketers feel their ad agency as the least competent among all vendors at delivering marketing technology. And 76% of marketers don’t measure the ROI on the work of their lead agency. So into the gap steps the digital shop, perceived as better, nimbler, more accountable. CIQ: There’s no such thing as “emarketing” anymore. If you’ve got “marketing” it has to have the “e” in there somewhere.

Project Apollo Shows Promise— (WSJ) The pressure to measure traditional advertising was on– pushed by the hyper-measurable digitabl. Now the venture between Arbitron and Nielsen seems to be paying off. “Portable People Meters” worn by panelists can pick out what channels are beign watched, what ads served up and when, giving real actionable data to marketers. CIQ: We are interested to see if online will be included for true integration of measurement.

Canadian Actors to Get New Media Compensation— (Hollywood Reporter) The screen actors guild in Canada has agreed to compensation terms for performances used in content distributed over the Internet, mobile or other new-media platforms. CIQ: A landmark agreement. SAG in US must catch up.

CIQ Headlines for February 26, 2007

CIQ Headlines

Searching Inside Videos— (NYT) Blinxx combines speech-recognition technology with contextual patterns to search for internet video. CIQ: There are lots of entrants into this space, including Google. It’s good news for content makers, as effective search is one step towards monetizing content.

Publishers Come Out with Different Readers— (FT) Associated Newspapers, Forbes, and Hearst all say they are coming out with proprietary reader formats based on Windows. The New York Times already has one. The Windows-based formats are a challenge to Adobe. CIQ: Steve Jobs? Are you out there? Cool device needed. Also some leadership. MP3 devides were out for years before you did the iPod, but no one could get it right. The eReader space needs you.

Evolution of Video Ads— (Forbes.com) Pre-roll doesn’t work. But bottom-of-screen ad tickers and other wrap-around seem to. CIQ: Everything old is new again. Remember Juno and NetZero? There are probably other ideas (dismissed prematurely) that we can bring out of the closet and dust off for Web 2.0.

Let Me Choose My Ads

CIQ Headlines

Picture this: You visit a site and are greeted with the following proposition…

Hello Visitor. This site is produced by legions of writers and editors who need to be paid for what they do. Therefore, we are going to offer you a choice. You can see the content for free, as long as you also accept advertising. Or, you can pay $29.95 a year and get the site ad free.

Oh, by the way, in order to make the advertising really work for us and you, we’d like to know what sort of ads you are interested in seeing.

I would love this. I will look at health and beauty ads all day long. In fact, we know women who buy women’s magazines are at least as interested in the gorgeous ads that promise a better life as they are in the content (that promises a better life). 

 WeatherBug used this strategy, and it didn’t really work. Why? Because they didn’t have enough advertisers involved. When I asked for my health-and-beauty ads, all I got was TrimSpa.

 Recently I had lunch with John Messina, a former legend at AOL, who is now with AWS, the company that owns WeatherBug. They are moving their ad-selection technology onto gaming sites. Where it seems to be a perfect fit. We would like to see this pick-you-ad technology on every publisher’s site as well.

CIQ Headlines for February 23, 2007

CIQ Headlines

NY Times Embraces Innovation — (FT) Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr recently said he did not know, or care, whether the NYT print version would be around in 5 years. And a whole team of new people at the NYT have been hired to confront the digital future. One main focus is the Times Reader. CIQ: Evidence that one solution for print will be the advent of eReading devices.

Microsoft Fined $1.52 Billion in MP3 Patent Case — (NYT) The jury decided in favor of Alcatel-Lucent, one of whose forebearers is Bell Labs. Bell Labs was involved in the initial development of the MP3 format and owns the patent. MS uses Windows Media player to play MP3s and only pays royalties to a German company with rights to some, but evidently not all, of the technologies involved in MP3. CIQ: Watch out Apple.

Fox Buys Ad Measurment Company–(Media Post) By buying Strategic Data Corp, Fox hopes to be able to finely target advertising to users on its community site My Space. CIQ: Great move. We would also like to see users choose their advertisers.