For the first time, in-stream audio advertisers will be able to target folks listening to Internet radio on mobile devices.

Slacker, a pure-play Internet radio service, has partnered with online radio ad network TargetSpot to monetize its audience that tunes in via applications on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

via TargetSpot, Slacker Focus on Mobile Audio Ads.

So, are Web publishers totally screwed — or aren’t they?

That’s not the official theme at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting (it’s actually “Revenue: the Next Wave”), but it appears to be the reigning question at the event, which is being held this week in Carlsbad, Calif.

Based on the topics discussed by various speakers thus far, the future of ad-supported traditional branded sites is very much up in the air. The ongoing threat of ad networks, exchanges and demand-side buying platforms turning sites into commodities has many asking scary questions — while others are expressing steadfast defiance.

via IAB Confab: Future of Branded Sites Unclear.

Porsche has called a global media review, the client has confirmed.Worldwide ad spending is approximately $80 million. In the U.S., the client’s largest market, spending totaled about $20 million last year, down from $33 million in 2008, according to Nielsen. Continue reading →

Introduce your work to the world. Enter Communication Arts magazine’s 51st Photography Competition. Hundreds of award-winning images are selected for their creative excellence by an esteemed jury of designers and art directors in editorial, advertising, institutional, for sale and unpublished categories.

Why enter?
CA’s Award of Excellence is one of the most-coveted awards in the industry. If selected, winning places you in the highest ranks of your profession. Ask any creative director which competitions rank as the most influential, and they’ll place Communication Arts at the top of the list.

Submission Guidelines and FAQs:
commarts.com/competitions/photography
To Enter Online NOW:
submit2.commarts.com
Entries must be sumitted by March 26, 2010. Entries submitted after that date require a $10 per entry late fee. No entries will be accepted after April 9, 2010.

Forget gold, Chinese real estate, or Greek debt derivatives, a new champion in the asset bubble wars has emerged: Superman comics.See full story

Google is taking the wraps off its new publisher-side ad platform, combining its technologies with DoubleClick’s systems.

DoubleClick for Publishers melds DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager. The combined product is designed to ease the complexity publishers face in serving ads, managing ad network relationships and maximizing revenue from inventory sold directly and through ad nets or exchanges.

Google paid $3.1 billion to acquire DoubleClick in April 2007.

New features include an open API that lets publishers tie in third-party applications like forecasting and workflow tools, integration with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and new yield-optimization features. Continue reading →

45 titles representing 15 publishing companies are running ads for the Kia Sorento in their digital editions

Marking an advancement for electronic magazine advertising, 45 titles representing 15 publishing companies are running ads for the Kia Sorento in their digital editions.

The buy launches Zinio’s newly created Publisher Advertising Network (ZPAN), which was recently reported by Mediaweek. Zinio creates digital editions of magazines for personal computers and Apple’s iPhone. Continue reading →

Lou Reed and Gretchen Bleiler make a perfect pair in BBDO’s Olympic spot

If there were a gold medal for the most breathtaking use of music and imagery in a 2010 Winter Olympics commercial, it would go to AT&T and BBDO New York for “Up and Up,” the spot featuring Gretchen Bleiler as a snowboarder in space.

The commercial is as visually dazzling as it is sonically hypnotic. To paraphrase Lou Reed, whose 1972 song provides the soundtrack, it just keeps me hanging on.

There’s incredible mastery (and risk) in the way the music and images match: Both are solitary, spare, stark and slowed down. There’s a kind of unresolved longing in each that makes the combination resonate that much more intensely. Continue reading →

Sneaker campaign takes a holistic lifestyle approach

Asics is rolling out a global campaign from the Vitro Agency, San Diego, that advertises the sneaker brand with the tagline, “Sound mind, sound body.”

That positioning is a play on the brand name “Asics,” an acronym for the Latin phrase “Anima sana in corpore sano” — “A sound mind in a sound body.”

A 30-second commercial breaking nationally this week demonstrates “The cleansing power of sport” — the campaign’s pervading theme — by showing a runner sprinting through walls of water as words such as “fear,” “stress” and “doubt,” rendered in various languages, fall away from his body.

Asics: ‘Sound Mind, Sound Body’.

Mobile advertising, long tabbed as the next big thing, is finally getting its share of attention. Google and Apple, poised in a battle for dominance in what’s being hailed as the successor to the PC Internet, have spent a combined $1 billion to buy mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless. And Microsoft last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, previewed its next mobile phone platform, Windows Phone 7.

Mobile’s Conundrum.

Somewhat improved Q4 performance bolsters hope at holding company

Publicis Groupe today said its fourth-quarter revenue dipped 5.4 percent in organic terms, a measure that factors out the impact of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and other variables.

That performance constitutes an improvement from previous quarters, and would appear to confirm company CEO Maurice Levy’s belief that the worst of the economic crisis is over, the holding company said. In announcing Q3 results in October, when organic revenue slipped 7.4 percent, Levy was the first industry executive to publicly declare a recovery had begun. Continue reading →

Brands seeking to understand whether their online video efforts measure up now have a new resource

Brands seeking to gauge how their online video efforts measure up to competitors’ campaigns now have a new resource.

Analytics firm Visible Measures has released Trends, a Web-based tool that provides access to traffic, audience and engagement data from hundreds of online video campaigns.

Essentially, Trends is designed to help brands determine benchmarks for video ads, which can be used in both post-campaign analysis and for planning purposes. This has been an area that’s been lacking for the still young medium, where even experienced buyers often don’t know what to make of some of the numbers they receive on campaigns. Continue reading →

App lets users sample camera’s touch-control technology

Nikon is promoting its new camera equipped with touch technology via a Web app that gives consumers a simulation of touch-control capabilities for their online photo galleries.

The Nikon Virtual Touch Experience is a utility that uses a Webcam to let users move through photosets and resize images with gestures rather than their touch-pads or a mouse. Users can download the app at Nikon site AshtonsCoolPix.com.

The Virtual Touch Experience uses edge-detection technology to achieve the trick.

Interpublic Group’s MRM Worldwide created the application as a way to showcase the benefits of the Nikon Coolpix S70 camera. The point-and-shoot device has touch-screen controls instead of buttons, allowing users to operate the camera with gestures similar to those used with iPhones.

“Nikon wanted to push that it had an innovative product,” said Farid Chaouki, director of innovation and user experience design at MRM. “It’s hard to convey that in an advertising banner, so we developed a utility that will add value and make people understand Nikon is about innovation.”

The tool is a bookmarklet that users can drag into their Firefox toolbars to use around the Web. It doesn’t require plug-ins or toolbar downloads, although it does require a Webcam.