If you happen to be in a market where you like to be cutting edge – and up to date with trends online as they happen, then you are going to need to find your information from a variety of sources. Chasing the news and being first always has its rewards from a traffic perspective, and as the web is becoming more and more real-time its never been a better time to keep your finger on the pulse.
Author Archives: juzarraga
Putting a Value on Facebook Communities
Putting a specific value on Facebook communities is a matter of some debate. Vitrue is hoping to shed some light on the subject with a new tool that evaluates the earned media worth of brands’ Facebook pages.
If you buy into the social media specialist’s underlying thesis — and even Vitrue concedes it’s not capturing the entire picture — the popular Starbucks Facebook page is worth $20.7 million.
Flash: Brightcove Plans iPad Video Assist
Flash doesn’t work on the iPad, pretty much making online video advertising a non-issue. But leading video technology provider Brightcove says it has a solution.
The company has announced that it will soon begin assisting its partners in delivering video content and advertising using HTML5, the Web site technology format which, as an alternative to Flash, enables video to be viewed on iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. That’s potentially big news for brands that advertise on the Web via video — particularly given that Apple has already sold 1 million iPads — mostly to a highly desirable, early-adopter consumer base.
Chevy Enlists Goodby as Lead Shop, Rehires C-E for Retail
General Motors hired Joel Ewanick as vice president of U.S. marketing just two weeks ago, but he’s already making a mark.A month after GM consolidated creative duties on its Chevrolet brand at Publicis Groupe’s Publicis, the automaker is undoing that decision by shifting lead duties on the brand to Omnicom Group’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — Ewanick’s agency when he led marketing at Hyundai Motors America — and rehiring longtime Chevy shop Campbell-Ewald to handle retail and sponsorship ads, according to sources. It was not immediately clear if creative duties on Chevy trucks also would return to C-E, a unit of Interpublic Group.
via Chevy Enlists Goodby as Lead Shop, Rehires C-E for Retail.
RadioShack Picks Mindshare
RadioShack has selected WPP Group’s Mindshare to handle its media planning and buying after a review, according to sources.When it launched the search in January, the client listed its full-year ad expenses for 2008 at $215 million. Annual spending for media placements going forward is estimated at about $150 million, per sources.
Why Adobe Abandoned iPhone Flash App Plans – PCWorld
Adobe will no longer pursue the ability to allow developers to create Flash apps intended for the iPhone and iPad, pointing to Apple’s chokehold over development for the platform.
Google Follow Finder
Follow Finder is a nifty little app that will help you find people to follow. You plugin your Twitter username and it will scan your public social graph to show you people you might want to follow. It’s hosted on App Engine and makes extensive use of Twitter’s new @anywhere platform.
Decoding the Mobile Ad Space
There’s a fierce debate going on in the digital media world. One side claims mobile ads are effective and the other that they just don’t work. Steve Jobs has said that “mobile ads suck,” despite acquiring Quattro Wireless, a mobile ads company, three months ago. However, in my experience, mobile ads work, and there’s empirical proof.
Digital Upfront: Fantasy or Reality?
It happens every spring. TV buyers start planning for the upcoming upfront buying season, and digital media executives ponder the question — are we having an upfront, too?
The prospect of a digital upfront — one focused on video, specifically — was the topic du jour on Monday during a one-day conference hosted by the organization digiday at the W Hotel in New York. During a standing-room-only panel session featuring representatives from several top digital agencies, the concept of a digital upfront was derided by some and cautiously embraced by others.
Value of a ‘Fan’ on Social Media: $3.60
Brands have rushed to Facebook to build fan bases, with some amassing millions of connections. The nagging question has been: What is the monetary value of these fans?
Social media specialist Vitrue, which aids brands in building their customer bases on social networks, tried to put a media value on such communities.
The firm has determined that, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year.
Twitter Starts ‘Promoted Tweets’ Ad System
Twitter finally took the wraps off its long-awaited advertising system, borrowing ideas from companies already matching advertisers with tweets.
Twitter is calling its system Promoted Tweets. The initiative allows advertisers like Best Buy and Virgin Airlines to buy their way into the stream of short-message updates Twitter users consume. Promoted Tweets will first appear in related search results. Ultimately, Twitter plans to inject them into the stream directly, matching a brand’s Promoted Tweet with users that fit geographic or interest-based criteria. Best Buy, for instance, could target people who follow others with tech interests.
Conan O’Brien Lands at TBS
In a move it’s safe to say no one saw coming, Conan O’Brien has found a new home on basic cable, signing a deal to host a one-hour late-night talk show on TBS.
O’Brien’s as-yet-untitled 11 p.m. show will bow on the Turner network in November, shifting Lopez Tonight to the midnight slot.
Yahoo, Reveille, Toyota Team Up
Yahoo News has partnered with the production firm Reveille and embattled automaker Toyota to launch a new daily Web series — Who Knew? — that will expound on the site’s most popular news story of a given day.
Who Knew? is aimed at providing a mainstream Web audience with snack-sized features on lesser known aspects of whatever topics are making news at that moment (Yahoo officials claimed that Yahoo News reaches 21 percent of the online audience). For example, today the show examined the Shroud of Turin, which was recently displayed in Italy for the first time in 10 years. Each episode runs 90 seconds.
Microsoft Gets Social for Kin Phone Launch
The average person on Facebook has 130 friends, but most of them aren’t really “friends” at all.
That’s the premise of a campaign from Microsoft that introduces its Kin phone, which is pitched as a device designed specifically “for people who are actively navigating their social lives.” Kin, a long-awaited, touch-screen mobile device that was code-named “Pink,” was based on feedback from more than 50,000 consumers in the target 20-something age range. Like some other devices, notably Motorola’s Cliq TX with Motoblur, Kin pools several social media streams including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live. But unlike Blur, Kin lets consumers program their phone so their closest friends’ updates rise to the top, a feature Microsoft calls The Loop.
Google: Too Many Moving Parts?
Back in August 2006, The Oxford English Dictionary updated its definitive record of the language with a new entry, adding “Google” as a verb, meaning to search the Internet. That put the firm in the exalted company of brands like Xerox, FedEx and TiVo, which also gave their names to the actions they invented.
Jason Uzarraga 