von Roland Hachmann | Mai 24, 2007 | Ad News, Blog
Paid display of products in TV-Shows without any referrence to the story was – so far – illegal in Europe. Or at least in Germany. Some German TV stations lately got into trouble for displaying products in soap operas. This might seem trivial to people in the US, where this is normal, as far as I know. But in Germany it caused a big scandal.
Now the European Commission put a decret up, which allows TV stations to display products in TV shows. Only prerequisite: it needs to be clear that it is an advertisement. I wonder, how they will manage to indicate that, without interrupting the story?
Kids TV shows still must not have any product placements, but can now be interrupted every 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes, writes German weekly magazine Spiegel.
Is this the „answer“ to increasing media fragmentation, consumer control and ad resistance? It is certainly a nice try, but I don’t think that will make it any better. I even think it will make things worse. Increase the clutter and users will find more ways to blank out any advertisements.
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 23, 2007 | Blog, Digital News, Marketing Trends, Online Advertising, SEO / SEA
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 23, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, SEO / SEA
Steve Rubel writes about the changing landscape of blog search. Google killed it, he claims, and it seems plausible.
For one, there is good reason why the attractiveness of search engines like technorati has faltered:
The improvements are nice, but I have to admit that I don’t use Technorati nearly as much as I used to. Link authority was a good metric a year ago, but it’s not nearly as worthwhile today when you consider all of the centers of influence one may wish to search and track. Link authority doesn’t tell me who’s an influencer on Facebook or which video artists are rising on YouTube. It was great in 2005, ok in 2006 and really has faded from relevance in 2007. […] While we still use vertical search engines today to dig through news, blogs, video, etc., their days are numbered. The lines are blurrier. Google News, for example, has lots of blogs. More importantly, the big web search engines are going becoming sophisticated enough to make an educated guess as to what information you’re seeking. It won’t care if it comes from the live or static web. It will serve up relevance and soon time-stamped sorting.
Is there anything that will put an end to Google’s dominance? Probably not. But it was never within their own fields that big monolithic companies were beat. IBM still offers some of the best servers. Microsoft is still a quasi-Monopoly in PC OS.
Whoever „beats“ Google will have find a totally new field of activity.
By the way, I love to take sneak preview of what Google is toying with…
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 23, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News
This guy lets people shoot at him with a paint gun via the web. It’s meant to show the daily struggle people living in Iraque face…
At YouTube you can see his VideoBlog, where he gives updates about everything, including where he’s been hit. You can see the walls being covered in paint, it’s amazingly cruel. But it certainly makes you think, and that was the point.
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 22, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
It is amazing. A viral campaign apparently already started for a movie, that will launch in 2008. That is at least 7 months down the line. I wonder how early is too early?
But, given the fact that it is a viral campaign, they need some time for spreading it.
There is a good overview about what has happened so far over here.
It seemed to have started with a static site, then some unbranded posters appeared in some US cities. Then:
Within 48 – 72 hours, all of the posters in major cities were defaced to resemble the image seen at the URL I Believe in Harvey Dent Too. If you went to that URL the site would ask for your email address. After you submitted (reusabale database anyone?) you were sent an email with the coordinates for a pixel that you could removeBatman4 from the site.
With users able to remove just one pixel each, a viral effort was underway to spread the word to get others to register and remove a pixel. In less than a day, thousands and thousands of unique visitors had visited the site to remove a pixel – ultimately revealing the face of the new Joker, Heath Ledger.
And then it goes on even more – I suggest you go here to continue to read. Really cool stuff – reminds us of „Snakes on a plane„
Wo ich sonst so bin...