von thecod | Feb. 25, 2005 | Blog
One of the headlines these days is that one of the Gawker advertisers pulls out of the deal.
NetworkLandscape has a long interview with Jason Calacanis of weblogs.inc, who tells us a lot about blogging and advertising and the merry future of both together.
But, reading about all these ad-eager bloggers I also read an article in clickz which writes about tracking of online advertising in blogs. Not banners, which are easy to track, but also a new form, ads as a post (which come with comments and trackback like a regular post), which are not so easy to track.
Also, aggregators (RSS Feeds) play another role in distorting the overal statistic of page views and ad views. Another concern by critics is, that bloggers simply talk to each other, implying a small total readership in the blogosphere overal.(via)
I think, the total readership is far from small (27% of the US population reads blogs), so this implies also a multiplier effect any piece of info experiences. And this exactly the reason for all hype around blogs over the last couple of months and years (depending on which country you live in).
But: Even though there is a hype about advertising with blogs in various forms, this has not yet reached anywhere near standard-procedure. So it reminds me of the „good ol‘ days“, when everyone who majored in HTML+Homepage thought they can build an empire based on selling advertising space…
von thecod | Feb. 24, 2005 | Blog, Digital Marketing
A great idea I read about at adrants: in addition to linking your banner to your own microsite or landing page, have links underneath it, that send the user to a blog or other site that comments in a favourably way about your product. Let others talk, it’s much more credible. Look on the banner for a Haruki Murakami book and the text underneath it here.
von thecod | Feb. 24, 2005 | Blog
A nice idea of Financial Times Deutschland that backfired, because their rival Handelsblatt had a mobile phone cam with him.
Take a look at the photos in this Handelsblatt Blog.
The first one, a truck-billboard, was parked outside the Handelsblatt Offices, with the billboard saying: „a little note for you not to forget to congratulate FTD turning 5 years old“.
The second one shows the driver of the truck, reading a Handelsblatt Newspaper…
On second thought – what if this second picture was photoshopped?
Anyhow, I thought it’s quite funny.
von thecod | Feb. 24, 2005 | Blog
Do you like lounge music? Chilling grooves, downtempo sofasurfer music or latin funk vibes? Or as radio42 says it: FINEST ELECTRONICA CHILLED WITH AMBIENT & DOWNTEMPO, MIXED WITH HOUSE & LATIN, STIRRED WITH NUJAZZ AND BLENDED WITH SOULFUL FUNKY BEATS.
Well, if we want to keep listening to radio42’s great music, as I do most of my time at home or at work, we need to help Bernd, who is running this 24h radio station, to set it up outside of Germany (the GVL – a German music licence organization – will charge a lot more money from march onwards, writes Bernd).
He found a viable solution already, working together with „lounge radio“ in Switzerland, as you can read on the website. However, he seems to be needing additional server capacity for streaming the music. So who can help, who can offer free a) SHOUTcast Server or b) Windows Media Server with 100MBit/sec. unmetered and guaranteed bandwidth?
If you can help, visit the website, where you can find contact information.
I, for one, would like to thank anyone who can help, in advance, as I love this station (and cannot help myself).
von thecod | Feb. 22, 2005 | Blog, Digital News
So, having written about viral in the last post, I now found an hint at adrants that you can now actually buy a viral marketing idea at
eBay! Viral Marketing specialist Asa Bailey has an idea for video clip that he expects to reach several million people in 6 months. And now he is trying to find a sponsor, who can, in return, stick his logo and web address into the clip.
A nice idea, but whoever bids on this should consider whether their product (or brand) has got anything to do with the story or actors, otherwise the clip go viral as hell and still nobody will ever remember who sponsored it…
von thecod | Feb. 21, 2005 | Blog, Digital News
Viral Marketing has long been a buzz word. And continues to be. It is amazing the kind of things advertisers do. McDonalds had the Lincoln Fry campaign, which started as what looked like an ordinary blog (except some people soon expressed doubts about the seriousness of this blog – and they were right).
The blogosphere has finally been „found“ by the advertisers. And while some try to influence the bloggers for free word-of-mouth, others just freely sponsor it, like Sony sponsors Lifehacker for 25k a month.
Funnily enough, T-Online opened a section on their site for all the ads that have been sent around via email. (Unfortunately they don’t have the „fake“ ones of Ford (the evil Ka) and the VW (Suicide Bomber))
And while they publish this, Adland speculates, that the newest talk of the blogs – the hacked Paris Hilton files (see also Gawker, they seem to have transcripts) – is actually a viral setup by T-Mobile (who are a distant cousin of T-Online). Quite a few of the comments at metafilter, which adland refers to, smell some bullshit marketing, too.
On the other hand, let’s not forget, how Google is promoting it’s GMail: by invitation only. Once you’re in, you get to invite 50 of your friends. And since there was a certain press hype already, most people I know are / were eager to try it. So by making access artificially difficult, Google made sure that the invites spread like fleas. (However, now there seems to be an abundance of invites available, as people advertise to give away their invites to anyone – I think Google overestimated the amount of friends people can possibly have that won’t get their invites from anyone else at the same time.)
Though these attempts are mostly hype based (in the case of Paris Hilton also celebrity spiced), there are some companies that take a more scientific approach to finding the influencers.
Keith Bates describes some of them and their methods. Basically, it’s about setting up databases of the 10% of the population that will take your message to the other 90% that listen. And ultimately it’s about feeding these people with the information on YOUR product.
Everyone in the process of making a buying decision will seek advice. And most of this advice is sought through these „everyday experts“. We all know them. They know everything about PCs, mobile devices, kitchen interior or cars. Their opinion forms our buying decision more than any advertising can ever do.
von thecod | Feb. 21, 2005 | Blog
A nice thing Werbeblogger refers to on their site: 3M has produced security glas. And what better way to prove their point than actually challenging the public into trying to break it? The incentive: a large stack of cash, as some photos shown in this PDF. I do hope this was (is) a real outdoor campaign and not just a web-thing with fake photos, because I really like the idea!
Wo ich sonst so bin...