Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
Widgets: From Hype to Hits
Widgets are not only changing the way large corporations strategize their advertising campaigns, they're also changing the metrics guiding online advertising at large. For years, online advertisers have focused on advancing click-through rates, which offer a concrete measurement of how often a particular ad actually entices someone to visit a site.
Widgets, on the other hand, provide interactivity and viral branding impressions, whereas users may never visit the campaigns site. And it may not matter if they don't.
The still-developing metrics of widget marketing include views, placements (copies of the widget code onto a page), and distribution (by domain and geographical location), but the most significant of all may be engagement. Data such as the percentage of users who click on a particular feature within a widget or the average amount of time spent on a particular widget offer valuable insight into a widget's popularity.
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/01/widgets.html
Microsoft Faces Challenge Of Marketing All Of Xbox 360
Staying true to video game enthusiasts remains a priority, but finding the perfect message to communicate all the services Xbox offers has become a challenge for Microsoft. While it recognizes that most consumers buy a game console based on their desire to play video games, Microsoft also wants consumers to discover all the features Xbox 360 offers, including Xbox Live, Video Marketplace, and
"Sony tries to market the PlayStation as a Blu-ray player and computer entertainment system, but, first and foremost, it's a game machine," Penello says. "As a marketer, it's a tricky challenge to communicate all the services Xbox offers."
Still, Xbox fits into Microsoft's vision for connected entertainment, from Zune and Windows Mobile to
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=74106&Nid=38167&p=334375
Three Keywords That Could Change The Course Of Television: Free Cash Flow
For Google to be truly successful in managing the world's television information, though, it would need to have ubiquitous access to television's data streams, and it is unlikely that companies like Comcast and Time Warner would give it. In fact, those big cable operators already have their own data-mining, data-sharing and advertising sales initiative. It's called Project Canoe, and it's been pretty much under wraps, but one executive familiar with its initial "request for information" from potential technology partners explicitly prohibited Google from participating in the process. No surprise there.
So unless Google were to use its considerable leverage to acquire a Time Warner Cable, or a Comcast - which it is not likely to do - how else could it get its hooks on television's data streams? What's that, you say? Nielsen? Yeah, that'd be my bet. Sure, Nielsen does not currently have access to the real thing, the actual census-level data stream flowing from the nation's digital TV set-top boxes, but it may have something better: the proxy data that is the underlying currency for the TV advertising and programming marketplaces. And that's something like a $100 billion business. Kind of makes the Internet seem like a real piker, doesn't it?
http://blogs.mediapost.com/tv_board/?p=238
Horseless Carriage
The masterpiece “Drunk History,” with hilarious “Superbad” twerp Michael Cera, is now all over the web. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it today and every day as long as you live. (On breaks from “Drunk History,” Cera’s “Clark and Michael” is worth a look too.)
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She proposes that Google or Apple or MySpace approach Tina Fey or Joss Whedon or Alan Ball and all the striking show-runners and head writers and tell ’em, “Make whatever you want and we’ll put it online.”
For online video’s potential, watch the freaky sketch above and truly try not to laugh.
What I mean is, who cares about those studios and their moldy old distribution models?
http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/horseless-carriage/
In Writers Strike, Signs of Internal Discontent Over Tactics
When
But the militant tactics may be creating fissures within the guild.
In particular, some writers wonder whether they are actually doing more harm to themselves than their opponents.
“It’s a classic rope-a-dope, like the Ali-Foreman fight,” said John Ridley, referring to the 1974 boxing match in Zaire during which George Foreman outpunched Muhammad Ali for seven rounds, only to fall, exhausted, in the eighth.
Motion Picture Storytelling Gets Interactive
Ever since NASA faked the moon landing, motion pictures have played a leading role in bolstering the believability of hoaxes, practical jokes and, most recently, alternate reality games (ARGs). Thanks to the success of I Love Bees and the interactivity spawned by the mysteries of Lost (which is running a second immersive game right now), ARGs have been building core audiences of obsessive fans — the kind that cover the Internet in chatter (which serves to promote projects) while having a whole lot of fun.
Social networks and video-sharing sites have begun to play key roles in the development of these interactive mysteries, because they can lend just enough of a veneer of truth and allow game masters a cheap way to create personas, drop clues and let players connect. Three new projects with interactive elements that could spell ARG have popped up on my radar in the last week: Enitech Research, Nowheremen and What is
http://newteevee.com/2008/01/11/motion-picture-storytelling-gets-interactive/
CES Scorecard: What You Need to Know
If you’re not into the second-by-second minutia of CES, it can be hard to take a low-key approach to the tech industry’s yearly kickoff. There’s just too much news, too much hype, too many “revolutionary” gadgets and services that you’ll never hear about ever again. But this year was especially significant for those of us who care about online video, as many of the major announcements concerned getting TV onto the web or the web onto TV. So here’s a need-to-know guide for the top five NewTeeVee-related announcements out of
http://newteevee.com/2008/01/10/ces-scorecard-what-you-need-to-know/
Strike Bumps Online Video Numbers?
Is the lack of new stuff on TV due to the writers’ strike driving people online? We’ve been posing that question to the web analytics firms since the strike started in November, but until now, nobody had been willing to call it. Today, however, the BBC quotes Nielsen analyst Alex Burmaster as making the tentative connection: YouTube traffic has risen 18 percent in the last two months, while Crackle has doubled its audience, according to the firm’s estimates.
“That is greater growth than you would normally see in such a short period and the strike could be a possible factor,” said Nielsen analyst Alex Burmaster.
http://newteevee.com/2008/01/10/strike-bumps-online-video-numbers/
Paid downloads a thing of the past
"People online want to watch for free, because they can get content for free via piracy," said Fox digital media prexy Dan Fawcett. "Downloading to own and keep on a PC seems to be losing out. People like to watch on an impulse."
Approach was mirrored in Sony Pictures TV's Monday morning announcement that it will start distributing its Minisode Network, which shrinks old TV shows to five minutes for the Web, on Google-owned YouTube. Deal makes Sony the only major
Sony, however, will put its 21 Minisode channels, including new entrants "NewsRadio" and "Married With Children," on YouTube, where it will get a cut of revenue from the Netco's ads, which are overlaid on the bottom of videos.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978614.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1&nid=2563
In Strike, Separate Deals Draw Ire of Big Producers
A deal between United Artists and the Writers Guild of America West to let the production company sidestep the screenwriters’ strike may have opened the door to a full-blown brawl, as other producers demanded to know why writers have granted some companies a special agreement but not others.
Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes ceremony for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has been trying for weeks to reach a similar deal but has been rebuffed. That is presumably because a free pass for Dick Clark would provide NBC, which is scheduled to show the Globes on Sunday, to bring in advertising revenue and promote movies like “Charlie Wilson’s War” for its sister company, Universal.
Alan M. Brunswick, an entertainment labor lawyer with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said the guild risks violating federal labor law if it refuses to deal with companies on an equal basis.
“If they’re willing to sign the same deal and the guild won’t give them the time of day, I think that raises an issue,” Mr. Brunswick said.
Taxing Advertisers is NOT A Long-Term Solution To The Writers’ Strike
THE RECENT JACK MYER'S THINK Tank article, " Advertisers' Strike Tax is the Solution to Writers/Producers' Impasse," opining that advertisers pay a 1% tax on media so those funds can be given to writers, is illogical for three reasons.
One, advertisers already financially subsidize the TV industry; two, they are not responsible for the problems causing the strike; and three, the people who are responsible for and can settle it are not even at the bargaining table.
But there is a way to resolve it for the long term.
The strike is about money: the money producers receive from broadcast, cable and digital networks they have to share with writers. The writers want more, while the producers claim the money is not there.
The solution is to increase the amount of money producers receive from networks, so more is available for writers. To do that, networks need to generate more money from advertisers. To do that, viewership must increase. Otherwise, with every contract, producers and writers will be fighting over an ever-decreasing pool of money.
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