Laddies-on-demand: Maxim goes video via deal with MSN

In a deal morphing a printed publication into a video-on-demand service, laddie magazine Maxim Wednesday announced plans to offer free video programming on-demand to Internet users via MSN's video streaming service.

The agreement gives Maxim and important video outlet at a time when digital media are blurring the lines between print, TV and online platforms. It also will give MSN Video's advertisers reach among the kind of 18- to 34-year-old males who are likely to access video programming that mirrors the publication's standard fare: fashion, music, cars, and of course, plenty of beautiful women.

According to terms of the deal, Maxim Online will provide five new one- to-two-minute videos a week, which can be found in the entertainment section of MSN Video.

Joe Michaels, senior business development manager at MSN, attributes video-over-Internet's strong growth to increased broadband and improvements in the quality of the content on offer. "The number of video streams downloaded from MSN video is growing exponentially," Michaels said.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Crowned at last

What will that future hold? “For the first time the consumer is boss, which is fascinatingly frightening, scary and terrifying, because everything we used to do, everything we used to know, will no longer work,” says Kevin Roberts, chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, part of Publicis. Shelly Lazarus, head of Ogilvy & Mather, part of WPP, is more sanguine. “Advertising is as vibrant as it has ever been. It's just that the way you define it is so much broader now, with new ways to reach people,” she explains. “In the past you would keep pounding the creative message out into the market place and look at reach frequency,” says Howard Draft, a veteran direct-marketing expert and chief executive of his eponymous New York agency, part of Interpublic. “Well, basically that is dead. What you have today is an informed consumer who is taking control of the way he learns and hears about products.”

Some changes in consumer behaviour that were already under way have been speeded up by the growing use of the internet. For example, consumers are spending more time with media of all kinds: currently about ten hours per person per day in America. According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a New York-based media merchant bank, this is likely to grow to 11 hours by 2008. James Rutherfurd, the bank's managing director, thinks this is due to a relatively new phenomenon he calls “media multi-tasking”: using different media at the same time. “This has enormous implications for advertisers and programmers,” he says. “It used to be that they were competing to get you to turn on the television. Now the TV may be on, but they are competing to keep your attention on the TV as opposed to the computer screen, the magazine or the iPod.”

Fujio Nishida, chief marketing officer of Sony's electronics division, points out that this forces advertisers to think very carefully not only about which media to use for the market they want to reach, but what people are likely to be doing when their ad appears. In Japan, he says, in the past you could be fairly sure that 90% of your potential targets would be watching TV at some point between 8pm and 10pm; but now only 70% may be watching and 60% will be using the internet—many doing both at the same time. Advertisers can take advantage of this by putting on TV ads specially designed to encourage consumers to go straight to a website, as Sony has done.

“Who actually controls distribution in this type of world?” asks Bill Gossman. “The individual does. That's where the ultimate consumer power comes from.” His company, Revenue Science, is developing new ways of “behavioural targeting”. This involves analysing online consumer behaviour and then delivering ads that are likely to be relevant to groups with common interests. Mr Gossman thinks that as the world becomes more digital, his techniques will increasingly be used by all kinds of electronic media.

Read the article: www.economist.com

Attention holding

Once a corporate haven, advertisers' Web sites now provide their customers with an online experience of their brands, and the more content they include the better. At irn-bru.co.uk, teenagers are offered an audio-visual sensory experience of the orange fizzy drink through games, downloads and other tailored fun. Atmospheric sounds welcome older users to Johnny Walker's Green Label site, where they can navigate around the lush landscape that produces the whiskey. And over at Lynx's new lads-oriented Feather site, there's entertainment of a more titillating variety.

As broadband usage has increased, advertisers are finding new ways to push consumers online and, once there, make them stay as long as possible by giving them an engaging experience.

Corporate channels have tended to be "too ego-centric", according to Michael Wood, MD of Cocojambo Branded Entertainment. "They're far more about you than the audience," he says. "But a shift is happening and will only become greater."

The online space is an open book for brands to create an experience that resonates with their core audience groups. Car brands were some of the first to enter the branded content arena, with BMW launching its films channel and Volvo building intrigue around its brand with its 'Mystery of Dalaro' campaign. But as brands find success, all categories of advertiser, from financial services to FMCGs, are finding online content an opportunity for them to express themselves.

"All aspects of today's advertising and marketing strategy have previously been based on the idea of limited channels," says Wood. "Now we have an area of infinite channels and the only way a brand will navigate it is by creating a defined world around the brand."

Read the article: www.nma.co.uk

Product placement outpaces ad spending

While the value of product placement has been a tough nut for the media industry to crack, PQ Media, a marketing researcher that has put together a brief history of the practice, is putting the net worth of the overall product placement market last year at $3.46 billion - an increase of 30.5 percent over 2003. And according to its projections, that's only the beginning. PQ Media is also saying that product placement grew at a compound annual rate of 16.3 percent from 1999 to 2004. And since 1974 - when the company began tracking product placement spending--the value of product placement rose at a compound annual rate of 10.5 percent.

Both in 2004 and in the 1999-2004 period, product placement was driven primarily by a robust TV marketplace. The value of television product placements increased 46.4 percent to $1.87 billion in 2004, and grew at a compound annual rate of 21.5 percent from 1999 to 2004.

Meanwhile, in films, where product placement gained prominence in the mid-1970s, the report notes that the value of product placements rose 14.6 percent to $1.26 billion in 2004. And because of the pull of TV, product placement grew at a compound annual rate of 11.4 percent in the 1999-2004 period.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

New interest in "branded entertainment"

Consumers are using an ever-larger array of tools to avoid advertising, from digital video recorders (DVRs) to satellite radio and digital jukeboxes.

But advertisers and their agencies are striking back with branded entertainment — products embedded in program content. It may or may not deliver the brand message that branded advertising can, but it can at least put the brand where it will be seen or heard — and not zapped.

A new study released by the Association of National Advertisers found that nearly two-thirds US marketers (63%) had sponsored branded entertainment initiatives during the past year.

Read the article: www.emarketer.com

How can general motors remake itself?

There used to be a saying that what's good for General Motors is good for America. But that was in the days when one of every two cars sold in the United States bore a G.M. brand name. Now, with its market share falling toward 25 percent, General Motors is struggling to revive its core business - selling America its cars, trucks and minivans - and seems in need of a few good ideas.

The problem is not the size of the General Motors advertising budget. Last year, the company spent almost $3 billion to advertise to American consumers, according to TNS Media Intelligence, second only to Procter & Gamble.

The extent of G.M.'s difficulties was underscored by a survey, taken last week by the trade publication Advertising Age, which asked its readers, "Can G.M. be fixed?" A startling 46 percent of the respondents replied no.

Even so, there remain many on Madison Avenue who believe that General Motors can turn around, although, as more than one executive said, it will not be easy. With the caveat that free advice can sometimes be worth what it costs, what follows are some of their suggestions, offered in interviews yesterday.

The most important step General Motors can take is "to reverse-engineer its marketing strategy," said Joseph Jaffe, president of Jaffe, a new-marketing consulting company in Westport, Conn., "from a top-down approach to a bottom-up approach."

"General Motors has forgotten who drives its cars," he added. "It all starts with one consumer, and you build from there."

To accomplish that, G.M. must accelerate a shift from its traditional "mass-market, one-size-fits-all approach," Mr. Jaffe said, as epitomized by broad-based television commercials and print advertisements, and more ardently embrace unconventional tactics. Among them, he listed producing video games that double as advertising; running ads in video games; inviting consumers to create their own ads, on Web sites; and making use of branded entertainment, embedding ads in television programs and movies.

That change would be particularly effective, said Michael Megalli, a partner at Group 1066, a corporate identity consulting company in New York, in reaching an audience that General Motors ought to court more to help alleviate its problems: younger consumers.

Read the article: www.nytimes.com

More products get roles in shows, and marketers wonder if they're getting their money's worth

As branded entertainment becomes an increasingly popular marketing strategy, advertisers and agencies are pondering how to handle problems that could potentially slow what, until now, has been robust growth.

Branded entertainment involves embedding advertising inside the content of television and radio programs and movies by placing products in important scenes or making brands intrinsic elements of plot lines.

The goal of such ploys, on display in TV series like "American Idol" and "The Apprentice," is to regain the attention of consumers who can avoid advertising by using digital video recorders, satellite radio and digital juke boxes.

In the last week alone, there was word of deals in branded entertainment from Energizer, Home Depot, McDonald's and Volkswagen. Actually, Home Depot had two - one on an English-language network, NBC, and one on a Spanish-language network, Telemundo.

"You don't want to be the last one in," said Peter Gardiner, partner and chief media officer at Deutsch in New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. "But because we're in the early stages, it's so confusing."

"What you're seeing right now is the same kind of fuzzy marketplace we saw 8 or 10 years ago, when people were trying to figure out how the Internet would work for marketing," said Mr. Gardiner, whose agency opened Media Bridge Entertainment, specializing in branded entertainment, last year under his aegis.

Read the article: www.nytimes.com

Big Mac rap may mean artists' payday

Rap artists are accustomed to name-checking prestige car, clothing and jewellery brands in their lyrics. But if McDonald's has its way Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and 50 Cent may soon be giving it up for the humble beefburger.

The fast-food giant is reported to be launching a campaign that will offer financial incentives to rap artists who mention its Big Mac burger in their lyrics. McDonald's will not pay an upfront fee, but intends to pay the artist between $1 and $5 (53p-£2.68) each time a track is played on the radio. It hopes to have several such songs on the airwaves by the summer.

Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald's in the US, said the initiative would be conducted by the US marketing firm Maven Strategies, which last year managed to get Seagram's gin mentioned in five rap songs.

Tony Rome, Maven's president, said his aim was to identify artists whose style would identify with the brand. McDonald's would have final approval of the lyrics, he said.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

The future of the 30-second spot

Devotees of Home & Garden Television, sitting in the comfort of their living rooms on the 33rd floor of a Manhattan high-rise, probably could not care less about commercials for lawn mowers or snow blowers. If they have TiVo, they probably zap right through the ads; if not, they can just change channels.

Soon, however, viewers may no longer be assaulted by ads that all but demand to be ignored. Technology, cable and satellite companies are scrambling to offer advertisers the ability to learn enough about who you are and where you live so that the likes of Home Depot will be able to send a different, more suitable ad to an apartment dweller - say, an ad pushing a kitchen upgrade.

With the growing popularity of digital video recorders like TiVo, as well as video-on-demand, viewers are fine-tuning their relationships with television in ways that would have been unfathomable just a decade ago, watching shows when and how they want - not when some distant, towering network demands.

But the technology behind all that small-screen freedom cuts two ways. The same digital set-top boxes that turn your television into an ad-zapping, instant-gratification device also provide an opportunity for the advertising-dependent television business to rejuvenate and rejigger the time-honored 30-second spot.

The television commercial - a blunt instrument that often reaches as many disinterested people as desired ones - is beginning to behave like a smarter version of direct mail. Ads can be customized, not just by neighborhood, but ultimately by household and perhaps by viewing habits.

Read the article: www.nytimes.com

Study concludes - surprise! - consumers take control of media

From TIVO to iPods, an estimated 27 million U.S. citizens own one or more on-demand media devices, according to a study by Arbitron and Edison Media Research released this week.

The study, based on January telephone interviews with 1,855 participants, found that 10 percent of consumers watched video-on-demand via cable or satellite in the prior 30 days; 11 percent accessed news online; and 37 million consumers listened to Web radio.

"The study shows that consumers, while still using traditional media, have great enthusiasm and passion for on-demand media," Bill Rose, senior vice president-marketing and U.S. media services at Arbitron, said in a statement.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Product placement: well-placed among consumers

Consumers may hate commercials - No study needed to tell you that - but they seem perfectly comfortable when it comes to product placement on TV shows. Eighty percent of Americans have a positive view toward this powerful new form of advertising, a MindShare study released Thursday said. Marketers appear to be equally enthralled with the idea of product placement, according to a separate study conducted by Association of National Advertisers, which was unveiled at the organization's 2005 Television Advertising Forum at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on Wednesday.

In the ANA's survey of 118 marketers, 63 percent said their company has participated in branded entertainment initiatives in the past year. About 42 percent of the marketers who conducted a branded entertainment promotion said that they did so in order to make a stronger emotional connection with consumers--an amount that outranked other stated benefits by nearly double, an ANA spokeswoman said. And while 60 percent said that they had done a branded entertainment deal in the past, 80 percent said they certainly will do one in the future.

Still, as MindShare found, there is a catch. As perhaps with any form of advertising, consumers told MindShare that, in terms of product placement, "It depends on how it's done." That was the view of 46 percent of consumers, while 37 percent said "it's generally okay with me."

And while it's not a bad thing that only 12 percent said "I do not like it at all," referring to product placement, the number of consumers who said they do not like product placement at all doubled from a year ago, when only 6 percent said they don't like product placement.

In MindShare's analysis--which was conducted by fellow WPP company Lightspeed--the positive attitudes still outweigh the negatives by such a large margin that the medium continues to show promise, and the doubling of negative attitudes merely reflects the familiarity with this burgeoning marketing tactic.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Bill and Rupert's big adventure

Since the first cable company disrupted the traffic flow in the early 1980s and the first Sky dishes started mushrooming around the country, the broadcasting industry has changed beyond recognition.

But if the past 15 years have been characterised by increased choice and an attendant willingness to pay for it, telecoms companies globally are now set to gamble billions on the idea that viewers will in future choose to receive television down their telephone line.

It is a battle that will pit Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - which has a formidable lead in pay-TV by investing in satellite technology - against Bill Gates' Microsoft. The pair have fundamentally different outlooks on the way television will evolve in the next decade. Murdoch, who has a sizeable head start, remains convinced that consumers will continue to pay a dedicated pay TV company to provide for all their viewing needs, attracted by exclusive content and technological advances such as Sky Plus-style personal video recorders and high definition pictures.

But Gates is equally adamant that the future lies in IPTV - television delivered over broadband internet lines to a set-top box, DVD player, PC or games console attached to the set. He has wasted billions since 1992 trying to break into broadcasting and anticipating the convergence of home entertainment devices. But Microsoft now senses this could be its moment to break into the industry.

Analysts predict around 26m households globally will have IPTV subscriptions by 2008, around 4.5m of them in Europe. But thereafter, the technology is expected to grow more quickly as prices come down and broadband speeds continue to rise.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

Jeep and Paramount hope to learn from 'Lara Croft'

Elaborate campaigns to promote the action-adventure film "Sahara" represent what could be called a second take in efforts by Jeep and Paramount Pictures to market through the multiplex.

The multimillion-dollar campaigns - on television, in print, online and in theaters and dealer showrooms - are intended to reflect wisdom gained from miscues the last time Paramount teamed with Jeep, in 2003, to cross-sell "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," with Angelina Jolie.

The goal is to smooth the bumps on the road to forging an effective working relationship between Hollywood and Madison Avenue in the expanding area of branded entertainment.

Marketers are hoping that embedding products and brands in movies, TV shows and video games, which consumers want to see, will help compensate for the diminishing appeal of traditional advertising tactics like commercials, which consumers want to avoid. However, marketers confront a tricky task in working with the studios to interweave brands into plots because it must be done in ways visible enough to be noticed, but not so noticeable as to be obtrusive or even obnoxious.

Read the article: www.nytimes.com

Ford gives away car in live TV ad

Ford is to give away a free car as part of a one-off advertising campaign on ITV this Easter in a novel way to get viewers to watch commercial breaks.

The third biggest advertiser in Britain, Ford has teamed up with ITV for a live advertising competition, dubbed "advertainment", which both claim is a world first.

"We have got a responsibility to work with advertisers and their agencies to find new and engaging ways to reward viewers for watching television commercials," said the ITV customer relationship manager, Justin Sampson. "There's a lot of thought in the advertising industry that we are moving towards an age in advertising where engagement is as, if not more, important than interruption," he said.

On Good Friday the network will broadcast a 30-second advertisement for the Ford Focus at the start of an advertising break in the evening, and will follow it with another asking them a question about the commercial. Viewers can enter the prize draw by telephone, texting or going online.

Later that evening viewers will see another advert followed by a 10-second billboard with a graphic announcing the winner.

The adverts will be repeated each night and the overall winner will be announced on Easter Monday with another specially created commercial.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

Video Game Ad Network Gears Up For Launch

Massive Inc., A video game advertising network, will announce today a slate of major video game publisher deals, including established names like Ubisoft, Vivendi Universal Games, and Eidos.

The Massive network will officially launch on March 28 with the release of the anticipated title "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory," and the online futuristic role-playing game "Anarchy Online." "Chaos Theory" is the third installment in the already established Splinter Cell franchise, which features a U.S. intelligence agent fighting various global terrorist threats.

Massive's ad network aims to target the elusive male 18-34 demographic, which has increasingly turned to video games for entertainment.

"We're talking about getting to that 18- to-34 demo," said Massive CEO Mitch Davis. "If you want to reach those guys in prime time, there's only one place to do it, and that's video games."

According to a study by Nielsen Media Research, the 18-34 male demographic, while watching less TV, spent about 30 billion hours in 2003 playing video games. And Davis maintains that players recall ads placed in video games better than those on television or in print. "In terms of effectiveness, we've completed three research studies so far," Davis said. The studies show the effect of advertising on brand recall, said Davis, and "[players] notice everything in the game, so they really pay attention to the ads."

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Ban on TV product plugs could be lifted

A 50-year ban on plugs in TV shows for commercial products ranging from beers in Coronation Street's Rovers' Return to cars in The Bill could be swept away by TV regulators, it emerged today.

Such a change could cause immediate controversy but open up new channels for advertisers, who find it increasingly difficult to get the attention of viewers in an age where personal video recorders allow audiences to fast forward through commercial breaks.

Stephen Carter, the chief executive of media regulator Ofcom, told a meeting of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers today that the media watchdog recognised that limits on TV sponsorship in Britain were restrictive and he was sympathetic to change.

One area of change could be product placement - banned in Britain since the birth of commercial television 50 years ago - which has existed in films for all that time, Mr Carter said.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

Dissecting 'Subservient Chicken'

On April 8 of last year, something odd emerged on the Web: a chicken dressed in garters that could do seemingly any command viewers requested.

After being seeded into several Internet chat rooms, the "Subservient Chicken" instantly struck a nerve with bloggers, in part because the site's technology allowed users to type in nearly anything and get a response from the chicken. He could do jumping jacks, dance, do push-ups and even watch television. He seemed impossible to stump. Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits. Within a week, it had received 20 million hits. Who was behind this strange Web phenomenon? Many visitors to the site were surprised to see it was Burger King

Read the article: www.adweek.com

In-game advertising: A whole new game?

If you're a hungry gamer, the only command you need remember is "/pizza."

Sony recently inked a deal with Pizza Hut to allow players of the incredibly popular EverQuest II, a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), to order pizza from Pizza Hut while playing the game online. Gamers just type "/pizza," and the EverQuest engine brings up a browser window where they can order their pies. No more stopping in the middle of the action to pick up the phone and order, no more logouts to go pick up a pizza. It's a gamer's dream come true.

No financial details of the deal were released, but the partnership between the top pizza chain and the top online gaming property represents one of the first substantial advertising deals in the gaming industry. And considering games such as EverQuest have hundreds of thousands of subscribers from the coveted 18-24-year-old demographic, you can be sure advertisers targeting this demographic will watch this experiment closely.

There's been talk about putting ads in games for a long time now, but few companies have pulled off true integration. Instances of product placement and games based on movie properties, sports franchises, and hot automobiles have been a staple for years. But the Pizza Hut/Sony deal is something different: true interactive integration between a game and an advertiser.

Read the article: www.clickz.com

Turner's upfront to move beyond 30s

As Turner Broadcasting seeks to dominate the upfront again this year, commanding about one-quarter of what could be a $6.6 billion cable market, the network group is making rounds at ad agencies, promising to promote clients’ brands beyond the 30-second spot.

Technology-based enhancements are “a great need of our clients this year, so this is where we will dig deep and aim to accommodate buyers, planners and clients in this increasingly complex market,” said David Levy, president of Turner ad sales.

“With VOD, broadband, TV and radio, there are so many more consumer options. How do you reach them?” Each presentation is customized to the client, so Levy declined to elaborate on just how Turner sales executives would be incorporating new technology platforms into upfront ad packages.

However, one can see what is possible by looking at how Turner enhanced the 30-second spot on some of its past reality comedy series on TBS. For example, for last summer’s reality dating contest series, Outback Jack, viewers had live interaction with the show via the Web and could accrue points toward winning a trip to Australia. For The Real Gilligan’s Island in December ’04, Turner provided free episodes of the series on VOD.

Read the article: www.mediaweek.com

Oscar winner knocks sales of merlot wine sideways

Even in the hyperbole-driven world of Hollywood, few would have predicted that a low-budget comedy about an unhappily divorced teacher and an oversexed actor would move America’s $20 billion-a-year wine market.

Yet that is exactly what the Oscar-winning Sideways has done, much to the despair of vineyard owners who are growing the merlot grape. The film’s hero, a schoolmaster and wine snob played by Paul Giamatti, loathes merlot, America’s most popular red wine for the past 15 years, and loves pinot noir, its hitherto less favoured rival.

On a tour of wineries near Los Angeles with his friend, he falls in love with a student, played by Virginia Madsen, telling her that the pinot’s flavours are “just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and . . . ancient on the planet”. He refuses to drink “any f****** merlot”.

Between October, when Sideways was released in America, and January, when it picked up its 81st award from film critics, merlot sales dipped by 2% in the western United States. Sales of pinot noir throughout the country rose by 16% and many drinkers have switched from French to Californian pinots.

Britain appears to be sipping from the same glass: Sainsbury’s reports a 20% surge in pinot sales, while Tesco and Oddbins — which is running a Sideways promotion — say that their sales have increased by 10% since the film opened here five weeks ago.

Read the article: www.timesonline.co.uk

Lex - Internet protocol television

English rugby fans would rather forget their team's recent match against Ireland. But for those Irish viewers who missed it, internet protocol television allows them to defy the schedules and download “live” programming over broadband networks when they choose. IPTV offers true video-on-demand and enhanced interaction with viewers. For those at home, that means full participation in interactive game shows and forums. Meanwhile, broadcasters could target programming and, importantly, advertising on a house-by-house or even set-by-set basis.

Investors are justifiably wary of utopian technologies, but they should seize genuine opportunities. IPTV builds on existing broadband infrastructure, with global connections forecast to double to 200m by 2008

Developing content for IPTV, however, is risky and something many dotcoms got wrong with regards to the web. Lessons from the Napster debacle in the music industry should also be heeded. Above all, developing innovative ways to capture the full financial benefits of IPTV as Google has done with online advertising will sort winners from losers.

ne trend emerging within IPTV is for viewers to “mash up” programmes by splicing unconnected scenes, changing the content itself. That should have traditional broadcasters thinking hard. If someone can find a way to let English rugby fans edit the outcome of matches, they are definitely onto a winner.

Read the article: www.ft.com

Start-ups blur lines between radio, music swapping

A new generation of start-ups is taking a page from Apple Computer's iTunes playbook, allowing Net radio listeners to draw their programming at will from one another's hard drives.

At the head of a movement that could transform online radio, Live365 and start-up Grouper are the latest to blur these lines between Internet radio and online song-swapping, with an alliance aimed at turning the older companies' stable of amateur broadcasters into the hubs of peer-to-peer communities.

The model looks to Apple's iTunes software, which lets people on the same network, such as in a dorm or office building, listen to songs from one another's music collections. Grouper's peer-to-peer service lets people stream songs at will to one another over the open Internet.

The company's alliance with Live365 is helping extend an advanced vision of Net radio already being pioneered by Mercora, another peer-to-peer radio service. By letting groups of listeners tap into one another's music collections, the companies hope to come close to providing on-demand radio services, while abiding by the strict legal rules governing online broadcasting.

Read the article: www.news.com