Forrester finds (via DM News) in their Report ,”Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2006,” that the spending for advertising on the Internet is mostly e-mail, search, contextual targeting, and rich media. The advertisers are curious about social media things (like blogs) but do not plan to get “into the game” yet…
Let’s find out who will be the first to go deeply into social media advertising! And who will be left behind.

The Nielsen/Normal Group (via Clickz.com) reports that: Internet Users Plagued by Banner Blindness.
An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group finds Internet users avoid viewing banner ads. Text advertising is read more often than display ads, according to the research.

So should the advertisers make the Internet not “too flashy”? And what kind of advertising should sites like YouTube use if the banner is competing videos?

There is a really good article on Wired today: podcasting after iTunes. If you want to learn the (still short and young) history of podcasting give it a read!

You also gets a little into video podcasting or video blogging. The ratio audio-video is about 10-to-1. And if we take the whole picture we maybe have text-audio-video radio of 100-to-10-to-1. So maybe if you plan to “do something” with blogging… You will find less competition with rising “production efforts”. But on the other side video will be consumed less time than e. g. audio…

What will you go for?

Is your company offering a corporate weblog? If not than you should at least be planning for one! Jupiter Research finds that 34% of Corporations have a weblog and 35% plan to have one this year.

Addition: Jupiter did not publish anything how their numbers add up compared to other studies made. See JupiterResearch Passes Around The Kool-Aid from the Diva Marketing Blog to question the findings.

Miller Brewing started the Brewing Blog. They inform about the beer industrie. The blog is aimed for B-2-B so do not expect to get the newest miller consumer marketing insights there. I think this is a very clever way of corporate communication. What do you say?

Germany hosts another soccer world cup! It does not seem to get much coverage in the media though….

Find a little report at Dr.Dobb’s for more information about the world soccer cup for robots. It is called the RoboCup. Germany scored the most with 11 gold cups folowed by China with nine!

Would you watch a game of robots against a human team (What is the long term goal of the Robocup)?

This time i would like to introduce ION: a java based player for media on the Web. A few days ago a new version ha come out that is really great! Use it!

From the Site comes the following description. Experience the Media Web:

A Media Console: ION makes it easy for you to find, manage and experience rich media content on the web. Once you have ION installed, you can subscribe to your favorite content, search multiple media search engines at once, create playlists, and share your favorite content with your friends.

An Open Media Player: When you find the content you want, ION will playback the media for you. It supports most media file formats, so you can sit back and enjoy videos from Yahoo! Video, YouTube, Grouper, Revver or anywhere, in one player. You an also enjoy audio podcasts and songs by indy artists.

ION also provides photocasting technology so that you can subscribe to photo feeds from Flickr (say that really fast!) and other photo-sharing sites that support Syndication.

Media Delivered Automatically

Subscribe to Content Feeds: ION allows you to subscribe to media feeds such as podcasts and video blogs. You can set ION to auto-download the content so that it is waiting for you and ready to play. Every day ION will go out and retrieve new content from your subscribed feeds.

What is mostly seen in these days are short films taken with the camera build into a mobile phone. But now you can also watch a Full-length film shot on phone as the Guardian reports.

This technique demanded a new approach to filming due to the limitations of the camera in the mobile phones as of today. Giving the movie his own tone. Have you seen other “productions” on mobiles yet?

IPTV is getting more and more attention these days! The news from Reuters shows that also the big players (here Deutsche Telekom owned Club Internet) are starting serious offerings.

Deutsche Telekom’s French Internet arm, Club Internet, will be the first in Europe to sell Microsoft’s software for TV and video on demand over Internet Protocol networks to consumers, the pair said on Friday.

More on CNet…

JupiterResearch Finds That MySpace Music Community Activity Far Outpaces Online Music Sites:

Jupiter says that Communities influence music choice and discovery far more than Online stores or e.g. MTV.com. Take MySpace: it seems more “real” to people searching and discovering music. You also find MySpace band pages through you friends what implies a higher trust.

Have you already used this way to find new “stuff”?

There are many new sites coming up. This one is really trying to change another field: teaching. You can create own courses at: nuvvo. Give it a try!

eLearning is something that will rapidly develop in the coming years. Now everybody can do the teaching. Is this giving us better material to learn from? Let’s find out!