More Ads to appear in Online Comcercial Breaks at abc.com

Looks like we might need to watch through more ads Online, too. Online viewing moving close to the “TV model”?

MarketingVOX: ABC to Pump More Ads into Online Commercial Breaks

Starting this week, ABC will insert multiple commercials into ad breaks within shows streamed online. Each break typically serves one :15 or :30 commercial.

Because the medium is new, the standard for streaming TV shows is one spot per break. Some sites, like Hulu, give users the option of watching a single two-minute trailer at the beginning of a show, in exchange for an otherwise uninterrupted experience.

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AdAge: Adults Spend 1/2 Their Media Hours With TV & Advertisers Loosing Confidence in TV

Is this a loosing battle for the TV industry in its “traditional definition”? Time to move your media to the Internet and build a new business model? Or not yet?

From AdAge.com: Adults Spend 1/2 Their Media Hours With TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It seems marketers and TV executives are having a half-full, half-empty kind of argument over TV’s prowess. The results of a survey on consumer media habits commissioned by the Television Bureau of Advertising show that adult consumers spend a little over half of their media hours with TV. Meanwhile, a recent survey of marketers and advertisers by the Association of National Advertisers found many were losing confidence in TV as a medium.

From AdAge.com: Marketers Losing Confidence in TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research’s fourth biennial TV and Technology survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials.

Indeed, two thirds of the C-level-executive respondents said they are watching the medium closely, up from just half two years ago, and 87% of respondents said they were going to be spending more on web ads in the coming year. The study was conducted in January and is based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers across all major industries and categories. 

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Drop.io – Online File Exchange Revisited

Came across a new service called Drop.io which was mentioned on ZDNet: Weekend Gadget Guidance: Send a fax for free — digitally.

Well, no more, folks: Drop.io, a fairly innovative file-sharing service, sends and receives faxes for free.

It works like this: to send a fax, upload a document to Drop.io. Enter the fax number and click “Fax.” Boom — no beeps to haunt you in your sleep.
On the receiving end, Drop.io will generate a cover sheet you then e-mail to the sender. As long as they use your cover page on the fax, it will end up in your Drop.io account as a PDF.

It is true that a free fax service is always good to have 🙂 But on the receiving side for this fax solution to work you need to provide a special cover sheet to receive it in your “drop” and becomes available to download. This makes it not a solution for sensitive data which you don’t intend to share freely (even if you make your drop private…. ).

This is how the site describes its service:

Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.”

The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want. 

And it gets even better: Drop.io supports different media types, like photos, videos and (text) posts! You also have the option to embed a widget in your blog or social network of choice. This enables visitors to upload and download files to/from your drop. You get 100MB per drop for free and you can add more storage for $10/GB. Embed the files located in your drop in another (e.g. blog) page and add comment to the files. This makes it a truly social app which should attract further users/traffic.

Please leave a comment and provide your feedback if you work with the service or want to test it out @ Drop.io!

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Bizak.com: Get the Web 2.0 Valuation of Your Start-up

Bizak Web20 Aplication

Check out the new site called bizak – The Web… Quantified.

You go to the website, enter “your biz numbers” and receive and estimate, called The Bizak Estimate. It creates an apples to apples comparison and benchmark that can be used as a starting point for comparative purposes.

The Site is created by Tom O’Keefe, you find further info about him on his site here: tomokeefe.com.

Bizak is a business network which computes the profitability of internet startups and connects entrepreneurs with investors.

Entrepreneurs – compute your business valuation, compare your performance to the industry and connect with investors.

Investors – evaluate the earnings potential of internet startups, compare them to industry benchmarks, and connect with entrepreneurs.

Student Entrepreneurs – are you a student entrepreneur? Bizak can help!

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eMarketer: E-Comerce Sales in Europe

Came across a chart from eMarketer about the distribution of e-commerce in Europe mentioned in the article: The UK Internet Boom:

E-Commerce Sales Distribution Europe 2006-2011

This is a very interesting find. I would not expect the UK to be this far ahead in Internet sales. Also if you take the size of e.g. UK vs Germany into consideration. To underline their numbers eMarketer says in the article mentioned above:

“A long tradition of catalog and mail-order shopping has contributed to the practice of online buying in the UK,” says Ms. von Abrams.

Is this why so many companies from the US pick the UK as their first “destination” in Europe (besides the language, of course…)? Or is it the other way round, that UK is “exposed” to have more Online shopping choices due to the fact, that there is no language barrier which stops them from ordering on US Internet e-commerce sites?

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Integrated Marketing: Immersive Games – Wired Magazine

WIRED MAGAZINE has a very interesting and in depth article in ISSUE 16.01, called Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games. Below you will find a short excerpt:

On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails’ European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled “i am trying to believe.” Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing “iamtryingtobelieve.com” into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site’s contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: “I’m drinking the water. So should you.” Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?

A very interesting read and it shows the new ways used by marketeers to deeply involve the target group in the marketing campaign, make them part “of the story”. The TV show LOST is another example of this, combining many different “media channels”, but all using the Internet to integrate all of them.

Do you have other examples? Leave a comment!

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TV Interface/Navigation: neave.tv

Neave.TV ScreenshotStill around and still a really cool idea how to navigate video on the web: www.neave.tv. I did not come back to Neave.TV for some time. But everytime I see the interface and the ease of use I am excited again! The site utilizes video from other video sharing sites (like youtube, blip.tv etc.) and updates itself all the time to keep the videos fresh!

Check it out! Enjoy watching the videos!

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Free film music: Moby makes (some) songs available for free

Moby_com site screenshot

In a recent blog post, Moby is offering some of his music to be used in films for free!
All you need to do is to go to his site and register. This shows another move from a well-known artist to make his music (or at least parts of it) available for film makers. I want to advocate the use of this broadminded offer from Moby to everyone out there working on a non-comercial (short-)film!

Below you find the excerpt from his site:

hi,
i’ll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password. you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you’re looking for,
moby

Check out the website here
http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html

BTW: His main site is worth a visit for sure: www.moby.com! A really funny front page. I love it!

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Video Twitter (?): Seesmic

Only a short post as they are still in alpha. Check out : Seesmic – “The dashboard for your videos”. You find a longer review on techcrunch: “Loic Le Meur’s New Startup Launches: Seesmic“.

The service can be described as a video based Twitter, although it is also much more than that. The grand vision behind Seesmic is for it to become a very open online video/television service where people are constantly interacting around both user generated and professional content.

The startup is co-founded by Loïc Le Meur (Organizer of LeWeb3 – Dec 11-12 ’07, in Paris, France) who recently re-located to San Francisco. Stay tuned!

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eBay searches for future growth

eBay’s growth slowed down in the last year(s). One of the major reactions to slowing down growth rates is to shift from a seller-centric approach to a buyer-centric approach. A sea change! For now the main focus is to advance search results (as eBay has a ever changing inventory).

In a recent article from FastCompany titled “eBay’s Chaos Theory” we learn:

“We haven’t even released an eighth of what we’ve done,” says Billingsley. “That’s what excites me. It hasn’t even begun.” Customized pages are in the works. More social-commerce features. An eBay to Go widget with your favorite auction listings to post on your Web site or your MySpace page, complete with a clock to remind you to bid before it’s too late. It all sounds good.

I am very curious how the currently introduced and the upcoming changes will help eBay to get back to a higher growth rate of soled items. Exciting times!

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