MEDIABLITZ

Report from February '07: 'The User Revolution' 12 Main Points Global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011. Communitainment = Community + communication + entertainment This new type of activity is taking time away from traditional types of content consumption. Usites -- The increasing popular category of user generated sites take traffic away from other content destinations, a challenge to advertisers and publishers. The Internet is a mainstream medium: It is the leading medium at work and only second to television at home. Usage patterns changing: favoring Usites, communitainment sites, and search . Away from traditional portals. User Generated Brands. The consumers are taking control of content consumption and branding. Media Fragmentation: Advertisers increasingly will need to buy more inventory, from nearly all types of media, especially the Internet, to have the desired impact. 8. The Golden Search: search has become the new portal. 9. G...

From January 8th 2007, Piper Jaffray study via Businessweek Blog A new report from Wall Street analyst Safa Rashtchy at Piper Jaffray outlines the rapid adoption of online video and the subsequent decline of TV viewing among online users. One of the interesting points is that TV network sites are increasingly popular and are the second most popular destinations, after YouTube. But YouTube draws a younger crowd. 60% of 25-34 year olds use YouTube, 43% use TV network sites, and 32% use Google Video. Among 45-54 year olds, 47% use TV network sites, 22% use YouTube, 25% use Google Video, 26% use Yahoo! Video, and 28% use MSN video. Safa says 2007 is the year for video, the year when companies have to make a place for themselves in online video distribution or bow out. And it’s important this year for traditional media to get a piece of the pie too: 40% of the people surveyed by Piper Jaffrey said they watch less TV now than two years ago. News, Movie Previews, and Amateur Videos are the M...

ComScore Press Release

Overall ad spends are down .5% for first half '07 vs a year ago according to Nielsen. Local & national newspapers, B2B magazines, local magazines, Sunday supplements, spot TV, and network TV were all hit hard. Cable TV loss the least amount of ad money. Outdoor, national magazines, and product placement all grew along with interactive.

In this Mediapost article , Alan Schulman, Executive Creative Director of imc 2 suggests that YouTube's decision to use overlay advertising instead of pre-roll or mid-roll video was short sighted. YouTube said that the "roll" ads made viewer numbers decline. Schulman says, maybe the ads weren't any good and maybe they're too long. He advocates a :10 video spot and notes the creative options that can be exploited when the "roll" ads are timely, entertaining, and targeted to the viewer. Personally, I welcome a shorter length but my biggest problem with the "roll" ads is that usually they keep playing the same one over and over again. Many times on high bandwidth sites the content gets stalled and you need to start over, or pause and press play to make it continue. I was watching "Anchorwoman" on the Fox demand site and I saw the same ad for a movie with Dane Cook and Jessica Alba over and over again. I've always believed tha...

Doubleclick did this study in February, 2007 The top-line results are that, yes, a whopping 8% of viewers interact with video ads. Users repeatedly watch the video ad much more than they click through on traditional banner ads. On average video ads are watched 2/3 of the way through. Play-through rates do not vary between traditional video ads and expandable formats. Video click rates are much, much higher than traditional image banner ads. The primary measurement for video ads = Interaction Rate . "It includes the sum total of all interactions people have with the video ad units, including expansions, interactions with the video control button, and custom interactions and clicks – divided by the total impressions served. In the Doubleclick study the smallest ads (120 x 90) had a huge Interaction Rate = 28.8%. They say that this isn't because of the size but because this size of video advertising appears in chat windows. It makes sense that while chatting people are mor...

On August 28, 2007 Advertising.com released the results of a study based on a questionnaire results and video advertising performance data from it's online video network. The results are from the first six months of '07. 62% of participants watched video online and 69% of these were adults over age 35 who primarily watched news stories. As for video advertisements, consumers accept them as part of the video experience – with 94 percent of respondents preferring ads to subscription fees. However, according to 63 percent of survey respondents, shorter ads would make the experience more pleasurable. Shorter spots also deliver higher percent-viewed rates, according to data from the Advertising.com network. 51 percent of survey respondents would watch a television episode online if they missed it on TV; but 80 percent of consumers say that online video usage does not cut into their TV time. WHAT ARE THEY WATCHING: 62% News clips 38% Movie trailers 36% Music videos (down 11% from se...

eMarketer recently predicted that online advertising will grow by 28.6% in 2007. Other ad forecasters, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Universal McCann's Robert Coen, have internet ad revenue growing in the mid 20% range. Search is the largest part of internet spending at 40%. Radio is growing by less than 1% and eMarketer expects that this year internet spending at $21.7 billion will overtake radio at $20.4 billion. Radio is seeking to market itself as a complement to internet advertising rather than a competitor. For instance Clear Channel found a way to sell search terms on it's local radio web sites to community advertisers. According to ZenithOptimedia, internet ad spending in China, growing at 70% a year. from AdAge

Microsoft Corp., Disney's Buena Vista International, France Telecom's Orange, plus Procter & Gamble (Gillette, Pantene, & Tampax), Hewlett-Packard and Paramount are all sponsorship partners for " KateModern" . (this episode features placements by MSN, Orange Broadband, and Tampax. Plenty of room for a pizza delivery company, and a current movie title. Microsoft has expanded it's partnership with Bebo (also mentioned). The producers are the same team that did LonelyGirl15, at that time they thought people would be turned off by commercialism but actually the audience wanted to know where she bought her clothes and what brands she consumed. (?!) The series launched on July 24th and is available on YouTube, Bebo, MSN in the UK, and the LonelyGirl15 site. In the first three weeks the has registered 3 million views and is building an audience quickly -- the first episode was seen by just 23,000 people. The most popular episode so far is one that features...

Bob Pittman's Pilot Ware, which owns DailyCandy.com , Thrillist.com , and the "light green" Ideal Brite, is sticking with it's core email strategy. Apparently Daily Candy gets a $250 CPM for it's Dedicated eMail product. Here is an example of one for Nike . Daily Candy and it's various city-specific offshoots has a subscription base of 2 million and cost Pittman $35 million in 2003. Thrillist, a Daily Candy for men was purchased for $250,000 in 2005 and currently has 110,000 subscribers. Last year Pittman tried to sell Daily Candy for $100 million but had no takers and the product is currently not for sale. While Pilot Ware focuses it's investments on affiliate TV stations it is also investing in some other online products such as music blog Stereogum and Facebook's popular social-music application iLike . from Adage