MEDIABLITZ

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...

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...

Facebook isn't a news source, it is a social networking tool and it is debatable on how differentiated advertisements need to be from the user generated content. Facebook is a multimedia tool with video and music but the majority of its content is text. If the company employed journalistic Editors there would be a big wall separating the business side from the editorial side. The business side would push for anything that made the ad more effective and the editorial side would push back to insure editorial integrity by completely differentiating advertising from content. Most Editors take this very seriously and don't want there to be a hint of conflict of interest. Above is a screen shot of the news feed I receive from my friends on my Facebook account. The Army ad I circled is troublesome. It does not look different at all from the messages that I get from my friends which is accented by the fact that its from a very controversial advertiser. Should social web sites be...

In the past few days there has been a bunch of buzz surrounding online video advertising because Google's mega-mammoth brand in the space, YouTube, (which they bought 10 months ago for $1.65 billion) initiated "semi-transparent overlay ads". With room for variation it's a banner that appears at the bottom of the video screen and offers the option of linking to the advertiser's web site. YouTube calls them "In Video" Above is a screenshot of an ad for the movie "Hairspray" on a Ford Models TV video. Hairspray, hairdresser, young women, that's targeting. Unfortunately the screenshot is one that appeared in the New York Times because I couldn't find an example of an ad on the YouTube site. Personally I think the web site for Hairspray the movie a much bigger brand than Ford Models TV but that's beside the point. FordModels.tv is one of about 1,000 large and small media partners that have licensed their videos to YouTube and w...