Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
UK viewers ’seeing more adverts’
Evidence that commercial TV has overestimated the threat of catch-up services like iPlayer?
UK audiences saw more adverts between January and June than in same period last year, according to figures from ratings measurement company Barb.
In the first half of 2008, UK viewers watched 2.4 billion broadcast TV ads a day – a 6% rise on 2007.
Figures show people watch three hours and 46 minutes of broadcast TV a day, seven minutes more than a decade ago.
Mobile phones and popcorn – more viral video nonsense
Don’t be taken in by videos of mobile phones apparently popping corn.
Bluetooth headset retailer Cardo Systems has claimed ownership of the hot viral videos that show people appearing to pop popcorn with their cellphones.
In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday titled “Cellphone Popcorn Mystery Resolved,” an advert for the company’s line of headsets follows the grainy footage of friends aiming phones at uncooked corn that’s been tallying millions of views on YouTube.
More: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/bluetooth-compa.html
And those original videos:
Viral video or cheeky boyfriend? Doesn’t really matter
Two million views (and counting), but is this one-minute YouTube video of an unsuspecting(?) girlfriend filmed using the Wii Fit videogame, erm, thing, a marketing viral or genuine overnight sensation?
To be honest, that’s kind of beside the point. Authentic or not, it demonstrates the enormous traffic opportunities available to creative folk tapping into video sharing sites.
For the record, both boyfriend and girlfriend work in advertising – their company’s website is here and its YouTube channel is here.
Google tests the water with video ads
Via The New York Times, Google is testing video ads in its search engine result pages (or SERPs, if you go for SEO acronyms):
Google has always had a love-hate relationship with advertising. Its power and wealth come from the $16 billion a year of advertising that it sells. Yet on its most important pages, the results from its Web search engine, it has limited ads to nothing more garish than a dozen words of text.
That is about to change. On Thursday, Google started testing video ads on some pages of search results. And it is developing ad formats with images, interactive maps and other more elaborate features.
More: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/google-tests-video-ads-on-search-results-pages/
Did you earn your £12.50 from Google last year?
Via good old Guardian.co.uk, Google is snapping at the ad revenue heels of ITV.
Google may have to wait another year to overtake ITV1 as the UK’s biggest single advertising income generator, despite announcing UK revenues of $2.53bn (£1.3bn) for 2007.
The web giant had been widely tipped to overtake ITV1 in terms of ad revenue during 2007 and may still achieve that when ITV unveils its full-year figures next month.
One key point to consider:
A US regulatory filing lists Google’s UK revenues as $2.53bn for 2007, though around 30% of these advertising revenues will be passed on to affiliate publishers.
That means $759m – around £389m – was paid out to Google’s UK-focused ad affiliates last year.
Or to put it another way, around £12.50 for each person in the UK.
More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/19/digitalmedia
Ads coming to Guardian podcasts
Via Journalism.co.uk, the Guardian is looking to monetise its podcasts:
The Guardian is planning to launch adverts in its podcasts later this year. Speaking at a Radio Academyevent on podcasting, Matt Wells, head of audio for Guardian Unlimited, said the media group was developing software to allow the sale of ’spot ads’ in Guardian podcasts.
Some Guardian podcast stats from the report:
Last month the site recorded 1.5 million downloads across all of its podcasts, Wells said, with 15-20,000 downloads of the Media Talk podcast over a week and 80-100,000 weekly downloads of its Football Weekly show.
