Ad Biz

Signaling strategies tell consumers what to look for. Examples of signaling strategies include celebrity and political endorsements, large scale ad campaigns and bestseller lists. It sends a message to the consumer that “(x) product or service is cool, popular, good, important - others are into it, and I can be too .” It signals its OK.

In Seth Godin’s most recent post, he examines how marketers try to game these signals to their advantage, and how the reality of the perceived popularity may be very different than it seems. He also gives 3 valuable tips on why you need to care about the increasing amount of effort spent gaming the signals.

He explains:

Once a signaling strategy is seen to be effective, we seek to game it. 25 years ago, driving cross country to go to my first day of work at Spinnaker Software (I was the 30th employee) I drove through Chicago. And I passed a Spinnaker billboard. Wow! This company was going somewhere if they had billboards all over the country. When I got to work in Boston two days later, I discovered that this was the one and only billboard they had in the country, strategically erected on the road to the big CES trade show. They were signaling the buyers of the big stores.

Seth’s Blog: Signaling Strategies

LiveRail recently revealed their advertising platform for the iPhone, giving developers the option of adding short commercials to their applications, which would play whenever their app is launched. The positive spin: LiveRail gives developers the chance to monetize their apps without making them charge a premium price - meaning potentially more high-quality, free games and tools for iPhone users. The flipside: more ads, on our screens, all the time. LiveRail also implements a video streaming system that might not sit so well with Apple. As TechCrunch reports:

Apple takes a cut of all premium applications sold through its store, but it absorbs the bandwidth and hosting costs for free applications, charging the developers nothing. If these ads make the one-time payment model obsolete and more applications switch to “Free”, Apple may wind up changing this structure (or even ban ‘intrusive’ advertising entirely).

Developers can tag their apps with keywords to help pair them up with the most relevant ad content, and future versions of the platform will even offer location-based ad options. Watch the video below for more:

TechCrunch: LiveRail Lets iPhone Developers Put Commercials in Apps, Get Paid

Allstate insurance is testing out a new program, called InSight, that uses online video game tests to identify safe older drivers. Using simple games that measure brain fitness, the company is hoping that gaming proficiency will indicate aptitude with the same skills in real life. One of the games, Jewel Diver: Divided Attention tests subjects ability to track multiple objects at a time. The InSight program plans to offer insurance discounts to drivers over 50 who successfully pass the online tests.

Ars Technica reports:

Allstate is currently piloting a new program which seeks to find out if playing driving video games could make better drivers out of those over 50. If the study shows that it can, the insurance company plans to offer discounts to mature drivers who pass the online tests and the current, single-state pilot would be spread across other states next year. The initial run at the program is taking place in Pennsylvania. Select customers in the state aged 50 to 75 will be brought in to test out the special games as part of a free option in the customers’ current insurance plan. The total number of hours played by this experimental group will be tracked and then accident rates will be compared to a control group that had no contact with the games.

“As Allstate seeks ways to reinvent protection for the consumer, we are taking intelligent risks that are focused on finding new ways to bring value to our customers,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “This innovative approach to improving driver awareness and reaction time has the potential to significantly reduce accidents. That would make the roads safer—and potentially save lives.”

Ars Technica: “Allstate testing video games to identify safe, older drivers”

The dairy lobby has always been a powerful force in America, but recently they saw their classic ad campaigns overtaken by cartoon characters that children more readily relate to.  These new school cultural icons easily sway children in purchasing choices.  The proliferation of SpongeBob snacks or Spiderman cereals drove Big Milk to form a modern marketing group known as “Milk Media.”  In the venture’s first deal, school milk consumption increased 34% after the implementation of Disney’s Doug into the milk campaign.  While milk has enemies, they certainly have fans in the federal government who wish to promote the milk alternative to sugary foods. The New York Times reports in the Consumed section of their Magazine:

The goal of Milk Media, Long insists, is not to advance the interests of pop-culture products; the goal is to leverage their power to promote milk consumption. “You can have Shrek beating the drum for 500 different sugar products or the Transformers saying, ‘Drink milk and roll out,’ ” he says. “I think we’re doing a lot of good.” In other words, he sees Milk Media’s approach as responding to the realities of the kid-culture marketplace.

[via Murketing]

Coming off of our post about the most creative business cards, we now present a collection of the most eye catching movie posters of all time.  Smashing Magazine provides us with their selection of 50 Beautiful Movie Posters.  The list includes some obviously iconic posters like Star Wars or Forrest Gump, but it also recognizes modern classics like The Dark Knight and Grindhouse.  Many recent movies pay homage to the classic simplistic styles, but it is clear that artistic form can mark distinction in a sometimes overcrowded and forgettable market. It’s nice to know that innovative graphic designers will always have a place in the movie industry.

[via ISO50]

As technology like TiVo or internet streaming enables individuals to avoid advertising, the industry has sought ways to sneak into the shows themselves.  The moral dilemma of corporate control was often dodged during the age of record viewers, but as television budgets tighten and viewers seek alternatives to the tube, network execs push product integration into the plots themselves.  While this long hated practice is often fought by the writers and actors, it is arguably an inevitable development in our favorite characters’ lives.  Tina Fey mocked product placement on 30 Rock, but it was in response to actually needing the advertising money for production.  NY Magazine writes about the complexity of the issue and the surprising twists behind the scenes to successfully integrate products into plots:

It is indeed possible to create subversive comedy that also sells Yarises. On most TV series, brands are woven indiscernibly into each plot twist—while on others they are referenced openly, with tremendous finesse, because there’s no longer any distinction between what’s funny and what moves the needle. Characters are designed as shills or consumers from day one. Shows themselves are brands, actors are brands, and so are songs and sodas, and these entities link and detach with the elegance of acrobats. No one will see a distinction between a scriptwriter and a copywriter—least of all an audience member—because that frog has boiled beyond recognition.

[via New York Magazine]

The allure of the iPhone has unsurprisingly garnered the rapt attention of the advertising industry.  With 100 million App Store downloads since it launched and 90% of those downloads being free applications, ad support is a clear way for developers to balance profitability and popularity.  Currently, one of the iPhone’s most popular applications is Loopt, a location-based social networking program, but on different platforms and in early development it was sold to consumers for a few bucks.  Now, thanks to venture capital backing and further ad-revenue support, Loopt is hoping to be completely free.  A similar story can be told of iBeer, which is a simplistic fun application that turns the iPhone into a virtual beer, and more importantly, costs $2.99.  Carling caught onto this idea and released their own application, iPint, with the identical formula, but thanks to the corporate backing, provided it for free.  CNN reports on this growing trend:

“Consumers are drunk on free from the Internet,” says Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, a startup that has developed an analytics tool that lets mobile developers track how people use their applications. Farago believes that paid-for mobile services will initially give way to ad-subsidized applications.

[via CNN]

We thought the dominoes Guinness Ad was bad enough - now Sony Bavaria gives us this ‘big colored’ dominoes ad to promote it’s Bravia TVs. Why are we making this point? If you go to YouTube you can see so many ’stunts’ taken with a single shot - so it’s painfully obvious to anyone watching this ad that it’s a multi-shot, discontinuous slick production. We’d argue that the content on YouTube is setting the agenda for what is inspiring, arresting and eye-catching - but brands and their ad agencies continue to pump out films with a dated view of our viewing consumption habits.

Times Online reports that British Television network, ITV is investing in a new technology that will allow the network to embed advertisements into programming. According to Times Online:

The new technology, which is known as “automatically placed overlay advertising”, uses complex computer algorithms to find clear space, such as blue sky or blank walls, in video footage in which to display logos or messages.

The technology is currently being tested in news footage on the broadcaster’s ITV Local website. The rollout of the technology is currently dependent on the response from the viewing audience.

The cat and mouse game taking place between media networks and viewers continues…

via Times Online