Archive for November 9th, 2007
Summarizing a recent panel on video advertising at adtech, this article states the obvious that users really don’t care much for the pre-roll advertising they are being forced to watch prior to getting the video content they want. No surprise there, but then it gives some fairly credible information that consumers react so negatively to the experience that the forced messages may adversely affect the brands or products being advertised.
A recent study by IBM, titled “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” found that 40 percent of the 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives it surveyed found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format.
Well, that’s not good. The nuts and bolts are that if you have to do it, the shorter the pre-roll, the better you will be. 10 seconds is about all you are going to have to get your message across, pretty much putting pre-roll in the same image-only ballpark as a good banner. Going any longer will put you in the annoying category, and frustrated viewers are unlikely to be converted to happy customers. And what is the main source for longer advertisements? Repurposed television spots. Once again, and the LR Faithful can sing along by heart… simply sticking your TV product into an online player doesn’t work for the Interactive audience. Yeah, yeah, shadoobie.
November 9th, 2007
The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi notes that the Hollywood writer’s strike may have an interesting unintended consequence:
Here’s a lovely irony of the Hollywood writers’ strike: In the name of winning a bigger share of revenue from the sale of TV shows over the Internet, TV writers could wind up driving viewers to the Web in search of original online video.
Darn right it will. Further, it’s going to hurt the locals because the lead-ins are going to have lousy ratings. But there is an opportunity for the locals. Take the extra time to create original, local content. People will be out there shopping for new and interesting stuff. Don’t repurpose - have a purpose.
November 9th, 2007
TechCrunch reports that the latest version of iTunes (7.5) has eight lines of code that certainly seem to indicate Apple’s intention to get into the online video rental business. It points us to a Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science undergraduate, Evan DiBase, who took a look under the hood and found these intriguing lines of code in 7.5:
rental-content
rental-bag
rbsync
source-rental-info
dest-rental-info
getvodaccountselectionlist
GET VOD ACCOUNT SELECTION LIST
supportsRentals
I’m no coding genius (I can bold) but that looks like a serious sign to me. And excellent work by Evan. Rental video would be great, if it means I can download, watch it on the plane, and then have it expire after I’m done.
November 9th, 2007
…PostSecret. The 545,446 votes are in and counted for the many, many categories in the 2007 Weblog Awards, and PostSecret walked away with the big title. You can see all the runners-up and the winners of the other categories here.
November 9th, 2007
How cool is this? Electronic Arts is going to put a copy of the original SimCity game on every machine in the “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) program. In case you haven’t been following, OLPC is a not-for-profit humanitarian effort to design, manufacture and distribute inexpensive laptops with the goal of giving every child in the world access to modern education. When it came out in 1989, SimCity gave rise to an entire genre of simulation games… game that when done right, can teach players all kinds of things while developing decision-making skills.
November 9th, 2007
