Archive for January 22nd, 2008
We just got our hands on a preview of tomorrow’s Borrell Associates report, “2008 Outlook: Online Political Advertising,” and even Gordon Borrell admits he was surprised at the results. With $4.8 billion of political ad dollars to spend this year, Borrell forecasts just $20 million for online media — less than .5% of the total (yes, that’s one-half of one percent). And half of that $20 million will be spent on search advertising. “I would have thought it would have been much larger than this,” writes Gordon in an email to Lost Remote. “But in the age of disintermediation, people go directly to candidates’ sites for information, rather than candidates having to pay a lot of money to get their messages out to the public. A lot of that still goes on, of course, in direct mail and broadcasting… but not online.”
I suspected this would be the case a few months ago when I spoke to a media buyer who specializes in political advertising. The message was very clear: the campaigns advertise on search engines and political blogs to drive fundraising. To drive the vote, nothing beats TV, which Borrell predicts will take in a 60 percent share of the total. That isn’t the say local TV sites won’t pick up some political revenue here and there. “Local stations should look at this an opportunity to funnel some of that spending into multi-media packages,” suggests the report. But clearly, no bonanza awaits online.
January 22nd, 2008
In a shift for Electronic Arts here in the U.S., the video game company announced today their plans to release Battlefield Heroes as a free game this summer. EA calls the game a fun cartoon-style shooter which caters to players of all skill levels. The interesting strategy won’t be the gameplay, but the way the company plans to make money: with in-game advertisements and microtransactions. Games usually run consumers $60 or more. The NYTimes has the backstory on a similar move EA made in Korea with a FIFA soccer game. According to the Times, EA “said it has signed up more than five million Korean users and generates more than $1 million in monthly in-game sales.” What’s your reaction?
January 22nd, 2008
But NewTeeVee isn’t very happy with the lousy video presentation on Oscar.com. “It’s good that Oscar is finally venturing into the Web video world, but its current efforts won’t win it any awards,” writes Chris Albrecht.
January 22nd, 2008
The story is headlined, “Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in South Carolina,” and many users didn’t like the story’s suggestion that black women face a “a unique, and most unexpected dilemma” between Clinton and Obama. So much so, in fact, CNN.com even wrote a follow-up story about the backlash.
January 22nd, 2008
A study by Burst Media reveals that more than half of all internet users bail out of a clip before the pre-roll stops playing, and a significant percentage leave the site entirely. Interestingly, younger users are more tolerant: 35% of 18-24 year olds close out a clip when they see a pre-roll ad, compared to 49.6% of 25-34 year olds. Of course, pre-rolls aren’t going away anytime soon, but I’d certainly call them a transitional video ad unit.
January 22nd, 2008
Silicone Alley Insider has been blogging about hundreds of potential layoffs at Yahoo, but so far, Yahoo isn’t commenting. The NYT predicts that the cuts will be announced later this month during the earnings call, but isn’t speculating on which of the current 14,000 Yahooers are facing the axe as Jerry Yang seeks to refocus and streamline the strategy to get the stock moving again. Is it ironic that Yahoo positioned itself as the ultimate content aggregator online, co-opting newspaper publishing strategies and partnering with the newspaper industry, and now is laying off staff like newspapers are doing nationwide?
Related: Does Yahoo’s success with sports point the way to its future?
January 22nd, 2008
