advertising Archive

Comic creator Guhmshoo has done it again – this time he takes a look at the real Twitter ad strategy. No, not the one that launched today where companies can buy tweets in Twitter search results and in user’s content streams.

Many have asked me for my thoughts on the new Twitter ad network. I will have some thoughts later this week (Starbucks has great coffees and teas). I want to do more research (fly with Virgin America today) and look into (Best Buy has great deals on MP3 players) whether this sytem will actually be used and whether it (lose 10 pounds today with liposocialsuction) will drive any actual tangible results.

Until then, check out Twitter ad network commentary from Patricia Handschiegel and Peter Kafka’s interview with Twitter COO Dick Costolo at the AdAge conference in NYC.

We’ve covered several of Guhmshoo’s cartoons including Happy Dependence Day and the shilling bloggers.

The Apple iPhone developer’s blog has an interesting entry from yesterday that discusses location-based advertising in iPhone apps. The usage of GPS functionality to deliver local information must provide “beneficial information” to the user.

The entry notes (my emphasis), “If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”

MacNN has a good look into what this decision means for developers and for Apple. “Many analysts believe Apple is preparing to launch a mobile advertising network that will serve ads through free apps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The company recently acquired Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising specialist, after reportedly failing to sign a deal to purchase AdMob. The latter company was later picked up by Google,” MacNN notes.

Continue reading “Want to Run Location-Based Ads in Your iPhone App? Not So Fast.” »

Over the first two weeks of this new year, I’ve noticed more malicious advertising than last year. Online advertising network optimizer Rubicon Project has announced the launch of a new security service named Rubicon Security that aims to reduce the number of malicious ads across the Web.

Rubicon receives data from ClickFacts regarding malicious ads and then processes the information against ads being served through their network to help lessen the possibilty that a malicious ad will ever be seen by a consumer.

From the announcement, “ClickFacts Ad Network and Publisher Management Suite enables Rubicon Security to automatically scan all ad tags, advertising creatives and publisher pages for content and malware before delivering advertisements, allowing publishers to manage the high volume of ad tags on any given page while dramatically reducing the potential of malicious attacks. Additionally, Rubicon Security continues to monitor the ad tags once they are served to ensure malware doesn’t attack the campaign.”

When malicious ads are served, they can damage not only a user’s computer but also the reputation of the website or brand. Also, by removing the malicious ads, Rubicon can serve legit ads which are more likely to be better paying as well.

The Rubicon Security service only works for publishers within the Rubicon network. Also of note, Rubicon is now describing their company as, “the Internet advertising infrastructure company.”

I’ve been a big fan of QR codes from the beginning. Years ago my goal was to get the barcodes added to the Sunday coupon advertisements so that a customer could clip the coupon but could also get more information about the products using a barcode scanner.

About two years ago, Google discussed QR codes at the Advertising Club meetup in NYC. Shortly thereafter Google announced the Google Print Ads program which included QR codes. Earlier this year Google discontinued the Print Ads product.

If you are new to QR codes, check out our look at how the Japanese use the barcodes today. And also have a look at why I believe QR codes will be big business in the U.S. I wrote this article almost two years ago — I guess finally Google is reading this blog because today they have announced the launch of “Favorite Places” within their local product offering.

Google is sending out 100,000 stickers to the most often searched local businesses across the U.S. These stickers will include a QR code that can be scanned with a mobile phone. After scanning the QR code, information about the local establishment including hours of operation, menus, reviews, payment methods, etc. will be sent directly to the phone.

Users will be able to “star” their favorite places after scanning the codes and will also be allowed to write reviews.

With more of the new mobile devices having the QR code software pre-installed, I am sure this program will take off for Google. I wonder what will happen to Microsoft Tag and if Yelp (or the new local location services) will make a play in this area.

And just wait until all of us humans walk around with QR tatoos so that an interested mate can scan our code on our arm and learn all about us :)

Twitter COO Dick Costolo was intererviewed today at the real-time crunchup event and part of the discussion centered around how Twitter will (and does) generate revenue. Clearly they are earning revenue from Twitter’s deals with Bing and Google.

More importantly, Costolo noted that Twitter will launch an advertising model “soon”. He went on to say that soon means most likely early next year. He continued, “It (the advertising) will be fascinating, non-traditional, and people will love it.”

The final comment from Costolo noted that partners like TweetDeck will be able to partner in the advertising operation.

It seems like no matter who writes about Twitter and advertising, the concept is merging advertising inside the stream (even if it’s displayed separately) and that the ads should be targeted towards the content of the tweet.

I wonder what happens to the paid advertising programs (like the one Izea runs) once Twitter launches their own.

This morning we included a link in our startup updates to a post on the VerticalResponse blog. The company provides email marketing services for businesses. VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick noted, “I’m all about getting new business, but we’ve tried to steer clear of going after our competitor’s customers because we think there are enough businesses out there that need  email marketing services.” I agree with Janine and that’s why you rarely see a post on CN that says x is dead because of y.

Janine’s post notes that one of the company’s competitors, iContact, ran an ad in the conference hall during the Dreamforce conference. Just one small issue with the ad…iContact spelled their competitor’s name wrong! If you are going to create ads that hit hard (maybe even considered attack ads) against your competition, you better make sure that the ads are perfectly executed. Otherwise you will end up with pie on your face like iContact has.

Earlier this month we reported on Canadian car sharing service CityFlitz as their website was removed and some customers were upset that they received no response to their customer service emails regarding their security deposits. The CityFlitz service concept offered car rentals for $1/hour (CAD) and the cars were wrapped with advertising.

Today I noticed that the CityFlitz website is back with the following unfortunate message: