advertising Archive

This morning I spent some time at the ad:tech online advertising conference in NYC at the Javits Center. Thank goodness they finally moved out of the Hilton. I will have a post later about my thoughts from the expo floor.

Judging from the length of the line, as shown in the video below, the online advertising industry must be out of the recession and ready for major growth. Either that or there was no plan for how to handle that most conference attendees would want to, you know, actually enter the conference. Now that I think about it and listening to people on the line, it is definitely the latter. There are actually two lines like the one in the video below. As of Noon today, the line appeared to be at least 75 minutes long. Lots of people seemed pissed that they paid anywhere from $35-$1,800 and had to wait for their badge. I assume by this afternoon they will have this registration issue resolved. Let’s hope that the Web 2.0 check-in process will be smoother later this month.

If you decide to watch the video, please note that there is a lot of camera shake.
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There’s a movement underway to install countdown timers inside of the NYC subway. Many of the other large systems in the world already have them. While I don’t believe they are necessary in NYC with the very short wait times for a train, I did notice something related that could be a new way for the MTA (the transit authority in NYC) to create a new revenue stream.

Nearly every station I’ve been to recently had very clear announcements on the platforms. This is a big change from the announcement systems of the 70s and 80s. There are announcements about security, how long until the next train arrives and a variety of other public service messages.

With all of the talk these days about local and local advertising, this could be a great opportunity for the MTA to launch “platform audio advertising”. I could see two types of ads; a general category that runs across the system and a local category with ads for companies that are within a short distance of the current station.

Now let’s come back to the countdown timers. We know how far a train is from a station and that distance tells us the precise time to play the ads. Naturally we wouldn’t want to play an ad when a train is entering the station. There is plenty of time between trains entering and departing to provide a reasonable amount of ads that don’t overwhelm riders while still providing value to the local community.

A self-service system similar to Google AdWords would work well for this transit audio advertising network. Pick your time, your station(s), etc and place your bid. Other factors would have to be taken into account as well to make sure a variety of businesses were able to get in on the action.

You already have to listen to other people’s music on the subway so why not listen to some brief ads that keep our fares low and might actually provide real local value.

In related transit news, FourSquare and BART announced a partnership today.

As a railfan, it’s so exciting to see the major transit systems across the U.S. starting to embrace technology.

We’ve written about the issues at advertising exchange Entrecard several times over the past year. Now it appears that another advertising exchange is also suffering some issues. Spottt launched at the Techcrunch40 conference back in 2007.  We reviewed Spottt on their public launch and noted that they have a cute doggg as their mascot. The Spottt service is a Web 2.0 version of the LinkExchange concept from the mid-90s.

We’ve been unable to access the service for more than 24 hours and from some conversations this morning, it appears that the service has been down for a longer period of time. It seems that even more than a year ago many Spottt publishers were wondering if anyone was still using the service.

Most of the ads we saw running in the Spottt network looked pretty amateur and would probably never run on larger blogs. The interesting thing about the Spottt code is that if you have Javascript, it degrades nicely and nothing is displayed. If you aren’t running Javascript, you always see the same Spottt house ad but clicking takes you to a blank page.

Let’s hope that the doggie is just taking an extended rest.

Boston-based online advertising firm Burst Media has announced the acquisition of NY-based Giant Realm today. Giant Realm describes their service as, “an online media company that targets the tough to reach male 18-34 year old demographic by delivering original, high-quality content from respected voices in the hottest areas of entertainment – including gaming, film, television, humor, music and gadgets”. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

I’ve used Burst Media in some capacity since the mid-90s. Today I only use them to serve some ads on InsideTransit as the other networks in my chain have performed better in both CPM and fill rate. Last year Burst Media announced several niche ad networks including a niche online gamers ad network. I assume the acquisition of Giant Realm will help to strengthen the Burst ad networks.

Giant Realm raised just over $5 million since early 2008. The company is based in midtown although no information was provided as to whether they will move in with Burst either in NYC or in Mass.

Last month Kara Swisher provided a list of companies she thought might be acquired soon and Giant Realm was one of the names on her list.

Related: check out all of our Burst Media coverage.

I don’t know about you but there are many times when I wonder what’s next after online advertising. “Where do we go from here?”

The answer is here and it’s from Moon Publicity — you can now advertise on the moon. When you buy an image on the moon, it’s available for a few days each month and apparently will last thousands of years.

Today is also the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon.

Here’s an overview of the “shadow shaping” robot technology which is used to create the ads. “New Shadow Shaping technology creates images on the moon that can be seen from Earth.  Robots are used to create several small ridges in the lunar dust over large areas that capture shadows and shape them to form logos, domains names or memorials.”

Bids are being accepted for the ad slots starting at $46,000.

From the release, “Finally dependency on government to travel beyond Earth is over,” says inventor David Kent Jones. “This new commercial incentive will turbo charge space technology development. Shadows are just the beginning; eventually robots will be planting crops on other planets.” 

Here’s a short overview video of how the Moon Publicity robot works:
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One of the toughest parts about blogging for money is trying to figure out how much to charge for advertising. Charge to little and you lose valuable income…charge too much and you may never get any takers. In the space that CN is in, I believe most of the “majors” are charging too little which helps them to sell out but reduces their total income and puts huge downward pressure on the 2nd and 3rd tier sites.

Online advertising marketplace BuySellAds has put together their “3 Golden Rules to Selling More Ads”. They discussing pricing models including eCPM pricing.

Ad placement is the second rule — different locations can mean placement premiums.

The last rule is content – as we know the better your content, the more you can charge.

If you are new to selling your own ads, you might try reducing the price a pinch below what you think is a fair price to check interest levels. Then as you get advertisers buying ads, increase the price little by little until you meet resistance. Also remember that many advertisers will want to negotiate so if you start low, you will wind up going even lower.

Share your pricing tips in the comments and I will add them to the post.

Amazon has announced that they want you for their upcoming new television campaign. The ad is part of the “Your Amazon Ad Contest,”  contest where you can win $20k in Amazon gift cards.

An Amazon judging panel will review all contest submissions and select five finalists based on:

• Creativity
• Overall appeal
• Likelihood of inspiring viewers to shop with Amazon

Amazon notes “suitable to air to a family audience on a national network.” Apparently they will pick finalists and let viewers pick a winner. One winner the Amazon judges picks will win $10k and the user winner will win $10k as well.

This type of “crowdsourced” ad creation seems to be pretty popular these days. For a small prize, Amazon gets press and interested customers – it’s a smart move. The customers who create videos will also pimp them around providing for even more awareness of the contest and Amazon.