2007 May | Web Jungle

Archive for May 2007

Gates and Jobs interviewed during the D5

May 31, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

This is one of those most amazing setups: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are being interviewd during the “All Things Digital” conference this year. They talk about the computer, software and internet industry, some thoughts about the history but also the future, etc. Well worth watching, also very entertaining!

It already starts with a prologue of other incidents in the last few decades, when the two met for discussions.

Watch Steve talk about things he can’t talk about yet, but “they are beautiful, so amazing, they will blow you away”. Again and again. And Bill trying to tell fascinating stories by stating facts.

If you don’t have the time to watch it all the way, make sure you watch at least the “highlights reel“

Posted in Digital Culture, Interactive News, Pop Culture, Search Engine Stuff, Television, Trends, Videos, Virtuality, Web 2.0 | Tags: Apple, Bill Gates, D5, iPod, Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Videos, Zune | No Comments »

The unexpected power of TV advertising

May 31, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

Even though the discussion about the life after the 30 Sec. Spot continues, there are still some amazing examples of how TV advertising produces visible results.

There is a TV spot for German Telekom currently running in Germany, that is quite nicely done, a few nice special effects, absorbing visuals and surprising scene-cuts. But really nothing special.

Yet, the spot draws you in, fascinates you (well, at least me). And that’s mainly because of the song they’ve chosen. It’s “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones and a search on Technorati for this song shows that many people talk about it.

Indeed, if you look at Yahoo! Clever (Yahoo! Answers) in Germany, there are many people looking for the song in the Telekom Ad.

And, furthermore: this song, even though a few decades old, made it all the way to Nr. 2 of the German iTunes charts! Listed before Maroon 5 and P!nk, for example!

The product of German Telekom launches on the 4th of June, so we don’t know yet, how successful this will be.

But we certainly know already, that the TV spot has helped the Rolling Stones catapult one of their classics all the way up the charts. I find this rather amazing.

Posted in Ad News, Digital Culture, Marketing, Pop Culture, Television | Tags: Advertising, Germany, Paint it Black, Rolling Stones, Technorati, Telekom, Yahoo | No Comments »

Links & News, 30.05.07

May 30, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

Joseph Jaffe on an Ad Age feature of the Coca Cola Second Life promotion
Werbeblogger links to a “Spam Radio“. Where you can have an automatic Computer Voice read out your spam to you. Nice idea filed under “new and useless”.
German Themenblog features a nice (and rather long) post about the current status quo of the German Blogosphere.
CBS has acquired last.fm for $280 million. I hope that last.fm will stay as cool as it is, I really enjoy it. (Check the last.fm widget at the bottom of the right sidebar.)
A cgm post about the fine line of letting go and not letting go too much whil staying authentic in FMCG CGM. (Like those acronyms, anyone?)

Posted in Ad News, Digital Marketing, Gaming, Marketing, Virtuality, Web 2.0 | Tags: Ad Age, Coca Cola, Jaffe, Second Life, Spam, User Generated Content, Werbeblogger | 2 Comments »

Google Maps with Videos of the Streets

May 30, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

I know this has launched already some days ago. But I am fascinated by it nevertheless!

Googlemaps now offers 360Â° views of the streets of some of the major cities in the US. But not only view from selected hotspots. You can virtually “drive down” fifth avenue by clickin on the arrows in you can see in the screen shot in the middle of the road.

Posted in Digital Culture, Interactive News, Search Engine Stuff, Videos, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

A video on everything is miscellaneous

May 30, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

Here is a cool 60 minutes video of a David Weinberger presentation on his new book “everything is miscellaneous“.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2159021324062223592

60 minutes is quite long. But it is very much inspiring, if you’re into the categorization of things, the order of information, data vs metadata, etc.

Posted in Communities, Digital Culture, Social Media, Trends, Videos, Web 2.0 | Tags: David Weinberger, Folksonomy, Taxonomy, Videos, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Google Testing In-Stream Video Ads

May 24, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

Latest news is: Google is now testing in-Stream Video ads:

Ad creative will be less than :30 and made skippable for users. Publishers will be able to select which videos to monetize, and track their performance using AdSense. Publishers can also choose where the ads will appear within the videos. Akin to standard AdSense deals, ad revenue will be split between the website publisher and Google.

And – though slightly unrelated: They now also sell TV Ads, as found on their AdSense ads.

Seems like they’re really moving into video ads in many ways now.

Posted in Ad News, Digital Marketing, Online Advertising, Search Engine Stuff, Videos, Web 2.0 | Tags: Adsense, Google, Streaming, Videos | No Comments »

Product Placement in Europe soon official

May 24, 2007 | Author Roland Hachmann

Paid display of products in TV-Shows without any referrence to the story was – so far – illegal in Europe. Or at least in Germany. Some German TV stations lately got into trouble for displaying products in soap operas. This might seem trivial to people in the US, where this is normal, as far as I know. But in Germany it caused a big scandal.
Now the European Commission put a decret up, which allows TV stations to display products in TV shows. Only prerequisite: it needs to be clear that it is an advertisement. I wonder, how they will manage to indicate that, without interrupting the story?
Kids TV shows still must not have any product placements, but can now be interrupted every 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes, writes German weekly magazine Spiegel.

Is this the “answer” to increasing media fragmentation, consumer control and ad resistance? It is certainly a nice try, but I don’t think that will make it any better. I even think it will make things worse. Increase the clutter and users will find more ways to blank out any advertisements.

Posted in Ad News | Tags: Advertising, TV | No Comments »