Very interesting thoughts on the future of search from Google. Not how the developments are almost entirely focused on location-based and mobile search.
This has huge implications for advertisers; the more Google focuses on these areas, the more local-based and mobile advertising can be introduced and adopted – we’re thinking coupons.
Big news from folks at Nielson: the be-all-end-all of television ratings intends to include Internet TV viewing, what it calls Extended Screens, in its national ratings.
At Nielsen, OnDemand Online and TV Everywhere are examples of what we refer to as the “Extended Screen” — initiatives that treat the computer as another screen in the home used to watch television. In fact, we’re already working to capture television viewing that takes place online and to add that viewing back in to the ratings. That includes in our National C3 ratings.
Tough, business to be sure. According to Nielson, the company intends to achieve this objective by implementing an “Internet software meter:
We’ve currently installed this Internet software meter among 375 homes in our National People Meter panel, allowing us to evaluate the measurement of Internet usage alongside TV usage.
This could represent a huge change in how television advertising is bought and sold, so it bears watching. One wonders if web-only television will also be rated – we’ll have to get the word from TubeFilter on that one.
For a site as ground-breaking as ESPN.com, they have been woefully behind in the area of video distribution. There are many reasons why this was a huge missed opportunity for the “World Wide Leader:”
Now that ESPN can build a content distribution network by taking their fantastic video content to every blog and social media outpost on the Internet, they will drastically increase the reach of their pre and post-roll advertising. It’s a bonanza for their advertising sales team.
For kick, we’re testing out the new feature below, with a postcard from Fenway Park in Boston. No word on whether or not you’ll watch an advertisement before reaching the content.
Slate.com is introducing The Slatest, a cleverly named news aggregation service that will publish on 3x/daily publishing calendar, and killing Today’s Papers:
So what is “The Slatest”? The heart of “The Slatest” is the Slate Dozen: A list of the 12 most important news stories, blog entries, magazine features, and Web videos of the moment. The Slate Dozen is published three times a day during the week: at 7 a.m., at noon, and at 5 p.m. This three-times-a-day pace is perhaps the most important element of “The Slatest,” …
Before I explain what “The Slatest” is, a painful announcement: After 12 years, and almost 4,400 editions, we are ending “Today’s Papers.” We are also ending “In Other Magazines.” This is like unplugging grandpa from the ventilator: excruciating but necessary. We believe that “The Slatest” preserves what is best about “Today’s Papers” and “In Other Magazines” but is faster and more relevant.
This move by Slate at once recognizes both the continual nature of the news cycle due to the content distribution opportunities provided by the Internet and the value of news aggregators.
For contextual advertisers, more and more opportunities are created for better and more timely advertising as the news cycle gets faster and as that news cycle is “productized” by online publishers like Slate. However, after looking at the design of the Slatest, which is good, one wonders if there are too few advertising positions available at this point in time. That alone will be worth watching.
We’ll be watching The Slatest closely to see how well The Slate succeeds at delivering value with its new product.
VentureBeat did a bang-up job at making sense of the Apple/Google/AT&T sniping over Google Voice:
Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your voicemail. It also lets you send free text messages and make international calls for two cents — features that would jeopardize AT&T’s traditional revenue streams. So there was a ruckus when Apple inexplicably didn’t list it in the app store and then went further to delete similar applications last month, prompting an FCC inquiry.
VentureBeat also reports that in a letter to the FCC, Apple states that Google Voice would “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality.”
This reads like the understatement of the year. Free texting? 2 cent/min International phone calls? One phone number for everything? Ask yourself, is this something you would take for a test-drive? I think most of us would and it’s no surprise that Apple feels, well … threatened.
As we’ve previously written, more and more newspapers will soon adopt a new model for online content, whereby their readership will be charged access for some or all sections of their websites. The Boston Globe is the largest such newspaper to consider such a model (with the obvious exception being the Wall Street Journal, which has always charged for content), with the announcement that they are considering charging for access to Boston.com. More from NECN:
Microsoft is buying a ton of TV advertising space for its Bing search engine, as you may have noticed. However, some of their ads are esoteric at one moment and overly-specific at others. Non-online marketing folks have commented to me that the following Bing ad leaves them wondering if Bing is a travel search site. (It does have a travel component, Farecast, which Microsoft bought about a year ago.)
It’s a branding challenge – does Bing have a strong enough brand with the average consumer to be discussing product benefits? I don’t think it does. View the ad below and be the judge:
Cash for Clunkers has been extended by the faux-largess of Congress, according to the New York Times. And, it’s a good thing for online marketers.
Automakers have been all over the program, aggressively promoting the program through custom landing pages and paid search.
Toyota, Mazada, and GM, to name three, have created custom landing pages to capitalize on this project:
There is an interesting experiment about to begin in Schenectady, New York. The Schenectady Daily Gazette isn’t free anymore. According to Editor & Publisher:
Beginning Aug. 3, The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, N.Y. will revert its Web site to a paid-only format … After the changeover, subscribers will receive unlimited content from the Gazette’s Web site, including access to the newspaper’s e-edition. Non-subscribers will be able to access some content, including blogs, TV schedules, photo galleries, and breaking news. They will not, however, be able to read the full text of the paper’s local stories, reviews, obituaries and columns or post comments on stories. “
And, this directly from the Daily Gazette’s editor.
Well, here we go. Could this be the first of many attempts on the part of newspapers to put the horses back in the barn and charge for online content? It’s always been bizarre to me that consumers of news indignantly demand that their content be made free online. Who writes this stuff? How does the hosting get paid for? The content management system? The research needed to complete an article?
The fact is, news costs money. I love citizen journalism, blogging, micro-blogging, and every other content distribution tool available online. But, good, quality journalism costs money – it does not and cannot simply create itself. Good, talented, experienced people must be compensated for it. It’s better for society and democracy if journalism is supported by citizens, and not advertisers. Fewer conflicts of interest and less temptation to skew the news.
I’m excited to see what happens in Schenectady – my hope is that this is a huge success.
After Google’s big announcement regarding the launch of its new operating system, Chrome OS, I can’t help but chuckle at the lyrics to the song Hell is Chrome by one of my favorite bands, Wilco:
“When the Devil came / he was not red. / He was Chrome …”
Is this being hummed within the halls of Microsoft this morning? It’s hard to think otherwise. (In fairness, who could fault Microsoft’s employees for such excellent musical taste?)
The mere announcement of Google’s play won’t, and should not, shake the foundation of Microsoft’s business – yet. But, the move does represent Google’s boldest salvo yet to push the migration of personal computing away from the desktop and on to the cloud. Consumers are already growing more and more accustomed to other cloud-based software, particularly through the high adoption of social media applications.
It’s this ideology that has Microsoft concerned, if not panicked – hell may not be chrome, but Chrome, and everything that Chrome brings with it, could certainly be hell for Microsoft.
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