Articles of the Day
Study: In-Game Ads Increase Purchase Consideration By 41% - New research from Microsoft’s Massive and Nielsen Entertainment reveals that in-game ads clearly have a positive impact on metrics like brand familiarity, ad recall and ad rating.
About.com Offers How-To Guidance For Online Advertisers - About.com has launched onlineadvertising.about.com, providing a guided overview of the fundamentals of online advertising.
Internet TV to Grab Ad Revenue - Internet television advertising revenue will hit $10 billion worldwide by 2011, according to an August 2007 Understanding & Solutions press release. That would equal 18% of all Internet advertising that year, which the firm forecast at $57 billion. “Globally, we estimate there are more than 20 billion videos being streamed across the Web each and every month.”
ESPN Revamps ESPN360 With Expanded Offerings - ESPN360 is receiving a much-needed overhaul. The Web-based sports video platform has struggled with its identity and its business model in four years of existence, and will now focus on live events, including a greatly expanded offering of college basketball and football games, smaller market competitions and live news conferences. ESPN.com will focus more on shorter sports news, highlighting analysis and archived shows. Collectively, the new 360 will stream over 2,000 live events in its first 12 months compared to 200 in 2006.
MySpace Launches New Behavior Targeting Program - Fox Interactive’s Mike Barrett, the News Corp. company’s chief revenue officer, reveals that FIM will report revenue “well in excess” of the $500 million goal it set for itself last year. The company’s new targeting program is still in beta with 11 behavior segments, but will soon expand to more than user 100 segments. Barrett says the targeted ads, which attach behaviors like auto, lifestyle, beauty and health to user profiles, will command a 20% to 50% premium over its other ad offerings.
Suggestive Search - Searches could get a little faster now that Yahoo has added “as you type” search suggestions to its toolbar on Internet Explorer. It’s similar to a function I like and use regularly in my new Windows Vista software. The intuitive feature saves wear and tear on the wrists and fingers. But if you don’t like getting suggestions for what you’re searching for as you type, you can easily disable the little hints in the new Yahoo search function. Don’t even think of trying a pop-up ad here, though. Yahoo Toolbar will automatically block it.
Facebook aims to win back UK advertisers with new ad system - Facebook is planning to provide advertisers with the ability to control and target the placement of their ads on the social network in a bid to win back UK advertisers who ceased advertising after some of their ads featured on the profile page of the far-right British National Party (BNP). “We have to build some technology in order to provide some additional controls and we really excel at that,” says Facebook chief operating officer Owen Van Natta. “I expect that most, if not all, of those advertisers are going to be coming back on board if they haven’t already.”
Second Life economy in crisis - Rumour - The Second Life economy is rumoured to be in crisis, with spiralling interest rates and a recent ban on in-game gambling in the US setting off financial chain reactions throughout the unregulated Second Life banking sector, according to various online reports. In-game ‘bank’ Ginko Financial is currently at the centre of what some users describe as a “bank run”, with members unsuccessfully trying to retrieve funds from Ginko for more than a week.
