Pushing the boundaries of stunt marketing, Gawker Media convinced members of the trade press that it acquired a blog by and for vampires named Blood Copy. The ruse was part of a larger marketing effort around the second season of HBO's "True Blood" vampire series, and orchestrated by boutique agency Campfire. "Gawker Media announced last night that it acquired BloodCopy.com," Silicon Alley Insider reported Saturday morning. "It's a blog about vampires. Really." A day later, the industry news blog apologized for the error, adding: "We also think that HBO, Gawker, and the marketing agency crossed a line ... We're all for experimental online advertising, viral marketing, etc. ... In our opinion, however, this campaign is designed to trick people." Gawker Media, however, denies deliberately misleading anyone. "We market our audience as being intelligent," said Chris Batty, head of ad sales at Gawker Media. "For us, it wasn't really a stunt ... It was about drawing people in and keeping them active." Jeremiah Rosen, a partner at Campfire, said that while deceiving the news blog was not part of the plan, his agency intentionally walks a fine line between provocation and deception. "We're very cognizant of where that line is when we're trying to figure out what an audience will get turned on by," said Rosen. Until the new season of "True Blood" debuts on June 14, Gawker Media staff have signed on to maintain a blog ostensibly written by vampires at BloodCopy.com. For its work, HBO is paying Gawker south of half a million dollars, according to Batty. Rosen would not say how well Campfire is being compensated -- only that HBO's marketing budget for the series is "not nearly as robust" this year as it was last year. "The production load is not as heavy." Last year, to promote the first season of "True Blood," HBO -- along with And Company and PHD -- created and placed print and outdoor ads for "a synthetic blood nourishment drink." The series -- about vampires living among the living, created by Alan Ball -- also had its own online prequel created by Campfire and HBO. "True Blood" was promoted to a niche following of vampire lovers via mailings, written in dead languages like Babylonian, that led people to various Web sites on a mission to translate their messages. To stay relevant and edgy, Campfire's Rosen said with regard to crossing lines: "I hope that we do occasionally." He also admitted feeling "a little nervous" when Silicon Alley Insider posted the faux news as fact. "It's a really bad idea to try and trick audiences." According to Batty, the real risk was not misleading press, but boring readers. "The risk is more about burnout with our audience," he said. "We've done these sorts of advertorials before, but it's not something that is highly replicable." This is not the first time that Silicon Alley Insider has fallen victim to fake news. Late last year, it published false reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been rushed to the hospital after a heart attack.
Two AOL subscribers have brought a new lawsuit against the company for allegedly violating a federal privacy law by inserting ads in email. Los Angeles residents Rande Bronster and Robert Nachshin quietly filed a complaint last week in the federal court in the central district of California alleging that such ads are unlawful under the federal Electronic Communications Act and California law. This case marks at least the second time that AOL's email ads have spurred a lawsuit. An AOL spokesperson said the company disputes Bronster and Nachshin's factual allegations and legal claims. AOL has offered free email accounts for almost three years, but Bronster and Nachshin pay the company for premium service -- which, they argue, should be ad-free. "Subscribers to AOL's paid email service pay a monthly fee, in part, to be free from the annoyance of ads strewn throughout their emails," they wrote in an April letter to a lawyer for AOL. In that letter, they asked AOL to refund all fees they had paid since March 2006, shortly after AOL began inserting ads into emails. Last year, AOL began allowing paying subscribers to opt out of the ad insertions, but Bronster and Nachshin allege that the company didn't proactively notify them they could refuse to carry the ads. They also allege that AOL doesn't inform subscribers that it will insert ads into the footers of their messages. An AOL spokesperson said that paying members can easily opt out. Bronster and Nachshin are represented by the law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, known for suing Google and Yahoo for click fraud. The firm achieved a multimillion-dollar settlement from Yahoo and participated in a $90 million settlement from Google. In the case against AOL, the lawyers seek to represent all subscribers who have paid the company for an account since February 2006. They are also asking for monetary damages and an injunction against AOL. The Bronster/Nachshin action is the second lawsuit against AOL for inserting ads into email footers. Last year, California resident Frank Cecchini also brought a potential class-action lawsuit against AOL. That case is still going forward.
Revenue from streamed music and full-track downloads on mobile phones will grow from $2.5 billion to $5.5 billion worldwide in the next five years as increased applications, all-you-can-eat data plans and more user-friendly services combine to drive up sales, according to a new forecast by Juniper Research. Windsor Holden, an analyst at the U.K.-based mobile research firm, points to a widening array of mobile music initiatives from music streaming service Pandora, with 2 million mobile users, to T-Mobile's Mobile Jukebox to Samsung's Beat DJ, as evidence of increased consumer uptake. "These are just snippets, but they are not isolated cases," he wrote in a blog post. Holden went on to argue that wireless operators are increasingly convinced that not only are customers willing to use their mobile phones for accessing music, but that a significant proportion view music as a key component of their mobile service. While traditional mobile music services such as ringtones and realtones are in decline, the report notes that more sophisticated music offerings are taking their place. "Recent positive developments, such as Apple announcing that iPhone customers can use the 3G network to download full-tracks, will offer a further stimulus to growth," according to Holden. Juniper wasn't as optimistic about ad-supported music services as a result of the global economic downturn. Because of ad budget cutbacks, it warned that ad spend could amount to only half of pre-downturn estimates under the worst case scenario. Geographically, the report predicts that the Far East region and China will account for the largest share of mobile music revenue through 2013, followed by Western Europe. A separate new report from Forrester Research found that while only 6% of online European consumers streamed or downloaded music on mobile phones, that figure jumped to 18% among smartphone owners, and 32% among smartphone owners with unlimited mobile Web access.
So much for a grand opening. Just getting in the door of the Ovi Store, Nokia's answer to Apple's App Store, proved challenging as heavy traffic slowed the widely anticipated site during its official debut Monday. Slow performance, a meager selection of applications and less-than-intuitive navigation were among various flaws cited by online critics during the global rollout of the Ovi Store, which Nokia first announced back in February. Among the harshest reviews, TechCrunch declared the Ovi launch a "complete disaster" because of continued slowness, disappearing apps, and a poor user experience characterized by fruitless content searches and thin publisher profiles. Other reports indicated that some registered Ovi users and Nokia customers were having trouble gaining access to the service. For its part, Nokia issued a statement Monday attributing the site's balky performance to high traffic demand. It addressed the problem by adding servers, "which resulted in intermittent performance improvements." This marks an inauspicious start for the Finnish phone giant if it hopes to challenge Apple's dominant position in mobile apps with more than 1 billion downloads to date from the company's App Store. Opening with less than 700 paid or free items on offer, the Ovi Store also has a long way to go to catch up with the more than 35,000 that fill the App Store. "This is still the early days but indeed it seems like it is not that easy to offer a seamless experience to a majority of consumers," said Thomas Husson, a Forrester Research analyst who covers the mobile space. When the Ovi Store was announced at the Mobile World Congress in February, Husson noted then that the quality and speed of execution would be a critical factor in its success. Nokia has already stumbled in its bid to expand into mobile services with its N-Gage mobile games offering, and music download service--Comes With Music -- failing to gain traction with consumers. Music and games will still be offered separately, but the Ovi Store will combine those content categories with apps, videos, podcasts and location-based services, among others. Boosting its mobile services business through the Ovi Store would help Nokia offset slower sales in its device business. The company reported its first-ever pre-tax loss in the first quarter, and is slashing costs in its device division by more than $900 million because of falling phone demand. Mobile phone sales worldwide dropped 8.6% in the first quarter compared to the year-earlier period, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales continued to grow, however, increasing 12.7% from a year ago. While still the biggest mobile phone maker by far, Nokia in the first quarter saw its market share slip from 39% to 36.2%, as No. 2 Samsung increased from 14.4% to 19.1%. Husson and other analysts have pointed out that Nokia has a big advantage over Apple in the sheer scale of its user base -- selling 93 million devices in the first quarter alone compared to the approximately 20 million iPhones sold to date. That opportunity could be especially compelling to app developers, who will get the same 70% cut of Ovi Store sales as they do from App Store sales. Nokia said Monday it was making the Ovi Store available to 50 million mobile customers globally across more than 50 devices, including the latest version of its flagship N97 phone. AT&T, which is also the iPhone's service provider, confirmed it will launch the Ovi Store for U.S. customers later in the year.
Just say "no" to Twitter TV. That's the sentiment of tweets sent Tuesday on Twitter after Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment reported partnering to pitch television executives on a new unscripted series incorporating the microblogging site. One tweet from Carly Wilson, known as @carlylately from Arizona, joined in the rant by writing "#nottwittertv keep it a Web thing!" Jan Galati, @ jplusgal, writes "#nottwittertv: say no!" And, the Twitter site @No_tweet_show was launched by Ian Former to demonstrate his distaste for the decision. The negative tweets prompted Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to write a blog post to clarify that Twitter is not making a television show. "Some Hollywood folks are developing something that leverages Twitter and they are extremely enthusiastic as evidenced by all the media hubbub yesterday and today," he writes. "We have little to do with their efforts but we wish them success." Think scavenger hunt. The show would bring the Web into reality television by relying on Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive format. Few details on the show's format or when it might hit the air have been made available. Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment plan to take the pitch to TV executives this week, and are trying to keep specifics under wraps. Reveille's credits include "The Office," "Ugly Betty," and "The Tudors," plus reality programs such as "The Biggest Loser" and "American Gladiators." Brillstein Entertainment has done "Real Time with Bill Maher," "The Sopranos," and "According to Jim." The link between Twitter and television isn't unusual, considering that Biz Stone's and Evan Williams' history takes the two back to video directory Odeo. Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst, says Twitter is searching for a business model. "If they need to find it in a traditional medium it's certainly better than not having one at all," he says. "Many companies in the new media space are finding monetization opportunities aren't there, so they turn toward traditional media. YouTube is an example." Google bought YouTube, and has found difficulties in monetizing the site, Verna says -- but progress has been made by tying the site to prime-time TV shows and feature films, traditionally old-world media. "If you're going the TV route, reality shows produce revenue," Verna says. "Considering Twitter's real-time search model, a reality show would lend itself to the life-streaming type approach." Christopher Coppola, CEO and executive producer at Christopher R. Coppola Productions, looks at the reality show as an opportunity to mix new media with old. "I see it as a positive because they are admitting Hollywood is changing and they better make some changes themselves or they won't exist anymore," he says. "Hollywood needs to change, because entertainment will become a mixture of old school storytelling and new school technology." It's like when Warner Bros. made "You've Got Mail" with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, as AOL grew into a new media tool. Coppola believes it is unfortunate that pop culture takes on that persona, "but don't think you can stop it. You have to try and work with it, ride it out and see what happens." Coppola, whose family includes uncle and director Francis Ford Coppola, and brother and actor Nicolas Cage, believes that studios and television networks need to embrace new media or wither away. He says, "I've asked Francis if he tweets. No, he doesn't -- but sure enough, his company uses it to sell goods."
The search engine DeepDyve.com will release a trio of free tools Wednesday that allows Web sites and blogs to display specific related results by inserting a few lines of code, as well as allowing users to search on large blocks of type to return more relevant searches. The tools -- More Like This Content API, Content Highlight Widget, and WordPress Plug-In -- are integrated by copying and pasting a few lines of code into the site, or by installing a WordPress plug-in. The More Like This Content API automatically displays results from DeepDyve that are similar to the information displayed on the page. The Content Highlight Widget lets sites integrate search with their users' normal reading and browsing behavior. Visitors can highlight any block of text up to 5,000 characters in length, and run that selection as a query with one click. DeepDyve's WordPress plug-in allows bloggers using the platform to include links to "related articles" directly in their blogs. DeepDyve relies on algorithms that manage complex searches. The engine does not index words, but rather phrases one to 20 words in length. That provides enough information for the search engine to disregard PageRank, which typically helps determine relevancy. Once the search engine disregards PageRank, searchers find the most relevant documents at the top of the results query, rather than the most popular. Semantics, metadata and taxonomy also are not required. William Park, DeepDyve CEO, says the company isn't trying to "out google Google," but rather focus on finding deep data for "knowledge workers" stored in databases accessible via the Internet. He estimates that worldwide, there are about 500 million of these technically savvy workers who rely on the Web for research. Roughly 50 million reside in the United States, he says, citing U.S. Census Bureau numbers. "We want search to happen where the person is reading," Park says. "It doesn't have to happen at our search engine anymore. We'd love to have you come to our search engine, but we want to make search available to anyone who wants to use it, wherever they want to use it." DeepDyve indexes a mix of publicly and privately available data. The company recently signed an agreement to index data from the American Association of Cancer Research, and the Association of Computing and Machinery. The plan is to launch a Chinese version of the search engine in about a month.
Amy Richards, formerly of Google and Yahoo, has been named senior vice president of product marketing at Bunchball. The game developer has also found a new senior vice president of sales in David Tyler, who most recently served the same role at avatar-based social network WeeWorld. Bunchball, backed by San Francisco-based Granite Ventures and San Jose-based Adobe Systems, designs custom games for media companies, including Hearst, NBC and Comcast. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, for instance, created a consumer engagement and interaction platform named "Nitro," which attempts to help brands measure and drive consumer behavior. "Using Nitro technology with our proprietary data and consumer insight, we're proving that we can create and strengthen relationships between brands and consumers," said Bunchball CEO Peter Daboll. Daboll -- formerly "chief of insights" at Yahoo -- was brought on to lead the company late last year. Richards is credited with helping to introduce the DoubleClick Ad Exchange platform to the publisher market before the company was acquired by Google last year. Prior to DoubleClick and Google, Amy led the development of advertising solutions for Yahoo. Prior to Yahoo, Daboll served as president and CEO at comScore Media Metrix. In August 2006, Yahoo named Daboll chief of insights and head of global market research.
Day one in the life of The New York Times's new social media editor seemed to consist of a great deal of Jennifer Preston, newly appointed to the role, joining Twitter (@NYT_JenPreston) and saying things like this a lot: "@soandso good idea"; "@soandso thanks for all the help"; "@suchandsuch great idea, we've thought a lot about that." Still, it's a new role, and you'd be forgiven for wondering what a social media editor will do. Deputy managing editor of the Times, Jonathan Landman was somewhat helpful, and in an internal memo sent to staffers offered this explanation: "Jennifer is our first social media editor. What's that? It's someone who concentrates full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers." But how will she improve The New York Times journalism? More of the same, obviously. "Jennifer will work closely with editors, reporters, bloggers and others to use social tools to find sources, track trends, and break news as well as to gather it," wrote Landman. "She will help us get comfortable with the techniques, share best practices and guide us on how to more effectively engage a larger share of the audience on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, and beyond." Why Ms. Preston, though? She's an experienced publishing vet for sure -- having worked circ for Newsday, been a reporter and, up until they were shuttered, edited the Times regional sections. Maybe that is where the role makes sense, with the Times thinking that social media is the new local. It's nice to sit back and think, well, maybe the paper is trying to embrace social media, taking the view that it needs to run with the bulls or be trampled -- no matter how debased it might make the Gray Lady seem. But the truth is, that the move is probably damage control on a few fronts. First, the reporters and writers were already out there tweeting away. Now, hopefully, they won't make Mark Bittman stop (The Minimalist Tweets: @bittman) but they can't have everyone running around out there willy nilly making a mess of The New York Times's best practices. Reporters use personal social networking accounts to find sources, in addition to extending the stories online (and off NYTimes.com). The Wall Street Journal just came up with some social media edicts, but the Times now has a full-time babysitter. But to be fair, she is also a watchdog. If you've ever gotten a cease and desist letter from the company's lawyers asking that you stop posting links to its content (MediaPost has), then you know how paranoid the paper is about new media outlets stealing its content. With officer Preston on the beat, maybe the hope is they can control the conversation in some way. Of course, there might not be any putting this particular toothpaste back in the tube.
If you heard a tapping sound in the morning hours Friday before last, it was that of a hammer putting yet another nail in the coffin of behavioral targeting. The behavioral targeting firm NebuAd is the latest company to fall victim to the storm of bad press and intense congressional focus surrounding the field of behavioral targeting. Pete Kafka summarizes this development in the AllThingsDigital blog succinctly: "there's a very big gap between the way the ad industry views this stuff and the way politicians and average Americans do." He predicts that this gap is going to trip up a lot of big players in the years to come. Indeed, behavioral targeting has downsides for both consumers and advertisers. Consumers have every reason to be skeptical of behavioral targeting. Being followed by tracking technologies as they move around the Internet sounds at the worst of times Orwellian and at the best of times Orwellian. The proponents of behavioral targeting have indulged in a variety of "education" programs that point out that BT campaigns track consumers anonymously, and great care is taken to ensure that the consumer is not personally identified. This argument has largely failed to impress skeptics such as Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va.), the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, who has asked search and network companies that gather personal information to outline: >> What sort of information they're looking to obtain >> What they intend to do with users' data and >> How they are going to provide clear ways of opting out These are all valid points. Consumers should have a clear way of opting in and out of messages they would like to see. They should be able to make the decision. Think about it. Would you be comfortable as a consumer to allow a third party such as an advertiser decide what's "good" or "relevant" for you? What's bad for the consumer is bad for the advertiser. Optimally, advertisers want to be speaking to consumers who are genuinely and willingly engaged with their brand. As an advertiser, would you want to spend ad dollars on following consumers secretly around the Internet, or would you much rather spend your budget on consumers who have explicitly raised their hand and said: "Yes, I am interested in hearing from you" (or words to that effect). Engaging consumers who have a high intent to buy, register (or take a desired action) is at the crux of a successful advertising campaign. It's not rocket science. Advertising frequently aims to create a strong relationship between a consumer and a brand. And just as in any relationship, transparency and openness are key to fostering trust. A system built around explicit opt-ins and opt-outs is fair to the consumer. The advertiser also benefits by paying only for interactions with people who have high intent -- to participate in a conversation, become brand advocates or simply buy the product.