Google launched a competition Wednesday giving those outside the developer community a chance to explore a pair of Google Glasses. At the last Google i/o conference, Google let developers buy the glasses for $1,500. Now others will have the same opportunity, with about 8,000 available. Ad agency Anomaly sponsored the event. Entrants to the Google Glass competition must use Google+ or Twitter to explain in no more than 50 words an innovative use of Glass, starting with the hashtag #ifihadglass. Submissions can use up to five photos and a video up to 15 seconds long. Applications are due before Feb. 27. Each person can submit up to three applications. On Anomaly's Web site, founding partners describe the company as an agency where lines between creative and media have blurred -- unpaid media is increasingly important, and what constitutes "media" is harder to define. Google opened the competition to anyone 18 or older living in the U.S. and will give winners the opportunity to access the glasses before they go on sale to the general public at the end of 2014. Although the world has yet to see the everyday benefits from Google Glass, the company released a new YouTube video demonstrating the headset's overall experience and new features, like the ability to translate between languages. The video demonstrates voice-controlled searches on the engine and in Google+ hangouts. It also shows how users give voice commands --"OK Glass, take a picture" or "OK Glass, record a video" -- to operate the functions.
As part of its push to automate the way advertising is bought and sold, The Rubicon Project Wednesday signaled a shift from a mainly “sell-side” focus to the “buy-side,” unveiling its first major suite of technologies aimed at advertisers, agencies, media buyers and trading desks. The announcement, which was made as part of a half-day-long summit of advertisers, agencies and digital publishers in New York City, was a significant step toward positioning the six-year-old Los Angeles-based startup as a truly “agnostic” platform for buyers and sellers to automate the way they trade media. “In order for a marketplace to work, you have to service both sides,” Rubicon founder and CEO Frank Addante said following the announcements. While industry analysts have so far classified Rubicon as a so-called SSP, or “sell-side platform” developing technology for the benefit of online publishers -- as opposed to DSPs, or “demand-side platforms” that develop them for advertisers and agencies -- Addante said Rubicon has never seen itself that way, and was created simply to help both sides automate their processes and take much of the manual “friction” out of the media-buying process. That said, the business cards handed out by Rubicon executives during the summit still carried the tagline: “real-time trading for publishers.” The new buy-side product suite unveiled by Rubicon was part of a new, more powerful version of Rubicon’s Revv server technology aptly named Revv Buyer, which will enable advertisers, agencies and trading desks to transact programmatic buys either through open real-time bidding exchanges or through private marketplaces directly with publishers. Not surprisingly, Rubicon also announced a new publisher-focused product suite dubbed Revv Seller, which offers the same kind of automation focusing on a seller’s needs. Both products are designed to automate many of the “mundane” human tasks associated with buying and selling media. While Rubicon faces an uphill battle to establish itself as a truly agnostic interchange between buyers and sellers in the display ad marketplace, which is hyper fragmented by an array of other intermediaries all vying for dominance, but ultimately skewed toward one side or the other, it also announced another initiative into a segment of the advertising industry that is crying out for something to be its organizing principle -- mobile. The new project, dubbed The Mobile Project, seeks to do for mobile what Rubicon did for display, pouring buckets of venture capital funding and cash flow into the development of better technology to automate the buying and selling of mobile advertising opportunities. The announcement was followed by an interview with Lori Tavoularis, managing director-revenue partnerships at Tribune Digital, which has been beta testing the platform, and recently put all of its mobile inventory on Rubicon’s mobile RTB platform. “We really wanted an easier way for people to buy our inventory at scale,” she said adding that the result has been a doubling of Tribune’s mobile CPM yields since making the move.
AOL Advertising has found a head of sales strategy and operations in Marta Martinez, MediaPost has learned. Martinez comes from MediaMath, where she served dual roles as SVP of business development & operations, and chief marketing officer. During her time with the data-management specialists, Martinez demonstrated a unique ability to translate complex ad technology solutions into tangible benefits, Jim Norton, SVP, and head of sales at AOL Advertising. "Marta is a true innovator,” according to Norton. In this newly created role, Martinez will be expected to lead and manage sales strategy and operations functions for AOL Advertising, including business operations and planning. Earlier this month, AOL said fourth-quarter revenues were up 3.9% year-over-year -- to nearly $600 million, which represented the company’s greatest sales gain in eight years. AOL "appears to have turned the corner," Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali wrote in a research note on the heels of AOL’s latest earnings. Tim Armstrong, AOL chairman and CEO, attributed the strong quarter to healthy increases in global ad revenue, which grew 13% year-over-year. Looking ahead, “AOL has strong momentum entering 2013 and is positioned to continue on our growth path,” Armstrong said on Friday. Half-agreeing with Armstrong, Cantor’s Squali wrote: “AOL is entering 2013 on stronger footing, but our visibility into revenue acceleration/margin improvement remains relatively poor.” Prior to MediaMath, Martinez was SVP of global dorporate development at Havas Digital, where she oversaw the group’s executive and operational management.
Twitter on Wednesday announced the long-awaited opening up of its Ads API, a step expected to expand advertising on the microblogging platform and accelerate the company’s revenue growth. In connection with the move, Twitter has named five launch partners that will initially provide the tools for creating and managing campaigns on the site: Adobe, Salesforce.com (which acquired Buddy Media), HootSuite, SHIFT and TBG Digital. “What this means is that as marketers, you’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns -- and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies,” stated a blog post today by April Underwood, product manager, revenue, at Twitter. Software created by the Ads API partners should enable brands and agencies to develop and optimize campaigns that reach the target audience with the right message at the right time across desktop and mobile devices at scale. Twitter is following the same playbook that helped Facebook build its ad business, when it launched its own Ads API in 2009 and established a set of ad partners that now include the five companies chosen by Twitter. LinkedIn also introduced an Ads API program in November. TechCrunch last month predicted that Twitter would soon take the same step. Until now, marketers either had to use the company’s self-serve option or work with its direct sales force to place advertising. The process of making ad buys and tracking campaigns should now be more efficient. HootSuite, for example, said that in relation to Twitter opening up its Ads API, it would now allow brands to quickly buy, publish and analyze Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts from within its dashboard. Similarly, Salesforce.com announced a new Social Ads Platform for Twitter that will let clients run and manage Twitter campaigns in real time within its Marketing Cloud product. In addition, Twitter said its Certified Products Program would be expanded in the coming months to include ad products that integrate with the Ads API and improve marketing efficiency and ROI. The company has begun screening the next group of ad partners, which vendors can apply for here. For comparison, Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer program, which encompasses expertise in ads, apps, analytics and brand pages, has grown to more than 300 partner firms.
Yahoo on Wednesday unveiled a revamped home page as the company continues its latest turnaround effort under CEO Marissa Mayer. The centerpiece of the updated Yahoo welcome screen is a social media-inspired stream of news stories that a user can scroll continuously and customize. In an appearance on NBC’s "Today Show" this morning, the Yahoo CEO emphasized that she wanted the home page to have a more "modern" feel. It also provides easy access to popular properties and third-party apps. “Designed to be more intuitive and personal, the new Yahoo! experience is all about your interests and preferences. Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the Web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles,” wrote Mayer in a blog post today. Mayer said in her blog post that the upgrade also includes redesigned applications and the ability to log in with a Yahoo or Facebook ID to access and share articles. In line with Mayer’s focus on mobile, the new home page is also optimized for smartphones and tablets and is designed to work faster across devices. The new look -- which U.S. users will begin to see in the next few days -- is the latest upgrade under Mayer, following the relaunch of Yahoo Mail and the Flickr app for iPhone. During Yahoo’s fourth-quarter conference call, the CEO said the company had identified a dozen key properties it would continue to overhaul this year as it strives to better compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. Like Facebook and Twitter, Yahoo will also introduce advertising into its newsfeed in the form of text, video and image-based ads. The sponsored material will be marked as such and the ads will be targeted toward users with the same personalization and recommendation technology that Yahoo applies to other content, Mike Kerns, VP of product, Yahoo, told Wired. The stories that someone sees in their Yahoo feed are tailored in part by what it learns about their preferences over time as well as taking cues from their activity on Facebook. Yahoo and Facebook have gradually increased their integration over the last few years. A home page facelift itself doesn’t necessarily mean much. Under former CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo invested heavily in developing and promoting a more personalized welcome page in 2009 to little effect. But Mayer, who took over in July, has so far delivered solid financial results, with Yahoo shares lately trading at or above $20 a share for the first time in four years.
Many marketers have become the primary buyers of new technology for their company -- even enterprise systems -- but don't necessarily factor in the total cost of determining ROI. CIOs might evaluate the platform based on cost savings, whereas marketers look at the marginal revenue gained for bringing in new customers. The challenge becomes determining the total cost of ownership of the technologies when factoring in existing and prospective customers. Forrester Consultancy has begun conducting studies to help gain perspective. One sponsored by BloomReach, and another from Covario, determine the total impact of technology on marketing strategies. They delve into the total economic impact, a method developed by Forrester Research. The BloomReach study finds that an established brand retail organization selling $3.5 billion annually from a portfolio of 25,000 products could experience a three-year return on investment of 196% for every $1 spent with a return in 2.2 days by using BloomReach's BloomSearch application. Emerging brands can gain a 600% return in about one month, with about $75 million in sales for three years. Joelle Kaufman, head of marketing at BloomReach, said marketers at the most successful companies will work in partnership with the IT departments. "Marketers are used to quick experiments, whereas IT thinks in terms of 18-month-long projects," she said. "The most successful companies carve out ways to think in two-week increments, implementing large-scale projects that move at the speed of marketing." While the Bloomreach report concentrates on finding the return based on software, Covario focuses on services. Covario commission Forrester Consulting in February 2013, and found similar results in three years. Covario’s customer three-year risk adjusted ROI averages 94% in less than one month. The total benefits of about $7.8 million on a total cost of -$4 million presented a net value of $3.8 million, which is the incremental net benefits from working with Covario’s platform, according to the report. The benefits point to volume of orders gained through non-branded paid search. Brands managed to spend less, while maintaining or improving returns. The report will post on Covario’s site Monday.
Horizon Media has been awarded U.S. media duties for global Web hosting company 1&1, a unit of United Internet AG.The client spends an estimated $35 to $40 million a year on ads in the U.S., according to Kantar. Spending is primarily in the direct-response sector. Expenditures are likely to rise as the client has expansion plans in the U.S., which the agency indicated is “potentially its largest global market.”“Horizon provided a clear strategic vision for our brand and demonstrated they could leverage data to drive business results for” the company, stated Rudiger Kluth, managing director at 1&1.It was not immediately clear which other agencies participated in the review process.“1&1 has a compelling offering, and we look forward to bringing the full power of Horizon’s direct marketing resources to help them cut through, engage and drive demand in a very crowded space,” stated Gene Turner, senior vice president, managing director at Horizon’s Direct Marketing Division.The client competes in a Web hosting market that includes Yahoo, GoDaddy and HostGator.1&1 is one of several United Internet Web hosting companies that provide service in Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada, with plans to expand to additional countries. The parent company currently claims approximately 42 million customer accounts. In 2011 it reported roughly $2.8 billion in revenue. It is based in Montabaur, Germany.
A Yahoo user is asking a federal appellate court to reinstate his lawsuit, alleging that the company violated the privacy of email users by including their names in the headers of outgoing messages. New York resident Albert Rudgayzer argues in new court papers that he should have been allowed to proceed with a class-action alleging that Yahoo violated its terms of service by revealing users' full names. Rudgayzer says in his court papers, filed last week, that Yahoo is violating an explicit promise that it doesn't share users' personal information -- including their names. Rudgayzer filed suit against Yahoo last March, alleging that the company "intentionally concealed" that it discloses the names of users who send emails. "Yahoo has intentionally deprived Yahoo Email Users of their legal rights not to have their first and last names disclosed when they send Yahoo Emails," he argued in his complaint, which was filed in the Northern District of California. Rudgayzer sought to represent a class of Yahoo email users. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, Calif. dismissed Rudgayzer's claims last year on the grounds that he couldn't move forward with a class-action because he was appearing "pro se" -- meaning he wasn't represented by a lawyer. Davila ruled that Rudgayzer couldn't represent himself and also represent a potential class of other plaintiffs at the same time. (According to Yahoo's court papers, Rudgayzer is a lawyer in New York, but isn't licensed in California.) Davila also accepted Yahoo's argument that Rudgayzer couldn't proceed with an individual case on the grounds that he didn't sustain economic damages. "Plaintiff has failed to allege a specific instance where he suffered any actual damage or cognizable harm as a result of the disclosure -- likely because he cannot," Yahoo wrote in its motion seeking dismissal. Rudgayzer is now arguing to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that Davila's decision was premature. Rudgayzer says he could have sought a lawyer to act as counsel for the entire class of Yahoo email users at a later date. He also says that he (and other Yahoo email users) are entitled to recover a nominal amount of damages for the alleged privacy breach.
Japan, the world’s seventh-largest national advertising economy, continued its recovery in 2012, expanding ad expenditures 3.2% over 2011 and posting its first annual increase in five years, according to estimates released early this morning by Tokyo-based agency and media holding company Dentsu. It was the nation’s best annual results since a series of macro (the global economic recession) and micro (Japan’s devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant breach) threw the island nation into a protracted advertising recession. Dentsu estimated that satellite media was the fastest-growing sector, rising 13.7%, followed by the Internet (+7.7%), newspapers (+4.2%) TV (+3.0%) and magazines (+0.4%). Overall, ad spending in “traditional media” rose 2.9%, and radio (-0.1%) was the only area to decline.
Right up front, one of the problems with Beyonce’s HBO documentary “Life is but a Dream” is that it’s called a documentary. Because no matter how compelling a public figure and glam superstar you are, talking close into your MacBook with your-unmade-up (but still flawless) face does not a documentary make. Granted, the former Ms. Fierce produced and co-directed the film, so it’s not as if we were set up for a Ken Burns special. (Although both docu-makers have sported bangs, at times.) Still, Beyonce is beautiful, talented, and one of the most powerful people in the biz -- a natural subject. But if you watch this 90-minute film because you actually are interested in how that happened -- stuff like where Beyonce was born, how she got along in school and with her siblings, whether she studied music, where she got her big break, how she met Jay-Z, what informs her musical tastes etc. -- you’re out of luck. I guess that’s what Wikipedia is for. Certainly, “Life” looks beautiful, with its mix of gorgeous saturated film and gauzy, bleached-out video. There are tantalizing wisps of things -- we do get to see home movies (and present-day shots) of the outside of the magnificent house she grew up in. She never mentions that it’s in Houston, or what her dad, Matthew Knowles (he’s never named) did in the days before she became famous and he became her manager. The singer-dancer-actress-producer-co-director and star also acts as narrator. “My life is a journey. It seems like I set a goal and I accomplish it,” she says. As with much of the voicover, that sounds as if it ought to be profound. But it mostly comes out as very carefully thought-out doubletalk. “We have to shape our own perception of how we view ourselves,” she says, for example. That’s actually more telling than she may know, since she’s using this platform to shape perception of how we view her. So we gets lots of footage of helicopters whirring and taking off, and the rush of people and cameras once she lands, and the crowd mesmerized by her stunning performances. But there really is no arc here, just dreamy passages floating non-chronologically through the past three or four years of her life, when, like the characters on “The Office,” she apparently had film crews covering her 24/7. The most annoying part is when she presents as her personal Cuban Missile Crisis the time she and her troupe were locked out of the studio and missed a full day of rehearsal for the Billboard Music Awards. It was a “huge artistic gamble” to go on after that, she says in the voiceover, but the “urge to get my message out” allowed her to overcome her fear and perform it live. The name "Destiny’s Child” is never mentioned, nor are the super-quadruple platinum songs she recorded with that group. But she definitely has daddy issues. What’s implied is that her competitive edge comes from her father -- that whatever she did to please him growing up was not enough. And she’s obviously hurt about all the crazy rumors that she faked her pregnancy and used a surrogate. She also provides a Demi Moore-ish shot (remember that old cover of Vanity Fair) of her subsequent pregnancy belly as a response to the haters. (Doesn’t matter -- some have already voiced their suspicions that the headless shot of the belly bump is not in fact her body.) Though she does come clean about something very personal -- a miscarriage -- she also reveals a poignant lack of historical understanding when she mentions that people like Nina Simone didn’t have these problems. “You loved her voice,” she says. “You didn’t get brainwashed by her everyday life. It’s not your business what her child wore.” Well, in fact, Nina Simone was very outspoken during the civil rights movement, and had to end up living in Europe for many complicated reasons. And I guess I agree that what her baby is wearing is not my business. I would have preferred less about the lost pregnancy (I can understand why she would want that to remain private) and more about how Beyonce is “always thinking about women.” Yes, her songs can be seen as a battle cry for girl power. Still, I wish that someone had asked her on-camera about the differences between sexiness and objectification. Take “Put a Ring on It.” The rhythms are hypnotic. But what would she say to people who are uncomfortable, for their own daughters’ sense of self-worth, about using the word “it”? Her Super Bowl act was all women; all of the dancers, singers, musicians, even the orchestra, was female. That’s a powerful statement, Still, some of the audience was put off by her costume, and what they saw as her characteristic thrusting pole-dance moves. In fact, the costume designer had roots in the Bolshoi Ballet, and as Bey mentioned many years back on Oprah, her moves come out of African dance. Talking to the costume designer, or showing any historical video of women in Africa dancing, would have been so enlightening. Any sort of historical perspective outside of Beyonce's free-range philosophy would have been welcome. But this is less a historical piece than a piece of gloss, about as deep as a gel manicure -- and equally as shiny and polished. Not surprisingly, however, the postscript is that “Life is But a Dream” drew 1.8 million viewers, making it the most-watched HBO documentary since the first part of the 2006 Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina, “When the Levees Broke,” according to HBO. It really should get some kind of new classification, though, that separates it from the D word. Because with “Life is But a Dream,” B has invented a new media form: the narcissisi-mentary.
We often see stats relating to Web use among different ages and genders, but seldom any that compare Moms and Dads as opposed to simply men and women.This USA TouchPoints analysis sought to explore the extent of any differences in the use of various types of Web sites between Moms and Dads in the average week and found there are at least some disparities between the two.Whereas the vast majority of both Moms and Dads can be found on the Web during the average week, social networking, news and to a lesser extent banking and food/cooking sites all show marked differences in average weekly reach.The greatest difference (just) is in the use of social networking sites, which is dominated by Moms: 44% vs. 26% for Dads. While the female skew in itself may not be surprising, its extent may be more so. However when considering the amount of other research that points to the same conclusion, the well-documented “Mommy-Blogger” phenomenon and the amount of time many Mothers – particularly those of young children – spend at home, this becomes much less surprising. When one also considers how many work environments are not conducive to the use of social networks (or in which they are prevented by firewalls), then this also logically contributes to the disparity.News Web sites almost exactly reverse the disparity between Moms and Dads – this time we see 43% Dad vs. 29% Moms. Anyone conducting any qualitative research among Moms will have heard of the time constraints that impacts their daily lives. It is likely that outside of major events, this is a factor here. Preference is given to other activities, like social networking, in the time they do have available.Interestingly, online banking appears to be more the preserve of Moms than Dads (39% vs. 30%), this may again play to time issues and online banking is an easy fix for an essential part of household management.Two other categories that are interesting in relation to each other are full TV episodes (online) and short video clips. While the numbers are not large for either, they are equal between Moms and Dads for full episodes: 7% and 8%, respectively). But there existed a much larger gap between the two for short video clips – 12% for Moms vs. 19% for Dads.