• Speacial Thanks To Sarah Fay (Plus The Missing Link)
    I'd like to extend a special thanks to Sarah Fay for delivering an inspiring and heartfelt keynote to open OMMA magazine's 2009 Online All Star Awards. Fay, an alum, and former CEO of Aegis Media North America, schlepped down from Boston just to make the appearance, and had planned to kick off her talk with a brief video introduction courtesy of YouTube. Unfortunately, the MediaPost team bungled it, and were not able to integrate the video, but here's the link to it -- the "Social Media Revolution" video -- for those of you who haven't seen it, or didn't …
  • NFC Mobile Coupons
    Near field communications technology--have you heard of it? NFC is a short range radio frequency (RF) technology that some companies are using to develop mobile coupon applications, according to Phuc Truong, managing director, U.S. mobile marketing, Mobext, during a mobile coupons session at OMMA Global New York. And while he says the technology should make integration easier, it will present new challenges for companies trying to install the platform.
  • Mobile Coupons, What's The Hold-Up?
    It's the last session at OMMA Global New York and I'm sitting listening to a panel of intelligent marketers talking about mobile coupons. The session: "Flip 'N Save: What Is Keeping Brands From Mobile Coupons." If you want to save money on products at the market, you clip coupons. It's that easy. But how many times have you clipped coupons from the newspaper and forgot them on the kitchen table when you walked out the door? Consumers want to save money. But are they ready to do it through mobile coupons? Panelist say they are ready. It's the marketers who …
  • ISPs And Privacy
    After Danny Sullivan and John Battelle mentioned Google on stage, the discussion inevitably turned to privacy. An audience member wanted to know if Google wasn’t especially vulnerable to criticism because of the vast amount of data about consumers -- search queries, email addresses, etc. -- the company had amassed. Sullivan and Battelle basically responded that it wasn’t fair to single Google out when other players -- like Internet service providers -- had far more data about people’s online activity. The speakers appeared to agree that they didn’t recall “people picking up the torches” about ISPs and privacy. In …
  • Fightin' Words!
    OMMA Global is winding down just as things are starting to heat up! Justin Siegel, co-founder and CEO of mobile social network MocoSpace, is waxing skeptical on foursquare, a mobile social networking application that's presently generating some serious buzz. Foursquare was started by Dennis Crowley -- the same guys who co-founded Dodgeball, a similar service that let users share their location with friends via text messages. Google bought Dodgeball in mid-2005, then discontinued it at the beginning of this year. "Dodgeball to dust ball," says Siegel, who speculates that foursquare will follow a similar trajectory. "They both had a lot …
  • This Just In: Google TV Gets A Standing Ovation
    Well, sort of. Actually, Ovation TV, the performing arts oriented cable and satellite TV network, just announced a deal giving Google TV Ads access to its TV advertising inventory. Google TV Ads, which already has local TV advertising deals via EchoStar's DISH Network, also has ad inventory deals with a few national cable networks, including some of NBC Universal's digital tier channels, and Hallmark. The major networks, so far, have been loath to work with Google's online advertising sales model.
  • Coke Exec: Yard "Failed Foward"
    Coca Colas “failed forward” with its social network “The Yard,” its Group Manager of Global Interactive Marketing, Tom Daly, just admitted. “Not that we failed,” Daly clarified, explained that the soft drink maker learned a great deal from the exercise, and should be commended for “leaning forward.”
  • TV vs. Twitter
    When you think about the IT infrastructure around AdSense and AdWords there's a lot that can be done about sentiment analysis. Twitter and Facebook are trying to plug into that system, but I don't think there's a substitute for humans. At the end of the day brands have to get use to is people say bad things about you. Something says something bad about you on TV is one thing, but when someone says something bad about you on Twitter it's different. On Twitter the brand says "I'm sorry. I'll fix it." That doesn't happen on TV.
  • Twitter Psychology With John Battelle
    While the virtue of Google’s search engine might have been instantly clear, there’s a 3-to-4 month lag time between people really “get” Twitter, and why they should care about it. So says John Battelle, founder and CEO, of premium ad network Federated Media. According to Battelle, people experiment with the micro-blogging service, then stop, then pick up where they left off several months later. Why? It often takes a friend “thanking” or mentioning them on Twitter, at which something clicks in the reptilian part of their brains, which says: “I want to connect.”
  • Microsoft Moving Foward
    Not surprisingly, Darren Huston, corporate vice president of consumer and online products at Microsoft, thinks his company is better positioned than most to take advantage of opportunities going forward. “We’re in a pretty unique position,” he said alluding to Microsoft’s investments in software, advertising, and, most recently, search. More than mere platitudes, Huston stressed the idea that media and marketing is now a two way street. “It’s a really, really, really big deal,” he said. Really.
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