• Jamba Juice Whips Up New Flavor: Fake-vertising
    Cheeseburgers are one of the great guilty pleasures in America. Like cheese fries and deep fried mozzarella sticks, they remind all of us that there just isn't any fatty food that couldn't do with a little more, well fat. And so it was just a matter of time before a major beverage brand came up with a cheeseburger flavored thirst-quencher. And if there is any brand that knows how to blend the texture of a fiber-free hamburger bun with the sharp edge of Wisconsin cheddar and the rich, juicy aroma and flavor of char-broiled beef in into a sensational smoothie …
  • Web-Enabled TV A Bigger Draw than 3-D
    The TV industry has gotten behind 3-D in a big way this year. The electronics trade shows are brimming with high priced sets and goofy goggles. And in an otherwise dismal year for b2b press, my offhand conversations with trade publishers in the CE world suggests that the hardware manufacturers are pumping huge promotional budgets into 3-D. Their hope is that the promise of next gen technology will spark interest in the category and kickstart them out of the recession.
  • Kia "Who's Next?" Campaign Brings Class-Clownery to Scale
    Being a YouTube star is a dubious honor best left to the madcap exhibitionists who seem to go viral with irritating antics. Call it class-clownery brought to massive scale. Obnoxious and untalented as this ragtag faux celebrity tribe may be, there seems to be no shortage of aspirants. Kia makes a smart play to capture that vibe with the new "Who's Next?" contest at YouTube. They have enlisted amateur talents ShayCarl, Lisa Nova and the duo SMOSH to front a promotion and contest on behalf of the Kia Soul. Following the "New Way to Roll" tagline, the program asks …
  • 'We're Not Car Salesmen': Justin Timberlake Drinks the Brandertainment Tequila-Ade
    Justin Timberlake thinks the customers for 901 Tequila are "smart," too smart to be sold to in the obvious ways. "We're not car salesmen" he explains in a video about the videos he directed for the 901 Tequila brand at 901Stories.com. Apparently Timberlake is also the CEO of the "ultra-premium" tequila brand, so he is vested in this project on a few levels.
  • Excelsior!: Stan Lee the Indomitable
    At last week's Comic-Con every sci-fi, superhero and action film and TV project was trotted out to the core fanboys in what is now an annual Sundance Festival for geeks. Arguably, the grand gray father of all comic superhero worship is Stan Lee, and bless his heart the man is proving as relentless as one of his own super-villains. Thankfully, Lee is much more likeable than Dr. Doom. But man this guy has given birth to more digital comics projects than Star Trek has had spin-offs.
  • Nerd Rappers Drive Dentyne Brandertainment and Make You the Lothario
    At this week's OMMA Ad Nets and OMMA Behavioral shows just about everyone was buzzing admiringly over last week's landmark Old Spice Twitter + Video campaign. And yet while Weiden + Kennedy was setting a new high bar for online video innovation there were still successes in the garden variety branded entertainment category. Hot on the heels of the popular Man on a Horse campaign was a nerdish rap from comedy duo Rhett * Link on behalf of Dentyne. The gum manufacturer is launching a new breath-cleansing product and they enlisted this North Carolina duo to wrap a rap around …
  • The Video Revolution May Be Tablet-ized
    Is the iPad and similar tablets the platform that Web video has been waiting for? According to a new study of it video usage on its own site MeFeedia discovered that the average viewing time for a video on the iPad is five minutes. According to Business Insider's Jay Yarrow in his reporting on the stats, iPad users are spending twice as long with video than do Desktop viewers. In fact, MeFeedia's number suggest that users of any mobile access point, from Symbian to Android and iPhone have longer hang times with a video than the PC. The iPad, …
  • Xumanii Brings Live Concerts Big And Small To The Social Net
    Video creation and distribution site Xumanii launched earlier this week, promising to bring together live media production, marketing, social networking and monetization in a single package for all level of brands. The new project is claiming to combine the attributes of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Ustream. Xumanii (they say it is pronounced "zoo-mon-ee") sees this as a play for both personal branding and entertainment. Live concerts, fashion shows, plays, as well as video blogs can be posted for live and on demand streaming. Clearly they have their eyes set on attracting bigger brands, however.
  • Vid Nets Poised for Growth ... And Monstrous Complexity
    At Monday's OMMA Ad Nets show in LA the buzzword was "complexity." Those of you in the video ad ecology should feel lucky ... for now. You don' yet have to deal with a display ad network supply chain that just about every honest person in it admits is too damned intricate, interdependent and confusing. From DSPs (demand side platforms) to RTB (real-time bidding) the alphabet soup of ad technologies is stultifying. In just the last two years the number of data and service providers inserting themselves into the targeting process has multiplied.
  • Did the World Cup Score for Web Video?
    Late last week Akamai announced that World Cup Soccer helped drive substantial amounts of Web access and especially video viewing across its massive content distribution network. While not the only CDN in the field, Akamai is the largest and it serves some of the biggest news and sports providers worldwide. Its 24 broadcast clients in 65 countries include ESPN, Televisa, and Prisacom. The company said that at peak usage it was serving 1.6 million concurrent streams.
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