Here's An Idea: Let's Insult and Offend the Consumer by Steve Smith

In its years-long effort to fight music piracy, have record labels ever made a good move with consumers? Courtesy of Peter Kafka at All Things D, we came upon what has to be the least effective tactic yet. This is the kind of bone-headed marketing approach that seems designed to make you feel good about whatever failings your own your strategy may suffer. It goes wrong on so many levels. ...Read the whole story

  • Game Over: Consoles Now Rival VCRs As Alternate TV Viewing Channel by Joe Mandese

    TV may be going everywhere - from hand-held mobile to streaming Internet services and devices - but one of the biggest alternate channels for television content is already in millions of American households: video game console devices such as Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PS3, and Nintendo's Wii. According to new research being released today by Knowledge Networks, one in five U.S. consumers already is using game systems to watch TV or movie content at least once a month. ...Read the whole story

Video Gets Specific: Vanderhook On Buying BBE by Steve Smith

As Mediapost's AdNets conference returns to New York on Nov. 2, it will mark about two years since we started this show to cover what was then the "400 ad networks cluttering the market," or so many said. Even then the conventional wisdom stated there would be a great and necessary consolidation of these many vertical, horizontal, platform-specific nets and the many targeting and data technologies mushrooming up around them. Well, here we are two years later, with hundreds of players still standing and little evidence that the market is going to consolidate soon. But this week did bring a ...More

  • What The Numbers Tell Us (And Don't Tell Us) About Search Marketing Campaigns In Q3 by Laurie Sullivan

    WebVisible released interesting statistics Thursday in its State of the Small Online Advertising report that suggests small businesses are ready to experiment with new media and have begun to better understand search marketing. The average small business search advertiser spent $2,373 in Q3 2010, up 6.4%, sequentially, and 43% compared with the year-ago quarter. ...More

  • The Metadata Dilemma: The Prequel by Ben Weinberger

    Imagine winning an eight-figure lottery only to find that your winnings are locked in a vault - and you must guess the combination. You have your eyes firmly fixed on the prize and on all the things you want to do with your newfound assets, but you must first rise to this seemingly insurmountable challenge. This is much the plight of content owners in the digital media business. This group possesses priceless assets in the form of huge libraries of movies and television shows dating back decades. These libraries are ever-expanding in size and content. ...More