The biggest story of the day is, of course,
Yahoo! Platinum. The gist of it is that this $9.95/month service will offer subscribers streaming content from CBS’
SURVIVOR INSIDER, Fox’s “American Idol,” ABC News, CBS MarketWatch, The Weather Channel, “NASCAR Races to Go,” “NASCAR Race Day Audio,” and “Best of NASCAR” audio and video, as well as live video
coverage of two games from the first two days of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.
The reality is that this is the latest move in Yahoo’s valiant quest to be less dependent on
online advertising, following launches of subscription versions of email, personals and other services, and still less than 3 million of Yahoo's 215 million users are pulling out their wallets every
month to pay for anything on the network (and that’s including its SBC DSL service users.) That’s the whole story, folks. I’ll let the fortunetellers take it from here.
The more interesting story,
at least in my humble opinion, is SF Interactive’s launch of the Ad Cube. The agency today announced a proprietary “Ad Cube” (Ad3) platform – a large-format online ad that works like a microsite,
housing up to 50 megabytes of video, sound, 3D and Flash animation, and text-based documents and content. It also offers a point & click user interface that with the help of third party ad server
BlueStreak measures user interaction -- not click-throughs -- to gauge success.
Predictably, the unit works best with a broadband connection, but it does conform to current IAB standards and has a
footprint of only 25KB.
So far, SFI’s clients seem happy with the new format. Verisign liked it so much they’re planning to enhance their initial Ad Cube with a downloadable white paper and an
interactive FAQ next time around. Cisco and Quantum are also currently test-driving the format.
Bottom line? Thinking outside the box may be trendy,
but making the existing box work like this is exactly what this industry needs. Here’s to true innovation.