I have a great suggestion for Steven Spielberg. Rather than spend a hundred million dollars or so on your next cinematic extravaganza, why not generate some real ROI by recycling that old Night Gallery television episode you directed starring Joan Crawford? I mean, it’s already in the can taking up space. People haven’t seen it in years. Just think of all the money you would save! As ridiculous as this sounds, the idea of “repurposing” old content is currently being suggested as a viable solution for streaming video advertising. “Repurposing” by definition is creativity by and for accountants. As …

MODERATOR: Jeffrey Graham, director of client services, Dynamic Logic: According to Morgan Stanley, top advertisers are spending only about 1.5 percent of their marketing budgets online, even though the average person spends about 12 percent of their total media time on the Internet. Why is that? Why aren’t advertisers investing as much as they should online? Keith Gomes, account strategist, FastBridge, a division of Initiative Media: Primarily, I think it’s viewed as a DR medium, and advertisers aren’t seeing the kind of returns that a.) were promised or b.) they were expecting to see from their media dollars. …

For the Internet to be accepted as a true advertising force, media planners must have the same research tools that they have come to expect when planning television, radio, print, and any other medium. However, until recently, online media has not kept up with offline media in the area of competitive analysis reports. Competitive spending and activity reports have been a mainstay in a media planner’s arsenal. It allows them to see where the competition is advertising, what types of creative they are using, when the ads are running, and how many dollars are being spent. Plans can then …

Programming languages inspire lots of questions from non-programmers: ‘What’s the difference?’ ‘Why are there 20 different programming languages that run on 10 different platforms?” “Can’t these hi-tech guys come up with standards?” Each programming language has its own strengths and weaknesses, and creating a useful website or online application usually means using more than one. We’ll start with HTML—Hypertext Markup Language—because most websites are written in it. It’s an easily implemented and easily learned formatting tool for text and graphics on web pages. The language’s syntax is simply text wrapped in “less than” and “greater than” signs, like this: …

Flowcharts, diagrams that show step-by-step progression through a procedure or system, are an integral part of any advertising campaign. However, there are only a few sites that specialize in flowcharting media. Finding the flowcharting site that is best depends on one’s needs, but here is a selection of resources available online. MPlanner.com (part of the mediapost.com website that i?1?šcompanion of this magazine) is a fully functional flowcharting site that lets users plan in any medium, using as many scenarios and vehicles combinations as necessary, while continually tracking spending and flighting. Once the plan has been created, MPlanner allows for …

StreamingThe Killer App for Ads? by Adam Bernard, MediaPost Staff Writer From advertising to entertainment, streaming media is currently being used and experimented with in quite a lot of ways. A recent study conducted by Market Decisions Corp. showed that one in four companies defined as “large enterprise businesses in the United States” are currently using streaming media in their organizations in some way. The study also showed that streaming usage has doubled in the past 18 months. Statistics like that are bound to make streaming media companies optimistic. “I think streaming on the web is growing, and getting …

To clarify my intent right off the bat: I do hope to start a heated debate with this one. The topic is that X10 $80 wireless video camera “pop-under” ad you’ve probably noticed recently. The ad slips clandestinely onto a web surfer’s PC and remains unseen until the surfer closes down browser windows. Then the pop-under ad becomes visible, filling most of the screen. In several stories written recently on the topic, pop-under ads are described as “just one of many alternative ad forms that advertisers are experimenting with these days as they try to punch up the impact …

Sometimes the best and brightest fail. Sometimes the visionaries, like Icarus, drown in a sea of mediocrity, inertia, and resistance to change. Sometimes the good guys aren’t left standing in the final reel. The online advertising industry is on a precipice. The tools are in place for it to go either way: success, innovation, engagement, and creativity to a degree we’ve never seen in advertising before, or...Ginsu knives, X10 cameras, and Boxcar Willie recordings. I’ve seen this all before and believe me, the last time out...the dark force won. I’m speaking of the computer games industry. Remember Myst? …