• Weezer, Weezer Everywhere
    Why bother trying to win the viral ad video lottery with an effort that is most likely to gather a few thousand YouTube views when there are plenty of consistent viral winners available to be leveraged? That was one of Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback's points when I spoke to him last week on the topic of viral success. Jim tossed a firecracker into the hype-fest over viral ads that seems to have come out of the famous Old Spice Responses series over the summer. Jim actually isn't opposed to all attempts at viral success. "You can do it. It just …
  • Piling on the Brands: Spike Lee, John Legend, Roots. AMEX, VEVO Go Live on YouTube
    Just in case there wasn't enough brand recognition in pairing AMEX with John Legend, an upcoming performance streamed live on YouTube is a flash mob of celebrity. On September 23 John Legend and The Roots will perform at Terminal 5 In New York. The event will leverage YouTube's recently introduced live streaming platform and is part of an American Express/YouTube/VEVO project to run five such live events to feature both the artists and the potential of the platform. High profile directors are being enlisted in the effort, so no less a master than Spike Lee will oversee the live stream …
  • GlideTV Offers Bigfoot Web-to-TV Interface
    I have to admit that I am not among the digerati who plug their laptops or a dedicated PC into their home theater. First, if I put one more fan-operated, CPU-driven device around my HDTV, I am certain to hit a kind of critical mass. Something is sure to catch fire. Second, I just never liked the idea. Call me a PC bigot or just a wishful thinker, but I always felt that hooking up a full-bore PC to my TV somehow was one geeky move too far. I was looking for the more elegant solution to getting digital video …
  • Is That Netflix in Your Pocket?
    Or are you just happy to have your on demand film library available anywhere, anytime? When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 in the early summer, he shared the coveted on-stage-with-Steve spot with top executives from Netflix because the arrival of the movie rental store on the iPhone was long-awaited. More than any other media company, Netflix has successfully leveraged what I call the 'post-desktop' Internet. Not only does it give subscribers access to their streaming media film collection on all major game consoles and select streaming boxes and disc player, but the company has used these …
  • Metacafe Suits Up for Sports with Go221.com Acquisition
    Metacafe's transformation into an entertainment video hub advances to its next stage with the company's acquisition of Action Sports, Inc. the owner of sports video destination Go221.com. Metacafe already aggregates and curates video content on the major mainstream sports at its Sport channel. This buy adds to the inventory more extreme pursuits like skateboarding, snowboarding and about ten others things my chiropractor tells me to avoid.
  • It's About the Work: OMMA Finalists in Review
    The low barriers to entry and infinite space of digital platforms leave just about every media maven with a simple quandary; how do you keep track of the good creative out there? Clients of digital agencies famously ask, where can I see my ad? But given the targeting technologies at work in serving digital display this can be harder problem to solve than one would think. Awards are one relatively random way of getting exposed to creative that you don't happen upon in your everyday browsing. This week MediaPost announced the finalists for its upcoming OMMA Awards. We have …
  • Putting Local Business on 'HappyFace' (Or Whatever You Call It) One Clueless Florist At A Time
    Someday I am going to do a deep search of my own past columns and reporting just to gather all of the local online advertising stories I have written in the past 15 years of covering digital. Cracking that mom and pop shop ad budget has been as prized and as elusive to digital markets as the proverbial Holy Grail. Over the years I have seen outlandish scheme after outlandish scheme designed to educate the small service business sector that online was the way to go. One directory start-up I recall years ago tried to recruit anyone and everyone just …
  • Repurposing Online Video Banners for TV
    Repurposing is the perennial scourge of online video advertisers. Sure the overwhelming majority of pre-rolls just slap onto clips a reiteration of a TV ad most viewers likely have already seen scores of times before. And, sure, there is something to be said for echoing TV campaigns online for that surround-sound, in-your-head, coming-out-your-ears campaign strategy. But most marketers continue to wish for more custom creative that leverages the unique screen, timing and use cases of online video. But from San Francisco-based agency Crossover Creative we see the usual TV-to-Web polarity reversed in a series of video banners that moved from …
  • Hey Lady! Time for Jerry's Schmaltz-Fest Weekend
    There is an old adage among Catholics (especially fully lapsed ones like me): "once a Catholic, always a Catholic." As far away as you may wander from the One True Church, wayward souls like myself will always find themselves bowing and greeting passing nuns with special respect, crossing themselves at altars, and balking at calling priests by their first names. The same holds true of being a childhood acolyte of Jerry Lewis.
  • Apple TV Goes To The Cloud: Works for Me
    I am not even an Apple fanboy and I have been a relentless defender of Apple TV. Other than the fact that it gives off a ridiculous amount of heat (no, I mean really hot), I have thoroughly enjoyed having that white slab attached to my home theater since it launched. In the years I have lived with it, Apple TV pretty much convinced me that connected devices posed a significant threat to traditional broadcast and cable TV. It ate about a quarter of my daily TV habits. On most evenings I will tend to spend at least an hour …
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