Adotas breaks down the search space for you. Basically Microsoft’s new Bing search is growing by leaps and bounds. Google continues to grow but at a decelerating rate. As for Yahoo, it’s still bad news, search volume is down 2% from 2008.
Newsweek has an interview with Jeff Bezos that covers how Amazon decides which markets to enter and the future of the Kindle among other things.
“It is [our] No. 1 bestselling product. It’s the No. 1 most-wished-for product as measured by people putting it on their wish list. It’s the No. 1 most-gifted item on Amazon. And I’m not just talking in electronics—that’s true across all product categories.”
AdWeek has an interesting article about American Apparel buying up YouTube longtail videos and matching ads against them. While not exactly a revolutionary idea it’s always great to hear about medium-size brands who understand online and use it to its fullest.
Best Buy is not standing down after inciting the “War on Christmas” crowd by wishing Muslims a “Happy Eid al-Adha” as pictured in the ad above.
The American Family Association, your favoritie anti-Semeitic, homophobic Christian advocacy group, has singled out the retailer for banning the use of “Merry Christmas” in advertising in the past.
Best Buy contends that they have and will continue to use the message “Merry Christmas” in their advertising.
George Packer in the New Yorker has written his take on the appeal of everyone’s favorite advertising soap opera, Mad Men. The attraction, Packer says, is in looking at our own society, not that long ago, with a completely different moral code. Things forbidden then, e.g. homosexuality and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, we are open about now, while they get to smoke inside, drink to excess and sleep with their secretaries.
Middle class American men were, in Packer’s words, little kings. And in Mad Men we get to watch these little kings at the end of their reign.
So this ridiculous Cocoa Krispies Box implies that eating sugary cereal will protect your kids from H1N1 aka Swine Flu. Obviously this is a dubious claim but the fact is, of course, that H1N1, while scary, is a only a minor threat to the well-being of America’s youths.
This fact did not deter USA Today from publishing an article resulting in Kellogg’s removing the claim from their box. Perhaps a compelling argument for self-regulation?
I’m reminded of this cartoon by xkcd which serves as proof that marketers will always find a way to irritate me via cereal boxes.
Check out this humorous and interesting talk about perceived value and its growing importance in the future.
Wired Mag editor Chris Anderson was at the Mixx Conference during Advertising Week where encouraged publishers to embrace the freemium model (and buy his book on the topic).
Advertising Age has a 3 minute video summary of his talk.
The Wall Street Journal’s new mobile app pricing plan asks users to pay a hefty $2 per week fee for the privilege of reading the “paper” on their iPhone or Blackberry. Subscribers to either the online or print editions of the paper pay $1 per week and subscribers to both get the app for free.
Conventional wisdom, if there can be said to be any, in the still-new mobile news market is that you slash your readership by a factor of 10 or more when you charge for mobile content. There are simply too many free options and readers are accustomed to getting their news online for free.
It seems that Murdoch’s goal with this strategy is not to make money from the app but create added value for subscribing to the print and online editions. It’s an interesting approach and consistent with his assertion that news has a real, and very high value.
MDC Partners, the same holding company that owns Crispin Porter & Bogusky, has invested in social media agency Attention. On the company’s blog, founder Curtis Hougland said they chose to partner with MDC over other potential investors because the company “gets it.”
As vague and cliche as that sounds, there’s some truth in the statement. In Hougland’s words,
“we are at an inflection point in social media, the shift from early adopter to early majority, a horizontal skill set requiring more and more vertical market expertise”
True that, Curt. More and more entrepreneurs will be starting these types companies and investors will be hungry to snap them up. It won’t be that long until kids who grew up with social media their entire lives are helming social media marketing agencies.
Agency Layoffs