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Sky TV May Pump Ads Straight Into Your Skull

July 19, 2013 / Klint Finley

The Verge reports:

Sky Deutschland, the German wing of TV provider Sky, is testing a marketing concept that may be pure evil genius, or possibly just pure evil. The BBC and others report that Sky Deutschland and advertising company BBDO have tested a concept that would pipe messages directly into the heads of people who try to rest or sleep against train windows. The idea, which was first unveiled at the advertising-focused Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in late June, is known as the Talking Window. It uses bone conduction like that found in headphones, hearing aids, and Google Glass to send vibrations through a window.

When a commuter leans against the window, he or she will hear a message that nobody else can, asking if they’re bored and want to download Sky’s mobile app.

Full Story: The Verge: Sky Deutschland campaign will pipe ads straight into train passengers’ skulls

(Thanks Skry)

Sky TV used to be co-owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, but it looks like they sold their share earlier this year.

For more on this technology see: New Hearing Aid Uses Your Tooth To Transmit Sound

Ad Blocking Tool Ghostery Sends Data To The Ad Industry

June 17, 2013 / Klint Finley

Count me amongst the users of Ghostery who didn’t know it was owned and supported by the ad industry:

Whenever discussion starts about how to hide from the tracking code that follows users around the Web to serve them targeted ads, recommendations soon pile up for a browser add-on called Ghostery. It blocks tracking code, noticeably speeds up how quickly pages load as a result, and has roughly 19 million users. Yet few of those who advocate Ghostery as a way to escape the clutches of the online ad industry realize that the company behind it, Evidon, is in fact part of that selfsame industry.

Evidon helps companies that want to improve their use of tracking code by selling them data collected from the eight million Ghostery users that have enabled a data-sharing feature in the tool.

Full Story: MIT Technology Review: A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry

(via Paleofuture)

From Greenwashing To Workerwashing

December 14, 2012 / Klint Finley

David Sirota writes:

Big Industrial Ag pretends to go organic. PC behemoths mimic Apple products. Barack Obama goes to the right of the Republicans on civil liberties. Mitt Romney suddenly portrays himself as a left-leaning moderate on immigration. It seems no matter the arena, the most cliched move in corporate and political combat is to co-opt an opponent’s message, expecting nobody to notice or care.

But as inured as we are to this banality, it’s still shocking to see Corporate America transform the message of organized labor into a sales pitch for … Corporate America. Yes, according to The New York Times last month, that’s what’s happening, as new ads are “tapping into a sense of frustration among workers to sell products.”

One spot for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (read: the casinos) shows a woman climbing onto her desk to demand a vacation. Another for McDonald’s implores us to fight back against employers and “overthrow the working lunch.” Still another for a Coca-Cola subsidiary seizes on the stress of harsh working conditions to create buzz for a branded “Take the Year Off” contest.

Full Story: Tahoe Daily Tribune: Sirota: From greenwashing to workerwashing

Brand Fanaticism Lights Up Same Part of the Brain as Religion

May 31, 2011 / Klint Finley

Glycon

Curt Hopkins compares the discovery that a company’s logo lights up the same brain regions in fans of that company that religious iconographic lights up in followers of the religion.

Anyway, the public (well, at least the free, male, moneyed public) that took such a hands-on role in shaping the policy of the Republic was displaced by an Imperial government that consolidated power in one man, whose will was carried out by a bureaucracy. When that happened, the formerly most influential elements of the society turned away from public life to “mystery religions”: Mithraism, the worship of Isis and of course Christianity.

In the same way, it feels that we’ve lost something in turn. I’m not sure what it is – religious faith, political will, tribal affiliation? – but I can feel it. With the loss of that thing, people have turned to brands, particularly to tech brands, with their promise of connection, amplification, justification, belonging. The promise of salvation and relevance.

ReadWriteWeb: Thou Shalt Have No Other Jobs Before Me: Geek Fanatacism Lights Up Same Part of the Brain as Religion

Also check out what Douglas Rushkoff has to say about the future of branding in social media.

LA Times adding paid links to certain content

April 28, 2010 / Klint Finley

LA Times

The Los Angeles Times will begin selling e-commerce links in selected stories and blog posts — but not in news stories or columns — as “both a reader service and a revenue opportunity for the company,” editor Russ Stanton announced to the newsroom in a memo this morning. The ads disguised as links will be marked in green, to distinguish them from editorial content links, and the articles where they appear will carry disclaimers.

LA Observed: LAT to add paid links to stories, blogs

(via Mediabistro)

No immediate revenue boost for Gizmodo from iPhone leak?

April 23, 2010 / Klint Finley

Leaked iPhone 4G

Nick Denton says that although the iPhone leak was “pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever,” he says “There were no immediate revenue benefits whatsoever.” Interesting.

Business Insider: Gawker Media’s Denton: I Lost Money On That Huge Gizmodo iPhone Scoop

(via Nieman Journalism Lab)

CNN Marries Content and Commercials to Retain Viewers

April 19, 2010 / Klint Finley

John King USA

Soon you’ll be able to watch a tiny screen with these people silently dicking around while being bombarded with a commercial for crap you don’t want. Or you can just keep skipping the commercials with your DVR.

Act of desperation or brilliant new strategy? Me, I can’t imagine this helping.

TV viewers by now are accustomed to seeing product placement in their favorite shows. But how will they react upon seeing “program placement” in their commercials?

On John King’s new early-evening news show on CNN, every commercial runs with a small window at the bottom of the screen offering a live view of the show’s set. That’s right — the show, “John King, USA,” in a sense continues into the commercials, with viewers able to see activity between producers and talent as well as a broader graphic offering news and tidbits from around the nation.

Adage: CNN Marries Content and Commercials to Retain Viewers

(via Nieman Journalism Lab)

Woman Sues Toyota Over ‘Terrifying’ Prank

October 16, 2009 / Klint Finley

In a lawsuit filed Sept. 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Amber Duick claims she had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work during March and April of last year after she received e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew her and where she lived, and was coming to her home to hide from the police. […]

It turns out the prank was actually part of a marketing effort executed by the Los Angeles division of global marketing agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which created the campaign to promote the Toyota Matrix, a new model launched in 2008. […]

Her attorney, Nick Tepper, said the Matrix campaign was similar to “Punk’d” a former MTV show starring Ashton Kutcher that featured celebrities being set up by their friends for elaborate pranks. Toyota’s marketers used the Internet to find people who wanted to set up friends to be “punked,” and Duick was set up by a friend of hers, he said.

Apparently it has something to do with this:

Saatchi & Saatchi’s lawyers are claiming she “opted-in” to the campaign with written consent. Her lawyer claims that “written consent” consisted agreeing to the fine print of an online personality test she took.

ABC News: Woman Sues Toyota Over ‘Terrifying’ Prank

Red and Blue Brain States

February 6, 2009 / Bill Whitcomb

It’s long been known that color has powerful effects. Red light measurably raises metabolism and increases grip strength. Blue calms and cools. In advertising, blue corporate logos are generally used to convey stability and trustworthiness, while red is used to convey energy and power.

A new study from the University of British Columbia now finds that blue promotes creativity and red aids attention to detail.

To test alternative explanations for the findings, Zhu’s team showed that neither red nor blue influenced mood. Test subjects also spent the same amount of time on their tasks, suggesting that neither color affected their motivation.

The colors appeared to enhance performance, but not to impair it. Red- and white-primed students had similar creativity scores, while blue- and white-primed students were equal on attention tasks.

Asked about the implications, Zhu suggested that people engaged in creative tasks surround themselves with blue, and with red when trying to focus.

An article in Wired by Brandon Keim can be found here. The results are published in the current issue of Science: “Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances.” By Ravi Mehta and Juliet Zhu. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5915, Feb. 5, 2009.

New Ads Watch You Watching Them

January 31, 2009 / Bill Whitcomb

Increasingly, small cameras are being embedded in video screens in malls, health clubs, and grocery stores both to determine who is watching and to customize what is displayed to the audience.

Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly.

That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.

And even if the ads don’t shift based on which people are watching, the technology’s ability to determine the viewers’ demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they’re reaching their target audience.

While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.

The full article can be found here, but I was most interested by the links at the bottom of the article showing the players in this area:

Quividi: http://quividi.com

TruMedia Technologies: http://trumedia.co.il

Studio IMC: http://www.studioimc.com

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