Online media and advertising are constantly evolving. This is my conglomeration of online media, search engine marketing and other social media news that interests me, and hopefully you.

7.16.2007

Where are The Simpsons Tie-Ins?

I don't know about you, but at my local 7-11, The Simpsons are about as prevelant as a sober college student at 2 a.m. Maybe I'm just not being fair. Maybe everything is just sold out. And maybe, just maybe, this is sour grapes, because my 7-11 wasn't one of those picked to be turned into a Kwik-E-Mart, but still, shouldn't I at least be able to go buy a can of Buzz Soda or Krusty-O's brand cereal? (August edit: They finally have the Buzz Cola for $.99, but alas, no Cereal)

It might not be a right, but I sure did want to spend some of my cash on that stuff prior to seeing the movie this month.

Complaining aside, I'm still going to see the movie.

7.12.2007

7.11.2007

Funny Things at 7:45am

It's strange the things you notice in the shower when you're running late to the office.

For instance, this morning, I noticed that the circles on the logo for the Schick Intuition razor are very similar to the new DoubleClick logo. Don't you think?

Although it's entirely possible that I still need coffee. See for yourself and decide:


vs.


7.09.2007

Live Earth - The Great Idea that No One Watched

When I asked my pool of friends who had watched Live Earth this weekend, I got a couple responses:
"About 15 minutes of it."

"What's 'Live Earth'?"

"Eh, Looked boring."

"What was that about again? Al Gore?"
These people are 25-30 somethings, early adopters, contantly on the net, Tivo-addicted and politically-minded young advertising geeks. So it's not like they are plugged out from what's happening in today's culture, in advertising, or on the concert or major event scene. I don't really fault them at all. I think in the week leading up to Live Earth, I recall it being advertised zero times on television. That's not to say it wasn't advertised, I just don't recall it.

As far as online advertising, I seem to remember some blog posting about it, but mostly about the lack of advertising. I seem to recall the names of the advertisers more than the talent lineup though to be honest. Before watching the multicast concerts this weekend, I didn't have a clue who would be performing.

I honestly enjoyed most of what I saw. There were some major sound issues through most of the morning and early afternoon. Some caused by the performers themselves, and others were just straight technical difficulties. It was more apparent in the locations where the performers were dripping sweat that the vocal quality suffered the most.

So I visited the LiveEarth site today to see if there were any links, blog entries, widgets or any other cool stuff I could link my blog to and really didn't find anything, other than the MSN link to the videos. It is a very content-rich site but as far as user-engagement goes, the site is lacking. There was a lot to read, just nothing that made me actually want to read any of it. Because I already had an understanding of what Live Earth was trying to accomplish, I stayed to read and learn more, but the casual visitor might not stick around and dig through the site with the amount of vigor that I did. My suggestion? Introduce Earth 2.0 to Web 2.0 and get the people involved in the revolution.

If you do check out the site though (45 minutes and I just figured out where the blog was), find your carbon footprint. Mine was in the mid-400s. I really need to upgrade my van.

7.03.2007

Google launches Business Pages for Mobile Ads

Today Google announced that it would give Business Adwords advertisers free mobile mini-websites for their mobile ads. On the informational sites, the business can include items like business address, phone and fax numbers, contact email address, forms of payment accepted, services, hours of operation and other information. The setup is integrated into the Adwords mobile ads creation process and is free to any business who is an Adwords advertiser and who is running a mobile Adwords campaign. This service is particularly helpful to those businesses who are looking to mobile advertising as an extra revenue stream, but do not have the resources to develop websites coded especially for mobile devices.

One Number to Rule them All: Google Acquires Grand Central

As announced yesterday on the Official Google Blog, Google has acquired Grand Central, a company which, if you go to their website, you can't figure out what the heck they really do. Thank goodness the folks at Google are a little better with their communication skills (externally, obviously, after that Sicko fiasco). However, communication is what Grand Central Communications is all about. Currently Grand Central is in Beta, but with all of their cool features, it's a no-brainer that they were quickly snatched up. Not only do they have a ton of cool calling features (recording your calls on the fly and accessing it later, as well as letting people call you from a website), but you can consolidate all of your phones, inboxes, voicemail - everything into one phone number, accessible from everywhere. I know that as soon as I heard about this - I reserved a number. I don't even know if they are in my area. I don't even care. Whenever they are here, I'm ready to roll.