Kindle Adopt Advertising to Drop Price

Posted on April 11, 2011 by adriangstewart

I have nothing but admiration for Amazon and their management of the Kindle. Today saw the entry level price fall to a mouthwatering $114. The Catch: Customers to view ads in exchange for getting the lower price.

The latest Kindle called Kindle With Special Offers, costs $25 less than the current lowest-priced model and it will be available May 3 at Best Buy in addition to Amazon.com.

Under the stewardship of CEO Jeff Bezos, Kindle has become Amazon’s most popular product (and the one with most 5 star ratings) and should bring in $5.42 billion in revenue in 2011, according to Caris & Co.

Who is taking up the offer to advertise on Kindle?

General Motors will be promoting the Buick, P&G will push Olay skin products and Visa want to tempt you too.  Amazon will put its own promotions on the Kindle offering readers a $10 gift card for $20 worth of merchandise on its site.

Discrete Screen-Saver Ads

Ads will appear as a screen saver when the Kindle is idle. They will also be seen as a banner on the bottom of the screen on a user’s home page.

Amazon are trying to position these ads as being more like Groupon offers hence the name Kindle With Special Offers.

For me, brought up on strict diet of Ad free BBC and more recently Pandora Radio I would willingly pay not to have the advertising interupt me when I am reading.

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The Future of Advertising

Posted on April 8, 2011 by adriangstewart

Written by the Centre for Future Studies, the report predicts an advertising revolution taking place over the next 12 months. The CfFS report – commissioned by 3MGTG, a company specializing in digital advertising – preicts advertisements that adapt to our moods.

Named ‘Gladverts’ by the report’s authors. CfFFS envision a world where emotion recognition software (ERS) can tell if you are happy or if you are sad and then serve up an advertisement based on how you are feeling. NEC has  developed a system which can identify a person’s gender, estimate their age, and then serve up advertisements that would be most appropriate…well thats the theory at least. This targeted advertising may go a step further by combining your mood with information such as age, sex and interests,  powered by social networking profiles.

So whats the stae of play at the moment.

  • In Tokyo, an advertisement designed by NEC can work out your gender and make a guess at your age before serving an advert designed specifically for your demographic.
  • Cisco is working on technology that takes your image in store and lets you browse a store by virtually “trying on” clothes.
  • Levi’s are experimenting with ‘Facebook Connect’ – inviting customers to share personal information in return for a personalised shopping experience.
  • QR-Codes have become a popular system to enable people with smart phones to scan a part of a poster and receive extras – such as a voucher -immediately to their mobile.

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AOL Project Devil – how good is it?

Posted on April 7, 2011 by adriangstewart

AOL has started rolling out its Project Devil. This new ad format improves the aesthetic quality and interactivity of advertising in ways that really do enhance the consumer experience. Project Devil offers a large creative canvas, divided into three panels, this allows advertisers to customize their content and functionality.

Each of the three panels includes media streams and applications such as video, slideshows, mapping, 3-D rotation, quizzes, polls, text messaging and more. Each ad is fully interactive, eliminating the need for consumers to navigate away from the page.

So just how good is it? ComScore conducted research with1,500 participants and here are the key findings;

  • Respondents spend an average of 18 per cent more time on a page when a Devil ad is present versus a standard 300×250 ad;
  • 65 per cent of respondents rated Devil ads as easier to understand;
  • 63 per cent said they felt better about the brand after viewing the ad;
  • 68 per cent said the ad made them want to buy the brand;
  • 58 per cent said the ad made the overall web page better.

Visit the Project Devil gallery to see how brands are using the new format to life. Personally, I quite liked the Lexus ad.

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Should Twitter Drive Your Investment Portfolio?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by adriangstewart

Before getting into the main topic its worth reminding ourselves what happened in Q1 of 2011. The first quarter of 2011 has been a strong one for stocks which is something of a conundrum to my way of thinking. I mean on the downside there was trouble in the Middle East and Africa; earthquake, tsunami and atomic problems in Japan; oil prices driving inflation; house prices weak and no agreement on the US federal budget…..on the upside unemployment appeared to be falling.

Okay so where does Twitter come into this?  A recent study conducted byPhD student Timm Sprenger at the Technical University of Munich found that investors following stock market tweets could have achieved an average return rate of 15%.

Timm analysed 250,000 tweets sent over a six-month period. He discovered “a striking co-ordination” between what Twitter was saying about shares and other information from investors and analysts.

“I don’t think it is the Holy Grail to make millions but it is a very credible and legitimate source,” he said.

Timm also found that more valuable information was retweeted, meaning that it reached an even wider audience. Timms PhD researchformed the basis of the website TweetTrader.net where the real-time sentiment for individual stocks can be accessed. The site is currently in beta.

During  federal elections in Germany last year. Using Twitter, Timm was able to predict the final results to within 2% for each political party.  “We got as close as the research institutions that spent hundreds of thousands of Euros,” Timm said.

Maybe I will start following some financial Tweeters and pay more attention to what is being Tweeted…

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Navigating the Facebook Advertising System

Posted on April 5, 2011 by adriangstewart

Back in the good old days when Google announced AdWords and companies started advertising on search engines the marketing effort was focused very much on Intent. If I searched for Volkswagen on Google then serving up ads in the results for car dealerships and car insurance companies was a very cool idea at the time. It was relatively inexpensive and it allowed for rapid testing of alternative ads initially as a simple comparison but then using multi variate analysis to test a number of features.

Now as companies start to advertise on Facebook they are following Interest rather than buying Intent and there is an opportunity to offer highly selected groups variations of advertisements and optimize or fine tune what works over time. And big companies are taking to Facebook advertising at quite a pace. In February of 2011 more than one third of all online display advertising in the USA appeared in Facebook.  Now just to be clear this is one third of all online display advertising, more traditional advertising on TV and in print is expensive to produce and place so still accounts for the lions share of big company advertising dollars.

In order to accelerate the use of Facebook for adverting a number of specialist agencies have emerged to hold corporate hands and guide the powers that be into this new realm.  Names such as Blinq Media, Kenshoo and Webtrends are leading the way and making it possible for larger less nimble players to enter this space with effective campaigns.

Facebook like these new agencies as they attract new customers and can manage large complex campaigns on behalf of their clients and add value through the use of metrics that measure performance.

Who is talking about their Facebook results? Well Buffalo Wild Wings claim that they were able to triple the effectiveness of their social campaign by working with Blinq who were brought in by 22squared the agency that handles most Buffalo Wild Wings digital and social strategy.

Groupon Inc have been using the services of AdParlor to greatly increase the volume of ads that they can pump out at highly focussed niches such as 27 year old woman who enjoy yoga in southern California.

Facebook certainly has something to offer and you probably wont be able to discover what the full potential is for your organisation without the advice and guidance of a specialist agency.

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888 Gigabyte iPad2 !!

Posted on April 4, 2011 by adriangstewart

Paper replicas of Apple’s iPad 2 have sold out in Malaysia during a ceremony to honour the dead. During the Qing Ming Festival, Chinese communities pay tribute to their ancestors by burning fake money and symbols of luxury items. These normally include such items as designer bags and plasma televisions, however  iPhones and iPads are also proving popular. One shop owner said he had shipped in 300 iPad 2 replica sets from China, which he sold for a dollar each. The paper iPads were marked as having 888 gigabyte capacity because this is an auspicious number in Chinese culture.

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April Fools Day in the World of Advertising

Posted on April 1, 2011 by adriangstewart

Increasingly today has become a day for brands to show off their confidence by running and ad or other campaign that demonstrates creativity and a sense of humour…of course.

Here are some of my 2011 favourites. BMW have been doing this for years and years and are past masters. This year they have gone for a Royal Theme and announced a special edition BMW to mark the occasion of the royal wedding. The BMW M3 Royal Edition.

A free London daily newspaper called the Metro which is a favourite with commuters on The Tube claimed to have published the first edible newspaper…I can’t see this prank working in the USA as someone would surely try and eat it and the liability issues don’t bear thinking about. I wonder if anyone did eat the Metro?

The coffee chain Caffe Nero claimed to have created the first scratch and sniff iPad applicationand offered readers of their iPad content a variety of coffee beans that they could “smell”.  Nice I like this one.

Bulldog a brand of natural groooming products for men claimed to have launched a lipstick suitable for the metro-sexual man…..

And last but not least Marmite that favourite of Australians claimed to have teamed up with Vaseline to offer Marmite flavoured lip care. Now who would have ever imagined an opportunity for Marmite and Vaseline to work together on a joint campaign?

I think this last item is my favourite. and the reason is it brings two well known brands together in a humorous context. Its memorable and I believe it is more likely to be shared among friends and family than some of the other ideas. But thats just my opinion whats yours?

Maybe the opportunity here is to start the annual April Fools Day Advertising Awards and encourage this anual day of creativity……

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+1

Posted on March 31, 2011 by adriangstewart

When we are confronted by a large array of alternatives we often rely on friends and family to help us make a choice. Now Google gives you that capability… a bit like Pre-Crime in the movie Minority Report with +1 from Google you get to tell your friends what you like before they even know they are going to ask your advice…how cool is that!  Okay its not quite that smart but you get the idea.

Googles new social button, is akin to Facebook’s “like”, enabling users to recommend its search results to friends. The new social button, called “+1”, appears next to search results and next to advertisements on Google, AdWords is unaffected.

+1 click can be shared with your friends on their Google Account and as a result any links recommended by friends will appear higher in search results. If your Google search results start to look a little weird then maybe you don’t know your friends quite as well as you thought you did!

The anonymous data from +1 clicks will be blended with public data, which Google will use to help calculate page relevance and ranking. The +1 button will launch across English searches on Google.com and will roll out across more languages in the future.

Google says it will also expand the use of +1 for websites to integrate the button on their own pages as well as in search results.

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Tesla – Noooooo

Posted on March 30, 2011 by adriangstewart

Well after my post yesterday on the underwhelming contribution of Tesla cars to the issue of climate change I didn’t imagine that I would be writing about Tesla again today. But I am….

Back in 2008 ‘Top Gear’ broadcast a race between the petrol-powered Lotus Elise S and the electric Tesla Roadster. During the test Jeremy Clarkson said the Tesla ran out of power after 55 miles, compared to the 211 miles claimed by the Tesla.

Top Gear Test

Now anybody who watches Top Gear knows two things; the presenters do not like electric vehicles in general often reffering to them as “milk floats” – (some UK cities have used lumbering electric powered  vehicles to deliver the daily pint of milk). And secondly  not everything Top Gear say or do is strictly true and exaggeration is their stock in trade.

Electric Milk Float

At the time Tesla complained to the BBC but then let matters rest – until yesteday when they filed a writ in the High Court London against the BBC claiming;

Top Gear had intentionally and/or recklessly, grossly misled potential purchasers of the Roadsters… Its reputation has been severely damaged………

Quite what Tesla is seeking is unclear but I think their legal action is a blunder – the facts are that anyone thinking of buying a Tesla takes the Top gear story with a pinch of salt. Not being able to take this type of joke from a programme that majors on entertainment rather than information will make Tesla look weak in the eyes of potential purchasers.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out….once again Jeremy and his colleagues at Top Gear can bask in the free publicity and controversy they enjoy so much…….

Its a battle you cannot win Tesla……..now lets see how many more thousands watch the Top Gear video of that infamous “race”……

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Tesla hits Ten Million

Posted on March 29, 2011 by adriangstewart

It sounded very impressive yesterday when I read that the cumulative distance driven by all the Tesla cars in the world have reached 10 million miles (16 million kilometers). However, I couldn’t help reaching for my calculator and cranking out a few numbers and although I hate to use averages the lack of more detailed data gave me little choice. So on the basis my head is in the oven and my feet are in the fridge so on average I feel great….I will continue with all the scientific rigor of a Top Gear presenter!

Ten million miles divided by 1,500 cars is 6,666 miles per car. The first car was delivered to the Founder Elon Musk in Feb 2008 and between then and July 2009 another 500 were delivered to customers. Thats 500 in the first 17 months and about 1000 in the following 10 months (July 2009 – March 2011).  On average a Tesla is about 15 months old.  That gives us a monthly drive of about 444 miles or about 15 miles every day on average or given its range per charge of 244 miles – one careful trip to Las Vegas and back. Some drivers are probably driving further and some less. I know of at least one Tesla that was parked up so long in a its LA garage that rats ate the wiring harness.

I just can’t help wonder how valuable Teslas contribution to our environment really is?

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