Google launches Google Music

Google have today announced the launch of a new service targeted at music lovers. Google music will operate on Android handsets users in the US, but is expected to launch in the UK soon once negotiations with record labels have been concluded.

The service hosts all major labels so far except Warner Music with whom Google claim negotiations continue. Song costs are between 69c, 99c & $1.29, the same as on Apple's iTunes.

This is seen as a major play by Google in ensuring that its Android based mobile offering can effectively compete with Apple.

Google claim that the service will host more than 13m tracks from Universal, Sony Music and EMI as well as a thousand independent labels. Users are able to buy individual songs or entire albums from computer or Android device and they will instantly added to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere.

This comes in the same week that Apple has announced a new iTunes Match service, allowing consumers to download a copy of a song on one device and have it available on all their devices.

Both services have more to do with locking consumers into a particular operating system and device through a passion area – music – than it has with a desire to bring more music to the masses.

Social media and TV united with Zeebox

Following on from last weeks post about how social media and TV work together, we have spotted a new app launched last week that brilliantly brings the two together. It is available here http://zeebox.com/

Zeebox is a free app for laptop or iPad, for use while watching TV. It takes advantage of the dual screen phenomenon. This was recently brought to life by a YouGov survey which showed 76% of viewers used the internet, a games console or listened to the radio while watching television - up from 58% in the previous year. It also suggested 43% of British adults commented on or discussed TV shows they were watching using Twitter, Facebook or other websites.

Zeebox gives you information about the show you are watching, what is trending, and even the ability to switch over friends internet enabled TV.

More excitingly are the potential advantages for advertisers. We can foresee a use whereby a company which advertises during a show can be tagged, allowing viewers to click through to a website and purchase products in a simple click, cutting out the need to use search engines or type URL’s.

Anything that cuts the customer journey from exposure to order is to be applauded.

The ability to measure real consumer action is also fascinating. Following a company’s ad, product placement or mention, direct consumer click-throughs can be measured.

The app is new, so exact uses and functionality is still to be developed, but as a first step towards formalising the connection between social media and TV it certainly is an intriguing start.

Using Social Media to Capitalise on TV

Last week our Media Director Elliot Parkus wrote an article for MediaTel discussing his views on how best to harness the power of appointment to view TV shows with social media.

For those that missed it, the piece is available here;

http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2011/10/26/tv-is-alive-a-kicking-you-just-need-to-join-the-conversation/

Google announces YouTube Movies

The future of TV continues to collide with new media in interesting and innovative ways. Google has today started its UK YouTube film rental service by announcing a number of deals with film giants including Warner Bros, Universal, Lionsgate and Sony Pictures.

YouTube users in the UK can rent films with back catalogue titles available from £2.49 and new releases at £3.49

Similarly to the iTunes renal service, a user will have a 30-day period to watch it, and 48 hours once started to finish it. Google claim there will be over 1,000 films available from day one.

This continues the trend of screen convergence and self -scheduling that we have discussed a number of times in this blog, and envisage growing in its impact on traditional ‘linear’ TV viewing.

Sunday Service

The August national newspaper ABCs are now out, so we are now able to see where the ‘lost readers’ of the News of the World turned to for their news fix on a Sunday.

Firstly, the bad news. Whilst widely expected to be one of the main winners from the demise of the NOTW, and after having experienced a short term gain in July after the closure of the tabloid, the Mail on Sunday actually managed to lose circulation month on month. It lost 150,000 in August. The mid market paper does remain the biggest-selling Sunday title after the closure of Murdoch's tabloid, but average circulation for the title fell 7%month-on-month in August to 2,098,244.

Other Sunday tabloids fared better in August. The Daily Star Sunday, which saw a 130% increase in sales in July, increased sales further by 6% month-on-month to 744,981.

The People, which almost doubled sales in the wake of the News of the World closure, performed the strongest among the Sunday tabloids in August with an 11% rise to 892,033.

The Sunday Mirror remained the top-selling Sunday red-top, with a 6% increase in August to 1,900,460.

The Future of TV?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion regarding what the future of TV would look like. One possible answer seems to be taking the form of content from Facebook, paid for by Facebook credits.

The BBC has this week announced a video-on-demand app for Facebook that will allow users of the website to rent a limited number of Top Gear episodes. There will three episodes available at a cost of 15 Facebook Credits each (around£1). Once rented, episodes will be available to view for 48 hours.

The Top Gear episodes will only be made available for users in Europe, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This builds on activity last month where BBC Worldwide announced a similar deal with Facebook to allow fans to watch classic episodes of Doctor Who.

The BBC is not alone in using Facebook to distribute content. This week Miramax unveiled a movie streaming service through Facebook at a cost of 30 Facebook Credits (around £2) each. FA Cup sponsor Budweiser have also done a deal with non-league teams Ascot United and Wembley FC to stream the opening game of the FA Cup live.

1 + 1 = 3

At AdConnection, we have recently been running a number of campaigns for our clients where we have looked to use the ‘media multiplier’ effect to help our clients advertising spend work harder for them. Put simply, the media multiplier effect is the added benefit that is derived from including more than one media to an advertising plan.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. There have been numerous studies over the years, mainly carried out by trade bodies representing differing media channels, which prove that advertising recall is significantly increased by the use of multiple media.

It’s a bit like ordering a burger – on its own it’s good, but the addition of fries makes the meal!

What AdConnection have done recently is to use this knowledge around advertising recall and add in some insight regarding how consumers are now watching and crucially responding to advertising messages.

The latest Ofcom report into the communications market has shown that UK adults are now spending almost half of their waking hours consuming media. However, the tendency to consume some media simultaneously means that the actual time spent with media is less. For further proof of this just open up your laptop or smartphone and watch Twitter or Facebook when X Factor, Big Brother or a sporting event is on. This is multi-tasking in real time.

So consumers are online whilst watching TV. They listen to the radio whilst reading their favourite magazines. They are on their internet enabled smartphones whilst doing almost every and anything. How can we capitalise on this behaviour?

For a number of clients recently we have run TV advertising and online advertising (both Display and PPC) combined. This has had some dramatic effects, with CTRs being boosted by an average of 50%. In addition recently we have started including mobile activity, through our sister agency Fetch Media on out of home plans. This has had the effect of turning outdoor into a direct response media, and has dramatically increased calls and click-throughs to client websites from our outdoor advertising creative.

If you would like to know more about how we can make your advertising work harder through the addition of complementary media, or would simply like a burger and chips with us please get in contact.

Facebook Unveils New More Interactive Advertising Formats

Following on from our post below about Twitter’s moves to introduce advertising, Facebook have also been looking at their advertising model. We believe that Facebook’s route is closer to the correct answer in this area, being involving and encouraging a dialogue with consumers rather than just viewing them as passive receivers of information.

Facebook’s new sponsored story ad unit is called ‘Comment’, closely reflecting the interface users are familiar with from the main Facebook page. It will consist of a display ad that poses a question beneath and invites users to give their opinion or participate in a conversation. If users leave a comment, it can become visible to their friends as both a Sponsored Story and as a news feed story.

The Comment Ad is the result of Facebook’s “Ad Expo” last year, which invited advertising agencies to submit ideas for advertising designs to engage consumers in new, interactive ways.

Twitter Risks User Backlash With Advertising

Reports have started circulating that Twitter are considering adding 'promoted tweets' (thats advertising, to you and me) into user's tweet streams.

While this would answer one criticism leveled at the Twitter management (how do you monetise it?) it could adversely affect the user relationship and experience. Currently, a user only sees messages in their stream from users or companies they specifically choose to follow.

It seems a strangely old fashioned and intrusive way for a company to go about building an advertising platform in the new world of engagement and involvement. Many new media companies have used old fashioned advertising models when the opportunity was there to build something new. The VOD (Video on Demand) space is another example of this, where advertisers look to 'get in the way' of content a consumer really wants by shouting about themselves for 30 seconds.

We welcome the fact that Twitter are looking at ways for advertisers to reach their users, but simply believe there are better, less intrusive ways of doing it.

Microsoft Launch Interactive TV Ad platform

Microsoft have launched a new advertising platform for the Kinect called ‘NUads’, which it claims will transform TV advertising into an interactive experience by using the voice-and gesture-control of Kinect for the Xbox 360.

Ads placed on the Xbox will respond to various voice commands, such as “Xbox Tweet”, allowing the consumer the ability to share the brand information with friends and “Xbox More” to request additional information or money off coupons about a brand via email. "Xbox Near Me" will locate a retailer near you, and send a text message with the location.

Gesture control is also employed as a way of voting for preferences. By waving a hand, consumers can take part in real time voting for products or services.

Microsoft’s Mark Kroese, who heads up advertising for entertainment and devices at Microsoft said in a blog post prior to the launch today that Nuads will “change television as we know it – forever”.

That remains to be seen, but we do view this as a continuation of the trend for more involvement and interaction between advertisers and consumers.

The Museum of Me

Intel have launched a great personalised use of social media that is creating a lot of buzz and talkability for the company. A short video about the 'Museum of Me' project is below;

It works by taking your facebook information, including friends, pictures and locations and turning it into a personalised art exhibition. Apart from a few grumbles online regarding the random nature of the images being juxtaposed, this is fast gathering positive reaction and being shared at an amazing rate.

If you want to create your own museum, the link is here

Twitter and TV

We have observed in the past how 'muti-media tasking' - the practice of consumers surfing the internet on their laptops or mobiles whist watching TV - has become an increasingly important part of understanding how social media has become integrated within consumers lives.

Now twitter have posted the following video on their blog and YouTube to illustrate how TV has embraced twitter.

Snapple shows the way to do viral

Not only do we love this new viral by those clever people at Snapple, but the fact that there is over 100 hidden embedded in the video drives continued views and further engagement.

Interesting use of AR technology

Lynx brought angels down to earth last week in an augmented reality campaign for the Unilever owned brand.

Signs in Victoria railway station told travellers to look up to a giant video screen. On the screen, they saw an image of themselves plus the angels, who featured the online and TV commercials the brand was running. As this video shows, the reactions ranged from surprised to the, ahem, interesting.

US Trends – More people getting news from the Internet than newspapers

According to a study published by The Poynter Institute, in 2010 more people got their news from the Internet than from newspapers — and more advertising spend went to online media owners than to newspapers.

34% of respondents said they read news online within the past 24 hours (as opposed to 31% who favoured newspapers); and 41% said they get most of their news online, 10% more than those who said they got most of their news from a newspaper.

This trend was more pronounced within the younger 18-30 year old group 65% of whom said the Internet was their main news source.

The report showed that the web was the second most popular source of news - television news is still the number one source for the majority of people.

This is especially interesting given News International’s move to start charging for online content – a move that has been criticised by many for attempting to put the genie of free content back in the bottle.

Quora taps into the 'wisdom of crowds'

Quora is a recently launched social Q&A website that has been receiving more than its fair share of press lately.

It works on a straightforward idea; the user asks a question (either to the community or an individual) and you then wait for the answers. You can also follow questions, topics, or people and read all the updates related to them on your home page. It’s simple enough, but beyond that, some of Quora’s features are proving contentious.

One point of concern for example is the ability of users to edit others queries, potentially changing meanings and putting the whole notion of the ‘open source’ nature of the website into question.

In order to implement quality control on the answers people give, Quora employs a system of “upvoting” and “downvoting.” Upvoting a response displays it higher up in the queue of responses. With enough upvotes, an answer will appear first in the queue, implying that its content is of the highest quality because the community approved it.

We suggest that anyone interested in Quora signs up and give it a try. If you don’t like it, you’ll know right away. If you do like it, you can find yourself getting sucked into the site and jumping from question to question, checking out topics that you never even knew existed.

Catherine Becker, COO of AdConnection, attends the Westminster Media Parliamentary Forum at the House of Commons – Feb 2011

Catherine Becker, our COO, attended the Westminster Media Parliamentary Forum yesterday at the House of Commons, bringing together MPs with leaders in broadcast, media and regulatory bodies such as BARB and Clearcast to discuss and debate the up-coming changes in the Communication Bill. Nigel Evans, MP, spoke of the need to evolve the communications legislation based on changes in technology and the growth in TV channels. Darren Childs, CEO of UKTV spoke about the need to have flexibility and protect the smaller broadcasters against the growth in power of the terrestrial channels and the pressure to maintain the status quo. He also discussed the challenge of migration of TV onto other formats such as online and even viewing on Xbox and Playstation 3 and the need for the industry to understand the implications of these changes and the need to legislate for them.

Catherine Becker, COO of AdConnection, representing the needs of advertisers, challenged the need to look at potential for advertising on BBC to widen commercial impacts and create a fairer playing field. Nigel Evans replied that this would be unpopular with the large TV stations but there was a need to look at this as part of the on-going debate. Catherine has now been invited to take part in quarterly select committees to advise on changes and how they will affect advertisers to help shape the next bill.

Catherine, seen above with Darren Childs, CEO of UKTV and Ray Blaney, Head of Regulatory Affairs at UKTV, discussed the challenges of fragmentation, the impact of TV consolidation and the need to protect advertisers from unnecessary inflation. Catherine also raised the challenges of cross-media advertising results, discussing how advertising in online TV formats (pre- and post-roll ads, banners and other online formats during the programming) were still to prove their effectiveness, and the need to push product placement in online formats (ability to click on products within programming taking the viewer straight to the websites to purchase). This has been recently tested by Tesco, who as well as having their barcode app, are now looking at the ability to use the red-button during programming to download a product onto the app, providing true cross-media response.

Finally, Catherine discussed with Bjarne Thelin, CEO of BARB, the challenges of recording viewing data as these cross-platform technologies evolved. Bjarne cited the challenges of even +1 channels which were broadcast at different times to slightly different audiences as making measurement more complex as broadcasting evolved.

Facebook's No3 advertiser is Microsoft search hjacker

Adage has detailed Facebook's growing advertising pool. Here's a chart of social networking's biggest ad sources..

Something that has caught the eye of many is Make-my-Baby.com, and well it might. Make-My-Baby.com is a spyware company that has gone from selling cell phone owners auto-recurring fees of $10-$20 each month, to peddling software that sets homepage and default search on browsers to Microsoft's Bing.

It is a site that allows you to put eyeglasses and mustaches on top of a funny looking baby's face. Hilarious. Well, that is what it seems to be….before you can do anything the site says you have to install "a browser plug-in to present an enhanced experience." If you do so, according to the fine print, your browser's default search and home page will be switched to Bing. Once you do so, the affiliate company behind the toolbar, called Zugo, will capture a slice of the revenue whenever you click on a search ad.

At best, Facebook is showing billions (literally) of spyware ads that trick users into installing browser-hijacking software.

Spooky Spokeo

We're not entirely sure how you are meant to pronounce ‘spokeo’, but for many it will read as ‘spooky-o’ because it certainly is spooky to say the least. Not in a hiding under the sheets, ghost and goblin way, but in a frightening data-protection type of way….

Type in some personal information into spokeo.com, for example, an e-mail address, and it will return *everything* to do with that e-mail that can be found in the public domain all in one neat package – your social networks, photo’s, images uploaded onto forums, comments, pretty much everything that is linked to that e-mail on the web. Worried yet? Well this is nothing compared to if you live in America. Type in any American resident name that you may know of, and up pops their home location, value of their house, a Google street map view of the home, their family tree, relationship status and more.

Frightening, but don’t hide under the sheets just yet…because this is your own 'fault'. All of this information has not been gained by illegal methods, it is simply acting as an API hub, roaming the web for anything that has been made public by yourself. Parts of forums are public, social networks (that are not secured by you) are for public viewing, photos you have uploaded via flickr are public…you get the idea… its more the fact that all of this information is in one place, and some revealing details that you may of thought as ‘private’ have been made public, such as your house value.

Thankfully, if you want this ghost story to end, you can ‘opt-out’ of your data being available to spokeo.com, although if you make another ‘public’ entry online afterwards the data will reset itself and you will be found once more.