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Media, marketing opportunists flood Fifth Avenue iPhone line

Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go, I want my freaking iPhone. The line of people waiting for the iPhone at New York's Fifth Avenue store was, at last count, still fewer than 40 people long with 24 hours to go, and the sky was looking like a downpour might start any second. But that didn't stop camera crews (including comedian Mo Rocca, now a Daily Show-style reporter for AOL News), journalists, and photographers from clogging the sidewalk to get the scoop on the spectacle.

Plenty of them wanted to talk to first-in-liner Greg Packer, despite the fact that he's … Read more

NBA playing ball online

Expensive sports rights are a major cost for the United States television industry. Sports also brings huge ad revenue and a male audience that is much prized by advertisers because it's so elusive.

Now the NBA has signed new TV deals that run nearly a decade. This time the buyers get significant rights to Internet distribution of games, highlights and related content. Clearly, this is just another step toward the Internet becoming a full-fledged alternative to typical TV distribution. An ESPN executive said its Web site had a million unique visitors daily during the NBA playoffs earlier this year.… Read more

Under the Radar: Video ads are here, now what?

Advertising is an important part of the Internet, but how are content creators and advertisers going to come together to start making money off videos? At Under the Radar this morning four new Web 2.0 advertising companies that specialize in video are trying to figure that out.

Adap.tv is an online video advertising platform that looks at the context of a video to place advertisements. Almost like Google's contextual AdSense program, Adapt.tv reads a video's metadata to figure out what the video is about before serving up an ad that (hopefully) is related. Ads pop … Read more

Internet advertising: Going up, up, up

More advertising dollars are flowing to the Internet, in a trend that started years ago. Advertising Age has come out with its annual look at the United States top-100 advertising spenders. There are few surprises, but it's confirmation of what you've probably been seeing and expecting. Internet ads now account for 5.5 percent of total spending by the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. That adds up to nearly $10 billion, and the Internet's about even with radio and ahead of outdoor.

What are the biggest losers? TV's share of ad spending has been … Read more

Feds plan 'town hall' meetings on online ad tech

An attack by consumer groups on the way that companies like Microsoft target advertisements to Internet users has attracted some notice from federal regulators.

Last November, the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. Public Interest Research Group asked the Federal Trade Commission to review the growing use of business models built on, by their description, technologies that "aggressively track us wherever we go, creating data profiles to be used in ever-more sophisticated and personalized 'one-to-one' targeting schemes."

In a letter dated June 21 to the leaders of the two groups, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Lydia Parnes … Read more

LonelyGirl partners with Neutrogena: Sellout or smart business?

The popular "LonelyGirl15" Web serial is breaking new ground in ongoing efforts to monetize video content by signing a unique deal with the Neutrogena skin care company. In a step beyond product placement, Lonelygirl15 episodes this summer will actually feature a branded character--a Neutrogena scientist, according to the Associated Press and other sources.

Some bloggers are impressed by the partnership, which they view as a creative way to pay the bills and help keep the show alive.

Others, however, view it as the ultimate sellout. But the show is likely to overcome such Web community disappointment. It started … Read more

The future of video ads: Text

I just got a very interesting demo from Adap.TV CEO Amir Ashkenazi. His company has built an online video-advertising technology that ignores one of the old maxims of advertising: that advertisements should be in the same medium as the content they are running in.

Adap.TV places text ads in videos. When a user clicks on one of these text come-ons, the video pauses and a new window opens on the ad's Web page.

It's a smart strategy, because there are a lot more text and Web ads for the system to chose from than there are … Read more

Google Maps - Wading Through a Sea of Franchise Logos?

Hat tip to my colleague Chris Smith for pointing out that Google has rolled out ads within Google Maps Japan.

It looks like the ads were just contextual based on the location, rather than being from a restaurant-specific search (although I don't read Japanese so I can't tell what the query was).

To me this looks very busy. And I'd imagine the ad density clutter will only get worse over time.

Perhaps Google feels that Japanese users of Google Maps will be more tolerant of the ads and the busier interface? Or perhaps this is the shape … Read more

Open source ad player takes on Google

Openads, which offers free software that helps Web sites manage their online ad campaigns, recently received $5 million in initial funding, led by Index Ventures, according to a Reuters article.

Openads is seen as possibly treading on Google turf, competing with ad serving firm DoubleClick, which Google is hoping to acquire. Openads also could butt up against Google's popular AdSense pay-per-click ad network, Radar Research analyst Marissa Gluck told Reuters.

The difference is that Openads serves up ads for Web sites that install the ads themselves and then relies on ad networks to supply advertisers, while Google hosts the … Read more

Bored? Curious? Check out Wis.dm

I admit it. I was skeptical when I got a pitch about the umpteenth social-networking site, one that also serves as a question-and-answer site, especially when I learned the target age demographic is 22 to 28 and the site is--not ironically--called Wis.dm. After learning more, I'm thinking they may be on to something interesting. But it's probably going to be more about market research and advertising than community.

Basically, people ask questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no," and other people answer. You have to register to ask and … Read more