engagement

I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful … Read more

Things haven't been so hot over at blog search company Technorati ever since Google debuted its Google Blog Search tool. But the company has kept going, and on Wednesday announced that it has launched its ad platform in an alpha test, after acquiring start-up AdEngage to power it.

In June, Technorati launched "Technorati Media," an ad network that now has about 45 participating Web sites. With AdEngage, which uses the now-common "self-service" model, advertisers can buy ads in the Technorati Media network directly. The new network, the company says, will be called Technorati Engage.

"… Read more

Gather, a niche social network that caters to adults looking for in-depth online discussions, is at the center of the formation of a new ad industry group dedicated to developing standards for social-media advertising.

Called the Social Media Advertising Council, or SMAC, the group encompasses representatives of social networks, ad agencies, and eventually brand advertisers; inaugural members come from the leadership of agencies Universal McCann, MediaVest, Edelman, Deep Focus, and Digitas, among others.

That roster is far from complete, SMAC chairman and Gather CEO Tom Gerace told CNET News in a meeting at the Web 2.0 Expo at the … Read more

Imagine seeing an ad on Facebook for a retailer like American Apparel or Target, and clicking a button to pass a 15-percent-off discount code to someone on your friends list. For advertisers looking to tap into the power of social networks, it sounds tantalizing.

That's the thinking behind "Engagement Ads," the new "experimental" advertising technology that social network Facebook unveiled last week. With the new program, members of Facebook can leave comments on participating ads, add the brands to their list of "fan pages," and use them to send friends virtual gifts. For … Read more

This post was updated at 8:02 a.m. PT with comment from Facebook.

Facebook is making the advertisements on its site "smarter" and more interactive, Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang wrote on his blog Thursday. Owyang had been briefed by Facebook monetization director Tim Kendall on a Facebook initiative called "Engagement Ads" that is slated to launch later on Thursday.

Facebook confirmed the program to CNET News later on Thursday morning. "Facebook is conducting a trial of Engagement Ads over the next few months as part of its continual development of additional advertising concepts,&… Read more

Listen up, incurable romantics of questionable taste. If you're looking for a geeky way to pop the question but can't afford a crystal-laden iPod Touch, a cheaper alternative may be near.

This "Swarovski Crystal Engagement Ring" is a concept for a USB flash drive designed to store photos, poems, credit card receipts, and other artifacts of your love, Gizmodiva says. These digital mementos are meant to be shared when the rings are joined in holy matrimony. And if this every makes it to production, it'll serve another purpose: Once presented with the gift, it would … Read more

Now that Adobe's Engage event has run its course for yet another year, it's a good time to pull in the types of items that slipped through the cracks of our coverage.

We lost Wi-Fi for an hour or so during the conference, which was actually a blessing in disguise. I got to try out all the new AIR apps I had downloaded and got to see which ones managed to perform while away from their umbilical tether to the Internet. My pick for best performer? A two-way tie between BuzzWord and Shifd, the latter of which has … Read more

FedEx was on hand today to show off its new Adobe AIR application for tracking packages.

Similar to tracking widgets you may have seen on tools such as Apple's Dashboard and Yahoo's Widget engine, you can keep small widgets on your desktop that update and let you know when that digital camera you ordered online mistakenly got delivered somewhere three states over. But that's not the sole use. The application doubles as command center for business users and frequent shippers to keep track of what's going on with several of their packages at once.

The company … Read more

Here at Adobe's Engage event in South San Francisco, one of the services getting some buzz is The New York Times' social-bookmarking tool Shifd. It's a neat idea--give users a place to write and share little notes between their PCs and mobile phones, while providing a way to publish those notes to social services people are already using.

This morning the company has released the Adobe Air version of the app, allowing anyone to create and manage notes they've made while offline, and without having to fire up a browser.

The notes you can make are fairly … Read more