This is a neat idea. I came across these guys (GreenLayers.com, based in Australia). Basically, they provide a way for advertisers to find premade shots of models in a green background which makes it very easy to overlay scenes and produce promotional and endorsement videos and stills for use online, on TV, wherever. All premade content is available for purchase and prices are not very high, at least the way things are now ($10-$50 for some products). I am not sure completely how they’ll handle multiple requests, for example when two different agencies request content that involves the same model, but I am sure this (and other potential issues) have been covered.

The service is not yet available, it will officially start during March. I think they will do well, but that remains to be seen.

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I was surfing the Web trying to explore new possibilities for advertising, something not so mainstream, something a bit underground. I came across an interesting UK based street advertising services provider called SAS (yes, like the special forces) which stands for Street Advertising Services. They use pressure cleaners to produce images and text on surfaces like concrete and asphalt by cleaning a pattern on the surface. The result is like a negative on a wall or street floor. It looks pretty good actually, and it’s definitely a different approach. I’ve done some more searching to see if there are others doing this sort of thing, and came up with a couple of references towards artists and the technique, for example this one.

The best thing is that, although a guerilla tactic, it’s not illegal since there is nothing applied to the host surface that damages it in any way. Only pressurized water and steam are used. In fact, left long enough, the “negative graffiti” will blend back into the “dirty” tone of the surrounding surface. The actual work is mostly done during the night, as there are far fewer pedestrians that may get in the way of work. A great way to pass on a simple branded message. Even though this is quite a new thing, there are already brands who have begun to use this newly opened advertising channel.

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Facebook is certainly all over the news these days, especially concerning privacy issues and some changes on the site oriented towards monetization its member potential. It’s been a while since I posted anything about Facebook as I think there’s simply too many unimportant news about it lately, that even the occasional good stuff gets lost somewhere in the midst of it all. Besides, there are plenty of blogs concentrating on Facebook, which channel pretty much all information you’ll ever need to know about it.

One such blog is Inside Facebook, where I read a post written by Justin Smith about 24 ways to use Facebook for marketing purposes. He takes a detailed approach to explaining pretty much all Facebook tools and how they can be used for viral marketing. Even if you’re only trying to get some idea about FB as a platform, this is useful because it gives a kind of an overview broken down into specific parts with short explanations of how each tool works. I was hoping for some more specific details based on marketers’ experience on Facebook so far (having followed some coverage on this recently, these experiences are mostly moderate if not poor), which would give a more detailed picture about the usefulness of certain interaction channels on Facebook compared to others, but none were given. Like Justin pointed out, it’s still a bit early and there is still plenty to learn about Facebook as a marketing platform in order to be able to judge its performance more objectively.

One thing is for sure, Facebook members are from all over the world, in growing numbers, on a platform that enables companies to communicate with everyone on a more personal level. With about 58 million members from almost every corner of the planet, this community should be considered in a company’s marketing plan. Trouble is, the specific way communication takes place on Facebook, through specific tools, represents an obstacle some companies still find hard to overcome, but since more marketers are getting involved in Facebook campaigns every day, the combined experience will soon be enough to get a stronger signal on the marketing radar.

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I read a great post on TechCrunch about how to optimize your viral YouTube videos to achieve high popularity. The author, Dan Ackerman Greenberg, shares some very interesting tips on what needs to be done to make your video stand out from all the rest, and there are tens of thousands of videos uploaded (!)daily. After reading this, I realized it’s not very easy and requires some in depth knowledge and skill. Here a few teasers as to what is talked about in this post:

• Not all viral videos are what they seem
• Content is NOT King
• Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page
• Title Optimization
• Thumbnail Optimization
• Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself
• Releasing all videos simultaneously
• Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole
• Metrics/Tracking: How to measure effectiveness

Whoa! SEO is complicated, but this is getting there. I am sure this is not even close to everything there is to say about this subject. With the expansion of web video as a marketing tool, there will surely be a lot more to learn about this in the coming months and years.

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Are you using video in your online promotion efforts? Recent trends show that online video can be a very good means of communicating with possible clients. But there is a twist! Online video is also good for a completely different purpose. With the introduction of universal search, which incorporates rich media results together with the usual text (pages), it is now more important than ever for webmasters/marketers to turn their attention towards online video as means to get into the search results.

If you are ranking well for certain keywords that may now trigger the appearance of rich media results in SERPs, you may soon find yourself in a tight spot because some of the positions may now be taken by video listings. Fortunately, video is not that hard to produce, now more than ever, it’s quite easy to make viral video content that may find its way into the universal search results. All the major search engines are implementing new ways of showing search results. ASK is probably the best example, having been the first to actually go on and do this with its 3D search concept. Now, Google, Yahoo and Live Search are doing it too.

Pretty soon, it won’t be enough to practice standard online promotion techniques. Marketers are always quick to adopt new ways to reach potential customers, especially it there is a way to get more presence in search result pages, and that means competition may get ahead. If we were ever considering online video promotion, now is the time to make a decision, although, the way things are going we don’t really have a choice, do we? Multimedia results for search queries are already happening, with or without us.

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Widgets seem to the next big thing for online marketing. Web widgets and desktop widgets have been around for a while now, with web widgets being more successful (no download and install), but haven’t had a major impact on online marketing, until recently. Many online businesses already use widgets to attract more people to their sites. Sites like Amazon.com use widgets to allow bloggers to show their favorite Amazon products on their blogs. More and more companies are starting to use widgets as a source of traffic to their sites. With the expansion of social networks, Facebook for example, widgets have come into focus. Apart from their original purpose, widgets embedded into social network profiles are perhaps much more than just small content boxes. With the growing popularity of social networks, widgets represent a specific online marketing channel since they appear on personal profile pages seen by other people on a social network, usually people who are friends or colleagues, in other words a specific audience, that is otherwise unreachable. This means widgets now carry a dimension of personal recommendation, as well as the content served within. Nick O’Neill over at AllFaceBook wrote an interesting post where he goes deeper into an analysis of Facebook’s effect on the widget economy.

MarketingSherpa released a special report on widgets usage (open access until Sept 28), which showed some interesting results. According to the report, some marketers have seen incredible ROI from widget based campaigns (as much as 1250% !), while others have enjoyed more moderate results. CTRs have been in the range of 3.5% .

Widgets are definitely starting to create impact as marketing tools. Even though they are still underdeveloped as a marketing tool, widgets will probably become an interesting online marketing channel, and should be considered in an overall internet marketing strategy. Although many companies use widgets more as a tool for increasing brand awareness (low conversion rates), there are obviously examples of widgets delivering satisfactory results in terms of traffic and conversion. This probably depends on the business industry, but testing is the only sure way to know if widgets are going to give good results for a particular business. Widget production is not expensive, and allows easy performance measurement. Are you considering widgets as a marketing tool?

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Facebook launched a paid advertising platform called Flyers. There are two options, Basic and Pro. Basics gets you 5000 views for $10 ($0.002 CPM, if we regard views as impressions), and Pro lets you determine CPC in a similar way you would determine price-per-click on other paid advertising networks (max CPC for ranking and max daily budget for spending control).

A flyer is basically an image enabled listing which will be shown in the left column of a user’s profile below quick search and links. There is a 25 character limit for the title, and a 200 character limit for the flyer text. That’s it about flyer creation. The second step is to specify the demographics for the intended audience (people that the flyer will be shown to). You can specify age, sex, location, keywords of interest, political views (!), relationship status, education status, and workplace (which is a text field which kind of confuses me as there’s no instructions for filling in). That’s it for flyer targeting, now onto expenses. You can set maximum CPC (min $0.01), maximum daily budget (min $1), duration (continuous or date scheduled).

In the Basic version, the main difference from the Pro version is in the targeting (only basic parameters) and pricing (days running).

This system definitely gives the advertiser a direct channel towards Facebook users. This may be an alternative approach to Facebook app creation. My feeling is that flyers would be most successful if coupled with Facebook apps (FB app promotion and/or complementary promotion - combined FB app and PPC product or service promotion). While Facebook definitely has a large user base (now more than 40 million users), it may be uncertain how the FB user community will react towards flyers. One can expect good results since flyers will be highly targeted and shown within user groups that are topic specific, but social networks have a tendency to surprise advertisers unless advertising is approached in a specific manner.

Will you be using Facebook Flyers as part of your advertising efforts?

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Would you hang out in a big entertainment mall, having the freedom to download music, video and other digital content for free onto your favorite storage device, while sipping on a smoothie in a relaxed environment equipped with iMac hubs? Sounds cool. This is a new concept introduced by HMV as it makes a move into the future with a whole new approach. The new megastore will be a place where people can enjoy all the latest digital content and be entertained. A collapsing CD market has brought a drastic drop in HMV’s profits, so this is a refreshing change that HMV hopes will help boost its revenue. After six months of tweaking, the new solution has been opened as a “compelling multi-channel social shopping space and experience”. The new store, measuring some 8,000 ft² (750 m²), contains digital sale-spots that enable the customers to download songs and videos for free, onto their portable memory devices. The content can then easily be transfered to mobile phones, MP3 players or PCs.

There is the “social hub”, which has iMacs which are available for visitors to use for browsing the latest music and entertainment web sites. A mini Apple store will sell latest iPods and accessories. Digital radios and DVDs, as well as other accessories, are for sale with special deals for HMV customers exclusively.

In case you get thirsty or tired, there is the Lovejuice bar serving freshly made smoothies at spot that has been created especially for laptop users. There is plenty more in store, which you can see here in more detail.

Will visitors actually spend money in this place remains to be seen. There are plenty of services on the Internet selling digital content downloads, and you can get them from anywhere as long as there is an Internet connection. HMV’s approach is better in my opinion, than making even more CDs with questionably useful content, as is the case with the latest music industry idea called ringles.

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Online Publishers Association released results on August 13, 2007, from a study comparing online behavior in 2003 and in 2007. To sum it up, visitors now tend to spend more time viewing content and less time searching. If you want the numbers, see the Online Publishers Association press release. The OPA also sites a number of factors that have contributed to these changes.

What was interesting also is that there’s a small (5%) decrease in commerce activity. It seems people are taking some of the shopping back offline. It’s not surprising since there had been analysis results in the past months suggesting consumers use the Internet mostly for research and comparison before doing actual shopping offline. This may not present that much of a problem for business that have a majority of offline sales, but for those doing retail mainly online, this decrease, however small, may present an introduction to a far more serious problem in the future. Online retail will have to come up with new ideas on how to convince consumers to buy online, with special focus on the social side of the web today.

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This is a very smart marketing campaign, this time by Nokia, which takes a very interesting and unique approach. Nokia smart phones are getting to be so advanced that laptop computers are beginning to lose their nerve and starting rebellion all over the world, sometimes with serious consequences for their owners. Check this out on jealouscomputers.com !

Disgruntled laptops are turning against their owners. Beware laptop owners! Tame your laptop beasts on time or suffer.

I especially liked this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOhmYp7bbiI

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