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Eileen Naughton to Google Sales

Time Vet Naughton to Run Google's NY Sales Ops

Eileen Naughton, the former president of Time magazine, is headed to Google to lead the company's New York sales operations.

Naughton had been at Time until last December, when she was relieved of her position as part of an extensive round of layoffs. At Google, where she will begin work in the coming months, Naughton will become the search giant's primary liaison with all New York-based advertising agencies and clients.

The Web's Most Viral Ads

Online video ads are meant for cheap laughs, but getting them onto the Net and influencing viewers is no joke

Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create humorous ads in hopes they'll go "viral" -- what it's called when computer users spread content throughout the Internet via personal Web sites, blogs, and e-mails. The appeal of viral video has long been the potential to reach millions of viewers, without the hefty placement fees to media companies.

But those videos are slicker than ever, and making them is becoming a big business, generating $100 million to $150 million a year, according to market researchers. To see what the buzz is about, open the following link in a new window or copy and paste into your browser...

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/viral_marketing/index_01.htm?chan=search

Viacom: I Want My Demographic

While it lost out on MySpace to News Corp., Viacom is now seeking its own route to the youth market on the Web via mtvU's acquisition of Y2M

Media giant Viacom (VIA ), which owns Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and the MTV cable franchise, has taken a step toward extending its influence in the crucial youth market. It said on Aug. 2 that it acquired Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks, which publishes 450 online college newspapers. Terms of the sale weren't disclosed.

The deal was struck by MTV's mtvU unit, a channel that is distributed over campus cable TV networks. The broadcast also streams over the Web at www.mtvu.com. The broadband version is known as mtvU Uber.

User Generated Content for News Organizations

Forbes: YouWitness News

By the end of the year, Time Warner's CNN, General Electric's MSNBC.com and the Reuters news agency are each planning to introduce new ways for viewers and Web surfers to send in video content that they've shot, so producers can incorporate them into news reports or online packages.

The concept is a potentially revolutionary one for TV newsrooms and their Web sites, which rely on their own camera crews and news services such as Reuters and the Associated Press for the vast majority of their video footage. The plans for greater use of user-generated content coincide with recent initiatives at CNN, Reuters, AP and other news organizations to provide Web surfers with more online video footage.

Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders - New York Times

Link: Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders - New York Times.

Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders Sign In to E-Mail This Print Reprints Save By JESSE McKINLEY Published: August 2, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1 — A freelance journalist and blogger was jailed on Tuesday after refusing to turn over video he took at an anticapitalist protest here last summer and after refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into accusations that crimes were committed at the protest.

RED HERRING | Branding Online Video

Link: RED HERRING | Branding Online Video.

Marketers see gold in online video as boutique sites promote video contests. August 1, 2006 Having tried ads in games, blogs, MySpace, and even on mobile devices, marketers are increasingly turning to online video as their preferred vehicle for brand-building on the web, including two new entrants Tuesday.

Comcast, Turner Broadcasting invest in Revver | News.blog | CNET News.com

This first of many of these deals to come...

Link: Comcast, Turner Broadcasting invest in Revver | News.blog | CNET News.com.

Comcast, Turner Broadcasting invest in Revver August 2, 2006 9:43 AM PDT Video-sharing site Revver has announced new investors that include Turner Broadcasting and the venture capital division of Comcast. Los Angeles-based Revver has made a name for itself within the crowded video-sharing field by offering to share ad revenue with videographers who post popular clips on the site. Comcast Interactive and Turner Broadcasting join previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards, and William Randolph Hearst III. The company did not disclose how much funding was provided, but said that to date Revver has received $12.7 million.

ABC News: Search Engines Fight Click Fraud

Google has trouble of their own...

Link: ABC News: Search Engines Fight Click Fraud.

SAN FRANCISCO Aug 2, 2006 (AP)— The Internet's leading search engines are teaming up with an advertising trade group to find a better way to identify and measure "click fraud," a scam that has raised doubts about the Web's trustworthiness as a marketing vehicle.

Nielsen Brings a New Marketing Strategy to Broadway

“Wicked” is a show for 14-year-old girls. At least that’s what everybody on Broadway was saying. So one of the show’s producers, David Stone, decided to hire a relatively new research firm called Live Theatrical Events to find out if the assumption was true.

Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Joseph Craig of Live Theatrical Events led a focus group after “Altar Boyz.”

The firm springs from a surprising source: Nielsen. Yes, Nielsen, as in television’s Nielsen ratings. Live Theatrical Events is the product of a partnership between Nielsen National Research Group, or NRG, a corporate cousin of Nielsen’s television-rating unit, and Broadway.com, the ticketing and theater news Web site.

Using Hollywood-style data mining techniques and the Internet to contact hundreds of thousands of theatergoers, Live Theatrical Events is changing the way shows are marketing themselves, on and off Broadway. And its managing director, Joseph Craig, who has a long history in the film industry, is quietly becoming a sought-after player in New York theater.   [ MORE ]

The Long Tail

The Original Wired Magazine Article

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

By Chris Anderson

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.

Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.

What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

[ MORE ]    

The Long Tail - Amazon

The Long Tail Blog