As a federal agency, NASA can’t run commercials — a problem both for rallying broader public support and fostering the next generation of astronauts. The Aerospace Industries Association has both cultural and very practical reasons for improving that public awareness, so it’s taking the unusual step of crowdfunding an ad purchase to get the American space program in front of as many eyes as possible. The project would cut a 30-second version of NASA’s We Are the Explorers promo (after the break), minus the administration’s official endorsement, and run it in at least 50 major movie theaters for eight weeks following the launch of Star Trek Into Darkness on May 17th. The crowdfunding is ostensibly to demonstrate our collective love of space, and would directly translate any money raised beyond the $33,000 goal into ads for more theaters. A cynical industry move? Maybe — but we won’t build starships without a public that’s interested in seeing them beyond movie screens, which makes the ad a noble enough cause in our minds.
Facebook is launching a new advertising test feature that will allow advertisers and marketers to bring ads straight to your Facebook newsfeed. The new test feature is part of Facebook Exchange, Facebook’s way of allowing businesses to cater there ads to people based on their online browsing history. The test feature will be rolled out to a small alpha group at first, and will expand over the next few weeks.
The new service will be an add-on to Facebook’s current Page post link ads. Facebook has clarified that while it will be introducing ads directly to users’ newsfeeds, it won’t increase the total number of ads that appear on their page. As of right now, the new newsfeed ads will only appear on the desktop version of Facebook, and the mobile version should be seeing the changes sometime in the near future.
There are only a small set of Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) that Facebook will be working with at first. They include TellApart, MediaMath, and Nanigans, however more DSPs and advertisers will get their chance to take a shot at the service in the near future. While this new service will be an annoyance to many Facebook users, it will be extremely beneficial to both Facebook and businesses.
Facebook users aren’t going to be left out in the cold however. Facebook users should be receiving Facebook’s new newsfeed and timeline (a love/hate relationship) that should bring a nice, cleaner user interface to the social network. Facebook has also implemented conversation threads onto Facebook Pages so that people can carry out much more organized conversations and debates. There are a lot of new changes coming to Facebook soon, and we may probably hear about more new Facebook features soon. Stay tuned.
T-Mobile made quite a few announcements today, the most notable of which was launching their 4G LTE network and detailing the various LTE devices that they would have available, including the iPhone 5. In order to keep their momentum going, the carrier launched a couple of new advertisements to spread the word about their new no-contract policy.
First off, T-Mobile sent actor and comedian Jason Jones out to Times Square in New York City to ask passers-by whether they would rather sign a two-year contract with a mobile carrier or get a root canal. In typical fashion with any advertisement, many of the people surveyed said they’d rather get a root canal.
Jones even points out how most mobile carriers are symbolically slapping around their customers, and Jones was kind enough to demonstrate such slapping by annoyingly hitting people in the face with his microphone. Either way, the lesson of the story is that most people seem to favor physical pain over paying a monthly fee for 24 months for mobile service. Who would have thought?
The other advertisement is set in the wild west, with a group of cowboys about to take over a small town, but one cowboy (representing T-Mobile) decides enough is enough and trades in his brown cowboy hat for a T-Mobile-colored pink hat and then sets off into the sunset. It’s quite an odd advertisement, but we think T-Mobile gets its point across in a straightforward manner. Do you think Verizon and AT&T are scared yet?
It may be no surprise that people are favoring web video and streaming TV shows over regular television nowadays, but while both cable television and broadcast television are taking a hit, broadcast TV is seeing a steeper decline in ratings this season, and that’s forcing advertisers to rethink what avenues to advertise on.
According to various analysts, it’s expected that advertisers are going to spend more of their ad dollars on cable television and web video outlets like Hulu. It’s expected broadcast networks’ dollar volume could drop by 2%, while cable television’s volume could rise about 5%. Of course, these aren’t huge gains or losses, but every percentage point matters, especially when you’re facing lower ratings.
However, CBS CEO Les Moonves says that ad demand for broadcast television (at least for CBS) is growing, and Moonves expects CBS to lead in “volume and CPM increases” this season. However, ratings have taken a dive at all four big television networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC) since the start of the fall season back in September.
Specifically, among viewers ages 18 to 49 ( which is the demographic that’s most prized by advertisers,) the average numbers for primetime audiences were down 23% at FOX, 7% at NBC, 3% at CBS; and 8% at ABC. However, CBS was the only major network to see an increase in overall viewership this season, with a 2% rise.
Except, instead of going after console rivals Nintendo decided to aim its attack at its own, older-generation console the Wii. To be fair, the Wii is probably the strongest competitor to the Wii U, yet the consoles treat gaming very differently. The Wii is a family, group console, bringing people together, while the Wii U essentially lets you take your single-player game where ever you want, even if a family member wants to watch a movie with you.
To display the Wii U’s strengths against the many shortcomings of the Wii, Nintendo’s flyer shows a side-by-side comparison. Though the two consoles do share a few features, the Wii’s dots are clearly less awesome than the Wii U’s check marks. As we all learned in elementary school, dots < check marks. Obvi.
Luckily, Nintendo has made it so you can rip one of these flyers right off the wall and take it home with you. Maybe you can post it up in your bedroom, just over your Wii, to remind yourself that you should probably (not*) upgrade. Perhaps you can just store it away in your desk for later reference when someone asks, “What the fuck is a Wii U?”
Because, to be honest, not many people know about the dual-screened Wii U console, despite the fact that it was announced at E3 last year. Again, Nintendo marketing hasn’t really been killing it.
For instance, let’s take a look at this Wii U commercial.
To start, I’ve never actually seen this commercial air on TV. Secondly, a good deal of this ad is dedicated to non-gaming activities, such as drawing, watching TV, weighing yourself, browsing the web, and video chatting. Because, you know, that’s why people buy gaming consoles. It has nothing to do with Netflix, Hulu+ and a complete gaming experience.
But let’s not forget, Nintendo’s awful marketing isn’t a new thing. Remember the Nintendo 3DS commercials, with that girl from Glee and Selena Gomez, I think? If you haven’t seen it, it’s essentially a famous blonde girl sitting in a diner like a hipster trying to draw a piece of pie. Again, Nintendo clearly knows its market: girls who draw pie.
Again, if you find yourself forgetting that the Wii U is better than the Wii, or if you find yourself forgetting that the Wii U exists, march on over to your nearest airport or mall and grab yourself a flyer.
As a result of the hiring of a new chief marketing officer back in November, HTC has said that they’re dropping their “Quietly Brilliant” slogan and will be ramping up its marketing efforts by becoming more aggressive as competition gets more heated. The company is said to become more outgoing with its marketing and advertising campaigns.
Of course, we’ve already seen these efforts from HTC when Samsung officially announced the GALAXY S 4 earlier this month. The maker of the new HTC One greeted people waiting in line for the Samsung event and handed out free beverages. The company also took to Times Square to show off their new device just as Samsung was announcing their’s.
HTC hired Benjamin Ho as the new chief marketing officer for HTC late last year, and it seems his work is finally starting to show through for the company. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Ho said that the company will be dropping its “Quietly Brilliant” slogan, but he didn’t mention any plans on a new slogan, although we’re guessing that the company has a few clever tag lines up its sleeves.
Overall, Ho says that while the company has made a lot of innovations, they just “haven’t been loud enough” with their marketing and advertising efforts. Ho says that HTC’s new marketing approach will be bolder from now on. From that, it makes sense that “Quietly Brilliant” is no longer a relevant slogan for the company, but it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with in the future.
Viruses, trojans, and other malicious pieces of software are nothing new on OS X. While the mainstream consensus is that Apple‘s desktop platform is impervious to such malware, that’s actually not the case. In fact, a new piece of adware is making the rounds that injects advertisements into web browsers after installing a disguised plugin.
The trojan is detected as “Trojan.Yontoo.1” and it was discovered by Russian security firm Doctor Web. Of course, you have to an install a plugin or other piece of software in order for the trojan to activate, but hackers are making it easy for unsuspecting users to take the bait. They’re prompting users to install a plugin before they can watch a mobile trailer, for example.
Of course, we’ve all come across this scenario before, where we don’t have a certain plugin installed in order to view something, so we’re forced to download and install it before continuing. However, it looks like criminals are taking advantage of that tradition by implementing the same kind of system in order to get users to install the trojan.
It’s said that a Windows version of the trojan also exists, but it doesn’t affect Windows 8 users currently. Cross-platform malware isn’t rare most of the time, but this particular one uses its own code to target each specific operating system, as opposed to targeting a universal piece of software like Java, which we’ve heard plenty about recently.
Remember the marketing campaign called the “Windows Phone Challenge” (also known as “Smoked by Windows Phone”) that put Windows Phone devices up against other smartphones in a series of challenges that ultimately gave Windows Phone the advantage? Yeah, Microsoft is bringing it all back with some new television ads that will air this month during NCAA March Madness.
The first ad to make an appearance in the rebooted marketing campaign puts the Nokia Lumia 920 head-to-head with Samsung’s Galaxy S III in a photo-taking challenge in low-light conditions. The 30-second advertisement demonstrates the remarkable low-light capabilities of the Lumia 920′s PureView camera, while the Galaxy S III’s photo appears really dark.
Of course, it’s not really a fair fight to begin with. The Galaxy S III is almost a year old, while Nokia’s Lumia 920 just came out a few months ago. Of course, we’re not doubting the 920′s amazing photo-taking abilities (take a look at our full review), but how about Microsoft waits until next month when the GALAXY S 4 comes out for a true fair fight?
At the end of the advertisement, you see the Galaxy S III owner trade in the Android phone for the Lumia 920. Obviously, the commercial targets Samsung’s last-generation flagship directly, and suggests that the device takes “bad smartphone photos.” Of course, we’ll leave that judgement up to you, but we’d be more interested to see a Lumia 920 vs. GALAXY S 4 challenge more than anything.
HTC has unofficially declared war on Samsung. Not in legal terms, mind you, but an all-out street fight in a sense, literally. Before and during Samsung’s GALAXY S 4 announcement event, HTC wandered the streets of Times Square and Radio City Music Hall to showcase the company’s new HTC One smartphone to random passers-by.
If you didn’t happen to be waiting in line at the GALAX S 4 event at Radio City Music Hall, then you may not know that HTC showed up and passed out free beverages to those waiting in line. It’s the ultimate troll maneuver, but that’s not all. HTC posted a video on their YouTube channel showing off the HTC One to random folks in Times Square in order take attention off the GALAXY S 4 and put it on the new HTC One.
In the video (which is cleverly edited, of course) shows a handful of people getting the chance to play around with HTC’s new phone, and a few of the company’s PR folks were there to tell people all about it, saying that they “just wanted to make sure that people got a chance to see it,” among the Samsung festivities.
This isn’t the only time that HTC has downplayed the significance of Samsung’s new device. They called the GALAXY S 4 “more of the same,” and they haven’t been afraid to call out the company recently. Of course, when you make a really awesome device, it’s hard not to get a little competitive, and even a little snarky.
A lot of headlines have focused on the new Galaxy S4 as a potential iPhone challenger in terms of hype and mindshare, but mobile ad firm Velti offers a different perspective in its February summary of global exchange data from its network. The company still sees iOS and iPhone dominating among mobile advertisers, despite the rising tide of Android devices.
Velti saw that 8 of 10 devices on its global ad exchange were iOS-based, including the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. Samsung managed to take two of the top 10 spots, but placed relatively low on the list with the Galaxy SII and Galaxy SIII at 7 and 10 respectively. The Galaxy SII is the only one to crack the top five in any region, coming in fifth overall in Europe, and while in general older phones ruled (there’s generally bound to more of them active out there), the iPhone managed to already crack the top 3 in Asia. That’s good news for Apple, which is focusing more attention on that region with recent launches.
Apple’s iPhone and iPod devices ruled overall with a 38.1 percent share of Velti ad impressions, with the various iPad models making up 17.2 percent. By comparison, all Galaxy devices together only managed less than 5 percent of ad traffic in February. iOS ads were also better performing in terms of effective cost per thousand (ePCM), garnering 20 percent more than their Android counterparts. That’s in spite of a higher click through rate on Android: ads on Google’s mobile platform earned around 50 percent more clicks than those on Apple’s.
Taking tablets on their own, there isn’t even remotely any competition for iOS. Android tablets as a whole account for only 0.7 percent, according to Velti, with the iPad making up 97.5 percent, with its share mostly shifting from standard iPads to iPad minis between January and February of 2013.
Overall, the picture on the advertiser side doesn’t look to be changing very much at all, despite Android growth in worldwide sales. iOS actually gained share between January and February according to Velti, though only a very small 0.3 percent, but the firm said that iOS has earned more than 60 percent of advertiser demand for the past six months running.
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will be watched for a number of reasons, but it may be most interesting to see if it can help sway the needle with mobile advertisers. He who controls the spice controls the universe, after all, which in this case means that Apple’s domination of the mobile ad world definitely give it a leg up among developers and media content providers.
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