It wasn’t until 12:01AM France-Time that French business owners were able to advertise on television. Retailers will now be able to advertise on air adter the ban was removed which was originally put in place to protect the ad revenue of newspapers in the country. In 2004, the European Union called the ban a restriction on free-trade. Since that time, ads were appeared on cable and specialty channels only but will now appear on mainstream television channels. The ad spending is expected to increase (duh) dramatically now that the ban has been lifted.

Verizon Wireless recently announced (according to AdJab) that it will begin to sell mobile banner ads to mobiel customers while surfing the web in early 2007. AdWeek reveals that although this move for Verizon sounds great, there is still a lot of experimentation going on out there with mobile ads. Companies are feeling their way around and creating applications that advertisers can utilize throughout the year. After doing that, marketers will need to find a way to give trial and error runs for advertisers to set up campaigns and promotions in the mobile world. Expect 2007 to be a growth but not an explosion period.

The rise and fall of the PlayStation 3 on eBay is one of the most talked about gaming stories of the year. In order to paint a broader picture, I’ve tracked pricing trends from preorders to Christmas Eve and surveyed retailers to determine just how hard the PS3 grey market has crashed. In the days leading up to the PlayStation 3 launch in mid-November, people all over the country lined up with dollar signs in their eyes, hoping to cash in on what was sure to be the most sought after gift this holiday season. I talked to many people planning on financing college, cars, vacations, and countless other dream items with the fruits of their labor.

A week later those hopes and dreams were crushed, as reports of plummeting eBay prices poured in. Just how fast did the PS3 grey market crash? Take a look for yourself, and feel free to click the graph for a larger version.

Within two days of the system’s launch the going price dropped by over $1000. eBay prospectors across the country were stunned at the rapid depreciation of their investment. While they were still looking at $600 profit on average, it was a far cry from the windfall everyone had been expecting. Read the rest of this entry »

Reign in the new year and bring on 2007. According to ad agnecy, JWT, the top 70 trends for 2007 are going to define the year.

The Top 15 Trends For 2007 Are:

- Skype/VoIP
- Wii and the next-generation gaming systems
- The business of social networking
- Pop-up stores, restaurants and bars … installation style
- Shrinky Dink technology (TVs are flat and hidden, iPods are down to half an ounce, speakers are smaller and less visible, and so on)
- The rise of nanotechnology
- Sustainable construction/green buildings
- Hydrogen fuel cell technology
- Veggie-bus: school buses running on biodiesel fuel
- Trans-fat fallout
- Reality show talent searches
- Ohio State’s freshman basketball phenom, Greg Oden
- Fear of agri-terrorism
- Halal foods
- Participatory advertising (user-generated advertising and music videocompetitions)

AdWeek reports that drug marketers really kicked it into high gear this year with advertising expenditures at a rate of 9%. At the current rate, by the end of 2006 that total for the year from pharm drug companies should reach $4.5 billion according to TNS Media Intelligence. The growth in spending was driven by some familiar names. Sepracor’s insomnia drug Lunesta will likely complete the year as the biggest spender. It had spent $220 million on ads, which feature a blue luna moth, through September of this year. That was a 78 percent increase in spending over the same period in 2005.

The SoftWave Media Exchange (SWMX) company is selling about $750,000 in business transactions during the third quarter of 2006 which is three times what it did in the first quarter of 2006. The company will continue to make hard earned dough selling radio and tv time with its’ online sales platform.

Google and Orange (mobile phone operator) are in a multi-billion dollar discussion on bringing the web to phones for the 21st century. According to the UK’s Observer, Google is in talks with the France Telecom company to develop a ‘Google Phone’ which comes with built in Google software and having the screen size of an iPod. “There are numerous situations in which people say ‘I wish I had Google in my hand,’ and I can imagine the younger generation of users would think that a Google phone is a cool idea,” said Tony Cooper, a telecom consultant. “It could bring in location-based searches like ‘Find a Thai restaurant in my area.’”

Facebook has verified that they have received an offer for a $1 billion buyout. The CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced that they are not selling the website and company and may build towards an IPO worth at least $8 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg:

We are not necessarily focused on what the exit is going to be - whether it’s selling the company or an IPO or when that’s going to be,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “But we obviously think that there’s a lot of potential to keep growing.”

Peter Thiel:

“It’s going to remain an independent company,” Thiel said in an interview last week. “The plan is to actually build it, maybe at some point take it public, but definitely not to sell it.”

A new report from the General Accounting Office announces that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has not been doing the best job of protecting consumers from drug advertisements both on television and in print. The GAO claims that the FDA has been completely blinded by drug advertisements and lack consistency with enforcing the laws. The FDA claims that the GAO recommendations would cause the FDA to bring on a larger staff and drastically increase their budget. Sounds good enough to protect consumers then it sounds good enough to me.

Phishing scams will frequently occur as more and more people begin shopping online this holiday season. What you might not know is that Adage is reporting that phishers are starting to use nonfinancial consumer brands such as Coke and McDonalds as bait - giving away sweepstakes, promotions, and other giveaways are luring devices.

The threat of phishers blasting the one-on-one relationships that businesses are trying to build with consumers online is affecting the trustworthiness of online purchases. This soft of scam needs to be addressed by marketers and programmers immediately if something can be done to thwart e-criminals.

“That red Coke logo is a shiny lure to get you to go through the load-in on your inbox, open up and then click through,” said John Roberts, VP-product, OpenDNS, a year-old domain-name-system service platform. “Anything which can take decades of brand promise and put it to use for criminal activity is going to be tried.”

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In 2006 out-of-home advertising has become the second fastest advertising medium behind online adverts. Mediapost reports that revenue rose 8.6% in the first 9 months of 2006 and now tops $5.1 billion for the industry. That growth for the year is well above the average across the board. As Stephen Freitas, president of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, notes: “Out-of-home remains the second-fastest-growing ad segment behind the Internet.”

Local advertising services and amusements top the leaders in outdoor advertising this year with a 24.7% growth over the first nine months of 2006. Insurance and real estate shot up a staggering 25.4% while communications came up a little behind at 24%.

A new study reveals the long awaited belief that niche websites receive more ad attention from visitors. Smaller niche websites are more likely to draw attention to ads than non-niche websites the study reveals. The report is from Media-Screen and is slated for release sometime next week so check back. Media Screen surveyed over 1,300 broadband internet users and asked them to scale how likely they were to be interested in products on any given website. Respondents gave 42% of the small sites their top ratings compared to 39% for larger websites. Smaller websites it appears are better at engaging users and capturing the attention of consumers. Read

VNU and the an In-Store Marketing Institute based outside of Chicago focuses their efforts on brand marketers, retailers, agenices and manufacturers in the world market. Their partnership announced today will create a new global measuring service to discover how businesses can better reach and influence buyer behavior and purchasing decisions. The new program called P.R.I.S.M. will attempt to measure how customers interact and are heavily influenced by in-store media and point of sale displays. The partnership will help both retailers and marketers make better decisions. Read

The Search Engine Journal reports that terrorists linked with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are benefiting from Google Adsense ads and are stealing from Google advertisers by using click fraud programs which generate revenue for their operations. The new report claims that insurgent based networks use robot clickers called ‘clickbots’ which are automated programs that click on Gogle ads and change IP address over and over again. According to the report, this is how the Adsense hustle for terrorists works;

1. Groups set up blogs and sites that serve Google AdSense ads
2. Commit click fraud on those sites
3. Collect revenue from Google
4. Donate revenue to “charities” that funnel funds to terror groups

A new series of studies from comScore and Avenue A/Razorfish point out that online advertisers should focus their online advertising dollars on search and display with major search engines such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Netork, and MSN Ad Center. The reports reveal that there was a direct correlation between advertising dollars spent per click and the rate of return on investment with actual purchases made through click throughs. The two highest quality ad placements were one’s placed on the left hand side of the screen and in textual format. Graphical images are still known to primarily affect in-the-future buys and brand recognition online. Read Reports