After many rumors and a long time of waiting (since July 22nd, 2007) it has been made public by Ryan Hayward on AdSense Blogspot now that Google launched its AdSense for Feeds in beta. With your Google AdSense account, it is now possible to push for Google advertising in your feeds in order to earn money with your blogs and feeds now. It is similary customizable as the other AdSense applications however this is only the beginning. The efficiency is questionnable as we are using feeds in order to minimizing the time spent for reading news and blogs hence we doubt that that Click-Through-Rate will be very high.
To find out more on how to integrated AdSense in your Feeds (interesting for publishers) click here for more info.
We found plenty of articles on the Google Blog but has this been existing in the other countries since 2005 as stated here on the Google Blog dated May 7, 2005 or is the date of the blog post just wrong?
It comes as no surprise that Google is trying to monetize its Readers now as well because Google is struggling to monetize their other projects such as YouTube, which just recently had to stop its project of live-streaming (article here) because investors are having a hard-time accepting those massive investments with no nice returns.
Most probably you have been noticing the increasing number of video ads because more companies see this is as way to draw attention. In addition to the nice little Visa Ad that we recently shared with you, we found this strange little ad/teaser/viral of Old Spice Aftershave. Check it out because we are convinced that you would like it (we had some issues with the site but maybe it works for you: OldSpice
An article of Cédric of “Woweffect” has given us some great links to truely unforgettable ads. Check out all these great ads as listed on DezineHQ, Toxel, SmashingApps and Tumblr.
We would also like to add this Adidas add to our favourite adds because it is really unique (here). This unique ad made us look for other handwritten designs, which made us tumble upon this list of excellent handwritten designs: Smashing Magazine site.
Are there any other great ones that you would like to recommend?
Jupiter Research published a study saying that branded communities are a failure and don’t reach their consumers. As stated in Internetworld and Acquisa the average number of members of branded communities in Europe are 6,494 members with more than have half of the communities only counting 1,000 members in comparison to the investments sometimes going far beyond EUR 100,000. Viral marketing is also out of date and is not lucrative anymore for those branded communities in most instances because most companies don’t understand the modern internet users. They try to just give information to the members instead of making the effort of understanding their consumers and providing them with interaction possibilities or even reasons to communicate. According to a report by David Eicher, CEO of the internet agency Robert & Horst, one just needs to merely be smart and integrate the users at the beginning of the development of the community instead of creating an expensive “community platform” and then looking for members. That sounds easy! What do you think?
Fleishman-Hillard Inc. and Harris Interactive have published an excellent study about the influence the internet has on modern consumers. Their “Digital Life Index Study” highlights the main aspect of the modern shopping behaviours and compares the different impacts between the UK, Germany and France. The four key findings of the report are worth reading up on:
Digital Influence: The Internet is by far the most important medium in the lives of European consumers — but companies are underinvesting in that influence.
Behavioural Framework: Consumer use of the Internet falls into five distinct classes of behaviours. Smart marketers will clearly understand the mix of behaviours that is most critical to their business — and formulate integrated campaigns to address that mix.
Consumers use the Internet in different ways to make different decisions. The differences are driven by the impact of the decision on their lives and the range of available choices.
Consumers see the clear benefits of the Internet to their lives, but they still have strong concerns that need to be addressed.
You should read the article, which you can find here.
Two news have drawn our attention today, which we think should be noted:
Winner of the day
We had previously mentioned the Download World Record attempt for the Mozilla Firefox Version 3.0. According to Mozilla and the BBC, Firefox has been downloaded 8.3 million times within 24 hours, which is quite noteworthy. There have been server problems, who could not cope with the amount of simultaneous downloads and apparently some security flaws have already been discovered but the number of downloads is still very impressive. Congratulations and you can count us in for those 8.3 million.
Loser of the day
Another news, which needs mentioning is the fact that the Swedish government has passed a law, despite the civil uproar, that permits the state to check everybody’s emails, sms, phonecalls and any other telecommunication without any court order. Isn’t this disrespectful against the privacy of the individual? Besides the common argument that “you don’t need to be worried if you got nothing to hide” we consider this as an incredibly distrust against its people. Let’s say that we were less than positively surprised to put it that way!
The recently published article “This Ad Stinks: Let Readers Vote” by Business Week gives some great information about the result that viewers’ feedback on ads have for the advertiser. We have already previously taken note of StumbleUpon.com, a rating website for websites, people and videos, but we think it is worthwhile mentioning now in this context. The notion that advertisers ask for a review or rating of their ads before the roll-out of a large campaign can save tremendous amounts of money but also generate huge traffic in case you are voted positively. The only questions is whether advertisers like the idea of being criticised or rated?
This is a viral marketing campaign as it happens: Mozilla Firefox is promoting its Firefox Version 3 by attempting to break the download world record, which is the amount of times the browser is being downloaded within 24 hours. There is currently no world record and this first attempt will be the world record but the goal is to beat the download record of Firefox 2, which was downloaded 1.6 million times on its launch day.
If you wanna be part of this World Record Attempt then go to the Spread Firefox Download Day 2008 website and register. We are part of it!
We have previously mentioned viral marketing however we were wondering whether anybody has examples for the monetary value of viral ad campaigns?
We read that the campaign “Will It Blend”from Blendtec generated $50,000 in ad revenue with 100 million views in total.
Apparently “Ask a Ninja” generates an unbelievable $100,000 a month in ad revenue and income from merchandising and licensing for creators Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine.
According to Wiki.media-culture the BMW viral ad campaign in 2001 generated BMW a sales increased by 12.5% compared to 2000 with peak times even crashing the servers.
What examples do you have for viral marketing campaigns where the benefit can be expressed in monetary value?
