Time Heals All Wounds.

The question on the minds of just about every media buyer and seller is: When is the ad market going to recover? When it comes to local television and radio, there are a few more years of hurting to come, according to a new forecast from SNL Kagan. The research firm is projecting a painfully slow recovery for both media in its forecast period, which stretches out to 2013. Spot TV spending will decline an average 2 percent each year between 2008 and 2013. Radio revenue will dip an average 1.9 percent. Each will see spending flattening out by 2010 or 2011, but any increases will be too slight to bring either back up to pre-recession levels by 2013. Kagan does see a decent bump for spot TV in 2010 from elections and the Winter Olympics. Ad spending will rise more than 5 percent. But even so it will be a down year compared to 2006 and 2008, the last two election and Olympics years, says Justin Nielson, senior analyst at SNL Kagan. “2008 was a down year [compared to 2006], despite record political spending,” he says. “We were going into the recession. TV doesn’t get back to 2008 levels by 2013.” As a point of comparison, forecaster Jack Myers recently issued an equally grim outlook. Myers expects spot TV to post a 20 percent decline in spending this year, down to $20 billion, with spending likely to post another 7 percent decline in 2010. He’s projecting that radio ad spending will plummet 19 percent this year, to $15 billion, and dip another 4 percent in 2010.

Interactive Gets the Edge On Radio.

Internet ad revenues surpassed radio in 2008. Internet ad revenue for the year rose 10.6% to $23.4 billion, up from $21.2 billion the previous year, whereas radio revenue fell 9% to $19.5 billion. Radio revenue is expected by Wachovia to fall another 13% this year. The Internet is now the third largest ad-supported medium, behind newspapers and TV. “We are seeing an ongoing secular shift from traditional to online media as marketers recognize that ad dollars invested in interactive media are effective at influencing consumers and delivering measurable results,” IAB President/CEO Randall Rothenberg is quoted as saying in Radio Ink. Despite a difficult U.S. economy, the report indicates that interactive advertising’s continued growth - though at a slower pace - confirms marketers’ increased confidence in the value in reaching consumers online. In the fourth quarter, internet ad revenues of $6.1 billion marked the first time the interactive advertising industry achieved, and surpassed, $6 billion in a single quarter. The figures represent a 4.5% increase from Q308 total of $5.8 billion and a 2.6% increase from 2007’s fourth quarter, which had revenues of $5.9 billion. 2008 marked the fifth consecutive year of record results, writes Marketing Charts.

Product Placement Goes Local.

While product-placement deals are usually the work of TV networks and major brands, local TV stations are getting into the act. For instance, local stations that air Meredith’s syndicated hour-long lifestyle program “Better” are now running customized videos that feature State Farm Insurance. Program syndicators “are a little bit more open” to adopting branded-entertainment ideas, compared to networks, “who have to deal with their own standards and practices,” says Ed Gold, State Farm ad director. Three-to-five minute videos centered on child-care topics, such as baby-proofing the home, are integrated into Meredith’s “Better” program. The videos are the creation of Meredith’s Video Solutions unit, which has also created custom videos for marketers, including General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Kimberly-Clark. Other backers of syndicated programming are seeing the value of branded entertainment. Last year the syndicated-programming arm of CBS formed a special unit to introduce product integration ideas earlier in the program development process.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: Ideas Anyone?

If you were at a New York deli or bar recently and suddenly had the urge to jot down an idea, your eyes might have happened upon just what you needed, a piece of paper with blue lines running across like the paper you once used in college. And it seemed to be everywhere–napkins with blue lines and sugar packets with blue lines, tray liners with blue lines. And if you went to the restroom, there it was again, toilet paper with blue lines. The lined paper came compliments of New York’s School of Visual Arts, and it was really an alternative media campaign to promote the school. The intent of the campaign was captured in the one-word tagline that appeared at the bottom of each execution: “Think: The School of Visual Arts.” We may think of Visual Arts as art school, and that it is, as its name makes clear, but the purpose of the campaign was to say that it’s really more. It’s about the creative process. It’s about imagination, about thinking. The campaign was the creation of Frank Anselmo, creative director at New York’s KNARF and also the instructor of a course at the school titled “Unconventional Advertising,” and it came about when the school’s administration asked him to create a campaign to promote the school.

Sight, Sound & Success

U.S. banks seeing the highest returns on their advertising investment are not necessarily those spending the most but instead have the heaviest TV budgets. A new report from financial-services research firm Aite Group, which examined ad-spending trends and return on advertising performance of 32 of the largest 50 U.S. retail banks from 2006 through 2008, found that top 25% highest-performing banks are those with TV-heavy buys. The 32 banks included in the report accounted for 75% of ad spending by the top 100 bank advertisers, a group which spent $1.9 billion on advertising in 2007, according to market-research firm TNS. Yet according to Aite, sheer budget size does not always yield high returns. “There are a lot of factors that figure into bank performance,” said Ron Shevlin, senior analyst at Aite Group and author of the report. “Sales ability, ad execution and asset optimization are all things we found done particularly well in the top quadrant of banks.” He said banks in that top quadrant — which include big names such as Citibank and Wachovia, as well as smaller companies Huntington, BB&T and Hudson Bank — did best in driving deposit, loan and IRA account growth, which is, after all, the ultimate goal in bank marketing. While other banks succeeded in ramping different traditional metrics of advertising return, such as awareness, he said those ad dollars were ultimately lost because they did not result in new deposits, loan or IRA growth.

Social Network Surge

The rapidly evolving world of social networks and blogs has officially grown up. Last year, the largest increase in visitors to such “member community” Web sites came from those ages 35-49, according to a new report from The Nielsen Co. “Social networking isn’t just growing rapidly, it’s evolving–both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality,” said Alex Burmaster, author of the study and communications director across EMEA for Nielsen Online. But grow rapidly it did. In 2008, over two-thirds (67%) of the global online population visited what Nielsen dubs “member communities,” which include both social networks and blogs. That placed “member communities” as the fourth-largest online category, ahead of “personal email.” What’s more, the category grew twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors, including search, portals, PC software and email. According to the Nielsen report, Facebook–which has now surpassed MySpace as the world’s most popular social network–was visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking. In Brazil, meanwhile, Google’s Orkut social network had the largest domestic online reach–70%–of any social network in these markets. Germany saw the greatest increase in penetration of social networks and blogs across 2008, from 39% of the online audience in December 2007 to 51% in December 2008–a relative growth of 39%. In addition, mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking, according to Nielsen. U.K. mobile Web users had the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23%–or roughly 2 million people–doing so, compared to 19% in the U.S.–or some 10.6 million people.

Morning Show Mayhem

To promote its flagship morning show, “Good Morning America,” ABC has bought ads in rival early-bird programming, including CNN’s “American Morning.” In other words, when CNN’s John Roberts cuts to a commercial break, you might see an ad suggesting you change the channel to watch GMA’s Diane Sawyer instead. Since rival networks were not likely to accept an ad from ABC News, ABC made the purchases through local cable operators in the top 10 national markets, allowing its GMA ads to run between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on a range of cable-news channels. ABC’s approach is the latest use of local ad time to circumvent the awkward times when a particular TV network would prefer not to run a certain ad. Alan Ives, executive producer at ABC News, says it makes sense to hunt on other channels for non-GMA watchers and hope to lure them from competitors’ programs. “It’s easier to convert someone who has the TV on at the time than it is to run a print ad to get them to remember.”

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: The Doghouse.

Less heard about but no less tragic is the story of the pets that are left behind as the family piles into the car and drives off. It was the plight of those animals that was running through the mind of Phil Jones, art director at an ad agency in Charlotte, N.C. Jones, a dog lover, had just finished reading a story about those abandoned pets. Says Jones: “It was one of those a-ha moments after reading a news article. The Humane Society of Charlotte is one of our clients, so I thought ‘We can do something about this, and it’s timely.’” From that a-ha moment arose an idea and then a plan and from that an alternative media campaign. The centerpiece is a dog house. Over the dog house is a sign that reads “Foreclosure” in bold red letters. It sits in front of the Humane Society of Charlotte. Next to the dog house stands a post and on the top of it is a box that looks just like those boxes you see in front of homes that are on the market. But inside, instead of the listings for available homes in the neighborhood, are listings for abandoned pets that are available for adoption.The great tragedy of this vicious economic downturn is the number of people forced onto the streets by foreclosures, and it seems not a night goes by on the evening news where we’re not told of some hapless family saying good-bye to their home.

Eventful Thinking.

Although marketers are getting more tech savvy, it seems they still have a soft spot for good old fashioned event marketing. More than half (53 percent) of 300 senior marketing executives surveyed said event marketing is the discipline that best accelerates and deepens relationships with target audiences. The EventView 2009 survey, which was completed earlier this month by George P. Johnson, The MPI Foundation and the Event Marketing Institute, included a healthy swath (41 percent) of marketers whose companies pull in revenues in excess of $1 billion. More than a quarter (26 percent) of those surveyed said event marketing is the discipline that drives the greatest return-on-investment. “The economy is forcing marketers to elevate their game to survive, specifically in regard to deploying direct response marketing such as events to drive top-line performance,” said Bruce MacMillan, president and CEO of MPI. Twenty-nine percent of marketers will transition their strategy from event marketing to experience marketing in the next 12 months. The difference being that experience marketing “involves integrated live and online experiences that drive deep brand interaction through highly relevant story telling and brand immersion,” per the study. A third of those polled said they already made the switch. The findings underline two trends coming together at the same time, said David Rich, svp of strategic marketing/worldwide at experience marketing agency George P. Johnson. “First, a downward economic spiral that is forcing brands to invest in channels like events that demonstrate measurable ROI; and secondly the maturation of strategic event and experience marketing, which takes the strategic, creative, media and digital capabilities of above-the-line marketing and activates them through the on-the-ground execution of an event portfolio made up of different types of internal and external events.”

Eating Down.

Affluent consumers increased their visits to fast-food burger restaurants, but cut back on visits to the more upscale chains within the family restaurants category in the months following the economic “meltdown” in early October. Those are among the restaurant-related trends emerging from newly released Experian Simmons data from the latest three-month wave of the Simmons National Consumer Study (Fall 2008). The preliminary data reflects week-by-week trends for the period spanning Aug. 18 to Dec. 8 last year. Because the data are not yet weighted (fully projected to the U.S. population), absolute percentages are not claimed to be exact; however, the relative percentages are indicative of trends across time. Following the meltdown (pegged at Oct. 3), the data show a distinct uptick in reported recent (last 30 days) visits to fast-food burger chains among households with incomes of $75,000 and above. Furthermore, the uptrend was more marked among the highest incomes levels. For example, the percentage of consumers with household incomes of $100,000+ having visited one (unnamed) burger chain jumped from 50.1% pre-meltdown to 57.3% post-meltdown, and the percentage reporting visiting a second unnamed burger chain rose from 25.7% to 31.3%. Simmons Experian notes that a simultaneous downward trend post-meltdown in the numbers of consumers with a household income of $75,000+ indicating that they try to eat gourmet food as often as possible seems to corroborate that their eating patterns were affected by the onset of the economic crisis.

Collaborative Content.

Craftsman revs up its involvement with NASCAR this season, having added a branded entertainment vehicle Sunday before Fox’s broadcast of the Daytona 500. Craftsman was the “presenting sponsor” of a special focused on the frequently overlooked pit crews that turn the wrenches and fasten the bolts to propel the cars to jaw-dropping speeds. The one-hour “Craftsman Presents: Road to Daytona” featured Fox analyst Larry McReynolds hosting from a set at a NASCAR research facility surrounded by the brand’s signage. Before certain segments, his lead-ins included a Craftsman reference, and there were other audio mentions throughout. The special–which aired immediately before Daytona’s green flag dropped–had a documentary feel, with a behind-the-scenes look at how crews diligently build their cars to prepare for the upcoming season. Vis-à-vis the drivers, there was an “unsung heroes” element. It also offered an overview of changes that will affect the NASCAR circuit this year, such as top driver Tony Stewart switching sponsors. “Road to Daytona” was engineered as a time buy on Fox, which is involved in the production along with sports-marketing firm Intersport and NASCAR Media Group. Craftsman, the longtime “official tools of NASCAR,” was attracted to the sponsorship opportunity largely because the show finds story lines off the track and inside the NASCAR garages. “It’s really about before you get your race car on the track–and that’s where Craftsman lives,” says Erik Rosenstrauch, director of marketing for the Sears brand.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: A Real Snow Job.

Earlier this week, Londoners were beset by their worst snowstorm in 20 years, and for several days wherever they looked they saw white. Or almost everywhere. A lot of times they saw, imbedded deep in the snow, a round impression, actually a logo. It was the logo of Extreme Sports Channel, a cable channel based in the Netherlands. There it was, an oblong circle about 14 inches across with the letters EX in the center. There were thousands stamped on structures around the city. Credit quick thinking on the part of the network’s London agency, Curb. The snow had begun falling Sunday night, and early Monday morning the agency sent out a crew with stencils of the logo, and they went around the city pressing them into the snow. “The campaign was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but as soon as we started doing it people were literally stopping in the street and saying, ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’” says Anthony Ganjou, managing director at Curb. “So we decided to go all out from there.” By day’s end, the teams had left some 2,000 impressions in about 350 locations. Ganjou says the campaign was a good match for the Extreme brand, as a network that focuses on extreme sports, including snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing and biking. Ganjou had actually come up with the idea for snow tags six months earlier. It was a matter of waiting for it to snow, and it could have been a long wait indeed, since it seldom snows in London. As it should happen, when it finally did snow it was a doozy, and the Curb crew was ready.

Stream-rolling the Competition.

Netflix showed little sign of the economic slowdown that’s been nailing other companies this corporate earnings season. But it attributed its fourth-quarter jump in revenue, profit and subscribers to a surprising factor: surging popularity of its online video streaming service. The movies-by-mail service said today it added 718,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter, far more than analysts had expected, bringing its subscriber base to nearly 9.4 million. Netflix expects the number to reach 10.6 million subscribers within the next three months, even as other parts of the entertainment business contract because of the recession. “It’s very clear that streaming is energizing our growth,” Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings said on a call today with analysts. Hastings said the company’s streaming business was propelled by connection with devices from LG Electronics, Samsung and Microsoft that offer Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service. Subscribers can use the service to stream any of about 12,000 television shows and movies without waiting for the DVD to arrive by mail. The company “substantially” increased its investment in streaming video — and plans to do the same in 2009, he said. “We plan to spend as much money as we can with the studios, licensing as much content as we can — and we are already one of the studios’ largest Internet revenue sources,” Hastings said. “Our spending is limited only by what content is available at reasonable costs.”
The Conversion is On.

The digital TV deadline won’t be pushed back after all, at least not this week. The House of Representatives yesterday failed to pass a bill that would have delayed next month’s changeover from analog to digital TV signals until June, a measure the Senate passed earlier this week. That doesn’t mean the bill is toast. It did receive a majority of votes, 258-168, but it failed to hit the two-thirds number needed to pass a fast-tracked bill. Many believe it will be reintroduced next week and win passage. But for now, it means that the Feb. 17 transition date mandated under the Bush administration remains the deadline. President Barack Obama’s team made pushing back the date a priority, saying that too many households, especially low-income ones, are unprepared for the switch and that the government bungled the coupon program designed to ease the cost of digital converter boxes for consumers. A recent Nielsen study found that 6.5 million households are totally unprepared for the switch, and several million are on a waiting list to receive the federal coupons.
Change for Superbowl.

NBC News’ Matt Lauer will interview President Barack Obama in his first television interview from the White House. Part of the interview will air during NBC’s Super Bowl Pre-Game show on Sunday, Feb. 1, according to USA Today. The rest of the interview will be shown Feb. 2 on NBC News’ Today. Obama was interviewed by Fox last year during that network’s broadcast of the big game, writes TV Week. Other presidents, including George W. Bush, have made appearances during the Super Bowl. Press coverage of almost anything to do with now-President Obama has broken all sorts of records. The day he was elected, newspapers across the country sold out, went back to press and sold out again. Days later, his interview on 60 Minutes gave that show its biggest audience in 9 years. His inauguration was the second-most watched in history, and online, the number of viewers was staggering: CNN.com Live served more than 21.3 million live video streams globally from 6:00am to 3:30pm EST. That’s more than four times the previous record set on the day Obama was elected - which at the time also broke records.

Strangest Media opportunity of the Week: Flying High.

A billboard is a billboard is a billboard, and we see them every day all across America. But some billboards go beyond, entering the realm of true alternative media, such that people look, then look again, their eyes fixed on something that seems to defy logic, a visual sleight of hand. And as with much of the best of alternative media, it’s more about imagination than money. Case in point: a board on California’s interstate 405 headed north from Los Angeles toward Mammoth Mountain, a ski resort in Mammoth Lakes some five hours north of the city. From a distance it looks like your standard billboard, but as you get close you see it’s practically all white, except for a logo in the upper right corner that says simply “Mammoth” and underneath “Play Big” and a web address in the bottom left. Then, looking above, one sees a high-flying snowboarder doing tricks in midair. The snowboarder is suspended over the board, snowboard pointing down, knees bent, one arm in the air, as if he were about to land on the board, whose white face now becomes a snow-covered slope.

HEILBrice, located in Irvine, California, is a full-service marketing and communications agency. Professional services include advertising, branding, collateral development, consumer research, direct response, digital communications, Hispanic marketing, media planning/buying and public relations. Some of the company we keep includes Ketel One Vodka, Kroger (Ralphs/Food 4 Less), Boot Barn, OCRegister.com, Ceiva, The Penn Traffic Companies, The Los Angeles Clippers, The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Marie Callender’s Restaurants, LA Inc. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The In-Store Solution.

It’s no surprise that marketers face enormous hurdles today in getting their message in front of the right consumers. At the height of the mass marketing era in the 1950s, advertisers could buy commercial time during I Love Lucy or The Ed Sullivan Show and be confident of reaching a huge percentage of their target audience. But no single TV show, newspaper, or Web site offers such widespread access to consumers today. The last bastion of prime-time mass marketing may well be the retail shopping environment, an advertising vehicle that many people would not even consider a communication medium. “Everybody has to shop, so the store is the last place where mass marketing exists,” says George Wishart, global managing director of Nielsen In-Store, the retail media division of the Nielsen Company. “Even better, you are reaching people who are declared shoppers. They’re there for a purpose.” During the last few years, marketers, retailers, and media companies have intensified efforts to increase the impact of in-store advertising and make it a bigger part of the marketing mix. They are moving beyond traditional vehicles such as cardboard displays, printed ads, coupons at checkout, and video screens that run the same ad throughout the store. Video ads in stores are more targeted than they have ever been. They are powered by networks that offer programming aimed at particular shoppers, on the basis of where they are standing in the store, the promotions on nearby displays, and the time of day. Consumers in some stores can find shopping carts that help them navigate the aisles; if they pick up a bag of charcoal, the cart suggests barbecue recipes and guides them to the ingredients — mentioning, perhaps, which brands are on sale. If consumers swipe the charcoal with a handheld scanner, the scanner generates a coupon for it and for complementary barbecue items such as chips or soda.

Staying Power.

All top shows fade in time, and reality shows have a way of falling off a cliff once viewers tire of them. But after five seasons as the No. 1 show on broadcast, Fox’s “American Idol” is not about to take that tumble. That’s the take of media planners and buyers on the show, which returned this week for its eighth season. They see the show declining in viewers a bit this season, reflecting the general erosion of broadcast ratings, but they see it remaining the No. 1 show on television and they see it once again driving Fox to a season win in adults 18-49. Clearly, media people have a good take on the show, based on how it performed in its premiere on Tuesday night. Asked to peg viewership that first night, and given choices ranging from fewer than 25 million to more than 37 million, the largest share, around 24 percent, chose between 31.1 million to 33 million while 23 percent chose between 29.1 million to 31 million and another 18 percent chose between 27.1 million to 29 million. The opener drew 30.1 million viewers, down 9 percent from last year’s 33.2 million. Nearly two thirds of readers, 60 percent, think the show will decline modestly this season, “as part of the natural viewer erosion seen on other shows across broadcast. Its dips will be no more than those seen by ‘Desperate Housewives’ or other top scripted shows this year.” And 21 percent see it maintaining last year’s viewing levels.

Ultimate Resource.

For the vast majority of shoppers, the heady concept of “mobile apps” translates into calling your sister for a second opinion before actually buying that new coffeemaker. But a new study from ForeSee predicts rapid changes as consumers become more adept at using their smartphones while out shopping. At this point, only 29% of online shoppers use their phone to help make shopping decisions, although 91% own cell phones. And of those who have used them, 72% call someone and ask for an opinion, while 40% say they photograph the product they are considering and email it to someone for feedback. A much smaller group–24%, or about 7% of the total respondent pool–use the phone to go online and compare prices. And 15%, or 4% of the total, use their phone to search product reviews. ForeSee, which studies e-tailers and online customer satisfaction, expects those numbers to at least double in the year ahead. In many ways, these mobile shoppers are no different than other shoppers. “They are not more loyal, more satisfied, or more likely to recommend top retailers’ Web sites,” the study notes, but they are 6% more likely to buy something in the store. “Mobile apps offer a huge opportunity for retailers to encourage in-store purchases,” the report says, adding that stores that initiate “phone a friend” efforts may benefit from encouraging consumers to make their cell phone part of the shopping experience. “Going forward, retailers should encourage smartphone users to adopt retailer-generated mobile apps–not only to ask about a product or send a picture of a product to a friend, but to compare online prices, remember specs of something they were researching online, and identify the proper model or version of a wish list item.”

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: Pump it Up.

It’s so simple, and it makes all the sense in the world. If you want to reach potential car buyers anxious over high gas prices, meet them at the pump with an eye-arresting image that will stay with them long after they pull away. Here’s what an agency came up with for Daihatsu in a recent campaign pushing its economical Cuore model: miniature make-believe gas pumps at filling stations near Daihatsu dealerships in Switzerland. The dwarf pumps stood next to real full-size pumps, and atop each was a sign with these words: “Schluckt viel weniger.” That’s German for “A lot less thirsty.” In coming up with the campaign, creatives worked backward, considering first what would be the ideal venue, and gas stations were the obvious choice. “There was the strategic thought to talk to the drivers when they are at their most susceptible,” says a copywriter who worked on the campaign. “We wanted to show them that it is possible to manage with a much smaller fill-up if you are driving the right car.” Next came the challenge of conveying that message in an way that would make it stand out from all the other messages one finds at gas stations. After more brainstorming, the idea of the miniature pumps emerged.

First Down, Pepsi

Pepsi has gone on the offensive, blocking all softdrinks other non-alcoholic beverages from the Super Bowl through the first half and half time. Coke is pondering a similar move for the third quarter of the game. The category exclusivity was engineered by Omnicom’s OMD, writes AdAge. Pepsi spent $192.8 million on Super Bowl advertising between 1998 and 2007, second only to Anheuser-Busch, which spent $274.2 million, per TNS Media Intelligence. After the 2008 game, Pepsi had more share of voice in blog posts during and after the Super Bowl than any other brand. People familiar with the situation say that Coke is trying to hammer out similar exclusivity in the third quarter, but that nothing has been confirmed. Coke has backed off on its Super Bowl presence in recent years. Super Bowl spots are running for $3 million on average this year. The game will air on NBC on Feb. 1, 2009.

Dunkin’ On the Move

When Nigel Travis takes command of Dunkin’ Brands as CEO next month, he may want a Toyota Yaris as his company car, particularly if it carries a seven-foot-tall iced coffee in the back. Many people at Dunkin’ Brands, parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins, ask for the tricked-out orange or pink cars. But John Giaquinto, manager of field marketing services, isn’t giving up even one of his 20 Yaris. “TV crews really love them,” he points out, “so it’s more likely that we’ll get on TV.” The eye-catching cars are the latest addition to Dunkin’s fleet of vehicles used primarily for sampling at about 1,000 events a year, from the grand opening of a new shop to big-name concerts and festivals. Some of the fleet has been around for several years–and by sampling vehicle standards, they are novel, with steam rising from the top of white coffee cups, for example, in pink cars. Giaquinto says the Canton, Mass.-based company used to send out only large vehicles, but decided to downsize to Yaris after gas prices began to rise. “We’ve made it to Phoenix but not [yet] to the West Coast,” he says.

Beta Begone

It just may be the shortest beta testing period of any Google product: After a mere 3.5 months, the search king has taken its Chrome Web browser out of beta. Gmail, for example, has been in beta since April 2004. So, what’s new? “The engineering team has been fixing a lot of bugs and working on stability, working on making the product really rock solid,” Brian Rakowski, product manager for Google Chrome, tells Information Week. He added that Google isn’t putting a lot into the “1.0″ tag: “We’re trying, throughout the whole Chrome development process, to release features very quickly, so we have a lot more stuff coming down the pipe. The main point of this is that it’s a rock-solid product that’s ready for anybody to use, not just early adopters.” Is that the same thing as saying that Chrome is both done and still a work in progress? “There’s no question that we have a lot of work to do,” Rakowski conceded. “If you compare it to other projects of this scope, it’s not unusual to have many thousands of open bugs. What we try to do is triage those bugs carefully and make sure that we’re taking care of the most important ones, the ones that are affecting most users. Lots of those bugs have been targeted for this release to close.” Meanwhile, the report says “the most meaningful consequence” of Chrome 1.0 is that distribution partners will now be able to offer Chrome as a finished product. That should help it move beyond the paltry 0.83 percent share of the browser market that Chrome now occupies.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: Origami

We may not think we pay much attention to the receipts we get out of ATM machines, but we do, looking at them as they come out and often sticking them in a wallet or purse to record later. That would seem to make them a great place to put an ad message–and an even better place to engage that bank customer. What an agency in Australia came up with was the ultimate engagement: Origami ads. ATM receipts from Australia’s HSBC bank are now printed with instructions for creating origami sculptures, five in all, a car, a house, a piggy bank, a mouse and a Chinese restaurant takeout container. Each is really an ad for a service the bank offers beyond checking. The car is for insurance, the piggy bank for savings accounts, the house for the mortgages it offers, the mouse for its online banking service and the takeout box for its credit card services. The idea for the origami sculptures emerged from brainstorming sessions in response to a request from the bank to come up with a smart way to promote its other services. “We set ourselves a task to create something people might want to interact and spend time with,” says Richard Apps, creative group head. “We explored quite a few areas, but the origami idea captured our imagination straight away and was the best fit for delivering the product information.”

Voice of the Future.

Want to know where the nearest Starbucks is, but don’t feel like taking out your phone to search for it? Well, now you can simply ask your phone, thanks to new voice recognition technology Google’s added to its search software for the Apple iPhone. Simply place the handset to your ear, and you can ask virtually any question. The sound will be converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which interpret the words and then pass them to Google’s search engine. The search results will be displayed in a matter of seconds on a fast wireless network. The New York Times points out that such voice recognition technology “has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural.” Incidentally, Google is not the first to try it. Both Microsoft and Yahoo already offer voice services for mobile phones. According to the Times, Microsoft’s Tellme service returns information in specific categories like directions, maps and movies, while Yahoo’s oneSearch with Voice is more flexible than Google’s offering but does not appear to be as accurate. That said, the Google system is far from perfect, the Times says, often returning queries that appear as “gibberish.” When asked, Google execs declined to say how often the service returns accurate results, but they believe it’s accurate enough so that people who want to avoid typing in queries would find it useful

Online TV Viewing Increasing.

As ratings for the Big Four TV networks continue to decline, more people are watching network TV shows online. According to Nielsen Online, the networks saw an average of 155 percent month-over-month growth in online video viewing in September. (Nielsen did not include the CW in its estimates.) The increase isn’t necessarily surprising since September saw the season premieres of many popular and new TV shows, but Nielsen Online reports that interest in the presidential election as well as coverage of the financial meltdown also boosted online video viewing for the networks. NBC.com grew the most, up 312 percent month-over-month, followed by Fox and ABC.com, with 165 percent and 105 percent growth, respectively. CBS.com only saw a 38 percent increase in unique viewers from August but was second in the number of minutes viewers spent on the web site at 48 minutes. Fox Broadcasting was first with 114 minutes, ABC.com saw 45.5 minutes and NBC.com 35 minutes. NBC.com also led in unique viewers with 5.6 million, followed by ABC.com at 5.2 million, CBS at 3.3 million and Fox at 1.4 million. Collectively, the Big Four networks’ average adults 18-49 rating has slipped 14 percent this season, while total viewers are down 10 percent.

Game On.

Apple’s iPhone 3G and its game-heavy AppStore may well push mobile gaming into the mainstream, Ad Age reports, in much the same way that the Web brought casual gaming to the masses. The trade pub points out that it wouldn’t be very difficult for the likes of Apple and Google to develop an in-game ad network for their mobile phones. Google, for example, already owns an in-game network. Microsoft, which owns the in-game ad network Massive Incorporated, is also rumored to be working on its own phone. Sony, which has the PSP portable gaming device and the Sony-Ericsson line of phones, is also rumored to be working on a PSP phone. It has its own in-house in-game advertising team and has partnered with ad networks like IGA. “The thing with casual gaming is that it hits a much bigger demographic than console games that just tend to attract younger men, so now with mobile gaming you have an even greater potential for generating ad revenue, more than PC games ever could. More people have phones than PCs, and they’re using them more often and with more [downtime and] opportunities for gaming,” said Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group. A recent study from NPD Group corroborates those claims, finding that smartphone users play games more often than they use business-related functions. According to the study, playing games was the most increased use of the phones over the last three months.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: Tubular.

When we think of out-of-home signage, we usually think of free-standing signs, but some of the most creative campaigns take advantage of existing structures that folks normally don’t pay much attention to. There was the cigar store campaign that put what looked like oversized cigar bands on wooden telephone poles, making them look like giant stogies standing on end. And just recently a campaign for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign put an Obama icon on signs alerting motorists to traffic signals. Here’s another one: A bank in Colorado is putting its message on light poles. The campaign, which is now running in the Front Range area of the state, is for FirstBank’s mobile banking service, with the idea that customers can bank anywhere. What the bank’s agency, TDA Advertising & Design, came up with were graphics that wrap around the poles in a way that makes them look like the pneumatic tubes found at drive-up banking installations. A cutout shows the capsule that’s used to transfer deposits to the bank. Below is the message: “Mobile banking. Available everywhere.”

The Time is Now for SEM.

As the economy enters a seemingly deep recession, marketers are beginning to see their dollars cut. With those cuts come hard decisions regarding advertising. TV, Radio, Print, Direct, and Online among others, will all likely be considered. This leads to a discussion of which, if any, forms of advertising are recession proof. It is our opinion that Search Engine Marketing is best positioned to be ‘recession proof’. Google, which relies on text advertising for the bulk of their revenue, reported revenue up 31% compared to 2007. Yahoo, on the other hand, which relies heavily upon display advertising, reported a 64% drop in profit and plans to cut at least 10% of its staff. Meanwhile, the other forms of advertising (radio, TV, and print) are seeing more budget cut. While cuts in marketing are painful, Search Engine Marketing offers several benefits that other forms of marketing do not. It is completely transparent, trackable, and contextualized to what the user is looking for. Instead advertising broad, SEM allows companies to filter right down to the user. Structured around the action of a user typing in a unique keyword that you bid on, SEM allows you to only pay when a user clicks on your ad. Being able to track every dollar and calculate ROI insulates Search from the other forms of marketing that invest more in brand awareness and interaction than they do with hard sales.

-Jeff Lawrence, Online Advertising Director, HEILBrice

Netflix Not Just For Snail Mail.

One of the longest-awaited partnerships in home video finally appears to be ready as Netflix and TiVo Thursday unveil a plan to offer customers films on demand via the Internet. By early December, following a technology test, Netflix will stream any of 12,000 movies and TV shows to its subscribers who also subscribe to TiVo — and have a Series 3 or high-definition DVR connected to broadband. “In terms of two long-standing brands coming together, this has great significance,” says TiVo CEO Tom Rogers. They planned a similar service in 2004; Mike Ramsay, then TiVo’s CEO, resigned from the Netflix board to avoid a conflict of interests. But studios refused to license films, fearing that it would hurt DVD sales. Since then, “We have a great head of steam on those content rights, and we’re trying to get our streaming software in every Internet box,” says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. His company has separate deals to transmit films to equipment made by LG, Samsung, Roku and Microsoft’s X-Box. The service has few recent hits: Studios offer films for streaming after they’ve run on premium channels including HBO and Showtime, although Netflix has a deal to offer some films licensed to Starz.

Merger Making Cents.

Yahoo and Time Warner’s AOL unit continue to discuss a possible merger, a person familiar with the talks told Reuters on Wednesday. The two companies are looking at each other’s books to figure out how much money they could make together and where costs can be saved. While noting a deal was not imminent, the source said the two companies have engaged in “meaningful” due diligence about a possible combination for the past couple of weeks. Talks began several months ago, when Yahoo was looking for an alternative growth strategy to fend off a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft. One possible scenario is Yahoo would fold AOL’s content and advertising business into its own operations, and Time Warner would get a stake in the combined company. Integration concerns would likely revolve around how to fold AOL’s advertising network into Yahoo’s operations, choosing whether to keep separate portals and email services, and squeezing out cost savings by reducing duplication, one former AOL executive said on condition of anonymity.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: The Outdoor Beard.

In all ways but one it was your standard billboard, one based on Diet Mountain Dew’s “Surprising Facts” TV campaign, in which we learn, among other things, that ferrets attack more people than grizzly bears and that the yo-yo was invented as a weapon. In the billboard, we see a man and a comely woman in an office situation, with the words, “Attraction makes beards grow faster.” That’s the surprising fact. But more surprising to Los Angeles motorists tooling past the Hollywood & Highland Center is that the man’s beard appears to be growing. And indeed it is. Every two weeks or so more hair is attached to the man’s beard. “Because it’s in such a busy area, we wanted more than just a plain two-dimensional billboard,” says Peter Kain, creative director. “Part of creating the campaign was digging up surprising facts. The beard fact we had for a while, and this was the best opportunity to use it.” The board went up in August and will stay up until the end of the year. Other markets are being considered.

Sources: Media Post 10/27/08; Advertising Age 10/27/08; Research Brief 10/27/08; Media Life 10/27/08, photobucket.com 2008, USA Today, Reuters

Obama Buys Network Time for Infomercial

Barack Obama has purchased a half-hour of prime-time television on CBS and NBC for a nationwide pitch to voters that will air on Oct. 29 — less than a week before the general election. “Obama’s appealing to the whole nation rather than a handful of tossup states,” says an organizer.

“This is another indication that Barack Obama’s got more money than [available] television time to buy,” says Evan Tracey, executive at the Campaign Media Analysis Group. Whether John McCain’s campaign will do the same remains to be seen, though its TV buying has been limited mostly to ads in battleground states.

“Obama’s campaign is not doing this and pulling down [ad] buys in Florida. This is not an either/or decision. They’ve got 25 days and unlimited amounts of money,” says Tracey.

Is That Sarah Palin or Tina Fey? Either Way, SNL’s Ratings Are Up

Sarah Palin is the best thing that happened to “Saturday Night Live” this decade. Last Saturday’s show marked the third appearance this season by Tina Fey as Palin, along with surprise guest Queen Latifah sitting in as vice presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill.

The 11-minute opening number drew rave reviews in the ratings and in the blogosphere, where a clip of Fey-as-Palin saying the GOP ticket would be all “mavericky,” gained wide traction overnight.

The episode averaged a 7.4 household rating, per Nielsen. That’s within a tenth of a point of its Sept. 13 premiere (also with a Palin skit), which was the highest-rated show since Dec. 14, 2002, when Al Gore and Phish appeared.

Google is Changing the Mobile Ad Landscape with New iPhone-Specific Platform

Not that anyone still doubted the iPhone’s heft in the mobile ad market, but just in case: Google is reportedly telling advertisers they will soon be able to create an iPhone-specific ad group as part of their regular search campaign.

The search giant wouldn’t confirm the rumor, but several agency executives say they’ve taken meetings with Google where the opportunity was discussed. Essentially the creation of an iPhone-specific ad group would mean that marketers could create ads that would appear specifically to iPhone users. In January, The New York Times reported that the iPhone was already the No. 1 source of mobile traffic to Google’s search engine.

Google would not be the first to offer its clients this option–JumpTap and AdMob are just two that have already done that–but it would obviously be the largest. It’s also notable given the recent launch of company’s own iPhone competitor, T-Mobile’s GI, also known as the Google Phone.

Arbitron’s Portable People Meter Gets Push Back From Minority Groups, But Will Keep Moving Forward

When Arbitron rolled out its portable people meter on Monday, two days early, it was a preemptive move against New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who had threatened suit to block it, contending the new radio measurement system undercounts minority listeners.

Cuomo may still file suit, perhaps today, as he’d promised. But the chances that Cuomo, or anyone else, for that matter, will roll back the PPM appear slight to none.

Once up and running, the new electronic system is all but a done deal, in the minds of analysts and industry watchers.

There will surely be court challenges to the PPM that could go on for months, even years, but the likely outcome is that the radio rating service would be forced to adjust the sample panel it uses to collect the data to better reflect the demographic makeup of the population in each market.

TV Car Crash Followed By an In-Program Ad For On-Star: Contextual Ads Debut on TBS

Turner Broadcasting revealed new partners for its new TVinContext system, which will match advertisers’ products with related scenes in movies shown on TNT and TBS. The partners include OnStar, DirecTV, Cadillac, and Victoria’s Secret.

TVinContext delivers ad content related to what just happened on screen. The first TVinContext ads will run on October 25, when the network runs Matt Damon’s “The Bourne Supremacy.” After a car chase and crash scene, the network will insert a spot for OnStar’s automatic crash response service.

As for the scenes that will put viewers in the mood for Victoria’s Secret ads, use your imagination.

Root Canal TV: Coming To a Dentist’s Office Near You

Advertising is being invited to the dentist’s chair via video goggles that patients wear while getting root canals and other sometimes-stressful procedures. The goggles, launched a year ago by InChairTV, show movies and TV shows from Disney and ABC.

Now the company is selling commercial time during the programming. It figures advertisers for toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, travel and stress-relief products will be willing to pay higher rates to reach people eager for distractions during dental sessions.

So far about 400 dentists nationwide have bought the $500 video goggle system to entertain their patients.

Sources: Media Post 10/6/08; Advertising Age 10/6/08; Research Brief 10/6/08; Media Life 10/6/08