House Dems: Broadband isn’t broadband unless it’s 2Mbps
This via Ars Technica. Apparently there is a move in the US to have the FCC redefine what broadband is. The discussion is that the definition needs to be increased from 200 kb to 2 Mb.
Sounds radical in a sense considering that a lot of ADSL high-speed runs at 1.5 Mb.
I’ve been using a service that runs at 256 kb lately, and it sure doesn’t feel like high-speed especially when you’re used to using a 5 Mb service as I’ve spent a lot of time doing.
I think there does need to be a concerted push to get most home broadband up to 25 Mb. Just odd that it’s the government giving this a push in this case rather than consumers or the ISPs.
From the Blog
Sony has landed themselves in hot water with a stunt is a little too raw for likes of some. Poor Sony seems to have a hard time doing much right these days.
This story via the The Daily Mail in the UK.
Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.
The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.
Okay, having a freshly killed goat carcass laying around isn’t usual event fare, but I do find it ironic that most of the people decrying the use of a dead animal for a publicity stunt are going to hit a drive-through and grab a burger on the way home.
Do they think that burger patties grow in shrink wrapped packages on trees? I would wager that this animal very likely led a better life than most of the cattle on a factory farm.
(Note: I eat an almost exclusively vegan diet myself so I’m not all into consuming animal products, in fact, quite the opposite).
I’ll say this though, unless you’re vegan and are walking the talk of not consuming any animal products, save the righteous indignation for another time.
http://skype-watch.com/
It’s too bad when these kinds of voices get silenced. Rather than shutting down these kinds of activity, figured out how to work with it. It’s the difference between creating online brand ambassadors vs. killing brand goodwill.
So, after Apple’s announcement, I’ll now be able to buy songs from iTunes without DRM.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
To the folks that care about DRM – here you go. BUT!!! Here’s why a good law-abiding citizen like myself doesn’t really care:
They are available in 256 kbps instead of 128. (Great, now I can fit half as many songs on my iPod as I used to since the data rate doubled).
The improved bit rates will resulting “audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording”. They said that about 128 kbps AAC files and they were right. Guess what? I can’t remember the last complaint I heard about 128 kbps AAC files. And if it does make that much of a different, I’m not going to be able to hear it in the cheap earbuds that come with any iPod and certainly not over a crappy FM transmitter. If you want to appease the audiophiles, sell the files in Apple Lossless.
Now I can listen to my music on another player besides an iPod. (Ya…I’ll get my iPod on Ebay later on today so I can buy a Zune. Right.)
And no more DRM even.(I’m legit. I’m buying from the store. I don’t have more than 5 computers. I can do what I want with the music now.)
Bottom line is, I don’t really care. DRM wasn’t an inconvenience to me anyway.
But I agree it’s a good PR move for Apple. But I don’t expect it will make a bit of difference to the music industry. The same problems remain.
And the people that like buying from iTunes are going to keep buying the 99 cent version. And the people that steal music are going to keep stealing music.
On thing I’ll say about this whole Web 2.0 business. The back button just doesn’t do what it used to.
It’s not the saviour it used to be in rescuing us from bad navigation and the occassional brief digression. But, in fairness, our dear back-button was built for a different time. A simpler time.
So, here’s to you Saint Back Button, you served us well.
We’ll miss you as we go boldy forward into a more asynchronous beyond.
Now that Microsoft has introduced Vista and it’s Gadget capability and creates a new way to display web content, here comes the bold predictions on how web pages are obsolete.
Whatever…
With every innovation of type, there’s a group of people it suits and some it just doesn’t. Look at RSS as an example. It suits a certain number of people just fine but adoption for RSS is still quite low even though most popular browser support it in some fashion or another. As with everything new, there will always be the people who were just fine with it the way it was and won’t change. Not everyone will spend the time to customize their desktop to have all the usual information at their fingertips. The last I heard a few years back when “personalization” of websites was all the rage, it topped out at around 30% adoption.
I just don’t believe the desire to personalize is that great if the current method of use it is largely satisfactory to the user with no customization needed.
If Gadgets or Widgets (I’ve just been calling them Gidgets and Wadgets to be “cross-platform”) were going to take the world by storm in the space of a few short years, it would have happened already. Apple OS X has had these features for years now. And before Vista you could download software called Konfabulator that does what Widgets and Gadgets do today. It was cool and I used it back then, but it didn’t totally transform my information consumption.
Now that’s not to say, this isn’t an important technology, but it’s going to take awhile to take hold and it won’t make the webpage as we know it obsolete any time soon.
So, relax and go hire a usability specialist and an ace web shop to spruce up your website. It’ll be relevant for a good while yet.
Here’s some 3D outdoor we did at work outside our building. What do you expect when a bunch of people in the industry are musicians?
I think I like this perhaps better than the last 3D we did. I think we should leave this outdoor up for good.
www.brown.ca/11
I put this photo up as hi-res as well as another one up on Flickr too.
And yours truly with a little Marshall loudness of my own.
Went looking for PubSub this morning.
Not to be found.
I haven’t followed them much but judging by the entry on Wikipedia, it looks like there is some financial trouble afoot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSub_Concepts
I’ll be candid.
I am really tired of a lot of advertising out there.
That might sound like something odd to say for someone in advertising, but I feel that way for the most part because I know most conventional advertising is largely ineffective at reaching me – a high-value demo (if I do say so myself). As an example, I watch a high-definition channel from my local cable provider that is programmed out of Toronto instead of locally. I listen to very little radio – only a few minutes a day in the car. Other than the music I listen to is from iTunes. I don’t read the local newspaper. The most news I get is from the Globe and Mail RSS feed in Google’s Gmail.
One thing I have been excited about is the in-game advertising offering available through Massive Incorporated, one of Microsoft’s recent acquisitions. I became acquainted with this company before all that and I really like what they are doing for advertising.
Here are some thoughts on why I think in-game advertising is such a good media placement.
Perhap the biggest merit of in game-advertising is that the ad is placed in an environment where the user’s attention is extremely focussed.
Have you every talked to someone playing a video game? You don’t exist. And God-forbid you walk in front of the TV! They will freak out/or try to look past you to continue what they were doing before the interruption. There are no potty breaks or PVR fast forwarding as there is with broadcast television. And it’s hard to ignore because it’s embedded in the game environment – unlike convential banner advertising that we have all learned to ignore because it’s existence on the page in no way supports our agenda as a user and is generally placed on the periphery of the content.
It’s the most measurable placement in it’s delivery of a quality impression.
Massive counts an impression once it has been on screen for a cumulative 10 secs. A 9 second impression doesn’t count or cost anything. So when you pay for an impression you know it has been seen. This is its biggest advantage over any banner ad (it’s closest sibling to an existing media choice by technical definition). You can not measure how many times a consumer has looked at your banner ad. You only know when the web browser has requested it from the server and placed it somewhere in a webpage. There is no way of know if the user has scrolled past it on the page or more than likely not paid a bit of attention to it because they are looking at the part of the page that they are interested in (which I’m sorry to say is not the ads). In this way, I would argue the length of the impression and the placement of the impression are far superior.
There is a certain caché of the in-game the placement by positioning your brand as a peer with the other advertisers currently doing placements in this channel.
This one is hard to quantify but would you rather have an ad in Fortune or the local chamber pub if the same amount of people would see it? Would you rather appear beside an ad for some other global brand or appear alongside a local restaurant or auto dealer? Placing an ad in a game has the benefit of placing you alongside other global brands that are placing ads. In the process, I think this demonstrates a higher brand value and esteem because of the company you are keeping as an advertiser.
First mover advantage.
This stuff is new. It’s good positioning for a brand to be where the new things are happening. And if you place localized ad (that they can offer by measn of IP geotargetting), it’s going to be noticed by users – especially now when it’s new.
It’s a more modern & immersive type of placement.
The usual “content you like” then “ads to pay the bills” then “content you like” then “more ads to pay the bills” is getting a bit old in places. Branded content and product placement is a big growth area in advertising (some would argue the future of advertising – I hope to goodness it’ll be tastefully done) but it makes it difficult for local brands to play the game because their audience and brand is geographically constrained. While no character in the game is going to interact virtually with your product in the game (today anyway – tomorrow maybe), this is an opportunity to secure a more immersive ad placement than the usual fare and I think that makes it a little more palatable to a cynical and advertising-weary public.
It’s skews towards the elusive 18-34 demo which is often identified as a key audience but is hard to find in conventional media placements.
They’ve fled radio. They multitask on the computer (likely chatting on MSN) while watching television. Forget most print. Gaming has become a social hub with new web-networked consoles and voice communication connecting you with your friends during game play. And if they’ve left conventional media, it’s been to come here.
It’s a media placement that gives access to early technology adopters and influencers.
Find someone who gaming on an XBOX360 console and you’ve got someone at ease with technology, an early adopter and very likely someone who influences the technology decisions of those around them. Take me as an example – since buying an Apple computer in the spring – two other Apple computers have been purchased by members of my family because of my influence. Influencers are a worthy target when promoting technology-based products or services.
It’s inexpensive to get in the door and an excellent value in comparison to other electronic placements.
In my opinion, it’s a very modest investment for chance to delve into and gain some experience in an emerging online marketing opportunity alongside the big boys. The CPM may be higher than a conventional banner ad but it’s well worth it. Industry click-throughs on banner ads are well below one percent. Banner ads are much weaker in terms of recall. (I’d defy anyone to recall a half dozen they saw yesterday). Frankly, I’d value an in-game ad at 10 times a conventional banner ad for all of the reasons above.
So, it’s been interesting to see the brands that are placing advertising. It’s generally the leading-edge clients and agencies with larger budgets that are pushing forward. I know Taxi has been placing ads for BMW Mini (good on ya!). I know some telcos and cellphone providers are advertising. As more agencies and clients figure out the value proposition here, it could get pricey and exclusive. But depending on how game title developers react to the demand for an 18-34 male demo, they may add a bunch of ad inventory opportunities into the game (but at the risk of gamer backlash). This is a delicate balance for them and I expect this will change something in terms of the consumer model for game pricing.
I’m going to be talking more about this. It’s the most interesting and worthwhile ad product I’ve seen in a long time.
Advertising NEEDS more of this kind of thing…
Check out the Massive website at:
www.massiveincorporated.com
Ever email a company and wait…
and wait…
and wait…
and wait…
and WAIT!!!???
I don’t know how many time I’ve made a followup call in to the call centre after not getting a response to an email as quickly I as I think I should be able to expect one.
I don’t know if this is the norm or not, but I just emailed MOTU (www.motu.com) – a maker of audio hardware and software and had a response back in less than five minutes!!! More like two minutes!!!!
I was completely blown away!
Brand managers, this kind of thing matters a helluva lot more than getting just the right pantone or font in your ad campaigns. Or making me laugh for that matter with your funny ad…
Brand live and die by how these types of customer interactions go. I think this is the first time I’ve had my expectations actually exceeded in this type of interaction.
Didn’t hurt that the response was helpful either.
So, hats off – this is how it should be done.
(Still can’t get over how fast that was…. less than five minutes!!!)
Just goes to show – sometime the best advertising is good customer service.