‘advertising’ Archive
This entry was posted October 9th, 2009 and has no nomments.
This week, the FTC issued updated guidelines governing how companies use endorsements and testimonials in their advertising and marketing. The FTC press release cites three specific groups that will be most affected by these changes. Let’s take a look at these groups and how the changes may affect certain businesses.
Testimonial Advertisers:
From the FTC , “Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.”
This change will have a significant and immediate impact on diet/exercise/weight loss advertisers. Where as before they could include the simple disclaimer of “results not typical”, they now have to tell you the average results that you can expect.
The headline will go from, “Becky lost 40 pounds in 2 months!” (Results not typical); to “Becky lost 40 pounds in 2 months!” (You can expect to lose 5-10 pounds in 2 months based on average user results). As you can see, this is a change that could have a serious impact on businesses in this industry.
Continue reading FTC Issues Updated Guidelines for Endorsements
Posted in advertising
This entry was posted April 28th, 2009 and has 2 comments.
There has been a lot of talk lately bemoaning the lack of creativity in online advertising. For years the IAB has been working to standardize ad units in order to make it easier and more efficient for agencies to buy and negotiate online ads. However, some believe this standardization has led to less creative and engaging ads that are easier for consumers to ignore.
VideoEgg has been doing some really good work recently to combat this. Most of the VideoEgg ads I’ve noticed have been on TwitPic for clients like Honda and Dove. The ads expand to cover the screen and include video and multiple ways for users to engage with the ads. And that’s what these new units are all about, engagement.
Also, today there is a really interesting ad on Wired.com (I don’t believe this is from VideoEgg) for the History channel show Life After People. The ad ‘destroys’ and takes over Wired’s homepage. Users can then email a note to a friend telling them about the ad. While the creativity of the ad is very cool, there are a few pieces missing that I think would make this ad even more effective.
Continue reading Life After People Destroys Wired.com
Posted in advertising
This entry was posted June 24th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Internet rumor has it that Google is set to announce their new web measurement tool today. Various articles in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and others are all saying that Wayne Lin, Google Business Product Manager, will announce the new tool this afternoon at the Advertising Research Foundation media conference.
As most of us who plan and buy online media know, the current tools available are either lacking or quite expensive. To be fair, I have not used comScore or Nielsen @Plan due to their prohibitive costs. I currently use Quantcast and Compete for the majority of my research. However, while these tools give you a basic idea of site traffic and audience demo, that’s really where their usefulness ends.
Another issue with these tools is that they, like old-school media measurement tools, rely on user panels. This means that only those who have allowed comScore, et al. to measure their web activity are included in the numbers. The reason that Google’s program may be more beneficial is that they will be gathering data from web servers. This should allow them to have more definitive data.
Continue reading Google Ad Planner to be Announced Today
Posted in advertising
This entry was posted June 9th, 2008 and has no nomments.
This is just a quick post to link to some of the amazing new stuff that is out as of today.
New iPhone announced at WWDC. It will be available July 11 and starts at just $199. I think I’m going to have to cancel my TMobile contract early.
New Sigur Ros album leaked today. This is one of the greatest bands in the world. Their new album is beautiful, as always.
Tonight is the Death Cab for Cutie show at Merriweather. Hopefully I’ll have some photos to post tomorrow and will not get heat stroke.
The annual Maiste crab feast/cookout/karaoke party was this past weekend. As always, it was so much fun. Thanks Mike for hosting another great party.
I’ve also recently downloaded some other really good music that is worth listening to: Bowerbirds, Wye Oak (from Baltimore), and the new Lil’ Wayne. Check them out and let me know what you think.
Posted in advertising, music
This entry was posted June 2nd, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Last Wednesday, I travelled to NYC for the 2008 AAAA Digital Conference. I planned to live blog the event, but this didn’t quite work out. First, my train arrived a bit late, so I missed the first 30 minutes or so. I’m assuming that it was during the introduction that they doled out a username and password for their wi-fi. Needless to say, without the luxury of having this information, I had no internet connection.
While I was initially disappointed, I think it was actually a good thing. With so many conversations happening and information flying around, I definitely would have missed some key items if I had been also trying to craft coherent sentences. Instead of going through the conference session by session, I’m going to focus on the ones that most interested me and were, in my opinion, the most successful.
As I mentioned, due to a late train arrival, I missed almost half of Venture Capitalist Mark Kvamme’s talk. I did manage to catch his introduction of SearchMe.com. SearchMe looks pretty cool, but you have to wonder if it stands a chance in gaining enough users to make it viable. With its visual display, there is the opportunity for advertisers to incorporate much more engaging advertising than the standard 95 characters of text. It also takes a much different approach in displaying the search results, which makes it very interesting.
Continue reading AAAA Digital Conference
Posted in advertising, marketing
This entry was posted May 7th, 2008 and has no nomments.
On Tuesday I took and passed the Google Advertising Professionals Exam. This was a pretty involved, 117 question exam that covers just about everything that goes into creating, running, managing, and optimizing a Google SEM campaign.
So, what is the significance of passing this exam, you ask? Well, according to Google,
“Qualified Individuals and Qualified Companies within the Google Advertising Professionals program have passed the Google Advertising Professionals Exam and have met other requirements in order to achieve this level of recognition. By attaining individual or company qualification, you’ll receive:
Continue reading Qualified Google Advertising Professional
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising
This entry was posted February 25th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Not only is Dustin Pfeifer a good friend of mine and a champion BSSC quarterback, but he is also an excellent web designer and developer. Dustin and I went to school together and also worked in the marketing department at our last company for about four years. During that time we worked on a lot of projects together, many of which I am still really proud of.
I left that company last April and in October, Dustin decided to work for himself full-time and focus on his company, Dustin Pfeifer Creative. He’s already done some great work that you can see on his brand new site, DustinPfeifer.com.
Continue reading The New and Improved DustinPfeifer.com
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted November 7th, 2007 and has no nomments.
If you haven’t seen 365 Shirts yet, well then where have you been for the past 141 days?
My good friend and roommate Mike had the brilliant idea to wear a different shirt every day for one full year. Each day he blogs about the shirt and whatever is going on that day. The goal of the blog is not only to be fun and entertaining, but also to raise money through donations, and awareness for Alzheimer’s research.
So, like I said, if you haven’t been to 365 Shirts yet, get over there and check it out. Then, bookmark it and visit daily.
Also, 365 Shirts is involved in a blog contest hosted by Behance. Behance is a very cool site that showcases great creative work and encourages collaboration and idea sharing among creative professionals. Their tagline is, “Make Ideas Happen.”
Continue reading Vote for 365 Shirts
Posted in advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted October 24th, 2007 and has 3 comments.
That’s right. The Wall Street Journal announced this afternoon that Microsoft has agreed to buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook for a cool $240 million. This values Facebook at a total of $15 billion. This move has been highly anticipated and talked about for months, but no one was sure whether Microsoft would win out over the likes of Google.
It is absolutely amazing how quickly the value of social networking sites have risen. Just 2 years ago, News Corp bought all of MySpace for $580 million. Even more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo just last summer. While many thought he was either crazy, or just an egomaniac, that move is looking quite brilliant today.
So, what could make a social networking site like Facebook possibly worth $15 billion? First, as nearly every media outlet has documented, advertising on TV, radio, and in print continue to decline while digital media has been growing tremendously. Most analyst expect this trend to continue as the internet and other digital technologies become more and more a necessary aspect of our lives. This means that large companies will be spending big bucks online.
Continue reading Microsoft buys a Piece of Facebook
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted October 12th, 2007 and has no nomments.
If you’ve made it here, you obviously are aware that chriswalbert.com is the new home of my blog. If you are new here, thanks for checking it out. Hopefully you’ll find something that interests you. Leave a comment, and start a discussion.
A huge thanks and shout out goes to my good friend of many, many years Dustin Pfeifer for designing and implementing this site. As you can see, Dustin is a top notch front-end web designer. Additionally, he is a mastermind when it comes to CSS.
Dustin now runs a web development and marketing company. If you or your company need any work done, I highly recommend you talk with Dustin.
I’m very excited to have this new, more personalized blog up and running. Not that there is anything wrong with a Wordpress template, but it’s nice to have something that reflects me a bit more.
It is a beautiful fall day, so go out and enjoy it. Be sure to check back here regularly and update your bookmarks, links, etc. to chriswalbert.com.
Continue reading New Blog Site
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
