Archive for March 18th, 2008

Sony PSP3, Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360 may get all the ink in the business press, but when it comes down to choosing where to place in-game advertising for the next four years, most marketers are going to turn to the browser, not the box.

Web-based casual games rather than gee-whiz dedicated consoles will be where the action is in in-game advertising for the short term. That’s the basic finding of an analysis done by marketing research firm eMarketer and published earlier this month. more

A story in this week’s Hollywood Reporter announced that Pepsi will launch an original Webisode series sometime this summer promoting its Mountain Dew brand. And “in a twist”, as the report has it, viewers of the videos will be able to choose from diverging plot lines at various points in the story, fashioning a kind of “Choose Your Online Adventure”.

If so, it’s a twisting that another Web video series is also wringing mileage from. Tassimo, a hot beverage system marketed at retail by Kraft Foods, has launched a microsite www.WhoHiredBob.com, about the misadventures of a middle-management goof who spends more time doing less useful work around the office than anyone else. more

Let me pull back the curtain and admit that sometimes I get more interviews under my belt than I have print space for. As a result, I sometimes wind up talking to very interesting companies and then having to wait a good while to write about them.

Last July I spoke with Neil Perry, acting CEO of XLNTAds, a start-up that brings together companies that want online ad content and video makers looking for a creative challenge. The company was founded in early 2007, just as the trend in user-generated ads was beginning to build momentum thanks to mass-media exposure such as the Super Bowl Doritos TV spot. more

That chart above is what political disaster looks like as reflected in the blog community. Specifically it tracks the volume and tenor of the posts about Eliot Spitzer, the now-former governor of New York, in the days immediately following his outing at “Client No. 9”, the Emperor’s Club VIP customer who met with a prostitute in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. more