Heineken's YouTube ad charms TV viewers
August 24, 2010 in News Roundup
After the huge YouTube success of its Walk-in Fridge ad, Heineken has launched a multimillion ad campaign on TV and in cinemas.
by Ardrich
by Ardrich
Government's crowdsourcing attempt falls flat
August 19, 2010 in News Roundup
The new government’s attempt to engage with the public online has ended in anticlimax.
After receiving 9,500 responses to the crowdsourcing calls for its coalition programme, it turns out that not a single department is willing to alter any policy.
According to Simon Burall, director of Involve, a group advising bodies on consultation, the attempt was poorly thought through.
“You have to give the government some credit for trying to do this, but badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all”, he said.
by admin
Excitement over lip reading mobiles and speech recognition experiments
March 9, 2010 in News Roundup
New technology could enable people to talk to their mobiles silently, the BBC reports.
Visitors to the Cebit electronics fair in Germany have been shown a prototype that measures tiny electrical signals produced by the muscles. The signals can be recorded and turned into synthesised speech even if a single word is not said out loud.
by admin
Google verdict astonishes the online world
February 26, 2010 in News Roundup
The most interesting news from the digital world this week came undisputedly from Italy. Three Google executives were convicted of privacy violations over a YouTube video showing an autistic teenager being bullied.
Among the convicted was Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, who has said he’s “outraged” by a decision he describes as setting a “chilling precedent”.
by admin
YouTube lifts music video block
September 6, 2009 in News Roundup
The issue of copyright has dogged YouTube since its launch
YouTube has lifted a block on users viewing official music videos after the website reached an agreement with songwriters’ group PRS for Music.
In March, the service blocked thousands of music videos to UK users after failing to reach agreement over fees.
YouTube, owned by Google, is paying an undisclosed lump sum to PRS, backdated until January and lasting until 2012.
Adam Shaw from PRS for Music told the BBC that he was pleased that an agreement had finally been reached.
by admin
Monetising Online Video
June 10, 2009 in Features
A lot of experimentation with video advertising on the Web is going on these days. There are interactive overlays, contextual text ads, video-in-video, video banners, ads that take over the whole screen, and little icon bugs that crawl along the bottom. What you’ve probably all seen the most of, however, is the plain video pre-roll that mimics a traditional TV commercial, even though everyone knows it’s not very compelling.
So what does it all mean and what are the implications for business?
Well it means that a whole new raft of advertising tools have just become available, which are well and truly geared towards the TV-loving, hard-to-impress consumers of today.
