Facebook has bought the advertising-measurement platform Atlas from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum.
The acquisition shows that Facebook sees its focus on competing with Google and growing its advertising business, and the ability to gain far greater measurement data will help it do that. Read More
Netflix’s unique content play, “House of Cards”, starring Kevin Spacey, has satisfied its subscriber base in the US according to a small survey by Cowen. It has also made their subscribers more loyal.
However it failed to take off from a word of mouth perspective and the content was mediocre rather than exceptional. In light of this both move from Netflix what is the future of content v’s distribution channels in the digital age and who will gain the most from this change in dynamics?
I foresee two key opportunities for the industry creative this year. One is that ambient will become a key battleground for brands trying to disrupt audiences’ daily routines. The other is the move towards the big, the bold and the simple. Both these trends may well converge of course and I look forward to exploring their possibilities.
While Minority Report’s retina-scanning six sheets may not arrive in 2013, I think the drive towards mobile-first advertising and the arrival of 4G will have brands clamoring to become even more visible in our everyday lives. Using insight to identify where ambient opportunities exist will be imperative … so we may see sports drinks advertised on treadmill screens (available in a vending machine near your locker) or footwear retailers offering discounts on sturdy boots with graffiti on snow-covered pavements. Read More
While Starbucks wilts under the pressure of protest and public boycotts Google is showing no such qualms as its chairman, Eric Schmidt, says that he is “very proud” of the company’s tax structure and that efforts to lower its payments to governments like Britain are just “capitalism”.
It is an interesting communications approach to take. Brazen almost. It gives the impression that Google does not care what anyone thinks of it. As the Telegraph reports Schmidt’s certainly comments risk inflaming the row over the amount of tax multinationals pay, after it emerged that Google funnelled $9.8bn (£6.07bn) of revenues from international subsidiaries into Bermuda last year in order to halve its tax bill. Read More
Fresh from exploits on the edge of space Red Bull has been named number one in a list of the Top 100 Social Video brands having been deemed to have the best overall “social video strategy”. The first Goviral Social Video Equity Report put the energy drink above brands such as Google and Samsung, which came in second and fifth place respectively. Apple and Microsoft both failed to make the top ten, coming in at numbers 11 and 37.
The report looks at how video content is being used by global brands as part of their marketing strategy after auditing them based on volume, total views and engagement for content uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook in 2012. It also evaluated the quality, innovation and relevance of content before calculating a final social. Read More
In the last of our series of excerpts from the brand new book – Pioneers of Digital – we turn to a man that came from China to university in the US and ended up spearheading search engine research at IBM, managing 3000 developers at Yahoo! and who is now the driving force behind Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
eBay, one of the most successful Internet brands, recently announced it was changing its logo. Upon making the announcement, it revealed the refreshed logo is designed to reflect eBay’s brand and marketplace today by offering “a cleaner, more contemporary and consistent experience, with innovation that makes buying and selling easier and more enjoyable”.
But can just a logo redesign deliver this? The redesign has centered around a much more mainstream aesthetic delivered by the Univers Extended typeface, used by many brands for its readability and simplicity with the instantly recognisable eBay colours maintained.
Gone is the jaunty lettering of the old logo that was so much a trademark of eBay. Is this an effort to look the part and convey those brand values or is it a technical solution that makes communications simpler to convey across different media platforms? Read More
It is being reported that Apple has held serious talks with Twitter in recent months about making a sizable investment in the social networking firm. Such a deal would help the iPhone maker bridge the gap in its own lack of social media presence.
The investment is said by the New York Times to be valued in the region of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This would add more than $1.6bn to Twitter’s valuation catapulting it to $10bn. It was last valued at $8.4bn last year. Read More
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