We're talkin about Profits, not a game, but Profits.

From the dramatic prairedog to 'One night in Paris' to movie and TV shows, the Web has become a breeding ground for videos. Digital cameras, phones, webcams, and other devices have become the reel; anyone behind them is now an instant director and anyone in front is the 'star'. These videos make life great for bored patrons around the world. They also make me think twice about changing in dressing rooms or having a romantic encounter with a window shade open. TV shows have been created in devotion to the top clips found throughout the Web. It is an amazing thing to be able to find any 'how to' video across the Web, but just as deviant is the fact that you can look up pornographic materials through Yahoo or any other search engine. Yes, there are parental controls, but we all know those can be circumvented. Skinamax is now an afterthought to young pubescent boys. All of this has created a marketer's wet dream - a captive audience interacting with the medium itself. This is great, but how do we profit? Because that is what the U.S. is all about, Profits! Exposure!! Recall!!! At first marketers tried running ads at the beginning of the video. This didn't go over too well. Running the same ad that has been run on TV doesn't seem to work; hence, the invention of the DVR. So marketers are trying some different approaches. One is to have an ad run at the bottom of the video itself. I ask, "Would this work for a TV show or movie?" NO! If you want your product to be promoted in a video, then either create a video worth watching or have others use your product in their video. My personal favorite is the skin around the video. This is nice because it is simple and doesn't interfere with the video itself. It helps cut down on the excess clutter surounding websites and focuses in on just one brand.

I would like to address a comment about my last blog:

There is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective. But I do ask the question, "Is art something that is created for the sole purpose of selling another product or service?" When Viagra makes it into the rock and roll hall of fame for "Viva Viagra"or when the ads at the bottom of this page make the Guggenheim, I will concede that advertising is art. For now we can classify it as "commercial art." This is art where the layouts and colors chosen are because they're more suited towards a demographic than towards what the "artists" have chosen for their mode of expression.

Meta blogging

I have recently added meta tags to my blog in hopes of converting my one reader (thanks, Nanu) to at least 3 or 4 readers. Meta tags help people find what they are looking for when using a search engine. Say, for example, I write about advertising a lot. I would use advertising as a meta tag, and then when someone is looking for a blog about advertising, my blog might come up. Here is an example of some of the code: You can add meta tags a couple of different ways. One can write the code themselves, but if you do not know html very well, then it's daunting and can be quite frustrating. The other avenue is to use a meta tag generator. This is easy and gives total control to the user. It is like filling out any other online request form -- simple. After the code is generated for you, all you have to do is copy and paste. Although, my code had to be altered a bit. I just had to add closing tags. This is useful for professional bloggers so that they may generate more traffic through their blog.

Google, Yahoo, and many other search engines send out bots every so often to read meta tags across the Web. So when someone searches and a tag is used, the engine correlates the meta tags to what the user is searching for. This doesn't mean the user will find exactly what he or she is looking for, but it definitely helps when it comes to the mass amount of content on the World Wide Web.

Another technique to acquire more readers is networking your blog to others across the Web. This is much like networking in the real world. If a respectable friend refers a friend of his to me, then I will trust that the third person is respectable as well. So when reading a blog you like, one is more likely to check the links associated with that blog. Although, if the blogger is a sell-out, then the links provided might just lead you to some site trying to sell you something by merely associated with the blog. This is why I would not sign up for Google's AdSense.

I find it deplorable that companies and advertisers try to use another's form of artwork as a way to sell their product that apparently they couldn't sell in traditional means. So they leach onto the bloggers because they have a fan base. Yes, the advertisements may have connections to what the blogger is talking about, but why would the blogger want to traffic readers away from his blog? To make that almighty dollar. If this is true, then what is really being written is no longer art but just another form of advertising clutter. This means that no longer does the blogger have a message other than to make money. I wonder what advertisement would be placed on my blog, a blog that criticises the advertisement itself? Maybe pop-up blocker ads. This leads me to my outro: Be more for the expansion of free ideas and less for the expansion of commercial speech.

Click Fraud and Analytics

This is the sad analytical side of my blog. I wrote many of my friends and family and they still did not even visit my blog. The one page view I did get was from me. Let's just imagine that my friends and family did actually respond to my request and clicked on my site. There would be more than just one triangle along the blue line. That triangle represents my one click. The numbers below show the exact number and percentages of page views, clicks, time spent, and percent of new visitors. Below that are the maps and graphs that show the information.

If I had a loyal following, which I will have, then the analytics would be important to me as a blogger. I would know if the same people were coming back to read my rhetoric or if I was getting people reading and then never reading my rhetoric again. Another useful tool aspect of these numbers is I would know if I was getting multiple blogs read or not, depending on the page views and the amount of time spent on my blog. This means I could write in different styles and find which the public prefers. Plus, knowing what part of the nation or world is viewing my blog can clue me in to what they might want to hear about. Instead of pissing off the east coast with my M. Vick jokes I can piss off the west coast with my B. Bonds jokes. Something I did not know that I learned from reading Click Fraud: The Dark Side of Online Advertising is that you can keep tabs on your ad providers. Companies like Yahoo and Google like to put your advertising up in dummy sites and use outsourcing to send business your way. These outsourcers make the profit while your site might get click-throughs, but not get any business. On the opposite side, you might have a site and have thousands of people visit it every day. This would make your site look like a gold mine to advertisers when it really isn't. Again, the analytics page comes in handy for the advertising companies this time. If they monitored your site for a week or so, they would come to the conclusion that your site wasn't a gold mine at all and would not place their high dollar accounts on your site. Maybe a mortgage company though. To set up your own analytical analysis of a personal blog or website visit: www.google.com/analytics/

Internet and the Adverassic Period

Advertising online can be tricky, the landscape changes overnight and what was the goldmine is now the striped mine. The best way to advertise on the Internet is to make your own content. This can be costly because it will have to be ever changing. Take but.tv for example; they provide content like videos, simple games, and contests. They need to go beyond this because this content gets old and stale. Adding things like fantasy games will help attract users and keep them coming back at least once a week, whether it be fantasy fishing, basketball, baseball, football, or celebrities (not sure how this one works, but I have seen it). Stats can be kept because they are considered a matter of public record. Also, providing a spot for user generated content like videos, blogs, and pictures may help with loyalty to the site. This would need to be subsidized with traditional media, much like Chanel is doing with their new Internet ventures. T.V., radio, or guerrilla advertising would help get users to this site, but the most effective would probably be the use of their own products.

In my limited expertise with the Internet I have found that banner advertising gets more praise then it deserves. Finding "the flavor of the week" and leeching off of it is much like... well, a leech. Take for example the new "Leave Britney Spears Alone" video on YouTube. Putting ads with a medium like this might get some click-throughs, but by who? If a company or product wanted to go this route, they would need to employ "surfers"; people to surf the web for the next days, warm body to leech off of. Another option is talked about in a Wired article about a computer generated second world for people to live in. This is strange to me, because why live a generated life when the real one has so much to offer. However, I am being a bit hypocritical because I do enjoy my XBOX 360 sports games. Through this medium I have seen more branded content such as: Under Armour, Snickers, and Reebok(shown on sleeve). This ad content is fluid with the enjoyment of the medium. It's not a constant and does not interfere or try to take attention away from the game itself. My biggest pet peeve about online advertising is it tries to tear you away from what you are engaged in, by whatever means necessary. The Internet does provide endless possibilities especially with cell phones being able to view the web. This is also a fairly new medium for advertising and with technologies exponentially becoming greater and greater this landscape is sure to evolve and change.

Through the Newspaper

Imagine sitting on your couch watching ESPN. Now imagine holding the national sports page in front of your face with the news stories cut out. This is much like visiting espn.com or any other website. One measured in inches the other in pixels. One uses ink the other uses bytes. One has been utilized for centuries the other a decade or two. Newspaper ads have their limits. Not in creativity, but in intrusiveness and social impact. Never does a newspaper ad pop up or hover with you while reading an article. Newspaper ads don't create visual, mental, or hearing related stress. Banner, pop-up, and hover ads many times do. Using abrupt sounds and moving visuals to "reach" your target market seems unethical to me. What does it say about our attention spans if this is an effective way of reaching the target market. Unless you go online to interact with the featured product of an ad, then why would you stop looking up a recipe, to check-out that ad hovering over the last ingredient of your desired recipe. Some of these ads lead to fun and mildly entertaining games, but what is the chance you will actually click on the ad that leads you to a fun and mildly entertaining game or to the one, in a sea of many, micro sites.........where you are shown a TV commercial and product info. This is why I do not click on banners or even give attention to them. I re-size my windows, so I do not have to deal with at least the visual stress of most banner ads. Pop-up ads are either detected by my pop-up blocker or it annoyes me. That should not be the desired effect.

I think I have banner-blindness. After polling many of the people I know, they do too. None of my friends say they pay attention or click on banner ads. Like many other forms of advertising, it gets used and abused and then it no longer becomes that great idea it used to be.

---Thoughts of a Predicate Souperstar---

Consumers for Sale

With technology advancing as rapidly as it is, there becomes a sense of responsibility the public, government, and advertisers need to live up to. We all know in the back of our minds that the government keeps track of many, if not all, of our transactions with the fabled "red flag," but who would believe advertising would do the same. It might be anonymous, but using cookies to track our movements throughout the Web makes me feel like we are being 'low jacked' by Nike and P&G. We probably know what Osama Bin Ladin is searching over the web, but not where he is. Although, this is not much different than traditional marketing. Research would show advertisers what programs we will probably be watching or if we like sports or even what toilet paper a 26-year-old male living in Illinois would use. It is where this new age of advertising is going that worries me: I saw a program the other day where doctors are using nanobots implanted in peoples' brains to help reverse the effects of Alzheimer's and in the future they will be used to fight the common cold. They could upload programs to these Alzheimer's patients to keep the nanobots up to date. Wouldn't this be an advertiser's dream!I delete my cookies and history at least once a day because I do not like the idea of people tracking. Although I have not deleted them in the past day and at least a third of my cookies are ad related:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/abmr.net
http://www.atlassolutions.com/
http://adinterax.com/site/index.bhtml

After looking through my cookies and history of web surfing I have come up with a set of products that advertisers could successfully target to me:

• Electronics-PDAs, entertainment systems, and video equipment.
• Fantasy sports
• Concert and sports tickets
• Fun and interesting viral videos
• Apparel

The fact that search engines are selling us is strange, but cell phone companies do the same, and in essence TV networks do it as well. Even though we are anonymous to these advertisers it still has a feeling that we are being stalked and brainwashed into buying their products. Remember in high school when that one weird person had a crush on you and would be relentless until you finally gave them a date, that is what this feels like. It would be nice if we could get rid of these pervasive ads the same way I did Margaret, by making out with her better looking friend!
posted by SouperStar @ 8:17 AM

"Internet Killed the Sitcom Star"

Everything changes! Everything evolves to best suit their surroundings. Except Chuck Norris, but that will be a later blog. TV commercials and more importantly the value placed on them are soon going to fizzle. Lucky for you, I have a minor in ECON and will predict these things!

Right now TV commercials are in high supply, and demand for consumption is high. Unemployment has been below 5% since December of '05. The same electronic wizardry TV ADS have been pushing over the years, combined with the emerging digital world, will ultimately be the demise of those same TV ADS.

With PVR's (personal video recorder) becoming more prevalent in the household TV ADS are not even being noticed anymore. If I do forget to tape my favorite show, then I can either download whatever I need onto my computer or onto my XBOX 360. New technology in televisions makes it easier for me to hook my hard drive directly to my brand new 51' Toshiba and use my wireless keyboard to control it like any other remote. Even sports are going away from the television era. For $50 I get to watch all 162 games the Cubs play plus I can always switch over to whatever MLB game is going on; and only $15 for the radio version of it.

Another amazing aspect the world wide web provides is anyone can strike it rich with even the most simple of ideas and they do not even have to charge for them. Take the case of young Ashley Qualls. At age 17 she has been offered millions for her website that provides, among other things, Myspace backgrounds. All one has to do is create clickthroughs. Clickthroughs are freaking gold to advertisers now-a-days.

The nice thing about Internet advertising is that if it gets to be a nuisance, then the user will not visit that site again. Elevator music; it's there to enhance the situation you are in, and if not, then you should be able to block it out, unlike TV ADS where you have to sit through 3 minutes of them every 10 minutes or so.

Advertisers should not be scared of change because with change comes great opportunities. As opposed to TV ADS Internet ADS provide much more: The user is always one click away from your information, the Internet provides easy flow of information, the advertising does not have to be intrusive, and advertisers will focus more on reach and not the brainwashing technique known as frequency. Although, I am sure this will not be adequate for the "AD Pushers!" They will find some way to ruin this great medium much like they did TV, radio, and the scenic landscape that was our nation.

--These are just thoughts from a predicate SouperStar--