Great youtube artistic project

YouTube Play is an interesting and fresh collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum to unearth and showcase the very best creative video from around the world. The project calls for video artists worldwide to enter their video’s on the dedicated YouTube channel. A jury of experts will decide which works presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The videos will be on view to the public from October 22 through 24 in New York and on the YouTube Play channel. Here’s the trailer:

Annual Streamy Awards – the full list !

the International Academy of Web Television announced the winners of the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards
Over 1300 digital entertainment leaders as well as a live global online audience gathered together to celebrate the best in web television programming.

OVERALL SERIES

Best Comedy Web Series
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis

Best Drama Web Series
The Bannen Way

Best Hosted Web Series
Diggnation

Best Reality or Documentary Web Series
The Secret Life of Scientists

Best News or Politics Web Series
Auto-Tune the News

Best Foreign Web Series
OzGirl

Best New Web Series
Odd Jobs

Best Companion Web Series
The Office: Subtle Sexuality

Best Animated Web Series
How It Should Have Ended

Best Branded Entertainment Web Series
Back on Topps (Topps, Dick’s Sporting Goods)

Best Experimental Web Series
Auto-Tune the News

Audience Choice Award for Best Web Series
Agents of Cracked

DIRECTING

Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series
The Guild
(Sean Becker)

Best Directing for a Drama Web Series
The Bannen Way
(Jesse Warren)

WRITING

Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series
Wainy Days
(David Wain)

Best Writing for a Drama Web Series
Compulsions
(Bernie Su)

PERFORMANCE

Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Zach Galifianakis — (Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis)

Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Felicia Day — (The Guild)

Best Male Actor in a Drama Web Series
Mark Gantt — (The Bannen Way)

Best Female Actor in a Drama Web Series
Rachael Hip-Flores — (Anyone But Me)

Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series
Easy to Assemble
(Illeana Douglas, Justine Bateman, Eric Lange, Michael Irpino, Cheri Oteri, Daryl Sabara, Michael Panes, Rob Mailhouse, Sean Durrie, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley Jr., Tim Meadows, Ricki Lake, Greg Proops, Kevin Pollak)

Best Guest Star in a Web Series
“Weird Al” Yankovic — (Know Your Meme)

Best Web Series Host
Zadi Diaz — (Epic Fu)

Best Vlogger
Shane Dawson — (ShaneDawsonTV)

Best Editing in a Web Series
The Bannen Way (Zack Arnold)

Best Cinematography in a Web Series
Riese (Christopher Charles Kempinski)

Best Art Direction in a Web Series
Green Porno (Rick Gilbert)

Best Sound Design in a Web Series
Fear Clinic (Kunal Rajan)

Best Visual Effects in a Web Series
Fear Clinic (Jason Bergman, Nicholas Onstad, Bethany Onstad, Jason Knetge, Erik Porn, Ikuo Saito, David Dang)

Best Animation in a Web Series
theGoob (Magnus Jansson)

Best Original Music in a Web Series
Auto-Tune the News (Evan Gregory, Andrew Gregory, Michael Gregory, Sarah Gregory)

Best Live Production in a Web Series
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show

Best Interactive Experience in a Web Series
Valemont

Best Product Integration in a Web Series
Easy to Assemble (IKEA)

Best Mobile Experience in a Web Series
Valemont

The future of content and Advertisement : Widgets ! (and Vidgets…)

The sheer volume of Web sites has grown so overwhelming that an increasing number of consumers—not just those in their 20s—are adopting multipurpose tools to help them manage and personalize the vast amount of data thrown at them every day. The mainstream adoption of online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace and personalized home pages such as iGoogle and Netvibes reflects attempts by consumers to make the Web more manageable. This new mindset, not surprisingly, also holds for the way in which the audience is willing to engage with ads.

Advertisers, many of which have only just begun shoveling more of their marketing dollars into promotional banners and boxes on Web sites, had better heed this shift sooner than later. Some Web trends prove to be fads, of course. But when hordes of consumers start shifting from one technology to another, it’s a good bet “old” marketing strategies will grow less effective. (Or so I say, which is why I started a new company called iWidgets last year to help advertisers develop campaigns that embrace the new mentality.)

LEARN FROM TV

If this shift in consumer behavior in response to information overload sounds familiar, it should. We’ve seen much the same with television. When there were only three major networks, people would walk up to the TV, choose a channel, and watch it for a while. When cable television emerged, people would flip through 50 to 75 channels to see what was on. But with the advent of digital cable and satellite TV, which made hundreds of channels available, many overwhelmed viewers started looking for ways to manage and filter the content. This created a market for digital video recorders, such as those from TiVo (TIVO), and on-demand programming. This in turn changed the game for marketing, as users were suddenly choosing which ads, if any, they’d watch.

This same phenomenon is now taking hold online. Instead of visiting more and more Web sites, users are shifting to the TiVos of the Internet. Consumers are using RSS aggregators to display news and blog postings from numerous sources in one place. They’re using personal portals such as iGoogle and Netvibes to view customized collections of stock quotes, local weather updates, and relevant news headlines at a glance. They’re using social networks including Facebook and MySpace to share pictures and “what’s up” with friends, family, and even business associates.

A BEHAVIORAL SHIFT

As with TV, this behavioral shift is having a significant impact on the online advertising industry, a multibillion-dollar business dominated by Google (GOOG). Until recently, the whole thesis of online marketing has been that ads need to be propagated across thousands of Web sites so that users see them, click on them, and visit advertisers’ sites. But nowadays, there are several problems with this approach.

One is that users are not as willing to leave the site they’re using to visit an advertiser’s site. Although the economic downturn may be playing a role, it’s worth noting that Google and Yahoo! both recently reported drop-offs in their click-through rates.

Tags: vidgets, widgets

content for money (in a free content world)…)

Much of the general public believes that, because many people download movies, music, and software, nothing online has any value. However, this is far from accurate — people just have different criteria for making their purchases online. In a world that seems to believe everything should be free on the Internet, how can subscription web sites hope to survive?

In answering this question, I’ll provide 5 tips that will keep your subscription web site profitable. Whether you run an online magazine, a money-making web site, a private community with memberships, or just a web site with unique, in-demand content, you can earn money selling subscriptions to your web site.

Be an expert.

We’ve all visited those web sites where, every few lines, we’re reminded that we must pay for access to the site. Phrases like “Sign up Today!”, “Only $9.99 per month!”, and “Purchase a subscription!” are thrown around the web page as the webmaster’s hope of making a sale is made devastatingly clear to the visitor.

In doing this, the webmaster changes the perceived mission or focus of the web site from the subject of the content (such as cars or business) to him/her making money. If you want to sell content online, you’re going to need to show that you have a solid grasp on your content’s subject matter, and confidence in your web site. It’s more effective to create good content and present it in a clean, clear web site than to confuse visitors by bombarding them with subscription links. In this way, you’ll be seen as an expert and not someone who’s just trying to make a quick buck.

Find a niche market.

This has been an obvious key to success for many businesses over the years, but it’s so important that I feel it should be repeated here. A niche subject for your web site is one with a relatively small scope. For example, instead of creating a web site that explains “how to make money”, you might create a web site that focuses on the topic of “how to make money with open source software.”

This narrows the scope of your site, increases search engine traffic, and gives you a chance to gain a much bigger percentage of the total market sales. If you write on too vague or too broad a topic, people won’t be confident that you will continue to write about things that interest them. Don’t cast a big net in the hope that you will catch a few fish; show that you understand the exact needs of your target market.

Show them that your content is worth buying.

Every day, I see sites that are trying to sell a product — usually ebooks on how to make money fast (or some other extremely broad topic). The site consists of one page filled with reason after reason why the visitor should buy the product, presented in multi-colored fonts with bullet lists galore. Yet I rarely see a single example or excerpt from the product that I am being sold so fiercely. With all of the competition on the Web, it’s just not realistic to expect to reason someone into buying your product.

You must give some of your content away for free. Using any one of today’s subscription content management systems, it’s easy to make some content available to members only, while leaving other content open to the public. This allows your visitors to explore your web site as if they were members, while gently being reminded at certain points of the benefits of membership. If you give away some content for free, your content can sell itself.

Search engines are your friends, so be nice to them.

An added benefit of the business model described in point #3 is that search engines will love your web site. This is important: if your web site can rank high in the search results for your site’s keywords, you’ll receive loads of highly targeted, free traffic. Google and other major search engines have technology built into their page ranking system that can sniff out “empty” web sites, or web sites that only attempt to sell content, yet provide none themselves.

You can gain a higher rank in the search engine results by making some content freely available, and using a clearly formatted web site. By making some content freely available, you give Google the chance to find your site’s keywords while increasing the likelihood that other web sites will link to you (something Google loves). Also, a clearly formatted web site is quickly understood by search engine spiders, which can “read” your content properly.

There are certain techniques that you can use to increase your search engine rankings, and these form the basis of the area of search engine optimization (or SEO). However, instead of worrying too much about this stuff, I’d recommend you build your web site using a content management system that uses SEO-friendly defaults. These defaults, combined with your quality content, will result in a web site that’s naturally search engine friendly.

Presentation is key.

It is true that a web site’s content will sell subscriptions all by itself, but we can’t ignore the fact that a well-designed, user-friendly web site will sell more subscriptions that an ugly web site with the same content. This fact seems to have been forgotten, especially in the subscription web site market. I’m not saying that a web design needs to be flashy or filled with images, but if you expect to sell subscription memberships to your web site, you’re going to need to present a professional image.

To me, a professional web site means: a nice logo, clear navigation, and a simple layout with proper content flow. A good subscription content management system should include a default web site design that offers these features. This means that, to get started, all you have to do is add content, change the logo, and change the colour scheme.

You Can Make Money with Subscription-based Content

Many people felt that the open source movement in software would kill the software industry, but as we’ve seen, the software industry has adapted to the open source movement and created the “software as a service” model. In doing so, the software industry, especially online, is bigger than ever.

Now, in the paid content arena, people are again saying that it’s impossible to sell content in a world where everything is free. Yes, it’s true that some subscription web sites haven’t transitioned well into the era of free content.

However, if you understand your site’s visitors and stay in touch with the free content model as these five tips suggest, you could earn thousands of dollars per month with nothing more than a computer and some passion.

Tags: Content, money

Foursquare – the next goldmind !

Big brands are checking in on Foursquare. Pepsi, frozen-dessert chain Tasti D-Lite and cable network Bravo are all attempting to harness the power of the mobile game/social network.

The question is whether they’ll pay for the privilege. Or whether Foursquare, which has 500,000 users now voluntarily “checking in” at locations, and broadcasting that to their followers, will transcend its current “it” status among the technorati and become a lasting consumer phenomenon — and a marketing tool.

In December, Pepsi made a small bet on the startup as part of its Refresh Everything community-giving push. For every point earned in New York, Pepsi donated 4 cents to inner-city youth center Camp Interactive. After one week, New Yorkers on Foursquare earned 225,000 points, and nearly $10,000 for the organization.

‘Huge opportunity’
It was a small deal with a big brand that generated little if any revenue for Foursquare. Still, it got Pepsi excited about the possibilities.

“From a broad strategy point of view, there’s a huge potential with the ability to connect people to promotional experiences,” said Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s global director of digital and social media. “We know where people are and can talk to them from a geo-located perspective — that’s a huge opportunity.”

That’s exciting, also, for Foursquare, which in this deal and others is starting to build the foundation of a revenue model on location-based marketing services. Foursquare is planning paid services for three tiers of businesses: small, privately owned stores and restaurants; brands with retail chains, such as Tasti D-Lite; and huge multinational marketers such as Pepsi.

For bigger brands, Foursquare is developing an analytics dashboard so businesses can track who’s coming into their stores. Then, deals could be sold against impressions such as web ads, clicks such as search ads, or a completely new model: cost per check-in.

Moving beyond early adopters
But before it can do any of that, Foursquare must prove it can expand beyond early adopters and educate marketers on how to use the service in ways its fickle users won’t hate.

“We’ve been hesitant to just shoot ad copy through our system,” said Tristan Walker, Foursquare’s head of business development. “Once we start to put in generic specials, we’re just another channel to distribute promotions.”

For now, marketers are availing themselves of Foursquare’s free tools, and some are liking the results. Checking-in in the vicinity of a Tasti D-Lite shop? You may get served a coupon from the Tennessee-based chain, which is testing a free service from Foursquare called “specials nearby.”

“Preliminary data is showing that this is driving foot traffic in stores,” said B.J. Emerson, director-information and social technologies for the 50-store chain. “We’ll most likely pursue this where we can measure effectiveness and return.”

The company also launched a loyalty program that’s synched with Foursquare and Twitter, so customers earn points for making purchases and for checking in. When visits are published to customers’ Twitter stream, Tasti D-Lite gets in front of all their friends, and a customer earns extra points toward free dessert.

Using, not paying, Foursquare
Right now, Specials Nearby — there are nearly 700 since Foursquare launched the feature in summer — are free to businesses. So is the API off which Mr. Emerson built the loyalty program. Likewise, Foursquare’s Bravo deal gives the company TV exposure, if not revenue.

“I think marketers will be interested in Foursquare, assuming the audience keeps growing,” said David Berkowitz, director-emerging media at digital agency 360i. “The lasting value will be from the smaller deals Foursquare will find ways to monetize.”

It’s a difficult balance: Foursquare’s ability to continue to grow depends on its users accepting at least a bit of marketing along with the badges, or honorifics, they earn, such as “mayor” (for most visits), “newbie,” “bender” (for consecutive nights out) and, yes, even “douchebag” (for checking in at places like Barneys).

Zero to 500,000 isn’t bad for an app that launched less than a year ago. It took more than three years for Twitter to reach its current fever pitch. But even as it grows, Foursquare will have to answer the same questions. Research firm Sysomos estimates that 5% of Twitter users generate 75% of activity.

Twitter for dogs ?! Interactive Basketball, … The most crazy online campaigns Feb2010

Best Interactive campaigns – this is my selection for Feb.2010

Enjoy it !

Niv

Twitter for dogs!

My next dog will have a Twitter account… So silly but so cool this iPhone application which is about to be released in Japan: it translates your dog’s barks into “human” language, and it automatically tweets them to the world.
Social networking for dog (owners).

I’m curious to see which topics will generate buzz in the dogosphere… I know how crazy you can get if you have a dog.

Interactive Basketball

check out what Adidas has done in basketball. An interactive video taking great advantage of Youtube’s feature.



Embrace Life

Huge concept and simple making, this online ad to enforce the use of seat belt while driving. Brought in by Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. The happy consequences of using it, instead of the usual rawness showing what happens if you don’t, made my day.

Beer in Argentina

This is an hilarious and brilliant way to promote your beer in Argentina, by Del Campo, Nazca Saatchi and Saatchi for Andes. Any description i provide wouldn’t be worthy of the campaign itself, so check this video out to see what is it about:

Vancouver Google street experience

Google Street View is now on the sky slopes of Vancouver. You can see the venues of the upcoming Olympics and experience the slopes from the snowmobile Street View. Great !

Tags: Best campaigns, Interactive

PREZI – The future of presentations ?

Just about every presentation app works the same way: Whether you rely on Powerpoint, Keynote or another presentation application, you’re sharing a series of slides that progress in a linear fashion. While you can craft beautiful presentations, you’re up against a format that never changes. One web-based application is working on changing that, though: Prezi has an intuitive interface for both building a presentation and sharing it with your audience.

Where a typical presentation is based on individual slides with a set progression, the starting point for a Prezi presentation is one big page. On this blank canvas, you place all of your elements for the entire presentation — images, text, even multimedia. Organizing this information is not a question of linear progression. Instead, you add paths between different elements; you can choose to start with a main idea and then jump to an image off of the far side of the page. Prezi uses a “path” tool to let you create a moving presentation that starts at one thought and moves to the next. If you want to change that order, or zoom in on a particular part of one of your images or ideas, you can handle those alterations on the fly.

The ability to zoom in and out during a presentation is one of the most important features on Prezi. By sizing information according to importance, you can communicate on levels far beyond a simple slideshow — while still being able to move in and look at the details of a concept. Moving between different parts of the presentation with changing sizes can also add an element of animation without relying on cheesy transitions between individual slides.

Prezi’s interface for building new presentations is incredibly intuitive: In one corner of your web browser, you’ll find a set of options mostly focused on placing items within your presentation. Adjusting the size, placement and angle of any item in your presentation is just a matter of clicking on that item and dragging one of the three sets of circles that appear. It takes only a moment to get used to the interface. There is a tutorial that you can watch, but you can pick up the skill of building a presentation in Prezi with just a minute or two of clicking around.

It’s a fast way to create a presentation, and it offers new opportunities if you need to customize one presentation for multiple audiences. Rather than adding or deleting slides, it’s a matter of choosing which sections of your presentation you want to zoom in on; by changing the path your presentation follows around that big page Prezi offers you, you can simply avoid any material you want to exclude and focus in on those parts you want to include. Put all the information in there from the beginning and you can customize your presentations in a matter of minutes.

Prezi offers a free version, you can create 100MB worth of presentations, but they’ll all be public. The two premium options offer an increased amount of space, as well as the ability to make your presentations private. The Pro version also offers an offline editor. All three options provide access to an offline player, just in case you are presenting somewhere without Internet access.

Tags: presentations, prezi

Buzz – if you want.. if you don’t… be careful

Google’s new social service Buzz showed up suddenly in everyone’s Gmail accounts this week, and right away it wanted to get you connected with the people you contact over email and chat the most.

Before you let it turn you loose, though, consider whether you want the world to see exactly who you “follow.” Google has since improved the on/off visibility, but if you want to make sure you’re not broadcasting your inbox to the web at large, we suggest visiting your profile and checking your follower counts. If you don’t see a profile at all, or don’t see the followed/following numbers, you’re likely in the clear, but as with many aspects of Buzz in this early stage, you can’t be too careful. And when you actually start using the thing, be careful not to broadcast private email addresses yourself.

Tags: Buzz

Ad Agencies clients should track effectiveness

Effectiveness has always been important, and more so now, where efficiencies in all expenditure including all aspects of marketing are critical to survival, and growth.

Media as an area that will get looked at, as brands choose between different platforms for the most cost effective and efficient channel. Some may be misguided that using digital media; it may be cheap, and easier to track ‘contact’, but for most, digital media is still only targeting a small selected group.

It seems logical to maintain this approach when investing large sums of money into advertising. As a minimum, clients should be tracking both brand awareness and ad awareness on a rolling monthly basis, both aided and unaided. Frequency of consumption (weekly, monthly, less often) should also be tracked. This data, along with sales and market share data should be shared with agencies in order to develop the best and most accountable advertising campaigns. Many agencies now have sophisticated proprietary software that uses econometric modeling to help set optimum weights, budgets, and effective frequency based on client data inputs. When all of this data is combined, some specific and measurable objectives can be set.

It should always be remembered that effectiveness (particularly for media campaigns) is subjective, and mutual objectives (and how they will be measured) should be agreed by both client and agency prior to the start of the campaign. Only then can the true effectiveness of a campaign be measured.

Digital is arguably the medium most easy to measure in terms of effectiveness. Multiple copies can be run, on different sites, during different dayparts with the results measurable in real time. Clients and agencies can make decisions based on real time data and copy can be adjusted.

Tags: brands, New Media, tracking

Back to Pandora Allien world…

Avatar… what a great film… what a great world…

McDonald’s Interactive advertising campaign in France will cheer up all those people  who got depressed because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora…

After uploading my own mug shot I’m not so sure…

Anyway,  here are some stats about Euro McD’s “Avatarize Yourself” campaign in Europe :
18-country, 7 language deployment has already racked up more than 4mm user sessions in a few weeks, with an average session time of 9 minutes, 45 seconds! One out of four sessions results in sharing via email or social networks, generating almost 1.2mm earned sessions.

Try it !

Tags: avatar, mcdonalds, pandora