the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Update 3: Saving on the Web - Tweets, Coupons & Deals

Coupons.com, has a new commercial that they are running promoting "a better place to save" by using their service - click, print and save.  The ad shows a humorous approach to saving by eating the free samples in the grocery aisles. Beyond Coupons.com, if you are looking for savings you can sign up for deals and coupon Tweets from savings aggregators like these:

• BargainTweeter
• Coupon Cabin
• CouponSources
• CouponTweet
• CheapTweet
• DealTweets
• Poor Man's Guide

If you are a retailer and have deals to share consider expanding your network by communicating the deals through these Twitter sources.

New content
Webware author Don Reissinger has put together a review of a couple of the services listed above and adds a couple more:

• JustBoughtIt - Where users tweet the price they've just paid for something
• Schmap - track user reviews for a particular city
• TinyMassive

Update 2
TechCrunch announced that Savings.com has been re-designed along with a new addition to their board. They also have a database listing at Crunchbase with 48 companies with online coupon opportunities.  Other sites referenced in the comments at Techcrunch are Savingg, SlickDeals, FatWallet and DealTherapy.

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Guiness Ad Campaign

Guinness - Dot
by sabotage

Ad Campaign - Centea Bank

Ultimate Break Kit Kat France Ad

Web Tidbits - Advertising & Online Video

Ad Lab posted a link to AdSlogans and their advertising slogan hall of fame.  The top slogans were analyzed to see what characteristics made them work including "5 words; new brand mention; declarative; grammatically complete; contain alliteration, metaphor or rhyme".

Financial Times reports on the top 5 online video campaigns of 2007 (ranked by GoViral).   

I've embedded my favorite "WillitBlend".

Financial Times also had an interesting article discussing how online video is converging with television.  In the article they referenced a few video sites that might be of interest.  Unfortunately they don't provided links to the sites, something that I thought diministhed the online value of their story.  Among the sites referenced are the following:

• PurePlays - YouTube, VideoEgg, DailyMotion, Revver, Vimeo
• Video Verticals - FunnyorDie, DanceJam (coming soon), Jaman (world video)
• Media Companies - Hulu, Crackle, SyncTV
• Video Search Enginess - Dabble, Blinkx, Taboola (coming soon), Truveo, CastTv (invitation only beta)

For more on online video see my article "Lights, Camera, Action - the state of Online Video" on Wisconsin Technology Network.

Web Tidbits - Online Advertising

Online advertising continues to grow as mainstream advertisers shift their marketing budgets to where the eyes are.  The options for online advertisers continue to grow with video ads, banner ads, in-text ads, out of banner ads, interstitials, sponsorships, PDF ads, etc all being part of the available options.

According to statistics from the Newspaper Association of America reported in a recent Business Week article, newspaper advertising continued to decline last year to $46.6 billion, a decrease of 1.7%.  The article also quoted eMarketer statistics that showed online advertising grew 27% to $19.6 billion. 

The same article focused on one of the growing areas for online advertising - in text ads.  These ads are found within the editorial content and are triggered off a highlighted keyword that when rolled over generates a related ad.  One of the firms discussed in the article that delivers these ads was Vibrant Media, "the in-text advertising leader" and an Inc. 500 firm in the last two years. Vibrant Media provides publishers with up to three ads per article and has set up technology to try and avoid ad placement in negative stories according to Business Week.

Meanwhile Inc. Magazine reviewed some of the ways that publishers could make money from their site in a December article "Clicks for Cash".  Among the services referenced were Google AdSense, AdBrite, AuctionAds, Vizu and ValueClick. 

In other advertising developments, Adobe has announced a partnership with Yahoo!, that will allow for the placement of ads in PDFs according to published reports in CNET and other sources.  The ads will also be keyword triggered and will appear in a righthand panel of the PDFs.

Video News and Views

UGC Principles
A coalition of video producers and distributers, sans Google's YouTube interestingly enough, have joined together to address copyright infringement issues on video distribution sites.  According to Adweek, the firms represented in the coalition included Microsoft, Fox, Disney, CBS, NBC, Myspace, Daily Motion and Veoh.  The set of principles that the group endorsed are posted here.  The Copyright Alliance has endorsed the principles as well according to AdWeek.

Online Video Articles
"Overcoming the Split Personality of Online Video" by Dave Graves at iMedia Connection gives an interesting overview of what's needed and what's to come with online video.

Not to be left behind, the issue of online video advertising metrics is addressed in "The Path to Better Video" by Bradley Werner at iMedia Connection.  Among the metrics reviewed in the article are the following:

1. % of Video Viewed
2. Time until first interaction
3. Brand Exposure time

New Ad Campaign - All Bran

Slate had an interesting analysis of this new ad for All Bran, stating "the visual puns in this are so bold - and so disgusting".  What do you think?

New Ad Campaign Follow-ups - Sony Bravia Play Doh Bunnies and Dove's

Sony Bravia has introduced a new ad, the third in their "colourful" series of ads.  Each has been pretty dramatic in telling the story of the colours available through the Sony Bravia televisions.  The teaser that shows the making of the ad is available on YouTube and the ad itself can be seen at Sony.

Meanwhile, Dove has followed up their Evolution of Beauty campaign with one called "Onslaught". The campaign using a production style similar to the Evolution campaign focuses on all the images of beauty that young girls receive from a wide variety of media.

hat tip to Ad Freak

Web Tidbits - Mobile Marketing

Mobile Metrics
M:Metrics and AdMob have released research that finds that 65.5% of the recipients of ads delivered over the AdMob mobile network of over 2000 mobile sites delivering 1.4 billion ads found they are in the hard-to-reach 18 - 34 year old age group.  The research results include audience composition by age segment based on the network web site type - community, downloads, entertainment, news/info and portals. 

Mobile Marketing
In a related story, James Briggs, CEO of Briabe Media, points out that African American and Hispanic 18 - 34 year olds "consume far more mobile services than other groups". Among their activities are downloads, SMS, MMS and web browsing.