ClickZ cites news on several fronts in Google’s quest to expand the reach and functionality of its advertising model. Pamela Parker reports that the search giant “is experimenting with plotting local advertisers’ locations on its Maps product, giving marketers a visual and spatial accompaniment to their locally targeted ads.” And Kevin Newcomb has some interesting details on a Google patent filing for “call-on-select” functionality.
According to Parker:
A search on “hotels” in New York City returns an organic list of local hotels, plotted on the map with red markers and bracketed by sponsored hotel listings, plotted on the map with blue markers. Clicking on a blue marker brings up a balloon with more information about the hotel advertiser, such as address and phone number. It also includes a logo for the hotel brand. Logos haven’t previously been part of Google paid listings, but in talks of its recent deal with AOL, the company said it would likely begin offering logos in the future. The new ad format was first spotted by blogger and Moreover founder David Galbraith, who mentioned it on his blog.
Noting that “Google began testing click-to-call ads on its site in November, but has not yet rolled out that service to mobile phones,” Newcomb says the company’s patent application “describes a process that takes into consideration a device’s screen size, connection speed, and input capabilities to determine if it would be better to serve an ad with a link to a Web page or one that causes the phone or other mobile device to place a phone call to the advertiser.”
“Everybody talks about pay-per-call in wireless as a natural business model,” Greg Sterling, program director at the Kelsey Group, told ClickZ News.” There’s definitely a lot of interest among advertisers in receiving phone calls. Our data indicate that 71 percent of small and mid-sized businesses would rather receive a phone call than a click in a performance-based ad model.” This preference for phone contact, combined with the presumed immediacy of the mobile environment, could allow Google and others to charge a premium for these kinds of ads, he said.
Newcomb also highlights some of the reasons cited in the patent why “call-on-select” would be useful, “including avoiding download delays on devices with limited bandwidth and preventing advertisers from looking bad when their site doesn’t render properly on a small screen…[and] entering shipping information and credit card information with a mobile telephone keyboard may be slow and frustrating.”
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 8:59 PM | Print | Comments (0)
There’s an interesting online discussion about Apple’s introduction of an iTunes Ministore feature as part of its latest iTunes update. At Macworld, Rob Griffiths explains:
What [the iTunes update] also offered, but didn’t bother to disclose, was the addition of a bit of potential spyware to the iTunes interface…the new iTunes MiniStore, which appears directly below the song list area in the main iTunes window, watches what you click on in iTunes and sends that information across the Web to a remote server. When you double-click a song to play in your Library or playlists, the display in the mini-store changes to reflect ‘matches’ based on what’s been selected, as seen below.
In order to do this, the music store must obviously know what you’re listening to. It learns this information via a packet of information sent each time you play a song via a double-click. This data is sent without your explicit permission, and as far as I can tell, there are no Apple privacy policies that cover that transfer of information. It’s also unclear exactly what data is being sent. (Is it just song and title? Or does it include your Apple music store ID, which would tie the song info directly to your personal data?) And although Apple now assures us that the data is not collected, that information is not made clear to users when they begin using iTunes.
Rob notes that the MiniStore can be disabled relatively easily and, along with it, the unauthorized transmission of data. But that’s not the point, he says:
However, this isn’t about the MiniStore itself. It’s about Apple’s attitude in rolling this change out to the millions of iTunes users, without as much as a peep about what’s going on behind the scenes. Consider, for example, if Microsoft had done such a thing with a minor Office update—say they started collecting data on the names of the files you were editing, in the hopes of selling you preformatted templates to help with future similar projects. If they did this in a minor update, and without telling anyone that the data were being transmitted, there would be universal outrage over this potential attack on our privacy. And now Apple’s gone and done basically the exact same thing. Personally, I am quite upset with Apple’s decision-making in this case, and I hope others are as well.
Cory Doctorow, who was one of the first to pick up on this issue, expressed similar concerns here, and in a followup post here.
A post by Tom Coates, along with the comments it generated, also address—from a range of perspectives—the various issues raised by Apple’s MiniStore. These include privacy and privacy policies; opt-in vs. opt-out features; user-interface design; Apple’s strategy and reputation and; how best to offer “recommendation” features that some customers may appreciate but that others may find intrusive and perhaps even offensive. Given the importance of these issues in today’s increasingly Media 2.0 marketplace, the discussion at Tom’s plasticbag.org blog is worth a read.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 3:34 PM | Print | Comments (0)
CBS is just a dynamo when it comes to leveraging every video platform possible — in addition to announcing today a new video soap opera serial for cell phones, the company has struck a deal with Comcast to offer its content on-demand via Comcast Cable. Comcast will offer for $.99/episode CBS hit shows, including CSI, Survivor, the Amazing Race and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).
Episodes of CSI and NCIS will be available up until the day the next week’s episode airs on CBS’ broadcast network. Each episode of Survivor and The Amazing Race, which begin airing in February, will be available for view until the season ends. This announcement comes on the heels of CBS’ pact with Google, announced at CES, that allows per-program viewing purchases via Google Video store.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:04 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of SmartMobs, this BBC video, which examines the impact of citizen journalism on the news media. This 22-minute video recaps the role of user-generated content in providing coverage of the London bombings, and features some interesting commentary, including one interview with Dan Gillmor.
An interesting aspect of the video: one BBC executive said that with the July 7th bombings in London, journalism “crossed a rubicon,” with the influx of citizen video now a key component of news reporting. On that day, the BBC received 20,000 emails, and more SMS messages, many thousands of which contained images and videos.
The video also examines some thorny questions that now arise as amateurs increasingly provide video and photos to news organizations. Among these are: should news organizations pay for this content? who owns the copyright? are news organizations encouraging citizens to engage in risky behavior by publishing amateur content?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:44 AM | Print
Fox pioneered the idea of creating little mini-episodes of TV shows designed for cell phones with its “24” take-offs. Now CBS plans to offer mini-soap opera episodes for mobile devices, programs that it calls “mobisoaps.” The first show, with a tentative title of a “Hey, It’s Me,” will run from three to five minutes per episode and have its own writing and production team. No word of which carriers will offer the content.
The National Journal’s Tech Daily has this item about a telecom dereg bill that is moving in Indiana. Yesterday an Indiana Senate Committee advanced a bill, favored by incumbent telcos, that would, among other things, establish state-wide franchises and place restrictions on cities’ abilities to offer broadband services.
The bill would also allow phone companies to raise their regulated phone rates by $1 per month until 2009 if they provide high-speed Internet services to more than half the homes in areas affected by the price increases. The Indiana legislature is in the midst of a “short session,” and the bill must be approved by the full Senate by early February if it is to survive.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:13 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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