AllThingsD » advertisement

Agonizing Wait for Verizon iPhone Ends With Agonizingly Hyperbolic Advertisement

John Paczkowski — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 02:30:01 +0000

The wait for the Verizon iPhone won’t officially end until Feb. 10, but the company’s already thanking its customers for sticking with it until it was able to ink a carrier deal with Apple. How? With a hyperbolic new advertisement. How thoughtful.

“To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come…Thank you.”

And, hey, we’re really looking forward to locking you into another two-year contract!

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Live at D: Dive Into Mobile

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:12:05 +0000

Spotify’s Daniel Ek, who heads up the most talked about streaming music service in Europe, continues to promise a U.S. launch this year.

But the company has been unable to strike deals with U.S. music labels, which fear popularity of the service could cut back on sales of CDs and digital downloads. In Europe, the popular service offers unlimited tracks for free, or users can subscribe for an ad-free version.

With three weeks left in the year, will the Swedish entrepreneur keep his promise? Stay tuned as Ek takes the stage with MediaMemo’s own Peter Kafka at D: Dive Into Mobile.

10:06 am: Peter takes the stage to welcome Daniel Ek.

10:08 am: Peter: Spotify is the most awesome music service that you can’t get in the U.S. It’s Dec. 7; can you get it in the U.S.?

Daniel: No, you can’t. There are more complexities. We have to do deals with music labels, etc. It’s hard, he says. “It’s a business problem and a product problem at the same time.”

10:09 am: Daniel is still eluding the question.

10:09 am: We are definitely going to do the U.S., you’ll see. I’m here today.

Peter: You can’t commit to launching in the U.S.?

Daniel: I can’t commit to a specific date.

10:10 am: With no news on a launch date, Peter asks Daniel how it works.

Daniel: You download it to your PC, and it’s also supported on a host of mobile phones. The general idea is that you can access music for free, with adverts, or if you pay, you can take it with you. The limit is 20 hours of music a month.

10:11 am: Daniel: There’s not that many ads; the fee is 10 euros. It will be $10 in the U.S. (Whenever it comes, I suppose.)

10:11 am: Peter: This sounds like a lot of products–Rhapsody, Napster, Thumbplay, etc. What’s different?

Daniel: The concept isn’t different, but more people now are consuming more music than ever. You aren’t just a punk rocker, but you may also be listening to old-school blues, etc. Music has to adapt to a consumption model.

10:13 am: Peter: Do we no longer value music because of Napster 10 years ago?

Daniel: Yes, that’s part of it, but people also want to have access to everything on every device. In the past year, we’ve seen the adoption of smartphones. Pandora has been very successful because of smartphones. People are consuming a lot more of it.

10:14 am: Peter: It’s all free, so this is a problem for the producers who aren’t getting money from anyone.

Daniel: That’s a problem, but we’ll figure out ways to provide value that people are willing to pay for.

Peter: How many subscribers do you have in Europe?

Daniel: 750,000 paying customers, who pay about 10 euros a month.

Peter: Okay, that’s up from half-a-million earlier this year.

10:15 am: Daniel: What’s unique about Spotify and why we are growing so fast…

How fast? Peter asks.

Daniel: We launched on mobile in September 2009, so it’s been about a year.

The value is convenience and accessibility and packaging it in a good way (i.e., some of the stickiness comes from users creating lists and building their libraries).

10:17 am: Daniel: Another thing helping our growth is social networks, he says. They have a huge impact on people sharing content. It’s getting to become the primary way of how I find out what’s going on.

10:18 am:( It’s demo time! For all of those who have special access, or have hacked it, you know what this looks like already.)

10:18 am: Daniel is showing off his playlists, some of which come from Spotify and some from tracks he already owns. He’s showing this offline (because he doesn’t want to incur roaming fees), so he can’t demonstrate how you’d search for new music.

10:20 am: Peter: Are people comfortable with renting songs now, and listening to music in the cloud?

Daniel: This is something the industry needs to work on to make it 100 percent reliable, but it lets people have access anywhere.

10:21 am: Daniel says he wants to provide music to users “super fast.” But he sure is dragging his feet when it comes to providing it to U.S. consumers…ho hum….

10:22 am: Peter: People are still buying CDs.

Daniel: People are always asking me why. Is it because they want to own it? I don’t think so.

10:23 am: Daniel: Everyone expects things for free on the Web, but Apple is showing that people are willing to pay for apps.

10:24 am: Peter: I hear about how Apple might be working behind the scenes, telling music labels not to work with Spotify. Have you heard that?

Daniel: I read the news, so I’ve heard about it. I don’t actually try to focus on what Apple is doing, or what others are doing. I am, first and foremost, a user.

10:26 am: Daniel: China has 400 million Internet users, and one of the top things they do on the Internet is music. For me, it strikes me as odd, the value of the entire music business is $15 billion.

Peter: It used to be $40 billion. What’s the holdup with the labels?

Daniel: It just takes time. There are a bunch of companies that say they want to do it this year. But at the end of the day, you can only do so much that’s in your control. We believe in our model.

Peter: Which is to give music away for free. Would you change your model here?

Daniel: We would not just launch a subscription service here. Right now you can pretty much access any music for free. YouTube is one of the biggest sources in the world.

10:30 am: Peter: Are you raising money now in order to pay more to get the music deals done?

Daniel: No, but I wouldn’t rule it out in the future, though.

10:31 am: What’s it like to work with Sean Parker, who was from Napster and Facebook.

Daniel: I just saw “The Social Network.” I’m not sure if it’s true, but I really liked it. Sean wrote me this really long email about all the flaws in Spotify. He’s so great at product, so for me, this is someone who has been thinking about the product since the beginning of Napster.

10:32 am: Peter: Any audience questions? Jokingly, he asks, “How about from Rob Glaser (former CEO of RealNetworks)?”

10:33 am: Next question from Glaser! He asks about the music label deals he signed in Europe.

Daniel: It’s a really interesting time. If this is going to be the next big thing, that’s why they are taking their time. Is it going to be a la carte, or subscription?

10:35 am: Peter: Google has been talking about music, and Facebook is thinking about it. Would you link up?

Daniel: We are a developer on both Facebook and Android.

Peter: I mean deep core integration.

Daniel: We would never do any exclusive deals. We want to get music to become like water. We think it’s the most social object in the world. If music could flow freely on the Web, it would surpass the popularity of photos. People are paying by looking at ads, buying tracks or subscribing.

10:37 am: Last question from the audience, about Nokia-bundled music with smartphones through a service called Comes With Music. “Do you think those kinds of integrations can work?”

Daniel: I do. Our whole strategy is around the platform. I don’t know how well the integration worked with the phones, but it wasn’t playing nicely with the Web, or with the iPhone. Like the Kindle. It works on the Kindle, but you can also read books on the iPad. Whether people pay for the device and it’s bundled in, or whether it’s part of a TV package, it doesn’t matter.

10:39 am: That’s it folks–thanks for tuning in!

Turning a Web Page Into a Keeper

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:20:22 +0000

What do you do if you come across an interesting online article or Web page but don’t have time to read it? You could bookmark it for a visit to the page at another time, or email the URL to yourself in hopes of eventually getting around to reading it. But since the Web is ever changing, a link that works one week might be useless the next.

This week, I tested iCyte (icyte.com), a smarter way of compiling data from the Web. Rather than relying on live URLs, this tool saves a Web page’s content, just as it looked when you first saved it, even if that Web page later shuts down or is no longer retrievable. It also saves any highlighted markings you’ve made on a page. ICyte is a free Web browser add-on that, once downloaded, works with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Versions for Apple (AAPL) Safari and Google (GOOG) Chrome browsers are planned for May.

[ See post to watch video ]

There are several existing products that offer to organize digital data in one central place. Among them are Evernote and Springpad, which save a greater variety of content (documents, emails, reminder memos and voicemails as well as some Web-page data) in various places. ICyte focuses specifically on saving Web-page content.

Sharing Research

It encourages people to share Web research with others by inviting them to join a project (iCyte’s term for a collection of Web pages saved on its server), comment on the content and share notes with one another.

For the most part, I liked using iCyte. I created a free account and made several projects filled with “Cytes” (saved Web pages), naming projects according to what they contained, like Tech Stuff and To Read, where I saved a bunch of online articles I wanted to read but didn’t have time to finish. I also used it to create a project with a friend called Silly News, where we shared news articles and Web pages with videos on them in a common space and commented on each other’s pages. People who want to participate in sharing and commenting on iCyte must also create accounts for themselves. ICyte is currently limited to browsers—whether on computers or on smartphones—though the company is considering making an iPhone app.

Once the iCyte add-on is downloaded onto a Windows PC or Mac for use in Internet Explorer or Firefox, two tiny icons that look like an eye and a list appear unobtrusively to the side of the browser’s address bar. When the eye icon is selected, it saves the opened Web page into a new or existing project and lets you add details like notes and word tags.

To save a highlighted section of a page, just highlight it with your cursor before hitting the eye icon, and that text will appear highlighted in the saved Cyte. By selecting the icon that looks like a list, users can open or close a left-side panel displaying a list of all saved Cytes. At the top of this list, and from the iCyte.com home page, a search box lets users comb through all public Cytes or just their own for specific terms.

With a click on the iCyte icon, Web pages—with highlighted text—can be saved as they originally appeared.

Viewing Cytes

Though the ability to highlight and save Cytes only works with the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, users can log into their iCyte accounts and see their saved or shared content using any browser. I did this using Chrome and Safari browsers on Windows PCs and Macs, and I also accessed my iCyte account on an iPad with its Safari browser.

By default, Cytes are saved as private projects, visible only to their creators. But in one step this privacy setting can be changed so the Cyte is shared publicly for the iCyte community to view and comment on. I browsed several public Cytes and found a few that I chose to save to my own account for reading, like an art history Cyte one user saved from a Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Web page.

Blue Bar Feature

Each Cyte has a blue bar across its top that shows who originally saved it and on what date. The blue bar also tells you whether you’re viewing the page with marked highlight on or off. A button lets you view the page in a live view, which may or may not be the same as what was saved depending if highlights were made, if the page has changed, or if more content has been added to it—like new reader comments on a blog post.

I found it easy to share Cytes with friends using a variety of methods, and a single Cyte can be shared from a private project without allowing someone access to the other Cytes saved in the project. I shared Cytes via Facebook and email, though links to Cytes can be shared in other ways like on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and MySpace—or by using a shortcut to embed the link on a Web site or blog.

The Highlights

I didn’t use the highlighting feature much, but I could see it being a real boon for people doing research and saving Web pages for specific content. Also, by highlighting text before sharing Cytes with others, users can more specifically point out what they like or find useful in a particular article or Web page.

The version of iCyte that I used is free and a company representative said each user’s profile information is kept private and not shared with third parties. ICyte doesn’t currently include built-in advertisements; instead, the company plans to roll out subscription-based Enterprise and Pro versions. The Enterprise version costs $195 a year and the Pro version is still in the works.

If you use the Web as a research resource or simply like saving articles, videos and other online materials, iCyte could be a great tool for organizing and sharing all of that content.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Was Google Ad Designed for Viral Mockery? "Parisian Oops," "Is Tiger Feeling Lucky Today"…What Next?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:30:46 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Yesterday, the day after after Google aired its first national commercial on the Super Bowl, an exec at a rival Internet company marveled at what high favorable scores the “Parisian Love” advertisement got, adding that the possibilities for spoofs were endless.

“I have a feeling that making fun of it will probably be a good thing for Google,” sighed the exec, who would dearly like such attention.

BoomTown doubts anyone at Google (GOOG) meant it that way. But, indeed, it did not take two seconds before the takeoffs on the ad–a sentimental, but effective, ongoing story about love in Paris, using only Google’s iconic search box–appeared.

Sources at the search giant said the ad, which was actually launched many months ago, was an in-house favorite already, and the massive marketing spending recently by both Yahoo (YHOO) and especially by Microsoft (MSFT) for Bing–clocking in at $100 million each–finally prompted the gauge-the-reaction move.

The Google spot seems to have inspired reaction, especially from those who like to poke fun.

And both the videos below do it well–one by Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on a more problematic Paris romance and one on Tiger Woods’s search history from Slate V. I added the original Google ad at the bottom:

Parisian Oops

Is Tiger Feeling Lucky Today?

Parisian Love

Laptop Punters

John Paczkowski — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:57:01 +0000

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner must be so disappointed. Remarking on the company’s “PC Hunter” ad campaign last week, Turner said he’d been ebullient when attorneys for Apple (AAPL) called to complain.

“The ‘PC Hunter’ ads, the ‘PC Rookie’ ads clearly have been winners in the marketplace,” Turner said. “And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, ‘Hey’–this is a true story–saying, ‘Hey, you need to stop running those ads–we lowered our prices.’ They took like $100 off or something. I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, ‘Is this a joke? Who are you?’ Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.”

But only after tweaking the ad in question to reflect Apple’s recently lowered prices, Ad Age reports.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Laptop Hunters ad, which once depicted the supremely annoying “Lauren” opting for a $972 Dell (DELL) laptop over a $2,000 MacBook Pro now features no reference to that machine at all. Which is appropriate, since it was replaced with a new $1700 model in early June. And now, rather than harping on that $2000 price point, “Lauren” simply suggests that Mac users are “paying a lot for the brand.”

Not nearly as much as Microsoft is paying for these silly commercials. Anyway …

“We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement,” Microsoft told Ad Age. “This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”

The new ad:

The old ad:

Goohoo Delayed

John Paczkowski — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:00:33 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Yahoo: Collins Stewart Says Fundamentals "Deteriorating"

Eric Savitz — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:30:37 +0000

More trouble lurks ahead for Yahoo (YHOO), Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Agrawal warned this morning.

“We believe that the fundamentals at YHOO are deteriorating,” he writes in a research note. “On the one hand, economic headwinds and turmoil in the financial markets are causing weaker display ad revenues. On the other hand, changes with the minimum bid with search and a possible GOOG/YHOO deal are causing an outcry among many advertisers. To further complicate the situation is an ongoing loss of talent which might accelerate with renewed restructuring efforts. We don’t see any near-term upside in the shares of YHOO on a fundamental basis.”

Read the rest of this post

Seinfeld and Gates Ads Over: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:47:42 +0000

While the very quirky ads recently rolled out by Microsoft to tout itself–starring Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld–got a ton of hype, it turns out there will be no more than than the three already released for now.

It seems the churros have gone cold.

According to a Microsoft (MSFT) spokesman, the Seinfeld advertisements were apparently just a warmup for more to come tomorrow, though the new ones will not use Seinfeld in any significant way.

But they might still feature Gates and Seinfeld could return.

But the main Seinfeld/Gates pairing was, said Microsoft, just a “teaser” for the next phase of the $300 million campaign to tout its beleaguered Windows Vista operating system.

[UPDATE] Said Microsoft in an official statement: “We will be executing the second phase of our advertising campaign tomorrow, as planned from the start.”

The company said upcoming personalities in the new ads will include feel-good author Deepak Chopra, television star Eva Longoria and musician Pharrell Williams, and they will also use Microsoft’s own version of the dumpy PC guy character to attack Apple’s hugely successful Mac/PC ads.

BoomTown is dubious, to say the least, that Microsoft can be more clever than Apple (AAPL) in the marketing arena. And by dubious, I mean its chances are as good as Lehman Bros. rising from its financial grave.

News of the development was first reported by Valleywag, which said in its post title that the ads were canceled, which is untrue.

But Microsoft’s rep stresses that this was the plan all along, to jump-start the marketing conversation, even though the ads have, in fact, not gotten a lot of praise.

You be the judge. Here are the three ads. The first with the churros joke and the second and third visit with a family, combined: