The right ad. The right audience. The right time.

The goal for every advertiser or marketer. Coming up with the perfect ad for the audience you're looking for, and placing it correctly results in tons of views and/or ratings. It takes teams of creatives and account managers to come up with the concept, based on thorough research of the audience and media. The perfect ad campaign does not develop over night. However, a new concept has arrived, Hyper Targeting by MySpace. Its regarded by MySpace as "The World's Largest Ad Targeting Platform," enabling marketers, on a massive scale, to communicate user groups based on shared interests in profiles. Hyper Targeting launched its first phase in July. In this phase marketers can buy advertising the specifically targets interest groups based on 10 categories, such as sports, travel, movies, etc.
Phase two is under way right now. Marketers can now target profiles more specifically, with over 100 categories to choose from. For example, phase one meant that marketers could target film fans. In Phase two marketers can now target myspace members who are into horror films

“Our mission with HyperTargeting by MySpace was to build an ad platform that translates our massive amounts of self expressed user data into highly-targeted, interest-based segments, enabling us to better serve the exact right ad to the right person at the right time,”

Michael Barrett, Chief Revenue Officer for Fox Interactive Media.

It's a Small World After All

With all the advancements in technology these days, advertisers try to stay on top of it all while attempting to stay ahead of the curve. Ever since the invention of the internet and the boom of cellular dievices and features has opened up so many media for advertisers to utilize in their campaigns.
An article in MediaWeek describes the way new developments in technology are happening all over the world, but that "advertising innovation isn't always keeping up with technology."
In Bangkok's Skytrain public transport system, similar to many public transit systems in the US, commuters are bombarded by flashy images on video billdoards, most much larger than typical US movie theater screens. In South Korea, their cellular phone and satellite technology is so advanced that mobile phone users can be underground in a shopping mall and still view about 30 TV channels on their mobile handsets. Verizon, in the United States, is beginnging to make similar advancements in their VCAST mobile television serivce. Technology is advancing so quickly that countries think they're more advanced but don't realize how fast a good idea radiates throughout the world.

The world IS becoming smaller.

In the article Javier Rodríguez Zapatero, Yahoo's vp of sales for Europe, predicts that in Europe mobile advertising will be huge in a few years. Advertisers need to take clues from the guys in Asia. One of Japan's main mobile carriers places wallpaper ads on the handset homepages, reaching 10 million subscribers each day. Solutions like these are picked up by people all over the world and used in different places. It won't be long before Europe picks up on the mobil advertising being done, creating the boost predicted.

When you think you know everything....

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

While browsing AdAge on my long thanksgiving break at home I found an article posted by Carol Philips, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame and founder for brand strategy consulting firm, Brrand Amplitude. The article was titled, "Millennials: Clued in or Clueless?", and I figured my professor, Kim Gregson, and the other student in my Audience Research class would find this very interesting.

Philips has a lot of insight into the minds of the Millennials, the term she uses to describe the college student of today, a very important market right now, and "will become even more improtant as they graduate, start jobs, marry and establish households." She says that many of the students in her classes did not realize, they might seem clued into the media-saturated environment they live in but are tuned out to the ingenious ways marketers influence them.

Check out Carol Philips "Top 10 Things College Students Don't Know About Marketing"

Some of Philips' top 10 I don't agree with. Number 4 is "Facebook is an advertising supported, commercial service". In our class we have discussed the commercialization of Facebook and the numerous ways of promotion that can be done through the network. Some of us college students are actually in on these things she mentions. Yea! The tone of the article I actually found a bit condisending. Yes we might say that we get our news from the Daily Show, but we're also browsing CNN.com while we kill time between classes.

Food for the "Info Hungry"

Have I tempted you to learn more about international advertising and marketing?
Here are some great sources:

International Advertising Association, IAA
The IAA is a global network of members from 76 countries, who all share information about issues, changes and practices in the industry.

American Advertising Federation, AAF
"Unifying Voice of Advertising"
The federation has national members from the industry as well as clubs open to students looking to join the advertising industry.

"The COLORS, Dude! The COLOURS!"

Sony's launch of their new brand of hi-def technology, BRAVIA, in the summer of 2005, needed to be hot and show the features of the LCD television. That's why they chose Fallon, a London based advertising industry, to launch their international campaign. Through the images and music in the commercials, Sony was able to target the variety of markets that were viewing the adverts. Here are a few from the campaign



This was the ad that launched the campaign. Shot in the streets of San Fracisco, 250,000 REAL bouncy-balls leaped down the sloping streets of the city. This colorful whirl-wind of color emphasized the slogan, "Colour, like no other". Sony uses the spelling "colour" to keep their brand internationally flexible. The music in the ad was Heartbeats, written by Swedish duo The Knife and performed by José González, a popular track on the UK charts.



"Paint", I saw for the first time at the Advertising Women of New York conference on October 27th. It was shot by English director, Jonathon Glazer, named MTV director of the year in 1997. The commercial was shot at a Glasgow, Scotland tower block, covered in 70,000 litres of paint with the help of over 1400 separate explosions, with a 10 day production period.



This commercial gives the viewer an even warmer feeling than watching 250,000 bouncy-balls launched down San Francisco. The same amount of fun is used in "Play Do", a claymation video of bunnies taking over a square in New York City. You can't help but smile when you watch the video. Music: She's A Rainbow - Rolling Stones

In my opinion, the latest commercial, "Pyramids", really rounds off Sony's international campaign. Unlike all the others, this video is rumored to have some computer generated images.

[Note: for a behind the scenes look at most of the adverts, go to youtube or the official BRAVIA web site.

NEWS FLASH!

THIS JUST IN:

There's a new smartphone on the market. AT&T Inc (NYSE:T)and Motorola (NYSE:MOT)announce that the new MOTO Q 9h global will be available exclusively to AT&T customers. Outside the U.S., AT&T customers can use the MOTO Q global in more than 135 countries to access e-mail and other data applications and to browse the Web, and they can make or receive phone calls in more than 190 countries — the largest international wireless footprint of any U.S. carrier.

This does seem like a good deal but if this Q acts like all the other ones on the market, the battery life is going to be horrible and the internet might be slower than other smart phones on the market. There aren't many review out right now. Keep your eye out for them within the next month.

[AT&T Press Release]