No More Superbowl Ads For You! All sold out

 Fox network sold its last 30-second spot Super Bowl spot.

“It’s the earliest we’ve ever sold the game out,” said Fox Sports spokesman Lou D’Ermilio. The advertiser was not identified however announced advertisers  include Anheuser-Busch Cos., Toyota Motor Corp., PepsiCo Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co.

Google Threeway

Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, together with Chief Executive Eric Schmidt  had pledged to work together for 20 years in a pact they made shortly before the company’s initial public offering in August 2004, Fortune magazine has reported.

“We agreed the month before we went public that we should work together for 20 years,” said Schmidt who will be 69 at the end of this techno menage a trois.

USA #1 In Rocking The Tech Innovation

Leonard Waverman of the London Business School, in a report funded by Nokia Siemens attempts to measure how “usefully connected” countries are, not just how much raw infrastructure in place.  In the the report, the US leads the world, but could be doing even better with more advanced broadband capabilities. Sweden and Japan rank second and third.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080130-us-tops-world-connectivity-scorecard-despite-broadband-ills.html

Consumer Electronics Sector to Grow 6.1 % to $171B in 2008

Jeff Buechler—HDTV, gaming and gps big drivers 
 

From a  CEA Press release:

“The consumer electronics industry is projected to post a healthy 6.1 percent increase in revenues in 2008, according to the semi-annual industry forecast released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)^®. CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro announced the figures today in his opening remarks at the 2008 International CES^®, the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow.

“CE industry sales have exceeded our expectations once again, despite a challenging domestic economic situation,” said Shapiro. “It’s clear that the spirit of innovation will continue to sustain and grow our industry. Indeed, we are seeing this innovation on display here at the 2008 International CES. This is especially healthy growth when compared to that of any other industry.” “

http://www.ce.org/Press/CurrentNews/press_release_detail.asp?id=11434

40% of Retailers Do Not Have a Store

According to a report by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), entitled “Channel Integration and Benchmarks in the Retail Industry,” many retailers do not have cross channel integration and are still struggling to find a consistent voice.

Key findings include:

• The absence of a brick-and-mortar store is becoming prevalent among retailers, since 41 percent of survey respondents don’t have a physical store.
• The website is the most consistently used direct marketing channel, followed by email and direct mail.
• Mobile is the direct marketing channel retailers are least likely to use.
• Among the survey respondents, 66 percent gather customer information from direct mail, and 65 percent gather it from the Internet.
• About 83 percent of respondents segment their customers based on demographics, 77 percent do so based on purchasing frequency, and 76 percent on products purchased.
• Only 33 percent of respondents provide cross-channel order fulfillment.
• Discounts remain the most popular loyalty program, with 80 percent of respondents using them.
• Brick-and-mortar stores (20 percent) and websites (22 percent) produced the highest level of revenue in 2007.

http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/disppressrelease?article=1064

Google’s Search Experiments

I could write and tell you about this…but probably not as succinctly and clearly as David Chartier at Ars Technica, link below, be sure to check Ars out:

Considering the many kinds of information Google aggregates and the individual tools it has built to visualize all that data, one could easily argue that its primary and decidedly bare-bones search portal got long in the tooth some time ago. As search competitors like Yahoo and Ask.com have introduced new ways for users to display and organize search results, Google only showed the first official signs of improving its search results UI in May 2007. Now, finally, Google has unveiled some opt-in experimental search features that allow users to find and reorganize more kinds of search results. The days of being limited to simple lists of ten blue links may soon be behind us

Alternative views for search results

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080130-atour-of-googles-new-experimental-search-verdict-awesome.html

Ebay Buyers Save Billions

Independent research by two statisticians from the U of MD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found buyers saved $7 billion that might otherwise have been paid in a study of eBay auction behavior in 2003.Using 2004 buyer data, consumers saved $8.4 billion. Rough numbers suggest that the # might be 19 billion in 2007.

The study seeks to calculate what economists call “consumer surplus” which is the difference between the top price buyers were willing to pay and what they actually paid.

Google Celebrates Legos 50th Anniversary

Enough said.

Update: You probably won’t see it after a search, just go right to Google.com

Social Marketing Against a Cult (Scientology)

Anonymous is using a combination of legal and illegal ethically dubious techniques to shine some light onto Scientology.

If you think people flown to the earth in inter-galactic DC-8s, put around volcanoes and then blown up with H-bombs sounds like a good religion, Scientology is for you!

If however, you think that Scientology just might be a cult that kidnaps people, spies on government agencies and sues people who disagree with them, well then you may be interested in a group calling itself Anonymous.

Hespos.com is calling it the first widely popular crowdwar and with all the attention they are getting on Fark and Digg, they might be right.

“So far, we’ve seen denial of service attacks to take Scientology websites offline, leaked internal materials, plenty of war declarations and “rah-rah” support videos on YouTube, widespread popularizing of anti-Scientology stories through social news sites, and a lot this bubbling up to the mainstream media. Near as I can tell, there’s no unifying strategy, just a lot of people participating in whatever way they’re comfortable, whether it’s Digging a story, posting to blogs and online forums, or working with the hackers.”-Hespos

Mark my words, this is a significant social event and people are going to be studying it for years to come.

I may not be totally onboard with Anonymous but I do support their goals.

Gamers Review Reviewer

Is it really news that talking heads often pontificate  about things  they don’t understand or, in this case, have even seen? What is new is that there is at least a way for you and me to voice our displeasure at those who pander to the lowest common denominator by loudly condemning hitting them in the pocketbook. In this case, thru Amazon reviews.

—Jeff Buechler

From Ad Freak:

Planning to go on Fox News and bash a video game you’ve never even seen? Then prepare to have your book torpedoed on Amazon.com. Psychologist Cooper Lawrence was a guest on a recent Fox News segment that denounced the “full digital nudity and sex” featured in Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. One problem: There isn’t any full digital nudity and sex in the game. Sure, there’s a bit of mildly salacious alien love (which, as you can see on YouTube, is about as hot as watching two mannequins being moved around a store window). Game publisher Electronic Arts has asked Fox News to “set the record straight,” but the more interesting reaction has been from the gamers themselves. Lawrence, who chuckled dismissively when asked on the program if she’d ever played the game, soon saw her book’s Amazon listing bombarded with more than 500 one-star reviews (which Amazon has since taken down) and several uploaded “customer images” (ditto). I’d be tempted to join in, but I’ll be tied up for a while watching all the other clips I found through my YouTube search for “graphic sex with an alien.” UPDATE: In a New York Times piece, Lawrence apologizes for misrepresenting the game: “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes, it’s kind of a joke.”

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/