Advertising Lab: November 2004

Advertising Model: Pay-Per-Call

"The premise behind pay-per-call is that not every company is prepared to measure clicks. Some that currently participate in search engine marketing are in over their heads, some are too intimidated to begin with, and others still don't have a Web presence to speak of.

Here's the gist of how it works. An advertiser enrolls online, listing their phone number, description, market (e.g., city, miles from ZIP code, national), categories where the ad should appear, the bid price-per-call, and daily budget. Ingenio assigns a unique toll free number to each advertiser, and this number is displayed prominently in the paid search ad. Calls are forwarded to the advertiser's original number. The highest bid nets top placement in search results.

Ingenio is the pay-per-call company. Right now, they can rightfully be referred to as the pay-per-call company since it's the only known entity in the space. Ingenio isn't only a pay-per-call company - it's been in business since 1999 and has a number of other technology solutions, platforms, and services. According to Barach, pay-per-call is now the locomotive powering Ingenio, and everything else is along for the ride."
--SearchInsider

Ads Means Worms

New advertising technology means new threats:
"Hackers launched attacks on online banner advertisements last week with a range of worms based on My Doom and Bofra. The worms had propagated through several banner advertising companies, including Falk in Germany, which provides banner ads to a number of news and IT websites throughout Europe."
--ComputerWeekly.com

Previous:
Digital Billboards: Defacing

Networked Wearable Display

An update to an earlier round-up on Wearable Displays:
"The R&D division of France Telecom has developed a Bluetooth compatible LED screen that fits into clothing and displays text, drawings and animations sent by multimedia messaging service (MMS). The 4096 color LED screen comprises a flexible circuit board packaged in a fabric layered sandwich. Weighing 150 g (including battery) and measuring 10 x 7 cm, these displays are lighter, more colourful and easier to fit in clothing than the team's award winning fiber optic screens showcased at the Avantex textile trade show in 2002. The new removable screens insert into a special pocket in the garment and connect to a rechargeable battery with 4 hour charge life."
--Optics.org (plus more images)
--France Telecom's press release (plus a short demo movie).

Advertising on RSS

"In recent weeks, more companies have started bringing advertising to RSS feeds, the popular platforms for aggregating content from multiple sites in a single place. In the past, RSS feeds have typically been free of ads."
--Wired

More:
- A how-to.

Table Advertising

GEH & Associates sells advertising space to local companies, then imprints the ads in the laminate applied to the top of the tables, then gives the tables for free to the local restaurants. The venture is called TableAds.

More:
"America West launches tray table ads"
When air travelers flip down the tray tables on their America West Airlines flights, they'll be getting more than the usual peanuts or pretzels later this month. They'll also be getting advertising. America West executives said Tuesday that they have begun selling tray table advertising, and the idea is already taking off.
--SFGate.com

Use Of In-Game Ads Grows

"The players in your virtual NFL game are wearing Nikes (nyse: NKE - news - people ), and at (virtual) half-time you see a digital product pitch. Meanwhile, your kid is dunking virtual Oreos in virtual milk in a Nabisco-created basketball game. "It's proof positive that video gaming has hit the big time," says Find/SVP technology consultant James Belcher. "
--Forbes

Previous posts:
Advertising in Video Games: Problems
(Social) Advertising in Computer Games
Future: Product Placement

Unexplored: Deus Ex Machinima

While not technically new, the genre/medium of machinima remains largely unexplored (and underexploited), with a noteable exception of MTV's Video Mods show the channel uses to promote its music.

"The term 'machinima' concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery with ordinary PCs and the 3D engines of video games (typically first person shooters) in real-time (on the computer of either the creator or the viewer) rather than offline with huge render farms."
--Wikipedia

The genre has been helped by the release of Electronic Art's "Sims 2" with a a built-in stream capturing feature. It is expected to be futher boosted by the upcoming The Movies game that will put players into a film director's shoes.

More:
An two-year old article by Wired gives a pretty good intro into the genre.
Machinima.com is an info portal on, well, machinima.
There's even a film festival run by Machinima Academy of Art's and Sciences.
Red vs. Blue is one of the more famous machinima series.

Previous posts:
Advertising in Computer Games: Problems
(Social) Advertising in Computer Games
Future: Product Placement

Marijuana on Target's Site for $25.25

UPDATE (Dec.13, '04): The marijuana page has been apparently removed from Target's site. You can still see the real-size screenshot by clicking on the image above. (Dec.20, '04) Substituted the original links to Target that were removed with cached ones from Yahoo.

Somewhat off-topic:
Target organized what they called "the biggest wake-up call" to get customers into their post-Thanksgiving store. Apparenty, Target didn't want their customers to miss this great deal. Very appropriately, it's listed under "entertainment" (and here's some crack, too) .

Thanks to Neko at LiveJournal.

Keywords: target, marijuana, pot, spoof

Digital Billboards: Magink

This comes as an update to yesterday's overview of digital billboards. Magink develops what they call "the first ever maintenance-free autonomous system operating in remote locations lacking adequate infrastructure".

"Magink's technology enables to create affordable "paper like" lightweight low power indoor and outdoor displays, which can perfectly fit into numerous applications. Its underlying properties fundamentally change the economics of digital content display."

From NYTimes.com:
"By creating a paste made of tiny helix-shaped particles that can be minutely manipulated with electric charges to reflect light in highly specific ways, Magink can produce surfaces that look like paper but behave like electronic screens, rendering high-resolution, full-color images without ink - or, as Magink executives like to refer to the process, with digital ink."

More:
Gyricon - producer of SmartPaper, which is "a reusable display material like paper, but is electronically writeable and erasable."

"How In-Store TVs Play to Shoppers" - a recent article on digital signage from Business Week.

Digital Billboards: Defacing

Adbusting follows the outdoor industry into the digital age. Not only can digital billboards be spray-painted, they can also get hacked.

More:
Just yesterday, a digital road sign was hacked in Florida.

Advertising in Video Games: Problems

"While the games might need ad sponsors, marketers see many reasons why games are simply not advertiser-friendly. For one thing, there is little opportunity to adequately assess return on investment. Another problem, said Berger, is that publishers can't guarantee to advertisers in advance how many units will be sold. And developing a video game can take many months--longer than most marketers are willing to wait to roll out an ad campaign.

Some of those problems might be solved when the next generation of consoles comes out, because they will have built-in Internet functionality, which brings with it the prospect of dynamic in-game ad serving. This capability, Madden said, could eventually lead to a more TV-like business model, where games are bought and sold on measurable cost-per-thousand impressions, without the hassle of months of planning. Madden said the industry is still four to six years from this becoming reality. The panelists agreed that in the short term, online gaming and advergaming remain the most cost- effective platforms for advertisers."
--Media Daily News

Previous posts:
(Social) Advertising in Computer Games
Future: Product Placement

Digital Billboards: Overview

(large image)

1. TOPPAN manufactures and markets segmented electronic paper display modules for use in public signs (more).

2. People at Vodafone claim their's is the only sign in the world that will display your personal message to a friend or loved one. Installed in London, Piccadilly Circus. See live cam of the billboard.

3. Coca-Cola's newly launched billboard in London is three times bigger than the previous Coca-Cola sign on the site, and comes equipped with the resolution of a cinema screen, computer technology, built-in cameras and even an on-board, heat sensitive weather station. The sign will be able to interact with people on the ground, recognising colour and movement in the crowd and will even be able to adopt it's messages according to the weather, with special sensors recognising rain, wind and heat. Watch video footage of the launch.

4. A Hypertag turns static poster sites and marketing displays into interactive ones. Consumers simply point and click their mobile phones at the poster or display which has been tagged to access content.

5. "The YellowArrow creates an interactive forum for people to leave and discover messages pointing out what counts" through unique identification based on mobile text messaging (see an earlier post).

6. Urban Display Network manages a network of outdoor LED screens wirelessly connected to the mainframe for real-time content update.

7. Ford launched a new ad campaign for the Ford Fiesta combining interactive billboards with SMS. Each passer-by can try their hand at winning a Ford Fiesta by sending an SMS with their first name to a short code and indicating the code on the billboard. The billboard then responds to this SMS, displaying a "good luck" message addressed to the person, and sends another SMS with a question that needs to be answered correctly.

E Ink: Digital Price Tags

"A new technology from Epson combines electronic paper by E Ink Corp with RFID tags to display the prices of products at stores. The small displays can show 8 bytes of character data." -- Gizmodo

More:
E Ink: Digital POP Display
E Ink: Digital Billboards

Advertising on Floors

In how many ways can you display your ad on a floor? The four most obvious ones (zoom in), left to right, are:

Paint a graffiti (image from Graffiti Archive)
Stick a laminated decal, such as this one from Maxx Graphics
Install an IntelliMat - a wear-resistant, 3-foot by 4-foot screen raised only a half inch off the ground that delivers interactive multi-media, TV-quality advertisements.
Install a wall-mounted projector from IBM paired with a camera designed to transform surfaces into projected "touch screens".

Stereoscopic Advertising, Part II

A Danish company ViZoo develop free-floating holograms, created by projecting an image onto a special see-through screen. The hologram merges with the foreground and background to create an illusion in a real-life setting. Pictured is a frame from their campaign for a Copenhagen's fashion boutique. See more.

In ViZoo's own words, "How people react when a young woman suddenly appears in the middle of a shop floor in a fashion boutique on Stroget (Copenhagen's main shopping street) and tries on clothes totally oblivious to her surroundings - and after closing time, too!"

More:
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part I

Keywords: stereoscopic advertising, 3d advertising, advertising holograms

Product Placements in Blogs

"On Monday, a squad of around 15 independent bloggers will begin inserting mentions of Marqui's hosted communications management services into their blogs for money. The bloggers [here's one of them] will get $800 a month to mention Marqui with a link once a week in their blogs and post its emblem on a page. They'll get an additional $50 per qualified sales lead they send to Marqui."
--InternetNews.com

Keywords: product placements, blogs

Text Indexing of Video Footage

"Multivision was the first video monitoring service to provide companies with text indexing, digital delivery and online storage, management and archive of digital news clips.

We are capturing, indexing and keeping:

One year archive of Network programming, Los Angeles market
One year archive of CNN, Bloomberg Television, CNBC
2-6 month archive of cable news programing including CNNfn, Headline News and E! Television
2 month archive of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco markets
1 month archive of over 100 local markets nationwide
Special recordings dating back more than 5 years."

TiVo Ad Zapping is Good for Recall

"CBS is poised to release new research which indicates that far from the negative impact fast-forwarding through TV commercials via DVRs are assumed to have, the process may actually enhance a key attribute advertisers and agencies seek with their TV ad campaigns: recall."
--Media Daily News

Advertising Robots, Part II

I am not making this up:

"Our robots have been used effectively in tradeshow exhibits, parades, fairs, carnivals, school functions, T.V. ads, grocery stores, real estate agencies, retail malls, gift shops, and auto dealer showrooms. In other words just about anywhere you may want to make a special and lasting impression on your customers.

Robot Factory - the original manufacturer of premium quality robots for advertising, promotion, education and entertainment - since 1966."
-- Robot Factory

More:
Buy a robot at the Robot Store

Advertising Robots

Put the latest achievement in artificial intelligence research to use and employ a chatting bot as your advertising agent. You can put one on your website or run it through an IM program or a chat invironment (such as IRC).

"Service Chat Bots provide some sort of service, whether that be customer service, product sales, site guides, information gathering, survey taking, or something else. These are generally more goal-oriented bots that may try to accomplish something with each chat, whether that be guiding someone through your web site, giving them information, selling items, or gathering information."
--Mondobot (pictured above)

"ALife-SmartBot Suite is a full fledged e-CRM solution It engages customers in the same conversational manner as would a human sales or support person. Throughout the discussion a customer can be guided, as well as consulted; consequently the smart bot can display the appropriate Web page, answer the questions, and even make specific recommendations."
--Artificial Life

More:

"As part of its continuous push to market its AOL Instant Messenger program, America Online is testing a new instant-chat robot that answers questions from AIM users about weather and stocks." -- CNET

"The Chatting AIM Bot is a bot that anyone can send upon their friends, family, co-workers, etc. using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). The bot uses artificial intelligence to pretend to be a real person, tricking your friends into all kinds of hilarious conversations."

BotSpot.com - a comprehensive directory of available bots.

AI Research - an artificial intelligence research project that created one of the smarters chat bots to date.

Keywords: advertising robots, advertising bots, adbots, ad bots, chatterbots, chatbots, artificial intelligence advertising

Musical Greeting Cards

Search the net for music greeting cards and all you find are sites offering those annoying e-greetings that should've died out around 1998. The real paper cards that play music when you open them may be a cute childhood memory, but they can make an innovative ad tool, and the music doesn't have to be "Jingle Bells". You can record pretty much of anything up to 20 secs long, including your voice or your client's brand tune.

Here's a Google Answer on how musical cards work. Electronic123 sells DYI electronics kits. Chung Yen Products and Smartocean sell pre-made and custom-made cards (they also sell other cool stuff like flashing pins). Chrys's Corner sells regular musical cards with pre-recorded tunes (plus musical windmill and musical water globe).

Advertising on Money

Putting ads on money seems to be the quintessence of capitalism. It has been employed successfully by the state throughout history (commemorative coins) to drum up patriotism, now it has moved into the private sector. Here's what has been tried so far.

Well, minting private commemorative coins (not for legal tender, though). The Highland Mint is one of the companies that offers the service. Northwest Territorial Mint is another.
Squishing pennies (and quarters, nickels and dimes, too). You have seen those cool machines in the gift shops at historic locations and you can actually own one of them, from Copper Memories.
Sticking your message onto dollar bills. First tried successfully last January by GoGorilla for USA Network's Traffic: Miniseries (pictured above, see CNN's article).
Sticking your message onto coins. Tried last August by Crispin Porter Bogusky for Consumer Networks. "The quarters [would] turn up in Minneapolis vending machine change dispensers, pay phones and on the street" (PromoMagazine).

Closed Spaces: Taxi

"TouchTaxi, a media company based in Melbourne, kits out the cabs with heavy duty PCs in the boot connected wirelessly to large touch-sensitive screens in the back of the headrests, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, Wi-Fi wireless internet access cards and an SMS and general packet radio service (GPRS) data connection to the mobile phone network.

These parts work together to provide passengers with an in-taxi information system which they are free to browse while they are driven around the city. There's no need to ask the driver to recommend a bar or club in the area - the taxi itself is more than qualified to provide the answer. And because systems like these don't come cheaply, the top quarter of each touch screen is reserved for banner advertisements."
--BBC News

Stereoscopic Advertising

VRex 3d Stereoscopic Solutions provide just that - stereoscopic solutions. They have some really bright ideas, such as doing an IMAX-like stereo presentation or making company's brochureware in 3d, anaglyph glasses included. A 3d billboard sounds interesting, too.

More:
Attend a conference on Stereoscopic Displays and Applications XVI (2005), January 17-19, 2005.
See Actuality Systems' gallery of truly 3d, although not yet big enough, displays.

Keywords: stereoscopic advertising, 3d advertising

Applian Records Streaming Video

Applian's new Replay Video Suite (featuring WM Recorder) is software that allows for one-click capture and multiple simultaneous recording of multiple video streams, including music videos, music, news feeds, subscription content or any other streaming media content in Windows Media or Real Media formats.

Context Ads in Newspapers

A pension fund's ad in a Lithuanian newspaper next to a review of Mini Cabrio. The copy reads: "I will buy this car". Source: Advertka (in Russian).

More:
"Media context and advertising effectiveness: The role of context appreciation and context-ad similarity". White paper, ideas.org

TiVo To Insert Ads Into FastForward

This came in just as I was finishing my piece "How to stop worrying and learn to love TiVo". Now I have to rewrite the whole thing.

"By March, TiVo viewers will see "billboards," or small logos, popping up over TV commercials as they fast-forward through them, offering contest entries, giveaways or links to other ads. If a viewer "opts in" to the ad, their contact information will be downloaded to that advertiser — exclusively and by permission only — so even more direct marketing can take place."
--LA Times

More:
- Bill may ban zapping (Wired)
- Slashdot comments.

Keywords: tivo, pvr advertising, interactive advertising, future of pvr

Podcasting: Advertising on iPod

New craze: podcasting. Listeners pull digital audio files from websites down to computers and devices where the audio can be played back at a listener's convenience. Audio includes not only MP3 music, but also talk shows, personal audio diaries and more. It can include advertising, too. Plus Apple recently announced the release of iPod Photo.

More:
Everything you need to know about podcasting from Wikipedia and ITWorld.
Jeff Jarvis's take on how podcasting may change the future of advertising.

Keywords: podcasting, iPod, advertising, digital audio, time delay

E Ink: Librie E-Book Reader

Librie, a new version of e-book hardware from Sony (EBR-1000 Librie eBook reader, in Japanese). On sale in Japan only since April until they figure out how to curb potential file sharing. For now, only a limited library of mostly public domain books is available. Size: 126 x 190 x 13 mm, weight 190 g. See a product review.

More:
Older Gemstar e-book devices.

Keywords: digital advertising, digital books, digital newspapers

Human Bodies As Billboards

For some reason it's the buzz of the day without being a new or a groundbreaking concept. A company called TatAd sells advertising space for corporate logos tattooed onto human bodies. But then, you already can Headvertise (or rather could, since apparently the operations are down) and Assvertise.

More:
"Forehead advertising goes extreme with Toyota"

E Ink: Digital POP Displays

"Ink-In-Motion is a flashing electronic display that gives advertisers the proven promotional sales lift of motion displays in a paper-thin package. Because a typical Ink-In-Motion display can animate continuously for up to 6 months using just two AA batteries, these displays are ideal for high-impact POP signs in retail environments where power plug access is often limited. In addition to long battery life, these displays can be easily viewed from all angles and under virtually any lighting condition."
-- E Ink press release
-- Midori Mark Co, maker of Ink-in-Motion

Keywords: digital advertising technology, electronic ink, POP/POS displays

E Ink: Digital Signage & Billboards

"E Ink Corporation, developer and marketer of electronic paper display technology and TOPPAN Printing announced an agreement for TOPPAN to manufacture and market segmented electronic paper display modules for use in public signs. Under the terms of the agreement, TOPPAN will utilize E Ink® Imaging Film products in the manufacture and assembly of these display modules."
-- E Ink press release

Keywords: digital advertising technology, electronic ink, billboards, displays

Wearable Displays II

"Chibi Vision, a U.S.-patented (US 6393745) brand new advertisement method, is a digital walking billboard that you can fashionably wear as a backpack. Ad video contents run on a 7-inch digital screen. You can make a cool video in any form."
-- Universal Planners

Keywords: portable video, displays, walking billboard, ambient advertising

Interactive Wallpaper

"The surface of the wallpaper can display text and images according to the input received from a computer. The wallpaper works like a low resolution and low refresh rate display, giving you the possibility to change patterns and contents on your walls. By Dario Buzzini."
-- Interaction Ivrea

Wearable Displays

"Los Angeles based Nyx clothing is launching a range of customised jackets with built-in flexible display screens that connect to a Palm OS PDA or smartphone such as the Treo or Kyocera, and can display the message of your choice on your clothes.

The illuminated jackets run on three NiMH rechargeable AA batteries and last for 8 hours (Duracells last for twice that long). The current jacket has a 16x16 pixel display screen on the front (7.5cm x 7.5cm) and a 16x32 pixel display screen on the back (15cm x 31cm). The upper limit for wearable displays currently set in software is 100,000 of the larger panels, enough to cover a football field and all the people in the stands."
--Gizmag

More:
"Billboards" that walk, talk, and even flirt a little - eleven-inch, flat television screens adorn the fronts of T-shirts worn by winsome women.
-- CS Monitor article
-- Tshirt TV
-- Brand Marketers, the company behind the idea.

(Social) Advertising in Video Games

"Velvet-Strike is an online protest modification that players can use to subvert the normally violent Counter-Strike game. Velvet-Strike replaces bullet-ridden body counts with peaceful protests, spray-painted anti-war messages and civil disobedience."
-Wired

More:
"Massive Incorporated: Creator of the world's first video game advertising network. It dynamically serves advertising across a network of premier video game titles and return measured results on consumer interaction with this brand messaging. "

"Nielsen Entertainment Media announced in April that it was working with Activision, Inc. to develop a tracking technology that would monitor how many in-game advertisements a user encounters and when."
-MSNBC

"Advertisers will triple spending on video game ads by 2008. New figures from the Yankee Group claim the U.S. video games industry reaches more than 108 million gamers 13 years of age and older, who will have spent $7.4 billion by the end of the year."
- MediaDailyNews

Typology of *blogs

Weblog (blog) - a journal available on the web. Caslon and Soggy give good outlines of different type of content found on blogs.
Photoblog: something is a photoblog if it has photos, it's on the web, and it is a log of some sort (photoblogs).
Moblog: a 'mobile blog' or 'photo journal' comprised of camera phone pictures that are posted direct to the internet from your mobile phone (mobog, textamerica, busythumbs).
Audioblog: a service that provides bloggers with the ability to post audio to their blogs from any phone (audblog, audioblogger).
Videoblog: the latest add-on allowing to place streaming video on blogs. Not sure how it is better or different from webcams (see discussion on slashdot).

Branding Food

"In January of 2002 Rich had a simple, but exceptionally clever idea: Embossing foods with messages and images. The objective is to enhance the dining experience while providing a unique and effective means to enhance corporate marketing campaigns. " Gourmet Impressions LLC was born.

Future: Marketing "To One"

"If a beautiful woman approaches you in a bar, slips a note in your pocket and whispers "Save me" in your ear, there's nothing salacious about it. Call the number to find out her fate, and instead, you'll ring through to a pitch for Majestic, a suspense/thriller game from Electronic Arts. In case you're curious, chivalry still reigns, and about 60 percent of solicited men called the number."
-An older article from ACNielsen on alternative advertising vehicles.

More:
"Provided economic growth can be sustained, ad spending may continue to pick up. How will the money be spent? There are plenty of alternatives to straightforward advertising, including a myriad of marketing and communications services, some of which are called “below-the-line” advertising."
- Economist, June 2004, "Harder hard sell."

Future: Product Placement

Paul Christ at KnowThis.com writes: "The visual and audio product placements seen so far may only be the tip of the iceberg with regard to product placement opportunities. One can see the day when product placement invades other sensory areas such as smell, touch and, possibly, taste. "

Pictured: a branded Mitsubishi car in the latest "Need For Speed: Undeground 2" computer game by Electronic Arts.

More:
Nielsen Entertainment and Activision, which partnered this year to develop tools for measuring the effectiveness of product placement in video games, have enlisted automaker Chrysler Group to help test its methodology.
--Reuters

The Decade of Ad Banners

This is the first banner ad that appeared ten years ago in October 1994 at Hotwired.com. It was not animated. It linked to the AT&T website.

More:
Banner Ad Museum
Banner Report

Ad:Tech Award Winners

"The goal of the AD:TECH Awards is to recognize and help promote ground breaking achievement in the creation, execution and functionality of interactive advertising and marketing. "

YellowArrow DYI Ads

This must be the first Yellow Arrow do-it-yourself ad. I wonder how long it'll take for a first en-masse campaign to develop. Shouldn't be long at all.

Subway Tunnel Advertising

I've been hearing about this "totally cool stuff that you see in the T tunnel between Harvard and Central squares" for about a month now, and last night I actually took a subway ride and saw it for myself. Very innovative, although not new (and rather expensive). Here's Forbes' take:

"Sub Media, cofounded by Spodek and Matthew Gross in 1999, produces 15- to 20-second animated ads that appear on subway tunnel walls. This is accomplished through a series of backlit pictures which Spodek compares to "the frames in a film reel." The pictures, printed by the U.K.'s Photobition Group on Kodak transparencies, spring to life as the train speeds by, creating a fluid film and giving passengers the effect of being inside a giant flip book." Check videos on their site to get the idea.

360-degree DynaScan Display

"The DynaScan is equipped with thousands of bright LEDs. Each of it spins around a drum to create vivid image in a 360-degree panorama. Linked to a computer, DynaScan LED display receives varieties of input signal, such as TV signal and the signal from DVD, VCD, VHS&Beta VCRs, video cameras, digital camera, internet streams, satellite and cable TV as well for rendering text, information, graphics, animation, or relay live show and instant replays."

Evolution of Shopping Cart

Left: a video cart as initially conceived by VideoCart Inc in 1992.

Middle: Same cart redesigned by Osage Associates: "We went to a touchscreen with higher resolution and a mag-stripe reader to enable personalization/CRM database functions: frequent-shopper programs."

At some point, the company couldn't cope with growth and technical problems (batteries wouldn't be rechared on time) and filed for bankruptcy, changing the name to Klever Marketing and renaming the product to KleverKart or iKart. In mid-2004, Klever Marketing in alliance with Fujitsu demostrated the new and improved product (right).

The iKart features a built-in wireless computer for scanning items and facilitating check-out. "Retailers will be able to use the device to present personalized offers or general product advertising to customers. The cart is also being designed to integrate with Fujitsu's U-Scan self-checkout system, also being demonstrated at Retail Systems."

Other features: system-generated shopping lists based on each individual consumer's prior history of product purchases, a store directory, product locator, nutritional information, seasonal promotions, electronic coupons, news items, recipes and local weather. Customers will be able to order pharmacy and deli items on the device and be alerted when they are ready for pickup.

AdTag Airport Media

AdTag Airport Media places ads on boarding passes, luggage name tags and check-in POS displays.

Cable Ad Narrowcasting Techs

"Adtag and Adcopy provide advertisers with the ability to create multiple versions of TV ads and send them simultaneously to different market segments – all with one buy. These sophisticated segmentation products allow advertisers to easily tailor the mix of commercials without sacrificing reach to build a brand across an entire market(s)."

"Television commercials can Visible World's intelliSpot capabilities to become data-driven, leveraging databases that contain information on demographics, program content, product inventory, or event the weather. In this way, each commercial version adapts to whether it is being shown in a program or neighborhood that has more young families than older couples, or vice versa".

Media Center Redesigned

Media Center PCs don't have to be noisy towers. They don't have to be towers at all. First International Computer released a Spectra that looks and feels like a familiar set-top box - with all the PC capabilities and more.

More:
Microsoft's TV2 appliance
Microsoft TV website
Comcast makes MS set-top box available in Seattle market.

The Future of Media Center

One&Co took one step further and redefined the concept of a Media Center PC altogether, optimizing it both for two-foot and ten-foot experience.

Article Index

Articles are listed chronologically, most recent first. Use "Ctrl+F" to search. In the meanwhile, I am working on breaking them into meaningful categories.

Comments

This is a good place to leave your notes, ideas, requests, questions and link offers if you don't feel like emailing. If you do feel like emailing, the address I check daily is vedrashko(at)hotmail.

I have hidden a few old comments to which I have already replied either on the main blog or personally by email because the long URLs in them wouldn't wrap and screwed up the layout. They will be brought back once I figure out how to fix it.

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