Thursday, April 24, 2008

Press Release about Widgets as Ads

CLEARSPRING TO SERVE WIDGETS AS ADS

New Ad Format Extends Advertisers' Relationship with its Audience

NEW YORK, NY, ad:tech New York (Nov. 7, 2007) — Clearspring Technologies, the market leader in widget syndication and tracking, today announced the launch of Clearspring for Advertisers, a new service that delivers widgets as online ads. The new ad-served format enables marketers to replace standard-sized online banner ads with interactive, portable widgets.

Unlike banner ads, widgets are shareable Web applications or components that consumers can easily grab and post to their social networking site, personal start page or blog of their choice. Posted widgets retain their viral capability and can be shared time and again. This allows for the advertiser's message to spread across the Web, creates a direct channel for marketers to engage in continuous conversations with their audience and lets end users establish themselves as advocates for their favorite products, movies, TV shows and brands. Sony Pictures Entertainment, The CW Television Network, Comedy Central, DreamWorks Animation, and Warner Bros. have all recently used Clearspring for Advertisers.

Sony Pictures Entertainment was Clearspring's first partner to use ad widgets for two movie releases this year - Superbad and Resident Evil: Extinction. "By using ad widgets instead of standard-sized banners, we were able to extend our time with the consumer and their network of friends, as they made our ad widget part of their personal pages," said Dwight Caines, executive vice president, Worldwide Digital Marketing, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The CW Television Network, also used Clearspring for Advertisers to launch an ad-widget campaign this year to build buzz among teens about the fall season premier of the Gossip Girl TV series. The day before the show premiered, thousands of fans had posted the Gossip Girl widget on their personal pages. These fans continue to promote Gossip Girl to their friends. The CW's use of ad widgets instead of standard-sized banners on sites such as People.com and MySpace, generated more than 65 million widget views during the campaign launch period, and continues to receive impressions.

Clearspring for Advertisers is fully integrated with the top ad-serving systems including DoubleClick and Mediaplex. Clearspring also offers a full set of analytics and reporting tools so advertisers can monitor activity as ad widgets traverse the Web and repurpose media placements in response to each widget's viral performance.

Clearspring publishes widgets that can be shared on multiple social networking sites, start pages and blogs like Friendster, TypePad, Blogger, iGoogle, Windows Live, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Webwag, and Freewebs, as well as on Facebook and MySpace. Clearspring provides advertisers the ability to convert ad widgets into fully compatible Facebook applications.

According to Hooman Radfar, founder and chief executive officer of Clearspring, "With Clearspring for Advertisers, everybody wins. Marketers can make one media buy and have the potential to increase impressions and get more bang for their media buck. Creative directors and producers unleash their ideas on a new platform for innovation, and the advertiser sustains a dialogue with the end user, who becomes an advocate for the brand."

Built for mission-critical campaigns, Clearspring's widget distribution service is used by the world's largest media companies and brand advertisers, including NBC Universal, Time Warner and the NBA. Clearspring for Advertisers is a scalable, reliable and fault- tolerant service, with its servers geographically distributed to support the world's most successful campaigns. For more information go to http://www.clearspring.com/advertising

About Clearspring

Clearspring is the market's leading widget syndication and tracking service, used by the world's largest media companies and advertisers, and independent widget developers. Clearspring helps publishers and marketers extend their reach to the leading social networks, start pages and blogs and to respond to growing consumer demand for a more personalized desktop, Web, and mobile experience. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., Clearspring offers a comprehensive set of widget creation, distribution, management and monetization services. For more information about Clearspring Technologies and how to use widgets in your business or to join the Clearspring developer community, please visit www.clearspring.com.


© 2008 Clearspring Technologies, Inc.
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AOL unveils Spot Marketplace

In the following article AOL annouces a Spot Marketplace to complement PubAccess. The implecation is that remnant advertising products will become more efficient because advertisers can use the new spot marketplace to choose inventory on a performance basis - either cost-per-click or cost-per-action - across such AOL-branded sites like Moviefone, as well as the publisher sites in the Ad.com network.


By David Kaplan - Wed 23 Apr 2008 09:01 PM PST

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-aols-platform-a-answers-spray-and-pray-ad-sales-with-spot-market-system/

AOL’s (NYSE: TWX) Platform-A is unveiling Spot Marketplace, a service that aims to give advertisers a bit more selectivity when it comes to online placements, the company tells us. The new service is intended as a complement to its recently launched PubAccess inventory management tool for publishers in the Advertising.com network. Platform-A also hopes the new spot-buying service will help to separate the company from the “spray and pray” placement description that remnant ads sales are often derided by, since most advertisers have little choice over where their ads wind up in these systems. While this doesn’t offer the kind of specificity ad buys get on vertical ad networks, Spot Marketplace looks like it could narrow the field a bit for online marketers. Advertisers can use the new spot marketplace to choose inventory on a performance basis - either cost-per-click or cost-per-action - across such AOL-branded sites like Moviefone, as well as the publisher sites in the Ad.com network.

* AOL’s Platform-A Makes Its Pitch To Small Publishers With Advertising.com PubAccess Service
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Social media news and information for April 22, 2008

Today MySpace announced The Community Builder platform for advertisers, an article was posted about ad networks that places the low end of display pricing at $4 CPM, and I’ve noted some social media and industry analysts that are being quoted in the media today.

Community ad program opens in beta: Separately, MySpace is testing a program designed to help advertisers create communities around their brands. Dubbed the Community Builder platform, the program has two tiers: Self-Service and Full-Service. Both versions give advertisers instant community updates via blogs and bulletins, as well as Hitbox analytics designed to tell them how effective the campaign is. Self-Service is basically aimed at advertisers who are familiar with MySpace and who have advanced design coding skills and can maintain their own site. Community Builder is powered by Brooklyn, NY-based web shop Deep Focus. Release

of producing a hit movie or TV show.

-- Reuters: Filmaka is aiming for global reach and is developing a local language site for India; it might create a similar site for Japan as well.

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The Gold Rush For Ad Nets is On; But Crowded Space Brings An End To Remnants Low Prices
By David Kaplan - Mon 21 Apr 2008 01:46 PM PST

A prolonged economic downturn could turn out to be a upturn for advertising networks, at least in the short term. But, as the space gets more crowded with companies selling remnant, or unsold inventory, the fortunes for many such ad nets could change. As the NYT illustrates, many ad networks that focus on remnant ad space charge as little as $4 CPMs versus the average $40 CPMs commanded by portals like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or MSN. Meanwhile, the suddenly trendy vertical ad nets offered by major media publishers dont offer the promise of cheap prices; instead, promising greater placement on top sites and like-minded affiliates.

The following CEOs will be speaking at EconSM:

Come listen to them at our EconSM conference on April 29th, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Dalton Caldwell, Founder and CEO, imeem

Seth Goldstein, Co-founder and CEO, SocialMedia Networks

Keith Richman, Co-founder and CEO, Break.com

Kevin Rose, Founder and Chief Architect, Digg

Toni Schneider, CEO, Automattic

Moderator: Shawn Gold, CEO, Social Approach

Four prominent analysts in the internet / social media space:

Jeff Lindsay, Bernstein
Ross Sandler, RBC
Mark Mahaney, Citi
Mark May, Needham
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