The Best Super Bowl Ads...

Alright, I’ve just watched every Super Bowl ad created for the big game in 2012… Something like almost 60 of them at 3.5 million dollars per 30 second spot. And to save you the pain of having to watch them all, I’ve rounded out the best Super Bowl Ads for 2012 below for you all Related Digital Buzz Posts: YouTube Adblitz: 2010 Super Bowl Commercials Brand Bowl 2011: Social Rankings in Real Time Doritos: King of Ads

The Samsung Doth Advert...

At CES, the AOL booth where we worked, did interviews, and ate lunch was just a few short feet from Samsung’s huge Galaxy Note booth, where they were giving out free shirts printed with your caricature, drawn, of course, on a Galaxy Note. There was a line around this thing the entire time we were there, scores of people waiting for hours for their free t-shirt. Outside CES there were enormous banners in the most prominent and expensive ad spots on the convention center. Phone? Tablet? It’s Galaxy Note™! And just yesterday, in a grandiose ad rather out of keeping with their well-done “next big thing” campaign, the Note was made out to be the end of all our troubles, ending the tyranny of using our fingers and letting us circle and cross out and all those things you wish you could do on your obviously-now-obsolete iPhone. But I saw the Note at CES and formed my opinion in about five or six seconds: it’s weak. And that’s why this advertising blitz makes so much sense. First, let me just justify my judgment. At CES, I was handed a Note at some trade event. I felt it, hefted it: weird size, not big enough to make shows and movies and games pop, not small enough to be considered compact in any way. I was handed the pen, and made a few squiggles and letters. It was, like almost all active stylus LCDs, slightly laggy, accurate up to a point, and generally unsatisfying. And I’m in favor of using a stylus . The rest of the details will be in our full review when we get one for that purpose (I won’t be writing it), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a pointless device. But that’s not what this article is about. The thing is all this advertising. It reminded me very much of movies recently where they don’t allow advance reviews, gag people who go to screenings, and saturate the airwaves with promotional material. In the case of the movie, it’s so people will form a resolution to see the movie before the critics start beating on it. And even then, that earlier drive to see it will often overcome bad reviews. Who among us hasn’t gone to a blockbuster regardless of reviews? Samsung is doing the same thing with the Galaxy Note. Although of course the European version has already been reviewed, consumers at large are not aware of that and likely think it’s a different product. Samsung is carpet bombing the world with Galaxy Note advertising so that people will decide they want it before they find out that it’s not, in fact, a killer product. Sure, it might be great for a few people who were looking for this kind of thing. But like the Flyer , HTC’s stylus-enabled tablet of old, it fails to deliver on its own promise. The screen and stylus aren’t new or interesting technology, nor is the OS. And as for the size, well, Dell tried it . But again, the point is not the device itself, which I obviously don’t like, it’s the launch strategy. Sure, other companies have big launches all the time. But this is the biggest delta that I’ve seen, I think, between the effort to promote and the real confidence in the device. I think they put all this weight behind the Note because if they didn’t, the thing would sink without a trace. This way they might sell a few. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But treating the consumer electronics world like the movie world and selling on hype alone isn’t likely going to be a winning proposition. Devices can’t succeed on spectacle, and the economics are totally different. Samsung makes a lot of great things, but the Note is not one of those things. It’s an awkward experiment that they felt could only break even on if they promoted it so relentlessly that people would have to believe it was a big-deal device. It’s a troubling trend and marks another point on the trend of CE companies competing awkwardly on either personality or spec. Few CE companies have any personality, unfortunately, and spec-sells are at best misleading and at worst a pack of lies. Samsung has no personality, and the Galaxy Note’s specs aren’t really salable. So they’re in the awkward position of selling by sheer visibility.

Mobile Super Bowl [Info...

I’m a Giants fan so I’ll let Pats fans win this one. It’s Sunday that matters . The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) put together this infographic (click through to see the full image) and a whitepaper taking a look at the mobile life of Giants v. Patriots fans. It was a close contest for sure and has no bearing on the result for this Sunday but it is fun to consider. Sports is changing and mobile capabilities are helping to lead that charge. How do you intend to get involved in the game this weekend from an online point of view? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Facebook Ads Becoming (...

In the S-1 filing for Facebook’s IPO, the company offers a little more insight into its advertising business, which it describes as “the substantial majority” of its revenue (and that’s an understatement). In 2009, advertising accounted for 98 percent of Facebook’s revenue. The number declined to 95 percent in 2010 and 85 percent last year, thanks largely to the growth of revenue from payments . Advertising revenue is climbing, though that growth has slowed  — it grew 69 percent in 2011, to $3.2 billion, but it grew 145 percent in 2010. (As one point of comparison, our corporate masters at AOL reported $1.3 billion in ad revenue last year.) What’s driving the growth?  Facebook’s increasing traffic , which led to a 42 percent increase in ads served. Plus, the company says that the average price advertisers pay per ad increased by 18 percent, thanks to improved ad targeting capabilities and more prominent ad placements. Another factor: Facebook increased the minimum bid price for an ad, “to reduce the frequency with which low quality ads are displayed to users.”  ( Hat tip to Inside Facebook for catching that last bit.) As evidence of the effectiveness of  its socially driven ad strategy, the filing points to a Nielsen study, which found that Facebook ads wrapped in social data (i.e., including “Friend X liked Brand Y” above an ad) did 50 percent better in ad recall than Facebook ads without that data.The filing also highlights some of Facebook’s advertising success stories, and it talks about the advertising ad spend from specific companies —  namely, the ones whose executives are also on Facebook’s board. The Washington Post company spent $4.2 million on Facebook ads in 2011. Netflix spent $3.8 million. There is, however, one big gap in Facebook’s monetization strategy. Despite the fact that mobile makes up about half of Facebook’s traffic, the company doesn’t currently serve ads in its smartphone apps, something the filing brings up multiple times. However, Facebook says, “We believe that we may have potential future monetization opportunities such as the inclusion of sponsored stories in users’ mobile News Feeds.”

SoftKinetic And Intel P...

Startup SoftKinetic just announced a new kind of advertising, one that combines its gesture-control technology with Intel’s video analytics. The goal is for people to walk up to a digital display equipped with SoftKinetic’s 3D camera and move their arms (or the rest of their body) to interact with the display, similar to Microsoft Kinect. Then, as you’re moving, Intel’s AIM technology can identify your age and gender, which is crucial information for advertisers — and also useful for personalizing the content to each viewer. For example, as outlined over email by SoftKinetic’s vice president of marketing and communications Virgile Delporte, a young woman might walk up to SoftKinetic-equipped display at an airport, and she could browse information about nearby malls and fashion-related shops. If the viewer was an older man, they might see an ad for a nearby cigar shop. The description reminds me of one of the most famous scenes in Minority Report , when Tom Cruise’s character runs through the mall and all of the advertisements start delivering personalized messages. (The movie is also famous for featuring gesture-controlled computers, so clearly the SoftKinetic team was watching very closely) Of course, not everyone thinks the Minority Report future is positive, but for people worried about privacy, Delporte assures me that SoftKinetic’s data will be anonymized. “Only statistical information will be stored, and this anonymous data will be shared in the cloud to provide real-time data to the advertisers, who can easily test different advertising scenarios,” he says. “Think about the way web advertising is managed today. Combined with 3D imaging analysis, the data will get even more accurate.” SoftKinetic doesn’t have any customers to announce yet, but it’s demonstrating the technology at the Integrated Systems Europe conference in Europe starting January 31. I’ve included a video of SoftKinetic’s technology in action at Yahoo, as well as the Minority Report scene, below.