Archive for November 7th, 2007

AS INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES CONVENED IN Washington, D.C. last week to debate whether behavioral targeting techniques violate privacy, Facebook was prepping a new initiative that makes anxieties about serving people ads based on their surfing history appear almost quaint. Facebook Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new program that allows marketers to conscript members to serve as brand advocates.

Under the program, members can sign up as fans of particular brands. Those brands can then send ads to members’ Facebook friends that include the fans’ name and photo.

Full Story

Share This

STOCKHOLM — A conflict similar to the writers’ strike in Hollywood is brewing in Sweden.A deal between the Swedish Playwrights Union and webs TV4 and TV5, alongside a number of production companies, expired Thursday. With no new attempt to broker a deal, the situation seems to be deadlocked. Writers will vote on whether to strike at a meeting later this week.

One of the main sticking points in talks has been compensation for repeats and content distribbed on DVD, website such as Joost, and mobile phones.

Susin Lindblom, a rep for the Swedish Playwrights Union, said: “We have the same problems here as our colleagues in the U.S.

“In the past, we had a royalty on the gross. Now there is fear of a net profit system being introduced, where all costs are deducted. This makes it difficult to get a good overview and then there will probably be no royalty at all.”

Full Story

Share This

Fox Atomic will become the first Hollywood group to produce a studio movie in South Korea when it goes ahead with an untitled pic starring Channing Tatum.Project was bought as a pitch by the Debbie Liebling-headed division from scripter Doug Jung (”Confidence”) before the WGA strike. Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are attached to produce.

The police thriller set in Seoul sets Tatum as a American cop who teams up with a big-time criminal in order to enter the Korean underworld.

Zak Kadison will oversee the project for Fox Atomic. Tatum, Peter Kiernan and William Choi of Management 360 are attached as executive producers. Helmer and a Korean producing partner have yet to be attached.

Pic is not the first sign of Fox interest in Korea, a market where, even after a recent dip, local films dominate the B.O. In April, it was revealed that Paul Hanneman, co-president of Fox Intl., and Kim Woo-taek, CEO of major Korean distrib Showbox, had struck a preliminary agreement that could see the studio co-financing and co-producing Korean pictures. At roughly the same time, Fox exec Mike Heard scouted locations in Seoul and Busan.

Fox Atomic was launched last year as a division of Fox Searchlight to produce and acquire genre films for teen and young adult audiences.

Full Story

Share This

DON’T GET ME WRONG, I love what Microsoft is doing. The concept of proper “click attribution,” or giving credit to all of the impression prior to a click that may have contributed to the end result, is an important step in the evolution of online advertising (“Microsoft Regarding Google: If you Can’t Beat’Em…”). And Microsoft, as well as many others, is well motivated to solve this important equation to get its share of current online marketing budgets since the odds of breaking into search, where Google currently reaps all the benefit, are long at best. The problem with looking to click attribution as the solution to branding online is that the practice still only values impressions that happen to precede or alter online behavior. That means an impression must be part of an online “click value chain” to have any value. What should be worrisome about this to the Web community (web publisher and would-be Google challengers alike) is that by taking this approach, we are saying that the sum value of all impressions on the Internet can only be equal in value to the sum total of all ROI on fully optimized direct response campaigns. In short, if the click or acquisition is all that matters, then there is still no accounting for branding.

Full Story

Share This

NBC is going green.  From reality TV shows like The Biggest Loser to daytime news on the Today Show to scripted comedies and dramas like Chuck and Al Gore’s visit to 30 Rock this Thursday are going green with helpful hints for viewers to help the environment.  What kind of impact has this made?  Have you recycled today?

More on NBC.com

-Karin Searle

Share This

If you were too busy playing Guitar Hero in your underwear on Monday, you may have missed the announcement that tonight’s episode of South Park will feature the rhythm game prominently in the storyline. For those of you who just can’t wait those last few hours, a Comedy Central press release reveals some more details about the impending rift between Stan and Kyle, and a short video preview shows the pair looking like total goobers while trying to look cool playing the game.

Full Story 

Share This

On November 20, for the first time ever, a movie will be exclusively distributed via iTunes. Yes, we already heard about this briefly when our own Kevin Kelly talked with Edward Burns at ComicCon. But at the time, Burns had said he would be given a trial run, in which his latest film, Purple Violets, would be available on iTunes for four weeks beginning on October 9. That date has come and gone, and now the New York Times has revealed that the film will actually get a full, exclusive release on November 20. That means you won’t be able to see it in theaters, or on DVD, or on Cable. Yet, anyway. Personally, I’m a bit shocked the idea didn’t happen sooner. There’s tons and tons of indie films out there that can’t get good distro. Going with iTunes sounds like a great opportunity to get notice. Plus, with iTunes still only offering less than 1000 movies, and still unable to get titles from all the studios, the service would do well to increase its library with exclusives like this. The idea certainly worked for companies like Netflix, which started exclusive distribution via its Red Envelope Entertainment moniker. Maybe one day, like Red Envelope, iTunes could even produce its own movies.

Full Story

If films debut on iTunes will that change product placement at all? Weigh in below.

Share This

Time Warner’s AOL said Wednesday it will buy Net ad technology company Quigo to bolster its ad force and make it more competitive with Google and Yahoo. One source familiar with the matter said the purchase price was about $340 million. The company did not disclose financial terms.

Full Story

Share This

Eva Longoria braved the picket line yesterday — and momentarily distracted striking writers by giving them pizza. This was not the bigger piece of the pie writers were asking for, but they took it.

Full Story

Share This

PEOPLE WHO USE THE INTERNET are increasingly layering their online time with other kinds of media consumption, according to an online survey of 2,700 Web users ages 18 and up conducted by Burst Media in October.

Overall, 82.4% of respondents say they are typically involved with some other kind of media, activity or device while online. Within this cohort, television is the most popular complementary medium, with 58.3% of multitaskers saying they also watch TV (that represents roughly 48% of total Internet users). Even more significantly, 75.6% of Internet users who watch TV say that they visit an online site because of something they see on television (that’s around 36% of total Internet users).

Full Story

Share This