Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The New Power of Television

Over the past decade, experts across the advertising world have proclaimed the demise of TV

However, we are now witnessing a phenomenon that is breathing new life into TV. In fact, you could even argue that the future for TV has never looked so healthy. And it is all down to social media – the very thing that many thought would be a further nail in TV’s coffin. Social media is having a profoundly positive impact on TV viewing as a new group of highly-engaged TV viewers is using social media to talk about TV programming and advertising and to influence the content and brand choices of their social peer group.

MTV Russia to Be Taken Off Air in 2013

MTV Russia will stop airing in mid-2013 due to falling ratings, the holding company that controls the music channel has confirmed.

Beyoncé signs 'unique' $50m brand ambassador deal with Pepsi

The former Destiny's Child star's very own Pepsi challenge involves allowing her face to appear on cans and bottles and an ad campaign timed to coincide with the release of her new album

Whether it’s Rihanna hollering “Everybody say HTC! Say Budweiser! River Island!” during her recent 777 tour or the hosts at last night’s Jingle Bells Ball getting the crowds at the 02 Arena to cheer louder for BlackBerry than for Girls Aloud or The Wanted, brands and music seem to be forging ever closer (and more profitable) relationships.

But the biggest signifier of the enmeshing of worldwide domination of our beloved popstars with the interests of what they can persuade us to buy came today with the announcement that Beyoncé Knowles, 31, is the new global brand ambassador for Pepsi in a deal reported to be worth $50 million

Google Zeitgeist reveals the top search terms of 2012

Whitney Houston topped Google's list of the most searched-for people in 2012, ahead of the Duchess of Cambridge, the search giant has revealed.

Google releases its Zeitgeist search list annually to show how trends in search have changed in the previous year. Google eliminates the searches that are the same every year, such as 'email', to identify the terms that have seen the biggest increase on previous years.

The top search trend for 2012 was Euro 2012, with searches for the football tournament coming in ahead of searches for Olympic tickets. Other trending terms included Natwest online, which made news this summer with a technical outage that lasted for days, iPad 3 and Gangnam Style, the Korean pop hit that became a viral success.

The newspaper industry

After years of bad headlines the industry finally has some good news

IN A recent issue of the beloved comic book, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, quits his job as a journalist at the Daily Planet because the paper has gutted its news coverage. Is the outlook for newspapers really so dire that even superheroes have given up on them? Ever since 2006, when The Economist asked on its cover who had “killed the newspaper”, the industry’s pains have only intensified. Advertising has plunged. Readers have kept moving online. Revenues of newspapers continued to fall, dropping to $34 billion last year in America—only about half of what they were in 2000.

Yet things have started to look a bit less grim, particularly in America. Revenues from advertising are still falling, but those from circulation have at last started to stabilise. At some papers, such as the New York Times, circulation revenues this year are forecast to offset the decline in advertising for the first time in at least five years.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Eurovision - More Countries Quit Contest

Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Poland have all said they are ‘very unlikely’ to take part in the cheesy singing contest that has become a European institution.

The rush of nations pulling out comes after Spain’s entrant for the 2012 contest was urged to sing badly and not to win, to avoid any risk of having stage the competition in 2013.

Bosses of Spanish public television told pop star Pastor Soler ‘to throw’ her entry amid massive government spending to reduce the huge national debt.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Forbes - The Most Overpaid Actors In Hollywood

In past versions of our overpaid actors roundup, we looked at each actor’s films over the last five years. This year, we cut back to the last three years to give the list a more contemporary focus.

That dropped Drew Barrymore from the top 10, but not because she has anchored any smashes lately. Barrymore was our worst-performing actor last year — her films earned only 40 cents for each $1 she was paid. However she hasn’t starred in three big releases over the last three years. We don’t count ensemble films where there is no clear star like Barrymore’s 2009 film He’s Just Not That Into You, which was actually a hit.

Psy Will Make $7.9 Million This Year From 'Gangnam Style'

Gangnam Style, which is racing towards 1 billion views on YouTube, will net pop star Psy at least $7.9 million this year, according to a report

Despite the unprecedented YouTube success of Gangnam, Psy won't even make $1 million from the video itself. The Associated Press cited TubeMogul, a video and ad-buying platform, which estimates Psy will make $870,000 from ads shown during the video. Google takes about half of the ad revenues. With about 880 million views for the video at present, that nets out to $0.001 - one-tenth of one cent - per view.

The Pope v Twitter: can he overtake Lady Gaga?

Social media experts say the Pope will be lucky to break into the top 20 of the site’s most followed people

Nearly 32m people follow Lady Gaga on Twitter; just behind her is fellow popstar Justin Bieber. Of the top 10 users, eight are celebrities, from Kim Kardshian to Taylor Swift and Rihanna. Only Barack Obama, with 24m followers and YouTube (20m) break the mould.

Where, therefore will the Pope’s new account, @pontifex, get to in the rankings? His closest religious rival on Twitter is the Dalai Lama. His 5million followers put him below Ryan Seacrest, FC Barcelona, Tyra Banks, Paulo Coelho, Russell Brand and a range of celebrities so famous you’ve almost certainly never heard of them. Let's hope it's quality, not quantity of followers that count.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Apple Launches iTunes Store in Russia

Apple on Tuesday launched a Russian version of its bestselling iTunes Store, but the online music shop so far offers a limited selection of Russian songs because the U.S. company has failed to sign agreements with all domestic copyright-holders.

"We just received an offer from Apple to work with them through the Russian Authors Society or First Music Publishing House, and we were very surprised by this approach, Alexei Kozlov, director of the Navigator Records label, told Vedomosti. "This is why we temporarily halted putting albums from our catalog on iTunes."

Navigator Records owns the rights to the songs of artists including DDT, Melnitsa, Zveri, Kalinov Most, Splin and Vladimir Vysotsky.

Changing Advertising Summit 2012 highlights - video

Quotes and testimonials from the Guardian's Changing Advertising Summit which took place in London on October 2012, following the theme of creative magic meets digital logic.

2 Minutes 49 Seconds