A Mazda Super Bowl ad showcasing the connected capabilities of its new cars became the poster child for distracted driving during a day-long summit held by the Senate commerce committee. The ad showed a a fleeting glimpse of a driver updating his Facebook page from the center console as he was driving down the road.
Citi is straining to break ahead of the financial services pack with user-friendly digital tools aimed at making banking with Citi as easy as shopping with Amazon. The bank chain is rolling out upgraded customer-centric ATMs in the U.S. this month and on Feb. 3 launched a revamped mobile app that lets you check your balances with a tap.
There’s an argument that the escalated prices of spots in last week's Super Bowl is nothing more than proof of its ever-declining value—the last gasp of traditional advertising. Year in and out, the big networks continue to lose viewers to other platforms and channels. As the tide of audience rolls out into the digital ocean, the Super Bowl stands out by contrast: a lonely tower of viewers, wobbling in the breeze.
AOL no longer seems to be in comeback mode. In fact, the company is on a pretty solid roll. The company's global advertising revenue jumped 23 percent in Q4, finally putting the brand back on par with the robust growth being enjoyed by the online ad business as a whole. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong likes to tout the company's "barbell strategy"—the idea that AOL is investing heavily on two ends of the online ad spectrum: big brand advertising and programmatic. Both are shining right now for the company.
Today, the Alliance for Audited Media released its consumer magazine circulation data for the second half of 2013, and once again, the narrative remains the same. Overall circulation remained relatively flat versus the year-ago period (declining of about 1.7 percent), with newsstand sales continuing their steep decline (dropping 11 percent) and digital editions up sharply (36.7 percent) but making up just 3.5 percent of total circulation. All numbers are preliminary and subject to audit.
Facial recognition is about to become central to the debate about consumer privacy. On Thursday, more than 120 participants representing businesses, social media, advertising, privacy advocates, policymakers—anyone who has an interest in privacy—will meet to begin hammering out voluntary guidelines for the use of facial recognition.
Horizon Media has just inked a $100 million upfront deal—with a radio company? Well, yes and no. The media agency has just signed a multi-year, cross platform pact with Clear Channel, best known for its 840 radio stations in 150 markets. One might wonder, in this era of intense competition from the likes or Pandora, Spotify and now Beats By Dre, if anybody needs to lock up radio GRPs ahead of time?
In 1932, Mrs. Gordon Bergfor of New York City learned from her doctor that she had a chronic neuromuscular disease. The only hope she had was finding an exercise machine that worked every major muscle group simultaneously. Unfortunately, no such machine existed at the time. Fortunately, Mr. Bergfor was a mechanical engineer and built his wife one himself. When neighbors and friends noticed the relief the device brought to Mrs. Bergfor, they asked for one, too—and the Exercycle hit the market. Tens of thousands sold.
Specs Who Peter Friedman, chairman and CEO; Jenna Woodul, evp and chief community officer What Social marketing agency Where San Jose, Calif. Though it’s been around since 1996, LiveWorld has adroitly adapted to an ecosystem completely transformed by Facebook and Twitter. Mammoths such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, Pfizer and Louis Vuitton now trust LiveWorld to manage their social media.
Upworthy, the social cause driven content upstart, says the page view is a lousy metric. It also believes that time spend doesn't cut it either when it comes to gauging success for a Web publisher. So the company is offering up something different: attention minutes. Going forward, Upworthy says it's going to track total attention on its site and total attention per piece.
