Clever TV Commercial Uses Security Camera Footage

Now here’s a clever way to use your business’s security camera footage:

“Stop Selling Ads and Do Something Useful”

Joe McCambley does a great job explaining the humble beginnings of the online advertising world and how shrinking screen sizes are forcing advertisers to get creative.

“Consumers are migrating in droves to mobile devices. And as Clayton Christensen wrote in a recent Nieman Report, those consumers are focused on getting jobs done.

We check news on Twitter. We search Google Maps for directions. We compare restaurants on Zagat. We take photos with Instagram and upload them to Facebook. All those people on the elevator with their noses in their smartphones? They’re not lazy or anti-social. They’re getting things done.

And do you know what else they’re doing? They’re sharing stuff that interests them, or helps them, or that they think might help their friends. Mobile sharing is the new word of mouth…” [Continue Reading]

How Advertisers Made The Super Bowl Power Outage Work For Them

There’s been more buzz surrounding these clever “blackout” tweets than there has been for the actual Super Bowl commercials!

Via Forbes:

“Savvy advertisers quickly took to Twitter tonight to capitalize on the unexpected power outage during this year’s Super Bowl. ‘We do carry candles,’ Walgreens tweeted when the power went out at the Super Bowl. ‘We also sell lights.’ Oreo tweeted, ‘Power out? No problem,’ posting an ad that finished, ‘You can still dunk in the dark.’ Meanwhile, Tide tweeted, ‘We can’t get your # blackout, but we can get your stains out,’ posting its own ad. Audi took a direct hit at competitor and Superdome naming rights-holder Mercedes-Benz with this tweet: ‘Sending some LEDs to the @ mbusa Superdome right now‘

They and other marketers responded to–indeed, capitalized on–an unprecedented event with instant on-brand communication.

‘This is an example of the new world of marketing where things happen so fast, where brands respond real time to the environment,’ said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the…” [Continue Reading]

2013′s Best Super Bowl Commercial

The Super Bowl commercials are hit or miss this year. So far, Taco Bell’s commercial is my favorite. If you’re not able to catch the game today, you can watch this year’s Super Bowl commercials over at The Verge!

Google’s Cash Cow Threatened By Mobile Search

Some interesting stats were published by comScore last week showing a decline in search queries performed on the desktop:

Now compare the stats with those from 2011:

As you can see, December 2012 saw about a thousand fewer search queries than December 2011. The reason for this is simple. We have Google in our pockets now.

Google is by far the most dominant search engine on our mobile devices, but mobile search is not as profitable for Google. The small screen size just doesn’t allow for as many ads.

For those of us advertising with Google AdWords, we can expect mobile ad costs to skyrocket as more and more advertisers fight to out bid each other for the few ad spots available on our mobile screens.

Ben Schachter of Macquarie let’s us know what we can expect by year-end:

“We estimate that as much as 25-30% of all Internet search traffic could be coming from mobile devices as of year-end. Moreover, in certain categories, such as restaurants, we believe that well more than 30% of queries are already coming from mobile devices (other key categories such as Consumer Electronics, Beauty & Personal, Finance/Insurance, and Autos also have a meaningful share of mobile queries),”

Will Google find a way to make mobile search as profitable as desktop search? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

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