Entries tagged with advertising - Channel 10

Did You See The New Ad?

sarahintampa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:58:00 GMT

While I was watching NBC Football (or rather, I was surfing FriendFeed and my husband was watching football), when, all of a sudden, I looked up to see Bill Gates on the screen! Yep, it was the first commercial from the new Microsoft ad campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky (backstory here), the ad agency that just won the big $300 million contract with Microsoft. You may not have heard of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, but you’ve definitely seen their ads: the Burger King “King” ads, Miller Lite’s “Man Laws,” and those freaky VW ads where unsuspecting drivers and passengers are sideswiped by SUVs and trucks in real-time.

The Microsoft ad that aired was not as harrowing as those VW ones, though, thank goodness. Instead, it was pleasantly goofy. Jerry Seinfeld spots Bill Gates buying shoes at a shoe carnival and goes into to help him out. Bill comes across as a lovable geek – and be sure to catch his Shoe Carnival card for a hilarious photo. But don’t leave it up to me to summarize. You can watch it now.

Microsoft could acquire Yahoo: What do you think?

Jesse — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:41:00 GMT

If you ever wanted to see a perfect storm of hyperlinked news, today’s revelation that Microsoft wants to talk to Yahoo about a merger is it. For those who haven’t already been deafened by twitter exclamations and email flurries, let’s walk through the news thus far. That bastion of responsible news reporting The New York Post, broke the story this morning. Apparently when Google picked up DoubleClick last month, the big heads here in Redmond decided it may be time to ante up in the acquisition game, and reopened a longstanding dialog with Yahoo. The ever-anonymous ‘sources’ were sure to include a $50b price tag, as well as reminding us that combining the search advertising shares of MSFT and YHOO would represent 27 percent against GOOG’s 65 percent.

David Kaplan of paidContent.org chimed in early, echoing the NY Post article, as well as reminding everyone of Jerry Yang’s avoidance of Microsoft products, and how much an acquisition could close the gap between Microsoft and Google. Reuters also covered the story with this choice quote from Peter Lobravico of Wall Street Access: “You can’t find a stronger buyer than Microsoft and while it would spur a lot of political and regulatory noise, everyone knows in the end that the deal would go through.”

Scott Beale picked the right graphic for Laughing Squid’s coverage, and also highlighted the 18 point jump in Yahoo’s stock on news of the negotiations. He also pointed out Eric Schonfeld’s post at The Next Net, which notes that the deal would have an air of desperation, and that, “The culture-clash of two companies could undermine any financial gains a Microsoft-Yahoo merger could produce.” Some astute opinion came from Henry Blodget at Internet Outisder, who recommends the two companies join, and then for Microsoft to spin off a Yahoo-MSN organization.

This questions raised by this morning’s news are far more interesting than the coverage of it, given that very little has actually transpired. So what are the questions then? What are your wildest fantasies about how a Microhoo/Yahsoft would exist, and what sort of combinations could make the new company insanely great?

Reuters opens Virtual News Bureau in "Second Life"

Tina — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:52:00 GMT

Advertising in video games has been around for a while now and we've all sort of been sitting back to see how far it will actually go. It's going to go as far as it does in reality. Toyota and Sony BMG already have advertising in Second Life. If game companies can make extra cash through advertising to off set some of the costs to create a game which then inevitably makes games cheaper for the consumers to buy then I say YEA! As long as its doesn't interfere with the gameplay. On the other hand, I worry game companies will just pocket the extra dough and then in three months tell us games will now cost $75.00 do to the high cost to make them. :)