Marketing Bytes, Bites and Bits

Marketers will pay up to $700,000 for a 30-second spot in the midseason hit, American Idol (FOX), according to Advertising Age. That is $23,333 PER SECOND. Talk about pressure in writing advertising copy and media design. Some of the best commercials come out of a crunch like this. Also some of the worse.

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Tidbits from Telephia:

The mobile TV audience grew 45 percent to 3.7 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2006. Among all mobile TV users:

• ABC News was the most watched mobile TV channel in Q2 2006, with 40 percent of the total mobile TV audience
• Thirty-two percent of the total mobile TV audience watched The Weather Channel.
• Fox Sports was third at 31 percent
• ESPN next with and 29 percent of the mobile TV audience
• Fox News fifth at 22 percent.

Nearly 13.5 million mobile subscribers downloaded a game in Q2 2006, representing average monthly revenues of $46.9 million for the quarter.

• Tetris by EA Mobile led all game titles with a 5.1 percent share.
• Namco Pac-Man came in second place with a three percent share and Ms. Pac-Man drove 2.3 percent of total revenues
• EA Mobile mBejeweled game was a close third with 2.8 percent
• ue share.
• World Poker Tour— Texas Hold em Hands-On Mobile secured a 2.2 percent share.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) continues to gain subscribers in the home telephone service market, with 2.9 million in Q2 2006. Vonage continues to own the largest market share of pure-play subscription VoIP consumers with a 53.9 percent share.

MapQuest Mobile was the top revenue-generating downloadable mobile application, excluding mobile games and mobile TV, with 21.9 percent of the total share of revenue for mobile applications. The Weather Channel came in second, with 5.7 percent of the total revenue share, while Verizon Superpages 2.0 came in third posting a 5.3 percent share.

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Ari Rosenberg of Media Post Publishing Insider listed the three things he would change in the advertising world:

1. Ads that float or pop (give me a gun)
   
2. Ads that speak before spoken to (shut up)
   
3. The term users (try listener, readers, visitors, consumer)

I would agree with all of these (my comments in parentheses). However, he wants us to use brand ambassadors. I think that is a bit ostentatious.

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