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Vol 1, #12, June 2, 2009 |
Next generation of global digital audience measurement Yesterday, comScore, Inc. announced the introduction of Media Metrix 360, a ‘panel-centric hybrid’ solution to digital audience measurement. The new approach combines person-level measurement from comScore’s proprietary two million person global panel with web site server metrics in order to account for 100 per cent of a web site’s audience. The new service will reconcile traffic metrics reported from client server-side and ad server data, with fully consistent, hybrid audience measures that can be used for improved planning of online media campaigns, and for evaluating the delivery of those campaigns at an unprecedented level of audience completeness and granularity. “comScore Media Metrix 360 represents an innovative and elegant measurement solution to the increasingly complex digital media landscape,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore President and CEO. “The past few years have seen the rise of global Internet markets, the emergence of new distribution platforms, and a substantial increase in media fragmentation and niche audiences. "Through comScore’s ‘panel-centric hybrid’ approach to audience measurement, we are able to combine the best of both worlds of panel and server-side measurement to bring the industry a comprehensive accounting of the complete digital media universe. Furthermore, this new approach will effectively reconcile panel and server-based measurement and provide unified numbers that are fully consistent with the ad server counts used for advertising payments. In this sense, Media Metrix 360 represents the Web’s first true measurement ‘currency.’” Media Metrix 360 will initially be implemented with July 2009 data for Canada and the U.S. that will be published in August 2009. Top of Page QualSpace™ gives marketers and brand managers deeper insights into the minds of their consumers. This new research solution from Ipsos in Understanding UnLtd in North America offers a new option for rapid, accurate and cost-effective qualitative research. “The online world is shaping the real world in our everyday lives. The same holds true in market research,” says Jill Wittman, VP of Innovation and Qualitative Research at Ipsos Understanding UnLtd. “In developing QualSpace™, we wanted to take qualitative research to a new level and offer clients a powerful tool that feeds insights and information to drive decisions and deliver results.” QualSpace™ offers an interactive virtual bulletin board where the qualitative research experts from Ipsos Understanding UnLtd facilitate three day to nine month discussions around topics relevant to the clients’ needs. Because the tool is delivered online, there is increased flexibility, greater personal convenience and higher engagement for respondents, offering more in-depth responses to questions and richer answers for clients. This highly flexible methodology also allows for increased creativity and customization for the client, as it provides an insightful compliment to other research methods or as a stand alone solution. “The customizable online forums QualSpace™ offers have been designed to leverage frequent moderator interaction over the life of the research, ensuring excellence and actionable insight that meets our clients’ research objectives,” says Wittman. “The tool not only delivers outstanding insight into consumer minds, it does so within clients’ time and cost constraints, allowing them to allocate resources more effectively and more efficiently.” Contest promotes viral aspect of social media SavvyMom Media Inc. has launched their third annual “reader’s choice” contest, designed to find Canada ’s top Mom Entrepreneur and included several new social media features to make the contest more engaging. Voters can post supportive comments on an inspiration ‘wall’ and share their support for their favourite nominees through Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Nominees will be encouraged to tap into the power of their social networks to gather votes for their businesses. The nominee receiving the most votes will be declared the national winner. The winner, who will be announced in October, gets a $15,500 prize package of cash and business services designed to help take her business to the next level. “These women have great ideas and small marketing budgets so we are pleased to be able to offer this prize opportunity for them but more importantly, we are offering them an opportunity to showcase their business on a targeted social media site for the duration of the award. It’s a great free marketing and PR opportunity for them.” says Minnow Hamilton, co-founder of SavvyMom Media. Throughout the contest period, Savvymom.ca will be hosting a ‘ Mom Entrepreneurs Gallery’ at www.momentrepreneuraward.com. “There’s a chance for people to get more engaged with the [nominees’] profiles and help with the viral aspect,” said Sarah Morgenstern, publisher at SavvyMom Media. “As people get excited about it and see the inspirational comments, the idea is that there would be more viral activity.” SavvyMom.ca is also promoting the contest through its own website, as well as its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Twitter coming to television The unscripted series, which will answer the site’s perpetual question “What are you doing?” will be the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to television. A joint release from Reveille and Brillstein described the show as having “ordinary people put on the trail of celebrities in a competitive format”. Few other details were given. Popularity of Twitter has skyrocketed in the last year, growing from 475,000 visitors in February 2008 to seven million one year later. Top of Page BRANCHEZ-VOUS! becomes BV! Media BRANCHEZ_VOUS Inc. has morphed itself into an online ad network and has changed their name to BV! Media. “The name change was becoming increasingly important in our continuing efforts to build our ad networks in the rest of Canada, with which we already reach over 10-million English-speaking visitors,” says Gino Couto, Co-President and COO. The corporation will continue to use and promote the BRANCHEZ-VOUS! brand for their web publishing and production operations, which include the branchez-vous.com portal. Water management site offers real-time dataThe Trent-Severn Waterway National Historic Site of Canada has launched a new real-time interactive water management web link which will allow users to access data pertaining to water levels. The site, developed by Parks Canada highlights current water level data and provides historic highs and lows for comparisons. Water levels can be observed for lakes throughout the watersheds, providing useful information to boaters, businesses and property owners along the waterway. Top of Page .tel Superbook for iPhones now available Telnic Limited’s .tel Superbook application can now be downloaded to iPhone and iPod Touch smartphones. The free application enables users to locate and browse .tel domains quickly without having to go to the Web, bringing real-time information to contacts in your iPhone’s address book with .tel domains. The .tel Superbook also allows users to access and browse all ‘live’, publicly available .tel information, view exact locations and time zones of .tel owners via an embedded map, look up .tel domains at extremely low bandwidth and very quickly even under GPRS. “.tel Superbook on the iPhone means that your colleagues are in control of the information you have about them in your address book,” says Henri Asseily, CTO and Chief Strategist at Telnic. “The ability to change your information dependent on how you want to be contacted dependent on your situation can now be dropped directly into the hands of those who need to contact you, no matter where they are.” Top of Page Platform addresses digital publishing workflow The ‘game-changing’ introduction of TPP completely revolutionizes the publishing process by removing the need for conventional typesetting and editorial mark up. Delivering up to a staggering tenfold reduction in page production costs and up to 75 percent reduction in production times - publishers, like HBG, can now quickly, cost-effectively and automatically produce quality PDFs and eBooks from a single, centralized and secure platform. “The TeleScope Publishing Platform represents an exciting evolution for the publishing industry,” said Ken Michaels, COO, Hachette Book Group. “It is the result of our strong relationship with North Plains over the years and their deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges publishers like HBG face. This solution addresses every aspect of our digital publishing workflow from creation to distribution and the ultimate sale of our content. Streamlining our production workflows will give us the ability to capitalize on emerging revenue opportunities.” The TPP’s modular nature gives publishers the option to choose the area of their business that they would most like to improve, while a full deployment would provide a completely integrated publishing solution. Achieving all this with existing solutions would require a complex and expensive integration exercise with several separate vendors, cobbled together in a somewhat precarious design. In addition to announcing the arrival of its new TPP offering, North Plains will now provide publishing services that include the digitization of books, typesetting and eBook creation, among other things. Now publishers can access North Plains’ outsource services to reduce production times and overall costs while building in scalability to meet emerging revenue opportunities. Top of Page Apple increases share of Canadian on-demand video market Last week Apple Inc.’s Canadian iTunes store added U.S. television shows for download that were previously unavailable, effectively removing a barrier that was a source of frustration for consumers north of the border. Episodes of popular American television shows from studios ABC, NBC, Fox and Warner Bros., including Lost, 24 and 30 Rock are now available on the iTunes store. The Canadian iTunes store first began adding television content in December 2007 and last summer added movie content, but the store has been hobbled in its offerings compared to the U.S. iTunes store, with the most popular prime-time American programs unavailable. Simon Atkins, a spokesperson on behalf of Apple, would not comment on the reason for the sudden addition of new programming. But Apple is facing increasing pressure in both Canada and the United States from other industry players eager to grab a piece of the on-demand video market. Cable companies are already offering video-on-demand and time-shifting, personal video recorder options to keep customers, and Rogers Communications announced earlier this year it would be launching a broadband video portal to bring a video-on-demand service to the internet. Television networks are also experimenting with making broadcasts available online as streaming, rather than downloadable, video. Last year CTV and ABC announced a deal that would allow CTV to stream full episodes of ABC series such as Lost and Grey's Anatomy about a month after their initial broadcast. Top of Page Facebook receives $200 million investment Digital Sky Technologies, one of the leading internet investment groups globally, has made a $200 million investment in Facebook in exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 per cent equity stake at $10 billion valuation. “This investment demonstrates Facebook’s ongoing success at creating a global network for people to share and connect,” says Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. “We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people – 70 per cent outside of the U.S. – onto Facebook.” According to Zuckerberg, a number of firms approached Facebook but DST sttod out because of the global perspective they bring. Top of Page Poynt local search expands its reach Calgary-based Multiplied Media Corporation, a provider of mobile local search services, has launched its Poynt local search application for BlackBerry smartphones in Germany. Poynt, which connects consumers to local businesses and theatres at the moment they want to buy or acquire products or services, will utilize data from suchen.de to increase exposure for Germany’s large base of local advertisers. The free application includes the following features:
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