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Deals, Discounts and Coupons: The Thrill is Gone

posted on February 21, 2011

It’s President’s Day and you know what that means! Low low prices on mattresses, bedding, jewelry and cars, cars, cars. If George Washington were alive today, he’d be lining up to get a great price on a new Toyota! Honest, says Abe!

Do you remember the days when Washington and Lincoln were respected men of history and not hyperactive, humorous pitch men? Me neither.

But there was a time when people planned for holiday sales because it was the only time of the year you’d get such a great deal. Magazines would publish articles about the best time to buy new sheets or barbeque grills because most of the deep discounts were calendar-based. How does that work now that we get bombarded with great deals every day? From Amazon’s Daily Deals to Groupon’s half price offers, to downloadable and printable coupons for hundreds of products and restaurants, the average person could go broke saving money.

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YouTube Wants to Make Stars Out of Stars!

posted on February 18, 2011

Wanted: High profile celebrity interested in breaking into the online video business. Imagine success on the ultimate small screen. No money required. No experience needed. Apply at YouTube where we make stars out of stars!

Yes, it’s true. At least according to Vulture it is. (They’re a sister site to New York Magazine, so don’t dismiss the story because of the publication name.) In an exclusive story, the online mag says that YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar is actively looking for a number of celebs around which they can brand a YouTube channel. They’d like to have the celeb star in weekly segments then fill in with other themed content and YouTube will foot the bill. They’re even generously agreeing to allow the celebs to keep the rights to their produced portions, which is pretty nice seeing as all they have to bring to the table is their name and their fame.

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Bing and Yahoo Change Policy to Allow Trademark Keywords

posted on February 17, 2011

As of March 3, Bing and Yahoo will change their policy to allow the use of trademarked names as keywords in search ads. They say the change will bring their policy “in line with search industry practices” and some outlets say this is due to Google’s hard won victories in court over such matters.

Here’s the wording straight from Microsoft Advertising:

“As of March 3rd, Microsoft will cease editorial investigations into complaints about trademarks used as keywords to trigger ads on Bing & Yahoo! Search in the United States and Canada. If there is concern that an advertiser may be using a trademark keyword inappropriately, the trademark owner should contact the advertiser directly.”

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In Video Advertising Size Doesn’t Matter

posted on February 17, 2011

Thirty seconds is the magic number for a TV ad, but for online video, fifteen seconds is much more common. Undoubtedly this comes from the idea that people won’t tolerate watching anything longer when they can easily skip the ad with the push of a mouse button, but that thinking appears to be wrong.

According to a new study by FreeWheel, the length of a video ad had little impact on the ad’s completion rate. What did have a huge impact was the length of the video itself.

Long-form content (20+ minutes) had the best completion rates regardless of the ad length, both topping 82%. Short-form content, which is currently the most popular form of professional content, peaked at a completion rate of 61%.

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TweetDeck: Now With Longer Tweets

posted on February 16, 2011

Bigger is always better, right? That’s the idea behind Deck.ly, a new service from TweetDeck that allows you to Tweet as long as you like. In the two weeks since the service has been active, 1.35 million extended Tweets have been posted to the program, like the one below from Tony Robbins.


But isn’t allowing you to tweet over the limit, counter to the whole point of Twitter? I get that sometimes you need a few extra characters, but one of their most popular deck.ly Tweets is like the first chapter from a novel. Can this even be considered a Tweet?

TweetDeck reports that many Twitterattis are up in arms over this development. I’m not really sure why. If you don’t like the service, don’t use it but the naysayers may grow in number as TweetDeck moves forward with its plan:

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Apple, Google Unveil Competing Subscription Plans

posted on February 16, 2011

Apple has a brand new system that will allow online content producers to sell subscriptions.

Google has a brand new system that will allow online content producers to sell subscriptions.

Is that a coincidence? Coming only a few days apart, it does seem that Google is trying to one-up Apple especially since Apple is taking nothing but flack from producers in regard to their offer.

Here are Apple’s rules. Any content producer that wishes to sell a subscription can do so through the iTune’s app system which provides one-touching (think impulse) buying. That’s great. If a person clicks and buys, Apple get’s 30%. Not so great for content producers. Where it really gets sticky is in this next bit.

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Twitter for Customer Service? Fortune Puts it to the Test

posted on February 15, 2011

The answer to a customer service question should always be accurate, as simple as possible while still covering the problem completely and it should arrive in a timely manner.

For most companies, this means running customer service phone lines or responding to email, but some intrepid explorers are giving Twitter a whirl. It’s a logical step, seeing as how people love to use Twitter to complain about companies, so why not use the same method to turn the consumer around?

The folks at Fortune decided it was time to put this new option to the test, so they took their problems to eight companies known to have customer service agents manning Twitter. They dealt with banks, airlines, shopping sites and even got technical assistance for their cable TV. In each case, they delivered the question by Twitter, Phone and through the company website.