New research indicates that the long-held promise of TV/Internet convergence is gaining traction, albeit slowly. Leichtman Research Group data shows that just over 24% of all U.S. homes have a Web-to-TV connection, while 5% of adults are watching YouTube and Hulu on their TV screens each week.
Leichtman data measured homes with Web-TV connections via video game and Blu-ray systems, as well as compatible TVs. Add in homes that can connect with a TiVo, Roku player or computer, Read More

According to Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch, YouTube just announced that they will be expanding closed captioning support for all videos on YouTube and rolling out an auto-captioning feature on videos featuring the English language.

Woah.

Know what you want. Sit down and work out exactly what you want to achieve.
Find out what’s available. Do your homework.
Re-evaluate your goals: If you had seriously underestimated the price, you may need to re-think.
‘Arm’ yourself. Knowledge is power, so make sure you understand everything doing into the proposal or contract.
Remember who’s the customer
Admit what you don’t know. If you need something explained, ask.
Don’t let them ‘blind you with science’ Read More

UFC Champ Chuck Liddell and his girlfriend Heidi Northcott are rocking a new Reebok commercial in nothing but their Reebok’s, literally.
The video which surfaced on YouTube shows the couple working out on gym equipment in their birthday suits, a video part of a “viral campaign for Reebok” who Liddell has a sponsorship deal with.
Thankfully the couples private parts are blurred out but this is still very racy.  Personally I can’t even tell that the UFC Champ is even wearing Reebok shoes so I ask myself was this gamble worth it for Reebok? Read More

Fox’s American Idol beat the telecast of the Olympics on Tuesday night, pulling 23.6 million viewers during its two-hour show, compared to the Olympics, which pulled 19.7 million. But the Olympics smashed Idol’s one-hour show on Wednesday.
The Olympics averaged a 5.4 rating in the 18-49 demo on Tuesday, while Idol generated a 9.1.   Tuesday’s airing of American Idol, which unveiled Ellen DeGeneres as a judge, pulled the biggest numbers for a non-finale, non-debut in two years. Read More

The opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics drew the largest number of viewers ever for any non-U.S. hosted Winter Olympics in history. NBC pulled an average 32.6 millions from 7pm to 11pm, according to Nielsen.  That number was a 47% increase over the 2006 Winter Olympics, when 22.2 million watched the opening ceremonies in Turin.
Despite some expectations that NBC would pull low ratings for the Olympic Games – NBC has pulled an average of 28.6 million viewers each night for the first three nights – Read More

Did you know that marketers are now going as far as to actually create Television shows just so they can feature/”pimp” their products.  Marketers will do anything to stay one step ahead in this increasingly competitive environment, but at what cost? Read More

When you launch an online campaign, try and make sure that you can run it for at least one-month (at a minimum) in order to get maximum effectiveness. This is true with both SEM and display campaigns. Read More

Take this bit of trivia knowledge down all you aspiring game show contestants out there.
This past Sunday, Super Bowl XLIV managed to break all records and surpass M*A*S*H* as the most watched television show in history.  Viewership for the Super Bowl came in at 106.5 million, up from 98.7 million viewers last year.  The series finale of  M*A*S*H* previously held this title since 1983 bringing in 105.97 million viewers.
Sunday’s Super Bowl also had the most ad time in history. Read More

If you run an online display campaign for more than 2-months, you definitely want to consider rotating in fresh creative to prevent burnout. In this day and age, consumers demand fresh content and will side step your product if the message gets stale. Read More