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All posts tagged "ads"


Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Does Your Smartphone Distract You From Ads on TV?

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad" @ 01:00 AM

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/05/...t-people-tv-ads

"While Apple might be pretty good at creating TV ads, the company's iPhone is something of a problem for television advertisers. According to a recent study, the iPhone (and other smart phones) are one of the major distractions people encounter when watching TV."

Anything that is "aiding in avoidance" is troubling to the advertising industry per AdAge. So when they decided to do a study and find out exactly how much distraction do smartphones cause television viewers. They didn't like the results. During a 30 minute show, 94% of viewers were distracted at some point, and smartphones accounted for 60% of these distractions. I can totally see this as I do exactly the same thing. How about you, does your smartphone distract you from those pesky ads on TV?


Monday, March 14, 2011

Krashlander Shows Success of Free Apps

Posted by Danny Simmons in "Windows Phone Software" @ 05:30 PM

http://mobilitydigest.com/krashland...ssions-in-days/

"It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Krashlander for Windows Phones and since the free/ad supported version has been released it's shot up to 14th in all games and 29th for all apps even though it was only released on February 23. It's already exceeded 1,000,000 ad impressions though. Beyond that, it's showing the power of free."

Many developers are reaping the benefits of ad-supported free applications. The ads are non-obtrusive to the user, and proving to be profitable for developers. I call that a win-win. Now that Microsoft has upped the number of free applications per developer, will we see more developers succeeding with this formula? Oh yeah, also check out Krashlander if you get a chance...


Friday, February 25, 2011

The New "What If?" Windows Phone Ads

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 01:00 PM

Effective? Yes. It shows the device, the software, the scenarios - clear features and benefits to owning the phone...and it does it in a way that isn't a rip-off of the Apple approach. I like it! You?


Thursday, February 24, 2011

Microsoft Increases Submission Limit for Free Apps

Posted by Nelson Ocampo in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 04:00 PM

According to a tweet from Rafael Rivera (a member of the ChevronWP7 team), Microsoft is now allowing developers to submit up to 100 free applications instead of the previous limit of 5.

While Rafael states that the ChevronWP7 can't take all the credit, he does point out that the team did make this a major point of discussion during their talks with Microsoft.

What does this mean for us users? While according to Rafael it means we'll have fewer sh***y apps. It also means that developers are free to structure their business to use advertising income as their main source of revenue, by creating multiple free ad supported apps.

What do you think of this? Talk about it in the discussion forums!


Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Windows Phone 7 "Real Time Trials" Ads: Do They Work?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone News" @ 03:30 PM

http://www.winrumors.com/new-window...-rival-devices/

"Microsoft is set to unleash a number of new Windows Phone 7 adverts on the Internet soon. The commercials are similar to the software giant's "laptop hunter" set of adverts that aired during the Vista days of 2009. The new commercials, named "real time trials", are a set of Internet flash commercials that pit Windows Phones against rival devices. Advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky was commissioned in December to create the commercials specifically for use in web advertising. The commercials are set to make their way to a number of high profile Internet sites in the coming months."

It's an interesting ad, that's for sure - it highlights what Microsoft feels Windows Phone 7 is good at, and is an extension of the "a phone to save us from our phones" campaign. So what do you think: does it show Windows Phone 7 in a positive light? Will people care?


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Windows Phone 7 Ads Continue to Evolve

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 11:00 AM

We've seen enough of the "Really?" ads to know what that part of the campaign is trying to communicate, so the question is what's next? The above ad is going in the right direction - direct, to the point information about what the phone can do.


Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Windows Phone 7: The Phone to Save Us From Our Phones?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone News" @ 12:00 PM

Microsoft has been criticized in the past for ineffective ads - or non-existent ads - for Windows Mobile/Windows Phone products, but I think both of these ads are quite clever. They hit on a societal symptom that we all know and recognize, and offer Windows Phone 7 as the solution. It may or may not be, but the ads are brilliant in my opinion. What's your take?


Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Running an Ad Blocker? Please Read This

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Thoughts Media Off Topic" @ 10:00 AM

Hi there. The topic of ad blockers tends to generate some heated discussions around these parts, so I'm going to keep this really simple: if you're running an ad blocker, this is a polite request that you white-list this Web site and allow the ads to load. Here's why: I work hard to keep the ads on Thoughts Media sites non-intrusive; I say no to pop-ups, pop-unders, full-page ads, ads with sounds, etc. I know that those types of ads are irritating, and I value the readership of everyone who visits our sites. I don't want to irritate anyone with our ads.

What you may not realize about online ads is that, for the majority of them, when they simply load, that helps me pay the bills (Our server bill alone is almost $500/month.). Ad blockers stop the ads from loading, which hurts this site. You don't have to click on the ads - just letting them load helps us out a lot. If you do click on them, all the better - that helps us get better advertisers because they know you're interested in the ads. It will help us continue to provide you with the content that you come here for, and that benefits you in the end. So please white list this Web site in your ad blocker.

As a side note, I have a personal "1 visit, 1 click" policy in which, when I visit a site and read/watch some content on it, I find an ad that I'm interested in and click on it. It only takes a few seconds of my time to do, and it's my way of giving back to that site, thanking them for creating that thing I just read/watched. The Internet would be a very different place if everyone had a similar policy. Just a thought to ponder as you head into the weekend. :-)


Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Windows Phone 7 an "Ad Machine"? Don't Believe the Hype

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone News" @ 02:00 PM

http://www.informationweek.com/news...RSSfeed_IWK_All

"According to Mallios, Microsoft will allow advertisers to send push notifications to peoples' devices through a new platform called Toast. Toast will serve ads to the devices much the same as Apple's iAd will serve ads to iPhones. Advertisers will even be able to push ads to phones even when the application isn't running. The ads will drop down from the top of the phone's screen to let users know there's an offer. Again, that sounds horrible to me."

Complaining about online ads is a fashionable pastime, and Information Week's Eric Zeman is concerned that a quote from Kostas Mallios, Microsoft's general manager for Strategy and Business Development, means that Windows Phone 7 will somehow be significantly different from other phones on the market when it comes to serving ads. The reality? Microsoft needs to be competitive with Google, who bought AdMob, and Apple, who bought Quattro Wireless. If Microsoft wants the best developers to come to the Windows Phone platform, they need to provide strong monetization options for those developers. You're not going to see Microsoft do anything crazy here - they can't afford to, regardless of how you interpret the quote from Mallios.

I don't mind ads, as long as they're not obtrusive ads - pop-ups, full-page whizzy Flash ads, etc. So as long as the ads on a free Windows Phone 7 application aren't irritating, I have no objection to them. Hopefully most developers will offer paid, ad-free versions of their apps.


Thursday, March 18, 2010

Windows phone 7 Promo Ad

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 01:00 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ5gpMf2--w

Damn, I wish the phone had that pop-up holographic display - wouldn't that be cool? Even cooler than having copy and paste? ;-)


Thursday, March 4, 2010

Vintage Windows Mobile Commercials

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 02:30 PM

http://pocketnow.com/thought/vintag...ile-commercials

"We came across some interesting commercials that aired many years ago for several Windows Mobile phones. The below commercials are from the HTC TyTN, the Compaq iPaq 3800, the HP iPAQ 614 Business Navigator, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, and, for good measure, the Sony Clie. Remember these devices? Are there any vintage mobile device commercials that you'd like to share?"

pocketnow.com has dug up some vintage Windows Mobile commercials - some aren't really that old - but it inspired me to dig up a video file that I'd been saving since 2000 and upload it to YouTube. Above, you'll see the original Pocket PC promo video created for the then brand-new platform. Wow, does that bring back memories or what? It really shows you how amazing the devices were for the time - you can hear them making jabs at Palm devices, the dominant competition in 2000. I miss those days sometimes...things seemed much simpler back then when devices were mostly disconnected. ;-)


Monday, April 28, 2008

Chitika Goes Berserk, Serves Up Worst Ads Ever

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Thoughts Media Status Updates" @ 12:45 PM

I saw something very strange when I looked at Digital Home Thoughts this morning. Well, to be accurate, I heard something strange; a beeping sound that was coming from something on the Digital Home Thoughts page. I closed a few other tabs in Firefox to isolate the problem, and it was indeed a banner ad that was making the beeping sound. I isolated it and figured out it was coming from Chitika - now what's strange here is that I had only configured Chitika to display their "eMiniMall" ads, which are interactive image and text-based ads that show you low process for certain products, and "RPU" units, which are related product links that appear at the bottom of our archive page.

What I'm seeing instead is best described by an email I received a few minutes ago:

"Jiggly, beeping "you've won a prize" scams seem out of character for any of Jason's sites...The half naked, in heat (butt in the air) blonde cougar singles ad was quite the addition to your Dragon laptop article, especially given the use of the term "ass-whupping" in the article...Ads with the wrong format for the frame (square jiggly beeping ad in the tower Ads by Google blue box on the right hand side), so it is half hidden. And the square ads by Google area at the top right is serving a skyscraper ad, so one can barely make out what it is for."

I couldn't have said it better myself. So, in short, completely irritating and inappropriate ads are being served up across all four Thoughts Media sites. I've seen this on other sites as well today, and the other Web site owners I've talked with are just as frustrated as I am. I noticed that some of the ads were loading with "500 Internal Server Errors", so I was wondering if this is some larger issue and Chitika has been hacked. This morning when I started seeing this I emailed my contact at Chitika. It's been a few hours and I haven't heard back, so I phoned him - no response yet. I've just phoned the general Chitika publisher support line and left a voicemail - I'm hoping someone will respond to me quickly. If I don't get back a response by tomorrow AM, and this is still continuing, I'm going to pull all Chitika code from my templates. I'd do that now if it was a quick and easy process, but it's not and so I'll ask you to put up with these stupid ads for just a bit longer.

Chitika had better have a really good explanation of all this for me!

UPDATE: Well, I just had a 50 minute phone call with my Chitika representative, and the short version is that this morning they switched on their banner ads for people outside of their "supported countries", which included Canada. This meant that instead of seeing the Chitika text ads, we saw banners - and Chitika partnered with a banner company that seemingly had the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality ads. So basically it was just us Canucks that saw these silly ads. Consider yourself lucky rest-of-world. ;-) Steps have been taken to ensure that as of tomorrow AM, Chitika will not display any banners to anyone.

Tags: ads, chitika

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