QUICK INDUSTRY NEWS 02/19/08

Network fees come under fire
A policy paper will be released late February by the AAAA and the ANA questioning the high fees networks are charging them when buying time on television shows. These fees are in the millions of dollars and remind us of the pre-digital days, where workers had to physically time, edit and insert commercials, in between shows. Considering that most programs are handled by computers with planned schedules produced well in advance, it is no surprise that networks are under pressure to relieve advertisers of "money squeezing" charges. Lets not forget that these days, marketers are becoming more and more insistent on tracking their advertising monies. Poorly justifiable expenses of this sort will soon go the way of the dinosaur.

iPaper
A document viewer that converts and streams PDF documents on to the web, for easy viewing of large files. It adds a nice touch by allowing you to read documents through a scrollable window, turning pages (like a magazine), or a slide show. Advertisers will delight in the way it seamlessly integrates googles AdSense inside each of the documents ($$$), making non web-pages monetizable. Revenues generated from advertisements are split between the Publisher and Scribd. Considering they have already received around $4,000,000 in funding from Silicon Valley, I would say this "YouTube of Documents" will only improve (www.scribd.com).

Mobile People launches Ad Server
"This Ad Server provides the capability to deliver targeted mobile ad campaigns for directory publishers... advertisements can be targeted to users based on time, keyword, category or location (Mobile Europe)." This service seems to promise an upgrade to the traditional yellow pages. Ex. "If a mobile user is searching for a car showroom in his vicinity the user can also be provided with car insurance results and local garages." I know that this has been something companies have been attempting to develop in the Philippines (look at how you get SMS advertisements on SM stores, when you are in the vicinity of SM). As far as I can tell, the technology is still expensive and the application by local content providers, not well integrated. A pity, because this sort of a service when integrated with the web, can really bring benefit to the consumer.