This is new.

I was surprised to see this ad, a display unit for YouTube HD running in my Google RSS Reader on a feed from Silicon Alley Insider. Google serving house ads for its own video service, YouTube?

The ad is running in the Google Ad Sense network, the search giant’s broad, yet targeted hyper-advertising distribution network. It’s what amounts to a house ad, meaning either YouTube is spending to advertise its service, which I doubt, or Google is undersold on their inventory and they’re running free ads for their video service. (more…)

Charlie Rose gives an enlightening looks into the thought processes of newspaper and print media executives as they confront the uncertainty in the future of their business. At the table are Time cover story writer Walter Isaacson, the Daily News’ Mort Zuckerman and the WSJ’s Robert Thomson. Who ever thought hanging out with four old white guys could be so much fun!

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This clip from a recent Fox Business channel interview with the smart and entertaining Gary Vaynerchuk is fun to watch on multiple levels. Here’s a quick list, in no particular order:

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There’s a theory that good advertising doesn’t make you buy something, it makes you buy something sooner.

If that’s the case, then most online advertising isn’t good advertising.

But we knew that already.

The inability for the online advertising market to develop standardized metrics that prove real ROI to brands has been a major hurdle in the evolution of a sustainable digital content economy.

But the financial crisis that has so many companies pulling back on spending and laying off warm bodies has a silver lining - it has set the stage for brands to help define the future of online advertising products that most effectively transmit their message. (more…)

It’s advertising week in New York, which means all sorts of banter about how to narrow the gap between Silicon Alley and Madison Ave. The traditional media mindset of reach and frequency doesn’t always mesh with the engagement value that digital platforms are built to offer. But any smart ad man knows that engagement is what builds brands.

I’ve kvetched recently about how I think the world would be a better place if display ads, which are all about scale, were coded out of existence and replaced by contextual ads, which are all about engagement. I stand by that statement, especially now that I’ve seen the nirvana of contextual, rich media advertising.

Check out this Youtube clip for the new Nintendo Wii game, Wario Land. You have to watch it all the way through. I’ll wait. (more…)

Remember the Youtube video where the kids were jumping, parkour style, into their jeans? I blogged about it back in May. It started off as an unbranded viral video. Within a week the video had hit 1M views, had developed a minor cult of spoof responses, and was picked up by Good Morning America, where it was outed as being a paid advertisement for “a certain denim company.” The video, as it lives online, still has zero Levi’s branding.

Last night, during Monday Night Football on ESPN, I saw the same video repurposed as a branded, fifteen second spot. It’s the first time I’ve seen content, created for the web as an underground viral video migrate upstream to on-air. Clearly, Levi’s test marketed the content on the web and in success, after amassing an audience of several million views matched with positive comments, decided the spot was broadcast worthy.

Kudos to Levi’s for pushing this innovative ad campaign forward.

This oft-attributed quote to Mark Twain might sum up how the online display ad industry feels about Jessica Vascellaro’s article in today’s Wall Street Journal, Gap Widens in Online Advertising, but the display ad industry is wrong.

Traditional, non rich-media display ads are an archaic media product that should be designed and coded out of the standard web user interface.

If the market has its way, the above suggestion may end up being less Draconian and more Darwinian. (more…)

Take an hour out of your life and watch this important video. It’s an excellent overview of the evolution of new media’s impact on human interaction. It highlights the role that YouTube is playing in the development of Fan Fiction (a somewhat inaccurate yet my current preferred euphemism for User Generated Content). If you’re short on time, skip to the conclusion at 45:15 and listen to Lawrence Lessig’s take on the cultural inflection point that we have communally reached due to the connectivity and access provided to us through digital distribution.

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Pricing is one of the most interesting and yet misunderstood components of digital distribution.

I don’t mean pricing in terms of end-user costs, although that’s a fascinating discussion in its own right. I mean pricing in terms of the value of content interactions that an intellectual property owner should look to extract when selling their content.

In other words, if I’m a content owner, I want to license my show at a variable price which will maximize the value of each interaction that said show will generate. How do I do that in the current state of the digital world? (more…)

Today, Safran Digital went public with the details of our partnership with Xbox. In particular, we’ve announced the directors for our slate of original web video pilots, which launch this fall to coincide with Xbox’s user-interface redesign.

The directors involved include James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence), David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), James Gunn (Slither), Lucky McKee (May), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th).

I’m extremely proud of the filmmakers and their camps, the deal we’ve put together and what I believe it represents for the future of digital content economics. (more…)