Last year’s Super Bowl XLVI attracted 111.3 million viewers, making it the most watched U.S. telecast of all time. Advertisers spent an average of $3.4 million for a 30-second spot, up more than $300,000 from 2011, according to Nielsen.

Once upon a time, TV viewers would (genuinely) eagerly stay put during the many, many commercial breaks, as big advertisers rolled out their blockbuster ads – all specially made and being shown for the first time. This one from Apple, shown during the SuperBowl in 1984, is iconic and regarded as one of the most memorable ever. Whereas this Pepsi ad from 1991 features Cindy Crawford, which is the only reason you need to watch it in my opinion.

Nowadays, in the internet and social media age, things are a little different, as the Canadian Globe and Mail reports. It says “A growing trend in recent years has been for companies to place either the full ads on the Web in the days leading up to kickoff, or to film separate teasers meant to build buzz and ramp up expectation for the 30-second spots they have paid millions to air”.

To some, this may be a little dull and predictable. After all, part of the whole halftime event was wondering who’d come up with something special this year, whose ad would dazzle and stick in the memory. Not to mention who was actually prepared to shell out the sort of money required to buy the airtime. (NB if cost is an issue you could always run a 1 second ad like this one from SuperBowl 2009).

But advertisers, more often than not, are after as many eyeballs as possible, and as the Globe reports: “Google…found that campaigns that released some type of video before the game last year netted on average 9.1-million views online. By contrast, advertisers that held out for the surprise factor, and did not air anything until game day, had only 1.3-million follow-up views of their videos online, on average. That’s a major difference”. So the figures appear to justify the new approach.

This year my favourites (of those that have been ‘leaked’, obviously) are Go Daddy and Audi. Axe (or Lynx) is simply more of the same, while Volkswagen has gone for the humorous approach but it doesn’t really do it for me.

The Sunday Times has published an open letter to Oprah Winfrey in the form of an advert in the Sunday edition of US broadsheet, Chicago Tribune.

The ad in the newspaper was written to Winfrey ahead of her interview with Lance Armstrong on Thursday, January 17, and offers suggestions as to the questions she might ask him.

There is history between Armstrong and the newspaper. The cyclist sued The Sunday Times in 2004 for libel after they printed allegations of his doping. The paper now is suing Armstrong to recover nearly $1.5 million.

This Chicago Tribune stunt follows hot on the heels of an exchange in early January between the Argentine President Cristina Fernandez and The Sun newspaper. Fernandez placed open-letter style ads  in UK papers The Guardian and The Independent to call for Prime Minister David Cameron to negotiate a solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands. The Sun responded in typical fashion with a full page advert in the Buenos Aires Herald, with a message ending simply ‘HANDS OFF!’

Striking that these letters all appeared in the online versions of the particular newspapers too, but all reports refer to the full pages in the printed version – suggesting that if it appears in the pages of a newspaper, then it really is newsworthy. This is probably a reaction to the sheer volume of online content out there, where it can be difficult to achieve cut-through and attract someone’s attention for longer than a few seconds.

As an advertising medium, it appears there is life in the old newspaper yet.

Our new, mobile optimised website provides simpler navigation and a much improved layout of the site when viewed on a mobile device.

Take a look on your iPhone or Android phone and let us know what you think!

To get your brand on screen and seen by substantial numbers of potential customers in your local catchment area is very reasonable. A contributing factor to this is the local packages available across many regions in the UK. These packages start from just over £1,000 for 15 x 10 second spots! Granted, this is for the Border region, and so would obviously only benefit those in the area but other regions are priced reasonably and accordingly to their audience size. When we say “regions”, this can in some cases be a concise area, for example the Yorkshire region which contains 2.6 million homes (with just under 5 million adults). Within this region are the key areas of Leeds, Bradford, York, Harrogate, Hull and Sheffield. All of these within relatively easy travel times/routes of each other – which presents any local advertiser with an attractive universe of potential customers!

These clusters of urban high volume towns and cities are repeated in many regions and micro regions within the UK.

Packages vary from region to region, but in general they consist of a predetermined amount of peak and off peak spots, for example a ‘Bronze’ package in the Yorkshire TV area includes 5 x peak time spots and 10 x off peak spots.

In this region, this package will reach approximately 1.9 million adults, i.e. 1,900,000 adults will see the commercial at least once and around 235,000 adults in the area will see view the commercial four times or more. Each adult in the region will have the opportunity to see* the commercial twice.

(*OTS of between 3-5 is deemed to be a sound guideline for a TV campaign).

One package alone will of course have a positive effect for any advertiser, particularly when combined with other marketing activity, but as with all advertising, repeating or increasing the weight of the campaign will provide a much stronger proposition. Taking two of the aforementioned packages would yield the following figures:

Approximately 2,600,000 adults would see the commercial at least once, and around 702,000 adults would see the commercial four times or more.

The noticeable effect here is that more people see the commercial on several occasions, constantly reinforcing the message to a viewer!

Within the Yorkshire TV region, it is also possible to target on an even smaller geographic basis by using only the area covered by one of the two transmitters:

Emley Moor – West & South Yorkshire or Belmont – East

Yorkshire/Lincolnshire.

These packages range from 12 spots up to 35 spots per package, but can of course be combined with one another or repeated, they have the flexibility to be used in any way you like.

Production will cost us a fortune!

Not necessarily, the cost depends on your individual requirements, if you have a local event for example, a 10 second commercial with a still graphic may be all that is required or you may decide that a 30 second live action production will be better to showcase a new product launch. The good news for advertisers and production companies is that many of these packages come with some sort of production cost subsidies*, making it even more affordable to get your brand on TV!

*Subject to availability and volume booked

Reaching a wider Audience

If you are aiming to expand to a wider market or you have a web or mail order based product, the ever growing list of digital channels presents many opportunities with which to reach a national audience.

If you can identify your customer profile then it is quite simple to match the channels that are viewed by your type of customer. In doing this it is then possible to construct a campaign across specifically targeted channels, thus avoiding unnecessary wastage. A number of these channels actually sell their inventory at cost per thousands that are almost as low as local radio stations – in the realms of £2.50* per thousand impacts!

(*Based on daytime rates)

An example of this manner of targeting could be an upmarket food product or kitchen product. With this, you can look at testing a channel such as Good Food. The channel doesn’t have a massive audience but the majority of those that watch will have a propensity to purchase food/kitchen related products.

Television is still the strongest advertising medium and recent studies show that ROI figures out perform all other media channels. With the right planning and implementation it can be used very effectively at a cost affordable to many advertisers.

How we did it…

To make our ‘Brief History of Twitter’ animated infographic our Creative Designer first sketched out the various elements in pencil. These were then scanned in and opened within Adobe Illustrator where smooth, vector shapes were created to give the artwork a bold outline and a vibrant colour scheme. Each separate piece was brought into Adobe Flash where the animation could be created, together with sound effects and a musical score.

If you’re wondering where Yorkshire is… Find London on your map and start looking a little further up…  not yet, keep going… You’ll stumble upon the little rural county in the north of England, that’s us. Known to its inhabitants as ‘God’s Own Country’; Yorkshire and its vast roaming hills up until recently were associated with the colour green, but the London 2012 Olympics have finally arrived and green is quickly changing to GOLD.

A fellow school mate of mine and Yorkshire’s very own Lizzie Armitstead opened up the floodgates for what would soon become Team GB’s record medal haul with her dramatic 2^nd place finish in the women’s Road Race.  Lizzie’s silver medal wasn’t Yorkshire’s only triumph on two wheels, with Huddersfield’s Ed Clancy bringing home gold in the cycling team pursuit.

We’re not too shabby on the water either with Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Katherine Kopeland both rowing straight to the top of the podium and scooping up another two gold medals for Team Yorkshire on their way.

And I’m sure you haven’t all already forgotten about Jessica Ennis’ record breaking performance in the Women’s Heptathlon. Jess smashed her personal best and was crowned champion on Saturday 4th to bring back yet another gold to the White Rose County. This wasn’t the only time Yorkshire struck gold this week, Alistair Brownlee also earned us a golden post box with his inspiring victory in the Men’s Triathlon.

One of the latest additions to Yorkshire’s increasingly overcrowded trophy cabinet has come from Leeds’ Nicola Adams. Last Thursday, Adams breezed to a 16-7 triumph over China’s Ren Cancan. The World Number 1 ranked fighter was no match for Adams, who claimed the historic victory was a ‘dream come true’ and mirrored the sense of pride felt amongst ‘God’s Own County’ by stating that ‘taking the gold medal back to Leeds will be special’.

And last, but certainly not least… Hull’s Luke Campbell had the entire crowd on the edge of their seats, when he emerged victorious in the gripping Men’s Bantam Weight boxing final, picking up Yorkshire’s final piece of silverware.

Campbell’s late win brings Yorkshire’s tally to an impressive seven gold, two silver and two bronze medals. This places us on par with sporting powerhouses Australia and Japan… Not bad for a little place in the North of England?

So what’s the big secret to Yorkshire’s success? Jessica Ennis’ Javelin coach Mick Hill seems to think ‘there must be something in the water, that and the Yorkshire pride’. One thing’s for sure, there is certainly a lot of Yorkshire pride floating around the Media WOW office.

Congratulations to all those involved in making London 2012 one of the most memorable Olympics of all time and Media WOW wishes all athletes the best of luck in Rio 2016.  (We also wish you readers the best of luck trying to find the few remaining red post boxes left in this lovely countryside county)

Much like the moles in our new dramatic wartime epic, we’ve been working hard to bring you our demo release of Mole Warfare, a new smart phone app that will test your nerves (and may result in mild shell shock).

You must pit your wits against the witless moles by sending your deadly bombs through various networks of tunnels, traps and other obstacles that stand between you and your quarry.

Once you have ignited the bomb fuse, the smartphone’s accelerometer will allow you to guide the bomb downwards. Once you are deep in enemy territory you must try to get your deadly explosive close to the target before the fuse runs out.

The real challenge comes when you try to beat your score and ranking by striking the moles with as short a fuse as possible AND with as few bombs as you can!

Our initial release is a 6 level demo which will give you a hands-on view of what to expect in the full game. Download it now from the Android App Store. An iPhone release will follow soon so watch this space!

The Sun On Sunday has [predictably] become the biggest selling Sunday newspaper. It’s effectively News International’s replacement for the News Of The World, which itself was the biggest seller. Back in February I said they would be aiming for 2.5m copies sold. Huge early sales of 3m+ in Feb have understandably dropped to 2.3m as the novelty has worn off – not quite as high as the NotW was when it ceased publication, but not far off.

The Mail On Sunday initially gained from the NotW closure, but that didn’t last long and the red top readers soon decided they didn’t like the Mail – circulation was soon back at its original level.

The Sunday Mirror was the big winner when the NotW shut down (about 800K) and this time, most of those new readers stuck with it. That is, until the Sun On Sunday showed its face. A short-lived price promotion kept the numbers above 1.5m in Feb, but any gains are gone. The same applies for the People.

The Daily Star Sunday can be considered a long term success story. The Northern & Shell title added 400K to its circulation back in July 2011, and has retained almost half of those despite the Sun On Sunday.

The upshot of all this is… pretty much the same number of papers are being sold now, as there were before all the changes. The overall popular and mid-market circulation is down about 300K copies year on year. A decrease like this is not unexpected and falls in line with print media trends in general.

He plans to up the girl and glamour content of the magazine, and amongst other initiatives, launch a Loaded TV channel, which he says will be “like 1970’s ITV on a Saturday night”. At last!, I hear you all cry.

The story got me thinking about the heady days of the mid 1990’s, when ‘Lad Culture’ was king, and the Mags that served the Lads were selling in huge quantities.

Of course lifestyle magazines aimed at men existed before Loaded; GQ, Arena and Esquire to name three prominent ones – these concentrated on upmarket fashion and style, maybe a tasteful supermodel shoot, along with the arts and some semi-serious comment. There was also For Him Magazine, bought by Emap in 1994 and subsequently changed to FHM.

But it was IPC’s Loaded, launched by IPC in 1994, which set a trend, and kick-started a genre, by doing something exciting and different. In the mid 90’s Vic & Bob, Blur vs Oasis, Men Behaving Badly, Euro 96, Baddiel & Skinner and Gazza were all part and parcel of what became widely known as ‘Lad Culture’, and Loaded played a huge part in it all. It tapped into what (for me anyway) was a lively period of recent cultural history. The magazine was influenced by popular culture, but it was itself an influencer.

Early Loaded covers featured Gary Oldman (Issue 1), Noel Gallagher, Uma Thurman, Kylie Minogue, Martin Clunes and David Beckham; a far cry from the no-name nubiles who grace the newsagents’ shelves nowadays. The light-hearted mix of music, alcohol, sport and women turned out to be a successful one.

The publication hit the right note at the right time. As then Editor James Brown said: “During my three years there, we had rock stars, England players, actors and actresses ringing up to come to our parties, all happy to appear in the title. The comedians, footballers, actors and actresses of the day all appeared on the cover and it sold because it was cheeky, honest, well written and passionate about what we were into…The magazine itself was like a popstar. People loved buying it, brands piled into it to advertise, and it created a new market for men’s magazines. And a new way of communicating to young men for the ad industry. Years later the head of Estée Lauder told me: “This was the first time we could reach young men in one place.”

Circulation of Loaded was 95K in 1994; by 1998 it was up at 457K. FHM started at a similar level, 81K in 1994 – and by 1998 had rocketed to a market-leading 775K. Maxim was launched into the booming market by Dennis Publishing in 1995. The age of the Lad Mag had well and truly come. Loaded won the prestigious PPA Magazine Of The Year Award an unprecedented two times in a row, in 1995 and 1996.

Of course all good things must come to an end, and 1998 would prove to be the high-point. Time passes, what was once new and exciting gets diluted and becomes the norm, tastes change, and lad culture would eventually give way to celeb-worship and obsession with reality TV. Circulations of the main players dipped slightly in 1999 and have continued to fall (drop like a stone) ever since (Men’s Health being the exception).

The reasons for this? The front covers and content became a bit more T&A (or boobs ‘n’ bums if you prefer). Newcomers such as Ice and Front were effectively porn for those too shy to reach for the top shelf. Is that what the readers really wanted? The publishers certainly thought so, and I do not doubt they did their market research. Unfortunately for them, the late 90’s and early 2000’s was the time that internet usage really started to gather pace, and we all know what’s abundantly available on the internet don’t we? Yes, T&A, and lots more besides.

The fact that these magazines have lost eyeballs to the internet is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s a reality that all printed products are facing. It’s the degree to which the market has fallen which is the interesting thing (see chart below). Maxim closed its paper version in the UK in 2009, Loaded’s UK circulation is now a tenth of what it once was, and FHM is down to 140K (although both do have an online presence).

Nuts and Zoo magazines launched in 2004, coinciding with the UK’s fascination with C-list celebrity and reality TV. Both were/are weekly publications unashamedly celebrating all things silly, gross and female-shaped. Nuts magazine actually had a ‘no-nipple’ policy at the start, but a quick glance at a recent issue confirms this is no longer the case. Gentleman’s Quarterly they are not. After peaking at around 250-300K copies each in 2005 Nuts now sells 114K copies a week, Zoo 54K.

Again, it’s not a ground breaking theory, but I’d suggest technology is the reason for this. Almost half of these mags’ readers are under 24. Smartphones are becoming more affordable and ubiquitous amongst the young. Why buy a magazine to see pictures of severed limbs and bare breasted models, when they are right there in you pocket?

So, people are now consuming media in different ways, which has led to the inevitable decline of the men’s magazine market. I’m not particularly sorry about this – whenever I flick through a copy of Loaded or FHM these days, I don’t find much to interest me. But then again, I’m not the target audience any more, like I was in 1995. The disappearing readership is not good news for advertisers, but as one medium struggles, another [online] prospers.

Mr. Baxendale-Walker is evidently a successful businessman but I fear his purchase of Loaded is a vanity project that is doomed to failure. Loaded ceased to exist as I knew it a long time ago, but it may not be long before it ceases to exist altogether. The market for girly mid-shelf mags is shrinking rapidly. However, that’s not to say I can’t be nostalgic about its early days, when it reflected good times and was vital reading for hundreds of thousands just like me.

1. Create a new folder in your documents containing the latest jQuery file.
2. Create a new HTML document in the same folder as the jquery file.
3. Open the HTML document in a text editor and add in the following code;

   
   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”
   “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
   <html>
   <head>
   <title>jQuery Example</title>
   <script type=”text/javascript” src=”jquery-1.7.1.min.js”></script>
   <script type=”text/javascript”>
   $(document).ready(function(){
   $(“#clickMe”).click(function(){
   $(this).hide();
   });
   });
   </script>
   </head>
   <body>
   <p id=”clickMe”>Click me and I will disappear!</p>
   <p>I will not disappear.</p>
   </body>
   </html>
   

   The code highlighted in red are the elements which have been added in for this jQuery example to work.

   The element in the body with the id=”clickMe” will follow the rules set in the header script, where as the other will just display as normal.

4. Save changes to the HTML document
5. Open the HTML document in a browser to view the working webpage

Click on the top line and watch it disappear
Click on the remaining line – it shouldn’t budge!

So the latest fireworks display of CG special effects and in-your-face, headache inducing 3D has become the latest and greatest flop of all time. Am I surprised? Well actually yes and no.

Surely this movie should have done quite well based on the success of similarly brain-dead CG fests that have come before it? Many have cited the boring, plodding story and dull title as the root causes. I could say the same about many blockbusters that have still managed to make money for the studios. Others say it was badly marketed. What ever the cause it is my hope that flops like these may help movie studios move on from the CG and 3D gimmicks and invest more in quality writing, production and direction.

I read that John Carter was directed by the special effects director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E fame so is it any surprise that the result was so CG/3D-biased? This brings back memories of the ‘making of’ featurettes for the Star Wars prequels where Lucas seemed to be surrounding himself with experts in eye candy. The result was a trilogy that succeeded purely on the title. If Star Wars The Phantom Menace had been released under the title ‘John Carter’ would it have made as much money? Hmmmm.

If your social campaigns have hit a plateau these 12 tips will get your creative social juices flowing, and help you engage and build a bigger following.

Twitter 

Twitter is a great way to find out about any subject and increasingly, Twitter is now being used by people as their main source of finding content and news. Here are 6 things you can do to help grow your followers;

Create A Poll

Creating a poll on Twitter is a good way to engage with you existing followers, you also have the opportunity to gain new followers if they come across your poll and get involved. There are tons of tools out there to help you along your way, here are a few to get you started; twtpoll.com, polls.tw, polldaddy.com and twittpoll.com They vary in what you can do with them but they all allow you to run a poll via Twitter, some of them are paid tools but as with most tools the paid for versions contain a lot more functionality.

Hold A Q+A

Holding a Q+A session is a great way to start a conversation and get people involved. You can start by asking a simple question or dedicating  a day to answering questions on a specific topic. Developing this as an event either weekly or monthly will help spread the word beyond your followers, which will give you the opportunity to grow your follower base. You can even embed the tweets on to your website really easily using Twitter’s free widgets this will allow the people to, use the widget to get involved with the conversation and could potentially boost your traffic, and increase your average time on site. This can also be used as a way to gain good old natural links!

Run A Competition

Running a competition on Twitter is a good way to grow your follower base but, be aware that the followers you do gain from this will generally be following you to get something free. The followers you gain from this will not always be valuable, running a competition is used best by brands that use it to promote a new product etc. So use this one carefully and set a clear objective of what you want to get out of running a competition, more followers? Brand awareness? Once you have decided make sure you read the Twitter rules for running a contest, you will also want to add a page to your website containing the terms and conditions of the competition.

Ask A Question

Now then that sounds simple doesn’t it. Well to be quite honest it is, by asking a question you are appealing to actual humans, showing sincerity will more likely get a response than putting a tweet out that is robotic or sales like.

Follow Friday #FF

This happens every Friday on Twitter you will see #FF and then a list of usernames. How this works is you use the hashtag #FF and suggest people to follow that you think put out some good tweets. So an example tweet would be;

#FF @SEOmoz @randfish @neilpatel @WiredUK @sengineland @TechCrunch @mattcutts

Hopefully once you start building a good following you will start getting recommended in the phenomenon that is #FF.

Introduce Yourself To New Followers

This might sound silly but unless your kind of a big deal people wont be completely sure who you are, so if you do get a new follower, say hey! It just gets you off on the right foot and increases the chances that you will keep that person as a follower, rather than them following you and you just being a Twitter stream it again adds that sincerity, which is an important part of maintaining a loyal, valuable following. Your nice right, so be nice say hello!

Get more great tips on how to become a Twitter power user with this post from Neil Patel, you wont be sorry there is some great stuff in Neil’s post!

Facebook

Everyone pretty much knows about Facebook by now, it has even had a film made about it! It is undoubtedly huge with a staggering 800 million users you need to be taking advantage of Facebook, and the best part is you can have a great page at no cost, yep free.

 Ask A Question / Poll

Facebook allows you to insert a poll question easily;

You select ask question, then you will be given the option to “add poll options”. The best thing about it being a poll question is that the answer is right there, no thinking involved really, just an opinion and people love to have an opinion. Ask something that will provide some value for you so if your a marketing company, “Where does the majority of your advertising budget get spent?”a.SEO b.PPC c.Display That way you gain some insight.

Thank Your Fans

This is the same principle as I mentioned above for Twitter, thank your fans. Let them know that there is a human behind the page that they are taking the time to engage with. A thank you goes a long way and will massively improve your chances of you keeping them as a fan for longer than if you don’t thank people. If you find that it would be a huge task to thank all your new fans then group them together and thank them all at once.

Brand It!

With the new timeline pages being compulsory after the 30th of March you have a great opportunity to create a recognisable consistent brand image. Be consistent across all social networks and within your website too, so that when people come across you they know they have the right people because of your unified image. I have used SEOmoz as an example;

The SEOmoz Twitter page includes Roger, contact info and the website logo. The profile picture is also high quality both large and scaled down to timeline size.

The SEOmoz Facebook page again includes Roger, a link to the website and also the Moz top ten.

Now you can see that the branding for the social pages is all tied in to the website, Roger and the main site logo are obviously present, and SEOmoz has links to their social profiles.

Cross Promote

Cross promote your content across all the social networks, this will make sure that you achieve maximum reach and keep all your fans and followers informed. In my opinion the best way of keeping on top of your social campaigns and cross promoting is through the Hoosuite dashboard. Hootsuite allows you to see all of your social activity as well enabling you to post to multiple social networks in just one click, rather than having to jump from network to network posting the same thing.

Consistently Post

You need to keep up the pace, nothing happens overnight! Keep posting, tweeting and blogging and you should see a nice growth rate. Make sure you produce good quality content and you don’t just annoy your followers and fans, keep up with conversation and respond to people as often as you can. Keeping your social media efforts consistent is one of the most important things you can do.

Keep At It!

I have slightly just touched on this point but it is very important so I will just have to say it again, keep at it! You cant just create a profile or a page and expect them to be successful, build it and they will come does not apply here so keep at it and you will reap the rewards. ( Wow two cliches in one sentence, sorry about that )

If you like this article, do me a favour and Tweet about it, or like it please. Also we do like a good chinwag so submit your comments below!

Our next installment in the series will be here shortly!

Or more importantly from an advertiser or TV stations point of view, how many of us fast forward the ad breaks??

First, let’s take a quick look at recent TV consumption in general.

Ongoing monitoring of the TV marketplace for 2011 (Thinkbox & BARB) shows us a few interesting points.

Linear TV viewing figures in the UK for 2011 equalled the record high set in 2010.

The average viewer watched 4 hours, 2 minutes of linear TV a day in 2011 (28 hours, 14 minutes a week), according to new figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB).

This strong performance underlines viewers’ preference for watching TV as it is broadcast and on a TV set whenever possible.  The many new ways to watch TV via other screens such as laptops, tablets and smartphones are growing, and a welcome solution to out of home viewing, but they are not included in BARB’s figures and are not impacting on linear viewing.

Commercial TV channels (i.e. non-BBC channels) were responsible for maintaining the record viewing level, accounting for 64% of all linear TV viewing, an increase of 1.3% points on 2010. For the younger 16-34 audience this rises to 72%.

During 2011, the average person watched 18 hours, 11 minutes of commercial TV a week, an increase of 22 minutes a week on 2010. In the last ten years, commercial TV viewing has increased by over 3 hours, 30 minutes a week. The average viewer watched 47 ads per day!

Time shifted viewing

Research shows that 9.4% of all UK viewing was viewed time shifted, this increases to 15.3% of viewing when looking at those viewers with the technology to do so (DTRs – Sky + etc)

Time shifted viewing appears to be quite stable averaging between 13.4% – 16.3% over the last six years:

Looking at those individuals with DTRs we can see that the majority of the recorded viewing is watched within 7 days (43.8%). 39.4% is VOSDAL (viewing on same day as live) and the remaining 16.8% is viewed after 7 days.

It is probably wrong to label it time shifted or catch up viewing. It would be fair to say that it is us consumers watching what we want, when we want to watch it. Nothing more. Just as we can do on other platforms, online, on demand for example.

But the question is just how many of us skip the ads when viewing our recorded content? I know I do.

Many of us have hectic lifestyles, where the time to sit down and enjoy our desired content doesn’t always come easy. A YouGov survey finds that almost 90% of viewers watching recorded content will fast forward the ads. Quite a significant amount.

So please take into account that if every one hour programme recorded can be watched in approximately 40 minutes ( if the ads are forwarded x 30) then your 3 hours of quality programming, whatever it might be, can be watched in 2, giving you back a whopping one whole hour with which to do whatever you please!

I like it. Very much so

But, by whizzing through the ads does the advertising become completely ineffective? Remember, at x30 speed on Sky+, each 30 second ad will be seen for one second. Is that enough? I would have to say yes, I believe it is.

While forwarding the ads in our recorded favourite Saturday night US crime drama, my good lady suddenly called out to stop and rewind the ads.

A popular supermarket was running a price led offer, (for salmon, if you must know, which we are both rather partial to) and the said price offer was on screen long enough, albeit for a fraction of a second, even at x30 speed to make us take another look. And I’m glad we did. A subsequent trip to supermarket X followed and we now have a freezer full of very reasonably price salmon.

It is also worth noting that this was a 10 second commercial which makes it even more astonishing that it was seen and prompted us to rewind. The key point here is that in real time execution the price offer was prominent and remained in view for 9 seconds of the 10. In FF time about 1/3 of a second!

I believe people will always fast forward ads, it won’t ever be all of the viewers doing it all of the time, or even some viewers doing it all of the time, but it will definitely be some people, some of the time. I don’t however think that advertisers or TV stations will be panicking just yet. TV is still the most effective form of advertising and is going to be around for a long time to come.

Creative Networks

Jody is responsible for launching E4.com and most recently Comedy Blaps. He’s also been in charge of online campaigns for the hit dramas Misfits and Skins and he commissioned the the digital components of the fun-fueled game shows The Million Pound Drop and The Bank Job. These projects earned him, and his team, the 2011 BAFTA award for Digital Creativity.

It was fascinating to find out how people interact with secondary devices (or distractions) while watching TV, such as house-hold chores and how games like these can increase audience participation. The prospect of winning a Million Pounds would definitely have my full attention!

I was asked to produce this promotional e-flyer, as an invitation to sign-up to the event. The design needed to reflect both his career and achievements and so I did a little digging around the internet and found Jody’s ‘Faces in Places‘ blog. This is “A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places” with a contributing community of over 3000 photographers which Jody manages in his spare time. It’s also been published as a book with a percentage of the proceeds of each book sold going to the ‘Hope for Children‘ charity.

Check out the Faces in Places Blog here: http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com
Buy the Faces in Places book on Amazon here
Follow Jody Smith on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/toastmaster

The campaign uses state-of-the-art facial recognition software (95% accurate) to determine the gender of interested viewers standing in front of the screen, displaying different content dependent upon the results. After the opening sequence, the screen will say whether it thinks you’re a guy or girl, and prompt you to touch the screen if you want to view the subsequent content, which differs according to the gender detected.

The aim is for women and girls to see the full 40 second advert, whilst men and boys are restricted to alternative content. The overall objective is to raise awareness of the lack of choices that still exist in developing nations for girls by denying males the choice to view the film.

The campaign is located in a bus shelter on Oxford Street opposite Selfridges and targets women aged 24 to 34. The screen surround and shelter are wrapped with Plan branding and a disclaimer highlighting the fact the software is not 100% accurate and does not intend to stereotype how people look.

The well-known track by Olive, You’re Not Alone, accompanies the advertising video and can be heard via a headphone socket. There is also a twitter hash tag below the screen and a QR code which appears at the end of the advert (and located to the left of the screen) to direct people to further content or comment on the activity.  Finally there is a dedicated donation short text code printed in the door surround which will allow bus users to donate on site.

Here is how we are going do it, all you need to do when you get that Friday feeling remember this hashtag #askwowfriday 

When you think of a question send us a tweet and include the hashtag #askwowfriday and we will do our best to answer your question!

We must ask you to keep it clean but, apart from that feel free ask us anything. Or why not take advantage of our wonderful in house team of specialists and ask us a question related to PPC, SEO, Web dev, Creative, TV, Radio, Data….You get the idea.

The closure of the paper was a dramatic move designed to assuage public anger at shocking revelations about the behaviour of its journalists. Rupert Murdoch at the time said “Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.”

Seven months on, has Leveson shown us that there has been any fundamental shift in the attitude of NI to the use of illegal newsgathering techniques and general improper practice? That’s a matter of opinion. The company has reached settlements with several phone hacking victims, which is in itself an admission of guilt. But would they be prepared to use underhand methods in the future, to get the front page scoop that trumped their competitors? Maybe, maybe not. Cynics suggest the Sun On Sunday will be just the NotW by another name.

Irrespective of all that, the ‘new’ publication will be here come Sunday, whether you like it or not. In the absence of any official blurb on the launch from our advertising contacts (so far), I’m going to have to rely on the words of Tom Mockridge, NI’s chief executive, who gushed “This is a truly historic moment in newspaper publishing and I am proud to be part of it. The Sun’s future can now be reshaped as a unique seven-day proposition in both print and digital. Our readers’ reaction to the announcement of a seventh-day Sun has been huge and we won’t let them down.”

Since the News of the World stopped publishing last July the Sunday market overall has suffered. Of the paper’s 2.67m sales in June 2011, the last month before its closure, 1.3m have simply disappeared. It seems that for some, only the News of the Screws’ particular mix of secret sheikhs and paedophile-shaming will do.

Some individual publications, however, have benefitted. 700K buyers went to the Sunday Mirror (c. 1m to c. 1.7m), who subsequently put ad rates up, and were well within their rights to do so; the rest were split between the Daily Star Sunday and the People. An initial gain of 200K by the Mail on Sunday soon evaporated, the editorial content obviously proving too cerebral for the red-top masses.

You may have gathered that as a consumer, The Sun doesn’t flick my switch, but for many the light is on and burning brightly. 2.7m copies sold every day make it Britain’s biggest selling paper, and put it in the top ten in the world. A chacun son gout, as Guardian readers might say.

From an advertiser’s perspective, the extension of such a successful product to a Sunday is good news, as it should attract those lapsed newspaper buyers who are now presumably getting their celebrity gossip online of a Sunday morning, or are simply staring glumly at their TV screens as Tim Lovejoy fails to demonstrate the latest remote control helicopter.

The new paper will be aiming for a circulation of at least 2.5m. There is obviously a concern for the rivals who gained from the disappearance of the NotW. Will their new-found readers desert them just as quickly as they arrived? Time will tell. One thing is for sure, with £3million TV and press campaign behind the launch (“In Britain the Sun comes out every day”) News International are going to do everything they can to regain their Sunday tabloid crown.

All SEO’s have their own opinion on what works and the best practices for achieving high rankings. In my opinion 2012 is going to see the growth of location based services which will effect how SEO’s have to do things, for certain clients anyway.

If you perform a local seo search in Google you will return a result that should look something like this;

As you can see the results for “Italian restaurants in leeds” are based around each listings Google places listing along with a map to the right, which you can click in to and get directions. So the top natural listing is Salvo’s, lets do a search for Salvo’s and see what comes up.

You can see here a resulting search of the restaurant results in two location based services coming up in the search results, Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon.Tripadvisor is third in the natural listings and Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon show under more reviews.

Now we will have a look at a result for Italian restaurants in Foursquare;

So we see that Salvo’s is coming up as number one again in the results for the search done on Foursquare.

The advantage to foursquare is that the app is perfect for when you’re out and about and you need to find somewhere to eat etc. Foursquare also allows businesses to create a business page and incentivise customers to check in when they visit. This can be a great resource because it not only increases presence but it also provides an opportunity to achieve repeat custom, through incentivised check ins.

An article published in The Drum in October last year suggests that Foursquare are looking at setting up an office in London due to the growth of Foursquare in Europe. These are all signs that location based services are going to become more and more popular. That means that SEO’s will have to make sure that they can provide strategy to clients for showing up across these services.

We have seen Facebook introduce check ins a long time ago but when it comes to convenience and speed Foursquare wins hands down. SEO’s everywhere should stand up and take notice of location based services, and make sure that they take advantage of the local search  opportunities that will continue to grow in 2012.

The table below displays the results of that comparison;

Both Firefox and IE have continued to decrease in popularity; however Firefox is still in top position with IE coming second. The gap between Firefox and IE has increased this year from 0.6% to 1.3%.

Google Chrome has once again converted the most users as they are very quickly closing the gap between themselves and the top two browsers. They have increased a significant 10.9% from 14.6% to 25.5% of users in a year. With Firefox and IE on a downward slope, it would be fair to speculate that in the next couple of years Chrome will take the lead as the most popular browser in Europe.

Worldwide, Internet Explorer is by far the most widely used browser. Last year Firefox was second, but has been overtaken this year by Google Chrome. It will be very interesting next year to see if Chrome can steal the crown from IE as the most popular browser worldwide.