TV watching in a virtual world

A Second Lifer since 2003, Justin Bovington has made his London-based Rivers Run Red one of the premier public relations and marketing companies to work inside the world that San Francisco-based Linden Lab has created.

“In 2006, we were about brands coming into Second Life. In 2007, it’ll be about Second Life going out into real life,” Bovington told TheStreet.com. “Second Life could be transitioned to mobile phones. It can be a bigger 3-D tool. It will be a facilitator, an aggregator service.”

Rivers Run Red is creating a broadband television network in Second Life. Dubbed Virtual Life TV, the 24-hour-a-day broadcast schedule is sure to draw attention in both the virtual and the real world. When launched, Virtual Life TV will introduce the U.K.’s Channel 4 and the Sci-Fi channel to the virtual world.

The firm is also working with Paramount Pictures with movie trailers. While Internet visitors are currently using QuickTime to stream trailers, Bovington sees Second Life as the next step in the evolution of previews. “Trailers will work a lot better in Second Life,” he says. “It’s a group experience. It’s extremely immersive.”

Bovington estimates that as a result of using Second Life Rivers Run Red saved $175,000 last year by reducing costs related to air travel, accommodations and the physical creation of marketing materials and models.

Chung Avatar on
Business Week cover

Within 30 months, Anshe Chung turned her initial investment of $9.95 for a Second Life account into more than $1 million in real money from profits earned entirely inside a virtual world, according to Chung’s website (viaCNNMoney.com).

Featuredon the cover of Business Week Magazine, Chung amassed her wealth primarily buying and developing virtual real-estate in the online world’s official currency, known as Linden Dollars, which is convertible to U.S. dollars. The fortune that Anshe Chung commands in Second Life includes virtual real estate that is equivalent to 36 square kilometers of land - “property” supported by 550 servers, or land “simulators.”

Chung has “cash” holdings of several million Linden Dollars, several virtual shopping malls and virtual store chains, and she has established several virtual brands in Second Life. Chung also has significant virtual stock market investments in Second Life companies.

Her operations have since grown to include the development and sale of properties for large-scale real-world corporations, and have led to a real-life spin-off corporation called Anshe Chung Studios, which develops immersive 3D environments for applications ranging from education to business conferencing and product prototyping.

A new service, set to launch in January, will give customers frequent flier miles in exchange for their watching or reading ads and responding to questions about them.

The service, called e-Miles, has signed up five of the six major airlines, with American Airlines being the sole holdout, reports AdWeek. Users identify their primary frequent flier account and fill out a short profile of their demographic information. Then they are given the option to fill out interest profiles from 13 categories, results from which are used by advertisers to target offers and ads. Users can select which types of ads they do not want to receive. e-Miles already has several advertisers signed up to the service, including LendingTree, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Hilton Hotels.

e-Miles is the latest attempt by companies to compensate customers for voluntarily exposing themselves to ads. In June, Virgin Mobile launched Sugar Mama, which gives users free airtime for watching web video spots. Former Universal McCann chairman Robin Kent will be launching SpiralFrog, which trades digital music for ad attention.

Mark Drusch, president of e-Miles and a former Delta Air Lines executive, says that e-Miles will work because fliers are already familiar with the concept of frequent-flier miles. “It’s building of the simple concept that people want to be rewarded for their time,” Drusch is quoted by AdWeek as saying. Someone who spends five minutes viewing and replying to ads each day would earn 25,000 frequent-flier miles in one year, enough for a round-trip ticket, according to the article.

Text-messaging within the cabin, pay-per-view movies on demand, live satellite TV, audio channels, games, meal-ordering, and wireless connectivity and AC power for laptops - Virgin America’s new in-flight ad-sponsored consumer consoles do it all, reports AdWeek.

The consoles were designed by WPP Group’s Wunderman, which worked with creative agency Anomaly and CoKinetic Systems, among others. Content partners include Disney, Echostar, Fox, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Advertisers are expected to buy everything from banner ads to in-game messages.

Dan Olson, managing director of Wunderman and COO of Young & Rubicam Brands, said the client came to Wunderman 18 months ago “because of our digital strength and branding ability. They are focused on the creative class as a target audience. It needed to carry the Virgin brand in every way, shape and form.”

Olson said the interface - called “Red” by Virgin America and spearheaded by the agency’s associate creative director, Susie Lim - is also intended to serve as a revenue center for Virgin partners as well as advertisers.

Click to enlarge

A company called RingTales is bringing the New Yorker’s iconic cartoons online - animating them and making them ad-supported via post-roll commercials, and offering them to consumers as podcasts - reports ClickZ.

New Yorker’s vast library of 100,000 cartoons will allow RingTales to offer brands content that’s specific to the potential advertisers’ needs. “The main objective has always been for them to be ad-supported and syndicated across the internet. So they would remain free gifts of humor for the viewers,” said Jim Cox, CEO of RingTales.

“This is content [that advertisers] can be assured is popular…and they can piggyback their message. It’s an effective way to get beyond the :30 commercial.”

The animated cartoons will be available via iTunes as well as NewYorker.com, and will allow advertisers to reach an upmarket crowd that “likes nice cars and nice things,” according to RingTales President Michael Fry.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau says a group of top brand marketers are demanding audited numbers from interactive publishers.

BMW, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford, HP, ING, Kimberly-Clark, Pepsi and Visa are among the top marketers that want audited numbers effective mid-2007, and measurement certified numbers in 2008, according to the IAB. Audited and certified numbers will be the only numbers used for payment against those marketers interactive advertising campaigns, the IAB said. Audited numbers ensure that ad impressions are being counted accurately; certified numbers indicate that the process supporting the ad counting is consistent and reliable.

“Across all media, ANA marketers are seeking transparency and accountability in measurement, and we support the IAB for leading the charge in the interactive industry,” said Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers.

“As more and more dollars migrate over to interactive, it is imperative as an industry that we continue to strive for the highest levels of transparency and validity,” said Greg Stuart, IAB CEO. “We are confident that this is just the beginning and other leading marketers will join this group presently.”

The IAB announced the Global Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines in November 2004. The guidelines address marketer and agency concerns about the need for a standardized method of measuring interactive advertising.

The goal of this initiative is to establish a set of guidelines for consistent ad server measurement: a counting methodology, an audit procedure, and an auditing and certification process. Some large publishers and ad serving organizations have already completed audits and certification against the Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines, including AOL, Atlas, CNET, DoubleClick, Univision, the Walt Disney Internet Group, Weather.com and Yahoo.

Nielsen Media Research parent VNU on Monday announced plans to acquire the remaining 39.5 percent stake in NetRatings and “fuse” its TV ratings system with the NetRatings online audience measurement service, reports MediaPost. VNU already controls 60.5 percent of NetRatings common stock.

The move would enable advertisers and agencies to look at video and advertising that is carried across TV and the internet. The two companies have already created an interim, “fused” database that matches those in the TV ratings sample with a comparable demographic in the online sample to simultaneously measure TV and online usage.

Some consider fused databases controversial, but they are becoming more popular because of the difficulty of building a single sample that depends on asking respondents to do many tasks.

Mobile TV will be a huge factor in the future according to Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC TV, who said ABC’s experiments with streaming TV programming online are also promising.

Speaking at international audiovisual content trade show Mipcom this week, Sweeney detailed some of Disney’s new media initiatives. “Industry analysts predict that mobile television could be a global market worth as much as $27 billion by 2010,” she pointed out. Disney already has deals in place with Vodafone Italy and Orange Mobile in the U.K. and just finalized a deal to stream Disney Channel via France Telecom’s Orange service.

Part of Disney’s drive to go mobile is being fueled by the rise of piracy. “We now understand that piracy is a business model. It exists to serve a need in the market - specifically consumers who want TV content on demand. And piracy competes for consumers the same way we do - through quality, price and availability,” Sweeney explained.

Sweeney also revealed positive results from ABC.com’s latest program streaming initiative. The promotion has garnered 2.5 million requests for shows in the past two weeks, compared with 5.7 million requests over a two-month test period in the spring - the first time ABC streamed its top shows online.

In a presentation to investors, ABC has signalled its intent to significantly expand the offerings on its website, including more streaming shows and more user-generated content, and will also offer a new ad format, according to MediaWeek.

ABC.com will soon begin to stream national news broadcasts in addition to more news programming from ABC affiliates. The site will allow viewers to choose from two new viewing options - full screen or mini-screens suitable for desktop viewing while working on other things - in addition to the current viewing size.

A new ad format for the streaming video is also being made available to marketers. “Pause Ads” will appear as static images over the show when viewers pause the show they’re watching. Advertisers will have the ability to geo-target the Pause Ads.

ABC also plans to launch an online channel for America’s Funniest Home Videos, its long-running home-video program. The site will encourage people to upload their own videos, which the online community can then view and pass along. Some of the videos submitted may wind up being broadcast on TV.

In a separate announcement, Disney’s Touchstone TV production department has been renamed ABC Television Studio. Two Buena Vista units will also be re-branded as Disney seeks to focus on its core Disney, ABC and ESPN brand names.

Another news “innovation,”
Canada’s Naked News

Yahoo News announced a new video project designed to leave people tapping their feet as they take in current events. Named “Odd News Underground,” the show will feature a journalist-cum-crooner who will sing the news, reports AdWeek.
The singing anchor is the first venture from Yahoo News since the last year’s launch of The Hot Zone With Kevin Sites, which chronicles the correspondent’s travels to war-torn areas around the globe.

Yahoo declined to identify the warbler/wag, but sources said the performer is not an unknown and has experience as a reporter and musician. The venture is expected to be on the lighter side, so ditties about Iraq aren’t to be expected.