Mobot explained

With marketing professor Fareena Sultan describing the mobile phone as the 24-hour-a-day “brand in your hand,” and 220 million Americans now packing one, the cell phone is making leaps and bounds in marketing capabilities, according to the Boston Globe (via AGENDA).

For example, uLocate plans to plans to unveil mobile advertising that uses global positioning technology to send ads to phone users in specific locations later this year. And Mobot Inc. used its mobile visual search - in which users search and browse the web using pictures taken with a cellphone camera - to power a Starbucks visual scavenger hunt and Acura sweepstakes this summer.

Another company, MobileLime, turns the phone into a mobile membership card that receives coupons and store alerts from grocery stores and fast-food restaurants.

Despite the growing options for marketers, Sultan offers a word of warning: “It’s a very, very private space. People have a tremendous emotional attachment; we’ve got to be really careful. If you think (email) spam is bad, it’s really, really bad on your cellphone.”

A market research firm has won a contest looking for the most realistic and profitable business model for execution within the virtual world of Second Live, reports CNET. The firm, Market Truths, was determined to have the most potential for profit of the business plans submitted to the contest, which was sponsored by public relations firm Edelman and Second Life-services provider Electric Sheep.

Market Truths was chosen in large part because it would be doing in-world what it’s already doing in the real world and also because its plan seemed to be the most executable. The prize for winning is six months’ free access to a Second Life island and 350,000 Linden Dollars.

Market Truths will collect data on both the real-world and virtual-world lives of Second Life members. Those who have already signed up to participate in the research have received a small fee, paid in Linden Dollars. The collected data would be useful to brands using Second Life as a marketing or e-commerce platform. By studying members’ behavior in both the real and virtual world, marketers hope to be able to connect attitudes and improve the user experience.

Runners up in the contest submitted plans for in-world music distribution, communication tools and more. The interest in this contest and continued focus on Second Life shows that the virtual community will play an increasingly important

As its core audience demographic increasingly abandons television as its primary media choice, MTV has had to redefine itself for a new media world, according to the New York Times.

That redefinition includes multiple initiatives across not only the internet but also mobile devices and more in an effort to achieve brand ubiquity, which hopefully leads to brand loyalty. The network has created multi-platform executions for reality shows such as “Laguna Beach” and other content that originally started on TV.

Other Viacom-owned properties that operate under the MTV Networks umbrella, such as VH1 and Comedy Central, have had less trouble adapting to the times since they lack MTV’s history of defining the cultural times. The content they create can adapt more easily, and they can try riskier channels because there isn’t so much riding on the success of their ventures.

One of the biggest and most documented shifts MTV has undergone is the reliance on reality programming and the subsequent abandonment of music videos, which are now relegated to a few specific dayparts.

Internet advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is advising YouTube users who were wrongly accused by Viacom of uploading pirated material to fight the media company, even if that means going to court. 

The EFF says some of the 100,000 YouTube users recently targeted by Viacom as having uploaded pirated content were actually innocent, the New York Times reports. Viacom claims only 60 or 70 videos were mistakenly deemed copyright violations.

The EFF posted a video on YouTube last week, asking users who were unfairly targetted by Viacom to contact the organization. “It may make more sense to go to court to assert your rights,” EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann wrote on the organization’s site.

YouTube posted messages where the mistakenly pulled videos had appeared, saying the clips were pulled “at the request of copyright owner Viacom International because its content was used without permission.” Those messages were later changed to say the clips were pulled due to a copyright “claim” by Viacom.

Thanks to a partnership with Viacom, television programming and full-length feature films will soon be available to users of ad-supported internet TV Joost - developed by the founders of Skype and Kazaa.

The revenue-sharing agreement calls for Viacom to provide programming from its MTV and BET networks, as well as full-length feature films from Paramount, Reuters reports. The deal is thought to provide Viacom with more than two-thirds of the advertising revenue generated.

Unlike video-sharing sites such as YouTube, Joost allows users to view content only when using a downloadable Joost player. Clips cannot be shared or posted on other sites, thus ensuring that partners’ copyrights are protected, AdWeek explains.

The service has been in beta-testing since last fall; the launch is planned for the coming months. During beta, no advertising will be added to the content, but would likely be in place at launch.

In an attempt to harness fan excitement for this summer’s Spider-Man 3, Sony Pictures and video-sharing site Grouper are holding a contest to look for two people to be the “Face of the Fan” and report on movie news, according to AdWeek.

Members of the Spider-Man network on Grouper can submit their entries to the contest in the hopes of serving as a host of an online show reporting news on the movie as the May 4 release date nears.

Sony hopes that by tapping into fan excitement and getting people talking - not only about the contest but by extension the movie - it can bulk up ticket sales for the all-important opening weekend.

Grouper was aquired by Sony last August.

The world’s first interactive daytime show is set to debut next month when iVillage Live airs simultaneously on-air, online and in front of a live studio audience.

The multi-channel format for the show includes the Bravo channel, at iVillagelive.com, and NBC Universal Television Stations at the Universal Orlando resort, Soapdom.com reports. The show will feature interactive elements including live-chat at iVillageLive.com, with selected portions of the chat scrolling across the screen during the show’s broadcast. Mobile phone users can also text questions and comments to the show as it is being aired.

iVillageLive is working with advertising partners to secure product placements and integration and e-commerce opportunities. Companies that have already agreed to be involved include Unilever; Aramis & Designer Fragrances, Clinique, Estee Lauder and Origins; GE Profile Appliances; Goody; Graco; Healthy Choice; Overstock.com; and Priceline.com.

You’ve got new male

A 31-year veteran NBC Universal exec, Randy Falco, has just been named to take over from Jon Miller as Cchairman and chief executive of AOL, as the Time Warner operating unit struggles to re-invent itself as a free, ad-supported destination for web users.

The Los Angeles Times notes that through this hire Time Warner gains a nuts-and-bolts manager with expertise in video programming and relationships with key advertisers - crucial assets as AOL tries to lure visitors with a range of sponsored entertainment offerings.

Falco had interviewed with Miller and others at Time Warner for what some assumed would be AOL’s second-in-command position. It was unclear what allowed Falco to vault into the top job, although Time Warner executives have said privately that although Miller was a “visionary” and “strategic thinker,” they were interested in an executive whose strength was operations.

“What this deal signifies is that the Internet isn’t that different anymore - it’s big media,” said Jeff Lanctot, general manager of online advertising agency Avenue A/Razorfish. “And big-media experience is important when you’re building a big media company.”

The move didn’t just catch outsiders offguard. Many AOL insiders were reportedly stunned, particularly because AOL’s third-quarter advertising revenue jumped 46 percent compared with a year earlier, the first validation of AOL’s shift from a subscription-based Internet access business to a free online portal. Falco’s predecessor was one of the key architects of that strategy.

The announcement has generated plenty of online ink. InternetNews weighed in with extra details of Falco’s extensive advertising background, reporting his involvement in coordinating NBC’s coverage of the Olympics and refining NBC’s approach to selling advertising based on young, upscale viewers. More important to AOL, he was integral in a drive to sell advertising on NBC’s internet services, such as NBC.com and iVillage, the women-focused website that NBC bought earlier this year for about $600 million.

The appointment is not without its risks. Falco is exiting a culture based around delivering a limited range of content to millions of eyeballs, opting instead for one where millions of fragments of content are competing for share of eye. It’s not an easy transition.

Time Warner, for its part, is betting that relationships and operational excellence will be more effective than “the vision thing.”

Big clients place business with big media. Whether they’re devolving fast enough to “get” little big media is still anybody’s guess.