HMV hit by Fox speculation
July 29, 2009
Shares of the entertainment retailer have fallen more than 2% as the City digested the news that Simon Fox, chief executive of the group, could shortly be moving into the world of broadcasting
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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Barclaycard ‘waterslide’ becomes most popular branded iPhone app
July 29, 2009
LONDON – Barclaycard’s “waterslide” iPhone application, which was released just 13 days ago, has become the most popular free branded advertising game in the history of the iTunes app store.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Microsoft and Yahoo confirm 10-year search advertising deal
July 29, 2009
Microsoft’s Bing to be Yahoo’s ‘exclusive algorithmic search’, in return for 88% of search revenue for five years
Microsoft and Yahoo have confirmed a 10-year global search advertising deal forecast to generate income of 0m (£305m) a year.
The deal gives Microsoft backing for its recently relaunched Bing search engine, and it gives Yahoo much-needed cost savings and income during the recession. Yahoo estimates the agreement will boost its operating income by 0m and cut capital operating costs by 0m.
Before the deal was announced, it was reported that Yahoo had wanted an upfront payment of billions of dollars. Instead, Microsoft agreed to a revenue-sharing arrangement.
Microsoft will pay “traffic acquisition costs” amounting to 88% of search revenue generated on sites owned or operated by Yahoo over the deal’s first five years.
It will also guarantee a minimum “revenue per search” on Yahoo sites for the first 18 months after the service is launched in any given country.
Microsoft will handle the search technology, while Yahoo will provide the search-advertising sales force.
Although Microsoft will license Yahoo’s search technologies, its own recently launched Bing service will be “the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites”.
Alongside the work of Yahoo’s sales teams, Microsoft’s AdCenter platform will handle self-service advertising sales. The deal only covers search advertising, and the two companies will retain separate display advertising businesses.
To allay privacy fears, Yahoo and Microsoft are promising to share no more data than is necessary to “operate and improve the combined search platform”.
Firing a shot at search giant Google, they said the deal would give advertisers another choice, freeing them from the need “to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search”.
Google still dominates search in many markets, and Microsoft hopes that the deal will give it and Yahoo the scale to compete, according to its chief executive, Steve Ballmer.
“Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” Ballmer said.
The deal will be seen as a significant victory for Yahoo’s new chief executive, Carol Bartz. She was hired in January, when the company’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, stepped down after rejecting a buyout offer from Microsoft.
The deal will still have to be approved by regulators. But while some analysts have said that Google could cry foul, its own market position makes it a more likely target for regulators’ suspicions than this partnership.
Barring any regulatory hurdles, the Yahoo and Microsoft expect to close the deal in early 2010.
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From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Spinvox, we stand by our story
July 29, 2009
I was not intending to return to our story about Spinvox, and how its uses humans in call centres rather than computers to transcribe voicemails, unless there was a significant development. Then two things happened – first James Whatley, Spinvox’s blogger-in-residence, otherwise known as Whatleydude wrote a lengthy post in which he described “a veritable maelstrom of accusations, misapprehensions and sometimes just plain lies”, and promised to set the record straight. And then two new stories about Spinvox did come my way.
Whatleydude’s blog goes through five allegations – and dismisses each of them. I’m going to explain why we still stand by our story.
1) “SpinVox uses humans to convert voicemails into text messages.”
JW: No. SpinVox uses humans to step in when the automated parts of our service need help. This is not brand new information.
RC-J: Well this is the very heart of our story. We believe – and have seen good evidence to support this – that humans in call centres not only play a large part in transcribing voicemails, they do far more than just “step in” to help.
Former agents in Egypt have described the work, as have South African call centre workers, and as you’ll see later, one customer has seen at first hand how it works. So yes, “Spinvox uses humans to convert voicemails into text messages” is entirely accurate.
2) “There is a facebook group sharing confidential information from actual Spinvox voice messages.”
JW: No. But there is a facebook group sharing training information from fictional Spinvox voice messages.
To elaborate on this further, the Egyptian call centre in question “which used to work for Spinvox” was trialling our software as part of our constant efforts to better our service.
Funnily enough, Raya, the QC (quality control) house in question failed to meet all of the stringent standards during training and we never commenced work with them. Surprising that this same QC house is now leaking “data”? I think not.
RC-J: Spinvox told me last week – and I put it in my piece – that Raya, the Egyptian call centre in question, had never gone live, and that the pictures on the Facebook group were from a training session.
Now I’ve found an interesting article in a telecoms industry magazine, published in the summer of 2008. It’s an interview with Tarek Kamel, Egypt’s minister of communications, which includes this passage:
“What sort of companies are coming to Egypt to use the developing infrastructure? Kamel names one intriguing arrival: SpinVox, the award-winning company that is winning business with a simple offer to turn voicemails on mobiles into text messages, so that people can read them during meetings without interrupting the flow of conversation.
‘SpinVox came to us with a request for a pilot of 50 seats. Our kids are listening to voice messages and transcribing them to text messages. It’s an excellent service for those customers who don’t want to listen to voicemail.
‘We set up the pilot, and it works very well. We are ramping up to 2,000 seats in the next 18 months. We’ve proved the concept — they challenged us with the price and we passed the test.’”
So Egypt’s communications minister had no doubt what the service was about. And what did the Spinvox PR man say when the journalist who did the interview asked him about the project? Not that it was a trial which had failed to work but simply: “We have no facilities in Egypt.”
3) “All Spinvox messages are listened to by human agents”
JW: No. As per fact one, Spinvox only employs agents to step in when messages need analysis and the machine gets to decide. However, the agents in question will only ever hear/see the specific parts of the messages that need work on. They never see fully automated message conversions because we don’t send them on once they’re complete.
RC-J: We never said “all” but “the majority”. But the idea that agents only hear “specific parts” of the message always seemed far-fetched. If a message like “hey Jimmy I’m taking my car to the (indecipherable), meet me there,” comes in, how’s the agent going to translate “garage” if he only has “indecipherable” without the words around it?
Now have a look at this picture, posted on the internet by a Spinvox customer, Jason Sewell from the United States. Actually, he’s a Vonage customer and signed up to the VOIP operator’s “visual voicemail” service, without knowing it had anything to do with Spinvox. Then he got via e-mail the message you can see. Jason takes up the story:
“You get the audio too with this service – and that was in fact my mother-in-law calling to see how the kids were. When I saw the number in the e-mail I thought it was a scam.”
He feared calling the number would rack up huge charges – but in the end a friend made the call and reported back in a strongly-worded e-mail (which Jason has forwarded to me) on the man who answered:
“The guy says he works in a call centre in Pakistan that is contracted out by Spinvox and they’re all pissed [off] since they haven’t been paid in two months!!”
Just how does that square with the idea that they never see full messages – or the assertion later in Mr Whatley’s blog that all messages are “completely anonymised”?
Jason Sewell certainly isn’t happy. “If an employee of Spinvox would go as far as to do this, maybe it’s not a stretch to think they could go further – using information in voicemails to commit identity theft, for instance.”
4) “How many messages are referred – in any way – to human operators during the transcription process?”
JW: Well I’ll be honest with you folks, I’ve been wrestling away with this one most of today. I wish I could tell you, really I could. But this information is so business critical to our operation that we simply cannot share it.
I’m not kidding when I say that it would be the equivalent of Coca-Cola publishing their exact recipe up on their own blog.
RC-J: So they’re still not answering that question – nor are they refuting the main charge in my story.
5) “Spinvox has broken its entry on the UK Data Protection Register (saying that does not transfer anything outside the European Economic Area).”
JW: Ok, so this one isn’t easy, legal stuff never is. But it is factually incorrect. Bear with me.
SpinVox’s entry on the Data Protection Register says that we do not send any personal data outside of the UK as a DATA CONTROLLER. This much is entirely accurate.
Information related to the owner of the message is defined as “personal data” and this information does indeed stay with in the European Economic Area (EEA). This is information like such as telephone number, e-mail address and so on.
DATA PROCESSING however is not covered (and is not required to be covered) under our entry in the Register. Converting voice messages is classed as “processing data”.
“BUT! What about ALL that personal data in each and every voicemail?!” I hear you cry. Yes. Well.
Any messages that need analysis for further conversion are COMPLETELY anonymised before being sent out of Spinvox data centres to QC houses whether in the UK or otherwise.
RC-J: Well neither of us is an expert on data security legislation, but I’ve already demonstrated that personal data (phone numbers left in voice messages for instance) is leaving Europe, in apparent contravention of Spinvox’s entry on the data protection register. And when I contacted the information commissioner’s office to say Spinvox says it’s processing data, not storing it outside Europe, they stuck to their original statement about contacting the firm.
Mr Whatley goes on to say that some of the world’s biggest telecoms firms have been over Spinvox with a fine tooth-comb and are completely happy. But you may notice that in its home territory this apparently shining example of British technology has failed to sign up with any of the big network operators. One of them told me,”We thought there were data protection issues, and we saw no business model.”
And the financial side is one area Mr Whatley does not examine. Four different companies which have dealt with Spinvox have now told me that they are owed large sums of money and are taking, or considering taking, legal action.
And then there are the staff. They were all – including James Whately – invited to take their pay for July and August in the form of share options not cash. But, by Spinvox’s own admission, 50% opted to stick to cash.
I’m sorry for writing such a long post. But Mr Whatley has spent some time rubbishing our story – and his blog post merited a detailed response.
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/rss.xml
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E.ON wind farm adverts banned
July 29, 2009
Ad watchdog rules that E.ON material promoting a proposed wind farm with pictures of smaller turbines was misleading
Energy giant E.ON has had a series of adverts promoting a proposed wind farm banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for “using misleading images”.
E.ON distributed three pieces of illustrated promotional material to publicise a wind farm due to be constructed in West Ancroft, Northumberland.
The adverts were designed to encourage residents to attend a public exhibition about the development.
In one advert, E.ON used a picture of one of its wind farms in Cumbria to illustrate what the West Ancroft site would look like.
The turbines depicted were half the size of the those proposed for Northumberland.
But E.ON said: “The image provided no scale comparisons – for instance, vehicles or buildings, and was therefore not misleading as to the comparative size of the prospective turbines.”
E.ON also stressed that the images were for “illustrative purposes only” and that “it was not the intention for them to be referred to as a depiction of how the West Ancroft wind farm would look like”.
Another advert featured a photomontage, which E.ON said was intended to provide a general idea of what the West Ancroft site would look like. However, the photograph used was taken several kilometres from the proposed location.
Once again, the ASA deemed the advert misleading, saying that it did not convey the proposed wind farm’s liekly “visual impact”.
The ASA added that future promotional material needed to be “more representative” of the proposed developments.
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From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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‘Haka’ war dance ad for jobs site cleared of being offensive to Maoris
July 29, 2009
Watchdog received complaints about TV and cinema ad based on New Zealand rugby team’s war dance
A TV and cinema campaign for a jobs website that used the haka, the war dance made famous by the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, has been cleared by the advertising watchdog, after complaints that it was culturally insensitive and offensive to the Maori people.
The ad campaign, to promote the launch of a recruitment website by the Scottish broadcaster STV, included three TV ads, two posters and a cinema ad.
STV’s ad campaign, by Scottish agency The Union, parodied the style of haka used by the All Blacks rugby team before international matches.
The TV and cinema ads showed a group of workers performing the haka with the traditional lyrics changed to show them angrily demanding jobs.
Accompanying poster ads showed a man and a woman with recruitment slogans written on their faces in the style of Maori full-face tattoos, called moko.
The Advertising Standards Authority received 11 complaints about the campaign, including five from New Zealanders, that the parodies of the haka and moko were culturally insensitive and offensive because of the spiritual significance they hold for the Maori people.
STV argued that it had not “crossed the line of showing disrespect” and felt the ads would not cause widespread offence.
The ads, the company said, featured a “job seekers’” dance inspired by various traditional tribal warrior dances choreographed for STV.
STV went further and said that it disagreed that the haka “embodied spiritual beliefs” and that its research had shown it was a traditional dance of welcome and motivation.
The company also denied that the facial markings used in the posters were specifically inspired by the Maori moko.
STV said that the history of facial markings was widespread and ranged from face painting at birthday parties to fans at football matches.
The ASA said that viewers would perceive the TV and cinema ads to be a parody of the haka.
However, the ASA said that “they were likely to be understood in the context of the ads message about communicating self-belief to gain employment … and unlikely to be seen as portraying Maori people and culture in a harmful or negative light”.
The ASA also cleared the poster campaign, ruling that the ads were not a “direct comment on the Maori culture that undermined cultural or spiritual values”.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
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From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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30 years of sports advertising
July 27, 2009
From a world without brands to logos in every possible place – all within three decades
1979 It seemed incredibly crass, 30 years ago this month, when Liverpool took to the field in shirts bearing the logo of electronics firm Hitachi, becoming the first Football League club to wear sponsored kit. Traditionalists made a stink, and the BBC and ITV refused to broadcast matches if logos were worn.
1983 British TV finally allows football matches involving sponsored clubs to be broadcast. The first live game is Man United versus Spurs – or Sharp electronics versus Holsten beer, in this new branded world.
1991 Cigarettes and alcohol take over cricket, when the Test and County Cricket Board sign a £3m deal to brand England with “discreet” adverts for Tetley Bitter. The next year, every team at the World Cup wears the logo of tournament sponsor Benson & Hedges.
1992 Harlequins sign a £350,000, five-year deal (at the time the biggest in British rugby) to display the logo of Flowers Original beer on their shirts and shorts, as well as the club’s goalposts. In 1996, the England team follow suit, with Cellnet branding on their jerseys.
1993 Jockeys are given permission to advertise on their breeches and boots, with the proviso that the branding must be no larger than five inches by two inches.
1995 In the year that New Zealand snooker player Dene O’Kane wears a logo on his waistcoat protesting against French nuclear testing, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association signs a deal with the BBC that allows its players, like Peter Ebdon to wear two waistcoat logos during televised tournaments.
1996 Welsh club Llansantffraid FC sell the naming rights to the team to a local computing company, initially becoming Total Network Solutions Llansantffraid FC (catchy!), before abandoning any pretence of hereditary pride to become simply Total Network Solutions FC in 1997. They are now known as The New Saints.
1999 On-field adverts for Lloyds TSB are melted by rain during a Five Nations rugby match between Ireland and France. All the players end up covered from head to toe in bright blue dye, prompting derision and health warnings. “At the end of the day, it hasn’t affected the score,” reasons a spokesperson for the bank.
2002 Boxer “Bones” Adams goes before an American district court to be allowed to tattoo himself with the logo of online casino GoldenPalace.com before a fight.
2005 West Indies cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul begins wearing anti-glare strips under his eyes, but a team spokesman is quick to point out that he simply bought the stickers “at the supermarket” and that the brand name which they bore (Mueller) was incidental; within a year, mobile phone company Digicel owns the rights to the space on each of Chanderpaul’s cheeks.
2007 Players from the Boston Red Sox, fitted with microphones during 2007’s baseball World Series, enjoy a cosy chat about food sponsors Taco Bell – in the middle of a game. The broadcast exchange (“Hey, you like Taco Bell?”) embarrasses fans so much that one player, Jacoby Ellsbury, now bears the nickname “Tacoby Bellsbury”.
2008 A glimmer of dignity, after Betfair offers a cool £20,000 to any player who celebrates his goal by performing a pre-arranged Betfair dance: nobody takes up the offer. Perhaps it was the promise of disciplinary action, immediately faxed to all clubs by football’s higher-ups.
2009 Mark Cavendish wins the third stage of the Tour de France after five hours and 200km of hard racing (plus a furious sprint finish against a rider called Thor). His split-second impulse is to sit up and make a pantomime phone gesture as he crosses the line, in honour of sponsors HTC. “They introduced a new phone last week,” explains a panting Cavendish.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Lloyds and Pearson help Footsie equal record
July 27, 2009
Lloyds Banking Group was among the best performers as the London market just managed to extend its winning streak to an 11th session
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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Pearson confident despite tough conditions
July 27, 2009
The publishing group, owner of the Financial Times, expects full-year earnings per share of 57.7p or above for 2009, as it reports flat first-half sales ahead of analysts’ forecasts
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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Starting up in a downturn
July 27, 2009
LONDON – It may seem counter-intuitive, but launching in a recession can inspire a future-proof business model. Funding-wise, venture capital is ideal, but there are alternatives, too.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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