Devil Of An Ad, You Will Never Know What It Is About!

An Evil ad? No It is an Devil of and ad, Only way to stop is to pull the plug! Enjoy!

via Noob.us

Shazam Gets New Funding And Plans To Enter TV Ad Market With Shazam for TV.

Sharzan, the company that offers audio fingerprinting technology letting users identify music users hear and want to listen to again later and purchase the same. Users just hold the phone to the direction of the song they are hearing and the app will recognize and direct the user to correct destination.
Sharzan now enjoys over 150 Million users and looks like wanting to test familiar but new waters, TV Advertising. They got $32 million to do that as well.

London, UK – 22 June, 2011 - Shazam®, the world’s leading mobile discovery company, today announced that it has raised $32 million in new funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), with existing investor DN Capital participating. The investment will be used to support the company’s continued growth and the development of Shazam’s real-time discovery and sharing App which creates an engaging, interactive mobile commerce platform for brands as it expands into television with Shazam for TV.

“Shazam has experienced incredible growth over the last year and established itself as the ultimate mobile App for media discovery and interaction,” said Matt Murphy, Partner at KPCB. “The recent additions of Shazam Friends, synchronized lyrics in LyricPlay, and Shazam for TV are just the start to expanding the functionality of a magical technology.”

With the 150 millionth Shazamer just around the corner, Shazam is on a trajectory to achieve 250 million users within two years and continues to dominate the mobile discovery market.

“Over the last 12 months, Shazam has seen a 100% increase in the number of people downloading its mobile application each week, making it an integral part of their life,” said Dennis Phelps, General Partner at IVP. “With four million tags a day, Shazam is uniquely positioned to capitalize the increasing propensity of consumers to use their mobile devices for discovery, sharing and commerce.”

This coveted reach is the reason leading networks such as NBCUniversal and MTV have worked with Shazam to incorporate Shazam for TV into their shows during the last year. With millions of consumers already accustomed to Shazaming for more information, networks and advertisers don’t have to invest in establishing a new behavior to further engage with their audience. In fact, according to Google, 72% smartphone owners use their phone while consuming other media – like watching TV. By creating Shazamable shows and commercials, networks and brands can give their viewers an unobtrusive “second screen” experience without interrupting what they’re watching. Additionally, Shazam works with these producers and advertisers to create a rich, interactive experience that gives viewers more information about the shows and products they love rather than just a simple “check-in.”

“Music is still at the core of our DNA and will always remain fundamental to who we are. Our expansion into television is a natural evolution of our technology and we are excited to have delivered the same powerful discovery experience for broadcasting and advertising that people have always loved with music,” said Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam. “Our size and growth is unparalleled in the industry and gives our network and brand partners reach not available with anyone else. This investment will support our continued growth, both organically and through acquisition, as well as the ongoing development of new features and products, keeping us at the forefront of innovation.”

Recently, Shazam released its latest enhancement to its premium applications with Shazam LyricPlay in Encore and (SHAZAM) RED on iOS, allowing music lovers to view lyrics synched in real-time to music. Creating a more personal, interactive experience, LyricPlay has multiple themed visualisations giving Shazamers a unique and innovative new way to see lyrics to songs they are tagging, so they can sing-along or just find out the words to the track. Previously, Shazam released Shazam Friends, which allows Shazamers to see a real-time feed of what their friends are tagging.

Shazam has more than 100 employees and is headquartered in London with offices in Palo Alto, New York, Los Angeles and Seoul. The Shazam App is available on iOS, Android, Java, BlackBerry, Windows, Symbian and all other major platforms and is available in more than 30 languages and 200 countries around the world.

Sharzan

Getting Your Coffee, Tea and Beer Right With Local Search!

Google Maps is the starting place for us, when we are searching for anything local, be it on the desktop or our iPhones or Androids.
Google (Lat Long) is telling us that this is going to be even easier, starting from today, because search results will have most frequently used phrases to describe the places in local searches.

So I followed up the given example, Rose & Crown, a place we usually hang out in Palo Alto, CA. You can see the results below. I also tried out other places like Peet's Coffee, Pizza places etc and information is beginning to flow.
For now it will work on Google Maps but expect to see the feature in Place search on Google.com and Google Maps for mobile soon!


Google LatLong: Introducing Descriptive Terms in Local Search Results

Display Advertising Will Become A $200 Billion Industry.

via Donttreadonme.tv

We were told so by the Vice President of Display Advertising at Google, Neal Mohan at the end of an lengthy and valuable post. Well I followed the link he has given. Yes, He has some backing for that statement, former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt has told "The online display market could quickly become a $200 billion ad business—if it gets its act together." at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting in La Quinta, California, last February. The keyword is Getting the act together.
What Neal Mohan pointed out might help to get the this act together. So I had to take down the following notes he made, just to keep as a reference for myself. Basically he is putting the ball in people's court for the future of display ads.
If you are working with ads, I think the following 6 pointers could do wonders, provided that you are in the same camp as me.

1. The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Today, people are bombarded by online ads, but they don’t connect with most of these ads in a meaningful way. I believe the trend will be for people to ultimately see fewer, but better ads.
2. Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent. As ads become less cluttered, more relevant, more engaging and more attractive, we’ll see the rate at which people interact with display ads (such as watching videos or playing games) increase dramatically.
3. People will have a direct say in 25 percent of the ads they see. Whether by choosing to watch—or not watch—video ads, updating their ads preferences to customize the ads they see or actively subscribing to or choosing to receive particular ads, users will be more in control of when and how they see ads online.
4. 35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions. Technology is helping marketers measure their ads with new tools that look at factors like emotional engagement and impact on offline behavior (like in-store shopping choices). We see a longer-term future where these become the primary metrics used to measure the success of a campaign, meaning marketers will be able to deliver the ads that potential customers say they like the most.
5. 25 billion ads per day will tell people why they are seeing them. We believe it’s important to give people as much information as possible about why they see particular ads. That’s why we’ve always included an “Ads by Google” notice, and now the AdChoices logo, on ads across the Google Display Network. We strongly support the widespread use of this logo by members of the display industry and by 2015, believe that this sort of notice will become ubiquitous.
6. Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format. We recently conducted a survey with YouGov of more than 1,000 U.S. Internet users, asking them what ad formats they liked. The number of people who said they preferred display ads trailed slightly behind the number who liked glossy magazine ads, cinema ads and even sky-writing—formats that have been around for more than 50 years! We think this will change. Display ads provide an incredible platform to engage, excite and inspire. If we as marketers, publishers and technology providers can deliver experiences that delight the user, we can take this industry to new heights.

You can read about Eric Schmidt's $200 billion mention here and Neal Mohan's post by following the link below.

Official Google Blog: There’s a perfect ad for everyone

Admeld In Google's Hold For $400 Million!

AdMeld,  is an advertising optimization for publishers, run by publishers, supposed to have been acquired by Google for a sum of $400 million as per industry sources. Admeld was launched in 2007, and had investors like Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments.


But this also brings to surface another story. CEO Michael Barrett who was fired by Rupert Murdoch for failing to meed revenue target of $1 billion from MySpace.I guess he will have a nice exit or a great entrance to Google.
Admeld Via TechCrunch

Will Facebook Be The New Online Advertising Tsar?

Everyone is elated or alarmed about facebook growth and the focus on facebook advertising is no different. Techcrunch even has a series of articles discussing about "how Facebook will eat Google's lunch" and as a part of this series, they had a nice article about;
How facebook over take Google in advertising revenue, a prediction of course.
But it is again based on other estimated ad revenues that facebook might have received.Again, I have never clicked on an facebook ad (I have clicked on Google Ads) but that might be because I spend much less time at facebook than most people.
The estimated ad revenue for facebook is estimated to be about $2 Billion in 2010 and over $4 Billion in 2011.
The article I am talking about is written by Hussein Fazal CEO of AdParlor, who advertises on facebook, yes on the right hand column. You can find the truth about facebook advertising and revenue from people who handle some of the advertising on facebook
Techcrunch
Adparlor