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June 21, 2009 - June 27, 2009

June 25, 2009

Blagojevich not involved in Yahoo's new Pay Per Candidate Offering

Yahoo unveiled its new Pay Per Candidate offering. And, no, it's got nothing to do with Jersey or Illinois politics!

Pay Per Candidate is a new performance-based payment option for Yahoo HotJobs ads, allowing job recruiters to pay based on the number of people who respond to a job ad, rather than per job listing.

According to the company press release, the product lets employers and recruiters "cap the number of pre-screened candidates they receive per job posting when candidates apply on the HotJobs website." The advertiser pays only when a job seeker applies for the position or clicks-through to the recruiter's site.

The system also can automatically filter out inappropriate candidates based on the information they provide in customized online questionnaires.

By offering this payment option, Yahoo has indicated that there's a need to provide greater incentive to advertisers to use HotJobs. The economy could be a factor here since fewer companies are hiring. Or, perhaps Yahoo is letting advertisers pay for performance out of the goodness of their hearts....

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Joanne Bradford Chills on the Beach (Cannes Pics)

On Thursday Yahoo hosted a beach luncheon across from the Carlton Hotel. In attendance were R/GA's Bob Greenberg, former Martha Stewart co-CEO Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo head of sales Joanne Bradford, Sapient's Alan Wexler and Freddie Laker, among others. Click above for photo descriptions and additional pics from around the Cannes festival, or view the slideshow below.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web Companies at Cannes: Wither AOL?

All the major Web companies have a presence, however reduced, at the Cannes Lions festival this year. All except one that is.

By far the most visible of the Internet giants is premier sponsor Microsoft. There's a Microsoft lounge, Microsoft-sponsored sessions, a Microsoft beach club, two Microsoft Surface tables, and a big flippin' Microsoft sign plastered onto the front of the Palais. As if that all weren't enough, Steve Ballmer won Media Person of the Year last night.

Google is here too. A YouTube cocktail bar on the lower level is giving away watermelon zingers and smoothies. There's also a YouTube booth of sorts, near much of the mounted work. Google's Eric Schmidt will be here Friday.

Yahoo's approach is perhaps most unique, if scaled back from previous years. The company is giving away branded flip-flops from a Yahoo Loves Creatives" truck that's been puttering up and down La Croisette all week, and it hosted a beach luncheon this afternoon.

AOL is the one Web media heavy-hitter that appears not to be in Cannes at all. No one ClickZ spoke with had seen hide nor hair of the company or its execs. That's perhaps understandable in light of the upheaval at the soon to be spun-off Time Warner unit. Yet at a time when AOL is eager to revamp its image with the ad community, skipping this party seems like a missed opportunity.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 24, 2009

Specific Media: Moving Up

With so many ad networks on the scene, it takes work for any single one to get noticed.

Specific Media made a splash with a 10th anniversary party at its new Manhattan outpost on 745 Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park and the landmark Plaza Hotel. (Sorry, forgot the camera.)

At the party last week, I got a chance to meet Chief Operating Officer Chris Vanderhook, one of the three brothers who founded and manage the business that has a headquarters in Irvine, CA. CEO Tim Vanderhook and Russell Vanderhook, SVP were both there, too.

The sleek offices are on the 20th floor in an Art Deco structure built in 1930. It's worlds away from its old home in the Empire State Building in the dull midtown south neighborhood.

For the party, Specific Media brought in Nikki Cassone and Camille Becerra, contestants from Bravo's "Top Chef" reality show to off their cooking skills. Plus, chef Scott Fagan from Tip of the Tongue catering and his team prepared sushi, dim sum, sliders, and calories-for-the-road dessert bags.

For the record, Specific Media has 13 employees in its NYC office and it's hiring, according to a spokeswoman. Based on unique visitors, Specific Media is the fifth largest ad network, according to comScore.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Another Day, Another Agency Research Project:
WPP and Microsoft Partner to Study Search for Branding

Search for branding campaigns? It's been done, but search is certainly not the go-to method for brand building. Indeed, the majority of advertisers still question whether search marketing can be effective for branding efforts at all.

WPP and Microsoft aim to figure that out. And, surely, the lately very Bing-centric Microsoft has an agenda to prove search is a fantastic brand building medium. According to a WPP statement, the firms are partnering to determine "The correlation between brand awareness and search efficacy; How search engines are changing consumer behavior; How social marketing impacts the search for brands; [and] The connections between paid search and brand development."

Three WPP agencies, branding-focused Brand Asset Consulting, direct response agency Wunderman, and Web strategy and SEO firm ZAAZ, will guide the research project.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photos in and Around Cannes, Wednesday

Some shots from in and around the Cannes Lions festival yesterday and today. Click for larger images and descriptions, or browse all Cannes photos on Flickr.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2009

Big Industry Players Join IAB Europe

The IAB Europe has added a number of major players to its corporate membership roster, including Google, Microsoft, Orange, and Alcatel-Lucent. Representatives from comScore, Google, Microsoft advertising, News Corporation and Orange will also take up positions on the board of the pan-European trade body.

Speaking with me at the IAB Europe's Interact Congress in Brussels earlier this month, IAB president Alain Heureux stressed the importance of involvement from respected industry players in order to help promote self-regulation of the industry within Europe. The addition of these major firms as members is a sizeable step towards that. According to Heureux, AOL's Platform A, and Yahoo should both be on board as members by September.

IAB Europe currently represents 20 national IAB's across the continent.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Faces at Cannes: Bruno Bertani

I snapped this shot of Cannes attendee Bruno Bertani as we both enjoyed a brief escape from the tomb-like Palais des Festivals. Bruno is up for a Design Lion this week for work he did for Brazilian gay rights group Arco-Iris. He and fellow creative director Ricardo Saint-Clair created posters, a logo, and Web elements for the "No Homophobia" project. The project was handled by Rio de Janeiro-based Dialogo Design.

Bruni's a regular traveler to New York, and a first time traveler to Cannes.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BK's Whopper Sacrifice Favored to Win at Cannes. Should It?

If it wins a Cyber Grand Prix, as everyone here appears to expect, Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky will have made history. Not because it would be the first Facebook app to win, nor because the recognition will go to a campaign that was squashed. (Facebook put the kibosh on it in January.) Rather, the win would be remarkable because the campaign reached so few consumers. According to CPB, less than a quarter million friends were deleted on Facebook using the app, and far fewer than that voluntarily interacted with it. So while the campaign may have been wonderfully innovative and subversive, its total reach was a drop in the bucket of Internet users -- or even Facebook users.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 6:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hyatt Launches Verizon Mobile Campaign through Microsoft

Global Hyatt Corp has partnered with Microsoft and Verizon to launch a mobile ad campaign, which it hopes will drive registrations to the hotel chain's Gold Passport frequent guest reward program, in addition to driving traffic to its newly launched mobile site.

Search and display ads will point users to Hyatt's mobile destination, which now allows users to find and book hotel rooms, check-in and -out remotely, and receive tailored promotions on their handset.

Microsoft penned a deal with Verizon in January through which it now sells display and search inventory across all of the carrier's mobile properties. The software giant says mobile is now a "critical component" in its ad offerings, and that it has made "significant investments" in the area.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 22, 2009

Cannes Lions, Monday photos

Some shots from in and around the Palais des Festivals today. (click for larger photos and descriptions)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cannes by the Numbers: Cyber Entries Fall Below '06 Levels

The number of Cyber Lions entries dropped this year for the first time since 2003, when the Web economy bottomed out. However the drop this time was considerably steeper than it ever was during those lean years. The number of submissions fell by 506, or almost 20 percent, to 2,205. Here are the exact number of entries for each of the 11 years since the category was introduced:

1998: 401
1999: 592
2000: 1,048
2001: 1,471
2002: 1,343
2003: 1,244
2004: 1,561
2005: 1,897
2006: 2,502
2006: 2,711
2007: 2,205

Entries in other categories were similarly down -- all except the Promo Lyons and the PR Lions. The former climbed incrementally, and the latter are new this year.

It's also interesting to note the number of Cyber Lion entries by nation. The top 5 are as follows, followed in parenthesis by the number they produced last year:

USA: 453 (600)
UK: 202 (289)
Germany: 191 (209)
Brazil: 181 (396)
Japan: 149 (182)
Canada: 104 (81)
Sweden: 103 (92)
Spain: 87 (137)
Australia: 76 (66)
France: 73 (83)

It's interesting to note Canada and Sweden were the only two in the top ten to grow their number of entries. Maybe the northern lands are better able to stand the wintery economic climate.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Cenz.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Faces at Cannes: Elijah Torn

I made my first Cannes buddy before I even got to France.

After missing my connection in Rome and settling in for an eight-hour layover, I started talking with the guy at right -- the awesomely-named Elijah B Torn. He was marooned like me, and he held forth on Cannes while slouched at gate B-4 of Rome International Airport. I didn't take notes, but here's the gist of his story and his take on the festival:

Who does he work for? Massive Music, a music and sound producer for various motion picture projects. Massive throws a party here each year at Cannes, and Elijah handles the list, among other things. In 2009 Massive's done a lot more soundtracks and music for viral videos and other Internet projects -- a lot less for television.

What's different about Cannes in 2009? This is Elijah's third year at Cannes. He said it's usually the one time each year Massive Music gets its employees together in one place. This year the company's scaled back, sending only Elijah from New York, plus some people from the Netherlands and L.A. offices.

What's his advice for Cannes virgins? Don't get in a confrontation with the French police, and don't show up at a party nude. Last year a guy swam up to one of the beachfront parties in the buff and tried to blend in. He was arrested, obviously.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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