Tessa Wegert – Page 3

Made for the Web

Published February 16, 2006

Whether relating to movies, specials, or real-life dramas, the phrase “made for TV” may soon go the way of the Dodo. Online publishers and offline producers are increasingly turning their sites to the Web, and creating original content expressly for Internet users.
It was “announced”:http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press_view.cfm?release_num=55254527 this week that Katalyst Films — the production company headed by actor Ashton Kutcher that’s responsible for such shows as Punk’d and Beauty and the Geek — will be developing and producing at least five original comedy shows (comprised of about 20 “mini-episodes”) for AOL sometime this year. The Web-only programming will be available on AOL and AIM.
This isn’t the first incidence of programming being developed exclusively for the Internet. In November, for example, Food Network launched “Eat This with Dave Lieberman”:http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_et, a Web-only series hosted by the Food Network chef by the same name. In it, Lieberman visits various US cities to uncover and share food trends.

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Zip.ca Falls Short

Published January 12, 2006

If an affordable luxury can be considered a guilty pleasure, then mine is most definitely “Netflix”:http://www.netflix.com/. The online DVD rental system is incomparably convenient, and is truly revolutionizing movie rental.
It there’s one downfall to Netflix, it’s that it isn’t yet available in Canada (its original plan to expand to Canada and the UK in 2005 has been “postponed”:http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2004-10-17-netflix-dvd-war_x.htm). So when I was looking for a birthday gift for my brother last year, I started investigating other alternatives. After reading several positive reviews of “Zip.ca”:http://www.zip.ca/ online, I decided to buy a gift membership on the site.
From start to finish, the experience was a lesson in poor online customer service. But that paled in comparison to the defective design of the company’s ecommerce site. It seemed very little attention was paid to facilitating navigation, and its online transaction pages were deeply flawed.

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Twelve Months of Interactive Marketing

Published December 21, 2005

With 2005 drawing to a close, it’s time for the interactive advertising year in review. If you’re like me, you can’t remember what happened in July let alone way back in January, particularly where interactive marketing trends are concerned (have you noticed that there’s a considerable amount of overlap with these sorts of things?). With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a month by month recap of the units, formats, and channels that made this a watershed year for interactive marketing.
h3. January: Vlogs
Given the popularity of blogs in 2004, we had to expect the trend would continue this year. The newest blogs, however, were a lot richer. Video blogs (blogs that incorporate video clips) made their presence known this year, thanks to vlogs like Peter Jackson’s “Kong is King”:http://www.kongisking.net/index.shtml. They’re sure to continue to flourish, thanks to distribution channels like multimedia search engines.
h3. February: Podcasting
Podcasting ended up being big all year long, but February “saw the introduction of the world’s first podcasting ad network”:http://www.clickz.com/experts/media/media_buy/article.php/3483571. Just think how much our “options have expanded”:http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113167835201394489-6RLXo50JXniwqPt59a3cCUJPXsM_20061111.html?mod=blogs) since then.
h3. March: Online Video
After the Superbowl, which brought with it a number of TV ads that subsequently found audiences online (remember “GoDaddy?”:http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp?isc=wscfwst304&se=%2B), marketers took a longer, harder look at online video. Can you think of a current online campaign that doesn’t include it?

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Category: Tessa Wegert

Made for the Web

Zip.ca Falls Short

Twelve Months of Interactive Marketing