Saturday, June 28, 2008

Basement Looking for Sales Pro

Ripped straight form the job boards this just in...

An aggressive sales performer who has a passion and interest in interactive marketing and digital design/animation services. Perform business development role as key driver of new business from approved target group (30-50) of potential major accounts that have the business volume to enter into long-term business relationships with The Basement Design + Motion. Will be primarily focused on advertising agencies (small to medium), web development firms, marketing communication firms and pr firms within the Midwest geographical marketplace in 2008 and 2009. Agency experience or selling to agencies experience a plus. Contact kelli@thebasement.tv if you are interested.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

What IPTV Can Be - Baby Steps Happening Now

I have written about the "Project Canoe" initiative a few times in the past and it seems they continue to progress forward, which in my opinion is good for the progress towards a viable and successful IPTV model. I am not stating that this is a successful and viable IPTV model, however it seems that it may be a baby step in the right direction. As you will see in the article they have hired a CEO, David Verklin, who has a lot of experience in advertising. It will be interesting to see how he leads this initiative and how the model evolves as it rolls out.

Check out the piece HERE

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Think Tank and I Agree - Digital Media Cannot Afford to Act Like Traditional Ad Model

I came across a pretty cool piece put out by the Jack Myers think tank talking about how a lot of digital media content companies are trying to generate revenue the same way traditional broadcasters have, and how that is a dead end.

Some excerpts...
Advertising is simply not a sufficient revenue model to sustain content companies into the long-term future.

For the foreseeable future, the pool of available advertising dollars will be stagnant. There are new media alternatives virtually every day and ad budgets are splintering into micro-fragments. Advertisers are being pulled in multiple directions. Dollars are seeping from traditional budgets into search engine marketing, event marketing, cause-related marketing, merchandising, experiential marketing, location-based marketing, public relations, conversational and word-of-mouth marketing, social and mobile media, and consumer and trade sales promotion. This year's national television Upfront market could be a bell-weather for determining advertisers' continued appetite for paying significant cost increases for eroding audiences.

In the past few decades, only a handful of media companies recognized the imperative of brand-creation and even fewer made the commensurate investments in organizational resources to support them. Most investors in digital media companies remain dependent upon the transactional advertising business model, expecting to build wealth by capturing a growing piece of a shrinking advertising pie. Many are being confronted by the reality of under performance and unachievable growth requirements.


Check out the full article HERE

Monday, June 9, 2008

Good Old Network Location

Analytics packages for web sites are a hoot. I have enjoyed playing around with them for a long time. The best in my opinion is the good old network location drill down in the visitors area of most analytics packages. That is where you go to see what organizations firewalls are being detected and you can at least get a general idea of who has been on your site.

A quick snapshot of who has been viewing this blog in the last seven days - and some of these are just funny, some not so funny:
Cox Communications
Tribune
AC Nielson
Administrative Office of the United States Courts (yeah, what are they doing here??)
Ball State University
BEA Systems
Cal State University Network
City of Mississauga
Diebold
Financial Times
IUPUI
J Walter Thompson USA
Whittman Hart
University of Detroit Mercy
universita l. bocconi - milano
Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue (First a federal court, now some big law firm, why am I feeling nervous???)
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Rochester Institute of Technology
Twentieth Century Fox

and the grand finale...............the US Senate Sergeant at Arms
Yeah, I could not make that up - the US Senate Sergeant of Arms (or at least someone browsing the web through that firewall) was on my blog

Now I am really sweating bullets - would you want this guy looking at your blog????

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Big Increases for Digital, Mobile

Straight from the Editor and Publisher, yes you read that right, Editor and Publisher...
Report: Digital, Mobile Advertising Revenues On the Rise

"The second annual World Digital Media Trends report, released at a meeting of the World Association of Newspapers, said the digital platforms of newspapers are growing at a double-digit rate worldwide, as the world increasingly goes online. The report, compiled with the help of 71 research groups, said digital and mobile advertising revenues are expected to increase 12-fold from 2002 to 2011, to about $150 billion worldwide."

"Even after newspapers generate enthusiasm among their traditional print staff for new media, they still have to find and provide the resources and qualified personnel for doing both, he said at the three-day meeting 1,800 publishers, editors and other senior newspapers, which started Monday."

Shortast commentary: I do not think there is anything new here - as IP networks grow beyond the personal computer screen, more and more communication channels will find themselves devoting more time and resources to their online effort - and collecting more ad dollars through that same IP channel.

As it relates to recruiting qualified personnel, newspapers do have a challenge - they have to compete with companies who have been attracting this talent for years in a very shallow talent pool. What can newspapers do to shake their reputation as old school to attract the best personnel?

Monday, June 2, 2008

Lots Going On

The last several weeks have been very exciting down in the basement. Cannot really talk much about a lot of it but let's just say things are moving along at a pretty quick pace. In the months to come you should expect to see quite a bit happening on our web site and possibly even some big announcements.

As always stay tuned...