My interest in interactive advertising really only began to take true direction when I was working for eStara.com, the Click to Call people. This is where the concept Call on Cue was born. I think that the evolution of “Call on Cue” is one of the best examples of how innovation has the ability to inspire Creativity. However it is only truly unique because it marries all the important elements of a successful marketing campaign: Creativity, Impact, Efficiency and Total Engagement.

“Innovation Call on Cue, where Click to Call is triggered from within a Flash movie,
Adtech 2008 award winning campaign for Sporting Portugal and General Motors, Prepare your Hair campaign, Summit International Efficiency Award 2007.”

Here’s a Constant Change blogpost that cited a Marketing Sherpa piece on my work:
http://constantchange.typepad.com/constant_change/2006/12/unique_cr…

This is a collection of links to the creative which is public:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/opel/study.html

And this is a post on eStara.com website on my work:
http://website.estara.com/de/aboutus/news/marketingsherpa2.html

And this one about the award winning Sporting Portugal campaign:

A new partnership between Ingenio and AOL marks the launch of Click to Call in mobile search Today AOL unveils the new beta version of AOL Mobile Search.
The new interface makes use of tabs that enable users to easily toggle between search verticals within the site like Finance, News and Local Content. The partnership with Ingenio enables click to call for all search results that include a phone number. As with the wireline portal, Google still powers the search results with the exception of local listings, which come courtesy of AOL CityGuide and financial info from AOL News.
Rachel Pasqua is Director of Mobile Marketing for iCrossing gives a nuanced view on these developements in the SE mobile market:

“Now granted the name AOL is by no means synonymous with search, but as Om Malik pointed out in his own insightful column on the subject, the jury is still out on who will own search on mobile devices. Google has the lead at this point, which is pretty much what you’d expect. But there’s certainly room for other contenders. Especially a contender that can wrap up an easy search experience and premium results with great content. The icing on the cake would be location awareness – you still need to proactively tell AOL where you are. But true LBS is on its way, if not right around the corner. A partnership with ThirdScreen is in place for advertising and if they continue to hone this refined user experience, I believe that AOL could give Yahoo!, if not also Google, a run for its money when it comes to mobile users and ad dollars.”
Ingenio commentary on mobile market opportunities

In the growing, yet fiercely competitive world of local online advertising, directory and classifieds publishers are seeking new ways to deliver value to their advertisers. A recent survey by WebVisible/Nielsen found that as many as 35% of consumers will save listing information for later use, and nearly one-quarter of respondents will bookmark business listings. According to the study, “[The] availability of recall is likely to lead to repeat or latent business based on a single search experience especially when 89% [of consumers] reported contact with a vendor a second time.”

“Internet advertising is forcing marketers to rethink their online advertising goals, while complicating the task of measuring effectiveness,” said John Federman, CEO, eStara. “eStara’s Click Suite for Local Search, which power millions of advertisements around the globe — including listings for Cox Newspapers, Idearc SuperPages.com, Yahoo! Europe and Sensis — ensures that local marketers are meeting their business goals, and are maximizing value from every ad.”

With the addition of Save & Send, eStara rounds out it suite of tools for tracking and measuring local ad effectiveness. Save & Send capabilities, which are integrated into eStara’s Click Suite for Local Search, allow consumers to save or share the advertisement in whichever electronic format they desire – on their desktop, on the Web or on their mobile device – predisposing them to make repeat purchases from their preferred merchants, and giving publishers the ability to measure ROI more accurately for advertisers.

You know when you ask someone to comment on something you think is important and they just end up starting a whole new conversation. This is what happend when I asked my friend Amit from Israel for his two cents on the SIPphone launching a Gizmo Call which since yesterday evening is just completely not important anymore.

This is because I just fell in love with this service called fringe. Uncomplicated, unattached and a little uh mysterious… I hope this isnt just a crush.
So what, who and where is Fringe?

What: fring™ uses your mobile internet connection to make peer-to-peer VoIP calls, send instant messages and talk with VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk, at no extra cost.

Who: Great question in fact, I know he lives in Fringland. There my be a wierd correlation between this and the incredible killer bees story from last week. It’s awfully exciting and mysterious in any case.
Where is Fring now : Fringe is here: http://www.fring.com

There is some important reading on this subject here: http://www.henshall.com/cgi-bin/mt-henshall-tb.cgi/977

A very interesting article about the convergence of IPTV and Telco’s, written by Johna Till Johnson who is president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research. You can read it here but if you don’t have the time I have included a short summary below of the most important points she makes.

In a previous post I commented on an article from the FT regarding the same subject.
Our carriers have had to deal with a lot lately such as the Internet and VoIP services. Their profits from offering directory services such as the Yellow Pages have been eating away by the likes of Google or Yahoo!
According to Johna Till Johnson IPTV lets carriers reverse that trend by giving them a shot at selling something for which the market demand is demonstrably insatiable: content.
Exploring the benifits of IPTV versus other forms of DTV

” So what exactly is the benefit of IPTV? For one thing, it gives telcos a sustainable consumer offering whose margins aren’t eroding. And by doing so, it introduces competition into the content-distribution business”

Ah..of course competition so things will be getting cheaper for the consumer?? 

“What IPTV gives carriers is the flexibility to experiment with content offerings until they hit on the packaging formula that consumers will pay money for.”

In other words, I think what she means is no, we are going to be willing to pay for more personalized content.

So the trend towards having free content isn’t going to change anything?
“People don’t pay for content itself; they pay for content to be packaged and delivered to them in a form factor that’s convenient. Take music: If free services destroyed the market for paid services, satellite radio wouldn’t be flourishing.”