Worldbeat: Now it's the ads that zap viewers
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(InfoWorld) - IÂ was hungry and it had started to rain when my mobile phone buzzed to tell me I could now buy sugar in a hermetically sealed packet. A picture on my phone's screen of a goldfish swimming past the cheery new packaging drove the point home. Suddenly, I had a craving for fried fish in sweet-and-sour sauce. Pushed by some strange urge to seek out a Chinese restaurant, I looked around and saw the same goldfish staring down at me from a nearby billboard. The message, zapped to my phone over a Bluetooth wireless connection from a billboard near Opera in central Paris, is part of a new service called Chrono Connect offered by French advertising company JCDecaux SA. The service involves 54 billboards in central Paris, either 8 or 12 square meters in size. The billboards contain a roll of different posters and, had I passed by at some other time of day, I would have seen and received a different message. Advertisers buy one of four time slots -- night, rush hour, working hours or meal times -- during which their poster will be displayed. Anyone lingering in front of the billboards with a Bluetooth phone in "visible" mode will receive an invitation to download a file. If they accept, the billboard zaps it over to their phone. Each billboard contains a roll of posters and a small computer with a Bluetooth transmitter. The files for transmission are loaded into the computer from a USB (Universal Serial Bus) stick at the same time as the posters are changed. The computer can match the files it transmits to the model of mobile phone it detects, perhaps sending higher-resolution video to more powerful phones. And while unable to identify individual passers-by or access their telephone numbers, the computer can at least track whether a particular telephone has already been offered or refused a file in the last few hours, so that people who pass frequently in front of the same billboard aren't inundated with messages. One of the first customers to realize the potential of this medium was French comedian and impersonator GÃ©rald Dahan, who used it to distribute a short video clip promoting his current show about the forthcoming French presidential elections. The mobile phone is a natural medium for Dahan to choose, as he is famous for his telephone pranks. In a recent call he convinced presidential candidate SÃ©golÃ¨ne Royal that she was speaking with the Prime Minister of Quebec, Jean Charest. For now, many of Chrono Connect's advertisers are transmitting only a digital image of the poster, like the one I received, but Albert Asseraf, director of strategy and marketing at Decaux, hopes to change that. He says the company is in talks with music publishers so that advertisers can offer song downloads to those willing to stand in front of their posters for long enough. And it could also be a way to distribute movie trailers straight into the hands of people with time to watch them, perhaps with screening times and directions to the nearest cinema. The technology offers so many useful and entertaining possibilities, Asseraf is convinced people will want to receive the ads his company distributes. The only problem, he says, is that too many of them set their Bluetooth phones to "invisible," preventing them from being "discovered" by other Bluetooth devices such as his billboards.
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Universal Music teams up with global advertising group WPP to specialise in licensing music for commercials.
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By Ryan, Jim T  REGION  Exploitive ads proliferate on World Wide Web  Computer experts are advising companies and Web surfers to be wary about what they double-click on, even when visiting trusted sites.
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When legit sites attack Excite.com and Rhapsody.com are the latest name-brand websites to be found serving advertisements that try to install malware onto users' machines, security researchers said. The sites join a Rogue's Gallery of mainstream destinations that include MySpace, Excite, Blick, and CNN.com, which all have been caught carrying tainted ads over the past few months.â¦
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A software program that blocks ads is a two-edged sword: It stops annoyances for consumers, but it threatens to break down the business model that helps pay for Web content.
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Ads and adware have a new way to get on your computer--through files that appear to be music and video.
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An animated ad for Apple's iPod made by a schoolteacher is thrilling buzz marketers. Forget word-of-mouth -- the future of advertising is in professional-looking ads that go viral. By Leander Kahney.
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Top marketers are going digital to track the delivery of commercials into U.S. homes with a system some advocates say will revolutionize advertising the way product codes changed the selling of sliced bread.
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Like thousands of other merchants, Tammy Harrison thought she had struck gold when hordes visited her Web site by clicking on the small Internet ads she purchased from the world's most popular online search engines. It cost Harrison as much as &#36;20 for each click, but the potential new business seemed to justify the expense. Harrison's delight dimmed, though, when she realized the people clicking on her ads weren't really interested in her products.
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New Web ads respond to your activities--and this has privacy advocates worried.
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Its new ad campaign may not be focused on the right people.
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Good news for film  studios: Even television viewers with the ability to skip  commercials are watching ads for movies.
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The New York Times ad for Firefox has become a cause celebre sight unseen. It&#39;s part pat-on-the-back souvenir for Firefox fans, part anti-Microsoft clarion call and part reality check
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A new advertising platform attracts a major radio network. What will the experiment tell us?
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By PAT KANE  Anyone who has visited a major website recently has surely seen the new batch of "Mac vs. PC" ads.
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Internet advertisers face a new enemy: people who click on ads with no intention of buying.
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Most internet users try to ignore banner ads, but web designer Tari Akpodiete can't stop collecting them. She's put her collection of 15,000 ad samples online for all who care to look. By Daniel Terdiman.