The rumours that the next-generation iPhone will be launched a week today,
on October 4th, have been officially confirmed.
The invites to the Cupertino campus, where the event will be held, have been
sent out. They simply said: “Let’s talk iPhone.”
Traditionally, major Apple launches are held at the Yerba Buena Centre for
the Arts in San Francisco, but the company has plumped for the smaller venue
this time.
This could be because the arts centre was booked up, although whatever the
reason, it means that new CEO Tim Cook will get to handle his first big iGadget
launch in a smaller venue.
Whether that’ll make it easier to deal with – or harder because the Apple
fans won’t be quite so massed and vocal with their cheering – we’re not
sure.
Anyway, in almost exactly a week’s time – the event will begin at 6pm our
time – we’ll finally discover whether there’ll be an iPhone 5, an iPhone 4S, or
both.
The theory with the latter being that the iPhone 5 will be launched as
normal, and the 4S as a somewhat cheaper more budget conscious alternative to
help expand Apple’s market share to the lower reaches of the smartphone world
(where Android reigns supreme).
The only certainty is that the new (top) model will definitely boast a
faster processor and an improved 8 megapixel camera. It’s also likely to have a
redesigned, slimmer body, certainly if you put any stock in leaked shots of
cases for the device.
BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile World Congress -- FluxDVD,
the leading secure platform-independent video solution, now supports secure
video downloads and playback on Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices. The
optionally DRM-protected files can be downloaded directly on the iPhone or may
be transferred from a PC without requiring iTunes. Once the content and license
is stored on the iPhone, the content can be used as defined in the DRM and does
not require any Internet connection.
"Supporting DRM-protected video on the iPhone/iPod touch is an extremely
important step for supporting all major mobile platforms. It opens up a variety
of new possibilities for our customers, such as Deutsche Telekom, in making
their video services available in as many ways as possible. Although the Apple
approval process took about four months, we believe, the result is definitely
worth the wait," says Volkmar Breitfeld, CEO of ACE GmbH, the company behind
FluxDVD.
"Adding the iPhone as a video distribution platform is one of the top
requested features of our clients. We work with many creative people who often
use the iPhone themselves and so this was always one of our top priorities. But
that this is now possible based on our existing solution without the need to
re-encode content is something I didn't think possible," says Michael Schmidt,
VP Marketing at
http://www.flickrocket.com, a site offering integrated DVD download web
shops for third party web sites.
Support for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has been added through the
custom "My Movies" app, which is available free of charge in the Apple app
store.
FluxDVD supports Windows, regular DVD players, portable media players,
navigation systems, Windows Mobile phones, Blackberry, Android, feature phones,
PlayStation and iPhone/iPod touch. Solutions for Mac OS X and Android are
planned to be released in the near future. Encoding and distribution tools are
available at no cost from
http://www.fluxdvd.com.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 1 million App Store download benchmark has
been achieved by DVR Scheduler application for the iPhone and iPod touch of
satellite television provider DirecTV, that to within less than a year after
its initial release. DVR Scheduler enables consumers to remotely program their
home DVR.
Any television show can be searched by the user up to 14 days in advance
besides browsing programs by channel or date and time, accessing content
information including description, length and rating, and recording either a
single episode or an entire series. DVR Scheduler app is featured in a new
national TV campaign.
Currently, 18.4 million customers in the U.S are served by DirecTV offering
more than 200 HD channels.
Perhaps yesterday’s tweet by Google CEO Eric
Schmidt put it best. Hell has indeed frozen over. Google has run its first
major television ad, during the Super Bowl, no less. Below, the ad, how it has
been received, how it compares to other search engine commercials from rivals
and some questions about why market leader Google felt it needed to make such a
dramatic move to promote its best known product that has no real marketing
problems.
The rumor
that Google would run a commercial during today’s Super Bowl 2010 proved true.
Google aired a spot from its online video Search Stories series, called
Parisian Love:
The company also has a blog post up about it here,
saying:
If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you’ll have seen a video from
Google called “Parisian
Love“. In fact you might have watched it before, because it’s been on
YouTube for over three months. We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even
a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos
about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this
video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we
decided to share it with a wider audience.
The commercial, by the way, had 1.2 million views before the ad. It’ll be
interesting to see how it changes now. Google’s taken out its own ad on Google
for google tv ad
that links over to an area with the ad — good cross-promotion:
Someone also tweeted to me that Google’s also taken out ads for actual
searches that are demonstrated in the commercial. I took a quick look myself.
That’s true for some queries but not all of them.
The queries in the ad are shown below, along with whether Google was showing
an ad for its Superbowl commercial in relation to these searches and whether
the listing selected by the searcher in the ad is still in the top results:
Of those sites selected, one
of them already doing something special for visitors who might be coming to it
because of the Super Bowl publicity:
The ad was also posted to the YouTube AdBlitz channel, where all Super Bowl ads have
been posted
immediately after airing.
Google & Past Traditional Consumer Advertising
Over the past years, Google — which is somewhat
notorious for not advertising itself to consumers, has actually been
ramping up that outreach. Consider:
Newspapers: Google’s done newspaper ads on the odd
occasion, such as a campaign in 2005
to target college students and entice them to its web applications.
Despite these traditional advertising moves, nothing matches the giant leap
that the Superbowl ad represents. Google has never felt the need to put across
its core product — search — to so many people at once.
Indeed, when Microsoft undertook a major television campaign last year to
promote its new Bing search engine, Google’s Schmidt suggested
they would be of little use for acquire customers:
You don’t just buy it with ads. You earn it, and you earn it customer by
customer, search by search , answer by answer. And we believe that today we
beat our competitors because we’re so focused on comprehensiveness, speed,
freshness and having the depth that people really care about.
At that time, Schmidt also said:
We are spending all of our time on exactly what we’ve always done, which is
innovation. I don’t think Bing’s arrival has changed what we’re doing. We are
about search, we’re about making things enormously successful by virtue of
innovation.
Such a major flip from that to a Superbowl ad in less than a year suggests
that Google is feeling pressure to reach consumers, something I suspected might
happen back
when Bing launched:
Google’s never really had to market itself to consumers, to trot its stuff.
The recently held “Searchology”
event didn’t cover anywhere near the range of what Google offers. But if the
praise for Bing keeps largely rolling in — if people keep discovering features
that aren’t necessarily unique to Bing — Google may find it has to step up.
Just a week after Bing’s launch, Google showed the first sign of outward
pressure by pushing out a new “Explore Google Search” page that was advertised
on its home page. It was to counter the idea that it was somehow missing
features that Bing was getting noticed for (see
Google Fires Back At Bing, Launches “Explore Google Search”).
Now we have the Super Bowl ad– a TV ad no less intrusive than those Google
once
said it hoped to change through its own Google TV Ads program
for advertisers.
We also have it during the same Super Bowl where long-time advertiser
Pepsi skipped the Super Bowl. What a strange, unexpected flip-flop.
Postscript: Like that simple focus on search results in
Google’s ad? As I’ve been watching reaction on Twitter, plenty seem to:
Of course, the Google ad has a common theme that evolves in the spot, a
blossoming love affair told in searches, whereas the Ask ad just focuses
quietly on Ask’s features. Still, having watched reactions to search engine ads
over the years, I can recall that the Ask ad seemed effective to those I talked
with about it. The Google ad may have struck the same chord.
In contrast, the Bing TV ads
that have been running perhaps have been too overloaded focusing on the idea
there is “search overload” rather than the simplicity of the results
themselves. Here’s one:
Meanwhile, here’s a look back to 1998, which was a heyday for search engines
to be advertising themselves on TV. This montage starts off with a Yahoo ad
that always makes me laugh, just a boy, looking for some hair:
We’ve also got a parody of the Google ad, though this was made before the ad
aired during the Super Bowl (that’s possible because the Google ad has aired
online for several months). Spotted via Twitter, check out
this Tiger
Woods-themed ad:
Media Reactions
We’ll see how reactions to the Google ad continue to go. Some media
reactions to how Google’s spot compared to other Superbowl commercials that
I’ve survey are giving the company kudos:
CNET: It
was a breath of fresh air in a Super Bowl where the ads were dominated by
dude-oriented spots
Ledger-Enquirer:
What did impress was the Google ad, which was smart, got the message across
fast and tugged at the heart strings.
Kansas City Star: It
it was a winner — far more satisfying than the mostly sophomoric commercials
from the beer makers, job-search companies, fast-food restaurants, soft drink
makers and other usual Super Bowl advertisers
Wall St. Journal: “Could be my favorite,” DiGo’s Mr. DiMassimo said of the
Google spot.
Wall St. Journal 2: A lot of typing into the search engine from a guy or
girl going to France, trying to impress a girl. As Butthead said, “If I wanted
to read, I would have stayed in school.”
AP: “‘That
was one of the few strong ads this year,” said Laura Ries, president of
marketing consulting firm Ries&Ries outside Atlanta.
Buffalo News: “It’s simple, charming and very real, down to the
misspellings.”
CNN Money:
“It was the least expensive ad and the best ad so far,” said McKee. “It was
basically a product demo on the Super Bowl.”
Reuters:
“The spot, well-received by experts, told the story of a
transAtlantic romance though search queries and results.”
Sporting News: Look at you, Google. You spent about ten bucks to
create your multi-million dollar ad, and it really got the point across.
Consider my heartstrings tugged.
That’s impressive when you consider just how much goes into the creative for
Super Bowl ads. Google’s is self-produced, to my knowledge. The ad, if deemed a
Super Bowl hit, gives Google the ability to back up what it tells large brands
and others in terms about speaking to consumers in ads. The purchase itself
also positions Google as finally spending in the medium where it seeks to
attract big advertisers from — even specifically with
its push to get Super Bowl advertisers.
Super Bowl Commercial Ratings
Various places provide ratings of Super Bowl commercials. Here’s a rundown
on some places I’ve spotted:
USA Today: The long-standing Super Bowl
Ad Meter tracks a panel of viewers to see how they reacted to Super Bowl
commercials. Out of 63 ads, Google ranked in the bottom half, at 43.
AOL’s NFL Fanhouse: Based on user ratings, Google’s a
winner, currently
ranked fourth of all ads.
Elsewhere, professors at Michigan State University rated Google’s ad the best.
So did students at the Kellogg School Of Management at Northwestern
University.
Over at Forbes, the Google ad
didn’t appear to be either a best or worse pick by Forbes judges. Forbes
also has public ratings, but Google’s
not listed — perhaps because it wasn’t known Google would be running an ad
in advance. The same is
true for voting at the Wall Street Journal. So downside to Google’s big
mystery spot? It might have missed out on being counted among the best by being
late. Google’s YouTube is also hosting a contest, with voting through the middle of
this month. So’s Hulu, with results announced later this week.
SF Weekly
also reports that Innerscope & Wired conducted a survey that measured
emotional responses through
electrodes attached to the skin. So far, Google’s ad beat the US Census ad.
More results are still coming in.
Why Advertise Your Best Known Product?
It also remains odd to me that Google spent so much money to advertise
itself in an area where it leads by so much, especially when Bing’s
advertisements have made little real impact with consumers. And when Google,
when asked about pushing its Nexus One phone,
suggested that TV wasn’t a way to go over pushing through its online
channels.
Compared to Google itself, practically no one uses the Nexus One. If any
product needed some TV ads, you’d think that was it. I suppose that it’s
difficult for Google to advertise Google itself to a “new” audience on Google’s
own network. So, the Super Bowl ad does get it out to a broad audience. But was
there anyone in that audience that didn’t already know Google? Were there
seriously that many people who were thinking of not using it over Bing?
The Google ad to me comes off as a giant waste of money, something Google
seems to have done to satisfy its own internal concerns that Bing is making a
splash even if that splash hasn’t tipped market share at all. No doubt it is
and will continue to generate buzz, of course. But was the buzz worth the cost?
Not just the financial cost, but the cost of signaling to your chief competitor
and those who closely track you in the search space that Bing makes you very,
very nervous.
