A co-worker here at IGA Partners recommended I read Madison & Vine as he knows that I love business books. Madison & Vine is an Ad Age book so it gave it some extra credibility in my eyes. Going into this book, I had very high expectations for it due to the referral and the publisher.

I read about 10 pages a night *if that* due to my attention span, however, I was able to finish this ~180 page book within 4 days. The overall topics within the book are extremely interesting, but would I recommend this to a friend? Yes AND no. Yes- if they are not already in the entertainment/marketing industry and/or they are just starting out and have less than 3-5 years experience. i would NOT recommend this book to someone who is a thought leader in this space, as most of the text is very redundant and if you believe entertainment and marketing could work together, this book may seem pretty elementary.Â

There are some excellent interviews within the book however. The interviews aren’t in your typical Q&A fashion but they are written out within the text. I happened to like some of the quotes and case studies - and I’ll probably bring them up in different capacities (client meetings, internal meetings, conventions, etc).

I’d love to sit down with Scott Donovan (author) and pick his brands further, maybe a bit further for the folks involved within the industry since the start….

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. said Tuesda that it recently topped more than 3 million subscribers to its subscription based satellite radio service. Rival, XM Satellite Radio has over 5 million members and is expected to announce just over 6 million members shortly.Â

A bit surprising here - Apple outpaced ALL other websites during the past year in terms of growth in traffic.  Nielsen/NetRatings said that traffic to Apple.com rose from 19.6 million unique visitors in November 2004 to 30.8 million last month–a 57 percent jump. The number of visitors to Google climbed by 29 percent, while traffic to retailer Amazon grew 16 percent.

Topping the list was photo-hosting site PhotoBucket.com, which saw 15.6 million visitors last month, up 1,492 percent from the 983,000 visitors in November 2004. Social-networking sites MySpace, Facebook and Memegen.net also saw impressive year-over-year growth, increasing 752 percent, 530 percent and 446 percent, respectively, according to the Nielsen/NetRatings’ report.

I confess, I’m about to buy in. Being in the game and technology industry - all we hear about is Amp’d Mobile. Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org broke the story about Amp’d receiving $50m from MTV and that was on top of the $67m already invested and currently out seeking another $100m. The interesting thing here is that Amp’d doesn’t own their network, they sublet it from Verizon. Are the carriers going to follow in the footsteps and white-label their networks for other cash-rich players?

The website looks pretty solid - www.ampd.com. With a background in the entertainment industry (music), I have a passion for anything that has to do with merging entertainment and technology - and this is certainly something to take note of. Currently with one phone out, retailing for $129 (Kyocera Jet) - there are limited choices but their website makes the phone look pretty slick - and I’ve bought in regarding my mindset. I’m curious.

As for content, since it’s a media play, they are going to be creating content utilizing the following companies (but not limited to):

I’m going to be following Amp’d closely - lets see how it does. The Apple Ipod is making huge gambles with video - so lets see if the Amp’d phone can do it as well. I’d be very surprised if the iPod and Amp’d Mobile didn’t do anything together….

So the headline has two meanings, but for this particular posting and the meaning behind this site, we’ll stick to ‘gaming’ as in, video games. If you were to guess the percentage of women gamers in the marketplace, what would you guess? We always are hearing about the elusive male - 18-34 year old, but why not women?

According to a recent study by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the Entertainment Software Association, 43% of all video-game players are female. Online games, in which players interact with other gamers around the world skew a percentage point higher, 44%.

Another interesting fact to the study is that there are more women over the age of 18 in the game-playing population (28%) than there are boys ages 6-17 (21 percent). In 2004, two of the top three computer games, The Sims 2 (No. 1) and World of Warcraft (No. 3) were ones that have a strong female following.

So yes, we can certainly reach women through video games - and this little posting didn’t touch upon casual games, whereas some casual games can be as high as 60-80% female dominated.

Most of us here the name Paypal and think it’s a small little payment faciliator that got purchased by eBay.  I personally hadn’t grasped the notion of just how large the global userbase of Paypal was - 87 million users (Q3′05).  That’s 1/3 of the United States of America.  Paypal has done over $1B in revenues in 2005 with a 10% marketshare of US eCommerce and 5% globally.  There are over 2500 outside developers using the Paypal API (integrating it into their services/sites) which has made Paypal a leading merchant services company.

We know the household names of credit cards such as Discover, American Express, MasterCard, etc- but do not put Paypal up on that stature.  Let’s start rethinking that as Paypal’s 87 million global users trumps any other credit card company out there… the next closest credit card is the American Express card at 66 million users. 

Paypal’s growth rate is multiples higher than any other major credit card and they certainly are an institution to keep our eyes on.  In order of global userbase, it’s Paypal, American Express, Discover, and financial institutions Bank of America (33 million), Wells Fargo, Barclays, Deutschebank.  Does this mean Paypal is more profitable? Not necessarily, this just means that they have a multiple of larger userbase.

Paypal is keepin their eyes out on new opportunities including buyer credit, gift certificates and financial products, within the geographic areas of the US/Canada, Europe, and Asia/Pacific region. 

Thought I’d post this on the blog… Twin-A is playing the Mercury Lounge here in NYC at 8:30pm EST on Friday (tomorrow). I’ll be hosting co-workers, friends, and colleagues at the show. Lots of great industry minds coming out to support one of the hottest and upcoming acts of the last 2 years. You can check out Twin-A at http://www.twin-a.com or http://www.myspace.com/twina

“IN OR OUT” -heard on MTV’s Power Girls (March 2005)
“FIRECRACKER� – heard on Dawson’s Creek
“BEAUTIFUL ONES� – heard on Dawson’s Creek
“YOUR LITTLE SECRET� – heard on NBC’s Superstars
“BEAUTIFUL ONES� heard on NBC’s Superstars
“YOUR LITTLE SECRET� – heard on MTV RoadRules.
“FOREVER AND A DAY” - heard on and performed live on Metro TV

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Let me know if you’re coming out to support - if you find me, I’ll buy you a drink! I’ll be arriving around 7:30/45 and staying throughout the set. If we get enough people to show from IGA Partners/Dynamify, we’ll all go out afterwards. Happy Holidays.

Reading a press release dated back to 1999 regarding Yahoo!’s acquisition of GeoCities.com, I’m realizing that there are many similarities between yesterdays free homepage communities and the Blog communities of today.

Tripod, GeoCities.com, FortuneCity.com, as well as many others have been instrumental in getting anyone with a dream of having a homepage onto the world wide web.  Back in the early days of the Internet (GeoCities.com was started in 1994), these companies spent hundreds of millions in advertising dollars to get their face out to the consumer markets.  Today, we’ve got companies like TypePad (Six Apart), Blogger, and many other sites that are allowing users the ability to give users a free homepage as well.  While these new ‘blog’ communities do not allow for direct FTP access to fully customize a page, they allow for users to create a similiar homepage experience such as the WYSIWYG editors of the old web communities. 

The similarities include templated homepage design, minimal traffic ratings, aggregation of advertising, user updated content, custom home pages, and multiple companies sprouting up all over the world who work with these companies.

It’s certainly interesting to relate GeoCities to Six Apart - revenue models are similiar as well.

Looks like MediaWeek is following AdWeek’s story on in-game advertising. Today, IGA Partners (of which I’m a co-founder) appeared in a MediaWeek feature article on in-game advertising. This is not the first article we’ve appeared in, but one of many articles IGA Partners will be appearing in across the globe moving forward as we’re picking up some serious momentum. Some of you may remember the CBS article that IGA Partners appeared in by William Vidka.

A solid quote from the article:Â “What we are effectively doing is becoming media owners in the games space,” says Ed Bartlett, global VP of publishing for in-game advertising pioneer IGA Partners. With most popular games focusing on real-world scenarios such as sports or, er, street violence, ad slots are simply built into games in their real-life context, inevitably with particular emphasis on outdoor spots. Though the PS2 can not currently be served with ads in real time, players’ exposure to ads embedded in games can still be tracked, while the Xbox allows ads to be both tracked and served. With the imminent launch of the Xbox 360 and next year’s PlayStation3, both the market’s cutting-edge consoles will theoretically be fair game for dynamic ads. “We can plan geographically, we can micro-target, we can do all kinds of things,” says Bartlett.

Our friends over at Activision and Nielsen Entertainment have released the results of a study that show that if in-game advertising is done correctly, it not only raises awareness and recall, but also pervasiveness, which contributes to driving brand awareness as well.

Research results also found that, contrary to the assumption that highly pervasive ads would detract from the game play and frustrate gamers, a majority of study participants said that when the product is relevant to the game, advertising enhances the experience. Underscoring relevance, the study revealed that the vast majority of gamers who recalled a product in a game felt it fit the game they were playing. Moreover, a much higher percentage of gamers changed their opinion of the product positively versus negatively after having played the game.