Study: Consumers Embrace Social Media Ads

As marketers we often think that consumers do not respond to or react favorably to advertising on social media sites, but a new new study from Razorfish reports that "connected" consumers are more open to advertising on social media sites than we think.

According to the report:

• Four in 10 online consumers have made a purhcased based on advertising they saw on a social media site
• Almost three quarters welcome brand advertising on social networks.
  

The key is to distribute content and features that are relevant to the audience and and fit within the context of the social media site.

You can check out the full article here: Study: Consumers Embrace Social Media Ads

Cool Calculator Example

(From Venessa:) I like how the map presents different scenarios visually.

Especially, how users can make smaller decisions (like clicking on individual states and choosing who may be victor there) and see how that decision affects the race overall picture.

Very in line with how we like to serve up info.

Check it out! http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/calculator/

Flash 10 is Coming!

From Venessa:

Adobe just released flash player 10 for developers and early adopters, since we do a lot of flash work I thought I’d share what we have to look forward to once the masses adopt.

1. 3D effects – much easier to create 3D elements that would work faster since they’re created in flash and not a third party program

2. Dynamic sound generation – Rather than a sound we pick, sounds/music can change automatically depending on user’s input (mood?)

3. Oh glorious Text controls! - Typography has always been Flash’s downfall but not anymore! The new version offers font control we could have only hoped for (and would have saved a lot of headaches for our Cymbalta Fibro team). There is now kerning, automatic flowing of text in multiple boxes (incase users need bigger fonts) or around images, and tracking control. In all, I think this is the feature that will benefit us the most.

4. Many other features that have to do with performance and API

If you’d like to take a look for yourself go here (just need to download the new version):http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/features/

The adoption of flash player 9 was faster than any player before it – with 95% of all PC users adopting it. If the same holds true, then I predict we can start offering applications, in this latest version, to our clients by mid next year.