cpm
Latest
EA Ronku program pays YouTubers for game coverage, with rules
EA's Ronku program offers YouTube personalities extra cash for covering specific aspects of EA games, with rules regarding what the players can say or show on-camera. For the "Battlefield 4 Launch" Ronku assignment, YouTubers wouldn't receive compensation if they made "a video that focuses on glitches in the game," according to a document posted to NeoGAF. Compensation for the Battlefield 4 Launch assignment was $10 per CPM with a cap of 20 million views, or $200,000. "Through EA's Ronku program, some fans are compensated for the YouTube videos they create and share about our games," an EA spokesperson told The Verge. "The program requires that participants comply with FTC guidelines and identify when content is sponsored. User-generated videos are a valuable and unique aspect of how gamers share their experiences playing the games they love, and one that EA supports." Asked whether YouTubers openly disclose their participation in the Ronku program, the spokesperson said, "We explicitly state in the Terms & Conditions of the program that each video must comply with the FTC's Guidelines concerning Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising." The FTC's Guidelines on Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising, in PDF form here, offer examples of personalities who would have to disclose the compensation, and those who wouldn't. In Example 7 of § 255.5, disclosure of material connections, the FTC states that a blogger reviewing a game would have to share his connection to the company if he received that product for free. Microsoft also has a YouTube bonus program for presenting positive coverage of its products, which it calls "a typical marketing partnership."
Moneta Onyx phase-change memory prototype can write some data 7x faster than traditional SSDs
As file sizes for many data types continue to grow, smaller chunks are also becoming more ubiquitous, particularly on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and search tools like Google. These high-volume, small-size blocks of data may soon be served up from a specific type of SSD, like the Moneta Onyx prototype developed by a team at the University of California, San Diego. Onyx uses phase-change memory (PCM), which can rewrite single bits of data (1s and 0s) on demand, rather than rewriting data in larger chunks, yielding sustained 327 megabyte per second (MB/s) reads and 91MB/s writes with smaller file types -- two to seven times faster than the most efficient commercial SSDs. PCM specifically benefits granular data, rather than large files that must be transferred completely (like photos and documents), so the tech is more likely to appear on devices serving up short text-based messages. Traditional SSDs can write larger files faster than the Onyx prototype, though the new drive offers speedier read speeds across the board. It'll be at least a couple years before PCM becomes commercially available, but once (and if) it does, you'll be reading about your coworker's breakfast or college buddy's traffic jam milliseconds faster than before.
iPad ads more lucrative than iPhone spots
Here's an interesting little finding regarding Apple's iOS devices -- Mobclix claims that for the month of July 2010, ads on the iPad were actually more lucrative than ads running on iPhone apps. The effective cost per thousand impressions is actually five times higher on the iPad than on the iPhone, which means that because there are fewer iPads around (but presumably ad rates are currently around even for the two devices), advertisers are actually paying much more to reach the same amount of people on the larger device as the smaller one. But that cost is paying off -- iPad users tend to spend about three times as much time playing with apps on their devices versus iPhone users of the same apps. Of course, given the brevity of a typical iPhone usage profile, that's still only about ten minutes more per app on the iPad. But it's quite clear already that the iPad presents a different use case, and that advertisers will have to consider the two almost completely different audiences. Keep in mind that the iPad is still in its relative infancy -- the iPhone has only been around for a few years, but we're still only talking about a few months (and even less than that, considering these numbers come from July) on the iPad. It'll be interesting to see how these two devices continue to diverge in the future.
