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YouTube video maker MKBHD wins Tesla's 'Project Loveday' ad contest
Tonight at 11:45 PM ET Elon Musk will deliver the first production Tesla Model 3s during a livestreamed event, and now the company has some new ads to play during any down time. Fans of its cars and technology submitted their own advertisements for the Project Loveday contest, which was inspired by a 10-year-old's letter. Musk announced the three winners tonight on his Twitter account, with YouTuber and tech reviewer Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD nabbing the top spot. The winner has been promised a trip to a Tesla product launch, and Tesla said it will play the most popular videos on the stream tonight. The winning isn't just a slick look at the car, it also shows off some of the high tech features like Summon and its appropriately-named Ludicrous Mode acceleration. Tesla has eschewed traditional advertising for its vehicles so far, but now that it has so many high quality videos to pull from -- and a car with a price closer to the mainstream -- maybe that could change.
Tesla opens 'Project Loveday' contest for fan-made ads
Tesla has refused to do traditional advertising for its electric vehicles, instead relying on PR and its reputation for innovation. Some fans love the cars so much that they've gone ahead and made advertisements for the company, inspiring a letter from "green" fan Bria asking Elon Musk to run a contest looking for the best one. A few days ago the CEO promised he'd do it, and just like that, Project Loveday is on, seeking out 90-second YouTube submissions that relate to "Tesla, SolarCity, our products, or our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."
Google took down nearly 2 billion 'bad ads' in 2016
Sketchy advertisers are all over the internet, and Google is doing everything it can to stop them from scamming users. According to a recent report on the matter, the search giant removed 1.7 billion ads from its advertising platform in 2016, more than double the amount compared to the year prior. The online housekeeping included 68 million ads for illegal pharmaceutical products, 80 million for content that misled and deceived consumers, as well as 112 million others that used trick-to-click methods.
Get ready for ads in Facebook Messenger
If you've been chatting with businesses via Facebook Messenger, don't be too surprised if they start sending you ads in the near future. A leaked document obtained by TechCrunch apparently says that users who've voluntarily messaged a company could open themselves up to the spam as early as this April. Note the "voluntarily" bit there. From the sounds of it, Facebook is going to be working pretty hard to ensure that the incoming messages are actually welcome, lest you get annoyed and uninstall the app.
This ad is how Twitter is introducing itself to the world
You read Engadget, so you're probably familiar with Twitter even if you're not a regular user. For most other people -- who apparently aren't joining fast enough to please investors -- it's just something occasionally mentioned on the news or Sportscenter. Those people are the ones who the social network's first TV ad is aimed towards. Predictably, the (baseball-focused, since it premiered a few minutes ago during tonight's World Series game) advertisement is all about the new Moments feature intended to organize and slow the flow of information for new users. I felt more confused than ever about Twitter's purpose after watching the 30-second spot, but maybe the intended audience will have a different reaction -- you can check it out after the break.
Verizon's customer-tracking 'supercookies' connect to AOL ads
In the last year it's become known that Verizon uses "supercookies" (aka UIDH or Relevant Mobile Advertising) to track what its mobile customers are doing, but now it's taking a step further by quietly linking that information to ads from AOL (the parent company of Engadget, which is also now owned by Verizon). According to ProPublica, the AOL ad network reaches across 40 percent of the internet, and by working with Verizon's UIDH (Unique Identifying Device Header) it can track in great detail what apps people on Verizon Wireless use and what websites they visit. Unfortunately, beyond just serving up targeted ads, the information is also unencrypted and could possibly be used by others to track you. The only good news? Verizon subscribers can opt out, which you can do by following this link or calling 1-866—211—0874.
Forever 21's 'Thread Screen' displays Instagram pics using fabric
Most companies seek out the latest displays for high-tech billboards, but Forever 21 has decided to take a different route for this particular Instagram project. For the past year-and-a-half, the folks at connected hardware maker Breakfast New York have been building a "Thread Screen" for the company. It's called that, because well, it's literally a screen made of 6,400 mechanical spools of multicolored threaded fabric. Those spools have five-and-a-half feet of fabric each, divided into 36 colors that transition every inch-and-a-half. They move like a conveyor belt, stopping at the right hue based on what picture they're displaying -- an infrared even scans the finished product to make sure each spool is displaying the correct color.
Your Facebook likes and shares will be ignored by advertisers
Facebook likes and shares can give you a pretty good idea of how popular your posts are, and since sharing is essential for social media, they can be considered as two of the website's key features. Apparently, though, they're more like extra metrics making success much harder to measure for advertisers, as people accidentally click them (especially the Like button) all the time. So, the social network has decided to drop your likes and shares from their Cost per Click (CPC) measurements, making them less valuable than they are today.
Smartphone ad banned from UK TV for objectifying women
Kazam is hardly a well-known smartphone brand in the UK, and that's unlikely to change any time soon if its ads are being pulled from TV. After a series of complaints, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad for the company's Tornado 348 handset, ruling that it objectifies women and is "sexually suggestive." The clip shows a woman moseying around in her underwear, grabbing a pair of jeans and ironing a shirt, only to discover that she'd forgotten to take her smartphone out of the top pocket.
Get ready to start seeing video ads in your Instagram feed
If people weren't too happy with the first batch of sponsored posts by Instagram, those temper tantrums might reach a new level soon. According to Adweek, the Facebook-owned imaging service is now rolling out video ads to users' feeds, having been quietly testing them for the past six months. So, starting today, don't be surprised to unexpectedly run into a random 15-second video while you're trying to find a picture of the next great brunch. As it stands, Adweek points out that Instagram is pushing motion ads from Activision, Banana Republic, CW and Lancome, but chances are you'll start seeing others from more companies as time goes on. In the meantime, head on past the break to check out what you can expect -- because you're dying to know.
Star Citizen pimps out the Drake Cutlass
Are you considering purchasing a new ship in Star Citizen? Do you anticipate yourself frequently dodging raider attacks while listening to up-tempo instrumental music? Are you generally fond of using car commercials to determine your purchases? If you answered in the affirmative for all of that, you might be well-served by checking out the new commercial for the Drake Cutlass embedded just past the break. The entire commercial is rendered in-game (except for one specific gesture), so it serves the dual purpose of showing off the ship and showing off the ships themselves. If you'd like, you can view the commercial in stereoscopic 3-D as well. And if you like what you see from the commercial, you can step into your own Cutlass starting at $115, although you can currently only explore the ship rather than actually using it for anything.
UK iPhone 6 ad features Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd)
Along with the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus came a charming pair of ads featuring Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon that showed some of the abilities of the two new phones. At least that's what happened in America. In the UK the ads are basically the same, just with one major and important difference -- their ads feature Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade from The IT Crowd. There are minor differences between the ads, but the most glaring example shows a major difference between our two cultures. In the UK ad Ayoade brags about eating a "massive" Arctic roll loaded with 540 calories, while in America Fallon consumes a 1200 calorie funnel cake. We suppose Americans would simply say "540 calories isn't that bad"... Currently the ads are only streaming at Apple's UK site, so head over there to see the different versions of "Duo" and "Health".
Mozilla starts testing sponsored tiles in Firefox Nightly's new tabs
Firefox typically fills a new tab with tiles of your most-visited websites, but if you're one of the brave souls using the Nightly experimental build, you'll see something else in there, too: ads. Mozilla has started rolling out sponsored tiles interspersed among websites you've visited on Nightly, months after the organization first announced its plans to do. When you first launch the browser, you'll get a pop-up notification that says some of the tiles will feature sponsored content, and that it'll clearly mark which ones are ads. But TheNextWeb, which has spotted this latest change on the browser's least stable build, noticed that some ads weren't marked at all.
If you can't tell editorial from advertorial, there's a browser plug-in for that
Google product engineer Ian Webster believes sponsored articles should be more easily identifiable (as they should be!), so he built the AdDetector plug-in in his spare time to make that happen. More and more publications turn to sponsored content or native ads these days (even Tumblr does it), but some of them just add disclaimers at the very bottom of the page or small, easy-to-miss bylines. Webster says the problem is that bad native ads depend on you, readers, not knowing that they're, well, sponsored. So, he designed the plug-in to plaster large red banners on paid article pages whenever it detects unfortunately small sponsored disclaimers, in order to boost transparency on the web. He also hopes that by making paid articles more obvious, sponsors would make an effort to put out better content. You can install AdDetector (and make sure this post wasn't sponsored) for Chrome and Firefox from Webster's website.
Apple unveils pair of new, more personal "Your Verse" ads
Following its previous "Your Verse" video ads -- which are closer to micro-documentaries than the TV spots you're used to seeing -- two new stories have been given the Apple treatment. The first, titled "Striking a new chord," follows a musical duo called Yaoband and how the pair uses Apple's tablet to make music in a new way. The second, titled "Organizing a movement," shows how a Detroit resident and cycling enthusiast was able to grow his idea for a city-wide bike ride from a concept into an event that attracts thousands of participants. As you might expect, he uses his iPad to do everything from planning routes to updating social media with news of each ride. Both videos have their own campaign pages with links to the subjects' favorite apps and more information about them and their "verses," which are definitely worth checking out. [via The Loop]
Apple's latest commercial promotes MacBook Air as the 'the notebook people love'
Apple released a new commercial, titled "Stickers," that showcases the MacBook Air. Tagged with the slogan "the notebook people love," the advertisement profiles the different ways people make the MacBook Air their own by personalizing it with a variety of stickers. The 30-second spot also features the electronic music of Hudson Mohawke. You can watch the commercial on Apple's website or its YouTube channel.
Who's your daddy? Sprint and Softbank depict bizarre family portraits
With its Framily plans, Sprint wants you to convince friends, family and possibly outright strangers, to join the carrier and chip a few bucks off your bill. It's even created a new ad series to show just how broad its definition of "framily" is. The dad's a hamster, while the daughter speaks only in French, accompanied by three animated birds. However, Sprint's Frobinsons have to go a long ways to match the sheer offbeat-ness of Softbank's answer to "framily," the Shiratos in Japan. That framily consists of a talking dog as patriarch, a wife who has the real power, a daughter played by popular actress Aya Ueto and a non-Japanese son played by Dante Carver (a Softbank commercial mainstay). The core family unit is then augmented by bit-parts from 'Uncle' Quentin Tarantino, Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa (and his dolphin father) and Tommy Lee-Jones, the live-in-maid-from-space. Ad-Age wasn't a fan, but we hope the Frobinsons are just getting started. We've pulled together a few English-subtitled Softbank ads and added them, alongside Sprint's interpretation, to the video gallery below.
Sony's first PlayStation 4 ad for Japan teases the Japanese with everyone's joy
Japan, you'll get the PlayStation 4 soon. Promise. For now, look at everyone else enjoying it. Don't they look happy? That could be you on February 22nd!
Sony offers a walk down memory lane with every PlayStation (video)
Whether you grew up in London or not, Sony's latest PlayStation 4 ad will assuredly trigger a memory or fifty of the past 25 years. The short video starts with the very first PlayStation and brings viewers all the way through to the upcoming PlayStation 4's November launch, bridging the gap with nostalgia-laced music and game console startup jingles. If nothing else, it'll serve to remind some of you how much time you've spent with video games over the years. Oh, and how bad your haircut was in the late '90s. We really dodged a bullet with the internet not being so prevalent back then, eh?
US Instagram users will soon see ads in their feeds
Instagram is gearing up to monetize all of your colorful border-enhanced photos, and you may not like what that means for your feed. Beginning "in the next couple months," Instagram users in the United States will see "an occasional ad" sandwiched between their friends' photos and videos. The company is insisting that the advertisements will flow with regular content -- and if you don't like a particular ad, you can hide it from view and let the team know what you didn't like. As a final note, the firm clarified that the introduction of ads won't affect ownership rights of the pics and vids you upload -- so if a family member pops up in a sponsored post with a Coke in hand, you'll probably want to send some feedback.
