interactive ads
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Microsoft's NUAds interactive advertising to harness powers of Kinect, 'change television as we know it'
The folks over at Microsoft Advertising are quite fond of their latest brainchild, so much so that they're calling the Kinect-enabled advertising platform "irresistibly interactive." NUAds -- which snaked the NU in NUI -- feeds off our need for interactivity, allowing advertisers to lure us in by enabling points of gesture and voice control. Think the latest Snuggie spot is super cool? Just say "Xbox, Tweet," and all your friends will know it. Want to know more about Mariah Carey's latest fragrance? Say "Xbox, More," and the info is all yours. Wondering where you can pick up a box of Nad's edible hair remover? Say "Xbox, Near Me," and you'll get a text with the location of the closest Nad's retailer. Want to vote on the hottest new Bratz doll? Give your girl a thumbs up. So Microsoft may have engaged a host of more respectable partners, namely Adidas, NBC, and Coca Cola, for its demo of the voice and gesture-enabled advertising platform yesterday, and NUAds does indeed serve up promotions in an entirely new way, but will it really change how we view the boob tube for good? Check out the video demo after the break, and weigh in the comments below.
iPhones control interactive billboard in Stockholm to win McTreats
Ah, Sweden. The land of Akvavit, crayfish parties and billboards that respond to your iPhone. You heard that right. McDonald's, not exactly a hotbed of Swedish cuisine but a popular place to eat nonetheless, has installed an interactive billboard in Stockholm. Enter a special URL, and you can play pong on the billboard with your iPhone. If you can survive for 30 seconds in the game, you get a digital coupon for some treats at Mickey D's. What's brilliant is that you don't need to download an app to play the game - just enter picknplay.se into a browser, and a web app checks your location to verify that you're near the billboard. You knew there was a good reason to keep Location Services turned on all the time... Another game on the same billboard has you snap a photo of a McTreat with a phone (not necessarily an iPhone) to get a free goodie at a local McDonald's. It's an ingenious use of digital technology to engage people in interactive advertising. How about you, TUAW readers? Would you get pulled in by an interactive ad that takes advantage of a feature of your iOS device? Leave your answer in the comments below.
Adobe and Greystripe partner for ads that convert Flash to HTML5
When you complain about Apple's products lacking Flash support, we figure you're talking about games and video, but web developers have to make a living too, right? That's why Greystripe and Adobe are working together to bring ads to iDevices all around, with an intriguing technology that might one day enable the real reasons we want Flash as well. Like the Smokescreen demo we saw last week, Greystripe can reportedly transcode the banned content to HTML5 on the fly, and it's apparently impressive enough that Adobe's signed on to create an interactive, crossplatform ad solution (also on Android and Java devices) priced and marketed specifically to rival Apple's own. With Apple's distinguished record as keeper of the walled garden, we'll see how well that goes, but we're definitely interested in other possibilities for the company's code. Full press release after the break.
TiVo patent points to new sharing and interactivity built around closed captions
The rumors are already flying for that upcoming March 2nd TiVo event, but a recently granted patent gives us one idea of what TiVo's been up to of late. The basic idea of the patent is to use embedded meta data in TV broadcasts, primarily the closed caption text, to create "event identification data" that makes the DVR -- when synced up against related data online -- smarter about the content. Example uses include overlaying interactive ads from the content provider, creating "tagged" video files for viewing on a portable device, extracting tagged clips, or even "sharing" segments with other TiVo users. Some of this info, like the commercial detection, is already in use, but the opportunity to "share" a sequence with a friend would be a powerful workaround for existing limitations from broadcasting companies that don't want users sending copyrighted content to each other. Using the TiVo to merely "tag" the relevant portion of something already recorded by a friend (hopefully with the addition of our helpful "OMG" and "LOL" commentary) makes a lot of sense, and even if we don't see it in this upcoming revision, it could be a pretty nice win for TiVo in the ongoing war between the well dressed, successful people who create our content and us schlubs who are trying to consume it conveniently.
Interactive ad campaign seeks to "reinvent commercial time as content time"
Here at Engadget HD, we've been watching TV for a long, long time, and we can't honestly say that we've ever viewed commercial time as content time. Nevertheless, MTV Networks is teaming up with Cadbury and DISH Network in order to launch its "first-ever advertiser-supported interactive television campaign." Available "exclusively" to DISH Network customers (a curse disguised as a blessing?), the campaign will debut during The N's reality series Queen Bees on July 11th at 9:00PM ET / PT. Put simply, it will present viewers with sets of questions to answer during the show (no, that's not distracting at all), and in the next commercial break, the poll results will be shown. According to the outfits involved, this is their attempt to "reinvent commercial time as content time" and "encourage viewer retention throughout the pod." We're curious -- does anyone at MTV / Cadbury / DISH actually believe this stuff, or does it just sound great on a conference call?
Meet BluScreen, another Bluetooth-based advertising system
While this isn't the first time that we've heard of Bluetooth-enabled advertising, we still think it's an intriguing idea. Researchers at the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the UK have come up with their own way to connect this nearly-ubiquitous cellphone technology with dynamic advertising in the department hallway, calling it BluScreen. The 22-inch hall-mounted screen is a working prototype that detects Bluetooth devices nearby and displays advertising and announcements once detected -- making sure to use each unique Bluetooth identifier to log what advertisements are displayed so that none are repeated. We wonder though, how this announcement will play out in Paris once the French get wind of it. They hate it when the English start competing with them.[Via NewScientistTech]
Parisian billboards enabled for interactive advertising
In what may be the first step towards a possible "nightmare scenario" where you can't walk around an urban area without your phone being deluged with spam, a French advertising firm has installed small transmitters on billboards and posters around Paris that offer downloads or discounts to passersby. Luckily the Bluetooth-based system being deployed by JCDecaux is strictly opt-in, meaning only those mobile users who want the swag-on-the-go will be bothered, and they can further limit intrusions by choosing to just receive ads about topics that interest them. Ironically, this commercial endeavor evolved out of a project by France's National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control to provide assistance for the disabled, but the project was scrapped and JCDecaux purchased the exclusive license for the underlying technology. The same team that worked on the government research is also developing another innovative fusion of advertising and cellphone, in the form of billboards called UbiBoards that change their displays based on characteristics of the majority of the people in the vicinity by pulling demographic data from their handsets.[Via textually, picture courtesy of Kameleon]
