The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has launched a campaign to inform consumers about interest-based advertising and online privacy, with three videos (watch below) to explain targeted marketing and advertising, and explain what its new logo identifies. 

Called "Your Ad Choices," it's one of the largest U.S. consumer privacy campaigns to date and perfectly timed as the SOPA/PIPA debate gets consumers thinking about their online rights.

The DAA is a proponent of self-regulation in digital advertising, and introduced the Ad Choices logo last year. The DAA website receives about 100,000 weekly visits, with about 20-25% of those opting out of behavioral ads.Continue reading...

Given the strong emphasis on branded products, it is logical to conclude that the performance of a product is all that matters to the consumer. But a new global study suggests that the reputation of the company behind the branded product plays a surprisingly important role in the consumer purchasing decision.

Seventy percent of consumers surveyed avoid buying products if they do not like the parent company, according to a study conducted by KRC Research, a market research firm, for the Weber Shandwick PR agency. The study was conducted among 1,375 consumers and 575 senior corporate executives in Brazil, China, the U.S. and U.K. Weber Shandwick's Chief Reputation Strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross says, "Consumers are using their dollars as a vote of confidence in companies they trust... The company standing behind the brand assures consumers that they can trust the quality, ethics and safety of the brands they are buying."Continue reading...

Oscar Wilde’s infamous 1889 essay, The Decay of Lying, gave us the notion that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." The art of texting and tweeting, now an inextricable part of our everyday lives, has moved beyond imitation to reality as one more taboo against the 24/7 smartphone tether consuming our world bites the dust.

A concert hall in Seattle is the harbinger of things to come, choosing to embrace texting and tweeting before and during the curtain’s rise. Tateuchi Center, Bellevue, Washington, scheduled to open in 2014, will be wired to allow patrons to post updates to Twitter and Facebook.

The 2,000-seat venue plans a laissez-faire phone policy, all in the hopes of drawing a younger audience accustomed to smartphone usage anywhere, anytime.

It may indeed be generational. Older theater-goers have hoped for stricter policies against phone usage, but newer paradigms, like Tateuchi, are proposing that a cell phone etiquette will emerge — given a place to flourish, in a non-disruptive way, without censure.Continue reading...

This holiday shopping season will be dominated by the ‘precision shopper’ as 72% of U.S. consumers will be consciously minding their budgets according to the latest annual Accenture Holiday Shopping Survey.

Accenture projects that discretionary gift spending this holiday will be consonant with the strains on consumer’s wallets and economic concerns. ‘Extravagant’ or ‘unrestrained’ spending is planned by only 6% surveyed while 24% expect a ‘thrifty’ holiday season with one in five (18%) ‘focused on necessities.’

While 88% plan to spend the same or less than last year, a spike from shoppers with income exceeding $100,000 (71% of respondents) expect to spend at least $500 on gifts in a segmented boost for retailers. 

“This holiday season will see the balance of power continue to tip in favor of the consumer,” stated Janet Hoffman, managing director of Accenture’s retail practice. “‘Precision shoppers’ will dominate. They will be very targeted about where and what they buy, and will be more inclined to shop around for the best value.”Continue reading...

Last year, during the Indianapolis 500, while racecars went around and around (and around) Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1.1 million hot dogs were purchased (and likely consumed) by race attendees. 

That many dogs eaten in one location apparently set off some alarm bells for The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes preventive medicine and a vegan diet, according to USA Today. As a result, the group put $2,750 down on a billboard near the Speedway and put an ad up there that shows hot dogs in a cigarette pack along with a skull and crossbones. For once, the concern isn't obesity with this food warning; it's cancer.

The billboard's text accompanying the alarming graphic: “Warning: Hot dogs can wreck your health."Continue reading...

When someone is looking to buy a cell phone, they don’t generally want to hear about how the World Health Organization has classified such devices as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” But the city of San Francisco now requires that such a lovely piece of info be passed along to its more than three million residents upon purchase.

The city's board of supervisors approved a new law on Tuesday, giving their "final approval to a law that would require retailers to disclose information about the radiation emitted by cellphones. No other city in the nation has passed similar legislation," according to The Bay Citizen.

Earlier this month, “the San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave preliminary approval to a revised ordinance that would require cell phone retailers to provide information to customers about radio frequency energy emissions from cell phones,” according to CNN.com. “ This energy can be absorbed by the head and body, and retailers also would have to explain how consumers can limit this exposure.”Continue reading...

Eager to reach "the next billion consumers," BBDO, Microsoft and Ipsos have joined forces "for a proprietary study of multi-platform campaigns leveraging both creativity and technology to identify a ground-breaking framework for marketing success," which they released at the Cannes advertising festival this week.

What's unique about this study, according to Microsoft Advertising's blog post — is the methodology and findings:

"Unlike other digital advertising multi-screen research, we took an approach that has never been done before and applied psychological archetypes—or models of a person or behavior—to put personalities to each device. (These archetypes were pioneered by the influential psychiatrist Carl Jung.) With the study, we set out to determine what’s going on in people’s psyche and understand their emotional connection and response to each screen – the PC, TV, Mobile, etc. For instance, we found the mobile phone is like a ‘lover’ – it’s the most intimate of all the devices you interact with each day, therefore ads should be highly relevant and appeal only to you."

Above, watch BBDO's worldwide CMO, Simon Bond, and Microsoft's global advertising VP Marc Bresseel discuss the research. Bond had more to say after the panel, below.Continue reading...

The times they are a-changing in Australia. A new report has it that Aussies are more likely to stay home than go out at night, are less interested in beer-drinking (awesome beer ads notwithstanding) than in the recent past, and are much more interested in recreational activities such as sporting equipment or television.

“The conventional wisdom is that Australians spend like there’s no tomorrow, are reluctant to save, put purchases on the credit card and love a beer, smoke and flutter (gambling). But the stereotype is outdated,” said CommSec chief economist Craig James, author of The New Aussie Consumer, according to StartupSmart.Continue reading...