Pomegranate Phone Is Too Good to Be True

This new phone is amazing. It has GPS, an MP3 player, a video camera and a voice translator. Oh yea, and it can also make coffee and be used as a harmonica.

Check out the cool Pomegranate Phone website which is actually a $300,000 ad campaign for the province of Nova Scotia. Yup, you heard that right. It's Canadian travel propaganda. And I love it.

It appears to be attracting a great deal of interest with it's high-quality video and slickly produced graphics. I wonder if this type of branded entertainment functions well as marketing. My gut says that it does work. Even though I wasn't looking for Nova Scotia, it pulled me in. I've thought about Nova Scotia several times today because of this site...which is several times more than I thought about it yesterday. And now I'm blabbing to my blog about it.

Not everyone agrees that this attempt at deliberate viral marketing is effective. Some even call it the Pombomb.

Online Video is Bright Spot in Dark Economy

The business of online video is growing. Numerous recent articles are pointing toward encouraging trends for those of us who are in the business of digital entertainment on the web.

Video advertising appears to continue to sell well according to a recent article in The Economist. Internet advertising will be relatively unscathed in the downturn.

A recent MediaPost article by Mark Walsh seems to support this. "Market researcher eMarketer maintains that video ad spending will buck the downward trend. It expects the category to increase 45% in 2009 to $850 million, or just over 3% of the $25.7 million total projected in online ad spending." See" Video Expected To 'Buck The Downward Trend'

Viral Entertainment Shows How To Squeeze Creative Juices

This is quality online entertainment. Ever wonder where creative juices come from? Just squeeze a skinny designer. Watch this hilarious video "The Harvest" (above) created for The South West Regional Development Agency, a group promoting South West England.

The video was made by Bristol-based viral video gurus Rubber Republic. In addition to making the video, they sent 2000 bottles of "creative juices" (you'll understand once you watch the video) to London creative agencies.

Check out the Creative Juices microsite.

Online Video Advertising Growth

It seems that every time another research firm predicts the size of the online video advertising market, another firm turns around and makes a higher prediction. The realities of the market and the ever-increasing adoption of online video is proving that the predictions are too low. The only thing we can be sure of is that advertising for online video will be huge! This is great news for all of us content creators...if there is money in the market, funding for shows will continue to increase.

Lehman predicts $2.4B in U.S. Video Ads by 2010. See the TechCrunch post.

Parks Associates predict $6.6B in Online Video Ads by 2012. See the NewTeeVee post.

Forrester predicts $7.1B in Online Video Ads by 2012.

Fifty Percent of US Population will Watch Online Video in 2008

Not everyone agrees. "Expectations for online video ad revenue growing faster than the evidence"

Microsoft Digital Advertising News

YuMe, a company dedicated to delivering ads across all platforms, has recently made a big deal with Microsoft to provide services and sales for digital video distribution. The video above is an interview with the Yume founder by Scobleizer.

In similar news, Microsoft just bought Navic Networks, a company that delivers advertising to digital television platforms. Read about the deal at The Seattle PI.

To learn more about the impending switch-over to digital television, read my earlier post T-Commerce, Digital TV and the Digitization of Content.