YouTube Going Commercial

G@@gle wants to attract mainstream advertisers to YouTube. Therefore, the content will undergo an upgrade and the site will be redesigned.

The user-generated-video hub will become yet another place you may watch TV episodes and movies online. Just in case we needed another place where we may watch those stupid commercials about "that certain male part."

YouTube will still accept user-generated-video, but you will have to look to find it. It will be behind the last tab.


Read more here: YouTube Plans Redesign to Highlight Premium Content
The new design will offer four tabs: Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. The first three tabs will display premium shows, clips, and movies from Google's network and studio partners, all of which will be monetized with in-stream advertising. Meanwhile the Videos channel will house amateur and semi-pro content of the sort major brand advertisers have shied away from.

So, another creative outlet for aspiring videographers, public relations outlet for non-profit agencies and testing ground for alternative media may be going away. YouTube will need a new tag line: Broadcast Yourself may no longer be relevant.

Blog Your Blessing : To All That Live



~ Sioux Prayer ~

Grandfather Great Spirit All Over The World
The Faces Of Living Things Are Alike.
With Tenderness,They Have Come Up Out Of The Ground.
Look Upon Your Children That They May Face The Winds
And Walk The Good Road To The Day Of Quiet.
~~~~~~~~
Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill Us With The Light.
Give Us The Strength To Understand And The Eyes To See.
Teach Us To Walk The Soft Earth As Relatives
To All That Live.





The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on any Sunday as we blog our blessings.

SezWho is Shutting Down



SezWho is shutting down. JS-Kit is keeping the service open until March 31, 2009. After that time, anyone using SezWho will need to sign up for JS-Kit. JS-Kit is the world's largest distributed social network, connecting over 600,000 publishers with light weight, cross domain services, including comments, ratings, and polls.

I tried SezWho when it was first suggested by Entrecard. It slowed down my blogs, so I removed it. Perhaps, the service will be improved by this change. I would wait before I rush into it. However, if you are an existing user, you should probably sign up for the JS-Kit, even if you do not use it at first.


Wordless Wednesday : Zebras

Texas Zebras on Bump Gate Road


Blog Your Blessing : The Irish in All of Us


Tip of the Hat to: EJ Cooksey for finding this gem and posting it on her blog.



The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on any Sunday as we blog our blessings.



Wordless Wednesday


San Antonio Botanical Gardens with
downtown San Antonio in background.



san antonio botanical gardensPhotograph by Eileen Trainor - all rights reserved


Right-clicking the image will open a larger image in another window


Behavioral Targeting by any other name . . .



This is scary. Google is adding interest-based advertising, going a step beyond the targeted advertising they now offer to Adsense advertisers. Google will track actions across the Internet in order to serve interest-based advertisements to users.

Although it sounds good in theory, this is behavioral targeting. Google has indicated that there will be an opt-out option, IF you know to ask for it. For a majority of users, their actions will be cataloged, their market segment determined, their demographics noted, and their privacy violated.

For related posts about behavioral targeting, click here
.


Blog Your Blessings : Rain

Sewell Park in the Rain
Photograph by Eileen Trainor


Rain is Grace;
rain is the sky condescending to the earth;
without rain,
there would be no life.

John Updike



The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on any Sunday as we blog our blessings.

Email Attitudes and Usage Study

Actionable Information for Marketers From the
Annual Consumer Email Attitudes and Usage Study

Merkle is one of the fastest growing database marketing agencies in the USA. Merkle helps clients design, execute and evaluate integrated customer marketing programs. One of the channels used is opt-in email marketing. The 7th annual study of consumer attitudes and email usage outlines the importance of opt-in email marketing in developing brands and influencing customer behavior.

Download White Paper (PDF) View from the Inbox 2009

From the Executive Summary:
Email continues to be a popular marketing communications channel in today’s challenging economic climate due to its low cost-per-contact and its ability to provide direct, measurable results. . . . The Merkle View from the Inbox report helps guide marketers through this changing landscape.
If you are an email marketer, this white paper should be on your desktop this Spring. The cost of continuing with outdated email marketing practices is high: 30% of opt-in recipients stopped doing business with at least one company due to their poor email marketing practices.

For an excellent summary of the study, please read MediaPost Publications Opt-In Email Next Best After Family and Friends 03/13/2009.



Wordless Wednesday

Picture of Kangaroos at exotic ranch outside Camp WoodTexas 'Roos
Photography by Eileen Trainor
all rights reserved


Blog Your Blessings : Women


International Women's Day (IWD) is March 8, 2009. IWD is now an official holiday in many countries. However, women are still not equal to men in many areas of life. So make a difference, think globally and act locally!

Write your thoughts about IWD on your blog on March 8, 2009. Register at BloggersUnite (new site!) so that you may share your post with other members of Bloggers Unite.
The International Women's Day website provides a free service to women and organizations around the world wanting to share and promote their IWD activity, videos, opinions and ideas.

The theme this year is: 2009: Women and men united to end violence against women and girls. Everyone is welcome!




The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. Visit the blog, grab the blogroll code, add it to your blog, and leave a comment. On the next Sunday, post your blessing, visit others on the blogroll so they will view your BYBS post. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on any Sunday as we blog our blessings.

Wordless Wednesday

Austin Museum of Art: AMOA-Laguna Gloria
3809 W 35th Street, Austin, TX 78703
(512) 323-6380

February 2009 Top Entrecard Droppers

These are the top droppers on Advertising for Success this month. I appreciate their patronage and hope they enjoy my blog as much as I do their blog when I reciprocate drops.

They Call it Super Crunching

Super Crunching 101 : Unleash the Power of Prediction
March 12, 10:30am PDT
Presented by Web Trends


A free webinar will help take the guess work out of tough marketing decisions. Learn how from Ian Ayres, best-selling author of Super Crunchers, during a live, complimentary webinar and Q&A session. Ayres will discuss how analysis - or "crunching" - of large databases helps industry leaders to:
  • Take advantage of more sales channels with tighter budgets
  • Uncover future business trends with randomized experiments
  • Improve service by connecting customer needs with seemingly unrelated online actions
Free webinar, register now. Sign up is quick and easy!