Ad business

MIT Advertising Lab has interesting commentary on Burger King's use of video games. Here's a quote:

Burger King ... made the decision to sell the games at $3.99, an extremely low price for disc-based (as opposed to downloadable) Xbox games but, as it turned out, a potentially much better price than “free.”
By choosing to charge even a small sum, Burger King seems to have sent a message to consumers that its games had real value, unlike other advergames they might have played and been disappointed by in the past. Burger King further supported the games with a strong marketing campaign that included advertisements shown during Saturday Night Live and during NFL games. All this sent a very clear message to consumers: “There is something of value waiting for you at Burger King.”

This is actually one of a series of articles abstracting the book Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business

MIT AdLab article Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

For those who think Microsoft and Google aren't our competitors, here's Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.

Quote:

"Over time, all ad money will go through a digital ad platform," Ballmer told a gathering of European ad agencies and clients. "All media goes digital, all advertising goes digital."

Link

More:

Microsoft became a player in the ad business with its August purchase of aQuantive, a U.S. company whose technology places ever-changing Web site ads in front of Internet viewers based on specific conditions.

Now, Ballmer is trying to convince media specialists that Microsoft is serious about catching up with Google in the $550 billion global ad market.

California senate votes to block mandatory RFID in employees - Engadget

There seems to be a bandwagon effect centered around RFID-as-destroyer-of-liberty.
Whatever the right and wrongs of this, and opportunistic politicians aside, it's something manufacturers and retailers need to be careful about.
Surveillance is certainly a hot-button topic, and "cool" and "convenient" can easily be trumped by "creepy" and "invasive".

More anti-RFID sentiment here:

http://www.spychips.com/

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Tags: RFID, technophobia