Twitter Launches Advertisement System Based on Consumer Acceptance

We have all been witnesses to the growing popularity of social networking media for advertising that has encountered a recent spike with the creation of facebook. The truth of the matter is that this type of marketing is not going away and may hurt search engine advertising on the long-run, especially now that twitter has launched its ”sponsored tweets”. Sponsored tweets consist on messages or ads that pop up in a user’s top portion of the twitter user interface. The display of these ads and messages, however, is based solely on consumer acceptance, meaning that it will only pop up in the screens of those users that have the greatest probability of responding to the advertisement. A growing number of companies including Virgin Air, Starbucks, Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, and Sony Pictures have already begun to use this new kind of media marketing to pitch new products.

An increasing number of prominent marketers have already predicted a possible threat to search engine marketing that this and other social media marketing may cause in the long run. As senior analyst at Forrester Research, Augie Ray, state: "Search is not going to go away, but there is a shift that is occurring, as consumers find out a great deal about products and sites that may interest them from their social graphs instead of needing to search." More and more companies are beginning to consider this new type of marketing initiative as an effective way to reach out to potential customers instead of relying on these potential customers to reach out to them.

Sources: Twitter, Various

-Cristian Lacayo

3D TV’s Speed Up the Product Life Cycle for “Regular” HD TV’s

The introduction of 3D TV’s this year has triggered unexpected effects in the market for HD TV’s. Although all major players in the new 3D TV market, including Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony, have reached an agreement of using a skimming strategy to introduce this new technology to the market (with prices in the $2,500 range), adoption rates are on the increase. This increase in the adoption of this new technology has thus triggered a defensive response by the HD TV product lines in these and other companies.

The fact that many early adopters are drifting towards this new product and, as such, eliminated any possibility of product replacement in the HD TV market, along with the decrease in price of the product, has led the HD TV market in an unexpected swift arrival into the mature stage of the Product Life Cycle. Although the high margins been charged for 3D TV’s in this introductory stage is projected to make up for the future loss of profits in the HD TV market for the companies that have entered the former market, other companies such as Toshiba and Panasonic that are lagging behind in their entry to the 3D TV market may be experiencing significant problems in the recent future.

Sources: Various

Cristian Lacayo