promotion

Who wouldn't want a 'Star Wars'-themed burger?

On February 10, "Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace" will come back to theaters, this time in 3D. That means we can expect to see Star Wars tie-ins squeezed out worldwide.

With that in mind, if you're in Europe and you're near a Quick restaurant, you might want to swing by and try one of the trio of Star Wars-themed burgers. There's the Jedi Burger, which looks relatively benevolent; the Dark Burger, the bun of which has poppy seeds, a sure sign of evil if I ever saw one; and the Dark Vador Burger. Dark Vador is what Darth Vader is called in French (man, they have a word for everything, don't they?), but that's probably not what draws your attention so much as the OMG WHAT IS--

--the black bun.… Read more

Google demotes Chrome in search results over pay-for-post promo

Google has demoted its Chrome home page in results for a search using the keyword "browser" following an effort to have bloggers promote the Google browser that backfired.

Now, there is no Chrome ad at the top of the results or link to the Chrome page anywhere on the first page of results on Google. It's ranked in position 50, according to Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, which first reported this news.

Google's statement, according to SearchEngineLand, is:

"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site'… Read more

Qualcomm promotes its own

Qualcomm said today that it will promote three of its top executives in a reshuffling of the management responsibilities.

The San Diego wireless technology company will move Steve Altman over to vice chairman from president. Steve Mollenkopf, who runs the CDMA technologies business, will take over as president and chief operating officer. Derek Aberle, who runs the licensing business, was promoted to executive vice president and group president.

The changes take effect on November 12. Altman and Mollenkopf will continue to report to CEO Paul Jacobs, while Aberle will report to Mollenkopf.

Mollenkopf and Aberle will get expanded roles in … Read more

Twitter expands paid tweets program

Twitter is expanding its promoted-tweets program and is now including paid tweets from companies that people don't already follow in their timelines.

The tweets, which began rolling out today, include promotions for AMC Theatres, American Express, Best Western, Disney, HP, Lexus, Lionsgate, Movietickets.com, Pepsi, Red Bull, Salesforce.com, Sephora, Xbox, and Yahoo.

Twitter started inserting paid tweets into people's streams in July. The difference with that initial rollout was that people would only see paid tweets from companies they were following. Now they'll see tweets from whichever company is running a paid program.

Not everyone will … Read more

iTunes chief Eddy Cue promoted to Apple SVP

Apple has promoted its iTunes chief, Eddy Cue, to senior vice president for Internet software and services.

In his new role, Cue will oversee Apple's iTunes Store, as well as iCloud, iAd, and its iBookstore platform, according to his biography page on Apple's Web site. He will report to the company's new CEO, Tim Cook.

A 22-year veteran at Apple, Eddy has been instrumental in the development of some of the company's most successful products. According to his biography, Cue helped create Apple's online store in 1998, and followed that up with the development of the iTunes Music Store in 2003. He also had "major" involvement in the creation of the company's App Store in 2008.

Cue's promotion is the latest shakeup in Apple's management. Last week, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs announced that he was resigning as CEO. Jobs recommended that the board appoint his COO, Tim Cook, as the new chief executive.… Read more

Twitter starts injecting paid tweets into the stream

Twitter today stepped up its advertising efforts with a new program that puts promoted tweets right in front of where users are likely to be looking.

The new system takes promoted tweets--which are paid marketing messages from Twitter's business partners--and puts them up near the top of users' timelines, where they'd typically find the latest updates from accounts of those they're following. Twitter says users will only see these tweets once, and only if they're following that brand or organization. The company has also included a way to dismiss these from the stream, something that can'… Read more

Hands-on: Amazon Cloud Player's new iPad Web app

I thought I could refuse Amazon's Cloud Player. I guess I was wrong.

Amazon unveiled official browser support on the iPad for Cloud Player. For me, and for many others, that's huge news. Previously, iOS devices hadn't been working too smoothly with Amazon's Cloud Player music-storage service. The newly updated Safari Web app isn't surprising, but it does work as advertised. iPad owners, you can officially rejoice.

Albums, playlists, and songs load up just like they would on a normal computer browser. Even better, the song list can be scrolled through with a single finger swipe. Songs play smoothly, and track-skipping and other controls work as expected. The best part, though, is that the Web app works well outside the browser in multitasking, too. … Read more

Samsung renews free 3D glasses offer, with caveats

A new promotion offering two free pairs of 3D glasses with purchase of select 2011 Samsung 3D TVs began June 28 and will run through August 13.

Since the glasses normally cost $50 each, the promotion is pretty tempting for 3D fans. No other 2011 active 3D TV except the expensive Panasonic TC-PVT30 series currently includes glasses, although passive models like the LG LW5600 series do.

This new Samsung offer has more strings attached than the company's previous such promotion, however.

The new press release states: "Consumers purchasing qualified 2011 3D TVs from participating authorized retailers will receive … Read more

Daily cost of a 'promoted trend' on Twitter: $120,000

The cost of advertising on Twitter has increased roughly five-fold since the social-microblog-whatchamacallit service started offering "promoted trends" a little over a year ago.

In an interview with the marketing site Clickz published this week, Twitter director of revenue Adam Bain says the cost of a promoted trend is now $120,000 per day, up from $25,000-$30,000 when Twitter launched the service in April 2010. Bain says over that time, Twitter has worked with more than 600 advertisers on more than 6,000 campaigns. That's decent growth for an ad service that launched with just 6 clients.

Big-name clients include the likes of Virgin, HBO, Samsung, JetBlue, and others. In addition to promoted trend slots, which appear on the right side of any Twitter user's home page, Twitter also offers promoted accounts and promoted tweets, but those are sold through an auction system, and--in the past at least--use a pay-per-click or pay-per-follow system. Recently, Bain says, Twitter has started asking for advertisers to spend a minimum of $15,000 over a three-month period.

If Twitter managed to get at least that $15,000 for each of its 6,000 campaigns (and to be clear, no one says they have, but humor me), that's a cool $90 million, or enough to buy at least two more Tweetdecks. Add in revenue from promoted trends and take into account some of Twitter's deep-pocketed, top-tier advertisers, and there's probably plenty more where that's coming from, and maybe even enough to buy stock in Facebook when it finally goes public.… Read more

The 404 771: Where the #dickbar is our totem (podcast)

We've been curious about how Twitter plans to make money off its services, and this weekend our questions were answered with one word: the dickbar. In-stream advertising has finally landed on the official Twitter iPhone app, and users will now see a top-mounted bar that shows "promoted" hashtags sponsored by advertisers who pay for the distraction.

The problem with these ads isn't that they're obtrusive or that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo initially told us they would be "organic to the platform," but that they're not specifically targeted at users, which makes sense because people use Twitter for a million different applications.

During this conversation, Wilson also reveals that he actually clicks on Google ads when he's shopping for things like headphones or, say, a house. I guess Jeff and I are so astonished at this because we're always looking for the quickest, easiest way to get rid of the annoying pop-ups.

The Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index shows, via statistical analysis of interviews with adults, that the happiest man in America is Alvin Wong: a tall, Asian-American, observant Jewish man who's at least 65 years old, married with children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business, and has a combined annual household income of at least $120k.

We certainly have a long way to go before we achieve pure bliss!

Apple rejected the controversial iBoobs application back… Read more