BLOG: The results of two new research studies have made me question one of the final shibboleths of media planning: the idea that there is such a thing as an ‘effective frequency’ which can be easily defined and which offers a single, optimal level at which the advertising ‘works’. The first piece...

BLOG: It might just be me, but the annual MediaGuardian 100 - just published - provides a lovely insight into the many ways TV touches upon our different media and various parts of our media lives. It is an elegant – albeit accidental – exposition of convergence and shows how TV is the strong and...

BLOG: A few years ago, a prevailing theme at Media 360 was that TV was dead – or at least in intensive care. It was depressing (because it was nonsense). A couple of years ago, following the launch of our joint study with the IAB looking at TV + online, the tone had shifted a little and there was...

BLOG: All the talk is of coalitions, of partnerships, of working together. In telly - especially online and on-demand - there have been many coalitions recently. Some have been between broadcasters and other broadcasters, some between broadcasters and platforms. SeeSaw has successfully brought...

BLOG: I was struck when reviewing this month’s Thinkboxes’ shortlist firstly by what an incredibly powerful set of ads they are, and secondly by the fact that, as a group, they seem to share a particular vibe which is distinctive but which I found hard to define. I eventually realised that the...

BLOG: Twitter announced last month that it had reached its ten billionth tweet. That, dear readers, is Numberwang. The news provoked the esteemed Claire Beale to comment that Twitter had therefore become a ‘mass medium’. Brand Republic recently ran the following story: ‘A cinema ad for South...

BLOG: As Uncle Bulgaria could have told you, it’s a lifetime’s work clearing up the rubbish that litters the marketing landscape. One of the current topics flapping annoyingly in the breeze is all the nonsense uttered about ‘word of mouth’, or WOM for short. Most weeks you’ll find a story about...

BLOG: I saw an ad for Sony's new generation of internet TVs this morning. The interesting part about it was the new functionalities it chose to focus on; in this case, the ability to merge Facebook and Twitter into the TV viewing experience. A lot of discussion has taken place about what...

BLOG: The nauseatingly cute and diverse young cast of Glee has been summoned to the White House to perform for the Obamas this Easter. But our favourite character from the show won't be there; Sue Sylvester (actress Jane Lynch) will be busy washing her Adidas track suits...

BLOG: One of the many marvels of Google is Google Alerts. It allows me to appear as though I am very widely read indeed. So I thought I’d mention an interesting article I spotted in the New York Times. It was about the fact that the winners of the BTAAs, which took place last week (the ‘beef’ has...

BLOG: I attended the Mediatel ‘Future of Online’ seminar recently, where much was made of the launch of UKOM, the online industry’s attempt to get a measure of exposure and reach with the aim of attracting more brand display revenues. It has been a tortured process. Now, this may seem strange,...

BLOG: Amid the cutbacks and regulations that have hamstrung some advertising categories, there is one that has recorded rapid and continual growth in the money invested in advertising in general, and TV in particular. It is a category that has access to a wealth of data to evaluate the success of...

BLOG: One of the regular taunts Thinkbox gets is that Google has become the biggest brand in the world without using TV advertising. We usually respond by saying a) no-one says you can't build a brand without using TV, it's just easier and quicker if you do and b) brands which occupy significant...

BLOG: A couple of weekends ago I was fascinated by all the chat on Twitter about Johnny Depp; he had been killed in a car crash apparently. Except that he wasn’t dead. Oh yes he was, oh no he wasn’t. So determined were the scammers they had even mocked up a superficially convincing CNN.com...

BLOG: Three momentous things began on Friday 1 January 2010: a new decade, a World Cup year, and a brand new BARB contract. Days very rarely get bigger than that for me. So, BARB has changed - what it does and who is doing it – and the thought of this originally filled me with fear, not joy. I...

BLOG: They were not quite Christmas presents but, in the past month or so, three pieces of independent research have landed on my desk, all of which run counter to the prevailing wisdom (cf. Chris Anderson) that ‘free is best’ and paid for media have had their day. The first piece of research...

BLOG: We’re now at roughly the half way stage in our annual (well, second) ad industry TVIQ competition and patterns are starting to emerge about which sectors of the industry have more TV nous. It is a viciously fought competition. Friendships could break. Lunches might be cancelled. So far we...

BLOG: A decade ends and an armada of navel-gazing features about the previous ten years is launched. My Christmas TV viewing - when it wasn’t either David Tennant or a Big Fat Burp of the Year - seemed to consist of reviews of the best TV ads or programmes of the decade. The best 20 TV ads of...

BLOG: There’s nothing quite as nauseating as someone revelling in an “I told you so” moment but there’s no stopping me; you might like to retreat now. Jubilation all round today at Thinkbox Towers thanks to YouTube’s new ad campaign promoting the arrival of proper TV content (courtesy of its...

BLOG: So Jedward are out and didn’t they do it in spectacular style? Moaning and growling through a uniquely atonal version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Boyzone classic “No matter what”. It clearly even tested Louis’s powers of positive thinking. At one point the camera turned to him and there he...

BLOG: It is important to respond, to act. Ask Gordon Brown about biscuits and he’d better respond with something – anything – or else there will be trouble. Deafening silence rarely suggests success. Advertising doesn’t always expect an instant response; often it is trying to change the way...

No other awards do what the IPA Effectiveness Awards do – honour the actual, transformational effect that good advertising can have. For this reason above all they remain the gold standard in awards. And for that reason Thinkbox is extremely proud to sponsor them. At Monday night’s awards do, all...

BLOG: In media, we like to create either/ors. Different media are generally pushed (or pulled of course) into various binary oppositions. As well as push/pull, we have lean forward/ back; interruption/engagement; new/old; and, today’s niggle, passive/active. Unless you are reading this from a...

BLOG: In a surreal moment, the respected media analyst and futurologist Rio Ferdinand has linked the fact that the England-Ukraine match is going to be online pay-per-view to the recent claim that internet advertising has ‘overtaken’ TV advertising: "I read that online advertising has taken over...

BLOG: It was supposed to be her day off, but then there was a lot of fuss about a story claiming online advertising revenues were now bigger than TV advertising revenues. What does that mean? Does it mean anything? Tess Alps put down her trowel and blogged about it to add a bit of context…

BLOG: David Reviews, the influential TV and film aggregation site, has recently started something called The Lunch Break. This is a selection of TV ads put together to watch as if in an ad break. The very good idea behind this is obviously to better replicate the experience that viewers...

BLOG: Prepare for the whiff of burnt rubber in the air as the government begins its u-turn on product placement in UK TV programmes. There is no doubt that this is a fair decision. Product placement is already on our screens in various forms within acquired programming and as legitimate prop...

BLOG: Quality Street, the Olympics, the UN, The Krankies – aren’t variety and difference wonderful things? This struck me when I had a look back over the winners of our monthly TV ad creative awards – the Thinkboxes – which have been up and running for just over a year now. It felt like a good...

BLOG: Now, here’s a lovely thing that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while. The brilliant Barclaycard ‘Waterslide’ TV ad propelled its iPhone app spin-off to become the most popular free, branded game in the history of the iTunes App Store. This is a fine example of TV and interactive media...

BLOG: You’ll have gathered by now that I am a bit of a pedantic old bag but I have nothing against the word ‘digital’ per se. It is a perfectly lovely antonym to ‘analogue’. It is, according to a dictionary, a ‘description of data which is stored or transmitted as a sequence of discrete symbols...

BLOG: While it is music to Thinkbox’s – and advertisers’ – ears that commercial TV has increased its share of viewing and that commercial broadcast TV viewing is continuing to grow, it certainly wasn’t our intention that this should be used as a stick to beat the BBC, as some have. There are...

BLOG: Our lovely cousins at the RAB have made an online TV ad to promote radio advertising. The cheeky blighters have based it around our TV ad, but, as they don’t say much we’d disagree with, we have decided to take it as a tribute. Don’t forget to put the sound up. Our TV ad does strongly...

BLOG: As I sometimes get called ‘Statto’ it is only fitting that I start with a stat. 99% of our time spent looking at AV content on screens at home is spent looking at the screen of a TV set (for digital natives only that figure is 98%). So says a new ethnographic study in the US by Nielsen/CRE....

BLOG: This is the first in an occasional and cathartic series where we pick one of the most irritating things at large in media at the moment. It could be anything; a word, a phrase, a person, some research, a trend or even an ad (probably not a telly one obviously as they are all beyond...

BLOG: Has Samuel Beckett become a headline writer at The Guardian? I ask because one of their recent headlines was so absurd, so fist-bitingly contradictory that I spat out my snail porridge and had to have a lie down. The piece was about Hulu launching in the UK. The headline was: 'With all this...