Entries Tagged 'Media' ↓

Terror is the latest trend in food marketing. These five foods go so far as to threaten bodily harm and global annihilation.

Wendy’s Baconator brings to mind the 1984 classic Terminator, in which a human-looking, apparently unstoppable cyborg is sent from the future to kill.

Unlike the Terminator, the Baconator instills fear with its six strips of bacon, two quarter-pound beef patties, two slices of American cheese, mayo and ketchup.

“[The Baconator] is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” Continue reading →

NEW YORK, November 20 /Newswire-FirstCall/ — Tony the Tiger, beloved spokesperson for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes died today, after suffering a heart attack believed to have been brought on by a lifetime of poor food choices and Type 2 diabetes. Continue reading →

[CORNY EGG JOKES seem to be the status quo when discussing anything egg related. Please join me in making the web CORNY EGG JOKE FREE. These jokes aren’t funny folks. Really, they’re not.]

Advertising on Eggs

EggFusion uses lasers to print advertisements on eggs. The company’s eggs have found their way into millions of kitchens – including my own. They’ve left their mark on more than 200 millions eggs – and that’s just scratching the surface of the potential market; 50 billion eggs are sold and distributed in the U.S. each year. Continue reading →

Local advertising networks will continue to lose relevance as search engines become the first stop for consumers. To date they have prospered as the “middlemen of paid search”. Will savvy advertisers cut them out of the loop?

Before Google, sites like Superpages and Citysearch established themselves as the leaders of local search. Superpages migrated its cumbersome yellow book to the online arena in 1996. When Citysearch was founded in 1995 there was still a monopoly on local business data. A user could quickly find local businesses by category, location or name – a vast improvement over 411 or the yellow pages. Continue reading →

Citysearch Ad Buyer Beware

Citysearch.com, founded in 1995, is a major player in the local search market. The site now attracts 20,000,000 unique visitors each month, making it one of the most popular websites in the U.S.

Not only is the site highly trafficked, it’s also highly profitable. The company’s “pay-for-performance” ad program generates an average of $500 per month per advertiser, or $6,000 per year, as reported by Ann Meyer of the Chicago Tribune. If accurate, Citysearch, with its 50,000 advertisers, earns $300 million annually.

For clients, Citysearch promises to reach customers who “are looking to make smarter decisions about where to spend their time and money”. The Business Profile has the “look-and-feel of an editorial review” and featured listings help one “stand out from the competition.”

An advertiser pays for views of their profile – presumably highly targeted views, driven by visitors performing searches within the site (e.g. a category and location). While they do offer reports on the number of visitors to one’s profile, Citysearch does not report where those visitors originated. Continue reading →

An ecclesiastical history of the food web, the media’s response to online restaurant criticism, and why Mario Batali is an idiot.

Our dining icons - the Brunis, the Bauers and the Golds - have ruled for decades. The monopoly enjoyed by print media has escalated the restaurant critic to demigod - their voices reign down in regular intervals as if from heaven. These titans of traditional media reach millions; rarely have we appealed so strongly or regularly to the voice of experts. If food is our God, they are our clergy. Continue reading →