... Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal and Univision presented ambitious slates of original programming to advertisers for the first time. 

Additionally, companies like Yahoo and Hulu, that already produce web content, announced greatly expanded offerings.

As a result, US viewers are being bombarded with an array of new internet programs — eleven from Yahoo, fourteen from AOL and a whopping thirty from Condé Nast, including one that will let viewers watch a Vogue editor, Hamish Bowles, as he shops around the world.

Advertisers and agencies, however, are less than enthused at the trend - expressing concern that audiences for individual shows will become even more fragmented and microscopic than they already are.

Says Group M's chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni of the new video offerings: “I don’t care how good your attention span is, I think it becomes all a blur.”

Karen Cahn, general manager of AOL’s online video arm, says the company monitors viewers' comments closely to see if they are uncomfortable with the video brand placements. “So far, so good,” she claims.

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... doesn't require users to hit "record".

Instead algorithms learn what viewers like and recommend new shows. The device also offers easy sync with social networks, effortless co-viewing with friends far away, video on tablets, phones and other screen devices, plus seamless integration of traditional TV and web content.

Hypes AdAge: "Now imagine all of that comes in a beautiful box with a front-facing camera and the kind of industrial design that makes you not want to hide it in a cabinet."

Most significantly, however, the device has progressed far beyond the drawing board. It is built and in the hands of a select few secret testers at media companies, agencies and, of course, Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, California.

As yet Intel has not announced a name, a price or a release date. However, those who have seen the device describe it as a significant advance over any existing cable or satellite platform.

Group M's Michael Bologna has spent several hours testing the box and declares: "I'm impressed because Intel makes chips [and] no one expected them to come out with a product like this."

Notes AdAge: "Silicon Valley has the best interface designers in the world, but until now efforts to apply that expertise to TV have led to false starts like Google TV and other products such as Apple TV and Xbox Live."

But, stresses the AdAge article, no one expects Intel to become a TV power overnight.

Nontheless, Intel TV represents an interesting challenge for cable and telcos, which as of now do not offer TV service outside their own wired footprint. Each new customer who opts for Intel TV is a customer walking away from the "bundle" of services that cable and telcos sell, among them broadband, TV and phone.

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... channels will seemingly vanish, sit in the background, thus compelling advertisers to focus on new formats. For example, on-demand realtime delivery and/or the ability to preposition content on a consumer's DVR.

Internet-connected TVs will also play a role. Citing a technology similar to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect controller, some experts predict TVs will acquire the ability to suggest programming by sensing a person walking into a room,

Two Cisco Systems' executives - Internet Business Solutions Group's Scott Puopolo, vp and global head of the service provider practice, and Leszek Izdebski, director of the media and entertainment group and service provider practice - recently presented a research paper on the Future of Advertising in year 2020 and beyond.

Some of their predictions may seem far-fetched, but progress is already under way.

According to the Cisco duo, branded entertainment will continue to grow, fueling the need for higher quality content. The focus will be getting consumers closer to the product.

This, according to Mr Puopolo, means bringing tactile feedback technology into the living room, smell and taste in TV advertising through new remote control apps or hardware.

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... can potentially be harnessed to the building of building stronger brands through interactions between products and users.

Like individual web pages, everything down to a single product on a grocery store shelf would have a unique digital identity — and, in effect, its own URL. Addressable as a web page, every object would naturally become an element of the media landscape, capable of interacting directly with end-users to deliver commercial messaging — including advertising.

Predicts Rayport: "In the not too distant future we can expect to see refrigerators that place grocery orders when you're running low on staples like milk and eggs; ovens that recommend a trusted repair service before they break down; dresses that are "aware" of current fashion trends and recommend alternative looks; and glucose monitors that give you recipes that best suit your type of diabetes."

Consider what a UK-based company called EVRYTHNG did for Diageo's spirits marketing business last year.

The booze behemoth ran a pilot program in Brazil for Father's Day. This enabled consumers to use smartphones to scan product codes on individual bottles of spirits, turning each physical product into a uniquely identifiable object of digital media. The giver could use his or her smart device to create a video for, say,  Dad and upload it to the cloud; the receiver, Dad, could then download the video to receive the gifter's message.

The result: increased loyalty to the brand; increased personalization of the brand experience; and increased insight for Diageo about how its products were bought, sold, and used.

Mr Rayport concedes, however, that outside of commercial environments like the Consumer Electronics Show or academic laboratories, we are still in the early days of turning today's "dumb" objects into "smart" ones.

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... it is "looking for bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass."

Google is also inviting people living in the US to use the hashtag #ifihadaglass to suggest ways in which they would make use of the headset.

The demo video deomstrates how Glass can be used to take pictures and record video, as well as share content directly via email or social networks.

Voice commands such as "OK, Glass, take a picture" are used to control the device.

Other Glass features include Skype-like video chats, and information such as weather reports and map directions - all of which appears in a small, translucent square in the top right of the wearer's field of vision.

Wearable technology is seen as a major growth area for hardware makers in 2013 and beyond.

Meantime, US trade journal AdWeek speculates that that Google Glass could "kill the smartphone, reinvent gaming and/or steal the second screen from tablets". Even entirely transform the landscape.

But such speculation is premature. AdWeek's transformational scenario is unlikely - in the immediate future at least - as Glass won't be commercially available until next year.

Stresses AdWeek: "It's important to understand what Google Glass is and is not—it is not a phone; it is a really extravagant expansion for your current phone, like a BlueTooth headset for your eyes. The product is wirelessly connected to your phone's GPS and microprocessor and so on; it uses all that power in your hip pocket to run recognition software and display hardware mounted on your head."

Nonetheless, industry experts predict the new product could be a game-changer along the lines of Apple's iPhone - a development that could send shockwaves across the worlds of entertainment, advertising, commerce, media and gaming.

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Read the original unabridged AdWeek article.

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... the next developments for 'Big Data', and how the digital revolution will impact on consumer behaviour.

Key trends highlighted in the report include: 

• Social
  Blindly chasing fans or followers has rightly lost credence as brands realise that social sharing and referring has the biggest impact. As a result, simpler and more effective tools to measure social sharing will allow brands to refocus on creating meaningful social media campaigns.
   
• Search
  Search engines are becoming more like content portals and less like navigational tools. Consequently consumer queries from currency exchange rates to weather forecasts to celebrity appearances are being answered by search engines without the need for the user to click through to a website. This shift is set to increase consumers’ dependence on search even further this year.
   
• Mobile
  Only a third of websites are currently optimised for mobile, yet in 2013 not having a mobile optimised site will not be an option as consumers increasingly shift to mobile applications.
   
• Email
  Creating personalised experiences based on data and real-time insight will be key in 2013. Added to this will be the ability to update email content once it is in the inbox – essential as consumers become increasingly used to real-time engagement with brands.
   
• Data
  Big Data will continue to be a buzzword in 2013 and will be pivotal in digital marketing. Digital linkage across email addresses, mobile numbers, cookies, and device IDs will enable data to work to improve marketing effectiveness and engagement regardless of channel.

Says Experian Marketing Services' Jon Buss, managing director, Digital: “It’s clear that online and offline communications will continue to blur in 2013 as cross-channel marketing becomes the norm.

"Thanks to digital channels we’ve moved from a one-way flow of information to a two-way conversation. Omnichannel marketing is the next step, creating a seamless consumer experience across all channels by using real-time data to truly understand who a customer is.”

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... "the architecture we have built is true mobile computing architecture.

"It's not a downgraded PC operating system. It is a whole new innovation built from scratch. It's built for mobile."

Despite a number of glowing reviews for the BB10 and reports of strong initial sales, some analysts and technology pundits are sceptical about BlackBerry's chances of mounting a comeback, doubting its ability to sell either enough smartphones or manage to transform the way people work.

Says John Jackson, an industry analyst at consulting firm IDC: "The [Wall] Street cares about how many units of these devices they're going to sell and that is the balancing act." 

Jackson said he can see a future in which the BB10's new operating system will allow users to control a vast array of devices, but added: "They need to sell devices to keep the lights on while they transform themselves into a next-generation computing platform." 

BlackBerry's marketing head, Frank Boulben, claims that the company is moving quickly enough to do just that.

"The vision is going to start to materialize this year," he said. "You will be able to plug the (Z10) device into a docking station at the office and then all you need is a keyboard, a mouse and a screen - combined with cloud services this would mean you don't need a laptop or a desktop."

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... that whether tactics are digital or otherwise, they'll need to drive positive customer experience and interaction with their brand/s. 

Although companies have been investing in digital marketing for years now, Forrester posits that there’s now "an understanding that on some level, all marketing is inherently digital".

On this basis of this understanding, the forecast predicts that interactive marketing budgets in the USA will account for some $50 billion, or 20% of all marketing expenditures. This trend will almost certainly be replicated in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Even though companies have been investing in digital marketing for years now, Forrester analyst Corinne Munchbach argues that the attitudinal shift is driven by the long overdue realisation that at some level, all marketing is inherently digital.

As a result, she expects interactive marketing budgets within the USA to account for some $50 billion, or 20% of all marketing expenditures.

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... the agency's founder-president Christian Del Monte is a seasoned internet ad veteran who has been practicing web marketing for more than a decade, adding social media communications to the shop's portfolio in 2005.

The shop's groundbreaking promotional display - which runs for five weeks through December 2012 - is not your average print ad. It mixes a 3D interactive spin with the traditional medium of print in a bid to generate a higher volume of engagement with readers. 

Says Del Monte: “We wanted to take print advertising to a new level by showing how you can create interactivity and true engagement with a simple idea using print advertising and the web.”

There were three main objectives that sparked the ad, he explains:

1. Create an ad that will be creative and interactive, unlike other print ads.
    
2. Create an ad that will clearly exhibit the agency’s core values.
    
3. Create an ad that will be fun for the reader and for the agency.

Adds the shop's Social Media Strategist Kim Maxon: “We began brainstorming ideas and came up with the idea to use a game as the ad. The idea truly reflected the core values of our agency, one of which is having fun.

“We didn’t want to submit the traditional, boring print ad that you typically see in newspaper. This ad is fun for readers, yet challenges them to think outside the box and still delivers the key message that we want our audience to hear.”

The ad runs for five weeks through the month of December.

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... for example J T Wang, ceo of Taiwanese PC-maker Acer who, back in August, complained to the Financial Times that the Surface would have "a huge negative impact for the [PC] ecosystem and other brands". Mr Wang added that he had made his concerns known to Microsoft.

Moreover, Mr Wang doesn't lack concerned colleagues at other hardware manufacturers.

Microsoft's ceo set the cliff crumbling when, back in June, he revealed that the Redmond mammoth company intends to make a family of tablet computers - one offering extended battery-life powered by an ARM-based chip, the other using Intel's technology to offer a deeper Windows experience.

However, Dell - the world's third largest computer maker - was the epitome of insouciance. "The announcement of Surface was necessary to have a proof of concept and to get people excited about what was coming to push application development and create some buzz out there," opined Kirk Schell, Dell's client and consumer product group vp, when speaking recently to the BBC.

"They've invested so much in Windows 8 it was important to make it work, so I felt Surface was the logical thing to do."

Windows 8 is a radical update to Microsoft's core product. The operating system introduces a touchscreen-controlled interface featuring 'tiles' that act as buttons to launch individual apps.

The tiles allow installed software to provide status updates on a computer's home screen. These can include details about the latest emails received, news headlines or social network posts created by friends.

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