Eucan picks up three
Eucan Urban Equipment of Canada, an out-of-home media marketing company, has hired Jason Rosen, Rob Munday and Patricia Sotomayor. All three new staffers will be working out of the Toronto office with Rosen and Munday hired as national account managers and Sotomayor as a retail account manager. Prior to their hirings, Munday was with Zoom Media, Rosen was with Pattison Outdoor and Sotomayor owned her own importing business which she started after working with Grey Advertising in Peru.
PMB Factoid
41% of skim milk drinkers are men.
Popular DIY sites make space for brands that blend in
At the 19th Annual Gemini Awards, the redesigned roomservice.ca site was named most popular Web site. The site is the online property of five-season HGTV favourite, the Room Service design series hosted by Sarah Richardson. This month, designinc.ca was unveiled to complement Design Inc., a new show from interior designer Richardson and producer Michael Prini, which launched on HGTV in October. Airing Tuesday evenings, Design Inc. has consistently ranked in the top 10 since it launched on HGTV in fall 2004.
Both sites offer advertisers an interactive way to reach the designerati, if their brands pass aesthetic muster.
Snowboarding hits the pavement
On Tuesday, BG Marketing launched the official website for the Canadian division of Freebord (www.freebord.ca), the skateboard designed to ride like a snowboard thanks to two extra revolving wheels. Established in San Francisco in 2000, the ‘rider owned and run’ company targets a 14-25 year old mixed demo of snowboarders, wakeboarders, surfers, and downhill longboarders. The new extreme sport has been picking up major steam both in the U.S. and Australia, and with a Canada-wide launch tour set to kick off this summer, it looks to have a found a market here as well. Professional and amateur Freebord teams have been growing in the U.S. and BG Marketing is looking to develop new advertising and sponsorship relationships with companies in the Canadian market. The U.S. Web site currently logs over 1,500 hits a day.
Vacancy filled at Gateway Newsstands
Vacancy, Torstar’s free consumer magazine covering the apartment rental market is now being offered at Gateway Newsstands in every TTC subway station. Prior to the agreement with Gateway, Vacancy had been distributed at over 2,000 street boxes across the GTA at street corners and bus stops. With the free magazine’s new subway station availability it has the potential to reach more than one million riders every day. Vacancy was the first local rental publication to be audited by Verified Audit Circulation. The addition of Vacancy coincides with Gateway’s new deal with Eye that, effective today, puts an additional 20,000 copies of each issue at its 65 TTC subway locations bringing the total distribution of Eye to 130,000 per week.
Newfoundland Capital Corp at it again
Two weeks after its purchase of two Red Deer radio stations, Newfoundland Capital Corp today made official its agreement to purchase the CHNR-FM radio broadcast license in Winnipeg from CKVN Radiolink System. CHNR – The Breeze, currently a nostalgia music format playing big band and soft oldies music, is the only station in Manitoba with an A-category signal. The $1.8 million deal is awaiting approval from the CRTC.
Hello, and welcome to movie phones
QuickPlay Media has reached an agreement with TELUS Mobility that will allow QuickPlay’s video download service to be available on all TELUS video phones across Canada. QuickPlay’s downloadable content, which includes videos from QuickPlay partners such as CHUM Television, CBC and the Soundtrack Channel, will be combined with content from TELUS’ own partners and will be distributed through an interactive programming guide on mobile phone browsers. The distribution platform will, at no cost to the downloader, provide advice on and descriptions of video clips which can then be downloaded to a user’s inbox for a fee that will be added to either a monthly invoice or prepaid account balance.
ComBase Market Focus: Midland, Ontario
Midland adults are heavy community newspaper readers:
· 75% report reading any community newspaper (weekday or weekend) compared to 41% who report reading any daily newspapers (weekday or weekend).
· 42% – or more than 10,000 Midland adults – are exclusive community newspaper readers. They only read the community paper and not the daily newspaper.
· Exclusive Midland community newspaper readers tend to be women between the ages of 25 and 34.
When it comes to consumption of other media in Midland:
· 33% of adults admit they didn’t listen to any radio yesterday;
· 8% report listening to non-commercial CBC stations; and,
· 32% of adults report watching less than 9.5 hours (less than an hour and a half a day) of television in the past week.
Source: ComBase 2003-2004 Study
ComBase, the Community Newspaper Database, is a syndicated consumer-media survey of more than 400 Canadian markets that provides market-by-market information.
It is an initiative of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and its nearly 700 members across the country. For more information, contact Kelly Levson, senior project manager, kellylevson@combase.ca.
www.combase.ca
History reveals England’s most famous monarchs (but not King Ralph)
In light of the recent shenanigans with King Gyanendra, it seems fitting that History Channel’s new series, Monarchy, will premiere Sunday, February 13 at 8 p.m. Hosted by renowned British royal historian David Starkey, Monarchy chronicles the drama and turmoil of Europe’s oldest surviving political institution. Beginning with England’s emergence from the dark ages, the six part series brings to life a few of social and religious injustice’s greatest hits including, the Crusades, the Norman Conquest and the plague.
New show brings singers out of the shower and into the opera house
Bathroom Divas, Bravo’s new stab at reality television currently in production, is out to discover Canada’s newest opera star. The show will conduct a cross-country audition tour with a select few chosen to enter the show’s ‘intensive training phase’ that ultimately be whittled down to just one person who will be given the chance to perform live on-stage. Bathroom Divas is scheduled to air later this year.
PMB Factoid
33% of Quebecors chew breath freshener gum.
NABS Ad Auction bidding begins Feb. 7
The 14th annual NABS Ad Auction kicks off Feb. 7 with an inventory of more than $3.1 million in donated national, regional, and local media time and space. More than 275 media packages have been donated for this year’s event, breaking last year’s record of $2.7 million by a whopping 13%. Media donations are still being accepted.
The auction runs online from Feb. 7 to April 7 at nabsadauction.org. The list of available media is now online. Bids will begin at 50% of rate card value.
BBM top 20
For a list of the top 20 TV shows for the week of Jan. 24 to Jan. 30, according to BBM, click the links below:
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050201/nat01242005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050201/ont01242005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050201/que01242005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050201/tor01242005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050201/van01242005.pdf
New tech lets advertisers see what you see
Shoshmosis, United Virtualities’ new rich media ad product set to launch mid-February, allows advertisers to follow varied user interactions while watching online video clips. By adding flash to streaming video content, which in turn allows users to click or scroll over specific elements in a given video frame, marketers will soon be able to add a whole new dimension to their content.
Though the flash video layering technology is not groundbreaking (similar software has been available for several months now), UV’s innovation may result in what company president Mookie Tenembaum has described as ‘synchronizing streaming video with interactions.’ In layman’s terms, the new twist to the tech has the potential to let you purchase something you see on a show by simply clicking the item as you see it on the screen and be immediately directed to an online store selling that product. Similarly, a consumer looking to get more information from a commercial could click on a specific feature of a product to get detailed information about its specs. As of now UV is not able to announce any deals regarding Shoshmosis, but Tenembaum has said that they are in talks with several advertisers and agencies.
Bell ExpressVu reaches subscriber milestone
Thanks to Joseph Manley of Ottawa, Bell ExpressVu’s subscriber numbers have now topped the 1.5 million mark. ExpressVu president Robert Odendaal credits the satellite service’s accomplishment to new simplified programming packages and the successes of varied Bell service bundles. Odendaal also made reference to new innovative hardware and additional HDTV content being available for subscribers in the not-too-distant future. ExpressVu, Canada’s leading direct-to-home satellite company for almost a decade, broadcasts more than 400 digital video and audio channels.
