Super Bowl Sunday is here again folks. Personally I’m rooting for the Colts because Ervin Baldwin went to Michigan State around the same time that I did. And I also think highly of Mike Hart even though he went to U of M. And of course I also think that Peyton is one of the best QBs I’ve seen. And usually when I pick my favorite team, it is based on proximity to where I live. Lucas Oil Stadium is a couple hundred miles south of me. But one of my most favorite parts of the Super Bowl is the ads.
Every year advertising companies spend millions of dollars to advertise for the Super Bowl. A large portion of the money spent on Super Bowl ads go behind the creativity too. Although Pepsi won’t be participating in Super Bowl advertisements this year, CBS was able to sell about $200 million worth of ad space. About 100 million people are expected to tune into the game.
I have compiled a list of 40 of the greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time. Check it out and let us know what you think about this year’s commercials in the comments:
Vevo is a music video website in stealth mode that was started by YouTube and Unviersal Music. The company is currently seeking funding and is reportedly finding partners for their content. Reuters recently revealed that CBS Corporation and NBC is in talks with Vevo to license and develop shows for Vevo. Vevo is expected to officially launch in December and will have high quality music videos. The website will also have music-related shows streaming.
YouTube will be providing the technology and back-end for the website while Universal Music will provide the content. Sony Music is also on board with Vevo, but it is Warner Music and EMI have kept their distance thus far. Rio Caraeff is currently the CEO of Vevo. Vevo will make money from the advertising banners and text laced throughout the website. Since the quality of video will be higher, Vevo hopes to have higher advertising rates than YouTube. About 40 people are being hired to work for Vevo.
One of the reasons why Tr.im decided to initially shut themselves down is because of the monopoly that Bit.ly has for URL shortening services. Twitter and TweetDeck both use Bit.ly as the default URL shortening services. Now Google, TypePad, and CBS has embraced Bit.ly for shortening the URLs of their content.
One of the reasons why Bit.ly has become the preferred choice for URL shortening is because of their constant service upgrades. Last month Bit.ly started to track what links are malicious in content and warns users before sending them to the link.
Within the last few weeks, Google added Bit.ly to Google Reader’s “send-to” feature. This feature allows anyone using Google Reader to send Bit.ly links on Twitter to their followers.
TypePad added a feature that generates Bit.ly links on Twitter for new blog posts. Bit.ly statistics have also been added into TypePad’s dashboard. All TypePad users will see this feature integrated by this fall.
CBS is also launched a new service called cbs.bit.ly. This service tracks the URLs on CBS’ website that has been shortened and tracks how many people clicked on the shortened links.
iBiquity Digital Corporation is a company that develops HD radio technology. It gives radio signals better sound quality and less static. The company has been working on better radio technology on cars and households for several years now.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, iBiquity has raised $42 million in funding from investors such as Grotech Ventures, CBS Radio, Radio One Inc., Entercom Communications, FirstMark Capital, New Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, and Clear Channel Radio. This round of funding puts iBiquity at over $172 million in total funding over the last decade.
Its not every day that you see a traditional media company poach from a new media company, but this is exactly what happened when CBS hired Richard Lawson from Gawker Media.
Lawson will be writing for TV.com in a role that is similar to what he already has been doing for Gawker: writing what is happening on famous TV shows.
Lawson will be writing fewer posts per day and do actual reviews. Lawson has supposedly been generating 2.4 million pageviews per month for Gawker, more than any of Gawkers’ others writers.
Joost was started by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis back in October 2006. The company raised about $45 million in funding shortly after starting up. Investors included Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Viacom, CBS and Li Ka-shing. Joost killed off their desktop application and became purely a web service in September 2008.
Joost announced that they have replaced former CEO Mike Volpi. Joost SVP of Engineering Matt Zelesko will be replacing Volpi. However Volpi will remain as Chairman of the board.
As a result of Joost’s lack of growth compared to YouTube, Hulu, and other video services Joost has decided to focus on providing video platforms for bigger companies. There will also be major layoffs. Joost employs about 100 people in New York and London.
The three founders of Last.fm Richard Jones, Martin Stiksel, and Felix Miller will most likely be leaving CBS by the end of the year. About two years ago, Last.fm was sold to CBS for $280 million. The three founders will be leaving to start another project.
“This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in east London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world,” stated the founders of Last.fm.
The founders are not planning on any reasons revolving around the acquisition, but more because the website is in great shape. They even said the company may even do better without the “crazy founder dudes hanging around.”
The three co-founders will be stepping down by the end of the month, but will serve as advisors for three months. The three co-founders will also help pick another head for Last.fm. Last.fm has about 37.7 million users.
In the past, TechCrunch had heard rumors accusing either CBS or the Last.fm founders of sending user data to the RIAA. Both CBS and Last.fm had denied those claims.
TechCrunch wrote a post several months ago about whether Last.fm submitted user information to the RIAA. Last.fm denied it. And now a new rumor has came up about how Last.fm’s parent company CBS Corporation sent information to the RIAA by tricking Last.fm. The trick that TechCrunch claimed took place was that CBS told Last.fm that they were planning to use the information for internal uses, but sent it to the RIAA anyway.
The source behind this whole issue is an anonymous individual that spoke directly with Last.fm employees. However Last.fm claims that no one at the company knows anything about a leak of information. “Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS’s ops team provided this data is just not possible – Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system,” stated Russ Garrett, a developer at Last.fm.
paidContent published a response that CBS has made in relation to the aforementioned controvery:
“Both CBS and the RIAA have already stated quite clearly, for the record, that absolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future. The story posted by the website was based on an unnamed tipster. No inquiry was made to CBS or last.fm about the veracity of the anonymous source. Those who consult such blogs should be aware of the standard by which such postings are sourced and published.”
The original source TechCrunch had for the story about Last.fm sending data to the RIAA stated that the employee that leaked the information was fired.
