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The social net­work Face­book admits that it uses file trac­ers, even for peo­ple who are dis­con­nected from their plat­forms, and will not change their habits.

With the help of Face­book engi­neer Arturo Bejar, an arti­cle enti­tled “Face­book track­ing is under scrutiny” on the USA Today web­site reveals details of how mem­bers are tracked on the social net­work, whether con­nected or not, and how their stored data is used. Vis­i­tors who do not have accounts on Face­book are also involved. The social net­work uses track­ing codes, also known as cook­ies, which are placed on the user’s com­puter dur­ing a web­site visit. Wide­spread, they are use­ful to sites and online ser­vices to see if a user is logged-in, or if they have already vis­ited the web­site. A good exam­ple being when you shop on Ama­zon, the prod­ucts you were shop­ping for last week are star­ing you straight in the face this week.

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I was at Econsultancy’s Fun­nel event a few weeks ago. A good event with some inter­est­ing speak­ers, but one thing seemed clear – all atten­dees and ven­dors were totally bought into the con­cept of the tried and tested Fun­nel. For many agen­cies present, it actu­ally seemed to be the basis of their busi­ness mod­els and their pitch to the market.

Com­pare this with Forrester’s mar­ket­ing event at The Grove, where the ral­ly­ing cry seemed to be “The Fun­nel is dead”.  Appar­ently, it’s now all about cus­tomer engage­ment.

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‘Tis almost the sea­son to be jolly. Santa has been dusted off, the rein­deer re-stuffed and both are being shoe-horned back into ad cam­paigns to sell every­thing from leather sofas to mince pies. At this time of year, any­thing not bright red or fea­tur­ing a ridicu­lous elf has to work hard to get noticed. With retail stores tak­ing a beat­ing from online sales, com­pa­nies have to think big­ger and bet­ter to reach their audi­ence. A shop win­dow isn’t going to cut it; you’re going to have to do bet­ter than that to impress Joe Pub­lic.

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It seems only yes­ter­day that I wrote my last post on QR Codes, but just checked and it was last Novem­ber and my god has a lot hap­pened! Maybe, just maybe, they’re catch­ing on.

Despite encour­ag­ing signs in 2010, there were many who just believed that QR Codes, or mobile bar codes, were purely an interim tech­nol­ogy wait­ing for the newer, funkier tech­nolo­gies such as NFC and aug­mented real­ity to get their act together and take over. But, as is the way, this hasn’t hap­pened yet. Sure, things have pro­gressed, but they still do not yet offer com­pelling rea­sons for mobile manufacturers/networks to make the invest­ment to uni­ver­sally include them. This is due to, amongst other things, some inter­op­er­abil­ity issues between Wik­i­tude and Layar tech­nol­ogy, the debate over user inter­faces and the pros and cons of real-time ver­sus cached data.

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There has been both excit­ing and sad news in the mobile world over the last few weeks. We have seen the rise of Android and the depar­ture of an indus­try leg­end. This week we look at cam­paigns and tech­nolo­gies com­ing soon to a pocket near you.

Bug Pow­ered Mobile

How do you keep a taran­tula on a tread­mill and not off eat­ing the other per­form­ers?

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Ban­ner has been part of Y&R Adver­tis­ing for over a decade now, but it’s only now that I’ve really under­stood the huge poten­tial that the net­work can bring to our agency and our clients around the world. I’ve spent the last cou­ple of days with the Y&R Global Team and other CEO’s from Y&R com­pa­nies across EMEA. And, the one thing that uni­fied every­body in the room was the desire to col­lab­o­rate with each other to do bet­ter, more digitally-led work for our clients.

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So sum­mer is wind­ing down. The lobster-tans are slowly fad­ing and peo­ple have shuf­fled back to their desks around the coun­try. But fear not, adver­tis­ers have made sure we remem­ber the good times. Sun, sand and adven­ture await. Oh, and one mas­sive shower scene…

Skoda Off-road – Image Mapping

Czech car man­u­fac­turer Skoda is on a roll. They have had a very suc­cess­ful year so far, win­ning mul­ti­ple awards for both their Fabia & Yeti lines of vehi­cles. Even the aging Octavia saloon is doing well. From the orig­i­nal Fabia “lovely things” cam­paign fea­tur­ing “bright cop­per ket­tles and warm woollen mit­tens” — which came out over 4 years ago — to the more recent Skoda Fabia RS “Meaner stuff” cam­paign, Skoda are now push­ing their crossover flag­ship — the Yeti.

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Girl Genius. Source: Wired, 5 Tips for Rais­ing Your Girl Geek, 06/08/09 (Online)

I have often won­dered why I seem to be so alone in the world as a girl geek.

No mat­ter how hard I try, I never seem to meet other equally geeky girls. For exam­ple, if I try and engage my girl-friends, in a con­ver­sa­tion about hand­bags or shoes, fine; but if I bring up the ben­e­fits of hav­ing an Android smart­phone ver­sus an iPhone, they look at me like I am from Mars.

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The count­down to the 2012 Olympics as offi­cially begun. Peo­ple are dust­ing off their run­ning shoes and get­ting out their bicy­cles. Lon­don seems to be wak­ing up from its lethar­gic slum­ber and head­ing out­doors. Here are a cou­ple of cam­paigns that look at the ridicu­lous and sublime.

Car­ry­ing the (pen­light) torch

Olympics ath­letes doing weird stuff for quirky Cadbury.

Yes, it’s still 2011, but if you are a bud­ding sports star, or couch-bound enthu­si­ast, it’s also offi­cially one year to go until the Lon­don 2012 Olympics. And boy, have the spon­sors made sure you know it. The much-reviled logo is set to burn your corneas for the next year and a bit, before hope­fully being for­got­ten behind the actual event.

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For a long time now, the utopia for online dis­play adver­tis­ing has been to be as tar­geted and as cost-effective as search adver­tis­ing in order to claw back adver­tis­ing dol­lars. The jour­ney has been slow, ad net­works ini­tially helped scale online dis­play adver­tis­ing and pro­vided lay­ers of tar­get­ing tech­nolo­gies to make the cam­paigns more effec­tive. How­ever, pric­ing was based on arti­fi­cial flat fees and seg­ments that had been pre-set within the lim­its of indi­vid­ual ad net­works.

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