Sports clippers

For any of you out there who aren’t sports fans, this probably isn’t shaping up to be the best summer of your life. Between Euro 2016, Wimbledon and the Olympics, we’ve been bombarded with reminders that our weekly half-hour at the gym probably isn’t cutting it. But, whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying that events like these bring people together on an international scale that can scarcely be rivaled. You only have to take a look at Google trends and the enormous surge in traffic around sporting events to see what a huge opportunity this is to connect with people: I can think of few advertisers that wouldn’t love to take advantage of huge spikes in public interest like this, but is it appropriate for everyone? Where’s the line between effectively tapping into that public interest to better performance and just jumping on the bandwagon for the sake of it? A handful of Merkle|Periscopix clients chose to run activity … [Read more...] about Should you hitch your campaigns onto the sporting bandwagon?

Bing News App Bing has partnered with a number of national, local and region news sources, including Associated Press, Reuters, Gizmodo and The Guardian, to deliver a customizable news app that lets users track specific story categories, topics or sources. Users can rearrange headline clusters to move preferred content to the top. Bing is also leveraging Live Tiles on the Windows Phone so that users can see news at-a-glance and pin favorite news sources or topics to the start screen for quick access to preferred content. The new mobile Sports app offers a variety of customized content. Users can personalize the app to track specific leagues or teams. If a user taps on a team or league, the app color theme will change depending on the sport (“green turf for NFL, brown dirt for MLB, grey asphalt for Formula 1 racing”). Covering a number of major sports like soccer, football, baseball, cricket, racing, tennis, hockey and basketball, the Bing Sports app lets users swipe … [Read more...] about Bing Launches News, Sports, Weather & Finance Apps For Windows Phone 8

For those devices running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or higher, which is now about 13.6 percent of handsets, Google Now now includes movie ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and movie passes from Fandango. (Apple’s Siri recently added the ability to buy movie tickets through Fandango.) For those in the market for a home, real-estate listings from Zillow will now appear. College sports scores will soon show up as well. Finally, users can add a Google Now widget to the Android home screen (mostly unnecessary) or lock screen (useful). Google Now may be described as “persistent” or “predictive” search. In many instances, Google Now can be extremely useful (weather) and even surprising (i.e., when it tells you to leave for the airport at a certain time given the traffic). However, it also presents outdated or erroneous information on occasion. For example, Google Now often continues to show me information relevant to the city where I was a week ago. On balance, … [Read more...] about Google Now Adds Movies, College Sports, Homescreen Widget

Each year, the number of college basketball fans that flock online to view games for March Madness continues to grow. Experian Simmons Data Stream confirmed that use of streaming online video among March Madness fans rose 23 percent from the start of the 2009 tournament through the championship game. In 2010, Unicast found before the tournament began that 44 percent of respondents planned to follow the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament online and that 54 percent of those people intend to catch the actual games live on the Web. With so many of the early round games taking place on weekdays, many devoted fans search for ways to follow the action away from home, whether online at work or from their mobile devices. The increasing popularity of online video among sports enthusiasts has led broadcasters and programmers to provide more March Madness content at the touch of fans’ fingers. Many fans rely on the Internet to track all aspects of March Madness, evident in the heavy … [Read more...] about Sports Fans Score Big Wins With Video Search

Major announcement today from GetGlue headquarters in New York City– besides an update to its website, GetGlue.com, and its iPhone app, GetGlue is now integrating with Foursquare to allows users to check into both the sports event they are watching as well as the location they are watching it from. GetGlue makes it easy to share their sports related check-ins via Foursquare and Twitter and more check-ins will lead to sports-related stickers, Fan and SuperFan status, and even Guru designation. More Sports Partnerships This partnership and major overall update allows users to integrate their Foursquare and GetGlue check-ins, so users can now post updates that include what they are doing, where they are doing it. This goes beyond sports events, especially because GetGlue allows users to check into not only televised events, but also movies, books, and music. Examples include: “I am watching “The King’s Speech” (GetGlue) @ AMC Theatre (FourSquare)” … [Read more...] about GetGlue Integrates With Foursquare, Announces Sponsorship With NFL Network, HBO Sports & More