We’ve lots of fascinating news for you this week. Stories include how advertisers are addressing the problem of ‘banner blindness’, a project to build a low-cost tablet PC, and Google’s rising status in the UK.

Plus: marketers at Pot Noodle have been using their noodles to come up with a method of promoting their product, and we have all the latest gaming news from industry event E3.

As the announcer of ‘Starcade’ would say, this is not just a newsletter - this is an experience.

Although, admittedly, an experience that’s very much like reading a newsletter.

Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications

Paper beats internet

By Dave Wilby

Site owners and advertisers are taking extra precautions to ensure their internet ads turn into paper ads when web pages are printed out by consumers.

The new push has come in response to depreciating returns for views of web page ads, suggesting that the web-savvy have evolved a subconscious knack of averting their eyes from anything on screen resembling an ad. “Internet users tend to avoid fixing their eyes on anything that looks like advertising, a phenomenon dubbed ‘banner blindness’,” Nidhi Mathur of Hewlett-Packard's research lab in Bangalore told the New Scientist.

The latest solution is to make greater effort to get on screen ads to print in an effort to get a second hit with consumers, as well as gaining some perceived credibility by getting marketing messages on to good old fashioned paper.

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Sky and Universal team up for digital music smackdown

By Dave Wilby

Satellite television company BSkyB is launching a new DRM-free music subscription service in conjunction with Universal Music later this year, offering unlimited subscriptions on a unique monthly-fee basis. Details of subscription prices have yet to be set.

BSkyB's chief operating officer Mike Darcey told the BBC that the aim was to appeal to a truly mass-market audience. "Sky already has contact with one in three British homes through our television service and we've got plenty of experience of running a subscription model."

Sky claims the combination of unlimited streaming, downloads that can be stored for life, access to the sizeable Universal catalogue, and DRM-free music playable on any device would be a “world’s first”.

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A tablet PC for everybody

By James Gerber

Michael Arrington, the owner of TechCrunch, a popular blog dedicated to technology news and gossip, has decided to embark on an ambitious venture, using the social media medium that has built his fortune to help accomplish his goals. He is attempting to build a $200 touch screen internet tablet.

Arrington is enlisting his legion of followers to help him build the laptop, based on open source technologies. His basic idea is for it to be as thin as possible, running on low-end hardware, with an iPhone-like touch screen interface. It will have standard computer features, such as a headphone jack, a built-in camera for video, speakers and a microphone. Other features he wants to include are Wi-Fi, one USB port, a built-in battery, half of a GB of RAM and a 4GB solid state hard drive.

Like the OLPC, an affordable laptop made for everybody which seems to continually go up in price, it aims to allow just about anyone to have a laptop, but with more functionality. With the open source development community behind it, expect lots of innovative applications ready to install when it arrives. Arrington has grand ambitions with a lot of risk involved, but if the tablet gets produced, expect it to be big.

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Google’s number one

By Ellie Turner

The Superbrands Council has announced that Google has become the UK’s leading brand, striding ahead of Microsoft for the first time after coming in third in last year's poll. Although a blow to Microsoft, it’s unlikely that the computer giant will be too concerned – it’s still sitting comfortably in second place.

The Superbrands Council is a group of marketing, advertising and media experts. The council compiled a list of more than 1,000 brands, rated on reliability, quality and distinctiveness.

The survey, which quizzed 2,200 consumers, had a heavy emphasis on technology brands, with four inside the top ten, including Bosch in eighth place and Sony in tenth. Apple landed just outside the top 10, at number 11.

Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of The Centre for Brand Analysis and chairman of the Superbrands Council, said: “As the results make clear, lifestyle brands, particularly those in the technology sector, have considerably more sway with the public than other everyday staples.”

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E3 fails to excite

By Terrie Chilvers

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) came to a close last week to a resounding cry of disappointment. Word on the street is that the glory days of E3 and its media frenzy are over. Even some big names in the gaming industry have slammed the event for being too small and lacking the ‘wow’ factor of previous years. “I hate E3 like this,” said Ubisoft boss John Riccitello, speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Either we need to go back to the old E3, or we’ll have to have our own private events.” Sega of America’s president, Simon Jeffrey commented on the lack of spectacle: "We need to figure out how to get the right component of retail back so we can convert discussion into sales."

Despite suffering a bit of an identity crisis, there were still some interesting announcements at the event. Microsoft vowed to win over casual gamers, with news of gaming titles aimed at families (including a karaoke game called Lips and a virtual quiz show gaming area). E3 attendees also got a sneak peak of titles such as Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and LittleBigPlanet.

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Marketing goes potty

By Fatima Khanum

Pot Noodle found itself in the limelight at the Edinburgh Fringe comedy show. The big-wigs at Pot Noodle gave the go ahead to a London based advertising agency to create a musical based on the popular British snack. The hour long show, imaginatively entitled ‘Pot Noodle: The Musical’ will be based on the lives of a set of factory workers who spend their working day singing a medley of Pot noodle related songs. For the more romantically inclined members of the audience, the show includes a love story involving the show’s protagonist and self confessed hero Steve, who is trying to oust the menacing overlord from the factory.

The musical has sparked debate about how the the Fringe is becoming more commercial by featuring outside brands. However, is this the next big step in advertising or simply a minor alternative channel of advertising?

If the answer to the first question is yes, then Prompt would like to suggest the following for a big screen production: Bollywood Hottie Pottie. The story will centre around the life of a dwindling Bollywood actor whose acting career gets a big boost after he eats from a magic pot of Pot Noodle (Bombay Bad Boy flavour, naturally).