Successful Advertising Methods?

Hi, I’m doing a report on advertising, and I need the opinions of business owners who have used various advertising methods.

The mediums I’m focusing on are: newspaper, television, direct mailings, magazines, radio, and internet ads (keyword, banner, pop-up, etc). If you could tell me what has and hasn’t worked for you, that would be really helpful! Or if you know of people who have used any of these methods and had success or failure, tell me about it.

I need lots of opinions! The more the better!

Thank you so much for all your help!

PS: It’s really important for me to have opinions on all the mediums I mentioned, so if you have any experience with any of them, please let me know about it!

How Your License Plate Could Be Your New Username [INVITES]

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details href="http://mashable.com/bizspark/">here. src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/traffic.jpg" alt="" title="traffic" width="225" height="225" class="alignright" />Name: href="http://bump.com/" >Bump Quick Pitch: Bump allows users to connect online and offline via unique identifiers, including license plates, mobile phones and online profiles. Genius Idea: Ever wanted to tell the driver in front of you that their lights are off? Or maybe you’ve wanted to be the good Samaritan and warn someone that his meter has expired. Perhaps you just find the driver in the adjacent vehicle visually stimulating and are hoping they think the same about you. These street scenarios face us drivers on a daily basis, but there’s never been an easy or safe way to message another driver or car owner. Enter Bump, a recently launched, private-beta startup (we’ve got invites) that has created a way to message other drivers by using the one unique identifier all drivers have in common: our license plates. src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/bump.jpg" alt="" title="bump" width="640" height="382" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-388388" /> Bump users can message other drivers through voice-automated commands, photo snapshots of license plates and SMS. Bump also includes e-mail support, which you can use by directing your message to State.Plate@bump.com, where state is the two-digit state name abbreviation and plate is the individual’s license plate number. Bump stores all messages sent to a particular license plate in the system until the plate in question is claimed by the plate owner. If you claim your plate, you can then start to receive messages as voice messages, e-mails or text messages. Of course, this also means that those messages you attempt to send to the hottie in the Audi TT won’t get delivered unless he or she has also claimed their plate on Bump — a clear limitation of the service at launch. Bump members can also connect their href="http://mashable.com/categoy/twitter">Twitter, href="http://mashable.com/category/facebook">Facebook, and eventually Match.com profiles, e-mail accounts and cell phone numbers with their license plate to further complete the loop between the physical world and the digital world.

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Your License Plate as Your Identity

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/> src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/BUMPinTraffic.jpg" alt="" title="BUMPinTraffic" width="640" height="480" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-386260" /> Eventually Bump will enter AAA’s realm and offer premium services to drives through a member program. Upgrades will include discount offers, special privileges and roadside assistance. The company is also working with rental car companies, sports leagues and fast-food outlets on marketing initiatives to target special offers to members on the road by tapping into existing video cameras. In this capacity, Bump aims to bring href="http://mashable.com/tag/groupon">Groupon-like discounts to the real world through license plates, which may be a bit too ambitious for privacy-conscious drivers. The service’s immediate and long-term success will rely on drivers claiming their plates. The challenge, however, is that even without offers directed at individual license plates, Bump’s technology will likely be a bit too intrusive for those who would prefer not to incorporate their license plate as part of their virtual and physical identities. The license plate may seem like an obvious public identifier, but to those with higher profiles, their license plate number is not exactly information they want to be part of the public domain. For others, their license plate will be a welcome natural identifier to help bridge the gap between their online persona and offline life. Right now Bump is available as a website and mobile web app, but the company has plans to release an app for href="http://mashable.com/tag/iphone">iPhone, href="http://mashable.com/android">Android and href="http://mashable.com/tag/blackberry">BlackBerry in the near future. Bump is still in private beta, but 250 Mashable readers can start using the service today. Simply enter the invite code “mashable” during the registration process. Bump has raised $1 million in Series A funding and recently appeared at DEMO in Silicon Valley. The startup is in the process of raising a Series B round that will likely reach $8 million. The startup also recently acquired Platester, a license plate messaging platform, for an undisclosed sum. Image courtesy of href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/" >richardmasoner, Flickr

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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/> src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/bizspark.jpg" border="0" alt="" align="left" style="margin: 10px;">BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can href="http://mashable.com/bizspark">sign up today.

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/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336868-Android" >Android, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/393528-BlackBerry-Rocks" >BlackBerry Rocks!, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" >Facebook, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336659-Flickr" >Flickr, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/337174-Mashable" >Mashable, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336651-Twitter" >Twitter, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/469362-iPhone" >iPhone More About: href="http://mashable.com/tag/bizspark/">bizspark, href="http://mashable.com/tag/bump-com/">bump.com, href="http://mashable.com/tag/driving/">driving, href="http://mashable.com/tag/license-plates/">license plates, href="http://mashable.com/tag/spark-of-genius/">spark-of-genius style="margin-top:10px;">For more href="http://mashable.com/tech/">Tech coverage:

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Has Bill Gates Finally Climbed out of the “Evil” Penalty Box?

The “Waiting for Superman” movement continues to sweep through the Valley with news that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has donated $100 million to Newark Schools– no doubt encouraged by his COO Sheryl Sandberg who has been a big supporter of the movie and the movement to reform public education.

Some people have insinuated the move was a calculated ploy to whitewash Zuckerberg’s image with the fictional and snarky “The Social Network” coming out and getting rave reviews. Although Zuckerberg sounded more media trained than I’ve ever heard him in his interview this week with Mike and Jason, the idea that he donated a sum that large to rebut at movie that’s widely-documented to be fictional is a stretch. Especially considering this week’s leaked emails and IMs weren’t exactly a smoking gun supporting the whole evil genius theory.

But I’ll tell you who will win big social capital points as “Waiting for Superman” gains steam: Bill “still the richest man” Gates. It’s hard to remember, but Microsoft used to be a widely admired company before the antitrust trial. The tide changed so much that Gates became a de facto pop culture villain whether you were a Microsoft fan or not. Hollywood described him as an evil genius manipulating his college-era-BFF well before Zuckerberg and “The Social Network” were a glint in Aaron Sorkin’s eye. He was creamed with a pie. He was mocked on the Simpsons for “buying out” aka wrecking Homer’s Internet company. And there were many other indignities. His name was pop-culture shorthand for Machiavellian. I’m not saying some of those indignities weren’t deserved. But driving home after watching a screening of “Waiting for Superman” my husband– an avowed Mac zealot– remarked that he suddenly realized he no longer hates Bill Gates.

The goodwill has been building for a while– the TED talks, the mosquito nets, the All Things D chum-fest with Steve Jobs, the truckloads of cash for the poor. But somehow seeing him in this movie, juxtaposed with an emotional story and kids that are hard not to root for, and given the fact that he’s gone out stumping for the film– well, it just Al-Gores-him-up a bit. (Although admittedly, that still may not be enough for Netscape founders and shareholders.)

Why Facebook Is (Probably) Turning To Android To Make Mobile Even More Social

Earlier today we published the full transcript of an engrossing, detailed interview we had with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that focused primarily on the social network’s mobile plans. During our conversation, he talked about how Facebook would ideally like to make your entire phone social: enter your login information once, and your apps should know about your interests and who your friends are. Compelling as that may sound (assuming you aren’t concerned about any potential privacy issues), there’s still a big roadblock to seeing it come to fruition: Facebook would need to have deep access to the phone’s OS to make this happen.

That isn’t going to happen any time soon on the iPhone, which, as Zuckerberg says, is “hard to penetrate” — without Apple’s cooperation, Facebook won’t be able to do an especially robust integration:

Mark Zuckerberg: For platforms that are really important, but are hard to penetrate, like iPhone, we’ll just do as much as we can. For Android, we can customize it a bit more. Other folks are going to want to work with us on specific things. But, our goal is not to build a phone that competes with the iPhone or anything like that.

And Facebook isn’t about to build its own operating system from the ground up, because that would be a time and resource-consuming endeavor. Which leaves… Android.

Google’s mobile operating system is famously open-source, which means that other companies like Facebook are free to tweak it to their heart’s content, revamping the UI or even adding a new social layer, while leaving the nuts and bolts that make the phone tick in place. Mucking with Android code could preclude Facebook from being able to include some of Google’s Android applications, like Gmail and Android Market — Google has tighter restrictions on who can bundle these apps — but that may not be a dealbreaker for the social network, especially if it’s looking to make the phone a Facebook-centric experience.

Rumors of Facebook working on a custom Android build were first reported by Silicon Alley Insider, after our original story describing Facebook’s mobile ambitions first came out over the weekend. And during our interview Zuckerberg essentially confirmed that Facebook was at least experimenting with Android:

Mark Zuckerberg: I mean, who knows, 10 years down the road, maybe we’ll build our own operating system or something, but who knows. That is more history than we’ve had so far with the company, so it is really hard to predict that far out. But for now, I think, everything is going to be shades of integration, rather than starting from the ground up and building a whole system. Jason Kincaid: So, it sounds like a customized version of Android seems like the best thing, the deepest integration you could do without building your own operating system. Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, and I mean… Michael Arrington: Is that putting words in your mouth? Mark Zuckerberg: No, I mean, we’ve looked a bunch of different technical things. I know if we were going to build an operating system, then we wouldn’t have anything to talk about for 4 years. And I know we didn’t start 4 years ago, so I know we’re nowhere near anything on that. What I can say generally is that our goal is not to build an operating system from scratch, or else not to design hardware from scratch. Our goal is to make it so that we can design the best integrations in the widest variety of phones.

And to add even more fuel to the fire: as I wrote this, Bloomberg published a report stating that “Facebook Inc. is working with mobile-handset manufacturer INQ Mobile Ltd. on two smartphones that may be carried by AT&T Inc.,” which are “slated to run Google Inc.’s Android operating system”.

Pay for the Subway Using Your iPhone

Visa has just rolled out a new pilot program that allows New Yorkers to pay subway, bus and train fares with a wave of their iPhones.

New York City Transit, NJ TRANSIT and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are participating in the pilot program. As part of the program, Visa is testing both payment cards and href="http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/paywave/index.html" >Visa payWave-enabled smartphones.

Rather than having to buy or refill a Metro card, travelers can just wave their phones in front of a contactless reader.

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/> As we reported last month, Visa is also working with Bank of America to bring href="http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/boa-visa-mobile-payments/">smartphone payments to retailers in New York City.

Smartphones that are equipped with a special sensor can transmit payment information to contactless card readers at fare gates. Not only does this help people get through transit stations more quickly; it also eliminates the need to buy a transit card or dig around in your purse for your existing pass.

Check out this video that Visa produced to show the smartWave wireless payment option in action:

Beyond New York, Visa is also working with LA Metro to bring TAP ReadyCARD dual-use prepaid Visa cards that act as both transit tickets and Visa debit cards.

Internationally, Visa has been deploying its payWave technology in Kuala Lampur, Singapor, Paris, Istanbul and London.

The New York subway program is only deployed across 28 stops along the Lexington subway line; but if it is successful, we might see this feature rolled out across the wider system.

Frankly, as someone who frequently loses or misplaces transit cards, having the option to just wave my smartphone to pay my fare sounds incredible. Even better than getting to use this feature for a train, using the system on the bus would make getting around much faster. Would you like to be able to pay for transit tickets by waving your phone? Let us know.

Image courtesy of href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3803135211/in/photostream/" >Ed Yourdon

More About: href="http://mashable.com/tag/iphone/">iphone, href="http://mashable.com/tag/mass-transit/">mass transit, href="http://mashable.com/tag/micropayments/">micropayments, href="http://mashable.com/tag/new-york-city/">new york city, href="http://mashable.com/tag/paywave/">payWave, href="http://mashable.com/tag/subway/">subway, href="http://mashable.com/tag/visa/">Visa style="margin-top:10px;">For more href="http://mashable.com/mobile/">Mobile coverage:

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