The playlist is out now.
Florence and the Machine – No Light No Light
New single from Florence’s 2nd album ‘Ceremonials’ – one of the Albums of 2011.
Coldplay – Charlie Brown
A highlight of the band’s stunning Glastonbury set in the summer – Charlie Brown will be the next single from Coldplay.
Lana Del Rey – Born to Die
Tile track from the highly–anticipated album, out 23rd Jan 2012, and the follow-up to the massive ‘Video Games’.
Members of the Absolute Radio Sales Team attended the Starcom Christmas Breakfast on 15th December along with over 100 media owners. Each year a number of awards are given out and this year Absolute Radio is the proud owner of two of them, for the best collaborations with media owners.
Runner up: Partnership with Kronenbourg
Kronenbourg 1664 sponsored Sundays across the Absolute Radio Network for 4 months over the summer as part of their ’Slow The Pace’ campaign. This included sponsorship of the Dave Gorman Show on Sunday mornings; Dave created a bespoke weekly on-air feature for Kronenbourg. As part of the partnership we also ran 3 promotions across the summer and created one event in London – with a live performance from The Pierces. Kronenbourg had an online hub on absoluteradio.co.uk for the duration of the campaign which was continuously updated and also housed tracks that could be downloaded by music fans across the UK.
Winner: Airtime collaboration with Autoglass
Absolute Radio has been a test partner for Autoglass along with a number of our competitors. Running airtime across the year, 2011 has proved to be a great success and we are hoping to run similar activity across 2012.
Great work from the Starcom Virtual team and all those involved from Absolute Radio – here’s to more awards in 2012!
After a fortnights silence, Digital Digest returns. ‘Huzzah’ I hear you all cry, ‘the messiah has returned’. And that’s very flattering, and I thank you all for it. I won’t go in to the reasons why it didn’t see the light of day last week, but all you need to know is it involved a carrot, a spork, the ‘Blue Whale Room’ of the Natural History Museum, and not five but six golden retrievers. Anyway, I know you are all literally gagging for an update on the biggest digital news this week, so without further ado… …here’s digital digest.
This week, online…
‘Tis the season to be jolly. And it would seem, absolutely spandangled. A recent report from Mashable suggests that British Facebook users are intoxicated in 76% percent of their Facebook photos. I have never been so proud to be a citizen of this great country of ours. In fact, it calls for a celebration. Here’s a video of the general public, filmed at the very instant they found out this amazing feat. And what would you know, they’re all completely mangled. Some more facebook photo facts: according to Mashable – 26% of respondents allow anyone to view their photos (not just Facebook friends), 8% believe their photos may cause ‘serious trouble at work’, and 93% have untagged photos deemed ‘too embarrassing’. Which makes you wonder just what is going on in those photos? In my eyes, untagging them only makes it worse. Because then the mind wanders… It’s like Jaws. How much scarier is that shark when you can’t actually see it? Until of course, it kills Quint, when it becomes the scariest thing in the water since… …well this.
In other Facebook news, the Facebook Timeline is now available to all. To enable it, go to this page and click ‘enable timeline’. Previously announced back in October, the Facebook Timeline makes a users wall a far more visual experience – allowing for even more drunken photos (let’s try and get that 76% figure up to 80%, yeah?) and videos, such as this. Yeah parents! Why on earth did you get your kid a book?! You can’t play Mario on a book. What was you expecting? It’s like the anti-John Lewis advert.
App of the week this week, goes to Twitter, which has had a complete overhaul and cleanup. Apart from a visual redesign, ‘mentions’, ‘retweets’ and ‘favourites’ have now been regrouped into a ‘Connect’ tab, while what’s trending, friends lists and hashtags have been regrouped into a ‘Discover’ tab, making for a smoother and cleaner tweeting experience. Staying with Twitter, here are the top hastags of 2011:
#egypt
#tigerblood
#threewordstoliveby
#idontunderstandwhy
#japan
#improudtosay
#superbowl
#jan25
A great year for twitter then… …I think. Nice to see that Charlie Sheen is higher in priority than the Japan Tsunami disaster. On another note, Charlie Sheen appears intoxicated in 100% of his Facebook photos, putting us all to shame and setting us the very bar in which we need to raise our collective game to. So get drinking. And snapping.
That’s it for another week, so it’s a goodbye from me, and a goodbye from this bear. I leave you with Break.com’s top ten fails of 2011, their top 10 pranks and a dubstep Christmas.
I’m off to buy a bottle of Jack and a disposable camera.
Absolute Radio has head-hunted Simon Kilby, currently Sales Director at world-renowned publisher and digital pioneer Guardian News and Media, as the new Absolute Radio Commercial Director.
Simon has a wealth of media and publishing experience with industry-leading digital experience at the core of his skills, including fifteen years at Guardian News and Media, which saw him leading a dynamic team responsible for all revenue across print and digital including The Guardian, The Observer and Guardian.co.uk brands. Previous to Guardian News and Media, Simon worked at Express Newspapers.
Simon will join Absolute Radio in the first quarter of next year- reporting into Chief Executive Donnach O’Driscoll and sitting on the Executive Board which includes Donnach, Chief Operating Officer Clive Dickens, Chief Financial Officer Adrian Robinson and Head of HR Caroline Hinton.
We have ambitious digital growth plans for 2012 and Simon has a wealth of traditional and digital media experience, top level Agency and client relationships so will bring new perspective to radio. As we are setting out to ‘redefine radio’ this makes him a very strong appointment for this business.
Absolute Radio’s senior commercial management team – Advertising Director Remy Kirk, Louise Simkins as Director of Branded Content and Director of Digital Sales, James Wigley will report directly into Simon.
The senior commercial management team are supported by Katherine Knapp – Head of Promotions and Tracy Stanton – Head of Business Development and Emma Smyth as Head of Sponsorship.
Read what others are saying about this here
Absolute Radio is set to partner with European start–up AdsWizz to provide the technology to power the radio station’s new InStream Ads Service which will see the station offer improved targeting to a logged-in listenership through ‘full view’ gender, demographic and active location based data.
This groundbreaking service enhances the radio experience by merging opt-in privacy data with live online streaming and puts Absolute Radio at the forefront of digital innovation in the sector with the station setting out to ‘redefine radio’, with an event planned at the Houses of Parliament in January alongside the BBC, Facebook and featuring comedian and broadcaster Dave Gorman.
Absolute Radio is capturing the age, gender and active location of the station’s users and is also revealing that 80% of their current InStream ‘logged-in’ audiences are within the station’s core demographic of 25-54, with 65% of users being male. Users are being incentivized to share data by being offered a series of benefits including HQ audio streams, more music and more relevant commercial messages.
Absolute Radio ‘In Stream’ – using newly available technology – offers listeners via IP the opportunity to receive a better quality, contextual, visualized radio experience that’s more relevant to them, while advertisers gain an intimate level of access to our core audience. It combines the engaging entertainment of broadcast radio with the one-to-one commercial benefits of streaming music services such as Spotify and Pandora.
By early next year, the station aims to have the service fully up and running with the ability to offer full targeting by location and demographic.
Speaking on the launch, Absolute Radio’s Director of Digital Sales James Wigley said “We’re excited to be the first brand, globally, to be using new technology to implement this method of InStream; we look forward to 2012 as we further develop the product and continue to redefine radio.”
Lead Applications Specialist at Absolute Radio, Ben Matthew, explained “We have spent a long time trying to find the right technology to implement our innovative ideas around targeted advertising and we found that the flexibility that Adswizz’s technology offered us was unparalleled in the market. We have been able to successful adapt their platform to suit our specific needs and create an online radio experience that isn’t just appealing to advertisers but sounds superb to our listeners.”
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