During halftime of game five of the NBA Finals Jay-Z announced the release of his newest album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.”

The spot, 3 minutes in length, is a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the album and a taste of some of the songs. It’s also a promotion for Samsung.

Jay says in the spot that the Internet has opened up new methods for releasing music—“it’s like the wild west, the wild wild west,” he says. So the album will be available through an app to 1 million Samsung Galaxy users on July 4, three days before the general public will abe able to buy it. According to the WSJ, Samsung paid $5 million for the rights to give away the album to its users.

This from Bloomberg:

“People primarily buy smartphones about once every two years on regimented schedules, so Samsung isn’t going to drive many sales from this specific promotion. 

Instead, it’s hoping that the next time someone’s contract is up, she’ll remember that Jay-Z exclusives are the kind of thing she can expect to hold over her iPhone-toting friends if she buys a Galaxy phone.”

A simple, clean, explanation of Apple’s evolving design philosophy.

The IAB, Interactive Advertising Bureau, is an advertising business organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for the online advertising industry. Over a year ago the IAB outlined five mobile ad platforms they believed would be “Rising Stars” in the ad world. These include the Filmstrip, Pull, Adhesion Banner, Full Page Flex, and Slider. According to MediaPost:

“…the five Mobile Rising Stars ad formats overall generated nearly twice the interaction rate of banners, with higher recall for campaign brand name and message among survey participants. People also were quicker to respond to Rising Stars ads, thinking they were “better” overall than standard ads.”

You can view specs, style guides, and examples of the Rising Stars here.

Many thanks to George Heisenberger, who came across this creative use of outdoor advertising, which is actually more so a product demo for photoshop. And quite an invasion of privacy. 

This morning, as we do every Monday morning, we gathered around our large conference room table to watch an inspirational video. We call it MPowered.

Christine Falciperi shared with us Benjamin Zander’s TED talk about the power of classical music. Really, it’s about much more than music. It’s about seing opportunity in challenges, leadership, and passion.

From Zander’s website:

“The best review I ever got was not from a music critic, but from my father. He was 94 years old at the time and completely blind. He attended a Master Class I gave in London and sat there in his wheelchair for about three hours. When it was over, I went to speak with him. He lifted up his finger in his characteristic way and said, “I see that you are actually a member of the healing profession.” It seemed to me the highest accolade.”

- Benjamin Zander

Google is currently in beta testing for Image Extensions for AdWords. It offers more visual options to advertisers.

Here’s an example of an add that includes words and relevant images.

According to this article from Search Engine Land:

“Until now, product image ads were the only way to include image content in AdWords ads, and those were limited to product results. The new extension opens up image options for a much wider range of advertisers.”

It’s still not fully clear as to how the search results will be incorporated into AdWords, but it is clear the extension will be combined with site links and other extensions.

“Image extensions will be more likely to trigger when Google determines a searcher’s intent is to find visual content. As an example, a search for ‘luxury car designs’ is more apt to show image extensions than a query for ‘local car dealerships.’”