Ad Age Viral Video Chart For Week Of September 14

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Abbey Klaassen’s weekly chart lists the top 10 viral videos from last week, with number of views and percentage change in views for each.

This week’s big debut is from Norton Security. Norton’s wacky campaign has thus far been about pitting objects against celebrity personalities to represent cyber threats. [a]listdaily featured the spot with UFC fighter Kimbo Slice earlier this week. This time it s metal band Dokken taking on a raw chicken. Visible Measures, which provides the chart to Ad Age, wonders whether the Norton spots are so bad that people are drawn to them (and obviously forwarding them on).

More noteworthy perhaps, Microsoft’s video for Natal has hung in there and generated nearly 400,000 views. With another video for Zune HD making this week s chart, Klaassen points out how Microsoft has managed to get a nice range of videos in the top viral chart lately.

 

Check out the full list at Ad Age.

PS3 Motion Controller Details, Launch Titles Revealed

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Sony says get read to wave, bob and weave through Resident Evil 5 in spring 2010. Resident Evil 5: Directors Cut is among the slate of games being released with the launch of the tentatively named PS3 motion controller. The launch slate announced at Tokyo Game Show includes Ape Escape, Echochrome 2, Eccentric Slider, Sing and Draw, Champions of Time, Motion Party, The Shoot, and Tower, in addition to a handful of other enhanced titles.

The motion controller needs the PS3 Eye camera to work and resembles an ergonomic remote control. In Gamasutra’s report on the story, the controller is described as having two motion sensors, a gyroscope and an accelerometer. An interesting capability is how the Eye camera can recognize changing colors emitted by the controller to differentiate movement data it receives.

Read more at Gamasutra.

The List Of Publishers In Motion For Project Natal

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Major publishers have lined up to support Microsoft’s motion controller. The list revealed at Tokyo Game Show is an A-U of who s who in big game publishing. On board with Natal projects are Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney, EA, Konami, MTV, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft.

Gamasutra seems to be channeling, possibly drawing directly from, press materials in its description of the tech behind Natal. It doesn’t reveal much. Long story short for [a]listdaily readers, it’s not positioned to be a technical pony in a race against Sony and Nintendo’s high-tech horses.

 

Read more at Gamasutra.

Twitter Is Valued At $1 Billion

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The closing of $100 million round of financing has valued Twitter at $1 billion. In the round, existing backers Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners added T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners as investors.

Reporting the news, NY Times rightfully asks where the valuation comes from considering Twitter has never pulled in real revenue. According to a spokesperson there was furious competition to invest in the three and a half year old company.

 

Tasteful TV Watchers Probably Skip Ads

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TV shows that score for quality are also the ones most watched on DVR, says TiVo. Hollywood Reporter broke down data provided by TiVo on time-shifted viewing habits, where viewers watch a program on DVR and can fast forward ads. The programs that made the list aren’t necessarily the highest rated in viewership. Rather, they represent high-quality shows. TiVo discovered that 25 of 28 Emmy-nominated shows are watched in time-shifted mode more than the average for their genre. TiVo says this makes it likely viewers are skipping through the ads in these shows.

The irony is thick, and it gets thicker when you see that Mad Men made the list.

Read more at Hollywood Reporter.

Personnel Changes At Namco Include New Head Of Marketing

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Namco Bandai has appointed new marketing, online, and studio heads for North American. Catherine Fowler, formerly of Codemasters and Konami, is named VP of marketing. Robert Stevenson, formerly VP of business development at Atari/Infogrames, joins as VP of online development. Graeme Bayless, formerly VP of special projects at 2K Games, is named studio GM.

Read more in the press release.

Mobile Carriers Freeing Up Wi-Fi Hotspots

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Overloaded networks are prompting carriers to free up previously fee-based Wi-Fi locations. AT&T has been one of the hardest hit with consumer complaints of network issues, with recent reports that connectivity problems spiked after this summer’s launch of Apple’s data hogging iPhone 3GS. The carrier has been quietly letting subscribers access their hot spots for free at places such as Starbucks, and other carriers are starting to follow the move.

Read more at NY Times.

Twitter Gets Its Own App Directory

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A new web site called OneForty is being called iTunes for Twitter. The site was launched by author and Twitter expert Laura Fitton. It’s not officially run by Twitter, but Fitton was in talks with the company for months leading up to the launch. She got a recent endorsement at a Twitter event when a company presenter pointed to her site when asked why they don’t have an app store.

The site has collected more than 1,200 apps, less than a third of what s estimated to be out there. Fortunately they accept user submissions.

Read more at LA Times.

Mixed Signals For Videogames In Walmart ‘Family Night Center’

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An in-store Walmart promotion is pushing board games and DVDs for nights of family fun. The promo seems to extend from Walmart s recent Save Money Live Better campaign targeting families facing tough economic times. While the TV rotation of that campaign has focused on food and household items, the Family Fun Center concept seems to be extending it into entertainment

The mixed signals for videogames come from the web site Walmart launched to support the campaign. The site dedicates the area just below the main banner to video games the whole family can enjoy , which at the time of this post was featuring Batman: Arkham Asylum, Guitar Hero 5, and Fight Night Round 4 at full price. Price point is likely keeping games out of the in-store promo for now, with all the fun stuff currently being pushed priced at under $20.

In another mixed signal, Walmart’s asks families to share healthy snack ideas for family night before naming Pepsi and Doritos as sponsors.

Read their Press Release.

Doritos Goes For Seconds With Another Stylized Horror ‘626’ Promo

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With Halloween coming, Doritos launches Asylum 626 as a follow-up to their 2008 horror hotel campaign.  The new promotion updates the Hotel 626 premise, this time putting us inside another place we d rather not be: a psychiatric ward.  Gamers might get a strong sense of Silent Hill homage in the execution here, while the film buffs scream Romero, Lynch, Carpenter…

The Asylum 626 campaign again uses social media to good effect, prompting those that experience the madness to pull in their friends through Facebook and Twitter.

See the video and read a brief on the campaign at Creativity-Online.