Deeeaaamn, I hate it when you go to a site like “Yahoo! Finance”:http://finance.yahoo.com/, and they don’t have the default focus of the cursor set to the search box… you know, like when you go to “Google”:http://www.google.com and you don’t have to mouse to the search box, you can just start typing your query. Ironically, it works on Yahoo!’s home “page”:http://www.yahoo.com.

Who’s in “charge”:http://www.sitcomsonline.com/charlesinchargecast2.jpg of sites like finance.yahoo.com? Do they think that by not setting the cursor, that I am more likely to look at the ads? I’ll look at the ads if they interest me, thank you, regardless of where the cursor is. Or perhaps — worse yet — do they just not *Get It*?

Yahoo!, if you are going to have a stand-alone site like finance.yahoo.com — which represents an “important sub-brand”:http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050131005415&newsLang=en — then make it work right, or you’re just wrecking your brand.

The New York Times today has a “piece”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/business/media/21mart.html?pagewanted=1&8dpc&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1109001621-ayrdj3xykgytNlTL0KQWeQ on WalMart’s in-store TV service (a.k.a., WMTV). Here’s some food for thought from the article:

bq.. According to Wal-Mart and to an agency that handles its ad sales, the TV operation captures some 130 million viewers every four weeks, making it the fifth-largest television network in the United States after NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox.

p. That’s a lot of viewers, which translates into some advertising nice profits for WalMart.

bq.. According to Wal-Mart’s rate card, advertisers pay $137,000 to $292,000 to show a single commercial for a four-week period, depending on the length of the ad and the number of stores where it is shown.

p. However, as Phil Lempert, editor of Xtreme Retail 23, an industry newsletter, notes that just because you have a huge number of customers (i.e., “viewers”), it doesn’t necessarily mean they are paying attention to the programming. The article goes on to talk about how WalMart is upgrading its old-school monitors to 42″ plasma screens. Some interesting reading.

I did a little A9ing/Yahooing/Googleing on the web, and found that “PRN”:http://www.prn.com/ is the company that creates (or helps create) the in-store network for WalMart (it’s interesting that the NYTs didn’t mention this in their article). According to an old Forbes “article”:http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0416/312.html PRN started out as music-sampling kiosk distributor. PRN’s “current customers”:http://www.prn.com/networks/index.html include Best Buy, Costco, Sears, Circuit City and Ralphs among others.

“This”:http://www.prn.com/assets/documents/WMTV_New_in_2005.pdf is a link to a two-page PDF that gives an overview of WMTV, and “this”:http://www.prn.com/assets/videos/storetour.mpg (warning, 57Mb file) is a link to a MPG file that gives an overview of PRN’s services and finally some statistics from PRN’s site on WMTV:

bq.. PRN’s network operates in 2,650+ Wal-Mart Stores

* World’s largest retailer offering a wide variety of general merchandise at everyday low prices
* $158.5 billion annual sales
* 84.1 million shoppers per week

p. I remember a few years ago that this gas station near where I used to live had several monitors blaring out CNN or something to ‘entertain’ the customers when pumping gas. I found them annoying, so general avoided that establishment. I haven’t been in a WalMart lately to view their media offering, but it would be interesting to see how it all works… definitely some powerful marketing lessons to be learned.

Funny, going to WalMart to watch TV.

P.S. I doubt “this”:http://www.tvbgone.com/home.php would work at your local WalMart.