Sports content and statistical analysis company, Stats, is now working with Google to provide the search leader with its worldwide sports information through Google’s search and sports gadgets. Stats, which is jointly owned by the Associated Press and News Corp, has exclusive relationships with the NBA and NFL.

These “gadgets” are “mini-applications that support rich markup language (XML, Flash) and enable a wide array of visual effects and animation,” according to the news release.

Stats will provide Google with real-time scoring, schedules, standings across all major sports worldwide. But this isn’t just for you baseball and hockey fans. As part of the agreement, Stats is expanding its coverage to include 111 more sports including billiards, camogie and sumo wresting.

Stats recently announced the formation of Stats Middle East and Stats Europe. It currently has 15 corporate offices around the world.

President-elect Barack Obama has already been recognized as one of the most Web-savvy chief executives our country has seen. This weekend, he solidified that position by doing a public address on YouTube on Saturday. There is also speculation that he his use of e-mail and smartphone will be ended with significant adjustments. Up until now, presidents have largely avoided using e-mail while in office because of the security threat as well as the digital paper trail that it creates for a world leader.

However, more interesting to marketers than the channels he is using is the online policy that he supports. Obama is outspoken in his support for net neutrality. While the debate between ISPs looking to block content in order to control usage and protect users and content providers pushing for accessibility and high speed access rages - Obama is clear in his desire to open up access to the Web.  According to Reuters we may see legislation to this effect as early as January when the president-elect takes office.

Dunkin Donuts has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. The chain that “America runs on” started running its mouth on the social networking site on October 24 and now has 1281 followers.

So far, “tweets” concern updates from the “DD Mothership,” responses to followers’ questions, the Dunkin take on the news (i.e. “What election? Results are already in: DD beat SBUX.”) and a picture of the day.

Dunkin Donuts executives say special offers will be posted to the feed occasionally, but that the main purpose of joining Twitter was to give DD fans some recognition and allow them to interact more with the brand.

As Dunkin continues its aggressive campaign against Starbucks, Twittering should prove a boon to the brand. Starbucks, with its house music and cafe feel, has long been establishing itself as a lifestyle choice for fans. Dunkin, on the other hand, makes a good cup of coffee, but is not the sort of place you go for a personal connection. Showing that it has a human side (albeit one that calls itself Dunkin Dave and hides behind a coffee cup icon) should help consumers feel a little better connected with the DD experience.

Follow the company’s Twitter feed here.

I’ve been endlessly fascinated by the sheer variety of tools and technologies both the McCain and Obama campaigns have used to tap voters, from e-mail and social media to mobile, database techniques and those dreaded “robocalls.” Today’s Wall Street Journal explored the candidates’ ambitious internet strategies.

Even outside political groups such as the left-leaning Moveon.org has taken election pavement-pounding to the next level. Their nifty video site, cnnbcvideo.com, inserts any name selected by the viewer into a fake newscast from November 7, 2008, three days after a US presidential election won by Republican John McCain. Sure, it’s a shameless plug to get me to the polls, but I laughed out loud.

This year’s presidential candidates have spent a lot of their time (and money) trying to mark a mark with the “reg’lar folks” of middle America: “Joe the Plumber,” “Wal-Mart Moms,” “Joe Sixpack” and, to some extent, “Jane Wine Box” (thank you, Jon Stewart), have been coddled, cajoled, addressed and fired up in the race for precious votes.

Now Wal-Mart is providing a new, direct-to-Joe-and-Jane channel for the candidates: online campaign videos at walmart.com, samsclub.com and walmartstores.com.

Each candidate is posting two videos to the sites, introducing themselves and explaining their positions on various issues. Wal-Mart will drive shoppers to the videos with in-store announcements.

Last night, I logged on to the New York Times home page, only to be confronted with one of those ubiquitous Mac ads featuring Jon Hodgman.

Rather than click out of it, as is usually my approach to online ads, I kept watching. Such is the power of Jon Hodgman — he’s tooooo funny. Usually, online advertisers would see this as a good thing: they made something that was so good that I spent more time with their ad, ingesting whatever marketing message they had to throw at me.

Mac ads are not usual, though. They’re so entertaining, they’ve made Jon Hodgman at least a household face (although his household “name” is probably “that PC guy”). Herein lies the problem for me: I get so caught up in laughing at Hodgman, I don’t really pay attention to the Mac Guy, and I don’t really pay attention to what the ad is actually trying to tell me.

I cannot recall a single thing about that ad — which I just watched last night — other than the fact that Jon Hodgman was a riot.

Is this a bad thing or a good thing for Mac? On the one hand, I don’t really know which Mac product it was trying to sell or why they thought I should buy it. On the other hand, even though I can’t remember the exact marketing message or any of the neat-o Mac attributes it was listing, I do, of course, know that it was a Mac commercial. Is that enough? Would I remember more of the specifics if the ad were less funny, or if I were actually in the market for a new computer?

It’s a fine line that they’re walking, I suppose, but as long as they keep putting Jon Hodgman out there, it’s alright with me.

According to a new study by The Conference Board and TNS nearly one-fifth of American households that use the Web, use it to watch online broadcasts. This is twice as many as 2006. The release put out by the two research firms says the top two sites for viewership are “the official TV channel homepage and YouTube.com.”

Consumers in the study cited not liking a set schedule, being able to watch on their own time, avoiding commercials and portability as some of their reasons for online video viewing. In addition to these stats, the study also estimated that nearly 72 percent of online households use the internet for entertainment purposes on a daily basis. One in 10 says entertainment is the most imporant internet activity to them.

Time will tell if online video continues to attract viewers at such a rapid rate or if it will eventually reach a plateau. It will also be interesting to see how marketers continue to leverage these platforms for new initiatives in direct marketing, considering this quick increase in viewership.

According to a recent study by comScore, Senator Barack Obama has run a “more advanced online operation” during the first six months of 2008 when compared to Senator John McCain. Specifically, Obama leads McCain in site visitors, candidate searches and display ads. However, McCain leads Obama in video views.

For example, the number of searches for “Obama” (5.4 million) was about four times that of “McCain” (1.3 million), comScore reports.

“This disparity likely reflects both the public’s interest in Barack Obama’s historic candidacy as the first African-American presidential nominee from a major political party and the desire to find out more about the background and positions of this relative newcomer on the national political stage,” comScore speculates.

…but only if you act quickly.

Today only, Southwest Airlines is offering discounted “Ding!” fares on flights out of of San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The deal — running from 9 AM to 9 PM today — is in celebration of Southwest’s one-year anniversary of its return to SFO. Southwest served the airport consistently from 1982 to 2001, but was off the roster at SFO until August 26, 2007, when it started running 18 daily flights out of the Bay Area.

“Ding!” fares are only available to Southwest customers who download the “Ding!” widget from the company’s site (linked). The tool delivers special rates to users’ desktops — and is a very clever way for the airline to embed itself into a consumer’s everyday life.

Despite criticism for being too TV focused in its Olympics coverage, NBCOlympics.com fared well during this summer’s games.

According to the NY Times, while the television ratings for the Olympics coverage was record breaking this month, NBC’s Web site saw its own boom in traffic, “serving 1.2 billion pages and 72 million video streams through Saturday, more than doubling the combined traffic to its site during the 2004 Games in Athens and the 2006 Games in Turin.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/sports/olympics/25online.html?_r=1&oref=slogin