Interact Congress Blog

The Networked Business of the Future

2011-10-12T13:14:00.003+02:00

Knowledge peers event share version

View more presentations from Nicholas Gill bluurb.wordpress.com

Recently I presented at the Knowledge Peers event: Technology – transforming growing businesses at the Design Council, Covent Garden, London. A lot of good presentations and discussions with a genuinely interested and intelligent audience asking some probing questions about cloud, social business and the changes required.

My presentation was about how technology has changed companies, the problems they face and the benefits of becoming a more social business internally and externally. It picks up on themes from a couple of previous posts on social business if you fancy checking that out.

More: read a full transcript and also a video of post event snippets.

Bloggers Outreach. My new blog and site to help connect bloggers to bloggers, and bloggers to brands

2011-07-24T12:11:00.002+02:00

I have recently launched a news blog/ site/ community called Bloggers Outreach which can be found at http://www.BloggersOutreach.com

Why have I created this?

I have been an active blogger since 2005, and over the last few years I have seen the influence and power of blogs grow and grow. The good ones are getting more important, and more influential, every day.

I believe that this will continue as key and important blogs on topics become seen as the independent, unbiased and opinionated sources of advice, information and guidance.

We are seeing "user generated content" sites (like TripAdvisor) in my view becoming less effective and reliable, as users vent or rave in short sentences - while on the other side companies and agencies are trying to manage what is said and how they are rated. This means these sites, unless they find a new model, will become less important and less effective.The good blogger who has passion, expertise, understanding and stays independent of mind and views will become very important. They can be experts in key niches and topics.

I find increasingly that I turn to and refer to blogs when trying to find out about places, purchases or issues. I find they end up being more detailed and more accurate and more reliable. This, when done well, will be the future of advice and recommendation.The BloggersOutreach blog and site is an attempt to help create a place to share, support and promote blogs and blogging. I think that so much interaction with bloggers is done badly, as brands and companies try and find out the best way to contact and interact.

An emerging trend and practice is for bloggers to start to create communities and forums to share, discuss and learn. They are fascinating as they also start to filter out and bring blogs on topics that they as a group feel are strong and complimemtary. These forums become a great opportunity for PR and Brand owners to connect in more efficient and effective ways - and learn the best way to do it.

BloggersOutreach.com is exploring how bloggers can connect with other bloggers and blogging communities, and with brands and companies.

Visit the site and sign up for the ride...

Do you have any thoughts? Leave a comment on the blog. Where you will also find details of how to subscribe for email updates, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe for the free podcast.

Blogger Outreach: My top 7 tips on how to do it better...

2011-07-05T14:24:00.000+02:00

I have been running blogs since 2005, and in the last year to 18 months it has become clear that brands and companies are trying to tap into this rich source of advice and recommendation for their businesses. It is also clear that almost all of them do it really badly, and do not understand what a blogger mindset is and how to get the most out of it.

So here are my 7 tips and thoughts:

(1) Read their blog - in depth. And then pitch or make contact in a personal and targeted way. As a blogger with fairly busy sites, I now get almost daily approaches. Most are clearly generic and off some list or cut and paste. If you want bloggers to partner, you need to show you understand their blog. Blogs for most are hobbies and things of passion...

(2) Remember bloggers are trying to or have a USP or point of difference, you need to help provide that. So, for example, access to wide range of people from the brand to meet or talk to versus a standard release or approach. My busiest blog is my Tips For Travellers blog, and in the travel blog world there are zillions of them. I need to make sure I have an angle and approach...

(3) Bloggers want more traffic. How can you help them get that? Links from your sites? Training on SEO and other traffic driving activity.

(4) Bloggers want recognition and to stand out. The space is very cluttered, and anything you can do to elevate their credibility or reputation will be well received. So things like awards, membership of top bloggers and so on.

(5) Bloggers are getting organised and forming informal and formal groups. They help to screen the best blogs, and always looking for good speakers, sponsors to cover cost of events and so on. Work with these as they are well connected, can be very efficient and effective.

(6) Bloggers are looking for some revenue. For many it is a hobby, but need some revenue to pay for the site, equipment, travel to events and so on. Some are trying to make a full time living from it. It will not always be free to get bloggers on board. It may not mean direct payment, but events and so on. Or buy ads rather than just trying to get "free" coverage...

(7) Build a personal relationship. For example, there is one person at Orient Express that will be the contact with me. She was the host at their event and made sure I was welcomed and introduced me around. I noticed everyone had some bloggers "under their wing" as it were.

Thoughts and tips based on your experiences as a blogger or brand based on what works and does not? Leave a comment on the blog posting...

Do you have any thoughts? Leave a comment on the blog. Where you will also find details of how to subscribe for email updates, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe for the free podcast.

IAB Belgium Think Digital Congress: Kevin Slavin on Second Screen Engagement

2011-05-28T15:14:00.001+02:00

This week I moderated IAB Belgium’s annual Think Digital congress. I knew a few of the speakers, but it’s always interesting to rediscover what they say and many presentations were absolutely worthwhile.

Someone I didn’t meet before was Kevin Slavin, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Starling. Kevin’s laid back way of providing great food for thought made the audience very quiet.

So, here’s a look at Kevin’s presentation and some very interesting insights about second screen engagement: TV, the way you might have never thought about it: from a community, engagement and social interaction viewpoint.

Key takeaways: TV is a synchronizing technology and with second screen engagement, we use desynchronizing technologies to resynchronize. No geolocated venue is as big as television.

Read full post and watch IAB Belgium Think Digital video

Belgian research shows lack of social media marketing maturity

2011-05-02T13:40:00.002+02:00

Belgian research shows lack of social media marketing maturity

A brand new study by Leads United (LEWIS PR), that was conducted among 70 Belgian communication and marketing “professionals”, found that Belgian businesses lack a fundamental understanding of the value of social media (marketing). The question is if businesses in other countries do better of course.

The fourth edition of the survey indicated that the use of social media tools is relatively well established, but that is about all really. There still is a huge lack of a social media strategy, let alone some sort of plan. Furthermore, 73% of the questioned companies don’t have a social media policy.

However, if you don’t have a clear strategy, a policy isn’t really necessary, is it? Looking back over the years there was barely any evolution to speak of since Leads United started the survey. The company even established that the number of businesses with a social media policy in Belgium has ceased to grow!

Read full post here.

Social Business Summit, London

2011-04-19T15:07:00.001+02:00

One year on, the Dachis Group Social Business Summit was back on it’s global tour to share and spread the social business gospel; where are we today and what does the next year hold? This year I was more selfish and bagged a ticket myself as the content looked more interesting than most of the other social events that just preach to you about what you already know. I wanted to learn something new and be inspired. So did I? I’ve tried to capture my notes from the day in the links on my own blog below and created some crap visuals to illustrate.
Part 1 (the morning session)
Part 2 (the afternoon session)

Nicholas Gill, bluurb.wordpress.com

Social Media ROI business measurement:

2011-04-03T21:10:00.001+02:00

Measuring the ROI of social media: in this slideshare Olivier Blanchard shares how.

Social Media ROI business measurement: @thebrandbuilder at #fusionmex

View more presentations from J-P De Clerck.

Requirements for social engagement

2011-03-01T10:44:00.000+01:00

I’ve shared before my views before that social media is just stuff and socialised brands can be contagious. More recently, the conversations we’ve been having with clients has been at a granular level; getting social media off the ground, making it work, benchmarking it and importantly, ongoing engagement with the brand connections. We’ve been using this to share our thoughts on engagement. Seems to be well received so thought I’d share here. It’s most likely an interim update to sharing our thoughts on our Socialising the Brand programme. Your thoughts welcome.

Nicholas Gill

bluurb.wordpress.com

OFF LINE BRANDS OUSTING ONLINE BRANDS? I DO NO THINK SO. SOME LEARNINGS

2011-02-26T15:42:00.000+01:00

There was an article online on The Telegraph site talking about the latest data on the top 50 UK web brands, comparing 2011 to 2004. The headline was dramatic saying: Tesco and BT oust dotcom darlings.

The writer of the article was trying to make the point that increasingly the “web only” brands were less dominant, and that brands that had on “off line” presence were growing.

On the surface it sounded like the old “bricks and mortar” brands were taking over online. The writer had taken any brand that required people to do things “off line” (like eBay) or physical products were involved (like Amazon) into the off line category, as well as brands who started as off-line and are trying to do more online (like retailers like Tesco and Argos, or utilities suppliers like BT).

I think this interpretation hides some very key trends and learning from the data. At the bottom of this posting is a link to the article, but the top 10 brands in Jan 2011 were: Google; MSN; Facebook; Yahoo; BBC; Microsoft; Amazon and YouTube. Tesco was 17th and BT not in the top 20...

I would like to suggest a different set of conclusions that we all should consider and take on board are from the data:

1. Media channels where consumers view and consume content are the largest and most important brands and channels online, and remain so. And will do so.

The key is to have a presence where consumers are. Fish where the fish are. Consumers will always go to where they can source the best and broadest information, education, entertainment, news and so on. These will be best delivered by content experts, just as TV channels, magazines and newspapers have provided it in traditional media. These big broad and increasingly “mass reach” channels online will always be key to success online, and that is where companies and brands need to be advertising, engaging or available

2. Tools that enable transactions between people or companies will always be strong. Amazon, eBay and the like have made it easier (and cheaper) to find things you need and want. These facilitation tools will be important and big, and grow. And they offer choice and the ability to access and compare what you are seeking.

3. Tools and brands that enable people to interact and engage will always be strong. Brands that offer email are still strong. Brands that offer chat are strong, and now brands that offer other forms of engagement (like Facebook) will be strong and get stronger. This is where time gets spent on time and where

4. Traditional brands will never be major destination sites or places versus the 3 above. They may play a role to address your current customers and consumers, or where people that really want to transact in some way with your brand. But remember that is the key role. Focus on being where your core target is. If that is a niche on your destination then fine, but if not be where they are going to be.

Thoughts?

The article that inspired this is at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8339000/Top-50-UK-online-brands-Tesco-and-BT-oust-dotcom-darlings.html

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TIPS ON MARKETING IN A DIGITAL WORLD: based on thoughts from Toby Horry of Dare

2011-02-19T17:23:00.003+01:00

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Photo: IABUK off Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iabuk

I was at an excellent talk that Toby Horry, one of the joint managing directors, at the communication agency called Dare in London gave to me and some work colleagues recently. His ideas and thoughts were very thought provoking, and give good advice to people thinking and approaching the whole digital space.

There were 4 key points that stood out for me from his thoughts and advice, and here they are:

(1) THINK ABOUT MARKETING FOR A DIGITAL WORLD, AND NOT ABOUT DOING DIGITAL MARKETING.

The consumer is now connected, and especially younger ones. They see it as just a normal part of everyday life, and something that they just do. Not something separate and unique. It is integrated into their life and blurs into they way they live and act.

The mistake that manufacturers and retailers make is that they approach digital with a mindset of "digital strategy and marketing", instead of being focused on what do I need to do across all my mix in a digital world.

(2) CONSUMER IS EXPOSED TO "TOO MUCH" MEDIA AND VOLUME OF MESSAGES. THEY NEED TO MAKE CHOICES.

There are more and more tools to help them do just this, and to screen out and filter the volume of media and messages. One example is Sky+/ TIVO so they can time shift watching, chose what they watch when and screen out adverts if they want.

The only way that you will be seen and engaged with is by being clear about how you will and can add value and be one of the chosen that they will want to stop and listen or interact with. Increasingly, this is going to be key. It also reminded me of another article I wrote about how communication will need to ensure that you stop people, make them look up and then engage and act (click here).

(3) THINK ABOUT AND APPROACH WITH A MINDSET IF "DOING. RIGHT DOWN TO THE ORIGINAL BRIEF"
Toby spoke about how important it is, and how they encourage their clients to always try and ensure they have a VERB in their briefs. The key, he argues and I agree with, is that you should have a verb in the brief that describes what you want people who see your communication to actually do.

For example, Sainsburys Supermarket communication proposes you "try something new today", while say Avis says "We try harder". The first encourages and action, and is much more about getting people to act.

This is a great piece of advice, and especially key for digital..

(4) FAIL FAST AND FAIL CHEAP!
Try things and learn what works, but do it fast and learn in an inexpensive way..

Some great thoughts and advice. The Dare agency website is http://www.thisisdare.com

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I don’t always need a TwitFace to get an emotional response

2011-02-11T11:40:00.000+01:00

I don’t like American football, I don’t even know who won the SuperBowl this year. But I have seen some of the advertising. Because it is a cultural phenomenon that stretches beyond the 110 million fervent Americans watching in their dens and into a global audience.

I have also seen a lot of the post SuperBowl bitching that this year was supposed to be the SocialBowl. Because y’know social is the new world order innit? And Pepsi shipped their SuperBowl budget into the Refresh social cause project last year. And because Old Spice guy did some personalised video responses to Twitter people. Which was, of course, brilliant. So this year we should all be exploiting the FaceSpace in a go big kick ass way. Whoop!

But SuperBowl has 110 million fervent fans watching. Live. Which is a prime opportunity to build your brand and be entertaining in an entertainment medium in the ultimate (if you’re American) sports entertainment date.

Which is what telly does brilliantly.

But still we whine that they missed an opportunity to be social. We even helpfully provide “they could have done this”. Well, some did use social…

Audi – they used a hashtag. So you could “participate”.

VW – they used social media to seed the Vader/Passat ad before the event to raise awareness and ohmygod create BUZZ.

Chrysler – they just did an amazeballs brilliant ad that left you with goosebumps. Oh and most Americans know it’s Chrsyler.com which has the campaign front and centre. It also has a social hub. And it’s as prominent as on facebook.com/Chrysler.

So they did do social after all – they just didn’t shout about it. Because it’s so second nature that we’ll find it if we want more.

If advertising is designed to elicit an emotional response and plant that brand front and centre in your brain then some of the Superbowl ads did it in spades.

Some of them didn’t. But still we yakked about it afterwards.

If advertising is just meant to be a vehicle to send people to Facebook then a brand ad on SuperBowl Sunday won’t be the answer. Brand awareness and emotional response doesn’t always have to have a social element.

The ads above delivered emotional response in spades and also had a lot of talkability/buzz factor we crave in marketing.

That’s why we need integrated approaches. Different parts of the communications mix do different jobs. You don’t need to tick every single box every single campaign.

Nicholas Gill

http://bluurb.wordpress.com/

DIGITAL STRATGEY: 3 THINGS TO FOCUS ON AS A BRAND OR COMPANY

2011-02-01T15:42:00.002+01:00

photo by PlanToo46's http://www.flickr.com/photos/55260169@N07

I am amazed all too often when I hear people through organizations talking about digital and digital strategies. There is an obsession with “doing stuff” and people keep asking for “a website”, a “Facebook page” and search optimization. These seem to be seen as strategies.

In a talk I did a while ago on Digital Fundamentals, I spoke about how to approach the whole digital space. To review those 10 tips and ideas you can watch it on SlideShare via the blog (click here) or download a PDF (click here)

But to make it even simpler, there are for me 3 key considerations for any brand or company as they think about digital and its role in their mix:

1. Ensure any consumer/ customer/ KOL looking for your brand/ company online will find it - and get what they are looking for. If they seek they should find what they want!

1. This means that you need to gout and find out what it is that they want and ensure you have it online, most likely via a website. It may be very simple: all they want is your contact details, or maybe to get a sample. Make sure you understand what they want, as you may find a one page site is all you need. Avoid copying what your competition does, as they may be doing what they think people want, not what they want.

2. Ensure that your brand/ company is present where your core target consumers/ customers/ KOLs are and are interacting online. Fish where the fish are!

1. In many ways, this is probably the key one. You need to be where people are. You need to “fish where there are fish”. Too many people focus on building destinations, rather than having content or ads where people are. The same as when you do a TV ad to communicate, you place it in the right place where your target is – you do not build a TV station and invest on getting people to come to the channel…

3. Increasing the amount people spend with you or on you by finding the ones who really like you, and use CRM to get them to buy more, come more often and stay loyal and cross purchase to make the investment worthwhile. You can find the best prospects and keep them on-board.

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THE DEATH OF USER GENERATED CONTENT IS COMING?

2011-01-24T20:54:00.001+01:00

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjoro/

All good things must come to an end. So goes the saying. And is the end of user generated content heading that way?

I think it probably is exactly where user generated content is heading. I believe that as social media, blogging, twitter and review sites have become more and more mainstream, it has is becoming less and less powerful, insightful and helpful. This is because instead of a few really passionate people with deep understanding and knowledge of a topic or area carefully crafting and writing about a topic, there has been and is a growing trend for people to either "gush" or "vent". This makes for less powerful and less helpful advice and comment to guide and to get help from.

Some friends who run a Guest House in Cape Town, who are usually the #1 or #2 rated in hotels in that city, are finding (for example) that TripAdvisor.com is becoming less helpful and powerful for them. This is because the reviews now tend to be just as I described above: a few words gushing about how lovely it is or a few lines on what they hated. The reviews lack substance and lack depth of content. Unlike years ago where more geeky and passionate people would invest time in their commentary, reviews and try and be more helpful and informative.

I have found when trying to research a problem - or find out about an area I need some help with -be it how to chose the right Apple Mac or solve a problem that you have to wade through piles of "stuff". There is a lot of noise that has to be waded through, and much of it is not very helpful (or accurate) ideas and suggestions. Increasingly you need to find experts with history and time of doing things.

I have found that my various blogs and even my videos of travel and hotel rooms on YouTube are growing in traffic and usage. I have been running them since 2005 and so there is history and so people (I suspect) are coming as they know there is depth there.

I think that the huge explosion in social media and everyone posting and commenting is the new SPAM! Just like it ruined email, it is ruining user generated content. Increasingly it is clogging up the system, and opening ways to a new way to emerge. More likely more validated and expert screening, and emeregence of more monitored and expert content.

What do you think? Post a thought and comment in the blog.

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Search engine marketing and social media: conversion is a matter of relevance

2010-09-19T20:25:00.000+02:00

In order for your website or other online properties to be found online (inbound marketing), you still need a good search engine optimization strategy.

Defining relevant keywords for your business and, more than ever, for your target groups. Relevance is increasingly becoming important in search. What people find in search engine result pages must lead to online destinations that are relevant for their search queries.

Search engines already take this into account but in the end they remain quite ‘dumb’ and all too often well ranked search engine results still lead to irrelevant web pages and thus content.

You can easily optimize the SEO of your pages with search engine optimized content, the right link building strategies and applying all the rules of professional search engine marketing.

But what’s the use of ranking high in results if the value you provide on your website is low from a visitor viewpoint? Conversion starts with being found online but it happens after the click.

When the relevance is not there, there is no conversion and probably even a negative perception about your brand.

Search engine optimized content requires the help of a professional. SEO copywriters are not always cheap, but they can correctly optimize all your content so it's search engine friendly.

However, that is not enough anymore.

If you want your content to be shared via social media, bookmarked and result in optimal conversion, you need a partner that understands more than keywords and SEO.

He or she needs to be able to write with the needs of the readers in mind, knows how to write a call-to-action, understand what determines if your content will be shared on social media or bookmarked on social bookmarking sites and understands that content is part of a broader exercise where your web site, blog, emails, social media presences and whatever you do, are part of another conversion process.

Not that from content to click and online conversion. But that from lead to loyal customer by offering content as a way of lead nurturing. Content in the context of the customer buying journey.

SEM is part of a broader marketing strategy and that’s why many agencies are extending their offering with social media optimization, conversion strategies, web analytics, online copywriting and sometimes even marketing automation and lead management.

Where social media optimization fits in

The same goes for the skills of an online copywriter: he or she must acquire new skills. This type of online copywriting is something that, according to me, cannot be done in house but must be outsourced to a highly specialized expert, a conversion agency, an SEO firm that has an integrated approach or a communication agency that has that same integrated approach but also a customer-centric look on interactive marketing.

In the end, all that matters in marketing is the bottom-line and the value that is created for the business and the customer. And content is key in every micro-conversion, acquisition effort, lead nurturing step and word-of-mouth conversation. That's also where social media optimization fits in: not search is social but relevance.

Originally posted here: Search engine marketing and social: why SEO and search engine optimized content are not enough

Blogs are the websites of the social media world

2010-09-19T20:19:00.001+02:00

Many businesses don't have a blog yet. Too bad since blogs are really social media hubs and more. But there is hope. Since blogs are almost a must for all businesses that want to do "something" with social media.
A little more than a decade ago many companies had no websites. And if they had one, it was often no more than some online brochure. Now, for most businesses their website is a critical part of their daily basis and a hub where various online and offline activities start and come together. In little over ten years the corporate site has become a crucial component of the marketing and communication strategy. Today companies face a new challenge: social media.

Actually, the challenge is not that new but the success of social media and the fact that people continuously want more control over the communication process and tap into their social networks force companies to use social media as well.Social media, including blogs, are so frequently used by people - and thus also by prospects, clients, suppliers, potential employees, competitors, journalists etc. – that you HAVE to follow what is happening in the social sphere and participate in it.

Blogs play a crucial part in this. A blog, as I have been saying for a long time, is a social media hub. In some cases social networks can also be social media hubs and even the corporate website offers various – underused - possibilities regarding social media marketing. But blogs are definitely the main social media hubs. They are the source of social interactions and facilitate dialogues.

Blogs are the online properties to which companies can link their social media presences and where dialogues with clients and prospects also effectively take place. Furthermore, blogs play a crucial role in search engine marketing and a brand’s reputation, amongst many others.

Businesses can blog in various ways. They can setup a separate blog which is more or less separate from the company (website) itself, they can leave the initiative for blogging to persons within the company who have something to say and create their own blog, etc.

But it is also absolutely advisable to have a blog that is setup within the website or connected to it and where different persons within the company can blog.

The benefits are tremendous: a simple integration with web analytics, a more ‘open’ and transparent image, search engine optimization and a rapid real-time interaction with people whereby relevant content is crucial.

Company blogs also open up new doors to strengthen other channels and client aimed actions, even in more outbound activities such as e-mail marketing. And of course they are essential in inbound marketing: people are in need of relevant information they can interact with; using blogs you can provide this much faster and in a conversational way than on a website.

Just as today the website has become a marketing hub, blogs will for a long time be the hubs of social media marketing. Content plays a crucial role in this.

If you don’t have a blog yet, it’s really time to get started.

Inbound marketing: blogs are the websites of the social Web

IS TV DYING? what digital players can learn and what we need to do about it.

2010-09-06T13:11:00.000+02:00

The death of TV is still not happening! This is confirmed once again in a large media consumption study run the media regulatory body in the UK called Ofcom. Although the data is on UK consumers, the study reflects the same learning that other countries are seeing in their markets.

However, I think the study does though clearly highlight some changes and new habits that have a huge implication on how marketers, advertising and people running online and digital campaigns and businesses need to think and act. In order to succeed they are critical.

In the business I am involved in running, it is clear that the traditional focus on high TV activity is no longer working as well. But does it mean that TV is not important? I don’t think it does, since people are watching a lot of it. But there are some very key factors.

Let em outline what I think was significant in the learning, and then the 3 key actions that I think we all need to take and focus on.

The 5 key things that stood out for me:

(1) People are still watching a lot of TV. In the UK it is just below 4 hours a day on average. However, they do not consume and watch it like they used to. Understanding this is fundamental at how one looks at the style and role of TV ads moving forwards.

(2) There is huge multi-tasking taking place, and the younger the consumer the more it happens. In fact younger people consume more hours of media than there are hours available. This is because they multi-task, consuming different things at once, such as watching TV while online or on their smart-phones interacting and engaging.

(3) The growth and use of online catch-up services and PVRs like TIVO in the USA and Sky+ in the Uk, has actually meant that people are watching more TV. This is because they can watch it when it is more convenient for them, and studies found that instead of dropping out of following a show or series if people missed an episode they now watch via PVR or online and keep with the series. In fact, it was found by Sky TV that people with Sky+ are watching more TV and being exposed to more ads. Of course many are watched on “fast forward”.

(4) Online companies are among the biggest advertisers on TV now. This clearly shows the power of large mass media for driving awareness and traffic.

(5) The above factor is likely to be accelerated by the fact that since people are now multi-taking more and likely to have their laptop, smart-phone, iPad and so on with them, if they see something that interests them in an ad they can immediately go to it, research it, sign up for it, buy it, download it right there and then. It means TV can get immediate response. Literally.

So what should we do about it as we think about creating ads for TV, or any media since people will be multi-tasking?

Your ads need to, more than ever:

(1) Get people to LOOK UP. You need to get them to stop multi-tasking and look at you, notice you, watch or listen to you.

(2) Get people to LEAN FORWARD. Get engaged and listen to what you are offering, telling or selling. If watching on fast forward on Sky+ you need them to slow down and watch and lean forward and listen.

(3) Get people TO ACT. Right away and right in the moment. Increasingly, you need to have a “call to action” and get people to respond. They may be connected and you can actually get them to do something. Don’t wait for them to act when they next go to the store, get them to act. This means you need to think through what you want them to do, and ensure you have the offers, the sites or the destinations ready and easy to access.

Exciting times, and exciting new ways to think about the role of TV and mass media. It is not dying, but to work you need to use it in a different way.

What do you think? Got any good examples? Drop me an email at gary@bembridge.co.uk or even better leave a comment on the blog posting and join the debate now.

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My client doesn't get social media

2010-09-04T15:17:00.001+02:00

Whoa! What do you mean they don’t “get it”? They must be mad! Are they insane? Are they still living in the 1990s? They don’t even have an iPhone?

Not everyone travels at the same pace.

Here’s a reality check from conversations and observations with clients who are “not getting it”.

Observation #1

We work in advertising (I use the term as a broad church that includes all our disciplines) and as such we do get it (well, not all – more on that at a later date perhaps). We get it because we have to be in it to win it. Because we are in a service industry where we need to be pro-active and better than the other guy. We have to experiment and get on board ahead of the curve. Because when we talk to our clients, we need to be knowledgeable and helpful so we can advise and guide them appropriately in our trusted advisor positions. That’s why clients pay us.

Clients are busy people. They don’t always get free reign on the interweb like us agency folk and have many more corporate restrictions from an IT or legal perspective. Yes, some clients are still on IE6 (shudder!) so cannot experience web browser excitement like what we can. Yes, some clients are not allowed on Facebook so they’re not as intimate with the joys of Farmville et al. Yes, some clients don’t have iPhones because it’s an expensive bit of kit so may not be as familiar with apps that make lightsaber sounds. Yes, some clients aren’t allowed access to You Tube so can’t watch videos about cats all day. So we can’t assume they know WTF SXSW is, how hashtags work or even that Old Spice guy has hit their radar.

Implication: understand their situation and be a guiding light. They may not be as far down the line as you want or assume.

Observation #2

A lot of clients are versed in advertising, direct and digital (websites, online advertising, search). That’s their sphere of reference. That’s their job description. That’s their 9-5 (and way beyond). They are assessed and rewarded on old-fashioned things such as how their communications contribute to market share, sales, margin, propensity to purchase, ROI, loyalty. There is probably not a budget line for social media so something else has to be sacrificed to trial it. Something else that has an accountable budget that drives or protects market share, sales etc. All of this has to be approved further up the tree; and those people typically have less time or inclination to know about this stuff – back to Observation #1. Until we actually start talking in terms that prick their ears up and make a demonstrable impact on their business performance, terms such as “frands” (jeez, I think I may puke) will go straight to the round file and the poor buggers will be labeled as “another client who doesn’t get it.”

Implication: ground ideas in numbers rather than buzzwords to make social salient.

Observation #3

So what? I know my advertising drives consideration and sales, my DM and email drives targeted response, my search drives me insane as well as lots of conversion, my site helps people and drives to purchase. What does four gazillion tweets and twelvety blog hat tips mean? The so what factor should never be ignored. If I did nothing, would anything ever change? Do I really need a Twitbook?

Implication: deliver insight and implication, not facts and certainly not a shiny twitbook account before due planning and consideration.

Above all, be open, authentic and transparent. Much like we suggest how brands behave in the social space.

Originally posted on bluurb.wordpress.com

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nicholas.r.gill@gmail.com

Times Paywall and iPad app: what I like and what we can all learn from it

2010-08-11T11:05:00.000+02:00

Much has been made by journalists and media commentators (mostly competitors of News International who own the title) of the move to charge for access to The Time's website, and to buy subscription to the iPad app to get the daily paper.

The data will finally tell us who was right, although early data suggests traffic on the site fell by three quarters (versus the 90% many projected). Also the charts I saw suggested that unique visitors to the competitive news sites was not up (meaning that the same set of people were looking at multiple sites versus a big unique set of people). Anyway, I thought it would be good to enter the discussion as a user and explain what I like and think about the move and the experiment - and what I think marketers and digital players can learn from it.

I have subscribed to the iPad Times news app (at £9.99 a month)

So here are the 5 things about the move so far that I like:

1: it focuses on the core target. In all the debate, the assumption has been that news is generic. It has not focused on the brand. It does not surprise me that the competitive sites have not seen a huge increase in unique users, as I suspect that many people - including me – would look at multiple sites covering news to see different points of view and coverage. But as a loyal Time reader off line, I ended up putting money where my loyalty lies.

When it comes to news there are brands and providers that users are loyal to and have affinities with. I love getting my TV news from Sky News, others from BBC. I love reading The Times. I buy and consume The Times as I like the editorial focus, style and screen. I like the familiarity. This is why people choose brands. The move is focusing on brand users and loyalists, at the expense potentially of volume, but they can focus on serving the needs of loyal users and try to get them to stay longer and spend more. Finding ways of adding value and keeping loyal users and repeat is a good marketing instinct and tactic. Volume and trial is easy to get, especially if it is FREE. But that is not what makes money and profit....

2: they are experimenting and learning. They have made a move, they are trying and experimenting. They are daring to go against the considered opinions and are constantly evolving the offer and actively asking for thoughts and input. This is what good innovation is about. I learnt recently that the best and most successful innovators are ones that keep doing things, trying changes, prototyping, testing live and constantly evolving. They have a belief (that good journalism costs) and are trying to make it work. I admire trying. More people win by trying than by sitting by and waiting for others to prove something.

3: they are using the tools to interact and engage. They have a very active Twitter feed that will contact you, feedback on queries and engage in a conversation. It is excellent and they will actively ask and push information. I feel like a person that is important to the brand, and not just one of a zillion of readers. I think this part of the mix is something that is really powerful and under-estimated in importance. They are making the loyal user feel part of the family and valued.

4: the iPad app is better than the paper, but familiar. It is a product improvement, it has added value and is not a substitute! The app is better than the website which is just like other websites. The iPad app is great. Has the occasional tech problems, but they work on it fast. It is – for me – key. The Times LOOKS BETTER on the iPad than on paper! It feels familiar and reads like the paper we are used to, but has added features and easy to navigate. For me the iPad app is much better than the site, as it feels like the product I like and consumer (but better) while the site looks like any news site. I think this is a missed opportunity.

Also one can access the paper earlier and easier than before as you can download it from about 4 or 5am. It also can be read offline, and for me who is away and out the country a lot means I can see and read my familiar product in “real time” not some day or more old thing.

Don't like
1: That for the £9.99 monthly fee, you don’t get access to the website online. You would need to pay again. Having one charge to access would be better.

I think the 4 things above are key, as they provide some guidance for us as we think about digital and online. Focus on the brand loyal? Experiment and learn, push boundaries just don’t copy? Ensure your offering a product improvement not just an alternative? Use tools to engage and interact?

I hope it succeeds as I am hooked to the app!

Leave a comment on the blog in comments or email me with thoughts: gary@bembridge.co.uk

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The New Integration

2010-08-10T15:44:00.002+02:00

Right now, there’s a lot of talk out there about integration being dead. Almost as much talk as there is about social media, the death of the ad agency – and the Old Spice viral.

But I think it’s all nonsense. Find out why and discover some simple truths by reading this ‘New Integration’ thought leadership piece. It’s the first in a probably highly irregular series of thought stuff from us at DCH.

Like or dislike?

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Guerilla marketing used to be celebrated, now it can get you arrested

2010-06-17T13:06:00.001+02:00

The World Cup 2010. Massive amounts of media dollars spent by a few big brands wanting to associate themselves with the beautiful game and getting some exclusive media rights to the tournament. For every other brand the challenge is to punk them without the need to be an official sponsor. Nike have pretty much done this already with their Write the Future campaign and despite the cool Adidas Originals Star Wars mash up, most of Adidas’ publicity has been about THAT ball.

And then there’s the official alcohol brand. Budweiser have spent gazillions to be FIFA’s drinking buddy and I’m still a little gobsmacked when I see some people in the crowd clutching a bottle. There’s a good reason it’s banned in stadiums over here, not entirely sure why it’s not over there. Anyway, I digress.

How do you ambush the Bud party, get yourself noticed and talked about?

1) Buy a load of tickets of an ex Wimbledon player who has somehow managed to get to the World Cup as a pundit – and subsequently been fired for his lack of ability to keep his ticket allocation to family and friends (and with the best headline so far from The Sun – tout of Africa). If only it was Mick McCarthy, is he the dullest man in the universe?

2) Hire a harem of hot, blonde, Dutch girls.

3) Dress them in matching orange mini-dresses and give them the match tickets to the Holland game.

4) Rely on TV camera crews to pick up on hot, blonde, Dutch girls in short dresses and let the lingering camera shots do the rest. Bonus points if the game is dull and therefore more crowd footage.

5) People will go “phwoooar, look at them! Why are they dressed all the same?” Google becomes your friend. Voila, everyone knows it’s for Dutch beer Bavaria. And they’ve done it before.

Hurrah! Job done. Girls in newspapers everywhere, brand gets noticed, Bud punk’d, less money spent. Everyone loves you.

Except in this case, FIFA and Bud didn’t like being punk’d. They got mad, they got the girls evicted (somewhat expected) and then the organisers arrested (most unexpected)! The world has gone mad. Sure they want to protect their investment but there was no overt branding on the dresses. No one really has a clue what Bavaria beer is still. This just makes Bud and FIFA look like dorks. Shame on them.

But good for Bavaria – they’re planning on more stunts with different colour dresses. Perhaps this World Cup will get interesting at last. Especially if Mick has been generous with his tickets.

Who wants to drink Bud with football anyway? I’d rather have a bevy of hot girls in orange dresses any day.

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nicholas.r.gill@gmail.com

Social media opportunities and threats

2010-06-17T13:05:00.000+02:00

Resource, control, senior stakeholder support.

The key threats of social media as viewed by a selection of UK senior marketers in this IDM download. The disturbing thing is that these threats are easily overcome. Social is no longer a fad, the case studies are out there of the huge impact it can have to amplify a brand message, activate a community of fans or instigate change. Control is an irrational fear. Use the channels you can control, plan accordingly and get upfront buy in from those bad boys in legal. Resource. Pah. In these uncertain economic times there will be activities that don’t pay back (commercially or brand equity) that do have resource. That have secured approval because the business “gets it”. By that I mean it’s traditional, always been there. If BT can change their call centre structure to have a team dedicated to active listening (listening and then participating in the conversations that are happening) then any brand can adapt. The biggest issue is senior stakeholder support. As Justin Billingsley, the former Orange Marketing Director said at the IAB Engage Conference in 2008, the biggest obstacle he had to overcome in turning Orange into a digitally focussed enterprise was the 60 year old man in the boardroom – he didn’t get it. And more pointedly, didn’t want to get it. We can help them get it, provide the evidence, create the excitement and continue educating and inspiring. The threats can be overcome, the opportunities are endless.

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Why check-in anywhere else?

2010-06-17T13:04:00.000+02:00

McDonald’s have just teamed up with Facebook to be the first brand to offer their new location-based service. While Foursquare stats are being touted aplenty of late with a million users and 40 million check ins, the numbers are dwarfed by the Facebook behemoth.

Facebook is HUGE. It’s ingrained in our culture, language and behaviours. Including more localised (and therefore highly relevant and timely) content will only make us more wedded to it. While we’re (marketeers and agencies) experimenting with the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook will just swat these guys like flies because of the scale, high activity rates of the installed user base and acceptance among brand marketers.

Why check-in anywhere else?

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nicholas.r.gill@gmail.com

Online advertising and inbound marketing: it's all about people

2010-05-08T13:45:00.007+02:00

In this social media day and age, we increasingly move from outbound to inbound marketing. There are differences between B2B and B2C businesses but B2B companies are catching up very fast in the inbound marketing space and inbound is growing year after year.

What is outbound marketing? In a nutshell: the campaigns and marketing activities are 'pushed' to the people and are often interruptive. What is inbound marketing? Well, the opposite.

Content marketing, SEO, blog marketing and social media marketing are forms of inbound marketing. Events, call center actions, direct mailings and TV ads are forms of outbound marketing.

Email marketing/advertising is difficult to categorize. It's a bit of both. After all, the recipient gives his permission. And at the same time there is an evolution towards a more conversational and valuable focus on the recipient. But, despite all this and the fact that email marketing has found a strong companion in social media, there is a broadcasting aspect as well.

When do display ads contribute to the brand experience?

Which leads me to the big question: what about display advertising? In a way, display ads allow people to find you. That's a bit inbound. They do have an impact on branding. But they are often intrusive. That's outbound. Can I add that they are also still very often without value for the people that should see them, being you and me?

However, it's not really about the formats. It's about what they contain: the story, the promise and the content.

Whatever the definition: if display ad campaigns don't engage the people that see them, use intrusive formats and are not set up in function of the needs and wants of people, in the formats and circumstances that are relevant and enabling people to get something out of them or what they promise, they fail.

Customer-centricity is key in everything we do. The same goes for display ads. If they simply are about pushing your products and services or about one-way branding, they are not perceived as valuable.

If they are used to offer something that your 'target group' seeks (fun, relevant content, a paper, interaction, etc.) they will lead to a positive brand experience.

Your brand is not what you want it to be. It's what people make it: the people in your company and the people in the influence sphere of your online brand.

Give your brand a face and value beyond the brand itself. Let go of your brand, and it will get stronger than ever. In display ads as well. The value is in reputation and thus the value you put into relationships. With people, as people.

Display ads should engage people and get them talking or taking action. No, this does not mean display ads are about clicks (alone). Engagement and interaction are also about word-of-mouth, interacting with the creatives themselves and being surprised, impressed and touched. Display ads can do that. If you dare to let go more of your brand.

Again, your brand is not what you want it to be, so don’t try to “position” yourself via a display ad, in fact forget positioning completely (sorry, Al Ries and Jack Trout, but it is what it is). Your brand is what you get when you involve people, in all layers of the ecosystem that determines the value of your online brand.

Feel free to comment here or on Twitter.

Socialised brands can be contagious, social media is just stuff.

2010-05-06T13:53:00.001+02:00

Social media strategy.

There’s something inherently wrong about that, no? Why create a bespoke strategy for this? Or worse, mistake “being on Twitter” as a strategy. Social media is becoming a bit like a collection of stuff; half a pound of Facebook here, a dash of blogging there and a slice of Twitter on top as a garnish. Oh and a bit of that FourSquare malarkey to make me look cool. To the extent where the phrase “social media” is becoming a bit of a hindrance rather than a help because people use it to default to executional elements such as having a Twitface.

Where social media is really interesting is it being an enabler to our business and brand strategy. Yes, I am going to use that word integrated because the social media world doesn’t just exist in marketing, it transcends the entire business. Which is why social media should probably be killed as a term. It suggests a marketing only existence. And the endless isolation of social media from other comms and its positioning by social media people as the saviour of everything is why it’s viewed by many senior marketers as a bit of fairy dust and not something that can fundamentally make a tangible difference to their strategy and their business objectives. You don’t just do a TV ad without understanding the business and brand challenges so why are we so eager to suggest getting on MyFace is right for your brand without understanding these challenges?

Change the focus to how social can enable your brand by using the space in the right way, being cohesive with all your other activities and allowing deeper engagement, amplification and reciprocation of your strategy.

Socialised brands can be contagious. Social media is just stuff.

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nicholas.r.gill@gmail.com

DIGITAL MARKETING PODCAST. Free on iTunes

2010-04-27T20:34:00.001+02:00

I have just launched a new Podcast Series called "Digital Marketing Unleashed" which aims to provide both practical and inspirational advice and tips about creating, measuring and driving a digital marketing strategy based on my experience as a client.

You can subscribe for free via iTunes by clicking here:
Digital Marketing Unleashed Podcast

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should we be less #fail smug

2010-04-16T15:33:00.000+02:00

The start of this year has brought us some memorable social media fails: Eurostar, #cashgordon and Nestle to name but a few. And how we relish kicking them when they’re down. Because:
They don’t know how to do it.
They don’t get it.
They’re arrogant.
They’re douches.
We would NEVER do that.
Etc.

If you want a wonderful description of #cashgordon then have a read of this from the good folk at Made by Many. I particularly like the point that yes, the interweb will try and punk you. Because it can.

But aren’t we also getting a bit up our own arses on this? What if one of our own campaigns suffered a monumental fuck up? We are fallible. Yes, hard to believe I know. But it could happen. Would we take so much joy in our own #fail?

In the case of Nestle, the real issue was seemingly missed – especially on Twitter – by our own blinkered views. Although I’m in no way a hippy – I flaunted Earth hour this year by watching a Top Gear repeat with the lights on, phones charging, dishwasher on and many appliances on stand by – the poor gorillas and forest destruction got side-lined by our own glee at Nestle fucking up a Facebook response. I’m aware Nestle also has a long running war with NGOs after many an issue so anything they did was bound to wreak havoc regardless.

But all this smugness has another impact. Clients who are still reticent about entering into the social space are typically concerned about reputation or the notion of control. And this is still the majority no matter our own rhetoric on social media being HUGE. The #fail culture does little to overcome these barriers and we will be left with only the brave forging ahead which inhibits the growth and maturation of this exciting and game-changing space.

Perhaps if we were less concerned with our own reputations we would be sharing more #success rather than focussing on the #fail?

Image source.

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |Blog | nicholas.r.gill@gmail.com

Apple iPad: who will use and what for? All is now clear!

2010-04-16T09:05:00.000+02:00

Apple iPad, originally uploaded by iLounge.

There is no doubt that Apple managed to create huge noise and discussion in the run up to, the actual announcement and the launch day of the iPad in the USA (a week ago as I write this). There has been monstrous amounts of coverage, comment and discussion.

One of the most common threads and themes through the whole process is around What the hell is the device for and Who the hell would want one.

There has been a lot of debate about people saying they do not see how it would replace what they have already (PC/ laptop/ smartphone/ blackberry etc) and it was surely just an oversized iPhone. Some more kindly said Apple geeks would buy it, and as there were a lot of those it would be a nice little side earner for the company.

I have watched the debate with interest, and then saw 2 comments that were “AHA” moments for me. 2 things that made it all clear.

The first comment was: “the iPad is a content consumption device, not a content creation device”
The second was: “the iPad is perfect for your mother”

It all made such sense to me, and of course the 2 thoughts are related, although I did come across them in different articles and comments.

Let me explain why I saw these as so profound and clear:

Anyone who has an iPhone knows the quality of images and look at stuff viewed on it is stunning. It is a great device to use, even for someone like me who struggles t use a laptop without a mouse! It is though damn hard to type and work on traditional content generation (be it documents, presentations etc). The iPad will not really overcome that, but will be big, beautiful and clear for consuming content like books, websites, video, applications, playing games and so on.

And so to the next point. People like my mother have no interest in creating content. They want to consume it, view it and at most tap out a simple email. They also do not want to have to have a desk for a PC or laptop, have it out or around, boosting it up and logging on. The iPad would be perfect. Easy to have in a drawer or in her bag. Easy to sit down with a coffee and consume.

Time will tell, but it seems to me that the iPad is a device to consume media by people who don’t want all the content creation capability a PC has.

Me I want it because I love gadgets. But at least I now know why I want it and how I will use it....

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Digital Fundamentals: 10 things you need to know to develop a great digital stratgey and plan

2010-03-30T08:48:00.002+02:00

Check out my SlideShare Presentation covering 10 key funamentals to driving a successful digital marketing stratgey in a business.

Digital Fundamentals: 10 things you need to know to develop a great digital stratgey and plan

View more presentations from Gary Bembridge.

For more podcasts and talks subscribe on iTunes (click here) and my blog http://www.garybembridge.com

INTERACTION. TRANSACTION. RESEARCH. ENTERTAINMENT. The 4 key things to think about when it coems to digital?

2010-03-09T15:41:00.002+01:00

This is an article I wrote in August 2003 to help people think about the internet and digital. It is mazing how valid and accurate it still is today....

The Internet and its use as a marketing tool can strike fear and trepidation in the hearts of marketers – or simply be dismissed by them.

The industry itself did not – and has not – helped at all. Firstly it sent everyone down the wrong path by focusing on the use of the Internet in particular as a direct response tool, where clickthrough is king. And more recently, the debate is over how big your ads should be.

Let’s get back to basics: here’s a simple approach to consider as you think about if, how and when to use new digital media and channels like the internet to build your brand or company. This straightforward way of looking at new digital media and channels is based on consumer insight – which should always be the basis of marketing initiatives.

A consumer has four main uses of digital media. Let’s look at each in turn – their roles, applications and the opportunities they present:

1. Interaction

People mostly go online to interact – with email being the most popular tool. Instant messaging, community sites (e.g. iVillage for women) and chat facilities are not far behind – and are growing fast.

So?

The implication of this is that your consumers are online, ready to interact, chat and engage with you in as close to real time as possible. Are you set up and able to take advantage of this?

2. Transactions

This doesn’t just mean shopping – although online retail is the area that gets the publicity. The real powerhouses are things like online banking (faster and more convenient than queuing at your high street branch) and most importantly, peer-to-peer activities. These are where consumers transact in goods (eBay), information (dooyoo) or money (PayPal) with each other.

eBay, the online auction site is the master at this and is not only the most-visited site in the UK, but is also the most profitable online business.

So?

Consumers love peer-to-peer activities and online services that enable and facilitate these make money. Is there a role your company or brand can play in this arena?

Another hook is to enable consumers to manage their relationship online with you by giving them access to their information and data – think personal address books and diaries attached to email facilities.

3. Research and education

The starting point for many people on the Internet is search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN search tools are among the most-visited group of sites. Sites that consumers associate with education, research and learning are second in popularity only to online transaction sites.

So?

You need to ensure your sites or products are listed well and high up in search engines by making use of search engine optimisation and listings.

Can your site build in more educational content or services?

4. Entertainment

When thinking about digital media for entertainment, many people tend to think of the much-publicised music swapping and downloading. But the powerhouses of e-entertainment remains the big three portals: AOL, Yahoo and MSN.

These are the three most-visited sites globally and provide the gateway to news, business information, entertainment news, features and downloads – and much more.

Specialised target market portals like Babycentre.co.uk (new and expectant mothers) or Gay.com perform extremely well with their niche audiences.

Big money though is being made in the areas of vice, gaming, gambling and ‘adult’ entertainment.

So?

Forget the idea of building a portal yourself. Too many have burned piles of money trying to compete with the big players. Instead focus on having a presence and relationship with those portals where your target customers are going already.

Focus on the four main areas of digital media and channels that the consumer operates in: interaction, transactions, research and entertainment. Look at each in turn and see what the implications and opportunities are for your brand, product or company.

Digital Fundamentals for the Nervous and the Uncertain: your thoughts?

2010-02-19T11:23:00.000+01:00

I have been invited to do a talk at the Richmond Events Digital Marketing Briefing Conference in London in March.

The topic and description is:

Digital Fundamentals for the Nervous and the Uncertain

Gary Bembridge, Vice President at Johnson & Johnson Beauty Care, and award-winning travel www.tipsfortravellers.com, and marketing blogger www.garybembridge.com , will be presenting some of the fundamentals of building a digital strategy based on personal learning and experiences.

Based on his experience from both professional and personal, he will provide insights, tips and advice to the group and share what he has learnt so far (sometimes the hard way!). It will also be a great opportunity to ask those digital questions you've always wanted, but never had the nerve to!

I am currently crafting the talk and tips for the one hour session.

Here is the taster so far, and any thoughts are welcome...

4 things work really well online.
Love it. Live it. Do it
From the top. Expecting is not enough. Be in or be out.
Be where they are. Build and they will not come. Take the mountain to them
Think: Learn forwards versus sit back. Think about the 3 screens:
Create a Fan base (not a database)
Give them what they want. Think like a consumer, stay thinking like that when you walk in the office
Know what’s out there
Use the principles of communication
Don’t try and predict the future, make it.

Follow Digital Marketing Briefing on Twitter: click here

Visit my blog and add thoughts on the above: click here

New Media Cruise / Podcamp@Sea - from NYC - June 28th - July 3rd

2010-01-19T09:57:00.002+01:00

The Idea

A different kind of cruise is being planned for this June. This is a cruise for people more interested in bit rates than bingo, and more interested in RSS than the midnight buffet. The idea is to create a floating unconference on new media. I have had a chance to do a themed based tech cruise and found that it was much more enjoyable and interesting than a regular cruise vacation (shuffle board is not my game). We will spend the time in port exploring but when the ship is at sea we will have sessions of interest to the attendees on new media and social media.

This is a 5 day cruise to keep the costs low with no additional fee for the conference as long as you register through me. By registering together as a group, the ship should provide the necessary meeting space with no additional charge. Also we will sit as a group rotating people through different tables to make it easier to meet people.

What is an Unconference
To keep the costs low it is my intention to do this as an unconference where the people attending will decide what sessions we will have rather than paying for speakers to attend. I would like to provide a place where novices and experts alike can learn something. I have created a discussion in the Amateur Traveler boards called “What do you want to learn?”

The Cruise
The plans for the New Media Cruise have solidified and we have reserved cabins for cruise leaving New York City on June 28th and returning on July 3rd with stops in Halifax and Saint Johns.

Who are we?
I am the host of the Amateur Traveler, The Bible Study Podcast and a co-host on This Week in Travel podcast. All together I have published more than 400 podcast episodes (both audio and video).

I am working with Lorene Romero of the Home Based Travel podcast to pull this off because she is a cruise travel expert and knows how to coordinate this with the cruise company and how to help people book their travel, excursions, etc.

For full and fair disclosure Lorene and I will make money on the commissions to help pay for our time working on this, but frankly Lorene thinks I am a little crazy for not having a registration fee to pay for miscellaneous expenses.

How much will this cost?
The taxes and fees came in a bit higher than I expected (always make sure to check these when you book a cruise because often the advertised price does not include them).

Final costs are:
Inside Cabin $420 base price, taxes and port charges $198.77 = $618.77 per person
Outside cabin $480 base price, taxes and port charges $198.77 = $678.77 per person
Balcony $650 base price, taxes and port chagres $198.77 = $848.77 per person
Also plan on $10 per person per day for tips

How do I book the cruise?
Email newmediacruise@AmateurTraveler.com with your contact info and cabin selection. If you do contact them please mention that you heard about it via Gary Bembridge (TipsForTravellers Blog)

How can I help?
Please spread the word to the podcasters and new media producers that you know. The more people who come the more fun this will be.

Dutch customer service research: e-mail still preferred contact channel

2009-10-04T21:01:00.000+02:00

Trinicom, a Dutch vendor of Customer Interaction Management and web based self-service solutions, has announced the results of the edition 2009 of it’s customer service report.

One of the findings of the report is that the main functions that customers expect to find on a website are…an e-mail address and a telephone number. E-mail, the research, says, is still the most popular tool to ask questions to a company.

A fax number is the least important this year, last year the last place was for chatboxes. So there maybe is life for all kinds of live contact chat tools. But still: the traditional customer service channels are the most preferred.

When sending an e-mail to the customer service of a company, 54.5% of the respondents expect at least a notification that the mail has been received and in what timeframe it will be answered.

More on this link.

Social Media Strategic Framework

2009-09-04T12:46:00.002+02:00

Our Chief Digital Officer, Steve Sponder (blog / Twitter), in collaboration with key luminaries from our agency (I grandly include myself in that) has created our Social Media Strategic Framework. Let me know your thoughts.

Here’s the thinking:

There are certainly no shortage of agencies offering social media tactics to brands although almost all of this activity is crude, forcing a conventional advertising approach into this new social media environment.

Social media has disrupted the conventional marketing model. People are one click away from the perfect job, the ideal product, a damming video diary or the 5 star review. Access to, and control over, this information results in different behaviour and attitudes. I believe social media is disrupting markets and the result will be more profound than the introduction of the Internet.

Brands need to adopt different mindsets, models, approaches and strategies to meet their commercial objectives. In order to help brands adapt to this change I have been working with my colleagues at Five by Five and Headstream to develop a Social Media Strategic Framework which we believe will enable brands to strategically navigate through, as opposed to just blindly rolling out the latest, must-have tactics.

Our Social Media Strategic Framework (SMSF) sets out a number of key areas for organsiations to consider:

1) Social Media Strategy – As organisations start to understand the far reaching implications of social media they quickly appreciate the need to define a social media strategy that mutually supports other strategies within the organisation.

2) Influencer Networks – Influencers will play different roles within different market-sectors, so the key here is to understand how to identify them, the role they play and how to engage with them.

3) Brand Outposts – Don’t just set-up a Twitter account because everyone’s doing it. Take a step back and think about how your outposts will support your social media strategy, who will run your outposts and where the content will come from?

4) Reputation Management – Arguably, real-time eavesdropping on what people are saying about your brand is one of the most immediate benefits of social media marketing although, conversely engaging in a negative conversation could escalate in a full blown crisis so again a clear separate strategy is required here.

5) Brands with something interesting, useful and/or relevant to say should be aiming to start conversations, using branded content as social currency. A distribution strategy will then ensure that engaging content has the best opportunity to kick-start a conversation.

In conclusion, the strategic intent should be for organisations to be an authentic part of the social media community and appropriate conversations, along the way there will be immediate, tangible results although like branding, social media is about the long-haul. It’s about systemically and consistently building the reputation of the brand where the pay-back is ultimately brand equity.

I hope you find our Social Media Strategic Framework interesting and that it builds on, and continues, the conversation.

More on SlideShare

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nr_gill@hotmail.com

Twitter: the next big thing for your brand. Or not??

2009-07-23T09:30:00.000+02:00

gary bembridge twitter home pgae, originally uploaded by garybembridge.

As a bit of an online junkie (some may even say whore), I love new tools and love new social networks like last.fm and facebook. I finally started to use Twitter a few months back, though I am still not really sure what it is all about and why it has become so hot.

To me it feels like a jumble of stuff and the more people you follow the more jumbled it gets. I thought it would be a good place to keep on top of news but find google news is better.

But one of the most interesting things that really made me ponder this whole topic last week, was a short interview and discussion on one of my most favourite podcasts (Media Guardian Podcast). On it they interviewed a 17 year old work intern they had who very bluntly said that Twitter is for celebrities who want to go on about "I am", and old people (by which she meant over 30) saying "look how young I am by using this".

It really made me think. The place to look for the next big thing is what teens and what this very online savvy generation is doing. By the time many of them get more mainstream, and your work mates start using them, it is time to think either:

(1) This tool is now past it's peak and past it's cutting edge. Our use of it may date us, may make us seem too establishment and behind the curve. OR

(2) This tool is now mainstream and time to embrace it!

Which option is right depends on your brand. So if you are a trendy young and cutting edge brand you probably need to be on what is scorching hot and new. More mainstream brands should look to the 2nd.

Either way you need to embrace these new tools and at least be trying...

visit my twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

Interactive Twitter ad for Volkswagen: I like it!

2009-06-17T10:24:00.004+02:00

Found via Adverblog: Your tweet, your Volkswagen: a "rich media banner that profiles your tweets and gets back to you with the recommendation of the ideal Volkswagen for you."

Click on the screenshot below to try it out for yourself:

I'm not sure how this application can analyse my 5,000+ Tweets so fast, but it helped me discover that the VW Jetta is the perfect Volkswagen for me. According to an unverified Twitter source, there are 26,965 active Belgian twitterers. Compared to the 5,5 million online Belgians that's definitely a niche audience but still: very impressive and creative ad campaign.

Wedding Direct Marketing

2009-06-13T12:02:00.003+02:00

Have a look at this case study of The People’s Award at the Festival of Media Awards: "Ha’Poalim Mortgage Bank identified weddings as a key moment in which to reach out to this potential target market. It [...] sent out dozens of representatives to weddings across the country to [take] advantage of the tradition of putting cash or cheques in envelopes into gift boxes, [by posting] a congratulations card, an Ikea gift voucher and an invitation to meet with the Ha’Poalim mortgage team to discuss the special mortgage package. [...] For eight weeks representatives targeted hundreds of weddings in the Tel Aviv area on Thursdays – the traditional day for weddings. Twenty-five percent of the couples approached called to set up a meeting, and many more came into bank branches. Ha’Poalim will be targeting weddings again in 2009."

I hate it when a super intrusive Direct Marketing campaign like this boasts such a high success rate. Think of it: these sales representatives crash wedding parties to anonymously put a commercial offer in the gift box? It's almost as evil as the sales people who roam the corridors in maternity hospitals to collect post addresses of young parents, so they can come over with their sales pitch later. I had that once when my son was born: she rang at the door one week after birth pretending to work for one of those maternity consultancy services. I almost killed her when I found out she talked herself into my house to sell me cleaning products.

Weddings, births, funerals are important events in people's lives, and most are forced make important buying decisions around these events. But is this really the right time to cross the border between personal and public life?

Podcast with BBC.com managing director, Kym Niblock

2009-06-12T16:58:00.003+02:00

There was a fair bit of discussion at the Interact Congress yesterday that referenced the BBC's iPlayer platform. I thought you may be interested in the podcast I did with Kym Niblock, managing directior of BBC.com recently which covered innovations which majored on iPlayer, the challenges of an international site, social network opportunities, convergence and more.

Find out more with links to listen, download, subscribe and read transcripts here.

Other podcasts in the series here.

Posted by: Nicholas Gill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nr_gill@hotmail.com

Makers and thinkers

2009-06-12T15:45:00.005+02:00

Paul Isakson, the Director of Brand Planning of Minneapolis digital agency space150, used the Venn diagram above to illustrate the possible value an ad agency could add. In his blog post The Core Competencies of an Agency, he concludes: "I think the days of getting by on great service are done. If I were a client, I'd nix the retainers and pay for ideas and execution of those ideas. I'd hire people and agencies great at thinking and get them to give me their best ideas. Then, I'd find the best makers and get them to bring them to life. I wouldn't want to pay an agency to suck up to me with a bloated staff. Just bring me great ideas and if you can't make them, help me find someone who can."

I'm not sure if I agree. This strategy depends a lot on the skills and knowhow of the client. Maybe he's easily impressed by the "wow" ideas, but cannot assess if, e.g. it is technically feasible and scalable. Or picks a subcontractor who is unable to interpret the "wow" idea into a working web concept.
What do you think?

What's stopping the URL landgrab on Facebook?

2009-06-10T21:57:00.002+02:00

Remember the court cases that went on around brand protection and ownership for URLs? Is the same thing about to happen with Facebook? As of the wee small hours on June 13, you will no longer be a number. You can be a name. But you’ve got to get up early to make sure you get yours. Do we really need this? Of course we’ll all do it to preserve our own personal branding but I’m fucked if I’ll promote myself as NicholasGill423 just because all the other Nicholas Gill’s are better at getting up at 05.01 GMT than me. Frankly Twitter, blog and Linked In are better personal branding starters.

But the real question here is not about me or individuals. But brands. What’s stopping me grabbing all my clients and super star brand names and then charging them extortionate fees to buy it off me? It’s like the late 1990’s again and one that was always close to my heart as I worked on the brand then was Mr Nissan. Whose surname was actually Nissan and therefore had every right to the nissan.com URL. Lawsuits and millions of dollars later, Nissan realised they should have been nice to him rather than starting with a letter from their legal team but there we go. Shell have the same issue with one of their former employees. Deja vu with Facebook?

I’m sure in the c. 44,000 comments (!) there’s reference to this but I, for one, am not trawling it. c. 35,000 like it too so a good baromoter of getting the people’s vote.

All I can suggest is you get your online reputation management dudes geared up to wake from their slumber early on Saturday and get registering. Who knows what’ll be left for me.

Posted by: Nicholas Gill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nr_gill@hotmail.com

Ad Agency replaces website by YouTube channel

2009-06-02T13:17:00.003+02:00

"This is our website." That's all the explanatory text that accompanies BooneOakley.com. The US-based full-service ad agency replaced it's website by a YouTube channel to showcase work for clients like HBO, MTV, MTV2, The One Show,
State Farm, Ruby Tuesday, CarMax & Bloom.

Smart thinking: they make could use of the in-video interactivity and the power of the YouTube comments community.

Currency replaced by kindness?

2009-05-27T17:16:00.003+02:00

ABSOLUT vodka’s new campaign challenges us to look at the world differently: what would happen if we replaced cash with kindness. Spawned by the TV spot, this was taken experientially in various venues around London. At cinemas in Clapham and Islington, customers traded compliments and high-fives for free snacks and drinks, while others were surprised by a free coffee in exchange for a smile. More events followed such as free busking and free drinks in bars (where? where? where?)!

Conversation has been happening about what you would trade for currency on the ABSOLUT site and across their Twitter stream (#kindness) and images on Flickr.

Although the experiential activity was quite small and the conversations similar, I applaud ABSOLUT and their agencies for getting out there and doing it. Too often we get barriers put in place; part of our evolving digital landscape is about experimentation. Innovation doesn’t have case studies and predicting results is hard. It takes brave clients and agencies to leap. Well done to these guys for taking it.

Thanks to Jonathan @ We Are Social for sharing.

Posted by: Nicholas Gill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nr_gill@hotmail.com

Kleenex' weeping willow

2009-05-27T13:58:00.004+02:00

YouTube - The Tissue Tree: "Next to Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kleenex Silk Touch Tissue Tree is inspired by the work of the world famous 'wrapping' artist, Christo.

Swathed in over 1km of silk, the tree is laden with 700 blossoms that each dispense Kleenex Silk Touch tissues to passers by. Staff nearby are encouraging people to touch the silky soft tree and feel the difference of Kleenex Silk Touch for themselves."

I really like the creative concept behind this, and the fact that the structure invites people who pass by to take a tissue and deconstruct it. Other might argue that this is an example of the blurring lines between art and advertising. But would that be such a bad thing?

Facebook killed the blog

2009-05-25T14:44:00.002+02:00

The other night my worst suspicions were confirmed: Facebook really killed the blog. Look for yourself what Google has to say on the subject when asking politely (top 5 search results):

"all my friends that used to blog no longer are. They're all posting one line statements of what they're doing on FB. So, there you have it. Video killed the radio star, and Facebook killed the blog. RIP."
Jonathan Hays, 14. april 2009 at his blog http://offlineinaustin.blogspot.com/2009/04/facebook-has-killed-blog.html

"I entirely blame facebook for my lack of blogging. I used to have random thoughts that would quickly evolve into short narratives, and since the advent of the facebook status update approximately 90% of these thoughts have manifested as 160-character updates instead of a full-blown story. I am going to try to do a better job of letting these ideas mature into well-thought-out blogs instead of little blurbs for my facebook friends."
Sara B, Portland , Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at http://www.saraknowsbest.com/2009/01/facebook-killed-blog-star.html

"I don’t see Facebook replacing blogs. The purpose for each is disparate. What I do see though is my blog readership dropping."
Anonymous blogger, 21. januar 2009 at http://blog.jamesfries.com/archive/2009/01/21/3727.aspx

"I'm sure you're aware of the new kid on the block - Facebook. Oh sure, its newer and its somewhat more interactive, and all my friends are there... it's all true. I've been having a great ol' time... But make no mistake, You - my blog - are my first love."
Kerry, Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at http://whatshappenindaddyo.blogspot.com/2007/05/facebook-killed-blog-star.html

"Facebook Killed the Blog ... but I'm sure I'm not the first one to say it. Obviously, I haven't blogged in awhile. A while. Quite a while..."
Lacey Crawford, 8. februar 2009 at http://www.laceycrawford.com/log.html

Also:

Technorati seems to have stopped producing graphs on the growth of the blogosphere, which they so proudly presented in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and up until 2007. No mention of "growth" in their 2008 report. No figures. No graphs.

And:

Is it, as Jason Calacanis said when he officially retired from blogging almost a year ago: "I love blogs and always will. However, I’ve done my part and I’m looking to strip it down. I’m looking for something more acoustic, something more authentic and something more private. Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it"

Or is it, that blogging is a far more lonely experience than the one offered by the social networks. That the social element of blogs (the blog-roll and the ability to post comments) is simply over-matched by Facebooks friends-list.

Or is it, that blogging is to fragmented, you have to sign up to a thousand different rss-feeds to be kept up to date with your networks activities, whereas Facebook offers you one-stop-updating?

Digital becoming Number One!

2009-05-25T05:59:00.001+02:00

Breaking news: Internet number ONE advertising mediagroup in Denmark

Internet beat both daily newspaper, tv and radio as advertising medium in Denmark in 2008. With revenues of euro 392,7 million, Internet cut out a 21 percent-slice of the total Danish adspend-pie of euro 1,9 billion.
Daily newspapers accounted for 19 percent, weekly local and regional newspapers for 18 percent, TV for 17 percent, weekly for 13 percent. Outdoor, Radio and Cinema accounts for 4, 2 and 1 percent.
These are the key conclusions from the Reklameforbrugsundersøgelsen 2008, the official Danish adspend statistics. You’ll be able to find the figures at Dansk oplagskontrols website, when they eventually are uploaded.
The euro 392,7 billion internet advertising revenues are parted into Display advertising (euro 123,3 mio), Search (euro 105,8 mio), Classifieds (euro 144,6 mio) and Permission marketing (euro 18,3 million). This breakdown is availble in the newly released FDIM ad ex study 2008 (summary in English at page 22).

Why Joining us at Interact 2009

2009-05-19T15:54:00.003+02:00

Opportunities and Challenges are knocking on the doors of the Digital Industry. The actual economical recession is forcing people to rethink their business models and their business practices. Traditional media having embraced massively the digital platforms are confronted to find new ways to fund the eco-system. Consumers are engaging as never before, brands are shaped by them and audiences are shifting towards social media.
Making marketing more relevant and performance based seems achievable within digital platforms as techniques are becoming more sophisticated bringing the right message to the right people at the right time and on the right place, but the regulator is worried!
All of these items will be discussed during IAB Europe’s 3rd Interact edition in Brussels on June 10-11-12 : don’t miss the most important event of 2009 meeting with some of the leader’s of the Converged Digital Industry :
- 4 unique Panel debates talking how to survive the crisis with major captain’s of our industry questioned by senior chairman
- 4 powerful opinions from some Key-note speakers representing major players of the industry : Google, Orange, Lbi and Microsoft
- 1 roundtable with Madelin talking about the e-privacy debate and behavioural advertising
- 1 Mia (audience measurement) worksession providing feedback from a worldwide survey
- the AdEx Benchmark Europe report explaining 2008 in depth
- the Global Summit, an i-Com session and a Global Brand Think Tank
- many useful and practical Industry workshops
- a Research showcase to understand Social Media
- and more importantly a lot of moments to network with some 250 Executive people from the industry coming from all over the world.
Look forward seeing you there : Alain Heureux – President and Ceo of IAB Europe, the voice of the digital industry at National and

Long Tail, Short Tail, chaired by Michael Nutley from NMA

2009-05-02T12:54:00.002+02:00

For delegates looking for inspiration for making money from online content, Editor-in-Chief of New Media Age, Michael Nutley, will chair the panel ‘Long Tail, Short Tail: Making content pay’ talking with Banner, Netlog, AdLink, Nokia and Axel Springer!
Any question you would like to address towards Michael and his guests?

Spendings are shifting, chaired by Guy Phillipson from IAB UK

2009-05-02T12:51:00.001+02:00

Guy Phillipson, CEO of IAB UK will chair the first panel on ‘Spending Shifts’, where L’Oreal, Orange, Group M, Google, Nugg.Ad, Nielsen and SAP debate how advertising spend is moving into the online sphere and the changes this will bring. How will continued innovations in formats and creative executions contribute to the shift to digital advertising? Screen Digest kick off the session with the results of an advertiser survey.

Integration wins it all, chaired by Simon Waldman from The Guardian

2009-05-02T12:43:00.002+02:00

Simon Waldman, Director of Digital at The Guardian chairs the first panel entitled ‘Making Integration Win’. He is joined by senior executives from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Turner International/CNN, Platform A and Alcatel-Lucent who will explore how innovations in bringing online into the traditional media mix can help advertisers and their agencies get the most from their budgets.
Any question you would like to address already towards Simon and his panel?
www.interactcongress.eu

Interact is back in Town!

2009-05-02T12:32:00.003+02:00

Dear all, we're back with our 3rd edition happening in Brussels on June 10-11-12! 3 intensive days combining industry workshops, regulatory roundtables, AdEx 2008 figures, social media showcase and a full congress day with some great captains and leaders from our Digital industry talking about the crisis, about innovation and about many other topics. Don't miss the event gathering some 400 professionals from all over the world as colleagues from China, Russia, US, Latin-America will join us. I will post some debate topics we'll be using for our 4 main panels asking for some comments and reactions from you I might use when briefing our 4 chairman. Visit our website http://www.interactcongress.eu/

L'ansia che mi genera Annalena

2008-10-09T09:26:00.003+02:00

Questo e' l'articolo di ieri sul foglio
http://www.ilfoglio.it/soloqui/1151

L'ansia che mi ha generato questo pezzo e' proporzionale al numero di parole scritte, ognuna delle quali e' sintomatica di quanta ignoranza e presunzione ancora vi sia tra alcuni sedicenti giornalisti che non sanno neanche cosa sia un servizio pubblico.
Lascio a voi ogni ulteriore commento...

------------------------

Cielo, mio facebook
E’ un aggeggio sfasciafamiglie o il trionfo dell’equivoco? Comunque è un gioco pericoloso
Dopo che una giovane collega ha lasciato il fidanzato con cui doveva sposarsi pochi giorni fa per via di facebook (la follia di una notte del fidanzato ha scritto su facebook alla collega e a tutti i suoi contatti, comunicando trionfante l’accaduto e allegando foto-prova), a questa colonnina è stato chiesto di farsi servizio pubblico e denunciare la pericolosità sociale dell’aggeggio sfasciafamiglie. Ovviamente chi non ha vite private molto complicate (in onore di Rachida Dati, eroina moderna) su fb viaggia sereno, perde una quantità abissale di tempo, ritrova vecchi compagni di scuola, commenta le foto dei bambini, controlla i figli adolescenti, si iscrive a gruppi tipo savedarfur e si sente modernamente umanitario.
Ma evitando di tirare in ballo nuovi linguaggi politici, nuove frontiere della socialità e dell’impegno, si sa che l’essenza di facebook, oltre all’impicciarsi dei fatti altrui, pubblicizzare i propri e mettere le foto in cui ci si sente meno sfasciati, è il rimorchio. Anche solo sognato o frainteso. Un immenso e virtuale mondo rimorchiabile, in cui le ex si mescolano agli amici, e l’amore che strappa i capelli, volato per sempre a New York dieci anni fa, ricompare all’improvviso in forma di foto ammiccante. L’ambiguità di un saluto con puntini di sospensione accanto alla fotina di una ragazza in costume da bagno, schiaffata lì, dove tutti guardano, può far impazzire una moglie già in crisi (quelle che non vanno su fb per non dover scrivere la data di nascita), e trasformare il sabato sera a casa in un incubo. E un ragazzo sentimentale che vede tra i contatti della fidanzata tutti i suoi ex, che propongono rimpatriate in ricordo dei bei tempi, morirà in silenzio oppure farà scenate e passerà per matto.
Un nuovo moltiplicatore d’ansia, un nuovo occhio che guarda ed equivoca, sempre, perché accettare o cercare amici su fb non equivale esattamente a frequentarli o a volerci passare la notte (un saggio gruppo su fb si chiama: che mi aggiungi a fare su fb se poi per strada non mi saluti), ma tutto viene amplificato dalle foto, dalla strana sensazione del pubblico che guarda, dalla sospettabilissima possibilità di chattare a qualunque ora della notte, dalle frasi misteriose che molti gettano lì apposta, e che paiono sempre destinate a qualcuno di segreto ma connesso e incluso fra i contatti. Fingersi liberi, disonvolti, stronzi e bellocci, finché il gioco dura (scriverne, si sa, ne accelera la fine), o finché lei non sfascia il computer con un’accetta.
di Annalena Benini

The power of context, as shown by facebook

2008-06-23T22:36:00.002+02:00

I know there has been a lot of press, and some false starts, with Facebook's attempts to deliver ads based on a user's interests and what they get up to on the site (or even partner sites).

There was some learning for me recently.

First of all: something I found intrusive

I had posted a review of a hotel on one of my most favourite travel sites, Tripadvisor.com. A small pop-up appeared on the bottom right of my screen saying that a note that I had posted a review on Tripadvisor was going to be posted onto my facebook mini-feed on my profile.

I was surprised and then a bit annoyed. I guess I must have somewhere at sometime told either of the sites I used the other. But this felt a bit like snooping. And I wasn't really sure of the benefit to me.

Secondly: something I thought was pretty cool.

I had received an email from a friend on facebook asking if I knew someone that tracked and managed user generated content to be submitted onto brand or company websites. I started writing him a note back suggesting he speak to Dan Hawtrey who used to work with me who now had his own internet/ intranet content management company called Content Formula. When I typed in the name a small ad and link for the company appeared and I was asked if I wanted to include that in my reply.

I thought it was a really cool, helpful feature. It saved me looking up Dan's contact details and site and gave the person I was sending the suggestion to relevant information. I also did not find it intrusive as it was not personal but triggered by me typing within their site a brand / company name.

This was a good example of getting contextual advertising right. Information relevant when topic and need was there.

Any thoughts? Leave a comment on the blog using the comments button at the bottom of the posting or email me at gary@bembridge.co.uk

My avatar by befunky.com

2008-06-03T20:59:00.001+02:00

friendfeed

2008-05-30T22:03:00.003+02:00

FriendFeed

What is it?

FriendFeed is a new web 2.0 service that enables you to aggregate all of your, and your friends, online activity and conversations in one place.

How does it work?

It uses RSS feeds to pull in the information from a wide (and growing) number of sources and places them in one feed so you can see everything in one place. RSS means that FriendFeed will be scalable in the future as you don’t need developers and open access APIs to create new content, RSS is the common standard for sharing information across the internet.

Why should I care?

The atomisation of the web means that users have pockets of information fragmented all over the web. Just think about a regular person who watches, favourites and maybe posts a few videos on You Tube, puts their family holiday snaps on Flickr, comments on a blog they read daily, shares links from their Google Reader. Multiply this by a blog you write, the comments on that blog, the links to it, tweets on Twitter, Facebook updates, de.licio.us, digg and stumble upon tags. And then multiply by the number of friends you follow and the fragmentation and amount of this information becomes overwhelming to the point of overload.

FriendFeed helps that by aggregating all that information in one place so you don’t have to traverse 5, 6, 7, 8 + websites to keep in touch with the information. It helps you stay on top of what’s grabbing your friends’ attention and keeps you connected. You also get full control of the people you follow and can un-follow at any time.

And because it’s all RSS enabled, you can distribute that content to where you want it: Google Reader, your personal homepage (iGoogle, MSN Live etc.).

But I’ve only just discovered Facebook!

It’s true that FriendFeed is pretty much used by the early adopters at the moment and true that you would have to again subscribe to/follow friends which is a chore. But the benefits of having everything in one place for those who currently suffer web 2.0 overload are worth it. There’s even a feature called “imaginary friend” where you can pull in a feed of someone who you want to read – a thought leader perhaps – but you aren’t their actual friend. This overcomes the limitations and annoyance of Facebook where you do actually need to know people.

In summary

FriendFeed gives you control over the web 2.0 noise and lets you consume it in a way that is relevant to you.

Add me as a friend

Europe is fastest growing online market!

2008-05-28T08:11:00.003+02:00

Online advertising in Europe grows 38% in one year!!! Europe 27 should finish between 11 and 12 Billion € in 2007 closing the gap with US market (tipped at some 11-12 Billion €).
IAB Europe/PWC early findings show average growth rate year on year

The preliminary findings of our AdEx survey the definitive guide to the size and value of the European online industry, shows that the growth of online advertising in Europe continues unabated. Our members are seeing more companies move their advertising online, including sectors that have until now tended to stay loyal to traditional media, such as fast moving consumer goods. As online continues to grab a larger share of advertising budgets year on year, some forms of traditional media are seeing their share eroded.
Brussels 28th May 2008: The Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) has just released the initial findings of its annual advertising expenditure survey for the year ending December 2007. Whilst some analysts are predicting that advertising on traditional media may be impacted by an economic slowdown, online advertising continues to grow apace, experiencing an average growth rate of 38% year-on-year across the three largest European advertising markets – the UK, Germany and France.
The data has been compiled by IAB Europe based on information provided by the regional IAB offices around Europe and then analysed and processed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The top line results for the UK, Germany and France show that:
These markets were valued at €5.6 billion euros in 2007, up from €4.08 billion in the previous year (for search and display only)
The German market experienced the highest growth rate from 2006 at 41%
Search advertising continues to account for the lions share of spend, at 63.5% compared to 36.5% for display

The report also shows that whilst the top three markets are by far the largest in value, their growth rates are slower compared to some of the other member countries. Spain and Italy have experienced particularly strong growth rates at over 50%.

The full report will include market size and value information for the full membership of the IAB Europe in 2007 including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the UK.

Come and join us in Berlin;-)

email marketing surprises

2008-05-27T14:56:00.004+02:00

Email marketing has surprised me of late.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had the fortune to work on and develop some class-leading CRM programmes in my time but I figure that if you want to be the best, you adopt best practices. And for me, double opt-in is the way to go. I remember spending several meetings and design iterations later to re-word and re-art direct positive opt ins for digital communications for Diageo to be ahead of the curve and live best practice, not just tip a hat to it.

So I was somewhat taken aback to read in eROI’s Cradle To Grave report (there’s no direct link, click on quarterly studies and download the report) that only 30.69% of US companies are using double opt-in. That’s tantamount to spamming if you don’t use that method.

And worse, 59.4% of those companies don’t pass an unsubscribe to other parts of their company when they get one. Two yellows equals a red card! So if you’re a consumer, basically a friend could get you signed up, you receive emails, you unsubscribe and you get them from another part of the same organisation. Aaargh. That’s just not joined up thinking and hardly going to endear your consumers to your brand.

Closer to home in the UK, econsultancy report that one in three companies flout spamming laws with only financial services boasting 100% compliance with email rules.

When you consider that European consumers receive over 250 emails per week (35 average per day) is it any wonder that 38% use spam filters, over half of promotion emails get deleted without reading and more people are concerned by clicking on ads in emails than on banners? The top two reasons people unsubscribe are irrelevant content and overly frequent emails.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. We just need to up our game and practise what we preach. Don’t let the standards slip and do it the right way. Because if we get it right, consumers do love email.

Consider this information released by eMarketer today. 67% of US adult internet users prefer companies to contact them by email than any other method. And in 5 years time, 67% will still prefer email to any other communication.

Remember, email is a conversation too.

Nicholas Gill
bluurb.wordpress.com

CPM price for large websites is dropping

2008-05-14T14:27:00.004+02:00

PubMatic : AdPrice Index: "eCPMs for large Web sites (more than 100 million page views per month) dropped dramatically by 52 percent from 38 cents in March to 18 cents April. Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Small Web sites managed to improve their monetization, increasing from $1.18 in March to $1.29 in April."

You could see this as proof of "The Long Tail". Or it's just a sign that for large websites it's just too much work to offer higher-priced targeted ads. Most "large" websites I know mainly do Run Of Site or even Ron of Network campaigns for their display ads.
Another possible reason is because there's a big gap between pages that attract lots of traffic (like webmail, forums, contests) and pages advertisers want to be on (like portal-style content pages).

In any case: time to move on to more interactive and permission-based advertising.

Couple of advices for Social Media and buzz campaigns

2008-05-12T21:01:00.004+02:00

Last week I attended Marketing 2.0 Conference in Paris. Great opportunity to meet new persons who are part of the leaders in the buzz market like Emmanuel Vivier, CEO of Vanksen group - and contributor of this blog too- and to catch up with a couple of great marketing speakers and persons like Mary Beth Kemp, Forrester principal analyst.

I stole a couple of minutes from their busy agendas to ask them recommendations for marketers willing to 'begin a Social Media effort' as opposed to' launch a social media campaign'.

In the first video below, Mary Beth is explaining Forrester POST approach. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. If it should stand for only one key message it would be this one: don't start at the end of the process thinking technology is key. Getting to know how your audience is engaging - or not- with existing social platforms and defining objectives are the success factors to determine the foundations of your strategy, then chose the social tools you're going to tap into or develop for your own community. Mary Beth is also referring to the Social Technographics Forrester has been working on: great tool to understand and categorize how consumers are behaving online. For more info on the topic, I advice you to read the Groundswell blog and contact Mary Beth. Start by listening to her 3 min wrap up :

Mary Beth Kemp, Forrester Principal Analyst from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.

As for Emmanuel, I challenged him at the end of those 2 hectic days with the uneasy task to sum up his inspiring 1 hour long presentation featuring best buzz campaigns. He did a great job doing so in a bit more than 8 min. No magic formula, but a couple of viral successful ingredients based on his wide experience with a number of brilliant campaigns. Worth listening till the end.

Emmanuel Vivier, CEO Vanksen group from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.

online advertising heat maps

2008-05-08T09:49:00.005+02:00

Here’s an interesting new way to look at consumer engagement with your online advertising: clickmaps from FlashTalking.

Clickmaps are essentially a heat-map showing where consumers interact with your ad above and beyond regular click tag reporting. As regular readers of my blog will know, I’m a sucker for cool visualisations and relate more to pictures than stats.

The creative and strategic implication being that it helps us to garner better understanding of what drives consumer engagement. Or in regular parlance, draws the eye.

Here’s some examples. To make it work, use the fade option - fade out the map, watch or interact with the ad, finally fade the clickmap up again for the interaction view/heat map.

Sony Playstation - the Call To Action buttons seem to be getting the most of the action.

Virgin Mobile - clearly the opportunity to wax the guy and then wax him him more at the end wins out. Poor bugger.

Social networks - see the social media options, especially share trailer being high points of engagement.

I certainly know some peers and clients who would also appreciate this more visual representation of data than having to wade through reams of stats to the point where they're pushing pins in their eyes for blessed relief. You get what’s working in an instant.

Be interested to know what you think.

Nicholas Gill
bluurb.wordpress.com

Power to the people

2008-04-28T11:28:00.006+02:00

A very detailed worldwide comparative study on Social Media behaviors and - since done by Universal McCann- esthetically very energising. Hat tip to Michelle Blanc.
Research highlights from Trendspotting :

1. Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.

2. Asian markets (not including Japan) are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region

3. All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves: Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3

4. Social Networks: 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content: 55% of users have uploaded photos, 22% of users have uploaded videos

5. The widget economy – 23% of social network users have installed an application – 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates

6. Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and a collective rival to traditional media (184m bloggers world-wide, China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers) – 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog

7. Social media has strong impacts over brand’s reputation – 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog – 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

The urge to go public

2008-04-22T14:39:00.001+02:00

Dutch journalist, writer and feminist Karin Spaink is not the first one to review Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur; how todays Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. But she sure has some interesting viewpoints. Let me quote two (emphasis in bold is mine):

"If the printed press [...] move to the internet, which many in the end will to do, they can cut on printing and distribution costs, thereby freeing a considerable part of their budget. Money that can be used to pay journalists and editors with. Yes, parts of the newspaper industry will suffer and people will lose their jobs – from paper producers and printers to newspaper delivery boys."

"we are witnessing the private going public. People increasingly use the internet to capture, comment upon and share their lives. And while I’m not always sure what to make of that, in itself there’s nothing new about the phenomenon, only about its scale. People have always kept diaries, wrote updates for their friends and family, made snapshots documenting their life. The manner in which they did so changed whenever technologies changed, but the urge to share has always been present."

For the record: I don't agree with either statement. First of all: there's a lot less advertising money to be made in online than in print media. And secondly: the urge to share is relatively new - simply because only now there's an audience that is large enough to have some effect. Only fifty years ago the biggest amount of people you would preach at would be sitting in a church building.

A short introduction to Word of Mouth, Buzz and Viral Marketing

2008-04-22T13:16:00.003+02:00

Buzz, Viral Marketing, and Word-of-Mouth: what’s the difference?

Word-of-Mouth Marketing consists of a number of different forms of communication: buzz marketing, viral marketing, influencer marketing, street marketing, user generated content and so on. These new approaches can quite often be confused due to their complementary attributes, but in the end are quite different from each other.

Prior to the explanation it must be noted that the efficiency of these new techniques remains for the most part undisputed. Cosum-actors are now not only marketing targets, but also potential information relay hubs for your communication actions.

First there is Word-of-Mouth. This form of communication between two people (about brands, products and services, among other things) is obviously not new. What has changed however, is the power, the range and the speed at which word-of-mouth grows in our new online media landscape. This activity mainly takes place via social media, blogs and video platforms… Any available information on the internet, whether it be in the form of image, text or video can be instantaneously reacted upon and propagated around the world in a matter of seconds. Formerly, word-of-mouth was restricted to a certain number of family members, neighbors and colleagues (within a specific social setting). Today, any internet user can profit from certain incredibly powerful communications tools that did not exist in the past.

In recent years, more and more brands have become aware of the power of this phenomenon. The first experiments with word-of-mouth marketing conducted by Hotmail, Budweiser and/or the Blair Witch Project, have now evolved into constructive advertisements. These experiments have lead to a greater awareness; in web 2.0, Youtube users have become a media in themselves! A brief explanation of these marketing approaches can be seen below.

Viral Marketing is one of them. Viral communication is about facilitating the transmission of a message from one person to another. The name "Viral Marketing" very basically comes from the concept. The idea is that it works like a cold, “infecting” one person who in turn spreads the infection to another; thus creating an exponential dynamic.

In order for it to achieve its goals, and not interrupt people like traditional advertising does (where the audience is forcibly exposed to an advertising message), you offer internet users content that is so original, amusing, surprising, inspiring and interesting that they not only enjoy it but want to pass it on to others. A module that is too overtly commercial or conventional will most likely not catch.

Humor, sex and provocation are often ingredients of success, and viral marketing can incorporate all of them (depending on the target, the message and the objective). In B2B for example the publication of a downloadable white paper is a very good example of viral marketing. The personalization of a message (by adding one’s name or photo to a game or video), the incentive (a symbolic or real reward that can be gained in a game for example) and intuitive uses are key elements of success within this type of campaign.

Formats: viral video, e-mail, downloadable module, widget, white paper study, Facebook application, audio and video podcast…Examples: The personalization of the homepage for La Tribune de Genève, Dove and its film “Evolution”, the “NicoMarket” viral videos against smoking, UPS and its widgets, the job website Moovement and its personalizable module “Manager of the Year”, the videos on rugby and existentialism by Coq Sportif , the viral virtual garden by Roxy perfume, or the game “AxeBusters”.

Buzz Marketing is another technique used to generate word-of-mouth. The idea in this instance is to spread information to the consumer via an event, an action in a spectacular, surprising and memorable way that is associated to a brand… A successful buzz marketing action generates word-of-mouth and media coverage. The important thing here is to create a reaction that attracts attention, be it risky, controversial or provocative.

Media coverage (via a PR action) is an essential part of a campaign, it makes sure that your range goes well beyond those who were directly exposed to the original action. You have to facilitate the indirect experience of the action via videos broadcast by the media and video sharing platforms... (the action has to be sufficiently visible and accessible).

This type of action requires a considerable logistic preparation and legal know-how in order to overcome regulations and obtain the necessary authorizations (unless you are prepared to risk paying fines), which can often be complicated and time-consuming. You also have to anticipate that some people or administrations might view these “creative measures” as a forcible invasion of their environment … so be careful with, and prepared for, negative reactions…

Formats: exceptional event or measure, street marketing, guerilla marketing, ambient marketing, ambush marketing…Examples: The latest WWF campaign against deforestation, the street marketing campaign for “Batman Begins”, the vertical rugby match by Société Générale, Jeep and its SUV parking lots , VW Eos and its “solar” billboards, the bank ING and its provocative saga of clothing for the very rich or the “DIM DIM Girls” squatting the ranks at the rugby world cup.

Then there is Influencer Marketing, which is made up of seeding (creating word-of-mouth by letting opinion leaders test products) and community management. The objective is to generate word-of-mouth by involving (online and offline) opinion leaders (bloggers, influential consumers, VIPs, stars) by motivating them to relay a message to their audience(s). This can be done by giving them the opportunity to test products, participate in exclusive events and/or gather in special places such as a blog, a forum, a social network,etc...

This approach requires time and a certain sensitivity but can be hugely profitable in the long run. By exchanging opinions with your consumers and answering their questions, you create customer loyalty and enable their step by step transformation into brand supporters. This transformation will allow you to enhance your recommendation rate and your brands overall notoriety. Unfortunately, brands do not always possess sufficient human and/or financial resources to develop ’involved’ relationships on an every day basis over a long period of time. Influentials need to be handled with care and in contrast to publicity they cannot be bought… A clumsy, overtly commercial approach will in the best case scenario disinterest them, and at worst cause negative buzz (it is therefore important to not try and manipulate them, lie or deceive them in any way).

Formats: Seeding campaign working with influential bloggers organised by BuzzParadise …, sponsored posts and media sales 2.0, creation of brand blogs and social networks, VIP eventsExamples: Distribution of new products to female bloggers by Dim Osmose, the social network of the brand MMMKenzoki, the “Running Club” of New Balance or the blog “Renault F1”, ...

Finally, we come to Consumer Generated Media, also called User Generated Media. This type of action consists of letting the audience participate in the communication of a brand (and in some situations the co-creation of a product or an offer). A certain number of brands have thus urged internet users to post videos and photos in order to participate in a competition or a collaborative module (Wat.tv, Gmail, or Joga Bonito for Nike). Some even go as far as to “ask” internet users to invent the screenplay (Honda for “Superball”) or even create a future spot or billboard (Sony via “Current TV”, or SFR via “BlogBang”).

Although this type of campaign is similar to the new phenomenon of “consumer 2.0” or “consum-actor”, it sometimes falls short or fails. This is most often due to a lack of quality and participation, as this type of action demands internet user’s time. We will certainly have to wait a while until a larger group of people have mastered the tools and necessary expertise to create an effective spot… The number of talented people that possess these skills are unlimited… Unfortunately, not everyone can be a creative genius like Hitchcock ;)

Formats: contributive video or photo competition, collaborative module, co-creationExamples: EBay and its latest campaign, Diesel’s perfume and its co-creation module of customized products or the collaborative video for Gmail (more than 5,000,000 views and more than 1,000 contributed videos).

All these approaches differ slightly from each other in their different strategies (even though they all pertain to the same goal). They can be used independently, complement each other, or even be combined with more traditional communication actions (TV spots, online advertising banners, billboards, press, radio, etc...). In that case we would speak of Integrated Communication or 360° Marketing…

Source: Translation of the article by Emmanuel Vivier in Le Journal du Net on November 15 2007

Magazines attachment fever

2008-04-22T11:05:00.003+02:00

In 1965, two engineers at IBM invented the scratch and sniff strip, while looking for a way to make carbonless paper. By 1979, the perfume strip was inserted for the first time into a printed magazine. The scent was so strong that "you could kind of smell it before you even opened the magazine," recalled Diane Crecca, vice-president of sales, marketing and business development at Arcade Marketing, which invented the scent strip.

And it doesn't end there.

"With blinking lights, pop-up ads, kiss-on lipstick samples, scratch-off scents, melt-in-your-mouth taste strips, and even pocket squares, advertisers are stuffing magazines full of just about anything to make their advertisements stand out.
One reason for the phenomenon is better technology, which makes it less expensive to put unusual objects in magazines and which helps advertisers create more sophisticated inserts. [...]
But there is another dynamic at work: with so much of the publishing industry shifting toward the Web, magazine executives are trying to use their print products as a tactical advantage."
(Source: For magazines, 'be clever or die' - International Herald Tribune.)

They are forgetting the "product plus" magazine attachments: the books, cds and dvds that are now sold together with many of today's newspapers and magazines. And who sometimes make more money for the publishers than the regular print editions do...

Mobile internet: dead before it's even born?

2008-04-21T10:52:00.003+02:00

The end of Mowser - RussellBeattie.com: "I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I'm tired of wasting my time."

This bitter quote was made a few days ago by web developer and entrepreneur Russel Beatie, one of the founders of mobile web transcoder Mowser. Mowser is closing up shop: "Sadly, Mowser is closing its doors due to lack of funding."

What followed was a blog storm of modest size, based around one question: Is Mobile Web Dead?. The answer is: it's not even born yet, and it's already hugged to death by advertisers, marketeers and mobile operators. To be honest I hope that consumers will run the show this time: most people I know see their mobile phone or smartphone as an extension of their identity. This means they are willing to pay for services that they really want (like staying in touch with their friends), but also that they are very reluctant to receive messages from any party they do not see as "part of their social circle". This is bad news for mobile advertising and mobile marketing. But good news for all kinds of mobile-based social network services.

2008-04-21T10:12:00.002+02:00

Tom Fishburne's inspiration after reading SethGodin new book Meatball Sundae. Self-explanatory really. Makes me think about the French movie with Daniel Auteuil 'Mon meilleur ami' (my best friend) on how a friendless businessman in order to win a bet tried to convince some of his relationships to be(come) his best friend. Obviously not working till the day he realised friendship is not about 'proclaiming' but about 'engaging' - such a hype word marketers often proclaim engagement without understanding what lays behind it. Quoted from Sarah Mahoney (Mediapost) : "You don't launch a social media campaign. You being a social media effort".

Hands-on guide to UGC and social media

2008-04-18T16:09:00.004+02:00

Interactive Advertising Bureau released the whitepaper "User-Generated Content and Social Media Advertising Overview” (PDF, 3.4 MB), a hands-on guide to social media, focusing on terminology, practices and standarts.

Interesting Snippet by lynetter

The document intends to clear some of the fears that brands and agencies might have on using this dynamic medium, framing the whole UGC movement and reminding brands that user reviews are just like personal recommendation, one of the most effective forms of advertising.

Source: eMarketeer

Blogs, wikis, UGC and Ad Networks are described, with several examples how to integrate advertising with social media. The myth that Social Networks it's kids stuff was also debunked, by showing that "more than half of MySpace users were over 35 years old" and "LinkedIn, reports that its average user is 39 years-old and has an annual income of $139,000".

With all the buzz surrounding social media, it's easy for brands to jump into the bandwagon, and try to push their messages instead of engaging into conversations with their audience. Marketing author and blogger Seth Godin brilliantly states it on his latest book "Meatball Sundae", reminding companies that just because they put money into new media that doesn't necessarily translate into effective customers. Be ready to fail, experiment, optimize and most important, be ready to listen.

The document is a valuable first time reading for professionals that want to get acquainted with social media. For a 17 page paper, it manages to get a good overview that you can enrich with several web resources , such as Paul Isackson's recent presentation, or from Fallon planer Aki Spicer:

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Content is king on and offline

2008-04-18T12:01:00.001+02:00

An article in "The Guardian" on 15 April called "survey shows darker picture for the TV channel" caught my eye. Although the story, for me, stated the obvious - it did make we wonder if others saw the world differently.

The article by Katie Allen starts: "Television remains people's favorite mass communication format but viewers are more loyal to a program than a channel, according to a survey of TV viewing around the world" (The survey was done by Accenture among 7000 people).

Isn't this obvious? Content is always the king. That is what I have always thought. In fact, during the dotcom boom and bust days this was a hot issue and topic. The point being that the survivors would be and were not the ones with clever technology and functions - but the ones with great content (where content may be enabled and realized due to technology like the Amazon "you may also like" content feature). Boo.com, which blew some crazy amount of money ($100 million) being one of the most dramatic examples.

But I have always believed in any interface with consumers that content is the king. Even a presentation that is dry but has relevant and great content will beat the no content showy one.

I guess though that the rapid expansion of the multi-channel mass media has possibly made this more obvious. Any user of Sky Plus/ Tivo knows it is all about capturing the content you want to consume. Not about the channel.

The massive success of the BBC iPlayer that allows people to catch up online with shows they missed in the last week also shows how it is all about content. The study suggests that in the US 46 percent of 18-24 watched a show on something other than a traditional TV.

Content has to be king, and getting the best content has to be the goal. Be it if you are a TV station owner or a brand marketer talking in advertising, PR, booklets and on your website. It is not about how technological advanced your site is, but what the content is.

For more visit my blog Gary Bembridge's Unleashed on Marketing

UGC: show me the money!

2008-04-17T10:45:00.003+02:00

eMarketer has an interesting question today: Can User-Generated Content Generate Revenue?: "“Since many of the growing numbers of Internet users creating social media are also consuming it, this is a content chain that feeds on itself,” says Mr. Verna. “There is a seemingly infinite demand for content, and there are legions of Internet users armed with laptops, cell phones and digital cameras ready to deliver.”"

Despite the large usage numbers, advertising revenue for user generated content is still painfully low. Not because, as Andrew Keen puts it, “Nobody wants to advertise next to crap.” But because advertisers and their agencies are not willing to let go of control. They want to keep their eye on the prize: their company or product logo, displayed as BIG as possible. Anything else is only adding more noise to the signal.

What's next in marketing!

2008-04-15T02:12:00.002+02:00

Excellent presentation on a possible route for the future in advertising.

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Copyright anno 58

2008-04-09T17:24:00.003+02:00

Atomium: "The image of the Atomium is protected since its construction. It's mandatory to gain approval from the asbl/vzw Atomium and the SABAM, before copying or broadcasting the image of the Atomium. It is also necessary to mention 'copyright asbl/vzw Atomium'."

A weird situation, especially with the 50th anniversary of the Anno Expo '58 coming up. Belangrijk bericht aan de bezoekers / inzenders / photoshoppers / lezers: "Maar elk beeld waarin –na bewerking- de contouren of het silhouet geheel of gedeeltelijk van het Atomium in blijven staan, kan toch ook niet zo blijkt. Dus geen “Ceci n’est pas l’Atomium”, “Patatatomium”of “Lamotium”…
Echter, een Patatomium met enkel aardappels en frieten in de vorm van een ijzerkristalstructuur gegoten, en niet met een bestaande Atomiumfoto als basis, kan wel."

Esther Dyson: companies must participate to the communities

2008-04-08T13:00:00.004+02:00

The 2008 Interact Congress is arriving, so we could relaunch this blog starting with an interview with Ms. Esther Dyson, one of our great panelist during the past Interact edition.

Mauro Lupi: Recently, the Nike CEO said to New York Times: "We're not in the business of keeping the media companies alive. We're in the business of connecting with consumers". Do you think that companies have really the possibility to bypass the traditional media and interact directly with the consumers? They should become a sort of media publisher too?

Esther Dyson: Absolutely, companies will be able to bypass traditional media to interact directly with consumers. But they won't necessarily be able to get consumers to come to their own websites. In many cases, they will have to join the communities where consumers gather - whether it's special-interest groups on Facebook or vertical-market sites. But they will have to participate in the activities of the community (rather than just post ads) - much as Nike might sponsor a local basketball game and send a rep or local sports-store owner. It wouldn't simply post a billboard; it would send someone to congratulate the winners....

M.L.: All around us there are digital contents, and they continue to grow exponentially. In your opinion, what is the more efficient technology that will help people to manage this rising amount of data? Better search engines? Social search? Semantic web? Other?

E.D.: It will require a broad range of approaches - just as it does now. But all these approaches will be built out... Things will be so easily findable, and systems will present them without even being asked... Instead of searching for things, people will have to filter them out.

M.L.: On the last column on The Wall Street Journal, you wrote about the power of social networks to understand user needs and behavior. Do you think that general internet users, especially the younger, are yet ready to understand and manage what this means in terms of privacy? How the good publisher will establish the users' trust?

E.D.: General internet users will have a different understanding of privacy as time goes by. They will not want "privacy" as much as control over their own data. And they will learn how to manage their data, just as they have learned how to pay taxes, buy things online, and do other complex things of modern life. People will. Publishers and merchants can earn users' trust by being trustworthy themselves. They need to be transparent, clear about their motivations, and accessible. They need to listen to consumers, not track or observe them. They need to treat them as individuals, not as market segments.

Promoting local services on foreign sites

2007-07-02T16:32:00.000+02:00

According to a New York Times article, British sites tend to attract large American readerships. As I’m reading this article, I wonder how much time Belgian readers spend on average on foreign sites.

Apple knows that I’m a Belgian reading this article. The words ‘Apple Store (Belgium)’ appear in a banner next to the article. I can't help noticing. Why? Because country-level targeting gives people a ‘homey’ feeling. And a ‘homey’ feeling generates trust.

A friend of mine who used to sell time-sharing in his not so glorious days in Ibiza, explained to me this trust principle. He told me that they had to learn by heart one café per location in Belgium. This piece of information helped them lure customers. ‘So you’re from Rotselaar, you must know Café De Zijbeuk!”

The same goes for offering local services on foreign sites. However, advertisements targeting foreign audiences is not a common practice, according to the same article: “Though the Internet is theoretically borderless, advertising budgets are still typically carved up according to national boundaries and media format. At media-buying firms, there is no category yet for the newly acquired American audiences of these British papers.”

Let's not be discouraged. We can always try to contact some top international media planning agencies to see if they can target Belgian visitors out there. What visitors? Well you know, waffles, Tintin, chocolates...

An incredible dance partner

2007-06-10T18:20:00.000+02:00

The Future of Interactive Advertising @ the FastCompany blog: "(President and CEO of Agency.com) Chan Suh's prophecies were the most eloquent, although perhaps the most hopeful: he explained that the face of interactive advertising will change to become 'an incredible dance partner, who knows when you are going to take a sudden step, knows when you're going to dip, and who knows what state of mind you're in based just on your behavior.'"

This is effective advertising for web 2.0: DOVE video

2007-06-05T13:57:00.000+02:00

This 1 minute 14 seconds youtube-video produced by Dove drove three times as many visits to the Dove website as did their whole TV campaign over the past two years:

The findings were revealed by Jaap Favier at the Interact conference in Bruxelles today. Jaap Favier is vicepresident at Forrester Research, and the conference is organised by IAB Europe - the european branch of FDIM.

Jaap Favier did a very convincing presention on the task advertisers need to undertake to reach the consumers of the present web 2.0 internet environment. What you need to do, he claimed, is to understand how to influence the group dynamics, that web 2.0 has brought to the forefront.

Realize these four different types of consumers and act on them: Very few are creators, a bit more are critics (commenting what they experience), some 20 % are collectors finding good stuff and sharing it with their peers, while the rest are couch potatoes, “passively” receiving.
(Live blogging from Bruxelles)

The morning of this big day :

2007-06-04T05:31:00.000+02:00

Dear all, thanks so much for your Interactions and posts! I hope I'll get some feedback on the Blog about your Interact experience, and I look forward seeing you next year for Interact 2008 in Germany! Greetings and look forward meeting you all in The Plaza hotel....enjoy some AdEx investments figures ;-)

SecondLife: a new networking protocol

2007-05-24T21:34:00.000+02:00

Of all the speculations that can be made about secondlife, there is one of which I am certain: secondlife as we know it now is destined for a necessary and radical change, which will make this type of application take off.

I am speaking about the way in which the project is owned and run today as the private property of Linden Lab. Here is a link to the company overview page: http://lindenlab.com/press/overview.

I am not able to imagine that a similar project can evolve very much, since it remains in the hands of a single company; the problem is in managing a thing of such enormous complexity.

At least the history of humanity shows us that above a certain threshold of economic, political and social complexity, a community must formally separate political power and the other powers, as is happening in China or Vietnam.

This is not an ideological argument but a technical evaluation of possible management models.

Today secondlife is an environment with very few rules, all decided arbitrarily by the board of directors and the executive management of Linden Lab, in the interests of the firm shareholders, who in my opinion understand the problem very well, given that so far, they have shown great foresight.

If Linden Lab know how to run this process, it will remain the main protagonist for a long time, otherwise it will be crushed by the development of another secondlife environment having resolved this phase; a solution, perhaps the only one, could be to open the standard to anyone who supports the technical interface - meaning anyone will be able to run the servers and decide the rules connecting to a network of servers.

Everyone together will form the secondlife universe and each of us will be able to have our own server, just as every one of us has an intimate and indivisible individual sphere.

Another phase that we will rapidly see will be where a secondlab provider will decide that the rules can be decided by the citizens through voting.

It will be interesting to see which evolutions these neo-democracies will have, that rapidly overtake the efficiency of the democracies we know today. Just think of being able to vote not once every five years but continuously, drastically reducing political intermediation.

Technically, it is not impossible to imagine this in a community necessarily literate in the use of the information technology.

GoogleBurner is coming your way

2007-05-19T21:13:00.000+02:00

What Is The Value Of Online Display Ads?: "Now that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and WPP have spent collectively $10.4 billion to acquire the largest online display ad platform companies (DoubleClick, Right Media, aQuantive, and 24/7 Real Media) on the bet that display ads will be a key driver of growth for online ad spending, it’s fair to ask exactly what the value of an online display ad is."

The answer? Pretty bleak: display banners can "foster familiarity" but since the advertisers themselves obsess over clicks, the ROI is pretty low.

Google AdSense, on the other hand, is sucking away larger and larger chunks of the online budgets every month. Why? Because GoogleAds "use the format of the universal call to action on the web — the text link."

Interesting to see what happens when (or rather, if) Google buys Feedburner, "the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds". RSS advertising is coming our way and my bet is, that it's going to be mainly text-based too.

Who'll serve the ads? "GoogleBurner" will. Who'll buy them? The same advertisers who are happy with GoogleAds' ROI. But who will be the media? The usual suspects (portal sites and other online media), but also the bloggers. I know some of the bloggers love reading RSS feeds for its ad-lessness, but when they can make money by inserting AdSense (or DoubleClick) ads in their own blog's feed, believe me: they will.

UPDATE (May 23 2007): $100 Million Payday For Feedburner - This Deal Is Confirmed.

Internet advertising complaint department is very busy

2007-05-13T19:30:00.000+02:00

The (British) Advertising Standards Authority has just published their 2006 Annual Report: the changing face of advertising. This report (.pdf) reveals that (in the U.K.) the number of complaints about internet advertising in rose by 33%, which makes is the 2nd most complained non-broadcast format. Five years ago, in 2001, the Internet ranked as the eighth most complained about of all nonbroadcast media.
This has of course to do with the importance of internet as an advertising medium. And with the fact that the online audience does not hesitate to use it's own medium backchannel to complain about advertising that is offensive to them.
Curious? Have a look at the Top 10 most complained about ads: the number one is a really weird ad from the Gay Police Association.
The ASA is, by the way, not able to sanction "faulty" internet ads. But they do have a clear mission: "It isn't just the change in advertising that has been remarkable over recent decades, but where and how that advertising appears." The challenge is not to create innovative advertising, but to make sure advertising techniques and concepts remain "legal, decent, honest and thruthful - and socially responsible too."

Found via 901am.com.

What research will help brands uncover how they can invest more smartly in online?

2007-05-10T12:16:00.000+02:00

That’s the question I put to the Leadership Council of IAB Europe last week. For the national IABs the answer will shape their plans, for the pan-European agencies and media owners the answer will focus their budgets, and for those new to the industry, the answer will reveal the breadth of the online research agenda.

Here I’ve collated a few of the key points that emerged:

• Metrix Lab: “The brand- building power of online - translating that into the effectiveness of media is the only way to prove what the new media mix should be”.
• ComScore’s research on users’ behaviour shows how it’s now possible to measure the different types of behaviour online.
• The Search Works: “Everyone is trying to educate the marketers, but we need to teach them how to look at metrics, how to understand campaign activity, how online behaviour really works; more studies, more often”.
• Yahoo: “You can’t just focus on the web, the role of mobile is swelling and that’s where more research attention is needed.”
• Interactive agencies (many): “Understanding the concrete effects of web campaigns is key. Not only on direct response, but also between different media channels. It is easy to measure response but that doesn’t mean people are measuring the right response metrics in the right way. What happens if we don’t go for print as part of the campaign? What happens if we do? We need this kind of mixed media research.”
• “In the Netherlands we need to translate the digital marketing language into more basic terms so that finance directors and marketing execs can shift the budgets quickly and understand what it means for them, how it increases the business, sales, purchase etc.”
• United Internet (Germany): “There isn’t a single simple model in cross media. We need to understand if the metrics work for all of the products. We have to focus on different media mixes for different products. What ideal media mix is there for food? What is the best media mix for cars companies? How does this differ from the media mix for finance sector?”
• Metrix Lab: “When firms like Procter & Gamble decide to invest a lot of money in online to increase their brand awareness, it’s important that the learnings are conveyed back into future campaigns. That means understanding how to use the metrics, and then doing a number of internal case studies. The industry needs to prove that a brand can be built online the same as in tv, radio or other classic channels. Then you need to explain the value each cannel brings. Get the maths right and you have cost per sale figures for the highstreet purchases that can be directly related to the web.”

The question is: what are your thoughts? What do you feel will change the market and get the switch to digital communication channels moving even faster?

Need more? Look out in the Ledership Council pages of www.IABeurope.ws and contact your national IAB for more research studies or Yahoo, Hitwise and i-Level for more about this.

Why multiple media in a single campaign? And at what frequency for each channel?

2007-05-09T12:08:00.000+02:00

That’s the question Roy Patel’s team tackled at Metrix Lab when they came to chat with us at the IAB Europe Leadership Council last week. Let’s face it it’s not an easy one. The theory of combining media channels together may seem simple, but quantifying the effects is a massive challenge.

The theory goes that if you see a message in one channel such as newspapers, and it’s echoed in a second channel such as the web, then the combined effect is much greater. A first exposure in an additional channel often delivers a bigger impact than a second exposure in the same channel. When I teach marketing I usually call this the 2+2=5 effect. Add to this the fact that different channels talk to our senses differently, and you start to appreciate the complexity. Then factor in the differences in the nature of the impact – for example how radio needs a high frequency to build recognition, but cinema needs only a few views to do the same. On top of this there are the differences in the price of each media channel, the targeting, the wastage levels and the calls to action: no, being a strategic media planner is not an easy task.

And the web just complicates it all further by creating a marcoms channel that can address pretty much any part of the advertising process from awareness, through brand activation to delivering the sale. You’d need some cutting edge econometric modelling to read this landscape and distil the rules for an effective campaign.

Enter Metrix Lab: their landmark studies in strategic media mix modelling in Europe are showing planners not only which media channels to use, but the exact frequency of exposures you need to get the best results for your campaign.

How does it work? Metrix Lab look at which media channels people are viewing and from that learn about their behaviour and the type of advertising they’re exposed to. This forms the basis of an analysis of advertising effectiveness. By marrying up media channel consumption, advertising exposures, and the viewers’ attitudes to these brands, they’re able to start unbundling cause and effect.

“For me it’s all about OTS: when have people actually confronted media” explains Patel. “The real challenge is that it’s tough to really test the effectiveness advertising across different media. This type of econometric modelling needs big samples and a powerful methodology, but get it right and it changes the way a business behaves.”

Theory: follow the steps...
• The weight of each media channel in a campaign needs to be change
• New research techniques are unlocking the answer
• When they’re run they typically reveal classic media are over used, with such a high frequency of views per person that the final few exposures do almost nothing for the advertiser
• If budgets are moved into the less used media – typically including the web – then the uplift in the campaign’s results are significant
• To advertise smartly online advertisers don’t need to create new budgets, just move the budgets they have around and they can enjoy better results

Case study: Spain
“In Spain the challenge for the industry was really clear: how do you get the big spenders to change their use of the media mix, upweighting online”, says Patel. “On the McDonalds campaign we worked with MSN and OMD Digital to gain the insights, taking large samples of more than three thousand people to look at the impact of the different channels.”

The research explored the branding effect of online: awareness, image and purchase intent. The objective most under the microscope was purchase intent because McDonalds were looking for the link to sales.

Results:
In terms of the campaign, there was an integrated look and feel in the creative work across all media, but with very different messages carried in each of the media channels. The web looked like press, but different calls to action.

In terms of results, the campaign proved that online built the brand. The uplifts in brand image were a massive 19% across the overall campaign, but the role of the internet was even greater. With some of the campaigns Metrix Lab researched, the frequency of TV campaign topped 22 views per person, suggesting that there could be significant wear-out. Crunch the numbers and it revealed those last few views were doing almost nothing to boost brand metrics. In fact, after the first 20% of the TV budget had been spent, there was hardly any incremental reach on the campaign: more spend wasn’t touching more people, it was just hitting the same people again and again.

With web advertising running at much lower levels (not much more than an average of 6 views per person), raising the frequency of the campaign would still deliver a significant uplift. And for younger audiences who were less exposed to classic media, it would also reach new people. That was a finding echoed from US research for McDonald’s where it had also become clear that a large segment of 18-34 year olds just couldn’t be reached cost-effectively through television any more.

In Spain, Metrix Lab’s analysis proved that the last 10% of the budget spent in TV delivered no significant change in purchase intent. Conclusion? Ditch the final part of the television budget and switch it into online. The findings for the media planners were that the optimal media mix for this campaign should have had the web on around 9% of total advertising spend rather than the 2% actually invested. It’s a dramatic change, but it echoes the cross-media optimisation research IAB US started back in 2001. The wider implications are even greater. This campaign was a brand building campaign for a product that couldn’t be bought or even researched online. In sectors like finance, motoring and travel, where the web now forms the main place for purchase research, the mix should clearly be even higher.

Takeouts from the session?
• Pioneering study
• Campaign frequency in TV was more than 22 vs just over 6 on the web
• Media wastage was high in television
• There was a 51% increase in message association
• New research proved that media mix should have been 9% in online, not 2% for McDonalds
• Further studies from Metrix Lab have placed the web even higher, at 14% for the best results
• And online with offline is a big boost: same budget, better results.
• McDonald’s has now changed its marketing mix as a result of the work

I'm sure Roy's team will be pleased to share with you more of the details. if you'd like to talk about presenting research at the European IAB meetings then just mail me: danny@digitalstrategyconsulting.com ...or add comments on this blog page.

Let’s get engaged

2007-05-08T17:12:00.000+02:00

What is engagement with media all about? How can we define it? What does it tell us? What are the relationships between the impact of communication through the different media channels? And why does online appear to be that much more deeply engaging?

These are just a few of the questions that appear once you start investigating what engagement means, and while the industry doesn’t yet have an answer, it is starting to uncover the roadmap to getting there. Some new insights from NetRatings are starting to show how you can measure some of the basic metrics for different types of engagement.

We don’t have the language that describes engagement yet, but online as a media channel can deliver an intimacy, response and connectedness rarely seen in other media. It can be a brand activation tool that prompts us to act; at the same time it can be a customer service channel or the actual sales process. The advertising copy can encourage real involvement from the customer, and with other media unable to compete on this scale, it’s clear that it’s up to the online industry to seek out the metrics.

Starting metrics for understanding website performance:
• People – this measures the popularity of a website, normally we talk about unique users
• Visits – this is the number of times people have logged on to the site
• Pages – pages per person gives a sense of the amount of involvement people are having with the site
• Time – the new measurement frontier that explores in one way how important the importance of the site in our lives

“Popularity just doesn’t tell the real story. Nor do visits, which might be useful for understanding loyalty, but nothing more,” explains Alex Burmaster from NetRatings. “Everyone uses impressions, but that doesn’t mean it tells the full story.”

A history of engagement
The engagement debate is one the online industry has flirted with since 2000. That was when a group of us came together in the UK to form the joint industry committee ‘JICNET’ project to explore smarter ways to measure website audiences to help media planners get it right. JICNET led to a second project which helped improve the data from NetRatings and other providers, and that led to the JICIMS group that took the work further.

A new landscape
Those metrics of impressions and visits are still valuable, and underpin much of the industry today, but they still represent an era of metrics that was locked into an older generation of web publishing. The landscape has shifted again, and in a world of AJAX, social networking and Web 2.0, metrics like the page impression are looking dated somewhat. Web Analytics 2.0 needs new vocabulary and new structures. That was the thrust of my lectures at the European Emetrics Summit this year (see http://analytics.digitalstrategyconsulting.com for some of the videos).

Page views will matter less as the technical architecture of the web moves on. The model of the page view can’t deal with the environments of chat, technologies, toolkits and virtual worlds that people increasingly use on the web. Add in the way that web pages now might include layers of applications (rather than static content) and you have a completely new set of rules to measure.

Time is one of the keys
Ebay is a case in point. The page impression figures for this retail giant have always been staggering, but new insights from NetRatings show that 100m hours was spent by Europeans on Ebay. Even more extreme are the new virtual reality communities: what comes through is that if you look at the amount of time people spend on a site like Second Life, you’ll discover that it tops seven minutes per person, but ask for the page impression numbers and it barely features on the radar.

Next step? Active focus
As for the future, it’s clear there’s a long way to go. The desktop is increasingly cluttered, multitasking has become the norm, the screen is a gateway to myriad services, and the relations between locally run software applications like Word or Excel, and what lies at the end of a Firefox browser is getting increasingly blurred.

There’s no answer to this yet, but NetRatings are doing some smart stuff with their desktop meter, and by downloading a software tracker onto their panel members’ computers, they’re able to learn exactly what is getting the attention. This could help cut through the chaos that’s coming to measurement and unbundled the mass of activity mashed-up on the user’s desktop into meaningful threads of data that can be read, analysed and interpreted.

Whatever happens in the future of web enabled computing, it’s clear that the metric of ‘time’ will be key, and within that the idea of ‘active focus’ will be one of the most powerful levers.

Need more? Contact Alex and the NetRatings team, www.IABeurope.ws, or your national IAB for more.

How to make money in web2.0

2007-05-05T21:15:00.000+02:00

In answer to Aljosa Japundzic’s post about how to monetize a web2.0 service, here my small reply. Of course you can go for the old school ad-model, or even try to sell your data for marketing use. But there is also a third option: the pro account. I translated a post I made a while ago about how Google could make money with YouTube by creating ProTube.

I was originally inspired by the book “Information Rules” from 1999 that explains how you could give away free software and still make a buck by creating a pro version. I shall write down six strategies that can easily be blended or broken in smaller pieces, and end with an example for the ProTube case.

More Options
This one can be found, for example, by Flickr or LinkedIn. Those who pay have an easier way of browsing and working with the site than those who don’t.

Quantity / Quality
Also a Flickr option (but also found on Live Mail and Gmail), those who pay have more storage, or can use a higher quality version of your product.

Speed
Sometimes the case, pro users can download and upload files at a higher speed. Or if it's still the case, can access the version of your site that is hosted on a faster server.

Delay
Users who pay can first use your lab and beta features, and can get a higher degree in involvement.

Annoy
Although it sounds a bit rude, this is what a lot of sites use - annoy the non paying visitors with advertisements, and let the pro-users work ad free.

Support
And the last example, one from the old world, gives support to you users; gives them the possibility to be in contact with a real human. Make them feel you still care.

The ProTube case
Although it seems now that Google is going for the add revenue model for YouTube, it isn’t that hard to imagine how they could make money by selling pro-accounts.

Pro users can edit their videos, and can upload several videos a day.
Pro users can watch all videos in high quality and can download them in several formats.
Features from the lab are first given to the pro users.
Pro users don’t have to watch advertisements.
Questions of pro users will be answered by humans in a reasonable time.

I have a strong feeling that the people behind Flickr knew all those ideas, and combined them to build a great photo site. Which is still the only web service where I bought a pro-account. So next time you try to finance your project with Google ads, think about the alternative.

This is the first post of Sjors Timmer, who recently graduated as a Master in European Media and is working for an exciting web start-up and blogs for several websites.

Using TV to unlock the power of the web

2007-05-04T20:50:00.000+02:00

Back in the mid-nineties the online marketing industry’s research agenda was all about how online could build brands, proving that the exposure to banners worked in a way comparable to press or outdoor. Did banners build brands? Yes. At the time, the research was revolutionary, uncovering a mathematical certainty and a truth of this new media channel for the very first time. Fast-forward to today and it’s about the brand building power of all media; mashed up together in a new diet of consumer behaviour, what should the advertiser’s mix be? Where exactly does online fit?

When i-Level teamed up with Yahoo and Hitwise at the end of last year to look at the new mix of media, their insights were rich and deep. They were digging into the relationship between TV and the web, and how marketing activity on TV triggered an uplift in searched online.

First up some of the basics were proved: online was “a highly effective medium for driving brand awareness and message association,” explained i-Level’s Amanda Davie at the IAB Europe Leadership Council in London today.

Next it went further, confirming that the combination of online and offline delivers the best yield and drives better awareness. It then examined the way that on-air mentions of the Sky brand drove immediate searches and web activity. Back in the late nineties Yahoo stumbled on this and created their ‘Buzz Index’ to gauge how popular a brand was so it’s no surprise they were one of the three partners behind this piece.

This collection of research studies, which included the Sky television network, looked at the behaviour of experienced online advertisers. Sky already put in 11% of their overall advertising budget into online, and the AA motoring breakdown service put 14% of their spend into online. By helping experienced online advertisers improve their media mix, this also reveals the reality that ‘best practice’ is still evolving.

“In the search marketing industry we’re still in our infancy”, explains Davie, “and much of the research we all use comes from the US. But here in Europe there’s a difference in the media mix and what we were trying to do was learn about how search could work with classic media advertising.”

Most revealing of all according to Davie was that “TV advertising can change the way the media mix works, often reducing the cost of other media”. As an agency, i-Level are clear that this work fundamentally changed their advertisers’ use of each media channel.

Two of the often cited powers of online advertising are measurability and accountability. But here with ‘search’, the data can actually be used to measure the impact of other media spends within the media mix. The studies tell us lots about the way people use media today, sliding seamlessly from one channel to another. The challenge many media planners still face is that they are not tracking the activity a campaign creates when that activity is in a different channel.

For experienced online advertisers this will be a familiar story, but for many marketers, understanding the relationship between the media channels urgently needs more attention. Audiences have shifted, new marketing channels have leapt into the mainstream, the strategic media is ripe for radical reassessment, yet many campaigns begin by dusting off the previous plan and applying only minor changes. With audience behaviours changing on the vast scale that they are, this approach prevents the planner from being able to address the real picture.

Takeouts:
• Point 1: Online builds brands
• Point 2: Online and TV together build brands more effectively
• Point 3: Understand the precise role of each channel and you can completely change the mechanics of your campaign

Need more? Contact your national IAB for more research studies or Yahoo, Hitwise and i-Level for more about this.

How big are we really?

2007-05-03T14:24:00.000+02:00

Alain already wrote about this, but this week has been a very busy one for me and especially my team as we struggle to gather all the data necessary to answer a simple question. How big is this industry?

The question is of course a simple one and the answer should be too. But the path to this answer is a very difficult one. And not just because gathering the data in itself is a slow process. But there are a lot of things that need to be answered before that in order to get the right data. Let me just start with the first one. NET or GROSS.

Well in fact the question is not so Shakespeare-ian. The right question is: Net, Gross, Gross with volume discounts (or Gross Gross as we like to call it), Rate Card , and so on?. The fact is that different countries use different methodologies to establish the value of a market. And this is of course a big obstacle in trying to set a common denominator for the adspend across Europe. So there is not other way to set the market for the whole Europe but to try to estimate the differences between gross and net.

And this differences can be, believe me, very different by country to country. Luckily enough IAB Europe has a distinct advantage in this matter. People within the country organizations around Europe are the very people that know their online markets inside out. So estimating the differences between one and the other is much easier and precise. The other good part if it is that by doing that people in those markets and across Europe begin to gain an even more extensive knowledge of the other markets.

For comparison is always good. It tells you where you stand and where should you be in a few years time. And it brings people around the table once again. A thing that IAB Europe has always done and always will. :-)

“Why isn’t there more consistency in trade associations across Europe?”

2007-04-23T19:58:00.000+02:00

It’s a cracking question from Atlas’ Michael Keaton, and one that reveals a disconnect between the structure of trade associations and the challenges they face in the digital networked society.

Since the mid nineties I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the smartest folks in more than a dozen countries to launch, or plan the development of, digital trade associations. They typically take some phenomenal effort to get going, but once they’re motoring – like IABuk.net, iabeurope.ws, iab.net – they provide cohesion in a fragmented sector, a single focus for debate and a massive momentum for growth. Look at the markets with the longest tradition of successful trade bodies and you’re looking at a short list of the Digital Giants and the countries that top the charts of online’s market share.

But in a global medium the rules are different to press, TV or outdoor. There’s a much greater need for consistency, and when it comes to Standards & Best Practice, the needs couldn’t be more absolute. Why should a banner be any different in shape or size between markets? Why should video ad impressions be counted differently? Indeed why even have the debate in parallel rather than all together?

Yet trade associations have an inherently national focus. The majority of firms the majority of the time are focussed on the national stakeholders and their national needs. Counting audiences or adspend varies greatly between markets, and it varies in ways driven by offline media. All of which is a tad frustrating for those of us at the middle coordinating development.

This morning I kicked off with a workshop to look at the standards and guidelines created so far, those of the present that we’re consulting on, and those of the future we’re lining up. That was for the ad technologists, and tonight I’m rerunning it with the tech vendors. Michael’s comments are spot on and echoed from 24/7 Real Media and Doubleclick directors who join us: moving on industry needs more cohesion rather than less, more coordination than ever before, and a smarter division of work so if the US, Germany or the UK are leading on a project, we all step back from duplicating our efforts.

Trying to build frameworks for a more efficient market has been likened to trying to build the wings of a plane while jet’s still taking off. It’s a challenge our industry clearly needs to embrace more deeply. And if it’s a challenge you’re up for then mail me and I’ll connect you to the right people. Remember to also check out the Standards & Guidelines pages of www.IABeurope.ws

Ad Operations: Turbo charging the online media engine:

2007-04-23T12:17:00.000+02:00

I love the way my mobile phone vibrates when a text arrives telling me the taxi has turned into my street. Addison Lee have been doing this for five years plus, but I still like the efficiency. It's neat, one tiny example of how the digital network society lets us do things in ways just smarter and more effective than the old world. Downstairs in my hallway there's a heap of luggage that needs moving. We've had a heat wave in the UK this weekend, with London marathon runners fighting their way through 25 degrees of sunshine, yet outside it's pleasantly cold and dank. Timecheck 4:31am. Why so early? Today is the start of the annual ad technology operations forum, this time in Paris. And if that text message seemed neat, it's nothing compared to what these guys will be looking at.

I've always been a fan of the ad tech systems. The whole potential of digital marketing rests in the large part on the scope, scale and functionality of what these boxes can do. In the early days it was NetGravity, then DoubleClick, OpenAdStream, AdTech,Falk, Accipiter... the vendors mushroomed. My introduction to all this was back in 1996, working on a project to explore bringing the fledgling DoubleClick into Europe, and ever since I've always had a soft spot for the toolkits. And with that the ad ops teams who administer them.

Ad operations execs are the unsung heroes of the industry. The whole potential for digital marketing rests on their shoulders, and the whole power of marketing efficiency hides in the boxes; put the right kit in the right people's hands and amazing things happen. Yet most agencies and media owners relegate ad ops and 'traffic' functions to the status of junior backroom tasks, somewhere as strategically important as ordering the company photocopying paper (though maybe without all the kudos).

No, no, no! Champion the traffickers, nurture their skills, celebrate their abilities, and give them the freedom to create. Yes, create: by digging around in all that campaign data, tuning the engine of targeting, adjusting the torque on ad delivery, a good commercial business engine can get turbo-charged, pulling the business away from the rest of the pack. While trafficking in most firms still means banner-planners, the smart money at MSN, Yahoo and AOL have lifted the group and their status to the dizzy heights of revenue maximisers, directing company policy and taking control of the inventory.

When a few of us came together to start teaching the Ad Trafficker's Academy, it became clear that it wasn't just the traffickers that needed an induction to the process of trafficking and their role in the business, it was the senior executives they reported into! Which brings us to Paris.

As my car hurtles along the empty streets that only 12 hours ago formed that sea of bobbing heads in the London Marathon, I'm collecting some thoughts for the conference. For the next three days we'll be debating the issues that matter most in industry right now. We'll be trying to find ways around them to make smart systems even smarter and to keep them there in the face of the morphing digital landscape.

Since 1999 I've chaired the Standards & Ad Operations Taskforces for IAB Europe. This is the group that looks for ways to achieve collaboration between firms to build guidelines and best practices in the industry. The 'Universal Advertising Package', the 'Auditing and counting' models, 'Creative best practice guidelines', the changes to the ad server counting tools... they all came from here. You can find out more in the standards section of IABeurope.ws. Having teamed up with Admonsters, we now have 60 of us together for a few days every year to do nothing other than think ad-ops thoughts. And that's exactly what starts this morning, in the heart of Paris.

This time around we're looking at a few old favourites, and a host of new challenges:

Broadband and video
The time is right for a massive migration to video based advertising. It's not simply a question of taking the TV spot and putting it online (though that might be an easy starting point), it's about weaving in commercials to non-linear video reportage. There's a new generation of advertising and content coming and we need some clear models for it to all fall into.

Behavioural targeting
Can we build up a framework for effectively trading the new behaviourally targeted inventory. There are several types of behavioural targeting in place and agencies keep telling me how difficult it is to know what they're getting. If we can get the model right then there's a quick win for everyone.

Lavasoft and the cookie debate
Changes in the way this Swedish software firm treats third party cookies could cripple segments of the ad industry online. It's not the first time the cookie has been under threat (remember the 2000/2001 campaign to 'save the cookie' from an over zelous data protection political bandwagon?), but if industry doesn't respond quickly and decisively, then part of the ad revenue that lets sites provide their content for free will be on hold.

Metrcis and analytics
The metrics challenges just keep getting bigger. In our Web Analytics Academy we explored the implications of Web 2.0 on ad data and concluded that while most publishers still focus only on the same metrics of visits, visitors and impressions, that they were ten years ago, the models of Web 2.0 analytics combine the sum of metrics from all other media.

But what else? Over the next few months we need to answer this and get some of those projects out of the door. I'm keen to know what would make your online advertising easier to trade, what would remove barriers in the market, what would help accelerate the industry.

As my car trundles up the ramp into the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo, it's still cold and dank outside. I've finished this blog update and cleared my overnight texts. If these technologies seem neat, it's nothing compared to what awaits in Paris. Time for coffee, croissant and some conversation. For more on the IAB Europe Standards & Guidelines debates either email me, check out the Standards section of IAB Europe.ws, or join the next Standards & Guidelines call or event.

Sometimes size does matter!

2007-04-21T09:24:00.001+02:00

A few months ago Scott McLeod shortened Karl Fisch' great presentation Did You Know? and added a slide on MySpace. Some of you might have seen it before. If not, it's definitely worth 6 minutes of your time!

Serial resetters and online gamers distort visitor metrics

2007-04-18T11:10:00.000+02:00

Top ten websites by time per visit

RuneScape (the massive online adventure game by Jagex Ltd) - 6hrs 32mins

Electronic Arts Online (online game service) - 3h 07m

Bebo (MySpace Alternative) - 2h 37m

Facebook (social networking service for students, corporate, and geographic communities) 2h 28m

eBay - 1h 55m

King.com (free online games) - 1h 53m

Adventure Quest (Role Playing Game) - 1h 35m

Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) - 1h 11m

Club Penguin (kid-friendly virtual world) - 1h 10m

Cartoon Network (free games featuring Cartoon Network characters) - 1h 09m

Web counting tools 'need change': "The post Web 2.0 world is best represented by measuring time spent on particular websites, argues [Nielsen/NetRatings] analyst Alex Burmaster."

From the same BBC article: ""It is clear that a certain segment of internet users clears its cookies very frequently. These 'serial resetters' have the potential to wildly inflate a site's internal unique visitor tally, because just one set of 'eyeballs' at the site may be counted as 10 or more unique visitors over the course of a month," explained comScore president Dr Magid Abraham."

Cost per influence

2007-04-16T14:08:00.000+02:00

The Devil & Online Advertising: "Jim Coudal at The DECK uses the term Cost Per Influence in their advertising model and I think it is a step in the right direction. I think we have to consider the value of the traffic on a site and the influence it has on it’s traffic."

The term Cost Per Influence as an alternive metric was discussed way back in 2004 by Ross Mayfield. The accompanying format would be Sell Side Advertising.

Robert Scoble dug it up again last year (New audience metric needed: engagement) but the funny thing is no one from the advertising industry really picked it up. Anyone?

Gobal online media measurement: where do we stand?

2007-04-12T16:44:00.000+02:00

Is online measurement a national or an international matter? The answer is “both”, and the reasons are twofold.

Most of advertising spends are local, few are international. This leads us to conclude that audience measurement has always been a national issue, and methodologies have been following local particularities such as counting habits, culture, and dominance of a media over any other.

Still, as the text introduction of the I-Com (http://www.i-com.org/) interestingly put it: “Around the world, online media and their audiences are being measured (Ad, Site & User Centric) differently or not at all. Commonalities include a predominant national focus and lack of a big picture about who is doing what and with what results. Meanwhile, advertisers would like to see internationally comparable data based on transparent common metrics.”

Compared to measuring traditional media, online measurement is such a complex and innovative task that operators - including research providers - struggle to provide a stable and accepted currency locally. In some countries, millions are invested to understand and create a standard measurement, while internet technologies continue to evolve.

As a consequence joint industry committees (JIC) along with private research operators felt the need to share experiences and best practices. In September 2005, several leading associations (including EACA, IAB Europe, IFABC, I-JIC & OPA Europe) decided to create I-COM, a joint conference about online measurement, in Berlin. The conference’s achievements were as follows:

- Delivery of an International Overview Study (IOS) of Online Site&User centric measurement status around the world;
- Presentation and discussion of major site and user centric measurement systems;
- Creation of an international network amongst professionals in Online Media Measurement;
- Facilitation through forums on key issues including international cooperation.

Like the harmonization of worldwide online ad spends, online measurement needs to be consistently aggregated on a global scale in order to better represent our media. Measurement operators need to work on common definitions, both across countries and locally to make the Internet media clear and transparent.

In the first “workshop” day of the Interact Congress (4th of June), IAB Europe will welcome all leading associations and players to introduce the global initiative for online media measurement (GIM) and announce the next I-COM conference. Three panel discussions will focus on improving the comparability of metrics across countries, sharing local requirements for research suppliers, and discussing new measurement possibilities along with Web 2.0.

Getting to grips with website analytics

2007-04-12T09:35:00.000+02:00

“Which KPIs and metrics should I be tracking?”

I got hit by this question while teaching the Web Analytics Academy in London this afternoon and figured it was worth sharing a few of the key points. Digital marketing is incredibly powerful, but much of that power can be lost if you’re not tracking what you do.

Seems obvious? Read on…The problem is that most folks who run websites and web marketing don’t give enough weight to the analytics. Sure, it’s not the sexiest part of digital media, but it can be the most profound and the most enlightening.

It’s only by tracking you’ll really know what works and what doesn’t, and while it’s part of the fabric of traditional marketing, there seems to be an enormous gap when it comes to extending that theory online. For example, in a media brand, the core key performance indicators include volume (of advertising), yield (of advertising) and the share (of the advertising and audience market).Those are revenue metrics any publisher would readily seize, but when it comes to audiences the same logic isn’t always there.

That’s why at Digital we developed the 5 Ps of web traffic measurement. If you’re stuck for where to start, then try these tips and see the video of our Web Analytics lecture…

• People (unique users)
• Pages (impressions)
• Persistence (stickiness / duration of visit)
• Pulling power (repeat visits)
• Passion (intensity of their activity; posts, community involvement, bespoke metrics)

Try these out as your starting point and you’ll be well on the right track. If you need more then ask us about the Management Information Academies we developed for media groups.
Need more help? Post your questions in our Web Analytics Digital Classroom.

European Online AdSpend will be worth over 10Billions€ in 2006?

2007-04-12T06:13:00.000+02:00

Going around from IAB country to IAB country presenting myself, listening to their needs and explaining our IAB Europe Masterplan 2007-2010 exercise, I've the pleasure to meet and great fantastic people but also to discover the web-story from each country. You feel the heat, the tipping point in many countries moving away from a secondary medium towards a primary medium. A key-driver might be for many professionals to see that our digital industry will hit the 10billions€ for the 2006 online adspend investment. We all know that it's only one side of the internet play-ground, but it does mean a lot for decision makers I believe...

A dedicated team is working under supervision of Zoran from IAB Slovania trying to provide a comprehensive benchmark sheet in May 2007 enabling us to compare and understand the figures from one country to another. More on this next month, but wanted to share this already with you ;-)

Pick their brains

2007-04-10T10:42:00.000+02:00

Quick linkdump:
Ads of the World (recent, blog): "an advertising archive and forum discussing great work worldwide"
ihavenidea (articles, blog): "Because the advertising industry we want to work for doesn't yet exist."

Web 2.0 World is a great place, but where's the Money?!

2007-04-10T10:30:00.000+02:00

"Everything is free, just take a cookie!" is a line from the video (You can watch it below) that pretty much summarizes the Web 2.0 model. Currently what most Web 2.0 ventures are doing is collecting information and creating an audience, and in some cases, basically waiting to be acquired.
If there is a monetization model out there, most of the Web 2.0 sites and services haven't found it yet, or they just can't apply it. Anyway, here are some suggestions made by experts:

Subscriptions: some very useful services finance themselves with subscriptions, but it's certainly not the way to go for everybody. Even those services that use that model have a hard time fighting with the competition that offers the same services free of charge.

Commission: a nice way to monetize services that offer assistance to shoppers (travelers, and other buyers), but it's really not a model that applies directly to a typical Web 2.0 service. But we can use a Web 2.0 feature combined with a more or less traditional commercial model – and make success.
That is where I see a good monetizing model for the Web 2.0 – using it's main qualities as a feature.

Advertising: even though most investors and financial experts don't really like this model, I still prefer it. It allows the services to stay free, and as the video says, that is what it's all about. As we all know, on-line advertising is growing in numbers, but the Web 2.0 is giving it ways to expand, become more targeted and effective. An average social networking service knows a lot about it's users: besides the general information (name, sex, age, location…) we have an insight to their habits and preferences, favorite brands, hobbies, and relationships.

Something else: Subscriptions and Commission are mostly not applicable, Advertising might bee to intrusive… There are only so few ways to monetize, and so many reasons why we should not use them.
The Holly Grail of Web 2.0 monetization is yet to be found. Meanwhile, everything is free, just take a cookie!

Dick Brandt on Identity 2.0

2007-04-05T19:38:00.000+02:00

My first post here, and it's not even about interactive marketing. Or is it?

Watch and learn something about the past and future of digital identity, courtesy of Dick Hard t, CEO of Sxip Identity.

Lonelygirl15 is boring

2007-04-05T16:00:00.000+02:00

If, in the midst of all the 2006 buzzwords, we had to go for the ultimate one, it would be "web video" or rather, YouTube. The stats that are published last week in the newteevee.com article Go Stat Wild: February Video Traffic confirm the obsession of marketeers, advertisers, investors and mainstream media over YouTube. The poster child of user generated content. The ultimate fulfillment of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame prediction. The company that was consuming terabytes per day in bandwidth, and would have succumbed under these costs if it wasn't for Google.

It's ok to obsess over a bright new kid, but the side effects are somewhat annoying me. A few examples:

The majority of web video consumers are not using the hosted services. If they forward web videos, they'll often use peer-to-peer networks, instand messaging or even plain old e-mail (with the video as an attachment!)

Every big internet player feels obliged to launch a me-too-youtube initiative. Me-toos are boring.

Advertisers ask their agencies for campaigns that depend on user generated content. Only an utter minority of, say, the Belgian internet users is able to capture, edit en upload a pretty decent web video. And even if they do so, it wouldn't be to review this or that product. Most succesfull user generated web videos are variants on the lonelygirl15 meme, or the "my cat sneezed" variant. Lonelygirl15 is stuck in YouTube. And for frequent updates on your pet's health the kids now prefer Twitter.

There is no such thing as wisdom of the crowds. Really want to know what pleases the crowd? It's Idols, or any other show involving freaks. Anything involving bikini girls is a good second, and my guess is that cute animals are on the third spot.

It's no use to search for an advertising model. Pre-roll advertising annoys consumers. In-video product placement is tricky but might work in some cases. And launch a tv ad of movie trailer in Tubespace and hope it will go viral? Good luck with that. You'll have to compete with all the freaks, the bikini babes and the cute animals.

Does this mean we have to give up the idea alltogether that advertisers can somehow get in the mix again? Of course not. The only mistake advertisers can't afford to make is to export their "old skool" advertising formats onto the new web videosphere. This means: no intrusive advertising, no display advertising, no dirty tricks, not even subliminal advertising.

The only thing left to do is to re-think advertising. It will take a while before new advertising standards will arise. In the meanwhile, all an advertiser can do is follow this mantra: be passionate, be proud, and be honest.

We Aid - forget the action

2007-04-05T00:23:00.000+02:00

Since the somewhat heated debate between Thomas Madsen Mygdal and Matias Palm Jensen at the Danish Internet Award (DIA07) conference some two months ago, my mind has once more been wandering about the limits of advertising.

Is it true that good products market themselves here in the age of the social web, where happy and unhappy individuals have excellent opportunities to make their opinions publicly known? That advertisement in the traditional sense therefore is obsolete, and that marketers should focus on Public Relations-like activities, ensuring the best conditions for the conversation between individuals (whether these are employed in the company selling goods and services or are performing the role of consumers, buying the goods and services)?

One thing I’m sure about is that no ad will succeed in getting anyone to buy anything, simply by saying: “This is a great product. Go to the nearest store and BUY IT”. Com’on! If this has ever worked (what I doubt) it certainly doesn’t anymore. This is 2007. More than a decade after “I’m not a consumer”, “Generation X” and what have you. Consumers are individuals, not masses, making up their own minds.

Phrased differently: In terms of the traditional AIDA marketing paradigm, the last “A” (the one where you get your target-group to Act, that is: buy) has been ruled out. Although the aim of marketing is to get the individual to do “the buy”, it is out of the hands of the marketer to make the individual do so.

However, it’s also true that not even the greatest product has a chance of getting success, if nobody knows about it.

Furthermore I hold it to be a truth, that products are more than their mere physical properties: That sentiments about the product may be a very important reason why anybody would buy the product at all. Take the Apples iPhone as an example: It’s very much more than a smartphone. As anyone who has observed the blogosphere during and after the launch (that is: of the presentation of what is to be in the US market in half a year, and in the European market in one whole year from now) of the Apple iPhone will truly be aware, the hype is tied closely to the expectations of what Steve Jobs and Co. will be able to deliver.)

Similarly: Coca Cola is more than a taste. Nike is more than a device for walking. Etc.

In other words: Marketing still has a role to play as regards to creating Attention of, Interest in, and Desire of products. The first three letters (“A”, “I” and “D”) in the AIDA still holds true.

The loss of the final “A”, the Action “A”, in the AIDA paradigm is not all that has changed. Modern times has not only cut off the most important part of what marketing is about. No – it has done something more. It has added a resource of such powers, that it’s hardly comprehendible. It has given marketers the notion of a “WE” to be working with. It has created the space for a conversation between marketers and the (people formerly known as) consumers.

This conversation does not necessarily need to take place on an abstract discussion-like level. On the contrary, I will suggest that conversation should be understood in the most widely sense of the word. That a game, which attracts an audience, is a kind of conversation, even though it might only have a slight connection to the way the product meets “objective” requirements. That the little green music-making man Pjotro (read my post on Pjotro at my own blog), who’s in reality advertising for Nokia, might be a great advertisement. Because it offers the individuals accessing the Pjotro-figure the opportunities to amuse themselves, while (very much secondarily) connecting the Nokia brand-name to interactive music. And because the creators of the ad has realised, that it doesn’t work just stating: “Go buy the new Nokia phone with MP3 capabilities”, but has succeeded in creating a community, a “WE” involving individuals, who like music, and like interactive playing around and the virtual Nokia-property Pjotro.

This is very much not to say, that only a few things has changed for marketers during the past decade. That the “AIDA” models still holds true, if you only modify it a little.

On the contrary: what we are witnessing is a paradigm shift. The whole instrumental way of viewing the marketing process, where you can move from point a to b, targeting the relevant consumers and eventually making them buy your product, is deemed to end in nothing but failure nowadays. Instead the “WE”-part should have the undivided focus of marketers. Whenever introducing a new product think of: how best to engage the individuals, you’d like to be consumers, in the sphere of your product. Talk to them, provide them with facts about you and the product, and play with them, create virtual universes and invite your “target groups” to get inside. Get them to be your ambassadors, to contribute to, and spread your message through their own viral channels.

Forget AIDA. Think “WE”. But also: think about and take the actions necessary, to create Attention about the product, Interest in the product and Desire for the product. Think “We” and think “AID”. Think “WE AID”.

(I first laid out these thoughts in my post "WE AID – a marketing paradigm for the user-centered era" on my own blog, where also this post originally was published).

Considering consumers as people

2007-04-04T15:44:00.000+02:00

The media digitalization, as much as the contents classification (tagging), is strongly changing our habits starting from the way we communicate and the way we relate with companies. And this is happening very fast. Marketing and advertising have to fit themselves quickly, putting in crisis some of the elements that have been the core of the communication strategies for the past years; for example it needs to shift from the classic approach “consumers considered as target to hit” to “people with whom talking to”.

Considering consumers as people is a significant, complex but necessary step. In this way consumers are no more passive receivers of the advertising messages, but they become individuals with who make sense to start a true relationship, a conversation, a dialogue. Considering that these individuals have become content producers therefore they have become significant purchasing influencers.

To face this new communication ecosystem, it is not enough, naturally, opening a corporate blog or uploading videos on YouTube. It needs to start a real renewal in the way of considering a company, knowing that it is going to be a gradual and complicated process. In theory it seems to be easy: being transparent, building brands with clients, talking with them, etc. The main problem is that companies have always been used to just communicate, not to talk, not to really listen to. It is evident that leaving part of the communication control in the hands of people is something scary. But this is an irreversible route.

ZenithOptimedia: global online adspend to overtake radio in 2008

2007-04-04T10:00:00.000+02:00

ZenithOptimedia released an update of its global ad spending outlook. It’s impressive to see how spending in online advertising keeps beating the prognoses: ZenithOptimedia expects the global online adspend to grow with 28,2 % this year. The rest of the media will grow with 3,7 %.

In three global markets online already accounts for more than 10 % of the overall adspend. All three of these markets are European: the UK of course (in 2007 16,6 % of overall adspend according to Zenith), Sweden and Norway.

By 2009 these three markets will be joined by Denmark, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the US.

ZenithOptimedia expects the global online adspend to overtake radio adspend by 2008. This is one year sooner than previously expected.

Check out more details in the ZenithOptimedia press release on this link (PDF).

Playing with ad formats at Club Internet

2007-04-02T23:02:00.000+02:00

Ad formats, technical requirements, ad guidelines, interactive marketing standards, whatever you call them: interactive advertising seems to be more and more a matter of well defined formats in which we squeeze our creative aspirations.

However necessary ad formats may be, the online world often becomes really interesting when advertisers surprise us by ignoring the rules and coming with refreshing new ways of reaching out to internet users. I call it the Star Trek approach: ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’.

A great example is a campaign by French Club Internet, dubbed ‘Le duel’.

Jan Van den Bergh (i-merge Shanghai) and Marc Bresseel (MSN Europe) mentioned it on their blogs.

An experience that is hard to describe with words. So I propose you just go to http://www.club-internet.fr/le-duel/, sit back, watch the ‘video’ and see what happens next.

Now that is what I call an engaging experience.

PS: mind the details (see for instance the Google search window when the duellists start using modern weapons).