Promoting local services on foreign sites

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

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

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 :

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 ;-)