Friday, February 27, 2009

New post!

Cadburys Jive Brow
Cadburys has not only introduced a great new addition to their eye brow campaign by encouraging people to have a cut their eye brows into mad shapes. Afetr the success of Movember, it will be interesting to see if this has the same effect?
Whats next, endorsing sports stars to have funky eye brows? Fancy seeing Ronaldo having a timeout at half time with big bushy brows, could work.
Oh and here are some adults wasting their time for Cadburys benefit.



Balcony TV
This is having some serious success and airtime, great idea and with hits going up and up.
Founded in June 2006, BalconyTV is a leading daily online viral music show that features bands, musicians and other variety acts on balconies around the world.
Everyone can watch videos on BalconyTV, which are archived on a a number of major online video distributers.
BalconyTV won the Best Music Website at the Irish Digital Media Awards 2007, and was nominated for the Best Viral Content at the prestigious International Webby Awards 2008.
BalconyTV currently operates from locations in Dublin, London and Hamburg with more locations on the way.
BalconyTV has featured and supported hundreds of exciting up and coming performers, along with many established and recognised acts.
BalconyTV was founded by film maker Stephen O’ Regan, and musicians Tom Millett and Pauline Freeman
Linkedin
Over the last few weeks hav recieved a number of emails asking me to to join linked in, fomer collegues of mine have joined many unemployed and set up a linkedin account to make themselves more employable.
Adage reports:The question is, however, whether LinkedIn -- a site closely tied not only to job seekers but also employers -- can thrive when unemployment is expected to reach 9% and few are hiring. After all, what's a bunch of online supply if there's not sufficient demand for it?
To understand the online supply-and-demand problem, look at Monster Worldwide. While traffic was up 76% year-over-year in January as the unemployed flocked to job boards, its first-quarter revenue is expected to be down 30% over the prior year's period, thanks to softening in the help-wanted ad market. And it could be unprofitable for the next three quarters, management warned.
Using fewer ads aids click through
Adage report how having less ads on your site increases the click through rate. This sounds somewhat obvious and straightforward, but it means that marketers will have to optimise spend and value their ads instead of presuming that more ads equals more revenue.
So SmartMoney cut the number of units on a page from three to two, eliminating a skyscraper ad that ran toward the bottom along the edge. The result: a 21% increase in aggregate click-through rates. Some advertisers that had quit buying the site have returned, including Scottrade and Options Xpress. And the site was sold out in the fourth quarter, though Mr. Shaw said that trend hasn't continued in first quarter.
"The fundamental theory of what we're doing is not only limit supply but make sure the supply we have makes sense," he said. "I don't think advertisers care if they're paying a $15 to $20 CPM as long as they're getting the right audience and performance."
Time to forget the measurement in Digital Marketing
I dont think so, but as reported by Andy Atherton, co founder of brand.net. Here is an extract.
So, if we were starting fresh in today's environment, I would simply argue that we wouldn't (and thus shouldn't) lead with measurement. The measurement pitch has obviously worked extremely well for direct response; about 30% of DR-focused measured media spend is now online. But 95% of brand spending, or more than $100 billion, is still offline. For those budgets, I think our collective pitch should be more like "Your audience moved. Your marketing needs to follow them. Let us show you how the internet can deliver the same quality, scalability and value as TV." Measurement should still be an important part of the story -- we'd be foolish to ignore all the opportunities there -- but I submit that it should be the sizzle not the steak.
Opt in Advertising
As mentioned on this blog oon a number of occasions, i feel that opt in advertising has a major future in online advertising. I think that social netoworks and other sites, such as email servers or any suscription service should offer an incentive for applicants to fill out plenty of questions so that the site has a valuable databse andknowledge of its suscribers. This provides advertisers with a guareenteed target for the advertising they invest in these sites. As well as this, it is seen as information rather than advertising. This was first mentioned to me through the Blyk business model and has been picked up by more and more people, heres another example of how it could work...
Really cool Aviva ad about the name change. . .

Bavaria or Heinken, who would you rather be?

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Net Imperative Talk 2 Weeks Back in Guiness Storehouse, Thanks for Having US!

I only made it until work but here are the notes that i took. Some really good speakers, great day, thanks to Net Imperative for the day.

Online Information

Chris Bennet Blyk
· Between 18-24 year olds
o 60% rather communicate through technology
o 2007 89% are members of a social network
o Spend on average 19.3 hours online vs 13 on television
o Control their own space
· Youtube saw 50% rise in visitors from 07-08
o 3 minute entertainment is huge
o Represents average time on website
· Mobile as media
o 3 times as many mobiles as computers
o 70% couldn’t live without mobile phonoe

· Alan O’Rourke Spotchild Design/Toddle.com,
THIS IS GOSPEL WHEN SETTING UP/ OR RUNNING A SITE

o Engaging and visibility online

· 60% drop out at payment stage online
· 75% of webusers judge site on looks
· Good looks is obvious signs

o Make everything OBVIOUS
o Should be ONE clear objective on page

· Make page simple
· Make page personable
· More information you give them the less information they get
· People don’t read online, they scan
· Wording is very important online

o Free offerings should be BIGGEST font etc

· Visibilty trumps features
· Make mistakes cheaply, do everything yourself or
give people doing it exact information about what you need
o See how things work, try before you buy
o www.worderest.com,www.oscommerce.com, www.shopandfly.com
· Ask questions to ALL your users, incentifise findings
o Ask only one or two questions
· Measure your sites efficencey
o www.crazyweb.com, www.mint.com, google abtesting
· Be a pirate
o Copy sites like Amazon
· www.spoiltshild.com
· www.crazyegg.com
· Google “eye ball tracker”

· Adam Parker Online PR, the new SEO

· SMNR is a social media news release

o News online is getting bigger and bigger
· Online media structure
· Process of online PR
1. Providers Irishtimes.ie etc
2. Editorials No restriction
3. Publishers hoovers, total eircom
4. Blogs techcrunch 1.7 million ISS subscribers
5. UGC Youtube, Wikipedia
6. Talk Social networking, micro blogging
7. Find Google etc
·
Online Audience
1. 1.7 billion unique users
2. 8 million read Gizmoto online once a month
3. Example,( Just an example www.mobileireland.com)
ranks in best 3000 websites in Google SEO
4. 22% if active internet on facebook
5. 61 million web subscribers a month through Google
· Advertising Vs PR
· I’m Great Vs He’s great
· Example Touch Phone Vs Will it blend
· www.Alexeire.com
· Bad side –(Example Land Rover discovery)
WOM/PR online can harm sales in negative way
· Google Analytics SIGN UP!!!
1. Identifies what publications are talking about you
2. Therefore you can invest in online PR and Google analytics will show you where and if its working
· Online is where people look for info its not passive

Conclusion

Try to get providers to talk about online in a positive way
It will be found in Google, sucked up in social media providing success
Use RSS feeds

The Posts are Back!

Flash Mob in Liverpool
This is mental, there one planned for london this Friday, there has to be a way marketers can abuse this many people being somewhere at once!

Opt in Advertising the future
The success of opt in advertising has been seen recently with the success of Blyk and other models. This is more evidence of its development.
  • 40% of social network users are receptive to opt-in advertising, according to market research firm InsightExpress.
  • 23% of users on Facebook, Myspace, Classmates.com, LinkedIn and Reunion.com felt randomly generated ads were acceptable.
  • This was in marked contrast to CafeMom, Twitter and Flickr users — 43% of which said random ads were acceptable.

Twitter changing/Altering their business plan
Twitter have denied recent reports that they are charging companies for the services that they are currently using. They have outlined that additional services will be offered to companies and that these services will be priced. Makes sence from Twitters point of view, good move on their part to not charge people for the services currently on offer.

Cream Eggs interactive us stop.
Quality, interactive bus stop that is so with the cream egg, funky innovative brand. How expensive and what return on investment they get from it is yet to eb known.
Have to give cadburys some serious respect for the scale and quality of the majority if campaigns that they are involved with.

Absoluetly Sharing the Love
Hugs should be given out more often, Im a major fan. This is a cool new campaign from the vodka that just loves to hug.




Loads of Internet Stats/Mobile Stats/Important Stats

  • 43pc of internet users prize speed of connection above other factors such as security, quality of connection or cost, according to a wide-ranging study of consumers commissioned by the Commission for Communications Regulation.
  • However, nearly half of broadband users don’t know what speed they are paying for.
  • 64pc of the Irish population are now online – the highest level to date – and
  • 82pc of users access the internet from home, while
  • 24pc of users also access it at work.

The Millward Brown IMS study, which covered over 1,000 people aged between 15 and 74, revealed that

  • 30pc of Irish adults rely only on their mobile phones, rising to 46pc among 25-34 year-olds.
  • Eircom – with 79pc of the market – is the largest residential fixed-line provider in the country, followed by Perlico with 6pc, BT with 5pc and Chorus/UPC and Imagine with 2pc each.
  • Eircom’s share of the fixed-line market only fell marginally from 82pc in 2005 to 79pc in 2008.
  • Some 84pc of Irish females are on prepay, while 95pc of 15-24 year-olds are also on prepay.
  • Meteor’s customers are the most likely to opt for prepay than any other operators’ customers.
  • Ninety percent of Irish mobile users only carry one handset and SIM card, while 9pc admit to carrying two of each and 1pc carry three handsets and SIM cards.
  • Those with a monthly subscription spend twice as much as prepay customers (€74 v €33.
    Vodafone’s share of the mobile market has declined to 40pc of the market from 47pc a year ago, O2 has risen only marginally remaining around the 33pc mark, while Meteor has grown from 18pc a year ago to 27pc of today’s market.
  • 36pc of Irish users access the internet via desktop PCs, while laptop usage has grown from 13pc a year ago to 20pc today.

  • In terms of the type of access, some 65pc with internet access claim to use a broadband connection, while 28pc say they have a narrowband connection. Only 4pc don’t know what type of connection they have.
  • Some 56pc of TV owners in Ireland have standard-definition TVs, followed by 24pc with high-definition and 13pc with both.
  • Nearly one in five TV set owners have access to a personal video recorder, with the highest amongst those of the ABC1 social class living in Dublin

Google Sync join forces with Microsoft in mobile landmark

Google Sync allows users to synchronise their contacts and calendar information on mobile phones with Google servers across a number of devices such as the iPhone and Nokia, BlackBerry and Sony Ericsson devices. Silicon Republic highlighted this and it seems that googles move to facilitate online/mobile services is gathering pace fast.

Cybercom identify Top 50 Key Digital events of Last Decade

Its hard to argue with, it is obvious that Cybercom put time into this. I absolutely agree with the number social media, fair play Cybercom.

1. Social Media: Blogging, Social Networks, Micro-blogging…. they are hugely popoular and embody UGC.2. Axe Effect - Lynx3. Barack Obama Viral Marketing4. Battle at Kruger5. Bean Counter - Apple6. Cadbury’s Gorilla - Cadburys7. Coca Cola Zero Fantasy Football8. Cog Ad - Honda9. Daft (punk) Hands Video10. Donnie Darko11. Exploding Whale12. Get it On - Durex13. Get The Glass - California Milk Board14. Google Homepage15. HBO Voyeur16. Horselstest - Oslo Health17. I’m a mac - Apple18. Impossible is Nothing - adidas19. JCB Song - Monkeehub.com20. Leroy Jenkins Warcraft21. Like a Rabbit - Volkswagen22. M&M’s Website23. Make me Super - Kodak24. Mastercard BJ25. Kiss Fight - Mentos26. My DJ fantasy - Samsung27. Baby its Cold Outside - Nike28. Wii Experience - Nintendo29. Numa Numa Song30. One Night in Paris - Paris Hilton31. Pick us a Flavour - Walkers32. Revels Eviction - Mars33. Ronaldinho Touch of Gold - Nike34. Salmon Bear Fight - John West35. Small but tough - Volkswagen Polo36. Soccer Test - adidas37. Star Wars Kid38. Submit Yourself - Diesel39. Subservient Chicken - Burger King40. Swarmsketch41. The Sims42. The Virgin Trains43. Travel Buddy44. Trojan Games45. Viral Graffiti Animation - BLUBLU’s Muto46. Where the hell is matt?47. RayBans48. Nike Plus - NIKE49. AfroNinja50. Art.com’s Website