For long advertisers have bombarded us with TV and print ads that we sat politely and consumed. But as the world turns more ‘social’ — because of the Facebooks, Orkuts, YouTubes and Twitters of the world — we are breaking out of the passive-participant mould. The consumer is reacting and influencing others’ opinions. This throws up challenges for marketers and advertisers. Lucy Jameson, executive strategy director of DDB UK and chair of DDB’s Global Planning Futures Group, believes that in today’s socially-networked and hyper-connected world, it’s not enough to craft a message that just touches the individual.
“Forget everything you’ve learned about advertising.”
That’s how Bob McInnis, president of Designyourad.com, kicked off a presentation on creating eye-catching ads in print and online formats. Creating ads isn’t so much a creative endeavor, but a logical and step-by-step process with surprising results.
UNTIL just a few years ago, looking for a job was a relatively straightforward process. Write a résumé. Scour job sites or the classifieds. Submit an application for listings that seem appropriate. Reach out to recruiters. Then, wait.
“It doesn’t work that way at all anymore,” said Nancy Halverson, senior vice president for learning and talent development at the recruiting firm MRINetwork.
Bebo has been one of those social networks that keeps on ticking. After being snatched up by AOL for $850 million only to get dumped by the Internet pioneer, the company recently made some strong management moves to position themselves for growth.
Recently, I had the chance to interview Adam Levin, CEO of Bebo, about the company's future and the very competitive social media landscape.
Verizon unveiled a series of new video applications today, including an upcoming iPad app that will allow FiOS subscribers to watch the same linear programming that is available on their TV screens on their tablet devices. The new app is expected to be rolled out early next year and Verizon expects to have all of its content partners on board by the time the app launches.
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of such books as “Free” and “The Long Tail,” has written a piece for the magazine with the provocative — make that inflammatory — headline: “The Web Is Dead: Long Live the Internet.”
When Android debuted in 2007, I couldn’t figure out how Google had managed to apply an Apache license to the project. Java, like Linux, was governed by the GPL and thus incompatible with the more permissive license Android was sporting. Stefano Mazzocchi subsequently answered the Java related questions: Google wasn’t using Sun’s VM, they’d built their own. As had Danger before them, from whence many of the Android team arrived. Called Dalvik, Google’s cleanroom reimplementation was, if not “Sun’s worst nightmare” as Mazzocchi put it, a clear fork-in-the-eye to the Java license holders. However brave a face they put on it at the time.
Shaun Higgins, who directs digital operations at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., watches with bemusement as the newspaper industry tiptoes into experiments with limited pay walls.
His paper has had a system in place for roughly five years that offers 90 percent of website content for free but fences off the other 10 percent for especially motivated audiences willing to pay. In essence it delivers the results The New York Times and others are aiming for in developing a so-called "metered model" - but without the meter.
Many companies have made money by promoting their products online via large online auction pages, or classified ad web sites. Ebay has millions of registered users as does Amazon.com, and Craigslist, just to name a few.
Newspaper consultant Jim Chisholm has looked five years into the future and sees the industry's best bet for vitality in digital shopping.
Updating a futures report he did 18 months ago for the Newspaper Association of America, Chisholm predicts nominal growth for the industry (3.4 percent, probably less than inflation) through 2014 in its current lines of business. That is a bleak forecast -- unless an infusion of new revenue comes to the rescue.
Online auction and retail site eBay is the most visited shopping website in the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore while Amazon takes the top spot in the US and comes a close second in Singapore and the UK.
Careful, SMB owners, it seems social media isn’t just for chatting anymore. According to new research from the recruiting platform Jobvite, 73.3 percent of business owners say they have used social networking channels as a way of recruiting new hires.
The recent merger of Honolulu’s two daily newspapers may be irrelevant when it comes to the future of classified advertising. Those making decisions on how to sell cars and houses or find employees have been shifting to online advertising models for the past decade.
Classified advertising used to be one of the big revenue generators for U.S. newspapers, bringing in $19.6 billion to the industry 10 years ago.
Google Adwords has permanently changed the advertising landscape. Prior to 1990, business owners were often heard to remark that only half their advertising worked; they just didn’t know which half. For decades, business owners spent advertising dollars on print Yellow Pages, newspaper display ads, classifieds, radio, and T.V.. Such advertising was expensive and unpredictable; one was never quite sure where the customer came from.
Recently I was in London, speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum. From my perspective, it was an ideal event: large enough to have a critical mass of interesting vendors and attendees, and small enough to support quality conversation. If you've been to any of the large U.S. cloud shows, you'll know how hard it is to accomplish the latter quality at them - they're packed and conversations are reduced to sound bites.
Monday, August 30, 2010
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