“This is a proposal that would strike at the very heart of what the digital economy is all about. The ability to measure, track and improve the site experience for visitors is key to the success of e-commerce, and given the potentially damaging effect this could have on a multi-billion pound business channel, suggests legislators don’t quite appreciate the havoc they could cause,” said Andrew Girdwood, Head of Search at bigmouthmedia.

“This isn’t really a privacy issue. More often than not, cookies only contain data to measure the success of keywords or affiliates. We support attempts to raise awareness of privacy issues and provide internet users with more control but believe these functions would be better provided by the browser than the website. This would give users even greater flexibility and more consistency.”

Many areas of the digital marketing business could be seriously affected if the proposed legislative changes come into effect, with big names from Amazon to Google likely to be hit. Services dependent on using user data to track sales such as affiliate marketing would suffer significantly, while pay-per-click advertising services would be forced to ask permission to place a cookie every time a user attempted to follow a link.

If the amendments go through, commercial web sites may be forced to run multi million pound search campaigns without having a detailed understanding of how well the strategy is performing. Most modern forms of web analytics, meanwhile, would also be threatened by the European proposal.

The experience of visiting commercial websites could also be badly affected. Sites may be forced to display a pop-up message – commonly associated with invasive advertising – in order to seek the visitor’s permission before any tracking could be used. Over all, the loss in transactions combined with the cost of implementation would stretch to many millions of Euros in lost revenue each month for online retailers, travel and finance sites.

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=48335

Advances in technology combined with the increasingly easy access to data have turned consumers from passive observers of brands into active participants who are shaping brands. As a result, companies must offer a method of enabling a two-way conversation with customers. Regardless of the channel, from first contact to customer to advocate, Customer Engagement marketing means that companies – through the utilisation of data – can deliver the most relevant message, at the right time, in the right tone of voice to each individual customer in the most efficient and cost effective manner.

“We’re on the crux of a monumental shift in the marketing industry driven by the customers themselves,” said Michael Fisher, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing, Alterian. “For years, there has been an incremental shift in the complexity of customers and their needs, largely due to the emergence of digital delivery channels and opt-out options for consumers. As such, a new type of agency model called the Customer Engagement Agency has emerged focused on engaging the customer into a two-way dialogue. The agencies and companies that understand how to connect the channels and how they are influencing purchases will succeed. Those that don’t will become followers rather than leaders, and have a hard time keeping up.”

Engagement marketing allows companies to place the customer at the center of the marketing process – integrating data from the on and offline world to create a 360 degree view of the customer in order to truly engage with them at every step of the customer lifecycle. Alterian’s integrated marketing platform serves as the foundation for Customer Engagement by providing the technology infrastructure that can pull together data from multi-channel sources and then applying analytics in real-time to deliver insightful feedback and recommendations to customers and prospects.

A handful of progressive agencies have joined forces with Alterian to address this trend, including RAZOR, Tribal DDB and Targetbase. These agencies are known as thought leaders and visionaries on the future of advertising and marketing. “So many companies invested in technology by building a website, but do not understand how the website relates to brand strategy and driving sales,” said Mark Wright, president, Targetbase. “Customer Engagement is looking at everything a customer does, figuring out the when and why behind those actions and then using that information to predict customer behavior before it happens.”

Additionally, Customer Engagement allows marketers to measure the value of each customer better than ever before. By gathering information from the customer throughout the course of the relationship, marketers can determine not only who is reading their emails and stopping on their websites, but can also add that information to a variety of other information to determine (a) how likely a customer who lands on the site is to conduct a transaction, (b) whether or not the customer will make a major purchase in a brick and mortar store, and (c) what time they shop. As a result, marketers can create timely campaigns that are targeted directly to the individual that receives the phone call, the text message, the email or direct mail.

“The ultimate goal for Consumer Engagement is to help clients build transactions and market share,” said RAZOR President Tom Cole. “Today, more customers are finding more channels to tell brands what they want. So, we show clients how to enable them by balancing traditional and new media engagement strategies and transaction tools.”

“We have entered the age of the 24/7 consumer,” said Clifford Lopez, managing director, Tribal DDB. “In the past, there was always a response lag time, in terms of attending to customer needs. In today’s market, responses must happen in real time or you will lose the attention of your target. To do this, you have to be able to understand that consumer today and how they will react today.”

The Customer Engagement Agency is focused on delivering the right message to the right person at the right time through whatever channel is most appropriate including the very cost effective, behaviorally rich web channels. Agencies that recognise the need to coordinate messaging in a conversational way with consumers will lead the next generation of marketing and advertising services.

Spyros Pyrgiotis, 24, thought he would have to abandon his £17,000 business course at Kingston University this September due to a lack of funds.

That was until his pay per character Internet advertising venture came to the attention of the media.

Once thetextpage.com came to the interest of the BBC, the Independent and a number of websites and media bloggers business really took off.

Now businesses are falling over themselves to advertise on thetextpage.com – a page full of text which links to advertisers websites.

And Spyros is well on the way to securing his place on the prestigious MBA course in September.

Spyros said: “I’m going to university in September and it’s all thanks to thetextpage.com.

“I’m going to study business so obviously it’s good to show my lecturers that I have the business brain.

“I think it’s all down to the fact that advertising on thetextpage.com is so cheap.”

Each characters costs less than £1.50 ($2) and businesses only need to by enough characters to provide a link to their website.

Cardiff entrepreneur Giovanni Malacrino is chairman of the Welsh capital’s New Café Quarter has already taken out more than £1,000 advertising on the site.

He said: “It’s a fair way of advertising and it’s for a great cause as Spyros shows great entrepreneurship.”

“We are eager to use it and we will be promoting this on our website and on Wi-Fi”.

Thetextpage.com launched in March but already has 2,000 visitors a day thanks largely to a 1,200-strong fan group on social networking site Facebook.

Spyros, from London, said: “Work is scarce and banks just aren’t lending due to the credit crunch.

“But I’ve still got to pay my course fees as I am determined to gain my MBA”

Tracesmart provides an online people search facility which enables visitors to trace family or friends via the electoral roll, or locate people they have lost contact with via a simple address search. The recently launched affiliate program works alongside the company’s other marketing activity, to further promote these services. The program is delivered and administered by the award winning Deal Media Group, a leading online marketing company which offers a platform for affiliate sales networks, referral tracking and productivity reporting to many major UK companies.

Matthew Hopkins, Internet Marketing Executive explains, “Tracesmart‘s affiliate program operates by generating income from people looking to find relatives or friends. The affiliate partners agree to display a Tracesmart banner within their website and, in return, they are remunerated when they refer a visitor to Tracesmart who goes on to make a purchase. This practice is common among many companies aiming to increase their company profile and website visitor numbers. The results to date are extremely encouraging.”

Having recognised the importance of accessible research tools, Tracesmart developed their database and search facility to provide users with a reliable means to trace people. This ability to perform an electoral roll search from the comfort of one’s own home, has caught the imagination of many website owners, who have in turn become Tracesmart affiliates and are driving the success of the campaign.

“We are always looking for new ways to engage with our target audience, and affiliate programs make it possible to reach a larger number of potential customers,” comments Owen Roberts, Tracesmart’s Communications Manager, “Tracesmart’s search facility has helped many families and individuals and we are confident that visitor numbers will rise even further thanks to our new affiliate program.”

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=48232

Confirmit Horizons will enable NPG to survey its readers and deploy reader panels for its flagship weekly scientific journal, Nature, and for its popular scholarly website, www.nature.com. It will enable NPG to better understand what its readers and users most value and to use this feedback to enhance the structure and content of Nature and nature.com on an ongoing basis.

Confirmit Horizons will also enable NPG to offer co-branded online surveys to its loyal advertising customers, providing an alternative method of reaching NPG’s highly sought -after niche readership.

Dan Penny, Head of Business Development at Nature Publishing Group comments: “Our decision to invest in Confirmit was based on our need to simplify and automate our customer feedback program. We need to be able to ask both new and longstanding, loyal readers what they think over the course of several months, creating mini panels and focus groups to discuss particular issues as required. This is a huge administrative task for which Confirmit is ideally suited.”

Gary Schwartz, SVP Marketing, Confirmit, comments: “We’re very pleased that Nature Publishing Group has chosen Confirmit as its end-to-end customer feedback solution, given its requirement for a single platform combining panel, surveying and reporting functionality. Its availability as a software as a service (SaaS) solution ensures that it is a highly scalable, cost-effective tool , which will allow NPG to meet its advertisers’ and readers’ diverse needs.”

Penny adds: “Confirmit’s offering gives us the ability to run mini panels populated with readers that have expressed some interest in new services, such as access to news and articles from the website via mobile devices. This means that we can take a highly targeted approach to planning and analyse responses in a systematic way, without taking on extra resources to create surveys or collate the findings. Confirmit Reportal’s dashboard reporting of the results facilitates sound business decisions based on real customer insight. Confirmit offers a complete solution that allows us to achieve all our customer feedback goals and offer a new service to advertisers at the same time.”

“Branded content has become something of a buzz term in the web TV industry, yet we know very little about what viewers actually think of it. There are no set guidelines for best practice and measuring ROI can be difficult. With this research we have set out to fill in some of the blanks and to outline why this area is so important to the future of online advertising.” Said Henry Scott, CEO, Simply Media.

Executive Summary

Consumers are savvy to online advertising

Across the research sample, it is evident that consumers are conscious of the many different methods of online advertising. They are also very aware that, unlike TV, they do not have to receive these adverts. They can block pop-ups, navigate away from the page, delete emails etc.

Branded content is hard to categorise

The respondents were shown a broad range of examples and for most it was hard for them to fit into a category. Most of the time it is not considered advertising and in some cases the benefit for the brand is not always clear. This uncertainty inspires curiosity.

Internet usage usually has a goal

When going online there was usually a goal that the respondent wanted to achieve. Whether it was checking Facebook, reading a news or sport update, checking email or watching online content, respondents had a clear mindset.

There is a clear thought process behind the consumption of branded content

Throughout the interviews it became apparent there was a set thought process when respondents were asked to judge the effectiveness of a piece of content. These fell into three main categories;

Distribution is key

Increasing potential to reach more people is clearly important but where content is viewed can also have an impact on the message you convey.

Viewing on a branded website makes the content seem more official, delivers a coherent message and also aids the opportunity to ‘up sell’. However respondents highlighted that it could be seen as lacking objectivity and it also less likely to be seen by non-users.

Relevant websites offer an introduction to new users as well as the potential to collaborate with other brands and benefit from their influence. In this space viewers can become distracted as there is plenty of competition for their attention.

Placing content on YouTube or other video portals exposes it to limitless possible viewers and is often the birth place of many virals. Respondents felt it made the content seem less genuine or lower budget when simply uploaded to a basic account, branded channels helped viewers to distinguish what was professional and what was not.

A complimentary medium

Online branded content sits very comfortably alongside other advertising media. It shares some benefits of print and TV but also has a role of its own due to increased scope for interaction and lower costs.

Tips for successful branded content

A number of clear tips emerged during the interviews such as being subtle with your product or brand, talking to consumers on their level, educating or entertaining content.

Methodology

Simply Media have carried out the first serious qualitative UK research investigating how online visitors consume and think about branded content online. The research explores reactions to many different examples of branded content such as infomercials, corporate social responsibility messages, product reviews and virals.

Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted in London as the basis for the research. During this time respondents were shown around 6-8 examples of branded content hosted across a variety of sites and portals.

The participants ranged in age from 18-50+ years old, with the majority of the sample being in their 20’s or 30’s. There was an equal split of males and females, and all were educated to university level.

The past year has seen Specific Media witness increased demand from advertisers to show measureable impact from their interactive media investments. With this suite of advanced audience intelligence reports, Specific Media is the only advertising network offering a truly holistic view of campaign effectiveness.

“As online advertising increases its share of the overall advertising budget, never before has the need to accurately measure and report on online advertising campaigns been so great,” said Ian Dowds, VP of Specific Media UK. “In the current climate every pound spent needs to be justified with tangible evidence and Specific Media is now able to equip advertisers with the tools to demonstrate that not only are they targeting the right audience, but how effectively that targeting is working.”

Pre-Campaign Report

The pre-campaign report enables advertisers to identify and build a detailed profile of their target audience and then design an online campaign to best engage with them. The profile is completely anonymous and based on users’ previous online behaviour, but empowers advertisers with actionable data to use at the planning and brainstorming stage of a campaign to better target specific audience groups.

Based on its proprietary technology platform and anonymous user data, Specific Media identifies which behaviours advertisers should target, gives clients access to information about detailed engagement metrics and provides anonymous demographic breakdowns and profiles of users based on most visited behavioural categories, segment profiles and audience reach.

By converting user research into actionable data, Specific Media can generate detailed reports that give advertisers unrivalled insight into their preferred audience prior to embarking on a campaign, giving them a starting point to develop their strategy and enabling them to tailor their campaigns to target specific audiences. Often the reports highlight additional target audiences previously unidentified by the advertisers. Once the target audiences are selected advertisers can reach them with unrivalled scale and accuracy via Specific Media’s Premium Network.

Post-Buy Reporting

Specific Media’s Post-Buy report provides advertisers with a tool to measure and offer insight when a campaign is complete, by offering demographic profiles of each consumer that the campaign reached, how effectively those consumers were targeted by the campaign and any resulting action. The post-buy report provides advertisers with the key takeaways from the campaign, offering easy to understand, actionable steps to implement in the next campaign. It enables advertisers to gain a greater understanding of how their campaign achieved its results, and provide future targeting and marketing insight into target audiences.

Dowds concluded: “These new products are about giving advertisers more control over their online campaigns. This additional control ultimately leads to better results, so we are offering genuine and significant value to our customers.”

Specific Media is a global technology and online media company that enables advertisers to reach target audiences with unprecedented scale and accuracy. The company connects advertisers with target audiences across its premium network of name brand publishers through advanced demographic, behavioural, contextual, geographic and retargeting technologies.

Google launched its first ever television advert, across a range of US networks this week to raise awareness of its Chrome browser. The company has previously avoided traditional marketing in the past, having become “one of the world’s best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth” as claimed on its own website.

The advert originally created for You Tube has sparked debate within the media and online industry around its effectiveness, being referred to by leading Digital Marketing report publisher eConsultancy, as questionably the “worst television ad ever?” and suggesting on its blog the advert “wastes 30 seconds saying a whole lot of nothing”.

Think Eyetracking this week independently tested a panel of 30 internet users in one day, and the results proved the advert to be highly effective on the three key measures; Engagement, Message Delivery and Elicitation of Desired Behaviour.

The Eye Tracking results show the advert succeeds in focussing the observer’s attention on the Google Chrome Logo for most of the full 30 seconds it is available on screen. Not only engaging the observers in the on screen activity, the commercial was found to be highly effective in transferring their interest from the on screen activity, to the concluding message containing the desired behaviour; ‘Install Google Chrome’.

The full findings from the Google Chrome Advert research conducted by Think Eyetracking can be found on the Think website, on the Think Eye Tracking Blog.

See the official Google Blog on the Google Chrome Ad.

The report found that storefronts are increasingly likely to offer the facility to upsell premium content from within the app itself (including the App Store, starting later this year). The result being that the freemium business model – whereby applications are offered on a free to download basis but subsequently offer incremental revenues from subscription-based services and additional content options – will become increasingly prevalent over the next five years.

However, the mobile applications report also observed that widespread deployment of the freemium apps model would pose a significant challenge to network operators, given that it offers the opportunity for much existing (and potential) content revenues to be directed through app stores (and the apps themselves) rather than through traditional distribution channels.

Nevertheless, as report author Dr Windsor Holden noted, “Although consumers are likely to shift from purchasing content on-portal to app stores offered by vendors and OS providers, those stores in turn represent an opportunity for operators to realise far greater revenues from consumer data usage.”

The report argues that apps delivered on a freemium basis presents a substantial opportunity for content providers to derive additional revenues from advertising. The levels of repeat usage from applications downloaded via the App Store suggests that there is far more opportunity for brand exposure on a per download basis than with any previous content.

Other findings from the Juniper report include:
• The low retail prices offered by Apple’s App Store have already resulted in significant price erosion on other established storefronts
• Short-term revenue growth from consumer-oriented applications is likely to be constrained by the global recession

Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of the mobile applications market based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the leading organisations in the growing mobile applications industry.

Whitepapers and further details of the study ‘Mobile Applications & Apps Stores: Business Models, Opportunities & Forecasts 2009-2014’ can be freely downloaded from http://www.juniperresearch.com. Alternatively please contact John Levett at john.levett@juniperresearch.com, telephone +44(0)1256 830002.

According to the survey, the average small company rates their website at 6 out of 10 for effectiveness, but also aims to treble the income generated by their website during 2009. The research suggests a clear discrepancy between business owners’ online ambitions and how much time they currently invest.

As their shop window to the world, the majority of UK companies recognise that having a web presence is a vital aspect of modern business. However, 27% are unhappy with their website design and a further 25% are concerned that their website does not allow feature sufficient methods to communicate with customers. The research also showed that 1 in 10 businesses would like to replace their website entirely.

Whilst there are plenty of products and services on the market to help enhance business websites, 1 in 3 owners admit to being floored by a lack of time. During the first quarter of 2009, a further 32% of business owners repeatedly sidelined changes to their website. The figures are alarming in contrast to the tough targets the same businesses have set themselves for online activity this year. 71% aim to increase their overall visibility on the Web during 2009, while 55% aim to grow the size of their website and 22% intend to begin online advertising.

Currently, the average business earns 10% of its total sales revenue as a direct result of its website, but in 2009, businesses are hoping to increase this income to 21%-30% of total sales revenue.

Steve Holford, CMO Fasthosts Internet, said: “In challenging economic conditions, business owners are more stretched for time and resources than ever. However, it is important to remember that often the simplest improvements to a website can make a noticeable impact on sales conversion rates. Even a modest business website must receive regular attention to fulfil its potential.”

Fasthosts’ research suggests that UK businesses risk missing their online targets unless they can prioritise the work that their websites require. The issue is further supported by the fact that 26% of respondents admit that tough operating conditions has either already led or may lead them to cut-back on external consultants such as web designers or IT advisors.

As UK online spending continues to snowball, business owners clearly recognise the value in investing in an online presence. 94% believe that every size of enterprise should have a website, and 79% would not wish to go back to the days of solely off-line trading.

Holford added, “Businesses can often find the Internet to be as challenging as the high street. However, a big flashy website is not a prerequisite to achieving online sales growth. With a realistic online strategy and a consistent commitment of time and resource, every enterprise can better achieve their online potential this year.”