Online video: it’s going to be HUGE…

This post first appeared on:
Digital Minds from the CAM Foundation 

As Fairfax Cone, one of the founders of US advertising agency Foote, Cone and Belding (today Draftfcb) observed in 1940, “Advertising is what you do when you can’t be there in person”. Historically, posters and press ads ‘ambushed’ people while they were going about their daily business and offered them something attractive, useful and/or enjoyable – something to make their life better. This was called Advertising and, as we know, a whole industry grew up around it.

Then radio was invented and soon it became possible for companies to add commercial […]

2021-09-23T17:15:36+00:00March 26th, 2010|General|4 Comments

End of the Hippie Dream: did business break The Web?

 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist and something of an idealist. Oh yes: and he invented The World Wide Web. I wonder what it says in his passport under ‘Occupation’…

In my book that’s about as cool as having been in The Beatles. However I’m certain Sir Tim is worth less than Sir Paul (even without an expensive ex-wife). You see he has deliberately chosen not to exploit his invention for personal gain. Which (many would say) is also pretty cool.

When Mr B-L was working at CERN in 1989-90 he wrote […]

2021-08-18T09:00:19+00:00March 2nd, 2010|General|9 Comments

Digital Marketing Training: learning from others’ successes (and failures)

(This Post first appeared on the CAM Foundation Blog – http://digitalqualifications.blogspot.com)

There are times when one needs to be sure one is dealing with skilled, thoroughly-trained professionals.

A very senior and experienced Marketing Director said to me the other day: “You know Mike, the single biggest thing holding back Digital right now is the shortage of experienced, knowledgeable people who really know what they’re doing online.  I can’t hire them as employees and I don’t see enough of them in my agencies. Of course, there are plenty of people with experience of design and build, SEO or […]

2021-09-23T17:17:50+00:00February 3rd, 2010|Education and training|14 Comments

How was it for you? The joy of UX

Google is planning and currently beta testing some design/ layout changes, both on the Home page and the Search Results page to include a new left-hand navigation pane. Google is known for making such changes very rarely and when it does, for researching them very painstakingly. Which raises the question: isn’t agonizing about miniscule changes in logos, column width and colours all a bit unnecessary? After all, Google has a strong brand and isn’t it the reliability of its search results that really matters?

Well, in a word, “No”. We’re talking about the User […]

2021-09-23T17:18:52+00:00November 28th, 2009|General|7 Comments

Social Media: What? We can’t measure it?

In the fast-changing world of digital marketing, one has to keep up-to-date. I recently attended a digital industry trade show/ conference: I met my client as arranged, we did some business and we said goodbye. I then walked round the stands looking for anything new and interesting. The ‘usual suspects’ were in evidence. There were various ladies with lots of make-up, wearing shorts and high heels, walking round in pairs giving out bits of paper (at a digital marketing event?) and smiling with as much sincerity as they could muster. There were the ‘mobile masseuses’ […]

2021-09-23T17:21:41+00:00November 10th, 2009|Social Media|18 Comments

Apple: turning ‘cool’ into dollars

Apple is not the biggest maker of computers in the US. In figures just released by IDC, Apple Macintosh (Mac) sales grew 11.8% in the 3rd quarter of 2009, as Apple took a 9.4% U.S. market share, maintaining its position as the fourth-largest U.S. PC manufacturer. Apple sold an estimated 1.64 million Macs in the US over that period, up 11.8 percent from 1.47 million in the same period a year ago. Although it’s not the biggest, Apple may well be the coolest. And remember Apple also invented the iPod, […]

2021-08-16T23:26:43+00:00October 16th, 2009|Tech companies|9 Comments

The tech company we love to hate

Remember that company from the last century whom many consider to be the inventors of personal computing? Older than Google, and even older than Apple (just). To jog your memory, here are some of their products:Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Office, Explorer, MSN (bit of a give-away there), Encarta, Live Messenger, Xbox 360, Age of Empires, Halo, Zune (OK maybe you haven’t heard of that one), Bing. Most of us grew up with some of these (sub)brands.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (for it is they) has created four $billionaires and some 12,000 $millionaires from Microsoft employees. Today Microsoft employs some 95,000 […]

2021-09-23T17:22:54+00:00September 17th, 2009|Tech companies|5 Comments

Online display: SORRY TO INTERRUPT!

 

 

“I find those ads on the internet really annoying; I never look at them.”

Anon. (OK it was one of my teenage daughters)

As you may be aware, those strips at the bottom or up the side of your web page are called banners and ‘skyscrapers’. Increasingly, you can ‘mouse over’ them to expand them and/or click to play a video. All (tell me if you know an exception) will take you through to a landing page on another website, generally owned by the advertiser. You will also have encountered films that play before the video you wanted to see (AKA pre-roll) […]

2021-09-23T17:25:34+00:00August 14th, 2009|General|4 Comments

PPC: how much will you pay per click? It’s all about Quality.

 

 

If you know all about Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) you might want to sit this post out (or better, please read and comment; this is Web 2.0 after all.)

Today’s big news in the world of tech/digital marketing is the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, which sees Microsoft become Yahoo’s search provider while Yahoo’s sales team will sell advertising on behalf of both companies. This will, subject to regulatory approval, create a serious rival to Google in the world of search and specifically in the world of PPC.

A random sample of advertised jobs from this week’s UK (digital) marketing press (online and offline) includes […]

2021-08-17T11:43:45+00:00July 26th, 2009|General|7 Comments

Augmented Reality – because the world is not enough…

 

The British Science Fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In my opinion, one such technology is Augmented Reality. Or just ‘Augmented’ or even ‘AR’ to the cognoscenti.

I saw a powerful demonstration of AR (by Brand Attention) at the recent London Online Marketing Show. It reminded me how far AR has come.

The basic idea is to overlay something onto the real world (using a webcam) to provide more information than meets the eye. E.g. you walk down a street and view a building through your mobile device; you see a ‘heads-up display’ (or […]

2021-09-23T17:26:52+00:00July 7th, 2009|Trends|4 Comments
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