March 4th, 2010 Posted by: marie_sornin Comments (0)
Despite 4 years of intense OZ language practice, I am yet to find an expression that perfectly translates “de la poudre aux yeux”.
Reading my point of view on Behavioural Targeting, you will surely understand what it means and may be able suggest a phrase that I would happily enrich my Australian vocabulary with.
This is where it starts: in 2010, volume and diversity of internet users, advanced cookie collection technology, market demand… everything is here for Behavioural Targeting to take off. US research shows that 44% of digital marketers rated Behavioral Targeting as the best performing online advertising tactic.
Overall Behavioral Targeting ranks 2nd behind SEO in terms of ROI. Expenditure forecast show that targeted display should represent 23% of the total online expenditure by 2012. However, every brief for custom profiling seems to still be answered with the same type of response: not enough volume or technology can’t go that far into clustering data…
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January 28th, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
From an advertising point of view it has always surprised me how relatively long (it is only 3 years since YouTube launched in Australia) for the YT ad product to evolve. Of course this evolution is very much in keeping with the Google philosophy of user experience first; ads, monetisation and revenue second.
So, it was great to see yesterday a raft of new ad positions; many of which are engaging prominent homepage placements and video overlays (which are served only over professional content) and which were all clearly developed with a users experience in mind. In addition there are a load of new and quite sexy channel features now available for advertisers including video carousel galleries, video walls and for the adventurous an ability to create custom gadgets. Read more
December 3rd, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
Farmville
Earlier this week my colleague Sam Granleese posted an entry on this blog debating the notion of user pay content? I thought therefore it might be a nice follow up to have a little look at another emerging market; that of Virtual goods.
Now, virtual goods are certainly not a new idea. We would all hopefully be able to recall from our ever diminishing short term memories the story of Anshe Chung, the first Second Life Millionaire who was successful in selling virtual land and property in a virtual world. Of course there are also WOW (world of warcraft) and other such fantasy gaming communities / worlds where there are existing markets for goods, powers and secrets. There are even companies dedicated to the dubious and sometimes illegal accumulation of said powers and weaponry which they then on-sell to eager gamers for ‘real’ dollars. But let’s be honest these are still relatively niche markets and unless you are a participant in these games you are unlikely to have seen and certainly not paid over your hard earned dollars for a virtual item. Yet that is.
Enter facebook and gaming applications are suddenly readily accessible to over 250Million users world wide. Currently the most visible and successful one is farmville
“FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and livestock.[2] Since its launch in June 2009,[3] FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook ….”
I checked, and the Farmville application is currently being actively used by 69Million users. Much like the a fore mentioned virtual goods sellers Virtual Goods are at the heart of the Farmville experience with users earning or paying for virtual currency ‘coins’ and trading with one another to buy land, seeds, equipment livestock or even a duck. Interestingly advertisers are also allowed to provide offers or actions to users of this application asking them to conduct brand interactions; Watch a commercial, sign up for our newsletter or apply for credit in exchange for ‘coins’ provided by that advertiser.
Now Farmville is a very popular game and I assume is highly addictive, as are other such games like Mafia Wars where users can also pay for virtual items to help them achieve missions. Here is the draw dropping bit though; Virtual goods sales are estimated to hit $1 billion USD in 2009. (for reference the entire AU online ad spend for an established market is estimated at $1.7 billion for 2009)
So back to the question at hand. Are people likely to purchase virtual goods? They most certainly already are, and I think we can expect a lot more frivolous micro spending where that came from.
If anyone wants me i’ll be out on the farm with my virtual tractor working toward a holiday in 2020.
November 26th, 2009 Posted by: Sam Granleese Comments (0)
Last month Clay Shirky (NYU) and Stephen Brill (Journalism Online) participated in a McKinsey Online debate about whether or not people will pay for digital content.
Whilst I generally agree with most of Clay Shirky’s writing I couldn’t agree with him on his argument that absolutely no people will pay. In my opinion Brill’s argument that a mix of paid and free systems, even on single websites, is more likely to be sustainable. I think some people will pay for content, and some wont. Like with all media, there is equilibrium between the two (i.e. 1/3rd of Australian households have Pay TV and 2/3rds have only free to air TV).
Shirky argues that sites already successfully charging access in the finance industry (FT.com, Economist.com and WSJ.com) are not sustainable. This is because pay-walls stop syndication of content and there are less opportunites to create ‘media cartels’ he argues. This is a very short term view, and one that mirrors the old attitude of major recording companies now ruing Apple’s iTunes innovative music store which has put them in an enviable bargaining position as the one dominant music purchase point in the world (and sharing only 30% of revenue with record companies). Read more
November 18th, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
On Monday I spent the day at DMMS09 an event that saw string of digital marketing and agency types address a large and mostly awake crowd at the Hilton on the Park Melb.
I was bristling with caffeine and so managed to capture quite a few notes which I’ll drop highlights of here for your review and historical reference. (note i missed the first 2 speakers so don’t have notes from sessions by The Population or Publicis Digital) Read more
October 21st, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
I picked this one up from Contagious and its another great example of a band using digital media in a new and exciting way.
In a week where I have seen two examples of Augmented reality experiences from bands John Mayer and also The lost Valentinos The Editors example takes an existing and popular tool like Street View and creates a lovely explorable experience using what is to many a familiar scenery and street-scape.
Google maps is now viewed by about 7M users in Australia monthly, and its certainly one of the most popular features of mobile web browsing. So whilst the music of these bands wont appeal to everyone, the potential for the creating unique experiences that are accessible to many in new ways opens up the door to some nice new and locally relevant ways to engage.
