2008 has been a great year for digital marketing in Asia, but it's no secret that 2009 is going to be tough -- both for digital agencies and marketers.
What can public relations practitioners hope to accomplish for the organizations they serve and for their own careers next year? Here's a look into the crystal ball.
Ad-funded mobile entertainment can be a key weapon in the integrated armory of advertisers looking for something more concrete in terms of value exchange for brands and their potential consumers.
I have ran across this comic strip recently at a couple of sites. It's the quiet time straddling Christmas and New Years so I figure something light would work.
This Calvin and Hobbes comic was actually published 15 years ago or so, but it seem so prescient!
Click the image to see a larger, legible version.
C & H remains my favorite comic strip, though Bill Watterson stopped writing it years ago.
The best line ever - in any comic strip - was Hobbes (the tiger) telling Calvin, "Yeah, why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous." Classic.
I don't know what drove the New York Times to release this piece on news on Christmas Eve, but the editor must be a damn Grinch.
From their press release: === NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 24, 2008--The New York Times Company announced today that in November total Company revenues from continuing operations decreased 13.9% compared with the same month a year ago. Advertising revenues decreased 20.9% and circulation revenues increased 4.2%. ===
In what may be an early indicator of broader Web advertising trends, the New York Times announced today that it saw total Internet advertising revenues decline 3.8 percent in November. This compares to a total decrease of 21.2 percent for all advertising at media company, most of which is print advertising...
...The NYT’s digital properties, which include NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com, attracted 47 million unique visitors in November and collectively would have been the 16th largest site on the Web, according to comScore. In the third quarter, online advertising ground to a halt at the largest Web companies...
...That said, we still need more data points before any conclusions can be made about the fourth quarter or next year. The New York Times is not a perfect indicator of the overall advertising market. Most of its declines came from weakness in online classifieds, especially job and real-estate listings. On the positive side, its news sites actually saw an increase in display advertising in November. So there is some hope for other display advertisers... ===
The nice folks at TechCrunch also took some Unique Visitor trend and Page view trend data from Comscore on the NYTimes.com
====
I am publishing this on Boxing Day... the day after Christmas. So I am not ruining anyone's Christmas Day. Now, as for this coming weekend... sorry people.
=== Nearly 18 percent of households in the United States have no traditional telephone and rely on wireless services only, which is up several percentage points from a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday.
In the first half of 2008, 17.5 percent of households were wireless only, up from 13.6 percent a full year earlier, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ===
THE CDC has this data? "collected the data as part of project to determine if national health polls were being skewed by the trend."
mmm.. OHHHKAY.... I guess...
=== Service providers such as Verizon Communications, AT&T Inc, Qwest Communications International and others have seen a steep increase in customers cutting the cord on their home phones.
Qwest said recently that the trend was exacerbated by the weak economy as some customers were disconnecting home phones to save money. ===
What a good idea! I am going to drop my Singtel home line. What's the number anyway? Oh wait, I can't do that. My domestic helper would quit since she won't able to call her friends.
Here's another interesting bit:
=== The agency concluded that polls were indeed being skewed because they have in the past only called those with traditional landlines. They and other organizations are moving toward incorporating wireless customers into their surveys.
For example, wireless-only households are more likely to contain binge drinkers and smokers, compared with those having landline phones. ===
WTF? If that were the case, then Asia would have more binge drinkers and smokers than the US... Wait .... we do.
Alright, we have been hearing that digital ad spend will increase in share and absolute volume during this down turn. I have been giving these links out for a couple of months... (Brand Republic and MediaWeek)
Well the analysts at Barclays (yes, the bank), are forecasting even lower ad spend in 2009 for the US - a decrease of 10% over 2008.
However: "It figures there will still be some Internet ad growth, pegging spending at $28.3 billion. That would be a 6.1% increase..."
Of course, the blog goes on to say: "that’s good news for Google (GOOG), and lousy news for most everyone else who is trying to build a business based on selling Web display ads."
I am not sure I would agree with that. Search is great for ecommerce driven sites, but not necessary the only way to go for brand engagement campaigns.
Another site posts the actual Barclays' forecast statement (I think): === Internet: We are lowering our 2009 estimate for U.S. Internet advertising revenue from $28.3 billion to $25.1 billion (up 6.1%) based on 4% growth in Display, 20% growth in Search, a 2% decline in Auctions and Other, and 5% growth in Lead Generation & E-mail. For 2010 we believe online advertising growth will reaccelerate to 12%, reaching $28.1 billion, based on 12% growth in Display, 15% in Search, 5% in Auctions and Other, and 6% in Lead Generation and E-Mail. We are not making changes to company specific estimates for Google or Yahoo! as they already reflect overall industry expectations. ===
Hang on, Digeratis. 2009 is going to be a crazy one.
Here is an interesting blog article from ChunkIt! The original post is here. It's a long one but I will pull out the interesting bits...
===
6. Search Engines Get Smarter
A. The Beginning - As web crawling spiders continued to gain intelligence and proficiency at navigating and indexing the Internet, new tools were needed for organizing the data that was being accumulated. Early search engines were able to help users find some of what they were looking for, but were incredibly simplistic. The search algorithms that were used to deliver search results from the data crawled by the spiders simply matched the search terms being searched for, and returned the result to the user in the order that they had originally been crawled. It was clear there was a better way.
B. The Vision - In February 1993 six Stanford University students began working on a new generation of search engine with a new solution for dealing with the increasingly large amounts of data of the growing Internet. Their idea was to apply statistical analysis of word relationships to make searching more accurate and efficient. This idea eventually became the Excite search engine. These initial steps by Excite and others spurred a competitive revolution and over the next few years many new competitors entered the search engine game.
C. The Game Changer - On July 20th, 1994 the Lycos search engine went public, introducing to the world the next great advancement in search engine technology. Lycos was the first search engine that not only fully indexed the content on web sites but also ranked them according to more sophisticated word relationship algorithms. Lycos was also a leader in the extent of its index. It quickly became the search engine with the largest index, with more than 60 million documents by November 1996.
8. Google’s Brilliance
A. The Beginning - Search engines before Google focused on using the content of the pages they indexed as the best way to determine what the page was about. As discussed, this method was very prone to manipulation because the variables used in ranking could all be easily manipulated by the webmasters themselves. These inherent problems led to the emergence of an entirely new model for search engines, a model that relied on impartial outside sources to help determine what a site was about, and how it should rank in the search results.
B. The Vision - In January of 1996, Larry Page, a PH.D. student at Stanford University chose his dissertation theme on web-based search engines. His idea was to try to understand the web in terms of its linking structure, or how each page on the Internet linked to other pages on the Internet. For this project, originally named “Backrub,” he partnered with another Stanford PH.D. student named Sergey Brin. Together they began to develop an entirely new search engine technology. Like current search engine technologies, Brin and Page’s new search engine ranked search results based on the content of the pages it indexed, but also took it one step further. Backrub took into consideration the number, quality, and context of the links pointing to each website as it tried to determine where a web site should rank in the search results.
C. The Game Changer - On September 7, 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially incorporated their new search engine under the now ubiquitous name Google Inc. Over the next few years Google’s popularity began to soar. It became clear that the search results delivered by Google were superior in quality to competitors, leading to the failure of many search engines with inferior technology that had enjoyed success in the earlier days of the Internet.
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH
A. The Beginning - Until now, search has been all about accurately matching what you type as your search query to the content available on the Internet. This idea was the basis for the original search engines, and continues to be the concept we all understand search to be. But search can be so much more. While we may sometimes know what we are looking for, we often don’t have enough information to properly find the information we seek, or perhaps we only begin with a concept, and need to be led to more concrete definitions or ideas. Search as it stand today is robotic and one dimensional, and most certainly still in its infancy.
B. The Vision - If you’re a Star-Trek fan, you’re likely quite familiar with the future of search. The computer on the USS Enterprise is perhaps one of the best known and most easy to relate to examples of the direction search is moving in. Members of the Enterprise ask the computer any question, phrased in any way, and the computer will linguistically understand both the intent of the question, and its main message. Searchers of the future will make queries that result not only in the information they asked for, but also in content that is related in any possible fashion; semantically, conceptually, etc. People will use search as a guide to their understanding in a way that is not even fully conceptualized, but promises to be a mix of advanced artificial intelligence, incredible computational understand of human language, and the integration of huge amounts of human behavioral data that will inform these advanced systems about what is most relevant.
C. The Game Changer - Every major search engine considers the above to be its end goal. Companies like Google and Yahoo are pouring large amounts of monetary and intellectual resources into the technologies that will be the platform for the search of the future. From the research and development being done at the GooglePlex on items like speech recognition and linguistics, it is apparent that we are trending toward ever more sophisticated implementations of what was once a very simple concept. As we move toward the future, those changing the game will be the developers of new technology that harness the vast quantities of information online, and seek to understand that information as fully as possible, coupled with the goal of understanding the way in which we seek that information.
===
The description in "The Future of Search" refers to the Semantic Web. Wikipedia definition here.
Here is a very good video called: "Intro to the Semantic Web (for noobs)" - if you have 6 minutes...
It talks about two ad-serving companies that are using behavioral targeting and AB/multi-variate testing to determine which versions of ads might be get more clicks from visitors. Then they would serve the best performing version - which means "changing elements like color, type font, message, and image to see what combination draws clicks on a particular site or from a specific audience". This is all done automatically after certain parameters have been set.
I am just going to cut and paste out the interesting bits:
"Adisn’s approach has been to build a database of related words so it can assess the content of a Web site or blog based on the words on its pages. Adisn then buys space on Web sites, and uses its information to find an appropriate ad to show visitors to those sites... Based on that analysis, Adisn’s system pulls different components — actors, fonts, background images — to make an ad. "
"Tumri’s approach is slightly different. It creates a template for ads, including slots for the message, the color, the image and other elements... Unlike Adisn, it does not buy ad space, but lets clients — like Sears and Best Buy — choose and buy space on sites themselves. And rather than building a contextual database like Adisn, Tumri uses whatever targeting approach advertisers are already using, whether it is behavioral or contextual or demographic, and assembles an ad on the fly based on that information."
"Adisn and Tumri both measure the ad’s effectiveness based on parameters the advertiser sets, like how many people clicked on the ad or how many people actually bought something after clicking on it. They compare those with standard ads they run as part of a control group."
Cool stuff... that's where this stuff is heading.. click on the link for the full story.
How can advertisers effectively use mobile platforms? We speak with the head of Yahoo!'s mobile business unit in Asia Pacific to gain insights into the mobile advertising landscape here.
Wired Magazine, the only physical magazine I still have a subscription for, had a great article on Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect. It talks about how his past at Lotus, IBM and Groove and how he got to where he is at Microsoft.
The article is long, but worth the read if you have 20 minutes. It talks about cloud computing, or as I have been calling it "Consumer Computing Cloud". It goes into the details of Microsoft's cloud OS called "Red Dog" is (now called Windows Azure). Below is an excerpt, see the full article here.
===
Ray's Plan: 4 Ways to Win
Not long after Ray Ozzie arrived at Microsoft in 2005, he wrote a memo declaring that the company's survival hinged on a shift to cloud computing. Three years later, Ozzie and Microsoft are finally announcing (though for the most part not yet releasing) key products designed to fulfill that promise.
1. Windows Azure
Microsoft's long-awaited "operating system for the cloud" doesn't run on a laptop—it runs on the company's thousands of servers. Customers develop their Web-based businesses to operate on Microsoft's data centers, and Windows Azure allocates resources as needed. Expected launch date:Late 2009 The competition:Google App Engine and Amazon EC2; already available
2. "Zurich"
Codename for Azure Services Platform, a set of sophisticated tools to help developers manage their own cloud-based services and Web apps. AvailabilityNow (in limited preview) The competitionFree open source tools
3. Live Mesh
A service built on Red Dog that allows people (PC and Mac users) to synchronize all their files, photos, and music with all their devices. Expected launch date2009; now in public beta The competitionApple MobileMe
4. Office Web Apps
The next major Office release will include relatively complete Web versions of Microsoft's crown jewels—Excel, PowerPoint, Word. Users can subscribe or access free versions supported by ads. Expected launch date2010; some apps may appear earlier The competitionGoogle Docs, Yahoo Zimbra, and Zoho—all available now
===
We will all hear more about Azure next year I am sure. Maybe someone at Microsoft would like to speak at Web Wednesday Singapore on this? Call me...... wait no, call Andy. His number is 555-ANDY.
Media's Agency of the Year 2008 awards were given out at a dinner at the St. Regis on this past Wednesday. Good thing we did not have Web Wednesday this week... that dinner would have been pretty empty. ;-)
"The 2008 Agency of the Year Awards honour the very best the Asia-Pacific advertising industry has to offer, highlighting agencies, brands and individuals that set a new standard in communications strategy and execution in the region."
OK... The Weeners were:
Creative Agency of the Year: BBDO/Proximity
Media Agency of the Year: OMD Asia-Pacific (Congrats to our own Andy Tu!)
Network of the Year: Ogilvy & Mather
Digital Agency of the Year: OgilvyOne
Specialist Agency of the Year: McCann Healthcare Worldwide
Independent Agency of the Year: BBH Asia
Brand of the Year: HSBC
Client Marketer of the Year: Li Ning
Agency Head of the Year (Regional): Miles Young of Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific
National Head: Marty O’Halloran of DDB Australia & New Zealand
Creative of the Year: Andy Blood of TBWA New Zealand & John Merrifield of TBWA/Asia-Pacific
There were apparently 18 awards in total that were given out, but only the above were listed on Media's news article. Their official site for the awards took too long for me to get anything so I gave up. (I get my attention span from my kids).
Andy, please sponsor a round of drinks for everyone at the next Web Wednesday.
I ran across a pretty good presentation on Slideshare.net (Did I tell you how much I like this site? Well, I REALLY like this site.)
It says a lot of the things that we have been saying about "shifting to digital", but is a slightly different way: "Outbound Marketing" vs. "Inbound Marketing". Check out slide 54... Inverted trapezoid funnel....OOOOHHHH.... AAAAHHHHHH..... Inbound... Marketing... System... with Analytics.
What should you look out for in your SMS campaigns? We speak to a digital marketing company in Singapore and get its take on the SMS landscape in Asia.
The Googlies Award 2008 were handed out last night at the Googlies/Christmas party.
“The Googlies” awards – given to agencies and advertisers who have successfully and creatively leveraged Google’s products and advertising solutions to execute sizzling, memorable online campaigns in 2008.
The big winners are:
Malaysia Airlines – Advertiser of the Year Mindshare Malaysia – Agency of the Year Proximity for the Nescafe Campaign – Creative Award Millennium & Copthorne Hotels – Campaign of the Year Award Listerine J&J – Innovative Advertiser Award McDonald’s - Promotional Campaign of the Year Award PurpleClick – Agency of the Year (For SMEs) for Online Marketing Education Award
Woohoo!!! Millennium receives Campaign of the Year award. Yeah Baby! Earlier this year, M&C won Ad-Tech San Francisco's Best SEO campaign award and now Google's PPC campaign of the year. SEO and PPC awards in one year. Disclaimer: I used to work for M&C.
The official PR pictures are below. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the PR agency did not release the picture of our very own Andy Tu accepting for J & J (Li Ting was too shy to go up??? or did Andy just want the spotlight?)
Anyhow, I found this on TechCrunch and thought it was an excellent set of slides and very fitting for today because... today is the Googlies Awards day and party! At least in Singapore.
Join us tonight for the last Web Wednesday of the year. Greg Fisher who heads Intel's Asia-Pacific integrated marketing team will be headlining the evening.
Lets kick off the holiday season with some networking and cheer. See you tonight!
By Mark Cripps
By Colin Miles
A. The Beginning - As web crawling spiders continued to gain intelligence and proficiency at navigating and indexing the Internet, new tools were needed for organizing the data that was being accumulated. Early search engines were able to help users find some of what they were looking for, but were incredibly simplistic. The search algorithms that were used to deliver search results from the data crawled by the spiders simply matched the search terms being searched for, and returned the result to the user in the order that they had originally been crawled. It was clear there was a better way.
A. The Beginning - Search engines before Google focused on using the content of the pages they indexed as the best way to determine what the page was about. As discussed, this method was very prone to manipulation because the variables used in ranking could all be easily manipulated by the webmasters themselves. These inherent problems led to the emergence of an entirely new model for search engines, a model that relied on impartial outside sources to help determine what a site was about, and how it should rank in the search results.
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