September 30th, 2008 elitani
Mike Harvey, Technology Correspondent
Thousands of BT broadband customers are to have their internet usage tracked so they can be sent targeted online advertising in a final trial before the service is launched network-wide.
BT customers will be invited to take part in the trial of Phorm’s controversial advertising system Webwise from tomorrow.
BT and Phorm said in a statement: “Following successful completion of this trial and an appropriate period of analysis and planning, it is currently expected that Phorm’s platform will be rolled out across BT’s network.”
The trial was due to begin in March but has been delayed by technical problems and legal controversy.
Up to 10,000 BT customers will have their internet use monitored and categorised under the new trial.
Phorm’s online targeting service is designed to make advertising more relevant by taking account of all the websites a person visits, rather than just the content of a single web page.
Webwise works by having equipment at internet servive providers such as BT that will capture, for each site you visit, the URL, any search terms entered in a search engine, and other data from the page, in order to categorise it.
When users sign up for the system their browsers are tagged with a cookie - a small program with a unique code number used to identify each user. This provides the data used to create a profile of the type of websites each user visits.
When people visit a page where the advertising is sourced from the Open Internet Exchange set up by Phorm, they will see adverts targeted to their profiles. For example, someone who has visited a lot of travel-themed websites would see adverts for holidays, hotels and flights.
Categories of advertising campaigns that Webwise will not allow include tobacco, drugs, alcohol, pronography, gambling and UK political parties.
On its web pages about the new service, BT highlights how the new system will improve the user’s internet security by checking against a list of fraudulent websites.
Customers can decline to enter the trial, and will not see the invitation again unless they delete the cookie from their browser, for example as part of routine browser maintenance recommended for secure and efficient performance. BT admits under a heading “Isn’t that a pain in the neck?” that the only to decline the invitation permanently is to “set all your browsers to block cookies from the domain webwise.net”.
Phorm has fought off concerns from privacy experts that Webwise is too intrusive.
In April the Information Commissioner said that Webwise did not represent a threat to privacy, but concerns from consumers have persisted. The Foundation for Information Policy Research, a group of Cambridge academics, has criticised the platform, saying that it infringed users’ privacy.
BT has admitted that it carried out secret trials of the Phorm technology in late 2006.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said that the service did not infringe an ISP customer’s privacy, because it did not collect information that would allow them to be identified. The system will also give users the opportunity to opt out of individual tracking, meaning that it does not breach the principles of the Data Protection Act, the commissioner’s office said.
Several websites have sprung up urging consuemrs not to use any ISP that introduces Webwise.
BT says on its Webwise site: “No personally-identifiably user data is stored as part of Webwise. Only the links between a random unidentifiable number contained in a cookie and advertising categories are stored in the system.
“This information is deleted after a maximum of six months. It is simply not possible to reverse engineer user identity using this information.”
ISPs hope that Phorm’s technology will enable them to increase their share of the burgeoning online advertising market. Analysts have predicted that BT’s cut from the online advertising could be as much as £85 million a year.
Advertisers are also said to be enthusiastic, because it will give them the chance to tailor their marketing more closely.
Posted in Online Marketing- International | No Comments »
September 28th, 2008 elitani
By Catherine Holahan
Business Week Online
Online marketers converged on New York for the ad industry’s annual conference, where they held discussions on everything from tracking online brand buzz to using humor to lure a Web-surfing audience. But perhaps the most pressing topic for attendees of the Advertising Week V conference in Manhattan is the financial crisis gripping Wall Street and what it means for their business, especially on the Web.
Companies dependent on Internet-based advertising are bracing for a slowdown as financial-service companies cut ad budgets. “The first six months of the next year will be slow,” says Russell Fradin, president of Adify, a company that helps firms set up online advertising networks.
When budgets are tight, advertisers tend to look for proven methods, such as ads placed alongside a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) or Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) search, and place less emphasis on experimental venues, such as social networks, experts say. “Mobile and social networks will be hit,” Fradin says. It’s harder to prove that ads placed on a social network or embedded in a video are effective in luring Web surfers to a site or enticing them to make a purchase. Matt Sanchez, CEO of online video advertising network Video Egg, says he expects growth to slow in the coming 12 months. He expects that some smaller, less well-funded video ad and ad targeting firms will have difficulty sustaining their businesses. “The next 12 months will be tough,” he says.
‘Real Measurement’ of Ad Spending
Even before the financial market malaise took a turn for the worse with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) 
purchase of Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) , and the government bailout of AIG, researchers were cutting back online advertising forecasts. In August, research firm eMarketer cut projections for Internet ad spending this year to US$24.9 billion, the second revision of estimates first released in October. The firm expects Internet advertising growth to slow to 17.4 percent this year fom 25.6 percent in 2007. Next year, growth will slow even more, to 14.5 percent. “Online advertising will not grow as fast because of the economic problems,” eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman says.
Even as some financial-services companies, including AIG, have cut back on or pulled television ads, some in the sector have stepped up campaigns in recent weeks to quell concerns they’re burdened with bad debt or are otherwise at risk, Hallerman adds.
Search Ads Not as Threatened
Some major brands are also likely to deal with the dour economic outlook by increasing spending in highly measurable online areas that are tied directly to sales, such as search ads. The expectation is that search advertising won’t suffer as much as so-called display advertising, which includes banner ads emblazoned on a page. This form of advertising is often designed to increase brand awareness or change perceptions, rather than drive sales directly. “In difficult economic times, marketers and advertisers want to have real measurement of the dollars they are spending,” says David Doty, senior vice-president of marketing at the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Executives at Unilever, one of the most active online marketing brands, say they will not cut back on online spending, even with such new ad formats as Web video and online games. “We are not pulling in the reins at all,” says Keith Bobier, Unilever’s senior director of marketing. “There is nothing experimental about this for us.”
But the feeling among many Web advertising firms is that Unilever is the exception to the rule. Many other marketers still see portions of their online ad budgets as “experimental.” “If a certain kind of spending hasn’t been in your [advertising] budget for three straight years, you’ll likely cut it when things get tougher,” says Adify’s Fradin. “Anyone who is new will have slow growth.”
Posted in Online Marketing- International | No Comments »
September 28th, 2008 elitani
Ad agencies are still are not structured to handle the online media realities of today. And it got me thinking, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Walk into an ad agency today, and in the middle of the meeting, tell them you want to brainstorm about new media possibilities. Chances are, your hosts will back pedal and give non committal personal viewpoints while betraying a lack of intellectual grounding on how it could work for your brand.
With online activity and advertising being so prevalent in the marketplace, it will come as a shock to you that most advertising agencies in Malaysia are not geared to handle interactive assignments for marketers.
While some ad agencies pay lip service to it, with some token staff in place, most actually seek out interactive agencies to handle this task.
Hence the proliferation of boutique interactive shops now staking their claim to fame by how confusing their techie prima donnas can make online marketing sound.
Some international advertising networks have interactive sister companies to undertake such assignments, while some have taken forever to set up in Malaysia. The immortal mantra ‘Show me the Money’ still remains a pre-requisite.
But, to be fair, there are various reasons for this.
Foremost, there’s a void in management’s comprehension that such a service should be part of their total product offerings in the first place. Old school ‘mass media’ mindsets ride roughshod over new thinking in these endeavours. Plus the widely-held perception that techies know best hampers real marketing communications thinking to root itself in this space.
So it’s a question of where the money is, the painful learning curve, and an alarming deficiency amongst marketers to realise the value of online.
This is sad, because interactive marketing lends itself to the same principles of advertising, as we know it, except that the playing field is different. To adapt, our framework needs to be modified. Seasoned pros can add much depth to online advertising, if only they cared enough to share and move the ball down the line.
Looking regionally, growth in Asian media continues to be powered by India in broadcast and print, and by China in online, out-of-home and broadcast. In the UK for example, half of the top 10 ad agencies are digital shops, raking in incomes that will shame the socks off traditional ad agencies.
Digital is not another medium, it’s a way of life. From a creative perspective, most marketers (and to be fair, a lot of agencies) still treat digital as a medium to be ‘consumed’ - “We need to extend the look and feel of our TV into online”. Well, sad to say, for a lot of the online audience, they may never interact with TV. Ask a typical 20-year old how they spend their time, and increasingly through Bit Torrent, YouTube and so on, the web is becoming the dominant form of their self expression and self awareness.
Embracing digital communication thinking into the advertising agenda upsets the age-old food chain to reap big returns from big media players.
Online media is still an afterthought amongst many advertisers, even though recent examples have been encouraging.
The Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board, the country’s eight ranked advertiser in terms of advertising spend, being a case in point.
Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina said last Monday that Internet TV had a wider global audience and was less costly, compared to conventional advertising.
“In times of cyber communications, it is the media preferred by consumers,” she reiterated, adding that some 40 million viewers were expected to visit Tourism Malaysia’s news Web TV site initially.
“We expect 10 million more visitors next year, over last year’s 29 million arrivals,” she announced, trumpeting a rare vote of confidence for online marketing by a big-ticket client.
The impact of online media, as witnessed by the Permatang Pauh by-election was a surprise to those who depended on the mainstream media and the government’s publicity machine for news and information.
The fact that blogs, social networks and the like are fast becoming critical channels of engagement is scaring most agency folk. They are in unfamiliar territory, and the prospect of not monetising their efforts on the scale they are used to makes them sceptical about walking down that road.
But advertisers are paying attention to the traffic on popular Malaysian Blogsites these days, as apparent with the phenomenal growth of Blog Media specialist Nuffnang this year.
Fact is, there is no turning back.
While some ad agencies and even marketers choose to remain disconnected to the online phenomenon, its inevitability will be their Armageddon.
Unless they prefer to opt for a crash course during an impending full blown recession!
adoimagazine.com
Posted in Online Marketing- International | No Comments »
September 27th, 2008 elitani
The GCC advertising expenditure in the first six months of 2008 increased by 23.6 percent to reach $3.77bn, compared to $3.05bn during the same period last year.
Khamis Al Muqla, chairman of Gulf Marcom Group based in Bahrain, and board member of the IAA Worldwide said that he expects it to reach $8bn by the end of 2008, compared to $6.5bn in 2007, an increase of 24 percent.
Al Muqla said that according to the Pan Arab Research Centre (PARC), the Pan Arab media share (mainly satellite TV) reached $1.57bn, an increase of 24 percent from 2007.
This is followed by the UAE with $929m, Saudi Arabia $550m, Kuwait $337m, Qatar $157m, Oman $120m, and Bahrain $50m. Oman recorded the highest growth among the Gulf countries (an increase of 69 percent) for the first six months of 2008, followed by UAE (42 percent), with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on par (11 percent), and followed by Bahrain (2 percent) and Qatar (1 percent).
Al Muqla added that the Pan Arab media share represents 41.64 percent of the total ad spend in the GCC.
The GCC media share including Pan Arab media was $1.7bn for newspapers and $1.6bn for TV of which $1.4bn was towards Pan Arab satellite TV. A total of $343m was spent on magazines, $74m on outdoor and $36m on radio. The print medium is still dominating in all GCC local markets.
The advertising expenditure in the GCC countries and Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan during the first six months showed a monthly average between $629m in January as the minimum, and $847m in May as the maximum, with the possibility of expenditure in July and August decreasing due to the summer period and then increasing, because of Ramadan.
The advertising categories for the first six months are:
Government/Organization – 14 percent (increase of 28 percent)
Toiletries Hygiene / House care Products – 11 percent (increase of 21 percent)
Insurance & Real Estate – 11 percent (increase of 101 percent)
Communications – 9 percent (increase of 24 percent)
Food Beverages and Tobacco – 7 percent (without any increase)
Publishing media – 6 percent (increase of 15 percent)
Shopping Malls and Retail Stores – 6 percent (increase of 20 percent)
Vehicles, Accessories and Supply – 6 percent (increase of 17 percent)
Financial Services – 6 percent (increase of 12 percent)
Professional Services – 5 percent (increase of 39 percent)
Hotel, Travel and Tourism – 5 percent (increase of 13 percent)
Entertainment – 3 percent (increase of 19 percent)
Business/Construction Equipment and Supply – 3 percent (increase of 25 percent)
Clothing, Jewelry and Personal Accessories – 3 percent (increase of 3 percent)
Household Appliances – 2 percent (increase of 12 percent).
Posted in Online Marketing- Middle East | No Comments »
September 27th, 2008 elitani
As Internet usage in the Middle East becomes more and more popular, online advertising is also growing. We talk to Husni Khuffash, Google’s country business manager for the UAE, about the benefits of online ads and whether they invade people’s privacy.
What state is the regional online advertising industry in?
I have been with online advertising for 11 years, and in that period, it’s picked up big time. When we started, we went to companies to talk about online advertising budget, and many of them had no idea what we were talking about. Now any decent company, big or small, understands the importance of online strength. Today there is a lot of understanding among agencies and clients about online advertising and communicating through the Internet.
What are the strengths of online ads?
Firstly, they can measure your campaigns; no other media in the world can effectively do that.
Secondly, there’s cost effectiveness. That’s because at the end of the day you know whom you are targeting and what their expectations are.
Next, there’s flexibility. You can start the campaign and stop it at any time, and also expand it across different countries if necessary.
And lastly, there’s the cost of production of the ad. If you want to do a TV commercial, it will cost millions, whereas online ads don’t cost as much.
Anybody looking at cutting costs, and at the same looking for maximum reach, which is targeted, can use this medium.
Is Google’s advertising content-related?
It’s not only content-related; we also use our search technology. Take for example a male guy, around 20 years old, who is looking for the new fighting Wii game release. This is what we call the magic moment in Google. We see the exact product he is looking for, at that exact time from a particular place. So we can show the ads of a shop near his location, which sells that same product.
We can capture the user when he is looking for you, it’s not like he is passing by [billboards on] Sheikh Zayed Road and may see your ad.
But does that amount to breaching the privacy of an individual?
Just to assure you that no one person in Google is sitting and serving ads or reading e-mails. It is an automated solution. Suppose you, as a user, would like to buy a new car. You then go and check it out online. When you search online, Google not only gives you the information, but also serves you the relevant ad.
What we have is a beautiful concept because I get exactly what I want.
This is a win-win-win situation. We are trying to give you what you are looking for, the advertiser is happy because he can reach out to his customers and the user is happy because he gets what he wants immediately without wasting too much time.
On the other hand, I am not interested in Pampers, but am shown the ad on TV. I think that breaches my privacy.
Considering the regional market, do you have to follow any censorship?
We are a very responsible company about what we communicate. For example, across the world we don’t advertise alcohol. We have our principles, and in fact we put more restrictions on ourselves than even local companies do.
Secondly, we look at what’s right and wrong in general. Like the issue of child porn. We don’t allow ads related to child porn anywhere. We always respect the laws of the country.
Posted in Online Marketing- Middle East | No Comments »