Friday Roundup 27th June 2008

Afternoon,

Apparently some search engine marketing agencies are pulling in as much as 300K a month at the moment. Andrew Smith tells us where this money is coming from and what PR’s can do to ensure they keep their piece of the marketing pie.

Also in the round-up this week is a post from Philip Sheldrake enlightening us about how developments in Internet protocol will impact Marketing. Click here to see how the two are connected.

Finally, four minutes to spare? Check out the TED video and be inspired.

Enjoy the weekend.

Best regards,

Andrew and the MarCom Professional team

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

by Andrew Smith of escherman

If you are looking for fresh ideas to stretch your mind, look no further than Ted.com. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) has been around since 1984 - a greater array of great minds and great ideas would be hard to come by. The TED Talks are well worth a look. Be inspired. More...

Intel Insiders to Advise Intel on Social Media Strategies

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

You've heard of Intel Inside, the now legendary marketing program that intelligently convinced consumers to make purchasing decisions based on the chip that powered their PCs. Now, I'm proud to introduce the new Intel Insiders program, a new initiative that extends the company's genuine intention of reaching and engaging with people, while freely trusting the brand's future to the very people who can and will shape it.

Not only am I proud to introduce the Intel Insiders program, I'm also humbled to actually be part of the team of advisers to Intel on all things Social Media. More...

Why Search Marketing Is Eating PR’s lunch

by Andrew Smith of escherman

Ask any traditional PR company - large or small - whether they consider £300K per annum as a sizeable PR account and I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’ll disagree with you. What about £300K a month? There probably isn’t a PR account in the country that would come close to this kind of spend.

Guess what. Search marketing agencies are now beginning to command that kind of expenditure. Some will (rightly) argue that much of this is going on PPC campaigns ie the actually revenue and profit claimed by the agency on this will be a smaller percentage. More...

Get your AdMob May 08 stats here

by si crowhurst of We Love Mobile

AdMob have released stats (focusing on Western European data) from traffic on the network during May. Here’s a few of the key points -

- 65.1% of ad requests in Western Europe came from the UK.

- Mobile internet usage has increased across the region with Spain showing the most rapid traffic growth with a 270% increase since September 2007.

- The iPhone is also grabbing a significant market share across Europe, dominating the top 10 device rankings in France, Germany the Netherlands and Spain. More...

What journeys do your customers make?

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Your customers are unlikely to arrive at your web site without having been somewhere else first; even if they are time travellers, like Dr Who, and they suddenly port themselves from outer space to your web pages, they will have been somewhere else first. Understanding how people got to your site can help you improve your business since it enables you to put signposts along the way for them.

Some marketing folks call this the "pathway" to your site or the "journey"; it doesn't matter what you call it, what's important is that you understand how people get to your site in the first place. More...

End-to-end marketing: the possibilities of a new Internet protocol

by Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group UK

We're just about to go through a complete renumbering of the Internet, and I think some marketing issues and opportunities will emerge along the way.

The way the Internet works today means that just less than 4.3 billion different Internet devices can be addressed uniquely... an address being just that, the unique identifier stating where packets of information are sent from and where they should go. So just as my work address is Building 5, 50 Brook Green, London, W6 7BJ, UK - a unique address at which I'm sure to receive anything you send me - my current IP address at this Boston hotel is 209.190.164.35. More...

Man v. Banner Advertising

by Chris Applegate of Outside Line

We all know banner ads are largely ineffective - exactly as Scoble outlined two years ago. They are only trusted by barely a quarter of consumers, while those that click on them are the wrong demographic and don’t correspond to brand value. It means a waste of up to $1bn a year. No wonder Adblock for Firefox has been downloaded over 20 million times. The less effective they are, the more jarring and interfering they have become to try and wring every last drop of attention out of their audience, so thanks to Scott Monty for highlighting this tongue-in-cheek look from current.tv at just how bad banner advertising has become: More...

Social networks are really boring

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Women are natural social networkers; indeed the stereotype of "chatty" women (false as it is) suggests that the world of social networking is a natural place for women to go online. And you wouldn't be wrong.

A new analysis of more than 50 million social networking members shows that women love social networking - up to a point. In the under 24 age bracket, women outnumber men in most social networks. Indeed, on MySpace and Facebook there are almost twice as many women under 24 as men. More...