|
Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category« Previous EntriesOnline On The UpTuesday, March 8th, 2011
 Yet more statistics that point to the ever growing importance of the internet for marketers: A new report released by eMarketer reveals online advertising spend will grow by as much as 13.9% this year, to reach a record $25.8 billion. This double-digit trend is expected to continue until at least 2014, by which time total spend will have broken the $40 billion barrier and online will have become the most important advertising medium. Standard & Poor’s Financial Services also predicts strong – albeit slightly reduced – growth, estimating that US online advertising revenue will rise by 10% this year. B2B In 2011Tuesday, January 25th, 2011  With a new year upon us, we’re all wondering what surprises 2011 has in store. BtoB magazine makes its own predictions for the top trends this year. For more of their predictions, visit BtoB’s 2011 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans survey. • BUDGETS SHIFT MORE HEAVILY TO ONLINE This has been happening gradually over the last several years but the pace is increasing as marketers have been seeking lower-cost, more measurable ways to reach their audiences during the recession. This shift is aided by improvements in technology. According to BtoB’s 2011 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans survey, 78.5% of B2B marketers plan to increase their online budgets this year. • MORE EMOTIONAL, PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS As marketers strive to connect with business execs at work and at home, they are getting much more personal and emotional. In other words, the line between B2B and B2C is becoming less distinct, reflected by TV, print and online ads that have much more of a consumer feel. • DATABASE-DRIVEN MARKETING AND NEW CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE METRICS B2B marketers will get much more sophisticated at mining customer data and making that information the focal point of their communications. As marketing techniques and data-mining programmes get more sophisticated and personal, so do the metrics used to evaluate these efforts. • OPTIMISING SOCIAL MEDIA Despite arguments to the contrary, social media is becoming an integral part of marketing for b2b companies: 62.6% of marketers plan to increase their spending on such channels this year, according to the Outlook survey. • FEEDING THE CONTENT MACHINE B2B marketers must continuously create and maintain content used for marketing purposes – from social media networks to landing pages, blogs to thought leadership events. Online Marketing SurveyMonday, July 26th, 2010  With online marketing seemingly growing in importance all the time, we found it interesting to assess how much this really is the case. Emedia recently published results of its 2010 Online Marketing Strategy Survey conducted among marketers and digital marketers, some of the key findings of which are published below:
Record High for U.S. Internet MarketingMonday, June 14th, 2010  Yet more indication that the internet is the future for much of our marketing spend: in the first quarter of 2010, internet advertising revenues in the United States reached $5.9 billion, a 7.5% year-on-year increase. The new figures, from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, show the highest ever first-quarter revenue levels for the online media industry, indicating that interactive advertising campaigns continue to prove their value and effectiveness – or at the very least their measurability. These figures seem to tie in with recent Bellwether Report statistics, showing that UK digital budgets were revised upwards in the first quarter of 2010 for the third quarter in succession, with digital the fastest growing of all advertising mediums. Meanwhile, eMarketer has revised upward to 10.8% (from 5.5% in December) its forecast for US internet advertising spend this year compared with 2009. It predicts that internet ad spending will total $25.1 billion in 2010, after declining 3.4% last year. In more specific terms, search spending is expected to increase 15.7%, banner ad spending 8.2%, and video spending a massive 48.1%. Seeing RedFriday, February 12th, 2010 
This week, David Ward explains how a little extra thought could go a long way for some of our prospective clients. I am colour blind. To be honest, I am so colour blind that my 6-year-old daughter takes great pleasure in telling me I’m getting my reds, greens and browns, my blues, purples, pinks and greys all of a muddle. As we sit down to do some drawing together, more often than not the scene taking shape on the page is eclipsed by the alien-looking purple sky or dry, parched-looking brown grass as though some prolonged drought has been in full swing for several months. I’ve lost count of the number of fouls I’ve given away playing snooker when I’ve inadvertently potted the brown thinking it was a red. I’ve long since given up looking for red tees against the green grass on the golf course. I long ago got used to the strange looks that shop assistants give me when I ask them what colour a particular item of clothing is. In short, it’s a frustrating problem. However, it’s hardly a life threatening one and to my nearest and dearest it’s a source of some entertainment. Depending on where you look for the figures, between 8% and 12% of the male population are colour blind to some extent and a very small proportion of females are affected. One way of testing for colour blindness is the Ishihara test. Here are a few examples from that test. 
I’m no expert on eye-related problems so I tried to find a simple explanation of the reason for colour blindness and http://www.wisegeek.com/what-causes-color-blindness.htm provided a good one, I think. Colour blindness is a result of certain cones on the retina misinterpreting the wavelengths that correspond to their respective colours. Red, green and blue colours have corresponding wavelengths. Red wavelengths are longest, green colours generate medium wavelengths, and blue colours are made of shorter wavelengths. If the green cones, for example, only respond to slightly longer wavelengths, green will be interpreted by the brain as red. I don’t need to tell you that the web is an established way of advertising, reaching new customers and selling products, but how much consideration is given to the design of the colour schemes? Being faced with a website that hasn’t used a well-thought-out colour scheme that takes us colour blind folks into consideration could be costing you. For example, according to the last census in 2001 there were 28.6 million males in the UK, and with around 12% of males being colour blind that’s potentially 3.4 million males that may be put off from using a website purely because of its colour design. The message for my Thursday Night Insight this week is simple. Although it’s often not a serious issue, please don’t forget about people like me that struggle when it comes to the world of colours and making distinctions between them. It’s not a difficult thing to take into consideration and there are 3.4 million in the UK alone that may just thank you for it. « Previous Entries |
|
