Analyst firm eMarketer has lowered its projection for the country’s internet spend for 2008 to £3.34 billion and 2009 to £3.58 billion.

The company had previously predicted in May that 2008 would see spending of £3.36 billion while this year it would hit £3.93 billion.

But the revision means that eMarketer’s predicted growth rate is half that of the May estimate.

However, Karin von Abrams, senior analyst and author of the report which contains the figures, said: “The good news is online is doing better than traditional media, which is down dramatically.”

She added: “Many forms of online advertising, such as paid search and email marketing, rank high in terms of accountability and return on investment.”

In October, comScore revealed that UK internet users are increasingly visiting blogs.

The firm said that this meant online marketers should consider blogs as part of their overall strategy.

The ASA said the advert:

“gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone”.

A little bit lame IMO – probably just sour grapes from the Apple’s competitors lodging a time wasting complaint with the ASA.  Boo hoo – Apple went and brought out a pretty cool, innovative product that grabbed a decent market share while the other mobile phone manufacturers were churning out crappy facias to give their average products a competitive edge!

“Because the iPhone doesn’t support Flash or Java, you couldn’t really see the internet in its full glory,” said Olivia Campbell, a spokesperson for the ASA.

“They made a very general claim that you can see the internet in its entirety, and actually that’s not quite true – so we’ve upheld.”

Well, technically, you can’t see the Internet in its entirety via any medium can you?  Not all at once anyway!  And really, is any consumer really annoyed at the fact that Java and Flash aren’t supported on a mobile format?  I can’t say I’ve even noticed the lack of support in the time I’ve had my iPhone (since UK launch).

Personally, I think the iPhone ad is fine – it does give you access to some of the key components of the Internet in the context of what a mobile user would generally want to use it for.  Maps, email, web access and so on.  All I need – how about you?

And when it boils down to it, Safari might not support Java and Flash plugins, but how much functionality of how many web pages is lost because of this?  And how many sites implementing Java of Flash have done so with mobile users in mind?  Very few I think.  At the end of the day, anyone requiring Java or Flash support on their mobile device is going to be savvy enough to do their homework before they buy aren’t they?  It’s not like anyone is being mislead or duped into buying something that is entirely innapproriate for their needs!

It’s a damn shame to see bullshit rulings based on pointless complaints by ignorant individuals soil a cool product with a pretty slick ad campaign.

They do run a PPC campaign for the term, but with 1.1 billion competing pages, perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to include that particular step in the communication process?   The site does rank number 6 after a couple of Wikipedia entries and some other unrelated stuff.  What do you think?  Is it a good idea to tie in an ad campaign with a search result that you can’t really dominate?

I can see where prompting users to search online for a term may be a good idea – for example, brand searches (assuming you don’t have any negative PR floating around the place) – but for generic terms?  The Orange campaign isn’t as problematic as it could be – after all they aren’t prompting users to search online for “mobile phones” or any other competitive phrase (in terms of quality of the competition not the quantity).

All the same, it does open the door to competitors jumping on the bandwagon and capitalising on your campaign.

It’s a similar issue to choosing a unique domain name – you don’t want users to end up at competing sites with similar names (which is one of my main arguments against using keyword domains for high ££ campaigns – although I do appreciate that in cases the benefits can outweight the pitfalls).  It’s more of a personal preference for me – I grudge spending time and money on a campaign just for other people to come along and get a free ride!  I’m oddly principled at times!

I do like the idea of using search in different ways though – it’s good to see marketers pulling search marketing into their more traditional campaigns and I think on the whole, the I Am campaign won’t really offer Orange any problems (unless their competitors decide to plough some resources in messing with the SERPs).

I remember movie launches used to be tied in with “AOL keyword searches” which I always thought was a bad idea – popular films spawn fan sites and spam sites pretty quickly.  It’s down to how easily you can control the SERPs really – it’s not that tough to dominate the top 10 for a made up keyword if you really want to – I think marketers just need to appreciate the limitations of their control over the SERPs when the campaign is launched.

Scott

The 3 companies have allowed ad company, Phorm, to access customers browsing records in order to serve relevant ads to any website publisher wishing to join the scheme.  The proceeds would then be shared between Phorm, the 3 Internet providers and the website publisher.

From the article:

A marketer that wants to reach wealthy golfers, for instance, would not have to restrict itself to advertising on golf sites. Because the ad system would track golfers’ Web habits, it could follow them to other sites and show them golf-related ads there, too.

Queue Homer-esque response, “ewwwwww”!

OK, I have mixed feelings about this.  As a website owner, SEO and marketing professional having revenue and advertising alternatives is pretty good, but I really don’t know how comfortable I am being tracked at that level.  Although the article does say that customers of the ISPs involved will be able to opt out of the scheme (and will only be tracked by unique ID and not personal information), it still doesn’t sit very well with me.

Esther Dyson (tech analyst and investor) noted;

Bombarding consumers with more and more ads, even “relevant” ones, risks sending them to social networking services and other places on the Internet where advertisers find it harder to reach them.

That’s a fair point to a certain degree, although I think if Esther had more knowledge of the SEM industry she might consider whether or not social network traffic is that hard to reach for advertisers.

Small guy might be missing out here

Just going through the signup process at Phorm, I see they start their publisher info request form with traffic details – smallest on the list is 500k – 1 million – so it would seem they are targeting higher traffic sites or possibly networks.  I sent in an enquiry and will post back with some info when it arrives.

The demo seems quite interesting from an advertising point of view though.  The example given on the Phorm site explains the process for advertisers.  You can for example, choose to display ads for a Paris hotel only to users who had browsed French travel sites using the keywords “France” and “Paris” (on page), at least 3 times in the past 30 minutes.

That opens up a world of options for advertisers – instead of customising a few campaigns with vague targeting on Adwords, you can customise entire campaigns to target users at different stages of the decision making process.  Frequent browsing could equate to a greater intent to buy – therefore you can target your juicy sales pages to these people.  On the other hand, infrequent browsing could indicate an interest in a new area, allowing you to target more subtle, informational pages at potentially new customers.

It also means we could target different types of customers who are looking for the same service.  A potential new client with no previous SEO services and an existing client of a competitor looking to change supplier could very well browse different types of sites, looking for different types of information – why not tailor campaigns specifically to each customer type?

However, the one constraint with a system like this is scope.  They have the technology to run the system on – they have the user data to sell to advertisers – do they have the content network to justify such a large remit?  That’s where small website publishers could really make or break the campaign.

Last note on this – one cool feature is that publishers can dictate a threshold fee for their ad real estate (i.e. a minimum price advertisers pay to advertise on the site).  I like the sound of that.

Any thoughts on either being able to track and market users at this level, or being tracked and marketed to like this?

Scott

That may be so, but the URL www.thisisliving.TV is neither memorable nor appropriate for the campaign (which also lacks branding). It is another example of a high profile launch being hindered by Sandboxed tactical domain names while the hyper rich media site has a pre-load time that extends beyond the pre-loader animation. The navigation is clunky in that the user has to return to the main screen each time to move on and there is no text content at all. It feels to me like a site designed by advertising creatives who have little concern for effective web communications. Besides I still wouldn’t mind finding out just a little about the console itself.

I don’t use gas, but I get charged for it.  Well I use a little – just the rings on my cooker (which I rarely use), but because I pay for electricity + gas in one bill I get charged for gas as well.

About a year ago I queried my bill because it seemed a lot for my tiny little flat – and found out that Scottish Power had been over charging me for gas.  Basically they estimate use for property size and don’t really make an effort to check it out.  So they changed my bill.

Then for the next 6 months I get people round to read the meter numbers to double check this – fair enough, I can deal with that.  Just not every fucking week.  And monthly letters asking me to take readings.  And phone calls every few weeks.

I explained over and over that I don’t use much gas, hence the reading doesn’t go up much week on week, but no one pays attention.

Today I got my new estimate for the next 6 months – £100 per month.  I had been paying £50 per month (I should have been paying £30).  Again, a fuck up at their end.  But, £100 a month!  For a 1 bed flat?  Idiots.

Seriously – what’s the fucking point of all this pro-conservation advertising and “let’s all save energy” bullshit if companies are just going to screw people over who are actually saving energy?  If people don’t see a change in their bills, then they are way less likely to bother conserving energy in the first place and where does that leave the planet?

Just a typical example of how social issues are picked up and raped by marketing professionals who don’t bother to back them up with any kind of substance.

MG

Examples of gifts you can get:

• HIV and AIDS awareness event (£15)
• Train a health worker (£38)
• 80 mango saplings (£160)
• Safe water for 1000 people (£720)
• Create a whole classroom (£1700)

Pretty nice gift for Xmas – unusual and goes to a good cause!

The TV ad for the site was pretty cool as well.  Can’t find it on Google video or Youtube, but it’s basically a montage of really damn ugly Alpacas with the Baby Bird song, “You’re Gorgeouos” playing.  Clever, funny and gets the message over.

MG

We’re all familiar with product placement in movies and to a (smaller) extent it has been tried in gaming – racing games with advertiser billboards, shoot em ups with Coke cans littered around desolate environments – even direct commercial tie ins (Bob the Builder!).

However it is only in recent years that online gaming has reached “mass market popularity”, cutting into mainstream gaming, largely led by the PC community, but now being explored more and more by console gamers (who traditionally have been more “mass market” than their tech-savvy PC counterparts).

I think it is about time that the online marketing community looked at online gaming as a more serious option for traffic and business generation.

MMORPGs

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft have huge online communities, which are largely ignored by the online marketing community (which tends to obsess more with “generic” sources of traffic such as Google).  Why?  It seems to me that forums, blogs, etc with tens of thousands of Internet savvy users that will flood other areas on the web on a scale on par with Digg or Slashdot, would be an ideal target some certain types of marketing campaigns.

However these types of communities tend not to be quite as “vanilla” as your average blog or forum user base.  This is a group of people who are effectively leading a second life with their virtual comrades – most won’t take too kindly to link spam and the like!

One community I know about suffered a near catastrophic exodus when the forum admin added an advertising banner to the forums to cover some of his costs.  It wasn’t an objection at advertising in general though – it was the type of advertising – a banner for a company that exchanged in game currency for dollars.

And this brings us to one of the central developments in online gaming over the past few years – the exchange of items and currency for “real life” money.  While this is a legitimate business move by the people running the operation (who, by the way, are old school SEOs!), the communities being targeted object a great deal to this practice.  We’ve all seen threads on forums go nuclear when the resident troll or guest spammer decides to piss people off.  That’s nothing compared to the fall out from a flame session in the gaming community!

So, why would an online marketing professional want to expose their brand to this volatile environment?

Viral marketing!

Consider the structure of an average MMO community. 

Each player chooses a “class” to play (eg warrior, wizard, druid, etc).

Each player is based on a “server” (a unique version of the online world – larger games may have dozens of different servers which contain thousands of players).

Within this server, most players are part of a guild or clan.

Each class, server and guild has their own forums.  Rough examples of figures – assume 500,000 players in total – 20 servers (20 forums), 10 classes (10 forums), potentially 200 (active) guilds per server (4000 forums) and a handful of random “fan sites” (say another 50).  Several thousand forums each with a variety of members ranging from dozens to tens of thousands.

Example – check out Google Video for “World of Warcraft” – 6,148 results, with the most popular ones having thousands of page views.  YouTube for the same search – 9,567 results, with the top results having quarter of a million views.

Even mainstream media covers issues raised in online gaming, everything ranging from the state of the economy to in game events:

• BBC – Gay rights win in World of Warcraft
• BBC – Deadly plague hits Warcraft
• BBC – US Congress steps into Cyberspace

The last news item there is one of the most interesting developments of late.  The US Congress is exploring online game worlds, supposedly simply to monitor the exponential growth of in game economies, and not with a view to implement tax on transactions (between in game and real life currencies).

Second Life

This latest US Congress has been spurred not by mainstream online gaming (where in game to real life transactions are minimal), but more by a recently launched game called “Second Life“.  While WoW and EQ are fantasy based games where users can take on the roll of a Paladin or a Wizard to battle enemies, Second Life mirrors real life more – people create their own appearances and buy land, etc.

The difference here is that all users buy currency using their real life credit cards (and indeed, they can make money in game and withdraw it).  Think of it as a virtual MySpace / Ebay – rather than a website, you can walk around a virtual world.

The interesting point here is that SL has attracted some very high profile mainstream interest – the BBC “own” an island within the game and use it to host virtual concerts via BBC Radio 1.  Reuters even have a full time reporter in the virtual world, and offer a live exchange rate analysis detailing online spend on a daily basis.

Its not surprising that the amount of effort put into the economies of these online worlds has the economic impact equivalent to the GDP of Nambia - Second Life alone has a daily user spend of over $400,000 (US)!

To the cynics

I know at this point a lot of people are thinking…what the fuck?  Clearly you aren’t familiar with online gaming (or you would have said “WTF?”! ) – hell, 10 years ago if someone told me that you could eventually use that dusty old computer to make a fortune on something called “the Internet” I would have laughed.  Or maybe 5 years ago that Google would account for 25% of ALL online advertising spend? (hat tip to TW)

Even those who pioneered using eBay / Amazon / MySpace to create a business income from were probably regarded with bemusement in the early days.

Unlike eBay, YouTube, Amazon or MySpace, Second Life and other online games don’t deal with user retention issues in the same way – they aren’t bookmarked and don’t rely on glossy, clever marketing campaigns to boost market share.  Users join these online communities and they become a part of life unlike any other concept in our history. 

Although demographics of users may vary – ranging from teenagers to pensioners – one key fact remains constant – users are comfortable conducting business online and given the scale of each user base of each online game, is that something the online marketing community can ignore?

Just installed Second Life last night – to be honest (and this comes from someone who has been an online gamer for years) – I found it more complicated to get into than when I started out in SEO!   But gonna have a mess around and see what I can do with it – may post some more info back later on.

MG

The photo adverts take you to a link unti type advert page, which IMO is pretty shit anyway and could be designed a lot better for CTR.  Not a huge fan of link units as you can see.   Google could make a lot more cash from just sending the user to the top paying advertiser for the keyword rather than to a page of adverts (I mean come on – who wants to be taken to a page full of adverts!).

Some examples of the images on the Jensense link above – they seem to be generic stock photography – nothing particularly inspiring.  I’d imagine they would have a decent CTR impact on Google’s network of spam sites.

I am starting to like Ask a little more now – the results used to be very cluttered to look at but things are a lot more Google-esque now and there aren’t quite so many adverts.

I like the “narrow your search” features – something similar to what I think Google will be wanting to achieve with Google Coop.

That all said, the results for “how to talk to girls” (one of the refined searches) on Ask, sucked.  Couple of forum type pages with little or no information.  Top result was a page about what not to do.  Several pages were selling a book or something (the same site, different domains, both listed) – the rest of the top 10 wasn’t too relevant.

MG