Another Echo Chamber: The real-time web

One of the big things about the web as a platform imho is that it places ‘people’ not ‘corporates’ at the centre.  With people come opinions, ideas, thoughts and conversations.  And lets face it: People work and move faster than bloated, process based corporates.

But there are issues.

Whilst the work from venerable web firms like Twitter, Google Docs, Acrobat Connect, Meebo and Octopz are certainly a step in the right direction towards a Real Time Web (and technologies like XMPP, SIP, HTTP extensions (Comet), and RTMP are helping too), I can’t help thinking that as the Real Time Web becomes a popular term and trend, it will be marred by negativity around real time syndication or overuse of various RSS feeds and APIs.

Take a look at an example below (click image to enlarge)

Now I am a fan of e-Consultancy.com – but is there any value for me (the customer) seeing multiple tweets on the same subject?  I don’t think so.  It really makes me feel like I am sat in the middle of an echo chamber.

I am sure there is a big difference between genuine Real Time Web Applications, and Real Time syndication.  But it is sure annoying to seeing more and more web properties displaying ‘real time content’ in this way.

Real Time web without de-duplication?  No thanks.

Filed under: 2.0, Ideas and Riffs, RSS, Semantic Web, Twitter, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, web 2.0

Digital Britain: Preliminary Report

On 17 October 2008, Lord Carter, the minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, began work on a report dubbed “Digital Britain”. The idea was to create an action plan that would secure the UK’s place ‘at the head’ of the new media age.  There is more about this action plan here and here.

Released today, the interim report outlines 22 specific actions, and in so doing commits the government too.  These are based on a range of topics including: Universal Connectivity, Original UK Content, Digital Content, Digital Radio, Digital TV, Mobile Wireless, and Next Generation Networks.

The Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, outlines the report’s interim findings here (why are the parlimentary benches so empty?) and the BBC editorial team reports on some of the key points taken from the report here.

It seems feedback is mixed with the announcement of Broadband ‘in every home by 2012′ being called a ‘damp squib’ no less.  Potentially a tad party political perhaps, but IT industry analyst firm Ovum said the report was well-intended but “severely lacking in the detail.”  Ouch.

As the final version is due in June, one can only assume this will be even meatier – but for the keenest digerati the complete interim report is here (open’s 2MB .pdf) in its 81 page glory.  Enjoy.

Filed under: Business, Computing, Media, Online, WIFI, digital, technology, wi-fi , BBC, Broadband Britain, Digital Britain, Interim Report, Ovum

The Media and the shape of things to come

Digital guru Clay Shirky gives Guardian writer Tom Teodorczuk his media forecast for 2009 – taking in the role of newspapers, books and magazines and TV.

Some Soundbites

Newspapers: “The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press – high upfront cost and filtering happening at the source of publication – is over.”

Books and Magazines: “I think the big revolution is going to be print on demand.”

TV: “The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.”

Filed under: 2.0, Media, Web2.0, digital, technology, web 2.0 , 2009, Books, Clay Shirky, Guardian, Magazines, Media, newspaper, predictions, TV

Superb internet marketing community & FREE industry reports (no catch!)

I wanted to draw you attention to a FREE resource for those of you who want to benefit from a community of the world’s digital marketing and ecommerce professionals. Econsultancy exists to help its members “sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online.” I have to say that it is a great source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.

imho there’s no shortage of marketing opinion online, but being ten years and with 71,000 marketers Econsultancy is pretty special.  Bronze membership is FREE and there is more info here.

These are complimentary reports you get for free upon joining (there’s another 20+ too!).  Great, er, value!

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Online PR Industry Benchmarking Report

By Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi, December 2008

Overview Authors: Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi Pages: 35 Features: Survey-based research about the Online PR Industry, with expert input from respected industry commentators.

Digital Outsourcing Survey Report

By Econsultancy, December 2008

This report, produced in association with Lemon Digital Production, is aimed at agencies who are interested in the business case and challenges associated with outsourcing digital work.

SEO Supplier Showcase November 2008

November 2008

Online Customer Engagement Report 2009

By Econsultancy, November 2008

The third annual Online Customer Engagement Report has been produced in partnership with cScape. This research is based on a survey of 1,300 respondents carried out in September and October 2008.

Email Marketing Briefing – November 2008

By Econsultancy, November 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Email Marketing held in autumn 2008.

Comparison Shopping Engines Survey Report 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This DoubleClick-sponsored research is based on a survey of retailers and agencies carried out in August and September 2008, with the aim of understanding more about the use of comparison shopping.

Paid Search Marketing Supplier Showcase October 2008

October 2008

Paid Search Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Paid Search.

Affiliate Marketing Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 11-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Affiliate Marketing.

Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, September 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation.

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The Services Econsultancy Provide:

Reports: Econsultancy is an award-winning online publisher of reports covering best practice, user experience benchmarking, market data, supplier selection, template files, trends and innovation aimed at internet professionals who want practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Training, Learning & Development: Econsultancy operates a highly popular training division, used by the world’s leading brands for staff education, both in-house and via public courses. We provide training across all areas of digital marketing and ecommerce and at all levels from accredited one day courses to formal qualifications including diplomas and a Masters in Digital Marketing.

Events: Econsultancy hosts over 100 events a year, including conferences such as the Online Marketing Masterclasses, Future of Digital Marketing and Digital Cream as well as regular Supplier Showcases, Roundtables, the annual Innovation Awards and a range of social events.

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Free memberships of marketing clubs, and online resources are ten a penny.  You just have to surf, or browse LinkedIn groups to see that.  But Econsultancy is very different.  I’d highly recommend you join if you are an internet professional who wants practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Blogging, Branding, Business, Buzz, CRM, Customer Experience, Design, Direct Mail, Email, Events, Media, Mobile, Online, Planning, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Strategy, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Web, Web2.0, digital, marketing, technology, web 2.0 , development, ecommerce, Econsultancy, Events, Free, learning, reports, Strategy, training

HiPPO – Highest Paid Person’s Opinion

What have I been doing? It turns out there is a phrase for it, and it’s been around a while.

“HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site.” Courtesy Avinash Kaushik

HiPPO stands for: the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

Thankfully there is some great technology making HiPPO’s extinct. Multi-variable testing tools & platforms like Interwoven’s Optimost will continue to make a big difference in the remainder of 2008 and in 2009.

Filed under: Analytics, Business, Conversion, Design, IT, Measurement, Media, Software, Strategy, Testing, Usability, digital, marketing, technology , Customer Experience, HIPPO, marketing, multi-variable testing, optimisation, Optimost, technology, web design

10 reasons why online advertising spend will dip in the UK recession

10 reasons why online advertising will dip in the UK recession:

1. There is a very small (but growing) percentage of conscientious people who don’t want to waste the advertiser’s money on a bad PPC click-through.  And so, as times get tougher, and because everything is tracked, some statistical trends will show a downward shift.
2. There is a percentage of people who do want to waste the advertiser’s money on a bad click-through.  And because everything is tracked, stats are up on poor quality click through’s.
3. Online advertisements are still too impersonal.  And this will become even more apparent in a ressesion.  If you read a magazine with an advert, or if you see an advert in a store, you can be mad at the shop assistant or the publisher.  If you click on a bad web ad, you have only yourself to blame — and by default that is never fun.  And rarely repeated.
4. Online PPC ads like “iPod Touch, just £20″ work.  But an ad like “SAAS.  Bespoke BPM Development testing professional” doesn’t.  The largest volume of investment in PPC advertising is in the long tail, and the adverts down in the long tail are broken.  Badly.  Ineffective advertisers with be the first to cut the budgets or shut down their experiments.
5. When up against it in a recession, human beings often ’stretch’ the truth.  The problem is, misleading and aversive adverts don’t perform well, especially online and especially during difficult times – when consumers become more defensive, critical and wary.
6. There’s no way “ad supported” ventures can pay for as many things as they were supposed to pay for any more.  Now this is being realised, there is going to be a pileup of ventures hitting the wall- taking their ad budgets with them.
7. When online ad revenues fall, there is major potential for a media driven ‘death spiral’.  A well communicated idea, story or worldview behind the short term argument “online advertising is dying” will easily transcend more relevant medium or long term spend trends.
8. Online advertising is horribly inefficient (becoming less so) but cheap (becoming less so).  And cutting spend is easy-peasy.  Your mum could do it.  Human beings are programmed to make these easy decisions quickly and painlessly.
9. ‘The End of Online Advertising as we know it’ will be auto-translated into ‘The End of Online Advertising’ in the consciousness of unknowing or immature advertising buyers.  The product of this will be FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the consciousness of a big proportion of online advertising buyers in the long tail.
10. Behavioural targeting will be trumpeted as a saviour in an era when existing online advertising will be promoted as ‘in transistion’.  The result will be a drop in spending whilst behavioural advertising is researched and evaluated.

Filed under: Advertising, Business, Computing, Conversion, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Strategy, Web, digital, ideas, marketing, technology , budgets, marketing, Online Advertising, recession

NMA Podcasts: Top Interactive Agencies 2008

This month sees New Media Page publish its Top 100 Interactive Agencies Guide for 2008.  The piece finds the sector “guardedly optimistic” about the future, following a second consecutive year of double digit growth. The NMA team and digital agency heads discuss how prepared the industry is for an economic downturn, and what the future holds for the sector.

Filed under: Business, Media, Planning, Research, Strategy, digital, marketing, technology , best interactive agencies 2008, NMA, podcast

20 free eBooks about social media

Chris Brogan points us at 20 Free eBooks about Social Media

(Don’t ignore the extras in the comments)

Filed under: 2.0, Books, Business, Ideas and Riffs, Influence, Media, Planning, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , Chris Brogan, ebooks, freee, Media, social, Social Media

the little things that matter

Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy.  His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Conversational marketing, Customer service, Design, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, WOM, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, interactions, interactive, marketing, Media, micro, new, social, Twitter, Web

How to clinch business deals

Get the right biscuits

(or if that fails check out the class of 2008: Design Week’s Top 100 Design Consultancies)

(or check out PR Weeks Top 40 Technology oriented PR consultancies)

Filed under: Design, Measurement, PR, Research, Strategy, digital, ideas, marketing, technology , BBC, Design Week, PR Week, Top 100, Top 40

The future of marketing communications….

….or “How to think in a world gone digital.” by Jan Leth, Ogilvy & Mather.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Buzz, Data, Design, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Planning, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, User Generated Content, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, ogilvy, technology, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, Advertising, alpha, beta, conversations, dada, Data, digital planning, future, Jan Leth, ogilvy, Web

Earning a living, in appalling rendering conditions

For all the email marketers out there – earning a living in appalling rendering conditions – This is for you.

Hat tip to the author Mathew Patterson.

You may also want to check out, or join the Email Standards Project.

Filed under: Design, Direct Email, Email, Fun, Google, Media, Yahoo!, digital, marketing, technology , CSS, Email, email marketing, gmail, Google, html, marketing, semantic, standards, web design, Yahoo! Mail

Sliderocket – Best in show

Sliderocket presented at Under The Radar in the US yesterday – scooping, wait for it, three gongs….Best in Show, the Judges Choice award, and the Audience Choice award.

Take the Tour.

I think this is one of those ‘Miss it – Miss out’ moments.

You see, SlideRocket is a rich internet application that provides for every part of the presentation lifecycle. It integrates authoring, asset management, delivery and analytics tools into a single hosted environment that allows you to quickly create stunning presentations, intelligently manage your assets, securely share your slides, and measure the results.

SlideRocket differentiates itself from other presentation products by being Web-based, feature-rich, easy-to-use, secure, and complete. SlideRocket is also unique in that it includes a community marketplace where content and services can be shared and transacted.

SlideRocket is the first online productivity application that embraces business level features such as collaboration, robust security, dynamic data binding and business integration with applications like Salesforce.com. SlideRocket also embraces the best of the Internet with features like asset tagging, web content mashups, embedded data services and seamless rich media support.

Very cool.

Filed under: 2.0, Awards, Business, Cool, Design, Media, digital, illustration, marketing, technology , Awards, best in show, rich internet applications, sliderocket, Under the radar

Please help

Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

Filed under: 2.0, ACL, Adobe, Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Apple, Awards, BBC, Blog, Blogging, Blogroll, Books, Branding, Business, Buzz, CBS, CIM, CRM, Charity, Colour, Computer, Computing, Conversational marketing, Conversion, Cool, Corbis, Customer service, Data, Deloitte, Design, Direct Email, Direct Mail, EMI, Email, Entertainment, Entrepreneur, Events, Experiential, Facebook, Fairchild Semiconductor, Forrester, Fun, Gartner, Google, IBM, IODA, IT, IT Planning, Ideas and Riffs, Illusion, Imagery, Influence, Infrared, Job, Keywords, Knee, MIT, Mac, Measurement, Media, Microsoft, Mobile, Music, News, Online, Online Video, Open Social, PC, PR, Planning, Power 150, Printing, Public Relations, Punchstock, Quotes, RSS, Religion, Remarkable, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, SPARQL, SQL, Salmon, Scene7, Search, Search Engine Optimisation, Second Chance Tuesday, Second Life, Semantic Web, Sinclair, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Software, Sony BMG, Spam, Spectrum, Strategy, Surgery, Survival, TV, Tattoo, The Orchard, Tim Berners-Lee, Twitter, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Viral Coefficient, Virtual Worlds, WIFI, WIKI, WOM, Warner Music Group, Web, Web2.0, White Paper, Wired.com, Wordpress, Xerox, Xuuk, Yahoo!, YouTube, ZX, blogs, bob, copywriting, digital, dotcoms, garfield, iStock, ideas, illustration, last.fm, marketing, ogilvy, permission, photography, podcast, sport, startups, stock photography, technology, trust, venture capital, verge, web 2.0, webmasters, wi-fi, word of mouth , 2008, Advertising, Age 5-14, Animals, Anime, Announcements, Answered, Art, Articles, Barack, Basketball, Bible, Big, Big Questions, Blog, Blogging, blogs, Books, Business, Charity, Children, China, Christianity, Church, clinton, Club, Comedy, Commentary, Community, Crime, Culture, Current Events, Daily, Democrats, Design, Economics, Economy, Education, Election 2008, Elections, Eliot Spitzer, English, Entertainment, Environment, Events, Faith, Family, Fashion, Fiction, Film, Food, Friends, Fun, Funny, Games, God, Government, Health, Hillary, Hip-hop, History, Home, Humor, ideas, India, inspiration, internet, Iraq, Islam, Jesus, John McCain, Journal, Kids, Leadership, Life, Links, Love, marketing, Marriage, Me, Media, Misc, Miscellaneous, Money, Movies, Music, Musings, My Life, Nature, News, Obama, Opinion, Parenting, penguin, People, Personal, Philosophy, photography, photos, Physics, Pictures, Poems, Poetry, Political, Politics, Pop culture, Prayer, Projects, Psychology, Questions, Quotes, Race, Ramblings, Random, Rants, Recipes, Reflections, Relationships, Religion, Research, Review, Reviews, School, Science, Sewing, Sex, Shopping, Society, Software, Spiritual, Spirituality, Sports, Stories, Stuff, technology, television, The Page, Theology, Thoughts, Travel, trends, TV, Unanswered, United states, Update, USA, video, Videos, web 2.0, Welcome, Women, work, World, Writing, YouTube

US Marketers Losing Confidence in TV

<Update 03/02/08: More advertising shifts here>

Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The US based Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research’s fourth biennial TV and Technology survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials.

Wow.

There is a bit of me that is surprised that someone somewhere still feels the need to research TV and marketing; but with so much money spent on TV advertising it is very understandable that TV is being scrutinised so heavily, and for so long.

Here’s the science bit…

• 2/3s of C-level-executive respondents said they are watching the medium closely, up from just half two years ago
• 87% of respondents said they were going to be spending more on web ads in the coming year.
• 62% percent of marketers believe traditional TV ads have become less effective during the last two years.
• 50% of marketers reported that when half of all TV households use DVRs, they will cut spending on TV advertising by 12%.
• 87% percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment is the key to TV advertising in the coming year, and 65% of them are eager to try ads in online TV shows.

And emerging technologies continue to lure marketers looking to experiment.

• 43% would like to try interactive TV ads
• 55% are interested in ads embedded in VOD; and
• 32% would like to try ads attached to the set-top-box menu.

With the proliferation of new media, media agencies have stepped up their game to help clients deal with the changes. Two years ago, just under half the agencies reported they were ill-equipped to address changes in TV advertising, whereas only 28% did so this year.

But quite surprisingly it is the creative agencies that are falling behind, according to marketers:

• 47% of them said their agency was ill-equipped to deal with the changes, a mere 8% improvement from two years ago.

By the way the study was conducted in January 08 and is based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers across all major industries and categories in the US.

Filed under: Advertising, Analyst, Business, Forrester, Measurement, Media, Online, Research, Strategy, TV, digital, marketing, technology , ad formats, Advertising, Advertising confidence, ANA, Association of National Advertisers, Forrester Research, TV, TV Advertising