Posts tagged online
The alternative to charging for content – and still make money
Mar 10th
Publishers are faced with an ever growing challenge as print sales slip and readers largely reluctant to pay for content online.
Sure they could start simply churning out advertorial. That would surely keep the advertisers happy, but where’s the editorial credibility or ethics?
A new tool could well be the much sought after holy grail offering to monetise content both ‘seamlessly’ and ‘ethically’.
It comes from Skimlinks, a content monetisation service that we picked up on UTalkMarketing some time ago, and now operating on more than a half million sites - blogs, newspapers, content networks and forums - worldwide.
Fans include the Mirror.co.uk, whose Head of Digital, “SkimKit places the content and the commercial opportunity together,” said Paul Hood, has praised the content and the commercial mash-up.
“The editors have complete control over the content that they’re selecting and the commercial happens automatically. We’re not missing any opportunities,” he adds cheerfully.
Skimlinks helps website publishers by automatically turning normal retailer links in their editorial content into affiliate links. Each time a user clicks through and makes a purchase, the website earns a commission from the retailer. Simples, eh?
So why is it important? Well, the service is ideal for publishers lacking the resources or capacity to harness affiliate marketing as a revenue source, in a market that industry analysts predict will grow to $4 billion in the U.S. by 2014.
Now a new desktop tool – SkimKit – aims to empower editors and bloggers to easily produce revenue-generating content in a way that critically distances them from the commercial side of the process.
The tool offers a live, searchable database of millions of products from Skimlinks’ merchants. The tool lets publishers research, find and link to products they are writing about, with immediate access to deeplinks and image URLs.
It also features a service that creates shortened, monetised links for use in Twitter and email newsletters, turning a means of communication into a potential revenue source.
While SkimKit makes the creation of content more efficient for publishers, it is also more lucrative. So, if a publisher chooses to feature a product found in the tool, they earn a commission on the sale.
“Skimlinks gives publishers a way to generate revenue streams beyond banner ads and text ad units by making the most of the commercial value of the content they are already writing,” says Alicia Navarro, CEO and co-founder of Skimlinks.
“SkimKit makes it even easier by allowing editors and bloggers to actively play a role in the monetisation process without feeling any impact on their integrity or impartiality, as they are still writing about the kinds of products and retailers they normally write about.”
Why marketers need to target women online
Mar 8th
It is international Women’s Day and what better day to talk about how to target this avid consumer online.
According to a Publicis Groupe survey, 88 per cent of the household disposable income is controlled by the lady of the house and advertisers are beginning to notice that the internet is becoming another place where they can reach women.
According to web measurement firm Media Metrix, women represent 48% of all internet users, with studies by Jupiter Communications, NFO Interactive, and NetSmart America all predicting the number of women will soon surpass the number of men online.
The November statistics from Media Metrix found the types of web sites with the highest composition of women included toy retailers, women’s portals (such as iVillage), greeting card sites, retail savings sites, and health sites.
The online world is beginning to mirror its brick-and-mortar counterpart in appealing to consumers who have both the greatest spending power and the most enthusiasm for the shopping experience.
There are now 86% of women using social networks, a 48% increase over 2008, according to a new study from SheSpeaks.
Social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have become drivers of purchase intent among women, with 50% of social media users reporting they have purchased products because of information on social networking sites. Furthermore, 40% have used coupon codes found on social networks.
Women have become more comfortable using social media, and for marketers, the overall growth and habitual use of social media represents opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase decisions.
Collette Dunkley, CEO of XandY Communications, told UTalkMarketing that the importance of presenting products and services that meet women’s needs is vital, together with brand communication which fully understands the way women think and interact with communication.
Ads during Oprah and The View just aren’t cutting through anymore. Online is where is at for women.
Dunkley says that women are influenced by different types of marketing and communications and there needs to be a long-term commitment to communicate better with them.
Taking advantage of digital. Murdoch might be on to something…
Feb 12th
Given the disastrous circulation figures in the magazine industry, it’s no wonder the newspaper industry is looking to protect itself. Pay walls might actually be the way to go – just as long as they can get advertisers on board.
The debate about pay walls rages on in the media industry. Rupert Murdoch sure is determined to protect his vast empire, despite that fact his company, New Corp, continues to do well. But if the magazine ABCs are anything to go by, ‘ol Rupert might actually be on to something.
Yesterday’s ABC figures for consumer magazine sales for July to December show serious decline across the industry.
The PPA sold it like this: “In a world of ever more free content on the TV, radio and the internet, the UK public bought well over 1 billion magazines in 2009 and more than 85 per cent of UK adults continue to buy magazines.”
But figures reveal that the sector is continuing into decline consumer magazines falling by 1.3 per cent in the second half of 2009.
Yes we can attribute that to tough trading conditions, but it’s not like the economy is showing any signs of a full recovery anytime soon.
In the past couple of years, as advertisers have fallen away from magazines and favored other avenues such as sponsorship, magazine titles have looked to ramp up their digital activities.
However, magazine websites often only provide the reader with bitesize information and teasers, requiring the reader to then go buy the magazine that has ‘just hit newsstands’.
With the take-up of Kindle’s and the iPhone, consumers no longer need the physical magazine in their hands and are lacking in the time to actually sit and read them cover to cover.
But people do still read online. That we know. So perhaps if magazines offered online subscriptions they would increase their lunch-time reading audiences and advertisers would likely follow.
The advantage of the pay wall, as Murdoch sees it, is that readers can read both the online and printed version for one price. So if you have a subscription to, say the New York Times, and never read it in the printed version, the revenues from the pay model online will still trickle down keeping both versions alive.
It’s the best of both worlds. Or is it? What do you think?
The magazine industry has to do something now if it wants to protect its future. But first and foremost, it has to reassure its advertisers that it at least has a plan.
Reputation, reputation, reputation is key to online success
Dec 1st
When it comes to doing business online, you can mess with your location as much as you like – but don’t risk your reputation.
If you build a good reputation on the web, people will link to you. If people link to you, other people will follow those links, and you will build up your traffic and your business. And the more good quality and relevant links you have, the higher you will rise up the search engine listings. More and better links means better rankings on Google, too.
Whether buying a house or opening a shop, there’s an old saying that the most important factors are location, location and location. But how does this work out on the internet?
Your web server can be physically located in a data centre almost anywhere in the world. Potentially, you can run an online business as effectively from a beach in Majorca as you could on Oxford Street.
One of our customers a few years ago even succeeded in managing his store while halfway up Mount Everest!
So when it comes to doing business online, you can mess with the location as much as you like. But the one thing you don’t want to mess with is your reputation.
If by action or inaction you manage to damage your reputation, the world can hear about it very quickly; via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter. There is an endless list of media by which disgruntled customers can spread their complaints about your business. Do you monitor them? Would you know?
On the internet it’s not location, location, location; it’s reputation, reputation, reputation that counts.
That means selling a quality product at a fair price, and looking after your customers. It also means watching what’s being said about you in social and interactive media, and taking every opportunity to intervene positively and turn disappointed customers around.
Before you pay to use Twitter, ask yourself if it’s worth it
Nov 27th
A new report say that the majority of companies are planning to increase their spend on social media activities next year, but will it be worth it?
The Social Media and Online PR Report from Consultancy reveals that fewer than a quarter of companies are able to see a ‘tangible’ return on their investments, while just under two thirds had gained ‘more benefit’ from their spend ‘but nothing concrete’.
However, companies that have concentrated spend on social media have seen a return on investment with more than half of all firms that had made a significant effort saying that they had seen return.
Some 90 per cent of respondents said that social media is taking up more time than it did a year ago, while 86 per cent are planning to increase their budgets next year.
But you can’t ignore the recent comScore figures about users declining. Recent figures have shown that the number of users on Twitter has actually declined in the past three months, with growth down by 8.1 per cent.
Are users simply over the hype of Twitter?
Twitter launched in March 2006, two years after the social network that started them all, Facebook, which launched in March 2004. It’s taken almost three years, but the site now has more than 92 million users worldwide.
To put that in perspective, radio took 38 years to reach just half the amount of current Twitter users – 50 million. TV took 13 years and the internet, four.
Social networking isn’t just a fad, it is fundamentally changing the way we communicate, as we discovered at our Social Media roundtable earlier this year.
A number of major advertisers and brands have used Twitter as a way of communicating directly with their customers, but not only are new users down, Nielsen data reveals that traffic to Twitter was down 27 per cent during September and October. That means less eyeballs seeing your tweets! And yet, co-founder Biz Stone announced this week that the site will be launching paid accounts next year.
The site is also considering signing further deals with companies to licence its content and live streams, just as it did recently with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft’s Bing, that will see your tweets in search results. But it also means that your tweets will have to spot on, full of key words and be engaging. Is this too hard to achieve for brands in just 140 characters?
As it is, only 10 per cent of Twitter users accounted for 90 per cent of all tweets as of May 2009. A study from Harvard Business School confirms that the typical Twitter user tweets “very rarely”, while the average number of tweets per user over a lifetime is just one. People are losing interest and brands and advertisers are failing to ‘tweet’ about anything compelling.
A report last week said that users on were tech-savvy and usually work in the media and marketing industry.
And surprise surprise, the brands they are talking about the most include Google, Apple and Amazon followed by a mix of tech companies and other strong global brands like Starbucks, Disney and HP.
But one of the biggest complaints made by Twitter users about brands on the site was that tweets need to be “more human”.
Using Twitter to promote brands just got harder. And while tweet may direct users to your website or attract them to deals or even just engage with your consumer, one must wonder if there is any real future in this micro-blogging site. Has the hype ended? Or has it just begun?
Twitter seems hell-bent on making next year it’s revenue year. But despite all the media attention, many are wondering what the future holds for Twitter and marketers will soon wonder if Twitter is worth the investment, especially when it competes alongside so many other social media sites that are yet to lose users or suffer declines.
Display advertising makes a comeback with new Google backing
Nov 24th
Google is investing in new technology that will tailor make display ads for individual users
Google’s rivals have struggled to compete against the search king when it comes to the search advertising marketing.
The giant has relentlessly implemented new technologies to ensure the effectiveness of its search advertising over the years to ensure its position as market leader – and it still commands a massive 65% share.
It has added weight to this with a stream of improvements each quarter designed to boost the monetisation of search results, increasing the click-through rate and ROI for advertisers, as well as Google’s own profits.
It is now on the war path of display advertising, as today’s news that it has bought Teracent, a private company whose technology is used to customise and target display ads, suggests.
Google’s acquisition is a warning to search rival Yahoo that the pace of innovation in the digital advertising market is picking up – post GFC.
Internet advertising is now worth £1.75 billion a year in the UK, which display advertising accounting for 18.1% (or £316.5m).
Most ad targeting on the internet tries to select the best advert to send to a particular user after making an estimate of things like his or her tastes, age and location. Teracent aims to go one better and has developed technology that designs what it thinks will be the best version of an ad to send to each individual user.
Advertisers who use the service basically hand over a collection of advertising elements to Teracent, which then combines and recombines them to reach what it believes will be the optimum result.
Its algorithms rely on machine learning: the more versions of an advert that are shown, the better it understands which will work best in each set of circumstances.
Targeted advertising is again rearing its head. It’s been touted by marketers as the next generation in marketing for years. The mobile advertising platform has given the idea further weight, but as far as we can see, no one has quite mastered individually ‘targeted’ advertising yet.
Will this new Google acquisition be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between consumers and ads?
It certainly sounds like it could change the way we see display advertising, but response rates are low (0.25% ) and that most consumers simply ignore display ads or are immune to them.
Could display advertising make a comeback if it has the backing of such a giant as Google?
We’d love to know what you think…
Business networking strikes back
Nov 19th
Bruce Townsend, online marketing expert at ecommerce & EPOS supplier, Actinic (www.actinic.co.uk)
Only a few years ago, networking was the thing that greased the wheels of business. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew, that built the reputation of your company. Whether at exhibitions and events, or in the local Chambers of Commerce, pressing the flesh and chewing the fat with like-minded people was the way to put the word about. Handing out bits of free advice opened doors for the occasional sales pitch, and brought the business rolling in.
The worldwide web changed all that. The online channel became the new growth opportunity, and on the internet it wasn’t who you knew, but what you knew that counted. Early conversations were about HTML and Perl script and how to physically create an online presence. As technology became easier to use, and more companies went online, competition increased and the debate switched to PPC and SEO, and how to get your web site visible in search results.
Today, we may be on the cusp of another switch. In the UK, 90% of searches go through Google. For any given search, Google only offers twenty places in the first page of results, and ten of those are adverts. It’s getting crowded at the top, and harder and harder for new entries to gain visibility.
But fear not, because rescue may be at hand. And guess what, it’s good old-fashioned networking in another guise. More and more businesses are gaining a foothold and building a profile online using social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, and business-oriented services like LinkedIn and Plaxo. Even Twitter, the bastard child of blogging and social networking, is being put to effective commercial use.
Initially dismissed by business skeptics, these sites are finding their place in the armoury of business marketing tools. Is your business represented there?
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