New iAds – Take a look at one of the first

This is a quick post to show one of the first iAds to appear on the phones over in North America. For those not sure on what the iAd is all about you can read more here, however essentially Steve Jobs from Apple is taking on everyone within respect to mobile advertising and has developed its own advertising platform for the iphone/ipad. Lots of controversy over this platform – however with Jobs stating that there will be 1 billion ad impressions a day on tens of millions of Apple mobile device users – you kinda have to take a look. After all – Apple has been pretty revolutionary to date. Read more…

What the Future Holds ?

Just read a great article on iMedia (by Jodi Harris ) today about the future and what it holds for technology. The interview was with Ray Kurzweil who is a renowned futurist and inventor (flat bed scanner, OCD recognition software etc). Basically his speciality is in pattern recognition in artificial intelligence and has been predicting with great accuracy the rates of advancements and change in regard to the internet and wireless technology. Read more…

Tags | Future marketing

Video display to boost online sales ?

I have been doing a bit of shopping online over the last 6 months and one area that has made a difference to my purchasing decision is the ability to view a video that is directly related to the product I am thinking of purchasing. I am not talking about finding the product and then researching to locate a product video that is related, I am talking about viewing the video on the site in question that sits right next to the add to cart button.

Here’s my example. I surf (as much as I can) and have for 30 years. So I know a bit about board design and functionality and the last thing you want to do is buy a board that just doesn’t work for you. Read more…

Tags | online sales, video ads

Who are you marketing to?

Hey – its been a while and we are incredibly busy finalising the AQR purchasing model.

And Yes – we are close …. I know we keep saying it but it is true.

This is just a quick note on the new generation and the impact of digital marketing. What is interesting to note is that we all acknowledge that the teenagers don’t have a credit card to shop online (unless of course they “borrow” your own), but an interesting study by Don Tapscott, who draws on the $4 million research project that inspired his new book, Grown Up Digital, outlines that these kids spend all of their time researching online before buying.

The comments that we need to alter the traditional method of the 4 P’s strategy is important for all business owners. The “Net Generation” are ad resistant and being raised in the digital marketing age can see a cheezy ad from miles away.

And in case your not convinced on the power of this market here are a few stats from the article

Taken from Business Week Article -Net Gen Transforms Marketing

“In the U.S., students earn almost $200 billion a year in part-time or full-time jobs, and in 2006, they purchased $190 billion worth of goods. What’s more, they influence their baby boomer parents. Net Geners age 21 and under influence 81% of their families’ apparel purchases and 52% of car choices. Even younger children have powerful sway, with those between 5 and 14 influencing 78% of total grocery purchases. And, as they age, their direct purchasing power will soar. In 2003, only 5% of cars were purchased by people born between 1980 and 1995; by 2020, this will climb to 40%. “

Lookout ….. their coming – better get ready.

Tags | digital marketing, net gen, online marketing trends

White Space Adserving Network

Well we have been working around the clock (ha … who isn’t in this industry) to finish off the adserving network and can happily say ……….. almost!

We are very close. Each day we test we realise we can make the interface and ability to purchase ads easier to use.
The irony is here that the simpler we make it for the user – the more complex the back end and code needs to be. It’s all for a good cause though!

Just to recap – the one thing that has bugged us over the years is the ability to understand exactly what it is worth to advertise on any given website. Many of you will have found a great site that really targets your precise demographic, only to find that you can’t get a reply on the advertising prices, they don’t know what it is worth, don’t offer any advertising or just price themselves out of the markets (YES … $10,000 is too expensive for 10,000 impressions).

I love the saying that if something bugs you, spend 5 minutes on how to improve it. If you can come up with a way to improve it in that time then you could be onto a good thing. Well here t WSM we ahve spent 12 months on it, so you know it is going to be great.

The short of it is that we have developed a score for each website that want to participate in the ad network. Each website that want to show ads on their pages (relevant ads mind you – not the crappy bingo type * sorry bingo guys) will receive a score out of 100. This score is known as an AQR™ – advertising quality rank™.

So the higher the AQR™ the more it will cost to advertise, but at least you also know how many visitors, the stick time, page impressions ….. even a score for how well a site is designed.

These factors plus dozens more make up the AQR™ which in turn allow you to browse our network and effectively benchmark sites at a glance BEFORE throwing money at them. Obviously we will provide weekly reports on how many impressions and click throughs etc just to make sure you understand the ROI for each campaign.

You can book the ads direct through us and even organise the creation of your creatives (if you don’t have any). We would like to think that any company looking to increase their brand recognition, promote a new service or sell products can spend 15 minutes in our network and spend a percentage of their online ad budget without any guesswork.

Your right ….. this is not new – in fact the IAB has reported here that Internet advertising revenues reached $5.8 billion for the first quarter of 2008, showing that advertising online will become the norm for most businesses. What we are doing is trying to simplify things to make your adplacements as profitable and effective as possible for you organisation – transparency, that’s what we are going for here.

Stay tuned….. just a bit longer

Tags | Buying adspace, online ads