27 March 2009
· Filed under News
The Habari Digital Symposium was hosted at Spier on the 25th & 26th of March. It was a huge success & was a good opportunity to mix with colleagues, competitors, and industry leaders. Congratulations to Habari Media for arranging a great event!
Some valuable discussions were held, here’re some highlights:
Tom Bowman, VP of Strategy & Operations for BBC Advertising Sales
- BBC.com reaches 30 millions users
- BBC employes 3,000 journalists
- Pre-Roll in video advertising online is becoming an effective digital advertising medium & is available on BBC.com
- BBC places banners, but unsold space is not taken up with ‘flyers’ or self promoting banners – as a result the user only sees ads when they are there to be shown – enhancing the user experience & effectively managing attention span.
- To advertise on BBC.com in South Africa contact Habari Media – (021) 487 9100
Matthew Bull – Chairman of Lowe Bull Group & Worldwide Creative Director of Lowe Worldwide
Matthew spoke directly & honesty. He challenged agencies to step it up a notch in terms of creativity, as well as to incorporate holistic media plans that span the traditional advertising world and digital in a consolidated approach. Stella Artois was used as an immersive website & leading creative flagship. The Nike Human Race initiative also featured in Matthew’s discussion as an example of a global creative execution.
Lynne Clarke – Head of Media Propositions, EMEA, Microsoft Advertising
Lynne gave a dazzling display of the socially networked world and the opportunities this offers advertisers. Her presentation covered addressed the importance of selling to a user at the point of interest, e.g.: Bob & Ken chatting on MSN Messenger about a new movie, and a movie banner appears within Messenger promoting the movie.
To advertise on Hotmail, MSN, or MSN Messenger in South Africa contact Habari Media – (021) 487 9100
TNS Research Surveys
Karin du Chenne presented TNS’ mobile research; Rudo Maponga presented the Black Diamond research – which was particularly interesting & highlighted the need for advertisers to include this segment in their planning, with Black Diamonds currently spending in excess of R 250 Billion per year in SA. The need for transgration (cultural translation) of advertising was also highlighted, and Rudo emphasized that ads cannot simply be translated into different languages.
Thanks to Adrian Hewlett of Habari Media for giving back to the industry in such a generous way. The OPA (Online Publishers Association) is in safe hands!
Sean RIley
24 March 2009
· Filed under Important Stuff, News · Tagged electricity, global warming, save the planet, wwf
Received this from WWF today – worth the effort!
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On Saturday, 28 March 2009, at 20:30, millions of people worldwide will switch off their lights to make a statement of concern about the future of our planet as part of Earth Hour 2009, an event led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
WWF are inviting all our loyal supporters to take part in this historic and inspiring event.
Earth Hour 2009 hopes to reach 1 billion people worldwide. Already 1000 cities have agreed to take part, including, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Rome and Dubai with more signing up every day.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has honoured us by agreeing to be the patron of Earth Hour 2009. City of Cape Town Mayor, Helen Zille, Johannesburg Mayor, Amos Masondo and Durban Mayor, Obed Mlaba, have already pledged their names, along with othercelebrities such as Bryan Habana, Derek van Dam, Francois Pienaar, Freshlyground, Jo-Ann Strauss, Leon Schuster, Marc Lottering, Moroka Swallows, Ryk Neethling and The Stormers.
Add your name and support what could be the single most powerful demonstration of global solidarity on any matter in the history of the planet. And it’s so easy – your participation would entail:
Sign up on www.earthhour.org.za and register your support for action on climate change.
Spread the message to colleagues, friends and fa
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20 March 2009
· Filed under Increase Website Traffic, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing
OK, you have a website, you may even have some decent traffic, but you want to understand where it comes from & how you can get even more traffic.
Follow these tips to track & improve traffic.
1. Use good statistics
Without good information at your disposal, you can’t make informed decisions. Use your ISP’s provided statistics or, even better, Google Analytics.
2. What keywords are important?
Do you know which keywords will bring you the type of visitors you need? Research keywords, choose the most important ones, and also identify the level of competition for each keyword. Remember, if you target more refined keyword sets you should gain rankings on search engines (and via that, traffic) easier. For example, if you operate a beauty clinic in Camps Bay, target keywords such as ‘cape town botox’ or ’camps bay botox clinic’ instead of just ‘botox’ – which is clearly an incredibly competitive keyword.
3. Which keywords currently bring traffic?
Your statistics will reflect which keywords are currently bringing you traffic. Remember to use Google Webmaster Tools – a valuable tool for tracking crawl rates, keywords sending traffic to your website, as well as keywords you have rankings for but are not yet sending traffic your way. It is useful to know that your website increased in rankings for the keyphrase ‘cape town botox’ from position 90th to 81st even if it brings no traffic yet – it highlights a positive trend that underscores good SEO practices taking place in the background.
4. Pay Per Click Advertising
If you are running advertising, assess cost per click, conversion rates, and compare bounce rates (users that reach your site but leave immediately) between different advertising platforms. Some pay per click advertising platforms available in South Africa include Google’s Adwords and Ad Dynamo. Move expenditure towards the platform that performs better. Remember, the platform that sends the traffic at the best cost is the better performing one!
Sean Riley
18 March 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
Mashups have been around for a while. Mashups refer to functionality provided by leading websites to other webmasters who may want to embed their content or functionality in their own site, with just a little ‘cut & paste’ code. But are Mashups of value to a website & how can they enrich the user experience?
Examples
Popular websites that allow webmasters to mash-their-content-up include YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, Kalahari, and many more. Some mashups allow you to enrich you own content. For example, writing an article on travel in the Kalahari – use Flickr to display the latest relevant pictures! Want to earn revenue on your website? Partner as an affiliate with Bookings.com or recommend good reads & direct users to Amazon or Kalahari – and earn a bit of revenue along the way.
Guidelines
Many website owners get carried away. Rule of thumb: keep it simple – will the mashup enrich your user experience? If yes, go for it, but don’t let your website lose the message it aims to communicate! The definative mashup reference can be found at http://www.programmableweb.com
Sean Riley
17 March 2009
· Filed under Marketing, News, Search Engine Marketing · Tagged ad dynamo, digital advertising, internet advertising, online advertising, pay per click
Ad Dynamo, Entelligence’s proprietary contextual advertising delivery engine, has taken off with a surge. After less than 3 months since its official launch, Ad Dynamo has already hit daily ad delivery numbers exceeding 1 million advertisements delivered per day.
An Alternative Advertising Solution to Google
Ad Dynamo is poised as a real option for any business requiring additional digital channels on which to advertise their business, particularly in South Africa. South African advertisers are left with little choice other than Google, which is dominant in every sense of the word. Businesses have a growing need to be less dependent on a single supplier, and Ad Dynamo offers websites the opportunity to grow their traffic base.
Competitive Prices
As a new advertising platform that also operates on a Pay Per Click bidding model, Ad Dynamo’s youth in the market means that advertisers enjoy unprecedented low cost per clicks due to the lack of excessive bidding competition on keywords. Publishers (or website operators) also enjoy complete transparency on earnings – with Ad Dynamo offering publishers an alternative ad delivery platform to Google’s AdSense. Advertisements are contextually matched to each page on the website, ensuring optimal advertising performance that is not intrusive to the end user (the ads are relevant).
Publishers
Out network of publishers is growing daily, and the fact that any website owner can signup instantly on Ad Dynamo, cut & paste a small piece of code into their website, and begin earning revenue, makes it easy to start monetizing website content. The range of themes represented by our publishers is growing daily, but some key themes include: health & beauty, lifestyle, rugby, & jobs.
Sean Riley
16 March 2009
· Filed under News, Regulatory · Tagged anti trust, competition law
A recent report highlights anti-trust fines in SA to total R 359,9 Million since June ‘07.
Read more about the competition fines here.
Let’s see what happens with our case against Google South Africa as we head to the Competition Tribunal for a hearing. The fines are being earmarked for special projects, Google may yet inadvertently fund some development in South Africa!
Sean Riley
14 March 2009
· Filed under Cool, News · Tagged augmented reality, batman
Since a lot of the visitors to this blog have expressed interest in my recent article on Augmented Reality, here is a demonstration of the team at Entelligence’s endeavour of our own. We developed this example as a Batman prototype…
AR introduces some interesting print-digital marketing opportunities; you can also try the pattern below on your phone instead of paper, and it works pretty well too, as long as glare is kept to minimum!
Visit http://batman.entelligence.biz – print out the pattern provided & off you go!
Sean Riley
12 March 2009
· Filed under Cool
The following searches on Google should give you a giggle – enter these search criteria & search with either the normal search or the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ option (I specify which for each search phrase)
french military victories (I’m feeling lucky)
find chuck norris (I’m feeling lucky)
anti-war peace protestors (I’m feeling lucky)
the answer to life the universe and everything (Search)
worst band in the world (Search)
Please comment if you know of any others!
by Sean Riley
11 March 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged carolynne higgins
Entelligence welcomes Carolynne Higgins, our new head of digital marketing. We can’t wait to wow our customers with her!
9 March 2009
· Filed under Cool, News · Tagged extreme sport, mxit, win cash jumpshot
MXit have launched a new extreme sport – and I love it!
MXit Jumpshots offers anyone the ability to win $500 per week with their jumpshot.
What is a jumpshot? Below are a few examples, but basically you need a friend with a camera set to sport mode (so your shot doesn’t blur) in a position that will elevate you. What works well is jumping on sand dunes or ledges on the beach – the landing is soft & your friend can lie on the sand comfortably. It’s addictive & fun – I recommend it to anyone!
Sean Riley
