Coast Digital Blog

The internet is continually blamed for "killing" the film and music industry. What a load of rubbish!   

The film and music industry only have themselves to blame. They have spectacularly failed to recognise the internet as the biggest opportunity since CD's and DVD's.   

Perhaps if they had re-invested more of their profits into looking at ways to deliver digital content then they wouldn't be in the mess they are now.

It's about time these high paid executives woke up to the fact that digital content IS the future.  

One company that really understands the opportunity, and responds with great products and solutions, is Apple.  

The iTunes store has sold 4 billion songs since launch, and on Christmas day over 20 million songs were downloaded in one day! 

What Apple and iTunes demonstrates is that people are happy to pay for content as long as it's reasonably priced and easily accessible.

So last week I was excited to see that Apple has now launched iTunes movie rentals which will allow you to rent movies at the click of a mouse from just $2.99 per movie.  

With Apple's great iTunes user interface and all of the major film studios already onboard this is surely set to be a huge success.  

The other announcement from Apple last week was regarding the new improved Apple TV. This device plugs directly into your widescreen TV, requires no computer, and allows you to download and watch movies instantly in DVD and HD quality. 

You can rent or buy movies using Apple TV at the click of a mouse and start watching the movie within 30 seconds. And of course it's all highly accessible through a great user interface, which is something Apple has become justly famous for.  

Watch Steve Jobs announce the launch of iTunes movie rentals during his keynote speech at Macworld 2008.

With the loss of 25 million data records by HM Revenue & Customs towards the end of 2007, there are increasing calls from the UK Information Commissioner (ICO) for a tightening of our data protection laws.

With continued growth in online these issues are extremely important to anyone working in marketing & communications. Security scares & changes in legislation will affect us all; from reluctance from potential customers to surrender personal data to the imposing of stricter guidelines on how we treat data once it is in our possession.

But as a firm believer in the power of permission-based marketing I’m grateful that some positive good might emerge from such a monumental mishap.

We all need to take great care of the data in our protection and of course, of how we chose to use it. Following the HMRC debacle, news stories about loss of personal data have increased & there is rising concern among the public about privacy issues. The government is under pressure to do something. I predict that we’ll see changes to data protection legislation this year.

But what can I do to ensure compliancy with current legislation?
Online marketing is covered by the Data Protection Act & the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations. In relation to the latter the ICO website states:

“Unsolicited marketing material by electronic mail (including email, text & picture messaging) should only be sent if the individual has consented to receive them, unless the individual's details were obtained in the context of a commercial relationship & the marketing is for similar products or services.

The individual should always be given the opportunity to opt out in every message.

The ICO is working with its European counterparts & the US to try to reduce spam. There is currently no specific legislation to cover email sent to business addresses.”

In relation to the above it is essential that privacy statements are clear, concise and easy to understand. And of course it is absolutely essential that data is kept clean & up-to-date.

With the possibility of new legislation there’ll be a real chance that databases might shrink as we’re all impelled to remove obsolete records. I’d welcome such a move as both a marketer and a consumer.

Cleaner data offers the chance to build better relationships. Permission-based marketing results in more intelligence about customers and their needs, enabling far greater targeting. It should be a win/win situation. Data is so valuable it’s imperative that it is kept secure and protected from misuse at all times.

With Google continuing to dominate the UK paid search market, it’s interesting to reflect on how their position is bolstered by the availability of online training on AdWords and pay per click.

Since 2004 Google have supported their AdWords product with free online training. Many search agencies and individuals use Google’s online training to become certified Google Advertising Professionals (GAP).

Attaining GAP status is good for business, staff morale and achieving greater results in Google. All of the online marketing team at Coast Digital are GAPs. In fact we were one of the very first companies to achieve qualified status.

Some of the criteria for qualification include: demonstrating a full understanding of the AdWords advertising model through management of two or more campaigns over a 90 day period; consistently meeting Google standards and delivering results of the highest level. Achievement of a pass mark of 75% in a final exam is also required.

The team have benefitted enormously from undertaking this training, but it raises the question of why Yahoo and MSN don’t support their products with a similar approach? Their apparent declining position in the market place only goes to underscore the opportunity they are missing. Google’s training tools help us to do a good job even better. And for Google it’s a win/win situation.

If I speak about “optimisation” people naturally assume I am talking about the practice of search engine optimisation, or “SEO” as it’s otherwise known. But optimisation should mean a whole lot more than just SEO.  

When considering the optimisation of your website you need to consider not only how search engines will see it but also how people will use it. So here is a quick guide to help you optimise for all of your web marketing, not just your search engine results!

Optimise the user experience

All too often I see companies’ spending money on internet advertising and search engine marketing when their websites offer a poor user experience. There is little point in driving traffic to a website if it fails to engage, or even worse, offers a confusing user experience. Generally speaking people prefer simple websites with clear, uncluttered screens and logical site navigation. So the message is “keep it simple”.

Optimise your landing pages

If you are considering running an online advertising campaign then you should review your campaign landing pages. These are the pages people will hit when they click through to your website. The more targeted the landing pages, the better the response rates and the more successful the campaign. So optimise your campaign landing pages and make sure there is a clear “call to action”.

Optimise your logistics

If you are launching a web marketing campaign then you will need to ensure the order fulfilment process is smooth and trouble free. Too many companies launch online marketing campaigns without considering the logistical issues of order fulfilment. Take time to carefully plan your logistics, paying particular attention to ensuring you have sufficient stock and dedicated resources to handle fulfilment, returns and customer services.
 
Optimise your relationship marketing

It can cost a lot of money to acquire every new customer online. So you need to make sure you put a strategy in place to communicate with your customers on a regular basis, in order to help retain them.

Communication should be personalised wherever possible and based on your users’ specified areas of interest. Implement data capture and personalisation techniques via your website and start to build “relationships” with your customers online. Use email newsletters to keep them informed and questionnaires to capture feedback and new ideas. 

Optimise your results

So now you have a great website that’s working well for your business. Don’t forget to use an analytics package to further optimise your campaigns. Analytics isn’t just about how many hits or visits you’re getting. You can use an analytics package to see where visitors are dropping off your website and gain insight into user behaviour. Take the findings and use them to make your website even better!

Optimise for search engines

Of course it goes without saying that you also need to optimise your website for search engines – both for paid and natural search. A good SEO agency can assist in getting you to the top of the search engine results pages and can also advise on set up and management of pay per click campaigns. 

Overall optimisation

I believe it’s important to take a holistic approach to optimisation. This approach will yield significant benefits, which as we’ve seen, involves much more than just optimising for your position in the search engine listings. The best method to ensure overall and powerful optimisation is by working with an agency which can advise on a whole range of online issues, both commercial and technical.

Google’s surpassed itself again by (according to comScore) powering more than half of all online searches by itself.

That’s right. It sounds insane, but Google powered more searches than Yahoo, Badiu, MSN/Live, NHN, eBay, Time Warner, Ask, Fox and Lycos combined in August this year.

In the UK Google’s grasp is actually much higher, somewhere more in the region of 75% of searches, and this seems to be increasing all the time. It's no surprise then that Google’s share prices have recently gone above the $600 mark!

This makes you wonder, how much longer the other big players such as Yahoo, MSN and Ask will be able to hold on as competitors.

Over the past couple of years the internet has increasingly dominated my life – so much so that I get a bit panicky when I’m ‘offline’. Working in digital media has sharpened my senses to the fundamental shift that’s taking place, but it’s staring each of us in the face really.

Nearly every day there’s yet another news story about Facebook or some other aspect of the internet. It makes me wonder how much more our lives are going to change in the next few years.

One change I’m acutely aware of is that if I want to read the news, and I mean the ‘breaking’ news, I certainly won’t find it on my television. Citizen journalism is a reality – stories are ‘broken’ by people at the scene, by texting, blogging, emailing and taking pictures, even videos, and posting them online.

For example, there was a major incident at Liverpool Street Station recently during the evening rush hour. A huge exclusion zone was set up sealing the whole area off. I learned this from a friend at the scene who called me. Concerned, I switched on my TV news channel… and nothing. The ‘breaking news’ on TV had been the same all afternoon. But had I been able to get online I’m sure I’d have found out what was happening.

Most ‘old’ media businesses worth their salt woke up to this reality years ago. Check out the BBC’s help us make the news feature or The Guardian’s news direct to you range of functionality; with g24 you can even print off your own PDF for a more old-fashioned read – updated every 15 minutes.

The Guardian has arguably been at the forefront of successfully translating traditional journalism online – with their website updated by the minute, winning awards, and offering amazing usability and choice. There’s an astonishing level of engagement with their huge range of blogs, where a new post can collect hundreds of comments in literally minutes.

As Howard Owens – a prolific journalist/blogger – recently stated:

“The user is in control. They decide what, when, why, where and how to consume media. Users aren’t interested in newspaper deadlines and their desire to have the full story before publishing. They want to know what we know when we know it. They want their news now.

People want to participate. They want to talk back. They want to add to our stories, correct us and just spout off as need be with their own opinions."

Absolutely. And I welcome the ongoing efforts on the part of publishers to embrace the web, but what I’m really looking forward to is someone inventing a way for me to find the time to read everything.

The New York Times has decided to drop its TimeSelect subscription service, which allows users into certain parts of the website.

What’s the reason for this? Search engine optimisation.

The TimeSelect service has produced over $10 million in revenue for The New York Times since 2005, so why drop it?

Well, if they continue with a relatively small amount of subscribers, they can continue earning a similar amount of money per year. But if they open their pages up to the public, and more importantly, the search engines, then the volume of traffic will increase dramatically.

They can then use this extra traffic to generate extra ad revenues on the site. As Vivian Schiller, senior vice president of The New York Times points out “our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising”.

This is a smart move from The New York Times, perhaps we’ll start seeing other big subscriber sites follow suit in the near future if it works out for the better! 

The adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing since 3 September. Searchers of the vast area of the Nevada Desert, where his plane vanished, have come up with a novel way to increase the chances of finding him.

Google has updated satellite imagery for the area on Google Earth with the result that hundreds of people are now scouring hi-resolution images looking for potential wreckage in an area that is approximately 17,000 square miles.

Coordination of the project has been enabled by Amazon. They’ve created a collaborative search scheme which is being delivered by their Mechanical Turk system. The Mechanical Turk is a website which pays people to complete tasks that computers would struggle to do, for example, assessing images.

Those taking part in the online search can flag images – it has been suggested the crashed plane would appear as an object about ’21 pixels long and 30 pixels in wingspan’. Flagged images are then passed on to the live search team.

I hope that digital technology may have a positive part to play in a scenario that is looking increasingly unhopeful.

I received my copy of the Yellow Pages last week - dumped outside my front door without my consent or knowledge. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't want the Yellow Pages anymore - I have enough junk mail and general rubbish to contend with without being forced to take delivery of this dinosaur.

It may have escaped the attention of Yellow Pages, but the vast majority of UK households now have high speed internet access. This means we can organise a pizza delivery and order a taxi at the click of a button. 
  
I was astounded to learn that 28.3 million copies of the Yellow Pages will be delivered to UK homes and businesses in 2007. What a complete waste of resources in every respect - the paper and ink required to print them, the electricity required to run the printing press, the fuel used to distribute and deliver them.

I appreciate that not everyone has access to the internet and some people still prefer to use the Yellow Pages book rather than go online, but wouldn't it make sense for Yellow Pages to only deliver the book to those people who requested it, rather than the other way round?

But this won't happen and I can tell you why. The Yellow Pages rely on high circulation figures for their book in order to justify their advertising charges. So it seems I will have to contend with having this dinosaur in my house gathering dust for at least a few more years to come. 

All statements are the writer's personal opinion and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of the employer.

Google has announced that it has started showing video ads while you’re watching videos on YouTube. The ads will be shown 15 seconds into the video you are watching but will only fill 20% of the screen. If after 10 seconds you haven’t clicked the ad, it will disappear.

Google are obviously realising the potential revenues they are missing out on, and projections suggest that these videos ads could generate $4.3bn dollars for Google in the US alone by 2011. That’s not bad, for a site that had no proven revenue model and was bought by Google for $1.65bn!

The only question is, how frustrating are these ads going to be? We all find TV ads annoying, and they don’t appear in the corner of the screen, distracting you from what you’re watching. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!