Author: Daniel Mettler

Posted on

Contextual advertising on the web

An interesting study: Routes to success for consumer magazine websites (PDF) (Reuters)

Most sites have gained new advertisers on the web who do not advertise in the print products.
The proportion has risen from 53% in 2003 to 66% in 2005.
The web-only advertisers are attracted by a range of factors. These include the interactive
possibilities, the ability to receive sales leads or direct response, the size of the audiences
available, the new/different audiences on offer, and the measurability of the internet audience.
Speed of delivery and updating is another attractive feature.
20% of the sites offer contextual advertising – that is, relating the ads shown on-screen to the
keywords that surfers employ when using search engines.

Contextual advertising obviously gains popularity among advertisers.

(via Rogers Blog)

Posted on

The meaning of blogs..

..or rather one of the meanings of weblogs:

WSJ: Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights
Slashdot: Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights

A note about the importance of mouth-to-mouth advertising, with blogs being one of its incarnations on the Internet:

NOTRE DAME USA — Ob ein Kinofilm zum Kassenschlager wird, hängt davon ab, was die Besucher der ersten Vorstellungen darüber erzählen. Das zeigte ein US-Physiker anhand eines mathematischen Modells, mit dem er den Erfolg von 44 Kinostreifen untersuchte. Demnach kann die Mundpropaganda die Besucherzahlen langfristig stärker beeinflussen als das Marketing oder die Grösse des Publikums, das ursprünglich mit dem Film angesprochen werden sollte. (Sonntagszeitung p. 81, June 19, 2005)

In English:
“Nature” article: Modellers measure ‘word of mouth’ for films
Original paper: The effect of social interactions in the primary life cycle of motion pictures

Currently, many companies are discovering blogs as an important medium to get in contact with customers and opinion leaders. And more and more consumers realize that they can actually have an impact on products and influence companies – through blogging.

In fact, blogs are “just” the beginning.. stay tuned for more information.

[Update: Related news: “The first-ever conference on measurement, metrics and standards in word of mouth marketing” organized by womma – the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (I doubt it’s the “first-ever”, though ;)]

Posted on

firefox’s deep impact

I got forwarded to this site when entering “asterisk@home” in firefox‘s URL bar[1]:

NASA’s Deep Impact

Strange coincidence, but interesting :) And excellent PR probably, considering the date of the event: 4th of July 2005 ;)

[1] Entering some keywords in firefox’s URL bar is a very convenient way to do an “I feel lucky” search with these keywords on Google. Works with most keywords (e.g. enter “Daniel Mettler” and you’ll end up on this site ;) The above redirection to NASA’s site works with “everything@home”. Amazing.

Posted on

MS feedback :)

A premiere for me:

That’s pretty cool :) I always asked myself what MS will be doing with all the many error reports I already sent them. Do they just pipe them to /dev/null? Collect them in the marketing department to do some data mining on how much more stable product xy is than product yz? Forward them to Bayer so they can send me a free pack of Aspirin in order to fight the headache these bugs are causing? ;)

Well, after all, MS seems to use these reports to actually *fix* the errors (surprised? ;). Or at least some of them ;) And they inform their customers about new patches if available.. nice reward for sending bug reports! :) Like this, the whole thing makes sense. Instant feedback, that’s what customers want nowadays.