Category: Business

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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)

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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 ;)]

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Weblogs and PR

“Weblogs werden in Zukunft als Werkzeug eine wichtige Rolle in PR-Kampagnen spielen”, says Stephan Oehen of Klaus J. Stöhlker AG (PDF). Therefore they launched their own Weblog in March/April, 2005.

As a professional PR agency with self acclaimed fast decision making, it’s pretty astonishing it took them that long to come to this conclusion.

So, know who you choose as your consultant.

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google comes to zurich, switzerland :)

nzz: google kommt nach zürich (in german)

welcome in switzerland, google! :)

here’s nzz’s interview with urs hölzle (in german) (his google hp). Interesting. I like urs hölzle’s side-blow to the overly complicated us visa application customs :) concluding from his answers, zurich/switzerland seems to be a really good place for google’s european r&d branch office.. promising and probably a sign for other us companies to open a branch office in switzerland too ;)

[update: symlink-story (german), jobs at google’s branch office in zurich. google will be at the vis kontaktparty on feb 2]