ADVERTISING & MARKETING  What is marketing about if not engagement? But what it is and how do you measure it? The fact is that the most important metric is the most poorly defined word in the ad industry lexicon. Watching an ad, talking to a call centre, wearing a label, tasting a cool beer on a summers day, chatting with friends about a product, using a branded app, all are engagements and all matter, yet most of them happen outside of the view of any reliable measuring technology, at least those I know about. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  Your media kit is a key decision making trigger for potential buyers when assessing where to place their advertising investment and is often a first introduction to your brand. To maximise your chance to either appear on their buying schedule, be asked for further information or to produce a proposal, it's important the information in your kit gives an effective overview of the features and benefits you provide. Here's 10 tips to consider when producing your media kit as a showcase to potential advertisers - Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  The retail industry has been slow to take the plunge into online media, compared to other industries such as automotive, banking and finance and travel. The market is rife with agencies, publishers, consultants and digital experts predicting that 2010 will be the watershed year for retail. However a lot of retailers are yet to truly embrace the changing face of consumer behavior and media consumption. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  How can brands plan and deliver unified long term strategy, build value and engagement in the message fog created by continually splintering and fractured media and audiences? The answer might be in the new field of transmedia strategy. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  It has been said that the basic difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. The analogy can be applied to the effective difference between TV and the web, where TV generates emotional actions while the web leads to deliberation, then to conclusions, what cause either action (e.g. a sale) or inaction depending on the result of reason or logic having time to emerge. This limitation of web marketing is not understood by many digital planners still blinkered by the technology. Its time to stop talking about impressions or the latest version of Flash and to learn to love TV, as the future of the web is increasingly looking like a supporting actor to the starring role of TV. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  After many years selling both Marketing Automation databases and CRM databases, services and solutions in the Australian / New Zealand marketplace, I have below clearly explained the differences and hopefully to simplify the jargon. What is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Database? Simply, this is a database designed to allow an organisation to do three core things: Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  Gen Y are a group of people generally born between 1977-94 so are aged between 16 and 33, the baby Boomers are generally late 40's to late 60s age bracket. Gen Y's are a tech savvy generation with text messaging, Internet, iPods, to keep them socially connected, due to events such as 9-11 & Bali they "live for the moment". GenY is the largest group on Facebook however the over 35 sector is the fastest growing now fast becoming the Baby Boomers. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  Is now the time for new kind of communications business that connects marketing specialists with corporate marketers? Its been obvious for a while now that the generalist media era is coming to an end. No longer do a handful of large media outlets determine our news and entertainment the way they did during the last century. Increasingly we are turning to a multitude of specialist media providers to satisfy our many needs. Media consumption is splintering so rapidly that its difficult to keep track of the vast array of options available to us. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  It's no secret that some Australian websites continue to report traffic from their automatically refreshed web pages, even though the inclusion of this traffic is condemned by sectors of the industry because in most cases it significantly inflates the figures used in the market. To this point, the MFA have recently sent a letter to their media-buying members warning them about wasting money on auto-refreshing websites that could be serving ads that are never seen. Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  I recently realised how far the digital media industry has come in becoming obsessed with numbers. Numbers that we do not always understand. Whether it is an agency looking for rate card reductions, a publisher looking to grow their users, a network trying to hit a sales figure, we are all striving for a number. But are we adding value to the outcomes along the way? Read on