DIGITAL MARKETING AND DIGITAL MEDIA INDUSTRY NEWS AND EVENTS

MOBILE  For me, ever since I switched my focus from the fixed Web to Mobile in 2000 it has been the year of Mobile that never really permeated in to mainstream media. I think the reason for this is simple yet not seen as obvious to most, as Mobile as a communication device has played in two main streams since the first voice call in 1946.
Read on

Management World Delivers Information & Solutions that Only TM Forum Can Provide
Read on

INDUSTRY TALK  On this weeks show we are joined by community legend Thayer Prime. We talk about her awesome name, and how she got started in tech. Thayer provides some killer tips on how to break into the industry, discusses how brands are attempting to engage with developers, the challenge of marketing to developers and her latest project, recruiting for the Government Digital Service.
Read on

START UPS  Steve Baty who will be speaking at Xmedia Lab Sydney 8-10 June, gives us some ideas on the when, the why and the how to start a business. Steve is a Principal at Meld Studios, a Sydney-based design studio and President at IxDA, a global network dedicated to professional practice of interaction design.
Read on

INDUSTRY TALK  I had a client agency meeting in London a while back and around the table sat 12 people all of us pontificating about a product predominately bought by women. Represented were developers, project managers, media strategy, creative and the social guru. Out of 17 all were men and nobody saw the irony. This is something we should address urgently?
Read on

Johns reaction: Has the fight back started?

ADVERTISING & MARKETING While U.S. newspapers wage a long-standing fight for print advertising and subscribers, they managed a slight gain in circulation, fueled by increases in digital circ. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations latest twice-annual report on newspaper circulation, average daily circ for 618 measured newspapers rose 0.68 percent, with Sunday circulation for 532 papers rising 5 percent. The report compares the six months ended March 31, 2012, to the year-ago period. On average, digital circ accounted for 14.2 percent of newspapers' total circulation in the six-month period up from 8.7 percent a year earlier. Digital circulation could include tablet and smartphone apps, replica PDFs, e-reader editions and restricted-access websites.
Read on

The Premier eCommerce Event In Europe A Multi-Channel Retail Conference...Only Different
Read on

Johns reaction: THoughts on how we measure the latest fad...

SOCIAL MEDIA Did you detect the sarcasm in that statement Two nights ago at Social Slam in Knoxville, Tennessee, I got asked if Pinterest is the hottest thing since... well, the last hottest thing (let's call it Instagram for argument's sake), then (not even twenty-four hours later), I'm on a flight home, reading USA Today when the top headline for the Money section is: "Pinterest growth curve levels off." So, that's it We've already fallen out of love with Pinterest According to the article in the newspaper: "...meteoric growth for the overnight app sensation slackened, according to two market-research firms. The image-bookmarking site and social network drew 18.7 million unique visitors in the U.S. in March, compared with 17.8 million in February and 11.7 million in January says comScore."
Read on

Johns reaction: Couldn't agree more. Funnels are tools used by agencies to explain the complex process of flogging products and services. However the reality is like many things a matrix, check out the Paul Adams video in Articles.

ADVERTISING & MARKETING The funnel is a lousy metaphor for measuring conversion. In real life, funnels let everything pass through a 100% conversion rate if you will. A better metaphor would be a sieve, or buckets with holes in them. But my problem with funnels isnt the metaphor. Its the mindset. The funnel ignores how the web works. It presumes that users are dropped into this vacuum from which we control their destiny. If a user didnt go from step 2 to step 3 then we need to tweak some copy or test new buttons. To paraphrase Billy Beane: were not solving the problem, were not even looking at the problem. Lets see where the funnel breaks...
Read on

START UPS  We are joined by London Tech Stars Natalie and Simon from Lanyrd to talk about building a startup on your honeymoon, the experience of going through Y Combinator, and raising $1.4 million of venture money.
Read on

Johns reaction: Another arrow to put in your quiver

INDUSTRY TALK Since Pinterest was founded in 2008, it's proven one thing: People love their visuals. And it looks like the site is becoming a hot space for online video marketing opportunities as well, with its recent integration of the Vimeo platform.
Read on

Johns reaction: Great overview of two leading crowd sourcing products, ODesk and Mechanical Turk.

ADVERTISING & MARKETING A question that I receive often is how to structure tasks on Mechanical Turk for which it is necessary for the workers to pass training before doing the task. My common answer to most such question is that Mechanical Turk is not the ideal environment for such tasks: When training and frequent interaction is required, an employer is typically better off by using a site such as oDesk to hire people for the long term to do the job.
Read on

START UPS  Justin Boswer from cloud based CRM and Marketing company HTK Horizon, recently crowned "Britain's Brightest Business", joins the boys for chat. They cover how to build a company organically, and the future of customer relationship management. Hear more from Justin in the accompanying Podcast, including the challenges of running a business from a small town.
Read on

Johns reaction: image is everything these days...

ADVERTISING & MARKETING But as Bob Dylan famously said, the times they are a changin , and social media seems to be doing it more frequently than other marketing channels. The most recent trend to come to social media is the dominance of visual content. Facebook has turned its walls into timelines and Pinterest, the online photo scrapbooking site, is now the number three social network in the country for total visits, and videos and infographics are peppering blogs everywhere.
Read on

PEOPLE  Welcome to Digital People where this time we highlight views from several of the most experienced people in the digital media industry. Rapid change & evolution in digital media is also raising multiple challenges. Here we focus on some of these challenges with suggested solutions. Please add your opinion - What do you think the digital media industry can do better right now?
Read on

ADVERTISING & MARKETING  A ton has been written recently about the current craze around influence scoring. Klout in particular has been under the spotlight for attempting to summarise a persons social influence down to a single number. Should we care about our scores? Well personally I'm torn, so here is my brain dump pro and against.
Read on

A two day international showcase (conference + exhibition) to spotlight the best of digital entertainment content creation, applications, solutions and strategy innovations to engage with audiences across multiple platforms: Internet, Mobile, IPTV, Conn
Read on

INDUSTRY TALK  Do people really want high quality products? Do they even want standard products designed for specif problems? Is creating something personal, even of moderate quality, much more satisfying that consuming something made by others, even something of high quality? I suspect for many it is and this is a growing market.
Read on

Johns reaction: Always interesting to see how the big boys are dealing with Social, here is Accentures take on the possibilities.

ADVERTISING & MARKETING In an age of information overload and unlimited choices, any marketer worth their salt knows that brand engagement is driven by providing precisely relevant experiences that attract and hold the attention of each consumer. Consumer relevance cannot be episodic. Maintaining relevance continuously as consumers move seamlessly from one interaction point to the next is a new demand of the digital age. The imperative for consumer relevance requires a brand to harness deep contextual knowledge about each consumer and apply it intelligently to create persuasive experiences at every touchpoint. This ability to be relevant at scale , will determine which brands win and which brands get lost in the war for consumer attention. To deliver relevant experiences at scale companies need to be able to tap into the wealth of data sources that provide valuable signals on what can attract and hold consumer attention at any moment in time not just data about geo-location, gender and age, product preference or purchase, but also more importantly likes, interests and who they talk and listen to. With the explosive growth in the use of social media, social networks provide a richness of data that can help build more precise insights into consumer context and will allow companies to tailor brand experiences making them more compelling, more persuasive and more relevant.
Read on

SOCIAL MEDIA  How many articles have you read today on how to have a conversation with your colleagues, make an appropriate phone call or give the best damn handshake you can? None I hope. That's because we all know instinctively how to communicate; we've been doing it all our lives. It's part of our DNA. Making connections and building relationships is what we're all about.
Read on