Monday, January 16, 2006

Copyright Battles Heat Up Abroad

Copyright law is a dinosaur; or maybe, calling it a BetaMax would be more appropriate. Like the ill-fated video tape format, intellectual property law had its place in history, but it simply doesn’t work with current technology anymore. Recent battles over implementation of copyright laws in France and Canada illustrate the need to rethink issues of content ownership.

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Sunday, January 15, 2006

ROI Silver Bullet: Fact or Fiction?

What’s holding back marketing managers from comprehensively measuring their Marketing spends and ROI?  Is it process? Technology? Mindset?  People?

Pat LaPointe, writing for CMO Magazine, suggests another possible reason: The Measurement Demon.

One such demon is called “The Silver Bullet Hunter.” This is a person, perhaps lurking in your very department, who “seeks the simplistic, single index to explain all aspects of marketing effectiveness,” says LaPointe, referring to that person’s search for a single “holy grail of measurement,” ignoring anything else as being “too complex.”

Think of it. What harried “feet-being-held-to-the-fire” Chief Marketing Officer wouldn’t pay a fortune to have the ROI Silver Bullet to show off to the CFO? “Hey, look at this: 300% ROI! I want a raise!”

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Friday, January 13, 2006

Online Video Advertising To Grow Nearly 300 Percent

The increase in broadband penetration to U.S. homes, combined with the rapidly increasing demand for interactive marketing services, has created huge growth potential for online video advertising. According to an eMarketer report, online video advertising will grow nearly 300 percent from 2005 to 2007. The report also shows by 2009 online video advertising will grow nearly 700 percent over 2005!

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AJAX Can Save Bandwidth

Macintosh rumor site MacRumors has published a report about the bandwidth saved by using an AJAX enabled page to update content during Macworld 2006 in San Francisco. Previously MacRumors, along with many other sites, would use page refreshing to reload the page every 30 seconds which of course causes increased server activity when thousands of people are viewing the site. By using AJAX to deliver updated content MacRumors was able to reduce the resources needed.

We peaked at approximately 103,000 simultaneous web visitors and 6,000 IRC viewers during the Keynote speech and transmited over 32 GB of data in a three hour period. If not for the efficiency of the MacRumorsLive AJAX update system, the same webcast would have required approximately twice as many servers and would have had to transfer almost 6 times as much data (196 GB).

AJAX really is more than fading yellow boxes or the latest buzzword, used correctly it can save bandwidth which in turn saves money.

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Your Product + iPod = Instant Media Attention

I thought I had seen just about everything that a person could plug their ipod into but I think with the Levi Strauss announcement of iPod jeans, the shark has officially been jumped. I’m not sure about the rest of the world but I’ve had iPod enabled jeans since the day I got my second generation iPod. My front pocket has worked as an iPod dock since day one, so unless the Levi jeans can charge my iPod as I walk I’d have to say this is the least useful iPod accessory ever. It sure got a lot of press earlier this week at Macworld though.

The most expensive iPod accessory ever is likely to be the new Chrysler you buy in 2006, for $175 (plus price of car) you can install the iPod Integration Kit. For those of you that bought a Chrysler this year it the kit can be retrofit to some 2005 models. I don’t often use my iPod in the car unless I’m travelling long distances, partly because I don’t like the mess of cables I have to deal with so this appeals to me a little bit. Unfortunately I have no plans to buy a Chrysler.

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