05.23.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:50 pm by altersage
I read a really interesting article on MSN vs Google the other day. What with the whole Google-DoubleClick thing, of course MSN has to reciprocate and get themselves on the level playing field once again.
Microsoft has said it would acquire aQuantive for $6-billion. This would effectively be one of its largest buys to date “to expand its push into Internet advertising through aQuantive’s tools for serving up online ads and tracking their impact.
The price just reflects the desperation that MSN must be feeling at this time towards Google’s purchase of DoubleClick which set them back a mere $3,1-billion. Yahoo had shortly after the purchase also followed in the Google steps and bought the further 80 percent of Right Media it did not already own for $680-million.
I especially loved a little phrase by ‘Toan Tran’ a Morningstar analyst who said that he is “..worried that Microsoft has Google tunnel vision.
All the recent purchases, it is clear the Multi-Channel Marketing is the way to go. How could it not be? The essence of Marketing is to be where your target audience will find you.
The web, cell phones, mobile games, TV, Radio, Print.
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12.20.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:13 am by altersage
I’ve been off the radar a bit of late, well to be exact, wow - just over a month!
Incredibly bad for a blogger!
In my defence, taking AlterSage from a part-time to a full-time has kept me busy to say the least. I love it though, even though I don’t get to Blog as often as I would like to.
With the impending New Year comes pending resolutions and I for one am adding blogging regularly to my (very long) list
2007 holds lots in store not only for me personally with the wedding around the corner and achieving some solid goals for AlterSage, but generally for the Online marketing community or anyone interested in it.
For South Africa specifically in 2006 we had
- the BarCamp sessions
- Geek Dinners hosted by Stormhoek
- Kicked off a few Online Marketing Seminars which were well attended by the more traditional media agencies and had some great speakers covering exciting topics
Apart from continuing the above in 2007 it will predominantly be the year for Consumer Generated Media (CGM) to take the SA market by storm properly. IMO of course
Given that we are already starting to see it break into our everyday lives more and more what with the revolutionary Stork advert…
The transcript:
Blogging… blogging. On the Internet, Mikey set it up for me. Kids these days know everything. It’s like your own website where you can speak up, play, inspire. I know, I used to find the Internet intimidating too. But this is amazing. It’s… my space where I can just express myself and when you sit back and read what you’ve written its like, Wow! This is me. My creativity.
All good and well, but searching I could not find a Blog for Stork anywhere today (and the ad has been circulating for about a month now)! Now I must congratulate Stork (Unilever’s) agency for recognising the phenomenon, but one would have thought that deciding to go down that path they would have set one up at least! Follow through….?
CGM is not just for the web savvy, it is for everyone and by everyone, young and old – which makes it so powerful…and that is what the advert is trying to bring across. Discovery, creativity and newness…should not be feared, but embraced.
I am not the only one that has commented about the Blog factor either, and as a prime example, this is where CGM plays an enormous role well in terms of Reputation Management online. It is relatively easy to track and the great thing is that you can always do something about it, therefore if set-up property you can, to a certain extent, control what people are saying about your brand or person.
If Stork’s agency is keeping an ear to the ground (or at least an eye on their monitors) with regards what consumers are saying we should be seeing a Blog relatively soon…
The NY Times posted a very interesting article on just that called Brands for the Chattering Masses. With new surveys showing that 90 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth suggestions, and that some make purchases based on such guidance this is definitely a space that everyone should be playing into.
To all my readers: Have a splendid Festive season!!
And if I don’t post before – fantastic New Year celebrations!!
Be safe, and if you’re taking a break rest well and come back refreshed for what promises to be quite a year 
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06.22.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:23 pm by altersage
Today MSN unveiled their new analytics site for (paid) Search marketers - AdLabs, sprung from this year’s earlier AdCenter release. It has been designed as an additional research site with online tools to make strategising keywords for campaigns easier.
With tools available for four classifications of paid arena, including: Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavioural Targeting and Emerging Markets, this adds another great resource to the SEO’s research library alike.
A few of the tools that are currently available are:
- Search Funnels - to analyze and visualize user search sequences in the form of funnels.
- Keyword Categorization Engine - to classify words into categories. For example, when a user types the word “camera” into the keyword categorization engine, a list of 15 categories appears in order of likely relevance; “lifestyle/hobbies” is at the top of the list, while “personal/health” is at the bottom.
- Demographics Prediction - Predict a user’s age, gender, and other demographic information, based on his or her online behaviour.
- Keyword Group Detection - Given a word or phrase, find a set of similar words.
According to Media Post Publications, the site will initially contain data for about 10 000 keywords which will grow to more than 10 million keywords in the next several months.
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