Clipmarks | alexpapa's clips

Online dating boosted by recession?

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:42:26 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: A most intriguing piece by The Economist states that dating sites seem to be doing rather well with the recession. The correlation between the Dow Jones falling by more than 100 points and the increase in the traffic of one of the dating sites was arguably the most astonishing of all facts presented in this article.

Clip Source: www.economist.com

Online-dating websites prosper in the recession

It may be that people have more time to devote to their private lives as the economy slows; that uncertain times increase the desire for companionship; or that living alone is expensive, whereas couples can split many of their costs.

25% of women said stress about the state of the economy made them more inclined to seek a long-term relationship. The company also noticed that the number of visits to its website was higher than average on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 100 points.

Back in September, users were sending 6,000 on-site instant messages a day, says Sam Yagan, OkCupid’s boss. Now that number is over 18,000.

“The majority of relationship discord stems from economic troubles,” he says. Instead of fighting, married people are taking stock of their lives. “They want to do something that makes them feel better about themselves,” Mr Biderman says, “and $49 is a tiny expenditure for a life-altering affair.”

Marketing budgets squeezed

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:14:53 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Just a few short months ago marketing agencies did not seem as worried as they are today even though data seemed pretty bad.

Clip Source: www.marketingcharts.com

Marketers are cutting costs, putting pressure on agencies to do more with less, and reducing budgets much more than they were six months ago

37% of respondents today plan to reduce budgets by more than 20%, up substantially from the 21% in the first survey.

Departmental travel and expense restrictions (87% vs. 63% in the previous survey)
Reducing advertising campaign media budgets (77% vs. 69%)
Reducing advertising campaign production budgets (72% vs. 63%)
Challenging agencies to reduce internal expenses and/or identify cost reductions (68% vs. 63%)
Eliminating or delaying new projects (58% vs. 61%)

“In the current economic environment, there’s a need for brand building that’s right for the times - that acknowledges consumers’ financial circumstances

For some marketers, that will mean skewing their media mix toward promotional spending and direct marketing. For others it will mean framing a new, relevant and timely brand message.

Skype turning profitable

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:39:17 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Skype showing an interesting performance in terms of acquisition of new customers or at least of opening of new accounts ( not necessarily the same thing).
Their seemingly sustainable quarterly profitability is also good news although it does not justify the price eBay paid to acquire Skype in the first place.

Clip Source: business2press.com

Internet telephone company Skype, an eBay company, has released impressive user numbers. The company now has 405 million users worldwide, and it is adding 380,000 new accounts daily. Skype continues to offer free calling between Skype users and low cost rates to all other physical phones. The company also posted a $45 million Q4 2008 profit, the 8th consecutive quarterly profit for the company. Skype also says 2.6 billion SkypeOut minutes were used, and SkypeOut minutes are estimated to be growing 61% quarterly, which will bring significantly more revenue to the company if the trend continues. Skype recently launched Skype 4.0, the biggest and most comprehensive upgrade to its service.

Should the Treasury's intervention be more targeted?

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:13:32 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Here's an interesting take on the Geithner plan for shoring up the banks' financial situation. The article makes a compelling argument as to why the plan is not really a great deal for would-be investors and definitely a loosing proposition for taxpayers. With my training in business management and finance I can see the validity of the issue raised here. In fact, I'd be in greater agreement with Nouriel Roubini's recent position that the banking system should be nationalized; with the understanding of course that only the payments and credit system for businesses and individuals would come under the government's fold.
All this makes me realize how wise the Belgian legislation is when it mandates that each company's and citizen's debt be centralized and monitored so as to remain within reasonable limits with respect to that entity's revenues.

Clip Source: money.cnn.com

The Treasury Secretary announced his strategy for a better banking bailout. But subsidizing the purchase of bank assets and forcing mortgage writedowns is the wrong way to go.

The real problem in the housing market is the rampant job loss. Most Americans whose homes are worth less than their mortgages keep paying. The Boston Fed found that during the crushing downturn in Boston in the early 1990s, only 6% of the underwater homeowners defaulted.

Hence, the right plan should focus on crafting a break for people who've just lost their jobs, not the 85%-plus of Americans who keep paying even with negative equity.

The best formula for stemming foreclosures is a highly targeted plan to aid people who have lost their jobs. For this group, the moral hazard issue is less pronounced, since it's unlikely that Americans would risk unemployment to get a break on their mortgages.

Social media bigger than previously thought

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:32:31 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: A very interesting conclusion of recent study by Pew shows that social media is on track for faster adoption than previously believed. And this means that the media landscape is on the brink of yet another radical change in the way owners of content relate to their audience and communities. Exciting stuff.

Clip Source: www.poynter.org

"The share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from eight percent in 2005 to 35 percent now."

"It appears that American adults are moving into social networks more quickly than top 100 news organizations."

McLellan cited recent Bivings Group research, which found that only one in 10 major news organization sites offer social networking features

It's not the site, it's the links, the connections and the network.

I think McLellan is on to a couple of interesting ideas here. First, that mindset and culture -- not resources and technology -- are the key barriers to news organizations benefiting from social media.

the willingness to continuously experiment is the most likely path to success in media. This includes not just trying out new technologies, but learning how to value engagement other than page views on your site.

one of the more rewarding ways news orgs can connect more fully with their audiences

Rising click fraud

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:01:17 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Interesting and worrying figures from a recent study on click fraud showing deterioration of the situation.

Clip Source: www.marketingcharts.com

Botnets, Click Farms Propel Click Fraud to Record High 17%

The internet click fraud rate hit a record level of 17.1% in Q408 and click fraud traffic from botnets surged to an all-time high of 31.4%, according to Click Forensics, Inc., which today released its quarterly pay-per-click (PPC) Click Fraud Index figures, writes MarketingVOX.

Specifically, click fraud traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic in Q408. This is up from 27.6% in Q308 and 22.0% in Q407.

The average click fraud rate of PPC ads appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. This is an increase from the 27.1% rate reported for Q308 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate for Q407.

In Q408, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the US came from Canada (7.4%), Germany (3.0%) and China (2.3%).

Madoff's preferred investments

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:48:42 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: The name Madoff is now indelebly associated to the largest financial scam of history. Nevertheless, it's interesting to see what types of investments had Madoff's favors and that's what a columnist of the FT did. Fairly interesting piece.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

It looks like Mr Madoff (or whoever chose the stocks in his fund) liked to get involved in various special arbitrage situations. Some of these still exist and make for interesting stock picks.

Mr Madoff played a lot of special-purpose acquisition company arbitrage: SPACs trading below cash.

Hicks has $540m in cash and a market capitalisation of $480m. Trading below cash makes this a very safe play.

Anheuser-Busch, which has since been acquired. When Mr Madoff bought the stock he had a potential 40 per cent annualised return implicit in it because of the arbitrage going on with Anheuser-Busch being acquired by InBev. The deal closed in November so Mr Madoff made his money.

Mr Madoff also liked “closed end fund arbitrage”: buying closed end funds trading at significant discounts to their net asset value

Finally, Mr Madoff was a big believer in financial media. One of his new positions in the third quarter of 2008 was a little stock called thestreet.com, founded by CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

Sweden's business focus on greentech

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:40:16 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: My first job was with a Swedish company and I've been a fan of the country's way of innovating and showing the world how doing the right thing can also be a profitable way. Again at the forefront in the field of greenetch with a couple of exciting companies mentioned in this article from BusinessWeek.

Clip Source: www.businessweek.com

The country boasts some 3,500 clean technology companies that together book roughly $14 billion in revenues

Lake Trummen in southern Sweden used to be a polluted, weed-choked mess. Now, after a $14 million cleanup, bathers crowd its clear blue water in summer. Växjö, a city of 80,000 that sits on its shores, is vying to be the most environmentally pristine place in Sweden.

In Växjö, for instance, IV Produkt makes energy-efficient ventilation systems it exports to 15 countries, from Belgium to Ukraine. The company says the systems mean energy savings of 80%, paying for themselves in about two years.

a startup called TranSIC is designing computer chips for the power systems of hybrid vehicles. And deep in the pine forests of Boden near the Arctic Circle, Swebo Bioenergy makes systems to burn manure and wood chips for heat.

the government is earmarking $590 million for environmental projects over the next two years, including $180 million to commercialize green tech.

Sharp decline in business for handset makers

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:22:50 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: A day doesn't go by without further indication that the crisis is deepening and hitting sectors previously thought to be shielded to a some extent. This piece of news also shows that consumers and businesses alike are unlikely to resume investments and spending before they are certain that the worse of the crisis is behind us. In the field of mobile telephony a sharp drop in capacity used by subscribers is to be expected and in particular in those patterns of usage rightly considered to be most expensive (roaming, mobile multimedia Internet...) This is all rather good news for Jajah, (www.jajah.com, which I covered on my blog more than two years ago) as well as for Skype. Furthermore, I expect broadband ISPs to do well.

Clip Source: www.businessweek.com

Mobile sales are slowing much faster than expected, and even Nokia, once a stock market favorite, is suffering the humiliation of downgrades

Only a few months ago, it looked like the mobile-phone industry might escape the worst of the global economic slowdown.

Those hopes are evaporating fast. Market watchers are now warning that sales are slowing faster than expected even in markets such as China, which had seen explosive growth for years. After a fourth quarter of 2008 that some analysts are calling disastrous, manufacturers could be stuck with millions of unsold handsets. Weaker players such as Motorola (MOT) and Sony Ericsson, which were struggling even before the downturn, could drastically scale back their ambitions or even leave the market.

Strategy Analytics, for example, officially predicts a 1% decline in global handset sales for the fourth quarter of 2008 as well as all of 2009.

growth has been slowing for years

Mobile marketing conversions rates

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:22:16 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Articles with some interesting data to try to assess the conversion rates in mobile marketing contexts and for campaigns targeting mobile phone handsets.

Clip Source: it.toolbox.com

Research, from a wide range of sources, shows that mobile marketing using predominantly SMS or MMS is achieving higher response rates than email or even more traditional direct marketing campaigns.

David Bainbridge, the managing director of Yoomedia Enhanced Solutions (YES), suggests that mobile marketing can also achieve a higher response rate than any email campaigns, about ten times greater in fact. HR Owen, the car dealership, has seen response rates of 6% as a result of its SMS-based mobile marketing campaigns.

This means that your communications with the consumer must, perhaps, have some emotional stimulus to influence a call-to-action. According to Seth Godwin such consumer communications must anyway be personal, relevant, timely, and it must add genuine value to him or her. These principles apply to any type of mobile marketing campaign, including those that use Out of Home advertising (OOH) to stimulate a consumer's response and interaction.

MMS is best for branded communications

What do they mean "recession fears"?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:01:21 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Quite a strange headline from the FT speaking of Wall Street's recession "fears"? Is the Street blind, deaf and comatose to the point of having completely missed the news that the US economy has been in recession since December 2007?

Clip Source: www.ft.com

A report by ADP Employer Services showed US companies cut an estimated 693,000 jobs last month. The decline was much worse than Wall Street’s expectations of 495,000 and was the largest since the measure began in 2001.

The glum reading also sparked fears that Friday’s closely-watched non-farm payrolls report would be worse than already low expectations. Last month, Labor Department figures showed employers slashed payrolls by 533,000 in November, the deepest contraction since December 1974 and much worse than expected.

Lower revenue and margin guidance from Intel pushed the shares down 3.7 per cent in pre-market trade to $14.80.

The warning could also place the wider technology under selling pressure

Bulls have argued the market is no longer surprised when economic data are even worse than already low forecasts, since stocks had already priced in bleak news.

Tags: recession, finance, jobless claims, wall street

Cost of cutting carbon

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:19:24 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Interesting data on the cost estimates relating to various means of cutting carbon emissions. However, at the very moment when markets are proven not to be as effective as previously proclaimed, do we still want to rely solely on market mechanisms to quell carbon emissions?

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

The Cost of Cutting Carbon

Will putting a price on carbon increase the use of renewables?

If the goal is to increase the use of renewable energy, says Sergey Paltsev, principal research scientist at the MIT joint program, governments may have to mandate its use. Unfortunately, that would increase energy costs much more than market-based approaches to carbon regulation would.

¹Based on average 2007 prices ²For electrical utilities ³All blends
Source: Energy Information Administration/Gilbert Metcalf (prices); MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (power sources)

WPP's digital push

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:23:42 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: A BusinessWeek article with some fairly interesting info about the goals and obstacles faced by WPP as it tries to transform itself into a next generation marketing agency. Interestingly its CEO is pushing employees and Board Directors alike to adopt new practices from video, to Facebook, to Twitter and other social tools. And that's the right way to go.

Clip Source: www.businessweek.com

strategy to make the $15 billion agency a leader in the emerging world of digital communications

At an Oct. 20 board meeting in Palo Alto, Calif., Sorrell had all the directors—including himself—learn how to upload video and create their own Facebook pages

chairman of interactive marketing company OgilvyOne, figures he pays 15% to 30% more to hire young people with one-third less experience than those versed in traditional advertising channels

Sorrell also is pushing for greater cooperation among WPP companies to incorporate TV, video, print, mobile technology, and social networking into every campaign

WPP recently won a hefty portion of a Johnson & Johnson

widely reported to be worth more than $100 million

WPP staged a science fair-style presentation inside JWT's New York office, where representatives from 20 WPP units sat in different booths, showing off displays such as a WPP-designed social network promoting a prescription drug and an interactive Web site to inform doctors

Tighter legislation of online and interactive marketing

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:33:46 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: In yet another sign of a maturing market for new generation marketing and communications services, stricter legislations and rules are being enforced in Europe. The clipmark is about the UK market where legislation has been tightened considerably over the past few years. For example, the legislators have taken steps to make it impossible to target children with dedicated web sites and online activities. Now techniques of influence marketing are being regulated in a stricter manner to limit if not eliminate manipulation of consumers. The interesting question of course is whether legislators will apply the same kind of logic to politicians and their spin doctors...

Clip Source: www.visinsights.com

Buzz Marketing techniques to become illegal in UK?

Effective on the 26 of May 2008 certain activities will become a criminal offense when the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations becomes effective.

Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand will be an offense. Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential customers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors will be an offense.

Tags: buzz, viral, marketing, influence, legislation, vanksen, buzzparadise

Blog Ad Network by Six Apart helps monetization of smaller blogs

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:07:38 GMT

clipped by: alexpapa
clipper's remarks: Six Apart is one of the few companies of the so called web 2.0 wave whose focus on sustainable business models is a major strength. Using their position as a blogging platform to structure and manage an ad network is really a no-brainer from a business standpoint, while it is also in keeping with Six Apart's consistent policy of offering easy-to-use solutions to its customers. They are uniquely positioned to generate substantial business value from this initiative. I am very curious about their pricing mechanism and about the degree of visibility they will allow into their profit margins from this activity. And perhaps even more than those aspects of the scheme, I will be interested to understand their targeting philosophy (serving the relevant ads to each micro-audience) because that's one of the big battles of tomorrow's advertising.

Clip Source: www.marketingpilgrim.com

Six Apart Launches Blog Ad Network, Blog Services

Clip Source: www.marketingpilgrim.com

Blog software company Six Apart acquired creative agency Apperceptive, a company that built blogs for sites such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, and iVillage. Now they’re launching an advertising network for blogs. They are also venturing into design, programming, and blog marketing services.

As an ad network, Six Apart is competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, Blogads, and others. Here’s how it will work - they will get advertisers, bloggers put the ads up, and the two share revenue (not sure what the payouts are like, but I believe it’s typical to get 20-30%). Six Apart is working with Adify to provide back end support so bloggers can see their payouts and manage their account.

they are targeting their services to the little guy

The ad network is currently in invitation-only beta and it’s just for bloggers who use Six Apart’s Vox, TypePad, or LiveJournal.

Tags: blog, blogging, ads, advertising, ad network, business, long tail, vanksen, businessquests