interactive-multimedia.org

In general a company is a business organization that is a hub of activity, which produces products or offers services to consumers. These services and products are made or offered to the public in order, for a profit to be made. Essentially, money is at the core of virtually any business and the need to make money drives businesses to develop new and dynamic products and useful services.

Markets change constantly in our world today and businesses need to keep up with trends in order to make sales and keep consumers happy and spending money. New technologies mean new products and services, forcing businesses to adapt to the demands of the consumer. Companies therefore need to make sure they satisfy their consumers with the latest products and services that are available because of new technologies.

The fashion industry is another example of a market where the need to change and develop new products is essential. New brands are always coming out and to compete with the brands that are already in place companies must think of smart new designs that are functional and look good at the same time. Companies that fall behind the times suffer and see their sales decline as their consumers move on to more dynamic brands.

In conclusion it is very important for modern companies to keep an eye out for new ideas and to be changing and developing all the time in order to attract consumers and make the profits necessary to keep the cycle of new developments going.

Giuseppe Pisaniello - All Right Reserved

Sly Bailey says the internet boom is about to go bust. But is the Mirror chief right? Ian Reeves investigates

I wouldn’t mind waking up to find myself back in 1999. I’d have more hair, for a start. I’d have The Matrix to look forward to. I could “surf the net”, because that’s what we called it, while guiltily sharing music files free on Napster.

But Sly Bailey has a more sinister view of the year. “Remember 1999?,” she rather gloomily asked last week’s Association of Online Publishers’ conference. “Well 2009 will be like Groundhog Day. For the lucky we should expect consolidation – and for the less fortunate, failure.” The Trinity Mirror boss said she was “firmly of the belief that there will be casualties in the coming months”.

She’s not the only senior media figure predicting blood on the digital publishing carpet. Maurice Levy, the chairman and chief executive of Publicis, warned of a second bust as long ago as last November. “Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone,” he said. “It’s exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought that because he had a website he’d get the valuation. Now everyone building a Web 2.0 operation believes he will receive the advertising.”

If I was to quibble with Bailey on the timeline, I’d reckon she’s a few months out – March 2000 is widely recognised as being the peak of that first bubble – but nonetheless, with the credit crunch kicking in, it stands to reason that online publishing is in for a torrid time. Doesn’t it? Some of the signs, admittedly, aren’t great. Yahoo shares are at their lowest value since 2003. Even the mighty Google’s grip on growth is loosening, and its net revenue was actually down in the second quarter of 2008 compared to the previous period .

Meanwhile, research published last week by media analyst group Enders suggested that growth for UK online media advertising would be considerably lower than the 28 per cent that had been expected for 2008 – its revised estimate is a more modest 18.5 per cent. Financial, recruitment and property advertisers are all cutting their spending plans, the report suggests.

Similarly, venture capital groups are becoming worried about their investment exits. There has been virtually no company flotations this year – a common method for a venture capitalist investor to recoup money on a digital publishing investment. The result is that one source of investment capital is drying up.

But before we get carried away on this wave of despair, there are some more healthy predictions out there. On Wednesday, the Internet Advertising Bureau will unveil its own research for the first half of the year. Its chief executive, Guy Phillipson, will tell a Westminster eForum seminar on online advertising that the internet advertising spend has been above expectations for the six months to June, despite the downturn. “We’re seeing serious consumer demand, and an increasing realisation that online is the most efficient way of satisfying that need,” he says.

“Since 1999, online has grown from nothing to a £3bn industry in this country. It’s simply the best direct response medium ever invented.”

Emma Jenkins, head of interactive marketing at Procter & Gamble, backs up his optimism: “It’s important to remember that the digital industry remains buoyant, at least for now,” she says. “I think you’ll see some people moving their money away from marketing streams that are less accountable, and moving into digital areas – search is a great example of that… in terms of capping the dollars you spend but making sure that every dollar is absolutely accountable.”

Similarly, Alison Fennah, executive director of the European Interactive Advertising Association, believes it would be “wrong and inappropriate” to compare now with the time leading up to the first dotcom bust.

She quotes figures from EIAA’s recent Internet Ad Barometer report, showing that 81 per cent of advertisers claim that their allocated online ad spend has grown in 2008 and predict that it will continue to do so over the next couple of years. “It’s a totally different scenario from 1999,” she says.

And of course she’s right in that there are a number of key factors that will make the 2009 media landscape radically different. Not least is the penetration of domestic broadband, which allows digital publishers to deliver on the promises in a way that excitable start-ups couldn’t at the beginning of the decade. Maybe even Boo.com, the online fashion store that famously burned $188m (£106m) in just six months, might have fared better if its technology had actually worked.

It’s also worth noting that big-brand publishers were generally delighted when the world came crashing down on the first wave of internet entrepreneurs. It allowed them to fall back on old ideology and a degree of complacency about the digital world set in that in some cases took several years to shake off. The schadenfreude they showed then certainly wouldn’t be repeated this time around because they have so much more invested in it.

Here’s another big difference. In 1999, the term “search advertising” would have brought puzzled looks from all but the most savvy of media operators. Now it’s worth more than $5bn worldwide and remains the fastest-growing area of online revenue.

The problem for publishers, of course, is that they don’t see much of that cash. And the hopes that online display advertising would close that gap simply don’t seem to be materialising. The buzz word is “accountability”. If you’re a marketer in the current economic climate, it’s much easier to show your finance director the precise benefits from your search-based campaign – you can literally count the clicks – than from brand-awareness campaigns.

Nonetheless, the EIAA’s Alison Fennah still reckons there’s scope for growth in display advertising from at least one big sector: fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). She says: “The car market for example is quite well-advanced in terms of what proportion it spends online, whereas the FMCG sector, it’s a very small percentage of online spend because they are still learning how to use it.” She cites Dove and Lynx as brands that have made good use of new advertising techniques, and says that other fast-moving brands will catch on soon enough.

For adults in the UK, more than a quarter of their media consumption is now online. Yet FMCG spends just five per cent of its advertising there. All of which offers some hope. But are the big publishing brands in a position to take advantage of any of this growth?

Phillipson thinks they are: “Big portals and publishers can provide great inventory for advertisers,” he says. “They have a much bigger armoury than they ever did. During the Beijing Olympics big newspaper brands were boasting 18-20 million uniques per month. Those are big numbers.”

Matt Brittin, director of Google UK, strikes a more cautious note: “There is a tremendous amount of innovation and I have great respect for Sly and for what other newspapers have been doing to develop online audiences. Their offerings have become more distinctive and more innovative. But the pace of innovation is intense. At Google we struggle sometimes to keep up with the changing pace of consumer demands, so if you’ve a business model that’s historically in a different medium you might find you struggle even more.”

Overall, though, Brittin sees no likelihood of a repeat of the dark days of 2000. “This is the first downturn we have seen where the consumer is digital,” he says. “We don’t know with any certainty what they will do.”

He cites the statistic that more than half of UK shoppers have changed their minds about which brand to purchase after doing research on the internet. The money will surely follow that trend, he reckons. “If you’re not going out, what are you going to do? You’re going to spend more time online.”

Ian Reeves is director of teaching at the University of Kent’s Centre for Journalism, and a former editor of Press Gazette

Ref From independent.co.uk Monday, 6 October 2008

Ask.com will introduce significant changes to its UK search engine on 20 October as it attempts to provide the most relevant search results on the web.

The new-look results page is focused towards giving users answers to questions directly within the results page, rather than suggesting pages to click through to find what the user is searching for.

For example, a search for Coldplay would not only bring up a link to Coldplay.com, but also include a short, Ask.com-written biog, a list of their next gigs, images as well as that day’s TV listings that feature the band.

Cesar Mascaraque, European MD at Ask.com, said the changes, which see Ask.com drop it’s third results column in introduced last year, are a natural step from its previous overhaul in spring 2007.

“We’ve been looking at how people use Ask.com since then, and although we are still predominantly showing links to pages away from Ask.com we want to provide as much relevant information as we can in the first instance,” he said. “The goal is to make the search a much shorter experience for the user.”

Mascaraque denied that the changes were due to the failings of the previous relaunch.

“We’ve got stronger since then; this is a big update of what went before, and is a progression more than anything else,” he said. “I don’t expect Ask.com to be doing it again in 2010, for example.”

The changes will be advertised through an integrated ad campaign launching in the Midlands from the end of the month, with a nationwide roll-out due in the New Year.

Ref From nma.co.uk Platform: Internet | Author: Will Cooper | Source: nma.co.uk | Published: 06.10.08