Inexpensive, Instant & Interactive Ways Of Online Branding

To perform online branding more effective, instantaneous and interactive, advertisers can opt for cheaper branding techniques too. And the good news is they are not required to lose stacks of cashes on online advertising. Voila! Yes, in the world of web based advertising and marketing strategies there are many ways to bring relief to people desperately seeking for cheaper but not certainly cheap looking online branding effects. You can make your visitors behold your site with literally “eyes wide open” and then, hold a firm grip over them with cost effective and truly effective online branding techniques. Email marketing, online banner ads are the two ways to capture those viewers who are eyeing for creative, attractive, informative websites.

Email marketing offers much fairer deals to advertisers looking for less expensive and much faster online branding solutions. fairly effective. Email marketing professionals are fetching newer and more client-centric strategies for helping them in capturing attractions of wider base of patrons – quickly and conveniently. Email marketing aids in “one-to-one”online branding solutions, decreases high costs and time required for receiving visitors' responses.

Another equally effectual, appealing and inexpensive online branding technique is banner advertising. Convincing visitors to click at your ads were never so easy and immediate until banner ad came to picture. With the strength of simple HTML link, a catchy headline and eye-candy graphics – banner advertisements are way to captivate and caste spell on your viewers. So what are you waiting for?

Online Marketing: Yahoo's New Relationship after a Failed Courtship

Yahoo and Google have reached a search deal and both are looking forward to make this deal more profitable for the sake of online marketing.

Yahoo and Google have reached a search deal after the courtship between Yahoo and Microsoft failed. On Thursday, 12'th June, Yahoo rushed into Google's arms with a hope that an alliance will improve its drooping fortunes. According to the Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Google and Yahoo began discussing an alliance in early February, shortly after Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo.

The sources believe that the deal will start small and gear up over time depending on its success. So, it is a small deal and thus would attract far less regulatory scrutiny and it will also contribute less to Yahoo's bottom line. The deal would put the Internet search king's expertise to work pumping money from advertising posted next to Yahoo Internet search results.

Also, the deal breaks down the wall between free instant messaging services offered by Yahoo and Google. Now, users of either service will be able to chat online with each other in a way not possible before.
The alliance focuses on text ads posted alongside Yahoo online search results and can expand to include display advertising. It can be a good news for the sake of online marketing industry.

Till now the deal is limited to Yahoo web properties in the US and Canada, but Google said there is potential to extend it to other parts of the world.

Online Marketing: Yahoo's New Relationship after a Failed Courtship

Yahoo and Google have reached a search deal and both are looking forward to make this deal more profitable for the sake of online marketing.

Yahoo and Google have reached a search deal after the courtship between Yahoo and Microsoft failed. On Thursday, 12'th June, Yahoo rushed into Google's arms with a hope that an alliance will improve its drooping fortunes. According to the Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Google and Yahoo began discussing an alliance in early February, shortly after Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo.

The sources believe that the deal will start small and gear up over time depending on its success. So, it is a small deal and thus would attract far less regulatory scrutiny and it will also contribute less to Yahoo's bottom line. The deal would put the Internet search king's expertise to work pumping money from advertising posted next to Yahoo Internet search results.

Also, the deal breaks down the wall between free instant messaging services offered by Yahoo and Google. Now, users of either service will be able to chat online with each other in a way not possible before.
The alliance focuses on text ads posted alongside Yahoo online search results and can expand to include display advertising. It can be a good news for the sake of online marketing industry.

Till now the deal is limited to Yahoo web properties in the US and Canada, but Google said there is potential to extend it to other parts of the world.

Online marketing: Is Yahoo Renovating?

The growth of online marketing is vigorous. It is profitable and revenue generating. That is why all Internet behemoths are planning to get maximum profit from this stream.

Be it Google, Microsoft or Yahoo!, every Internet stalwart is striving to achieve excellence in the field of online marketing. These companies do not want to leave any stone unturned to make maximum use of this marketing spree. Now latest buzz is that Yahoo! has come up with a broad vision for online advertising transformation.

The Internet giant has highlighted opportunities and solutions for the industry. Speaking at the 2008 Advertising 2.0 New York conference, Sue Decker, the president of Yahoo!, confidently declared that the industry was 'on the cusp' of a 'renaissance' of display advertising.

She further added that new technologies, products and platforms will make it more efficient to reach customers. She also described the importance of getting a balance between monetisation and customer experience. Yahoo! is developing the technology, products and platforms to help advertisers find the right audiences and publishers find the right advertisers.

This is necessary for online marketing because until and unless advertisers find the right audience, revenue generation would be a distant dream. And if revenue is not there then everything else is useless. Hence, Yahoo's decision to launch new technologies, products and platforms would make a big difference in the field of Internet advertising and online marketing. So let's wait for Yahoo's new face.

Overall Online Marketing Spends Increases

Instead of investing in the traditional banner advertising the oldest way of marketing online, the online marketers these days are spending most of their online advertising spends in search engines, email marketing and pay per click campaigns. A recent survey on the marketing habit of the individuals suggest that search marketing and online campaign planning are the most essential areas of advertising.

This rise in accountability of online marketing is supported by the finding that says that almost 75% of the marketers who use online marketing as their means of advertising generate a higher return on investment than those who follow the traditional marketing tool.

The survey also indicated that apart from the rise in online marketing streams like ppc, emails and search engines, a good amount of marketers are also willing to invest on the social media marketing techniques, as they find it to be a convenient and free mode of advertising online.

These findings collectively suggest that the face of online marketing has undergone a great transition which has not only increased its demand in the industry but has also formed a new genre of marketing strategy which is undoubtedly more beneficial and targeted than the current one.

Online marketing: Growth in Social Media And Viral Marketing

Recently a survey was carried out by the Online Marketing and Media Show (OMMS), according to which the marketers are spending a big share of online budgets on search, pay per click and email. They are no longer spending on traditional banner advertising to make ways for the growth in interactive mediums like social media and viral marketing.

This online marketing survey was targeted at exhibitors and delegates who will be attending the OMMS 2008 event which will take place on 24th & 25th June 2008, at the Business Design Centre in London.

Also, it has been revealed that overall online marketing spend continues to increase. Over a third of all respondents revealed that up to 25% of their marketing budget will be dedicated purely to online marketing and media this year which is a 15% increase over predicted spend in 2007.

The survey further revealed that 75% of respondents produce more accountable ROI from their online marketing and media activity than their traditional marketing tools. And 62% said they would feel comfortable while advertising their brand on a social networking site.

According to the OMMS conference producer, the survey results show that marketers want to extend their understanding of new marketing tools before trying them out. Hence it can be said that emerging online marketing tools have a bright future.

Online marketing: Worldwide Phenomenal Triumph

Everyone knows that online marketing is a booming field and the phenomenon is widespread. It is successful not only in UK and US but also in the other parts of the world. And the latest buzz is about the phenomenal success of online advertising in New Zealand.

According to a report published in the New Zealand Herald, online advertising in the first quarter of the year 2008 grew 67.2 per cent from a year ago to new record $46 million.

The report shows dramatic increases over last year in all three categories of advertising measured by the report. Display was up 68.3 per cent to $11.5 Million, classified up 52.4 per cent to $19.2 Million and Search & Directories up 93 per cent to $15.1 Million.

According to the online marketing analysts, the growth is an evidence that more advertisers are starting to spend money online. The trend is here to survive as not any country can afford to loose such a huge opportunity that Internet marketing is
throwing.

Thus, the magic of online marketing is spreading all over the globe. Be it banner ad, display ad, affiliate marketing, Email marketing, PPC or any form of Internet marketing, every form is showing profit and the world is getting ready for it.

Online marketing: Face-Lift of Facebook

The web design affects a lot to the business of any website. US-based social networking site Facebook also realized this fact. That is why it has planned for a small face-lift to present even more beautiful face for the social networks, who are playing a major role in the online marketing arena. Due to the more and more information on Facebook like more photo albums, more applications, and more history, profiles became cluttered. Page navigation was also a little bit harder.

So Facebook has come up with a new design of its users’ profile pages which will now move away from a single flat page to a tabbed design. The move has made the profile page cleaner and more simple, giving users more control over their profile pages. The core tabs on the new designed profile page are Feed, Info and Photos.

Also There are four categories listed as Profile, Friends, Networks, and Inbox. Under each category, there are some subcategories. For example, you can browse through friends who have just updated their profiles or who are online right now in the 'Friends' category.

There is a Custom Applications tab. Another new feature being added to the top of the Feed tab is a Publisher Box. This particular feature would allow users to add content directly to their profile, instead of going to different pages.

So, the website has become more faster, more Spam-free and less cluttered. And it has become more user-friendly.

Online marketing: Its Next Big Thing

According to the website clickz.com, YouTube and other Google sites hosted more than 4.3 billion video views in March. The figure accounts for 38 percent of all U.S. video traffic. It means that during that month, U.S. Internet users increased their video intake by 13 percent gain compared with the previous month, and by 64 percent compared with March 2007. The figures are obviously mind blowing.

Due to these kinds of enthusiastic figures regarding online video, YouTube has begun offering advertisers the ability to pair their in-video ads with videos the site believes are on their way to becoming viral hits. The YouTube has created an algorithm that can identify videos that are on the up and up in terms of audience.

It makes that determination by looking at some factors like the early frequency of views on a given clip, along with the number of times it is 'favorited' and the number of ratings it receives. YouTube hopes the feature will appeal to entertainment marketers and it would affect a lot to the online marketing environment. The feature could be a strong marketing opportunity for any online advertiser.

Thus, this is the time to create attractive advertising videos for online people, to show your product to the millions of Internet users and to grab the latest opportunity which online marketing is going to provide.

Drive Key Audience to Site with Online Marketing

With everyday millions of websites budding on the web like dandelions, having a site is nothing but to participate in a crowd where you are not possible to be found out. Instead of belonging in a crowd if you perceive other sites as competition, you have got to push yourself to stay ahead. So how to stay ahead? Simply give an unique look and feel to your site, know your consumers' expectations to be clicked now and then by your prospective visitors. Performing this objective by yourself may seem impossible, however, online marketing companies handle this everyday and excelling in their approaches to enable their clients excel too.

These online marketing companies layering marketing strategies with latest techniques day by day. Starting from launching social media marketing sites, building video search engines, publishing blogs, newsletters – online advertising and marketing companies have taken web side of advertising to an endless journey of advancements. A recent online ad company has come up with 'word of mouth' solutions to aggregates information by keeping the pitch of conversation up amongst their targeted consumers. It has launched various communication enhancing programs like email services, blogs, social networking sites to aggregate information from what the target market wants from a product to improve and sell their advertisers' products.

Adobe Media Player – The Latest from Adobe

Adobe announced the release of Adobe Media Player (AMP) on April 9, 2008. The Adobe Media Player gives the facility of ‘a push to provide content to end users’. Apart from this it also creates a platform where one can monetize and track online video. The main goal of AMP is to enable content providers the facility to modify and sort the whole media player experience. Through this sorting, the content providers are provided many analytical tools that can help them track the videos and monetize them.

The technology that enables a person to do so much is the Adobe AIR. It is because of this that AMP can help some one to take the video content offline. The AMP can also become the default player for FLVs and one can watch a FLV file that is there inside of AMP.

AMP enables you to watch full screen and supports up to 1080p resolution. Currently, there are content from CBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, PBS, CondéNet, and Scripps Networks, plus there are other content about Adobe products.

All Quiet on the Yahoo Front

The Microsoft and Yahoo upheavals seem to have settled down, but is it the calm before the real storm?

Yahoo is taking more time than expected to respond to the proposal by Microsoft. Is it waiting for Microsoft to lift the bid and let the transactions close? Is Yahoo turning to Time Warner or not?

According to Mark Mahaney, Citigroup analyst, "We believe that a Yahoo sale to Microsoft -- at a price likely higher than the initial $31 [per share] bid -- is the most likely outcome. While we continue to see no other competing bidders, we believe Yahoo is aggressively pursuing strategic alternatives. One possibility is a tie-up with Time Warner, whereby Time Warner would contribute its online content assets to Yahoo in exchange for a stake. We believe this could serve as a forcing function to a higher Microsoft bid."

While some of the industry watchdogs are suggesting that this is just a gimmick by Yahoo to get a higher bid, the rest simply can not come to terms with the Microsoft & Yahoo marriage.

Yahoo! Supports Open Social Foundation

With the support that Yahoo! has provided, Google’s OpenSocial Foundation has gained a momentum and the backing of the most visited Website in USA. OpenSocial was introduced in October in an effort to cut time and cost of developer by letting them create a single application that works on multiple sites. The OpenSocial software is aimed to enable developers put their programs on more social networking sites.

The OpenSocial concept comes from the fact that the social media sites have gained immense popularity and are doing rather well with people across the globe. The OpenSocial foundation is formed by the 3 industry giants – Yahoo!, Google and News Corp.’s MySpace. This is a non profit organization that is formed to promote the OpenSocial technology.

The OpenSocial software can also be the silver lining for Yahoo! at a time when sales growth at Yahoo! has sloped down from 22% in 2006 to 8%. It is through the popularity of the social networking sites, Yahoo! can hope to gain a better foothold in the industry back again, especially because advertisers have found potential target audience in such sites.

99 Million Euro for Quaero Project: Can Google Survive it?

Checking a data or fact? Planning a tourist vacation? Want information on a disease, a hotel or restaurant, a business event, pet care? What Internet users normally do? They Google the information. With around 85 percent of the search-engine market, including that of Germany, Google has become the market leader.

Now European Union is concerned about US hegemony in the worldwide search engine market. They aim to develop an Eurocentric alternative to the dominant Google.
European Union have launched a project under the name Quaero (Latin for ‘I seek’) to compete with the American behemoth. The project is headed by an Internet information company called exalead.com. The Quaero project is a coalition of 23 companies led by French technology giant Thomson.

Now, the European Union's competition watchdog has approved €99 million (£76 million) of French state aid for the consortium. This is also a fact that Google spent $7.5 million (6.3 million euros) on one lab with 10 students in its development stages. Can Quaero project become that tough? Also, the US search engine behemoth continues to spend $400 million annually on research and development. Can Quaero compete with the Google competency?

Anyway, the endeavour of EU is worth watching and the consortium plans to make the Quaero engine available for personal computers, mobile phones, televisions and other media platforms.

Bebo is in the basket of AOL for Internet Advertising

Internet advertising is the latest medium of advertising which is generating revenue and advertisers are utilizing social networking sites very often for this purpose.

Social networking sites are valuable locations for online advertising because members post information about themselves and can then be targeted with useful products and services.

For this purpose, media giants are looking for social networking sites and latest news is that Time Warner's AOL internet division is buying the social networking site Bebo for 850 million Dollar or 417 million pounds in cash. Bebo is the third-biggest social networking site in the US, behind MySpace and Facebook. According to AOL officials, Bebo has more than 40 million members worldwide who view an average of 78 pages per day each.

Internet analysis experts are saying that, ‘it comes as no great surprise to see another traditional publisher buying in to the power of the social networking phenomenon. Microsoft did it with Facebook and News Corp did it with MySpace.
Furthermore, Bebo has an incredibly strong brand identity with the teenage and young adult market, so AOL can make best use of this powerful Internet advertising tool.

Online advertising scene would change forever in China

Do you know which region in this world have the most internet surfers? Is it Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Middle East or Australia/Oceania?

The answer is Asia! Yes in Asia there are approximately 510 million or over half a billion Internet users approximately, according to Internet World Stats, December 2007 report.

Let see Internet scene in the China. According to a report by eMarketer, February 2008, there are 176.5 million internet users here. The numbers are increasing day by day and these users affect Chinese online marketing business to a great extent. These users are influenced by online marketing and its various tools so different manufacturers, advertisers and publishers want to get some benefit from these internet users.

Good news for them is that a business software company Omniture Inc., which is a leader in the online business optimization and Chinese search engine Baidu.com Inc., are together going to provide a technology that will monitor the effectiveness of Chinese marketing campaigns.

The confluence of these two giants will help the companies to determine the influence of the online marketing over the Chinese Internet users. Most probably this will change the face of the online advertising in China.

War for Capturing Internet Based Office Tools Market

Sometimes I get amazed that who is going to win in the war among software giants to get the biggest piece from the huge Internet marketing cake. I have been listening about brand India emerging in the field of software. I also have been listening about the monopoly of some of the giants in this field. I have been listening about the new developments in the software and applications domain.

One thing I am realizing that all software giants like Microsoft, Google, Dell, Yahoo! and other software hunks like these, are undergoing a war with each other. The war is on for supremacy.

Here you would ask me some concrete data to prove the above statement. So let’s start...

To provide competition to Google Apps, that allows users to create and store documents online, Microsoft has recently launched Office Live WorkSpace. This application allows people to create and store Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations online.

Again, for giving competition to Microsoft’s Outlook, Google has launched Google Sites, which allows people to create websites on which they can present documents as well as videos and other material.

Now, other companies are also not lagging behind. Dell has invested $155 million for buying MessageOne which is a provider of online e-mail archiving and management services. Furthermore, Yahoo! has spent $350 million for buying Zimbra, a web-based competitor to Microsoft Exchange.

The list can go on and on and here you can see how. Google has spent 625 million dollar to buy the e-mail filtering and security firm, Postini. Cisco bought WebEx, a supplier of online conferencing software, for 3.2 billion dollar.

Really, the war is on. Now, you would have been well convinced that really the war has begun. As a user of the software applications, I can say only one thing that let them fight with each other; ultimately the winner is me, i.e., the customer and the billions of active Internet users worldwide.

Internet Marketing: Cream customers are waiting for you

Your Company is doing a great job, its products are useful and your marketing strategy is very market driven but still you are don’t have a strong online presence. Or, may be you are afraid of the term Internet marketing.

The above situation is very common. Most people, organizations, publishers and advertisers ignore a very large base of customers just because of lack of knowledge. They are habituated of selling their products in the physical market. And often they ask, are their enough customers? This is a very common question, but I am sorry to say, this is a really irrelevant question now.

They ask this question in a world where there are speculations that there will be 1.5 billion people with Internet access in 2011, with the biggest growth in the online population occurring in Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to the Worldwide Online Population Forecast, 2006 to 2011 (Report by JupiterResearch).

And I must tell you a large part of this number will do online buying and selling and perhaps that is why online ad spend is enhancing day by day. Companies are also utilizing various online marketing services which educate about tools of the Internet marketing like e-mail marketing, display ads, paid keyword search, video ads, podcasts etc.

Moreover, this is the impact of the Internet marketing only that people are using the Internet for many other purposes other than communication. They are using it for searching for job, life partner, home, latest gizmos and lots more. So what are you waiting for, go online and see a large number of customers waiting for you.

Open Social Web – exploring new dimensions

What is open social web? Has it been formally recognized by any agency or is it just a technical jargon that slipped out of some techie’s fingers? If you are an active participant in the technology driven era you must know what it is and more than that where it is heading.

Open Social Web is the term that tries to explain the technology incorporated and space occupied by various social media software applications like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Youtube and many more. Such platforms make available to the people some free services and resources to communicate and share data. Community websites and portals are popular examples of Open Social media.

What is new in Open Social Web is the release of new applications to aid the open resources. These applications are primarily made available to aid the users for exploring new features. Such releases have come up as incentives to further retain the users and make services popular.

From simple mails and chat messengers the Open Social Web now has integrated different technologies to enhance the interactivity and sharing of resources with others. The VoIP services, photo and video sharing, community networks, etc., have added new dimensions to the open sources. If we take Skype as an example, the company started with basic services and has been releasing new features and add-on components of its already launched products. Research and design as such is being consistently pursued. Not only does it add value to the existing product or service, but the added feature or component can itself start a new service.

One of the main concerns faced by many Open Social web resources is the privacy of the users. Some such resources let certain content pertaining to the user be displayed to all. The issue of using the technology for unethical practices has further raised alarms. All this is keeping the experts on their toes to come up with timely solutions and hence advance the media to face yet new challenges.

Alternative of online marketing for your online business

Mushrooming, perhaps that is the right word to describe any aspect of online business. Online marketing has been diversifying; diversifying as in branching out in different directions. Apart from the popular tools we now have vast resources and some new components to help us serve in the propagation of messages.

Previously, the best we had in terms of meeting the challenges posed by the market was a handful of techniques and few platforms. But today have a look at the valuable resources we have – blogs, search engines, networks, PPC, article submissions, affiliates, banners, etc. So, when the popular methods fail or deliver little you may opt for the alternatives. The most effective marketing alternatives known today include:

· Press Releases: Press releases are not restricted to serve as pubic relations tools. In the present scenario press releases are effective communications that can better help your marketing campaign.

· Social Network: With more and more people registering for the communities there is no better place to catch the audience. Social networks exist in the form of social websites and community websites that are open to the people at large.

· Social Book marking: Social book marking are some new tools to help in promoting the product or websites. They exist as a set of useful links and resources and can be shared to any number of people.

· Podcasts: Audio messages and presentations can be more useful than the traditional stagnant texts. Called as podcasts, these audio presentations can be made available to the people on websites and portals.

· Videos: Videos are the best alternatives as they can provide better description of your products. However the large size of the video files can be a little problem and not many people have patience to wait on the Internet.