Digital Marketing Blog

Customers want tougher online banking security

A poll conducted by RSA, the security division of EMC, suggests that online banking customers are becoming more concerned about security issues, and would like banks to take more steps to combat fraud.

RSA's Financial Institution Consumer Online Fraud Survey was conducted in December and polled 1,678 adults from the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Singapore and India.

by Graham Charlton 26 January 2007 13:13pm 1 comment

Strong Christmas performance from eBay

Online auction giant eBay enjoyed a good Christmas period, particularly in the UK and Germany, as fourth quarter earnings turned out to be higher than expected.

A rush to buy hard to find games consoles like the Wii and PS3 was one of the reasons given for the success, as total revenue for the last three months of 2006 reached $1.7bn, a 29% rise on the same period a year earlier.

by Graham Charlton 26 January 2007 11:37am 1 comment

10 great ways to explain Affiliate Marketing

I've been pondering lately how it is that Affiliate Marketing, which helped to generate more than £2 billion in UK e-commerce revenues last year, has scarcely ever got a mention in the national mainstream press.

by Linus Gregoriadis 25 January 2007 23:00pm 2 comments

Bubbl.us makes brainstorming / mindmapping easy

Bubbl.us is a site which provides users with an interactive and attractive interface with which to make brainstorm and organise your ideas online.

Bubbl.us is the brainchild of Russian Kirill Edelman, a web designer who resides in the US. The site uses Flash and Ajax technology to help you organise your ideas simply and effectively.

by Graham Charlton 25 January 2007 13:40pm 0 comments

Wikio raises £2.7 million in VC funding

Wikio, a European social bookmarking site, has received almost £2.7 million in a Series A round of funding led by Lightspeed venture Partners and Gemini Israel Funds.

Wikio originally launched in France and Italy in June 2006, and claims to have had almost a million unique visitors per month since then. The company has since launched its site in Germany, Spain and the US, with a UK version planned for this year.

by Graham Charlton 25 January 2007 13:37pm 0 comments

Email trends - trust and frequency still key

The results of a consumer email survey suggest that, though many consumers rely on email for shopping news and ideas, consumers are becoming savvier in the management of their inboxes

Return Path’s third annual Holiday Email Survey looks into the responses of 2,400 US and Canadian consumers in November and December 2006.

by Graham Charlton 25 January 2007 12:41pm 0 comments

Find the Gap.com (oh, actually you can't)

After almost three years of weak sales Gap CEO Paul Pressler has stepped down to enjoy more than £7m worth of severance pay. Why is the 3,100-store company suffering? One look at Gap’s website tells you all you need to know.

With just 107 words of readable text on its homepage, the Gap site is far too fond of pretty pictures for its own good. Being image-heavy isn’t always such a big problem, especially in these broadband-enabled times, but Gap has failed to strike the right balance between pictures and prose.

The main consequence for Gap is rubbish search engine visibility. Is it any wonder that the firm sales are in freefall?

by Chris Lake 24 January 2007 16:56pm 4 comments

European VC investment in Web 2.0 grows in 2006

Paul Fisher has an excellent round-up of European seed and first rounds of VC investment from 2006. He reveals that more then £144 million was raised by 54 European Web 2.0 companies last year.

In his post, Paul points out the rapid growth in investment levels - in 2005, just £24 million was invested into Web 2.0 companies. That figure rose to £79 million in 2006.

by Graham Charlton 24 January 2007 16:40pm 0 comments

Teen girl site adopts self-service ad strategy

Flip, Condé Nast’s upcoming social networking site for teen girls, is to follow in the footsteps of Bebo and allow its members to influence the ads they receive.

Media Week reports that users of the site, due to launch in early February, will be able to select which brands’ ads they will see, while also being offered the option to include ad-supported content in their pages.

by Richard Maven 24 January 2007 11:36am 0 comments

Google - friend or foe to affiliates?

One of the questions we asked in the UK Affiliate Census (published this week) was whether or not respondents believed that 'Google was damaging the affiliate marketing industry'.

A third of affiliates (34%) agreed with this statement compared to 26% who disagreed.

by Linus Gregoriadis 24 January 2007 11:34am 0 comments