Jake Hird

Jake is Econsultancy Australia's Director of Research and Education and comes from a background of online commerical research, development and account management, including a considerable amount of time spent with a leading digital agency and top UK digital group.

He takes a keen interest in emerging digital trends and technology and welcomes any new industry insights or thoughts.

Q&A: Jay Stevens of the Rubicon Project on display advertising

Jay-Stevens

The Rubicon Project helps publishers make more money from their display advertising inventory by optimising their use of ad networks. Founded two years ago, the company already has more than 1,500 premium customers, optimises more than 40 billion ads each month and reaches more than 500 million unique internet users.

The company's International Vice-President, Jay Stevens, (formerly MySpace's VP of European operations), shared his thoughts about trends in display advertising, the growth of ad networks and what this means for publishers.

by Jake Hird 14 September 2009 15:00pm 0 comments

12 brilliant 404 pages

A huge part of user experience is ensuring site navigation is as easy as possible, in order to retain anyone who happens to be browsing your site. But what happens if there’s a broken link or a page doesn’t load?

The answer has two scenarios: Either the user will leave, or with a bit of help, will find their way to the right page. More often than not, in these situations, it’s the 404 page that will decide the outcome, so how can you maximise their effectiveness?

by Jake Hird 08 September 2009 10:32am 31 comments

Is your PPC agency under-performing? Some warning signs

Has your relationship with your paid search agency soured? Are you in denial about bad service and performance, hoping that things will suddenly change for the better?

To mark the release of Econsultancy’s new Paid Search Agencies Buyer’s Guide, here are some warning signs that it might be time to take your paid search accounts to a more deserving agency.

by Jake Hird 26 August 2009 10:35am 3 comments

20+ more mind-blowing social media statistics

The social media statistics I posted a few weeks ago seemed to strike a chord amongst the digital community, especially in highlighting just how big an issue this particular area of online currently is. So I’m happy to say that I’ve trawled around the internet to bring you some more snippets of useful data and awesome figures.

by Jake Hird 17 August 2009 10:50am 12 comments

20 + mind-blowing social media statistics

Social media remains the hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as this particular online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an astronomical rate. But I’ve pulled together some interesting (and hopefully useful) data for a couple of the bigger players in the market...

by Jake Hird 31 July 2009 10:00am 20 comments

Q&A: Nick Bell on the opportunities offered by online video

Previously, Econsultancy has discussed the visible impact that new video formats are having upon the online advertising sphere and is an area which we can easily see will implode within the digital environment as a whole over the next twelve months or so.

To get some front-line opinion of the marketplace, we spoke to Nick Bell, co-founder of the up-and-coming interactive video platform, Quick.tv, about this complex and often overlooked marketing medium.

by Jake Hird 29 July 2009 12:19pm 4 comments

Six 'I's' to help you create ingenious digital marketing campaigns

To loosely follow on from a previous post, it’s not necessarily advisable to ignore innovation and creativity under the current global economic conditions. However, when faced with this kind of negative environment, thinking up imaginative ways to engage with users through existing channels can sometimes become a bit stale.

Here, I’ve compiled a few different examples of relatively recent online campaigns that caught my attention through their resourcefulness and that follow six identifiable 'I's'.

by Jake Hird 17 July 2009 10:31am 0 comments

Europe shows off its start-up muscles

Last night TechCrunch Europe hosted their inaugural Europas awards, with a list highly impressive nominees and an audience of digital royalty - both start-up and established - including the Traveling Geeks who had been at Econsultancy’s roundtable event only hours before. So, what were the categories and who were the winners?

Europas awards

by Jake Hird 10 July 2009 17:20pm 0 comments

Innovate your way through the recession

At Econsultancy, alongside best practice, we love to see innovation and creativity within the marketing sphere. Interestingly, it seems that as companies are increasingly scrutinising budgets and resources, the assumption is made that the room for manoeuvring in this way is restricted.

by Jake Hird 13 July 2009 09:21am 3 comments

Online consumers trust real people, not companies

Online recommendations are powerful. New data from Nielsen’s Global Online Consumer Survey reveals that 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people that they know, with 70% trusting the opinions posted online by unknown users.

by Jake Hird 08 July 2009 12:56pm 0 comments