Digital Vision grant winners announced
At the end of 2011, we launched Digital Vision, a new grant program to allow aspiring thought leaders to conduct new research in the areas of advertising and marketing.
Today we announce the five award winners selected from the scores of applications we received. These winning ideas will receive grants of up to $10,000 USD in addition to research support and publicity from us.
Do sponsored messages ever work online?
Visibility is everything online, so reaching thousands of people in an instant is something a lot of businesses crave.
This leads many brands to try sponsored messages, but do they actually work, and when they don’t work what’s the PR risk?
“I will share your messages twice over 150,000 Twitter followers and 10,000 Facebook friends to help boost your traffic views for $5” reads just one advert on Fiverr.com.
How can you lose? The seller has 299 positive reviews and 220 people have starred (liked) the service. Surely this is proof that sponsored messages work, right?
Wrong.
The Digital Ocean: how to market to fishers and swimmers
More B2C and B2B marketers are shifting their focus towards increased digital in their tactical mix.
Understanding the digital locations of their target audiences is becoming a standard step in the creation of a digital plan, but many are overlooking the intentions of their online audiences, and adapting their tactics accordingly.
This blog introduces the concept of the digital ocean and the need to locate and market to both fishers (those actively researching products/services) and swimmers (those not looking and just ‘hanging out’ online).
Project or flow?
Projects don't come about through some law of nature. They're a mental construct we've created to help ourselves manage our work.
I spend most of my time on projects.I’ve worked on projects to build e-commerce systems, projects to build and update websites, projects to create new products, even projects to define the way we do projects within an organisation.
The idea of a project as the fundamental unit of work is pretty pervasive within our industry. Many organisations structure themselves almost entirely around the portfolio of projects that they are undertaking.
And a large industry, think of PRINCE2 and the PMI and various other project management bodies, has emerged solely to service the interests of projects and project managers.
But how real are these projects?
CBS Outdoor B2B site goes mobile in Canada
CBS Outdoor, one of the largest out-of-home media companies in North
America, has launched a redesigned, mobile-friendly site in Canada to
advertise how to advertise with them.
The new site includes an interactive web mapping program alongside its mobile capabilities to help companies find out more about local teams and what advertising opportunities are already in their area.
The end of tech blogging?
Over the festive break, Jeremiah Owyang, analyst at Altimeter Group, caused a bit of a stir with a post claiming the golden era of tech blogging is over.
Creating a social media strategy for B2B organisations
As shown in many of the latest Econsultancy reports, a growing number of B2B companies seem to have caught up with their B2C peers and are investing in social media.
However, when we decided to create a company-wide social media strategy in the summer of 2010 there were very few examples from which to draw inspiration.
11 things Santa won't bring you this year
It’s the time of year when lists are produced in their hundreds; wish lists, predictions and trends for 2012.
2012 is the year that marketers can affect change more than ever. The reality is that we don't always get what we want, sometimes we have to work that little bit harder to get it.
Here's my alternative list of 11 things that Santa will NOT be bringing you this Christmas, with some suggested further reading. Maybe it's a worth a glance over a glass of mulled wine.
How’s your decision energy?
Making decisions requires mental energy. When your energy is low, 'decision fatigue' sets in and some fairly predictable biases result.
Too many teams set themselves up to operate in an almost permanently fatigued state. How can you avoid this?
What do unique visitors and traffic volumes really mean to a B2B advertiser?
Here at Econsultancy we are many things, one of them being a B2B publisher.
Like most publishers (B2B or otherwise) we carry ads on our site and have an in-house team to sell and manage the advertising.
A recent in-house project at Econsultancy kicked up the dust on the issue of traffic figures and what gets quoted when selling advertising.
In three years managing ad inventory on Econsultancy, I have only ever been asked for two numbers: unique visitors and page impressions.
