Australian online news and views

“17 per cent of emails sending customers to a home page rather than a promotional page uniquely relevant to the email offer. “

How embarrassing I have done that….. you should always have relevant landing pages for all of your campaigns….search, EDM, affliate what ever.

What is the point of capturing someones attention attracting a response or action and then leading them to a confusing situation or even a dead end.

I can see the costs rising and the returns diminishing already. It happens sometime you are just to hurried and in need of doing more more more faster. remember sometimes quality over quantity.

But at the same time get it 80 or 90 percent right and then get it out the door!

If you have done it hang your head low, if you are doing it stop it now trust me it will make a huge difference. But take a look at thei rticle at least you can see you are not alone.

Here is an article on the topic from brand revolution

Extract

Landing pages are Achilles heel for email marketers
by Alicia Buller Revolution UK 27-Jun-07, 11:20

LONDON - More than four out of 10 companies practising email marketing in the UK and across North America fail to repeat promotional copy through to the landing page, thereby running the risk of confusing customers who will quickly abandon the site, a new survey has revealed.

The survey, conducted by email service provider Silverpop, analysed landing pages for email promotions from 150 companies across the US & UK.
Only 45 per cent of landing pages repeated copy…..click for more

Australian census data is out for 2006

We still haven’t cracked the 20 million mark for population. Maybe if everyone moved back home we would make the mark.

Some interesting reading in these stats, if you are that we inclined.

* Population - The population has increased by 6%, or just over one million people, since the 2001 Census

* Age - Australia’s population continued to age as a result of low fertility and increased life expectancy. The median age of the resident population increased by 2 years, to 37 years in 2006 from 35 years in 2001. The biggest change occurred in the older age groups. The proportion of the population aged 55-64 years increased from 9% to 11% between the 2001 and 2006 Censuses. Over the same period the proportion of children in the population (aged 0-14) decreased slightly. However, there were about 16,500 more young children aged 0-4 years in 2006 than in 2001.

* Country of birth - In the 2006 Census, 7 out of 10 Australian residents were born in Australia, a slight decrease from 2001. Of people born overseas, the most common countries of birth were England, New Zealand, China, Italy, and Viet Nam.

* Marital status - Just under half (49.6%) of the Australian resident population stated they were married in the 2006 Census, a slight decrease from 51.4% in the 2001 Census. The number and proportion of Australians stating they were never married, separated, or divorced increased from 2001.

The quick stats are here for you to see.

Take a look

the rupert effect:

News Digital Media to go carbon neutral
Sonja Koremans

News Digital Media has pledged to tread lighter on the planet announcing that it will become carbon neutral within months.

Joining a growing list of organisations taking leadership on climate control, News Limited’s digital arm will ramp up its green credentials as part of its parent company’s sustainability strategy, One Degree, which was launched today.

Richard Freudenstein, chief executive officer of News Digital Media, said as Australia’s fastest growing digital media publisher, the company needed to not only embrace the issue but walk the talk and set an example with its own sustainability policy.

“Climate change is now one of the most important political and social policy issues,” Freudenstein said.

“News Digital Media is committed to being a leader on the issue by informing, educating and enabling individuals to understand what they can do to help,” he said.

The digital publisher will measure its carbon footprint with an external audit and aimed to be carbon neutral in the next few months, Mr Freudenstein said.

However, an official date was yet to be set, he said.

“Becoming carbon neutral is only the beginning of our permanent commitment to change the way we use energy and reach our audience on this issue.

“We will achieve carbon neutrality and take a lead on the issue by cutting the overall energy use of the business, implementing energy efficient programs and offsetting otherwise unavoidable emissions from our business.”

News Digital Media’s announcement comes on the back of The Cannes International Advertising Festival last week where the sustainability issue was highlighted by climate change crusader Al Gore.

The former US Vice President, who headlined the event as guest speaker, pleaded with the world’s advertising industry to get involved in the climate change debate and create campaigns to raise awareness.

News Digital Media’s properties include NEWS.com.au, FOXSPORTS.com.au, truelocal.com.au, CareerOne.com.au, CARSguide.com.au, moshtix and taste.com.au.

Internet adspend continues to rocket
by Ben Bold Brand Republic 25-Jun-07, 08:30

LONDON - UK advertisers spent over £4.2bn in the first quarter of 2007, a year-on-year increase of 3%, according to research published by the Advertising Association.

However, the Quarterly Survey of Advertising Expenditure revealed that all media, apart from internet, outdoor and cinema, experienced a downturn. TV advertising continued to fall marginally from favour with advertisers, with expenditure down 0.8% to £962m
The hardest hit by far was the business magazine sector, with adspend plummeting 6.6% to £203m. This was followed by regional newspapers, which fell 3.8% to £705m; national papers, which experienced a decline of 1.8% to £492m; and consumer magazines, which fell 1.4% to £188m.
As a whole, press advertising fell 3.3% to £1.59bn, with advertisers spending 4.8% less on classified and 2.1% less on display.
Radio adspend was down 1.8% to £127m and direct mail fell 3.6% to £615m.
Unsurprisingly, internet advertising looked more positive, it bucked the overall trend and grew a massive 42% to £648m. Cinema advertising expenditure grew nearly 10% to £30m and outdoor by 7.7% to £237m.
The survey was researched and compiled by the World Advertising Research Centre. The figures exclude money spent on ad production, sponsorship and promotions, but include agency commissions

If you are thinking of adding or building a web 2.0 netwroking site or networking element to your site think about how it will add value, and what about the loyalty?
Will there be any

Survey finds social networking users have little loyalty
by Jacquie Bowser Brand Republic 22-Jun-07, 12:00

LONDON - Many users of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook feel no obligation to restrict themselves to one site, according to a report.

Research by market research firm Parks Associates suggests nearly half of all social networkers regularly use more than one site and one in six use three or more. Nearly 40% of MySpace users also keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook. Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is reported to be even lower, with more than 50% of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.

John Barrett, author of the ‘Web 2.0 & the New Net’ report, said this has resulted in an interlinked environment, tied together by links, widgets and the users themselves.
Barrett, said: “MySpace is a growing ecosystem and one that ironically now extends beyond MySpace itself.”
Barrett suggests that this environment creates fertile ground for new social networking sites and application providers.
He said: “A handful of users are all it takes to connect new services to the MySpace-centred environment. From there it can begin to spread virally, assuming of course that it offers something people want.”

Another article from bandT magazine’s e newsletter
By Sonja Koremans

Google advertisers will only be billed when products or services are purchased on their site under a new pay-per-action pricing trial being rolled out in Australia.

Hundreds of high-traffic businesses have been invited to road test the system from today as an alternative to the pay-per-click model.

A similar Google trial earlier this year proved popular in the United States, however the search giant has not committed to offering it permanently.

“We are rolling it out as a trial and it is likely to be successful here but at this stage we are uncertain whether it will be made available, we are optimistic though,” said Google spokesman Rob Shilkin.

Pay-per-action enables advertisers to pay only when a pre-defined action had been completed on their site such as when a user made a purchase, signed up for a newsletter or completed any other clearly defined action, Mr Shilkin said.

The system is designed to give advertisers and publishers more precision and control over their online budgets, he said.

Advertisers in the beta will see an alert in their AdWords account informing them that they can create pay-per-action campaigns. Those which have enabled AdWords conversion tracking and received more than 500 conversions from their CPC and CPM-based campaigns in the past 30 days will be automatically added to the trial.

Can this be for real…imagine…

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is reportedly in talks with Yahoo! about selling MySpace for $12.3bn (£6.2bn), in exchange for a 25% stake in the digital giant.

A deal would demonstrate a remarkably swift return on News Corp’s investment in MySpace, which it acquired for $580 million in summer 2005.

Yesterday Yahoo! was worth $37 billion. A quarter stake in an enlarged company would be worth $11.1 billion.

According to a report in News Corp-owned newspaper The Times, talks are at a tentative stage. News Corp has proposed that Yahoo! allows it to buy a 25% stake in the business in exchange for MySpace and a host of other digital assets, including games network IGN.

It is also unclear whether the talks will continue, following the resignation of Terry Semel, chief executive of Yahoo, yesterday. His role has been taken by cofounder Jerry Yang.
A 25% stake in Yahoo!, once enlarged by the addition of MySpace, would be worth $12.3bn. This is nearly a 24-fold increase on the $580m sum NewsCorp paid for MySpace and associated businesses in 2005. Yahoo is currently worth $37bn (£18.6bn).
Analysts have said that the deal, if it went ahead, would represent a significant step up for both businesses, with News Corp willing to trade the profitability of MySpace for greater exposure through Yahoo!’s global internet news offering.
According to The Times report, it is unclear whether Yahoo! was willing to consider the terms of the deal, but it is not a secret that the company has been very keen to acquire a major global social networking website after failing to buy Facebook for $1bn (£503m) last year.
Semel, who will stay on in a non-executive role, has experienced a 30% drop in Yahoo!’s stock price over the last 18 months. The company has also missed out on acquisition opportunities, such as the Facebook site and advertising services company DoubleClick, which was bought by archrival Google.

Man what a LEG!

Browsing through some of my favourite blogs the other day and once again it seems the guys over at smashing magazine have done it again.

The link below takes you through to ther blog entry “Google pagerank: what do we know about it?“

Well worth a read thats if you want to know about google page rank?