Australian online news and views

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?

Received an email about another analytics service today.

http://crazyegg.com/

I have just started testing it and so far it seems to work quite well. It is defintiely worth checking out there are few different tools that they have
For example i like the “heat map” imaging tool example below:-

It may not really tell you anything different but it does look cool. Not to be confused with eye tracking software but it looks great.
Another image to put into your consultants folder.

Check it out signing up is free for now with a limited account. BTW I don’t get anything from this I wish I did.

In an hurry again.

Copywriting is hard its not something that just roles off your puters keyboard, well not for me anyway. I then suggest that quality blogging can also be hard, it is something that you should at least briefly plan out and think about before you do. It is very easy in a rush of ideas or a rush to get content into your blog to just start typing. If you do not have good content and I mean by that easy to consume content that is on topic you will not have much success. That is you probably won’t get any repeat visitors “stickiness” on your blog.

One of the key successes of a blog is in bound links and email or subscriber users.

I often find myself typing away on my laptop before I have even start thinking about what it is that really want to communicate.

Who am I writing for?
What am I trying to say?

Don’t forget when you publish information anyone can see. So you should always be putting your best foot forward. With this in mind I have decided to try and fix up all of my previous posts and sites and find out the best way to do it. I have just added this blog to my blogroll and suggest you take a look.

This blog covers a number of copywriting issues and i think they cover them well.

such topics as :

1. Tips for designing the ultimate landing page
2. SEO copywriting
3. 10 effective ways to get more blog subscribers

and much much more check it out its good stuff.

Blogs, Blogging, Bloggers there are millions of them, search almost any subject and a blog is returned in the SERP.

So what is a blog anyway?

Well if you weren’t aware you are reading one now !

According to wikipedia a blog is a website where entries are made and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

They can provide commentary or news on any subject many are personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Here are a few other definitions from “pro blogger”:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ ‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.