Our Spotlight column in the Jun ‘08 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are privileged to witness the start of a new movement. A movement that is revving up to do what The Cluetrain Manifesto did for marketing communications. Welcome to VRM.
Remember ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’? It’s the book co-authored by pre-eminent marketing practitioners including Harvard University’s Doc Searls. It coined the phrase “markets are conversations”.
Well, Mr. Searls is at it again. Not satisfied with inspiring consumers to use the web to redress the balance between marketers and consumers (e.g. via blogs), he wants to move things up a gear. And blogging strategist Adriana Lukas is along for the ride.
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Our Spotlight column in the Oct ‘07 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
Now that new media accounts for a significant portion of advertising revenues, advertising bodies are investigating how to future-proof its self-regulatory framework.
Breaking news: as far as advertising goes, the internet’s not quite the bad boy it may appear to be.
As Richard Knubben, policy & compliance manager at EASA, the European Advertising Standards Alliance, puts it: “On the whole, internet and new media-related complaints have made up a relatively small percentage of total advertising complaints over the last couple of years, but are slowly rising.”
And according to Christopher Graham, director general of UK advertising regulator the ASA, that’s because people see traditional media including TV as ‘push’ and so uncontrollable by the recipient, whereas new media is more ‘pull’. He adds: “…people have an expectation about the internet. If they encounter some nastiness they just go away… in context, they would probably expect some advertising to be, frankly, raunchier or sexier than on TV.” A conclusion supported by a 2005 research study commissioned by the ASA.
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Our Spotlight column in the Dec ‘07 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.
Barely nine years old, few would deny that Google has had a significant impact on the world. But does Google bode well for the MR sector?
Mainak Mazumdar, VP of Measurement Services at Nielsen//NetRatings, probably sums it up best: every time, he notes, someone steps on a Google property, Google gets a bit more insight into their behaviour and, as a result, a bit smarter.
And as attention continues to shift online, and Google solidifies its position as a dominant destination, it is clearly becoming more adept at understanding not only consumer behaviour but also intention – i.e., when you enter a search query, you’re telling Google what you want to see, read, buy, do etc. And Google takes advantage of that to give you ever more relevant results.
So could this understanding one day trounce what MR has to offer?
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