Online Business Blog

Facebook has just released a forecast for its advertising revenue for next year that cites the company will make just over 1 billion pounds.  Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and several of his college roommates whilst studying at Harvard University and has seen its popularity increase over the past few years immensely.

People could be wrong in thinking that this will be a trend within the online advertising market as other companies such as MySpace have unfortunately reported 14% shrinkage in their advertising revenues.

Facebook now has over 500 million users globally and relies on 65% of its revenue from the US. It is very big news that it has now dwarfed its rival MySpace that is currently owned by Rupert Murdoch’s news corporation. With advertising profits rising by 165% since 2009 the company is set to soar even further over time and reach its own goal of 1 billion users in the near future.

Most of Facebooks revenue is served by its advertising partner Microsoft in the form of Banner advertising.  Facebook has a much lower click through rate than many other large websites but is still extremely successful and used by many UK advertising agencies.

One of its reasoning’s for its low click through rate is its reckoning that many of its users are very young and technically minded and in turn use advert blockers to bypass adverts.  It has been reported that some adverts used within Facebooks wall posts have had click through rates as high as 6.49%, which is one of the reasons as a Direct Response Advertising Agency there is no better time to start using social website Marketing.

Cornwall is one of the busiest and highly sought after location for family holidays and is now hosting a quite unique battle between one of its villages and a local school.

Residents of the small village of Trevalga are coming to terms with the news that their homes could be sold due to a loophole in the law that was recently discovered.

The small hamlet of Trevalga was left to the local public school Marlborough College back in 1959 by Gerald Curgenven, a trust was set up to ensure that the estate and its buildings would be maintained for future generations.  The ex-pupil and lord of the manor’s original agreement has been marked as legally flawed by the local public schools solicitors and as a result the school has decided to sell the entire 3,000 acre estate. The £28,000 per Year College has cited that the original agreement contained no end date and no ultimate beneficiary which is enough to cancel the arrangement.

Many of the local inhabitants are facing an unclear future and have formed a campaign called ‘The Battle of Trevalga’. The village is nestled between Tintagel and Boscastle both tourism hotspots for Family Holidays with no holiday parks situated in the vicinity.

The estate is expected to go on the market at the end of the summer for an estimated ten million pounds. Property developers and holiday parks are expected to be very interested in the estate due to the sheer size and location.

One great concern from the residents newly formed group is that villages in the past have been ‘trashed’ by large scale buying. It is suggested that if the estate was sold off as second homes or turned into holiday parks it would go against Gerald Curgenven’s original plan for safeguarding the hamlet.

At present, the entire village is occupied by locals and does not have any holiday lets or holiday parks within the area making it a very viable business opportunity.

The campaigners plan to launch an appeal against the college’s action but fear that if all else fails then hopes of a sympathetic buyer could be slim.

No Win No Fee Accident Claims have been around for centuries and there has, in the past, been some controversy surrounding them. Nowadays, that controversy is long buried and the No Win No Fee structure is one that’s advantageous to both the client and the solicitor.

Previously, a No Win No Fee arrangement would be entered into and it meant exactly that. If the lawyer pursuing the No Win No Fee Injury Claim didn’t succeed in the case then the client would not have to pay them anything. However, if the lawyer won, then not only did the client have to pay the standard fees, but in most cases they would also have to pay a ’success fee’ to the lawyer, which is where the controversy arose. Although it meant that anybody could pursue a lawsuit, regardless of their financial situation, it also meant that people would see any compensation they received dramatically reduced as they then had to pay the lawyer.

This all changed in 2000, when the Access to Justice Act 1999 allowed success fees to be recovered from the losing party. With the standard lawyers fees also able to be recovered from the losing party, there now exists a ‘No Win No Fee, Win No Fee’ agreement. The lawyer agrees not to charge the client if they don’t win, but if they do win it is the losing party that must pay all of the lawyer’s fees. This means that victims can keep 100% of their compensation and has removed the controversy that previously existed in the No Win No Fee field.

So, what does No Win No Fee really mean? Well, it means that whether you win or lose you don’t pay a penny.

It has been a turbulent old time for Direct Response Advertising and other elements of the media sector which over the last three years have seen a drop in revenue. Today there seems to be a surprise recovery though on the global advertising markets, having seen for the past three months some positive growth. Some large UK Advertising Agencies have actually boosted their forecasts for industry spending this year by more than 50 per cent and have predicted a further spike in 2012 which can only be good news for an industry that has been suffering.

Drastic falls in advertising have historically been followed by a good rebound approximately three years later, so for example, after the big slump of 1991, spending went up by 6.8 per cent three years later. The same can be said for the dotcom bubble when spending went up 7.4 per cent about three years later.

Whilst the media industry diversifies all the time and opportunities arrive in all manner of new places like online, via mobile phones and even through television programmes with the latest allowance of product placement then the scope for companies to get their products and messages across to consumers is as exciting and innovative as ever. Companies need to lead with their innovations and pave the way against their competitors in what is an incredibly cut throat, competitive industry. Consumers are more demanding than ever and expect great value for money along with well designed, high quality finished products.

The investment, pensions and insurance group, LV=, have launched a clever new recruitment advertising campaign to spearhead a new recruitment drive. The campaign uses a mixture of groundbreaking technology and LV= very own staff.

LV= will be utilising a whole range of media to target new recruits including, online, press and outdoor advertising and social media sites such as Facebook. The advertising material will use real life LV= employees telling their own stories of what it’s like to work for the country.

Those interested in working for LV= are asked to take a picture of the poster and either email or text it to LV=, LV= will then use some fancy technology to identify which employee is featured on the poster and that employee will then call the interested potential recruit. This allows anyone interested in applying for a position to find out a little bit more about the company. This recruitment campaign is not only benefiting LV= though as 10p from every text goes to the Great Ormond Street hospital.

The recruitment drive will be launched at 150 sites across cities such as Exeter, Croydon, Bristol and Bournemouth. LV= are looking at recruitment at many of there 28 offices across the country with positions with in their insurance departments being a particular focus.

If successful LV= could start a trend for innovative recruitment advertising which looks to utilise its own work force and cutting edge technology in a big to attract the best candidates.

As the world cup kicks off, England had their first game on Saturday night and in true form managed to have the nation in states of tension, frustration and at times embarrassment. Robert Green, England’s chosen goal keeper, managed to let a goal in that even I could have saved and in the wake of his embarrassment, UK Advertising Agencies have told him that he should have a fairly good career in advertising, presumably being the butt of his own joke.

So, who else has managed to make a career in advertising?

Gareth Southgate, Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce who all famously missed penalties in crucial matches gained roles in the Pizza Hut advertising campaign. Southgate was seen with a bag over his head in the restaurant whilst trying to eat a pizza, trying to hide his identity from fellow diners.

Gary Lineker was a household name for his football abilities and clean record on the pitch and become the face of Walkers crisps in ironic roles as Mr. Bad Guy, stealing crisps off unsuspecting crisp eaters in a series of very successful adverts.
Eric Cantona retired early from an extremely successful football career playing for Manchester United and his country, to become an actor. Along the way he starred in a fair amount of adverts, the most famous being his Nike commercials which featured a whole host of world class players in a dungeon playing football, he was the dungeon master hosting the tournament.

It will be interesting to see which players sign up to a UK Advertising Agent and start to appear in adverts as a result of their success or demise in the World Cup.

2010 Election

It would have been a bitter pill to swallow, in the wake of our turbulent economic crisis, to find the powers that be had spent millions on advertising fees to promote their party in the quest to govern this country. Thankfully the leaders, especially Brown had the sense not to.

For the three UK Advertising Agencies appointed to peddle each party, a baptism of fire ensued. It is often a few weeks, sometimes months, for the strategic briefing of an ad campaign to turn into the creative execution. For this election it was required within a matter of hours, overnight sometimes, to rewrite messages and tweak ads already lined up to run. The modern digital world moves at such a pace that it is possible (and sometimes vital) to reconfigure entire strategies overnight, reacting to the media frenzy and party oppositions day by day.

The recent election has been hailed as the Social Media Election. With tiny budgets, the evolution of social media has played a huge role. Allowing each party to work hard building relationships with the voters via social media opportunities along with email marketing to amplify their party policies and keep in touch with the voter.

Opinions are split on how much more effective social media has been for each party opposed to the traditional poster sites and press ads of yester year. One strong argument is that it is the real people within these realms that have had the most influence, rather than the parties themselves. From high brow intellects to youthful pop stars; it will be difficult to quantify how much impact their tweets and profiles have had in swaying the public with their unrestricted and transparent opinions posted on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the run up to the next election and monitor how each UK Advertising Agent will strategise the campaign; will the emphasis be on Modern Social Media or Traditional Press Media?

As the internet evolves so do the opportunities of advertising and marketing avenues for UK Advertising Agencies. Whilst we once engaged in placement ads on social media sites with gusto we now see that people want to see what others are into, and like, and can offer, than just clicking on the adverts that sit next to these people’s profiles. That’s not to say paid placements are pointless. As we watch social media grow and mature we see more sophisticated methods of advertising coming through with developers designing much more reactive and measurable information in the form of capturing profile data, profile targeting and auction systems that meet the advertisers ability to engage and also to measure the results.

Away from the paid placements there are of course the social media usage itself that for the likes of almost every company has benefits: from increasing brand awareness to direct response call to actions. Marketers are awakening to the realisation people don’t want to be shouted at or have adverts thrust in their faces. More so, businesses see the effective benefits of offering relevant, informative and valued insights to facilitate building a relationship with consumers. By engaging in more social communicative ways and offering entertainment and benefits to their valued target audience, the target audience in turn, respond in a more effective way. Following companies tweets, becoming a fan of their Facebook page and signing up to their news alerts has become a way of life for consumers to keep in touch and stay informed with all the latest that company may offer.

They say in this industry it is far more cost effective for a UK Advertising Agent and indeed a business, to retain and market to their existing client base than reaching out to new, and in this social media world we live in, surely that is truer and easier today than when this statement was first penned.

We all know just how much we rely on our trusted PC, laptop or notebook for internet access and daily usage. The whole family benefits from the World Wide Web, from parents researching and booking their family holiday to kids using its vast resources to help them with their homework and studies, even grandparents are getting involved because of course, it is a great way to keep in touch with distant members of the family.

With the amount of use the internet gets and the vast amount of surfing that takes place from site to site and page to page with it brings a great threat to your PC. From fast spreading viruses, trojans, spyware and other forms of malware your PC, without protection, is vulnerable to catching all manner of infections which could crash your computer and loose valuable work, photos and downloads that are saved indefinitely.

Fortunately there is plenty of free download antivirus software available online which can enable you to surf safely and will protect your computer and information. Preventing viruses, rootkits, spyware, hackers, online fraud and identity theft along with the lesser known but very real internet threats, it’s certainly something that you should be looking at to provide you and your whole family peace of mind for 24 hour protection.

The latest to fail in the world of online mergers and acquisitions is the social networking site Bebo. It was once the most popular website for teenagers, but now it faces a complete closure by the end of this year. Bebo’s demise has been put largely down to the failure of AOL’s willingness or ability to fund the site which has now made it impossible to compete with the likes of other social networking giants Facebook and MySpace.

Recent figures show that Bebo’s global unique visitors in February totalled 12.8 million against Facebook’s whopping 462 million. MySpace totalled 110 million and Twitter 69.5 million. Bebo’s stats were 45% down on last February.

The result of the acquisition by AOL led to insufficient investment and when compared to Facebook, who at any given time have 2, 000 engineers working on the site to keep it running effectively, Bebo had just 40; it is not difficult to see one of its downfalls.

In its heyday, Bebo attracted a host of direct response advertising companies all keen to participate in features like the well publicised web video dramas like KateModern. This was a strategy that worked well and also saw the site attract media focus and ultimately led to a more attractive sale. However, since the acquisition it has lost the vital investment and impetus to keep up with the big boys and this, coupled with a gradual reluctance of top UK Advertising Agencies to continue to commit to any length of advertising campaigns, has led to their ultimate demise.