Online Business Blog

Whilst advertising in 2009 as a whole has been down on 2008 there have been successes across the board with digital and online advertising continuing to grow and become more competitive. The war of the Internet Search Engines began with Microsoft’s Bing launching globally in June, much to Google’s annoyance. They have teamed up with Yahoo and now have a Market share of 10%, Google is a little worried and has launched its first ever global advertising campaign. The question is will people be coining the new phrase ‘I binged it’ in the new decade?

Internet advertising has been the most innovative marketing medium in 2009 which is supported by the Internet Advertising Bureau (LAB) reporting that it had grown by 4.6% in the first half of 2009, overtaking television spend for the first time ever. Now more than ever people should be looking at utilising the Internet for their marketing and many UK Advertising Agencies are fully equipped to manage campaigns as paid for searches continue to grow and be in demand.

The mobile phone market is also driving innovation in marketing with 2009 being another strong year. In June, consumers camped outside O2 stores across England to get their hands on Apple’s 3G iPhone, a launch which secured a 40% share of the smartphone market. The future for mobiles look set to get bigger and bigger and the medium is now accounts for 11.7% of ad spend.

TV has struggled this year but with shows like X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Britain’s Got Talent, TV advertising revenues will be up by 4% year on year this month. The BBC has been suffering with their networks and need to find £75 million in order to kick start its cost cutting programme for the next five years. Whilst Channel four has signed a ground breaking deal with YouTube this year which will make the broadcasters programmes available on demand, in full and free of charge via the video sharing website.

With these new avenues of marketing looking set to grow and continue to be fiercer in competition who knows what other ground breaking deals, new innovations and jaw dropping tactics will be used in 2010 by search engines, phone companies and direct response advertising . Watch this space.

online bingo

Recent research by one of the internets leading bingo directories has found that online bingo sites are spending millions on TV advertising.

The focus of the report was the amount of money spent on advertising by the major bingo operators and the size of the online bingo industry.

The report showed that Foxy Bingo was by far the biggest spender. Their totals spend accounted to nearly a third of the total spending by the industry by spending $3.27 million. Its nearest rival in the spending charts was online bingo newcomer Tombola who spent over $2.5 million.

The report also showed that there are now over 230 online sites in Britain. There combined spending on TV accounted for more than $10 million.

The likes of Think Bingo, Party Bingo and Crown Bingo were also responsible for a considerable amount on advertising spending, with $1.09 million, $993,000 and $622,000 spent respectively.

During the research of the report it was noted that despite the current economic down turn bingo sites are still holding with plenty of people playing bingo online on strong and it’s likely they will continue to spend big on TV advertising in 2009. So far this year we have already seen big advertising campaigns from Foxy Bingo and Tomola.

Interestingly the report shows that the two biggest players in bingo, Gala Bingo and Mecca Bingo, where not among 2008’s big spenders. Both companies felt that it was not necessary to advertise heavily during 2008 after years of successful TV advertising has bought huge volumes of customers to its sites. It will remain to be seen if they change there stance in 2009.