Entries categorized as ‘eBiz Globalization’
Annonsnätverken i Sverige har hittills haft begränsat genomslag om man ser till andel av den totala mediainvesteringen online. Enligt IRM stod online (och mobilt) för c:a 18% av mediainvesteringen 2009 (c:a 5 miljarder SEK totalt för Internet). Av det var c:a 1.7 miljarder eller 32% display/ bannerannonsering. Min gissning är att annonsnätverken i Sverige tillsammans har kommer att ha c:a 10% av den kakan 2010 d v s runt 200 miljoner SEK. Det kanske är lågt räknat.
Det är min uppfattning att det pågår ett skifte just nu. Från att ha varit blinda nätverk (otydliga eller dolda sitelistor) är nätverken nu mer transparenta och tydliga med sina komponenter. Dessutom möjliggör teknologin att nätverken i allt högre utsträckning kan optimera resultatet av enskilda kampanjer för såväl annonsör som siteägare (“publisher”).
Skiftet ligger i att målgruppsstyrningen (“targetting”) öppnar för större värde för annonsören och att acceptansen för nätverk som alternativ till kontextuella placeringar med högre prislapp ökar. Min magkänsla säger mig att få annonsörer kommer att göra aktiviteter online om ett år utan att ha en targetting-komponent. Den kommer att konkurrera med argument om kontextuell relevans som många stora medieägare lever på idag.
Störst och viktigast kommer s k re-targetting att bli spår jag. Vi ser redan tendenser på kontinenten där teknologi fokuserad på re-targetting vinner mark. Med re-targetting menas i allmänhet att återexponera ögonpar som besökt annonsörens site eller liknande site baserat på intresse/varor/tjänster.
Den största utmaningen för nätverksindustrin kommer att bli att korrekt attribuera försäljning eller aktiviteter till rätt annons (vilket i brist på branschstandarder mm är tveksamt idag) samt att se till att leverera volymer utan att gå in i gråzon kring spårning (vilket är en helt annan diskussion).
Categories: eBiz Affiliation · eBiz Big Picture · eBiz Demand Generation · eBiz Globalization · eBiz News and Trends · eBiz Strategy
Tagged: målgruppsstyrning i annonsnätverk, annonsnätverk i Sverige, framtiden för annonsnätverken, retargetting ökar sin andel av spend, genombrottet för annonsnätverken
It seems more and more advertisers are choosing so called closed keyword policies i.e. they choose not to work with specialized affiliates that employ search engine marketing (SEM) tactics to drive traffic and make money on the difference between cost per click bids and cost per order rewards.
In many markets, savvy keyword affiliates can still make nice profits. However, as marketing departments adopt a proper search strategy and acquire relevant know how, many affiliates that previously delivered search originating traffic through an affiliate programme are sacked. In the short term, they can focus on other programmes and activities. In the long term, we are seeing a migration of affiliate revenues into search. For the affiliate market it is hardly bad news. A short term loss in revenue will be replaced by true affiliate revenues as digital marketing spend grows.
The beauty of true affiliate programmes lies in a common interest in the consumer between an advertiser and an affiliate. Without a relevance between affiliate traffic and advertiser products, the model won’t generate enough return. Affiliate programmes take long time to build (not only technical tracking) and need a lot of tweaking before they can be deemed successful.
So as both demand channels continue to grow, affiliates will become more clean cut. All good.
Categories: eBiz Globalization · eBiz Management · eBiz Strategy
Tagged: Keyword policies changed as advertisers take over search., Advertiser search know how changing online demand playing field., Affiliate programmes see less search mix., Search affiliates in trouble?
My colleague Åsa Lundell at TradeDoubler, www.tradedoubler.com and www.digipedia.se, showed me some very interesting research on transaction volumes online. The research clearly highlights how average order values (AOVs) are trending down year to date.
What is even more interesting is that the order volumes themselves are not trending down. The number of orders are probably driven by a variety of factors e.g. growth of online users and migration of offline campaigns.
On the other hand, average order values are hit by:
- Purchase patterns amid recession – people have less money and look for bargains and cannot fully afford high end products.
- Increased efficiency in online tracking – the more orders we track as a percentage of total – the greater the number of orders and the lower the average order value.
- Possibility that high AOV ecommerce items (durabels etc) are suffering more than e.g. fast moving consumer goods i.e. mix is shifting to lowend AOV.
Categories: Web Analytics · eBiz Affiliation · eBiz Demand Generation · eBiz Globalization · eBiz International · eBiz Management
Tagged: Average order values online hit by recession., Drivers of lower average order value online., Ecommerce slowing - driven by lower average order values.
For most people, trading equals buying low and selling high. Typical traders will run there own stock or inventory and look for quick in and outs in any given market place.
In financial markets arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices (Wikipedia definition). My appreciation of the term arbitrage also includes the notion of the capitalization being “risk free” i.e. the practice described above is done simultaneously such that no risk is incurred.
My colleague Jonas Rundgren brought my attention the other day to the emerging practice of “arbitrage” in the online advertising space. Impressions, clicks and actions are referred to as “currencies” and the arbitrage lies in capitalizing on the imbalance in conversion rates between cost per impression, cost per click and cost per action.
For example, if you know a historic conversion rate of impressions of financial services to clicks of financial services you can start trading when an imbalance occurs.
Let us assume that the market cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for relevant publishers/ site owners is 2€. Let’s say the standard historic conversion rate of financial services is 1%. This would mean that a thousand impressions would give you 10 clicks. In a balanced market, the financial services cost per click (CPC) should be 100x the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) i.e. 200€. If this is not the case there is an arbitrage opportunity.
Publishers (site owners) will be more or less willing to settle for anything else than CPM deals. Let us assume they are indifferent. Opportunities in this case will arise from assymetric knowledge about conversion rates (historical data, publisher data, assessment of offering in question, seasonality). Assuming that the CPM and CPC prices are constant, a higher than average click through rate will allow market makers to buy CPM and sell CPC making a margin off the imbalance. A lower than expected conversion rate will allow market makers to sell in CPM and buy in CPC, again making a margin off the imbalance. A real opportunity, in real dollars, occuring every day.
Some maybe sceptical as to the real value in understanding this? But seeing that impressions, clicks and actions are the new currencies of the next century, with trillions of CPC, CPM and CPA transactions every day, there is a tremendous amount of money to be made in trading them. Only issue is that few players on the market have the adequate data to do it successfuly. And those that do hardly have the competency to understand how to manage risks and structure a trading outfit.
Categories: eBiz Globalization · eBiz International · eBiz Management · eBiz News and Trends · eBiz Organizations · eBiz Strategy
Tagged: Online advertising arbitrage., Online market making., CPC, CPM and CPA as traded currencies.
When I was 15, I used to work extra during the summer at UPS Stockholm (when it was called Seabourne). My father was the managing director for the company so I wasn’t exactly employed for my skill but more as a typical “gotta find my son a summer job” employee.
One of the things I used to do was to send telex to other offices around the world. Yes, you heard me. Not fascimile/fax but telex (see the beautiful beast below). I realize that I must sound like a relic from the past. But we actually used to send confirmations on transports and messages on financial daily performance via telex. This was in 1988 and I recall this even at the time being inferior to fax and a tool that was looked upon with some scepticism.
Today, I find myself in a purely globalized company using an array of communication tools. To name a few I use fax, email, internet messanger (only internal), MS net meeting, MS live meeting, smart phone, Avaya IP Phone software (mobile office), telephone and video conferencing. In the online space we are especially open to new tools given the magnitude of our business outsourced to India and other offshore locations.
Because I tend to IM with colleagues only 5 metres away, the only way to notice that your colleague is on the other side of the world is that you don’t know which part of his name is first and surname respectively or that you ping him in the evening and he says “good morning”.
At least it would appear so.
I am becoming painfully aware of the downsides of the globalized company. In theory, all the communication methods offer a steady flow of information. But the problem is that information, when offered by face to face substitutes, doesn’t help you understand culture, attitude or informal agendas.
An abundance of factual information derived from the rich palett of communication methods may give you a false sense of being “in the loop” when actual decisions are made by the Coffee Machine in influential corporate locations.
So if you want to be effective in a globalized world, move your desk to the coffee machine and depend less on your email. Direct interaction face to face still rules unless you work in Finland. There you need to remove your clothes and move your desk into the sauna…
Categories: eBiz Globalization · eBiz International · eBiz Organizations
Tagged: globalization in communication underlines importance of, Informal chats more important than email
The latest data from eMarketer gives us some hints about where the extended European on-line market is going in terms of penetration and users. The first diagram suggests that Scandinavia and the Netherlands are the most developed connected European countries in the on-line space.
However, Russia, Spain, Ireland and France are leading in terms of user growth (see below).
Similar to the “catch – up” theory or theory of convergence in macro economics these countries will most probably experience abnormal growth until they reach penetration levels in line with the averages for Europe. The fact that these countries are adding a vast amount of new Internet users each year makes them very attractive targets for business expansion.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the maturity of users follows their tenure in the on-line space. Many of these users will be users that have not been exposed to the internet. Advanced ecommerce offerings, blogs, widget applications etc are not necessarily easily adopted in these markets. So for new business development and start up type on-line business activities, I believe Scandinavian markets (and NL) are still the best testing grounds.
Categories: eBiz Big Picture · eBiz Globalization · eBiz International · eBiz Management
Tagged: penetration and growth in Europe 2007., what are the most interesting European markets, Where to test and develop online business in Europe
My German colleague Martin sent me an email stating that “wurst case, we have to think of lowering margin”. For those of you who don’t speak German, “Wurst” means sausage and has nothing to do with the English word “worst”. The same week another Danish colleague invited the office to “drinks and nipples“.
We were neither about to lower any sausage margins nor were we about to have breast milk for drinks. But the above examples support the key message in this article: don’t underestimate the power of semantics, cultural associations and localized copy writing when chosing to globalize your online business.
I would argue that in globalizing your copy writing (merchandising, point of sales statements etc) via a translation agency, you are forfeiting the most important tool you have to convince your customer to buy your products.
The companies that do the translating would of course argue that it is a matter of quality of translation (the below example would have been easy to translate).
Nevertheless, I cannot see how a creative copy, sometimes based on a functional area of understanding (e.g. computers), with all its cultural bias, can be translated to have the same meaning and sought after sales impact.
Find below a point of sale statement intended to be used in all merchandising for a specific laptop computer that I reviewed this week.
I sincerely hope you can have a laugh at the English wording “90% power. 90% power-trip”, carelessly translated into a selection of your mother tongues.
The Swedish translation of “power-trip” is “högvilt”. The latter is a word for a group of Swedish wild animals (e.g. deer) for which Swedish hunters by law need to use the most heavy type of ammunition.
So why do companies continue to expand these global practices?
Copy text is similar to many quality metrics in that it is difficult to isolate the direct impact on sales and customer experience. And that makes it an easy target for corporate cost cutters, opex scalers and Myers-Briggs profiles with a preference for sensing.
My advice for those of you thinking of outsourcing your “mother’s tongue” is to use your intuition and look at it this way: would you feel comfortable going to a job interview in a language you did not speak with an interpret by your side?
Categories: eBiz Globalization · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Outsourcing
Tagged: globalizing copy, globalizing translatioin services., online merchandizing, online translations of sales copy., Outsourced services, translating copy
