Blog Ad Network by Six Apart helps monetization of smaller blogs
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Some good material presented at Media'08 in Australia. Should it come as a surprise that the concept of a flat world is being challenged from "down under"? This presentation is quite interesting in that it challenges a few stereotypes and generally accepted truths and thus puts in perspective a number of success stories that capture so much of our attention these days. No I am not rambling about Facebook and its ridiculous valuation... at least not too much. Enjoy this good stuff!
In an industry that has been growing at a yearly rate greater than 20% for the best part of the past decade (source: PricewaterhouseCoopers), with the 2006 growth standing at 35% according to Pew Institute, Belgium's online advertising spend has grown by 50% to 273 million euros in 2007 according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Of course, that is tiny as a share of the global online advertising revenues which reached 17 billion dollars (about 12 billion euros) in 2006 according to Pew Institute.
Here are two interesting reports published in 2007:
Being in NYC these days, I am spending quite some time observing the city and its people as well as watching those huge screens displaying TV programs on the avenues of the city that never sleeps. These are uncertain times for the US economy and one of the things I was looking for was how people would react to that. First of all, I see none of the gloom and doom even though people acknowledge the ride ahead may be quite bumpy for a while. Secondly, I am impressed with this very American way of seeing opportunity and rising to the challenge in troubled times. To illustrate this, I see quite a few people who are turning the current pressure some people feel into a business opportunity selling books and workshops on how to make real estate decisions or how to reduce debt. Some authors do that positioning themselves as experts while others occupy the "consumer activism" space defending customers from the nasty tactics of credit card companies and other providers of financial services. And this is quite intense.
So there's a big difference between US and Europe: the Americans are able to see opportunity in almost any trouble, while Europeans see trouble in many opportunities. For example, the way we handled the expansion of the EU to Eastern Europe is perhaps iconic of this: the French started complaining about Polish plumbers "invading" their market and no public figure, no political leader trumpeted the only message that was constructive back then (and perhaps now): "go East young man!"
Just got to the OnMedia conference and glad to be here for a new edition meeting friendly faces from previous events. Same posh location and already a couple of very striking facts for the marketing & communication industry or at least stuff I found quite interesting and worth commenting:
Interesting trends don't you think? Of course as a friend of mine keeps saying surveys can be twisted to convey the desired message, so they have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but nevertheless the field is ripe for some momentous changes, all of which may not necessarily be in favor of Google. For example I doubt AdWords will be successful in its current form in the long run... but that's for another post :-)
If we are serious about dealing with durable (human) development and the type of world we will leave to future generations (not only in the economically developed world), it is worth listening to well documented views from contrarians like Bjorn Lomborg, whose book Cool It I strongly recommend. Worth considering on this Blog Action Day I think. His presentation at TED Talks can be viewed at the end of this post.
What I like about what he develops is that:
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Tad James & David Shephard: Presenting Magically: Transforming Your Stage Presence with NLP
Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series (General))
Richard Tanner Pascale: Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business
Randy Komisar: The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living