Gasta Opinion: Why the forecasters are wrong about digital in 2009

While the pundits may be singing a similar tune when it comes to digital advertising's immediate future, here are a few points they may not have considered.
It's the first full work week of the New Year, and already I'm tired of the constant vacillation in moods concerning the health of internet marketing.
Depending on whom you believe, digital marketing will either follow newspapers into oblivion in 2009, or it will be hit hard but not quite as hard as other media. Hardly any of the pundits give it a positive outlook. And that's a shame, with self-fulfilling prophecies and all…
There are quite a few assertions, though, that are fairly consistently questionable from pundit to pundit when it comes to predicting digital's future. Among them:
1. Failing to grow at the same rate as last year is some sort of failure -- If digital advertising grew at 10-15 percent last year, and it will hit only 7-9 percent growth this year, that's not a failure. Accelerated year-over-year growth for any market sector, whether it be manufacturing, biotech engineering, or financial services, is unsustainable in the long term. Things have to slow down at some point. If digital advertising slows down but still grows in an economy where the word "Depression" is still commonly used in headlines for op-ed pieces, I think we're doing rather well, thankyouverymuch!
My other issue with this is that more marketers are doing things with digital that are not classified as advertising and probably don't get tracked by the prognosticators. Suppose your recommended solution to an e-commerce client is not to buy a bunch of ad banners, but instead to pay to have their digital shelf presence enhanced. Is that advertising? No. Does it address the business problem your client is trying to solve? Most definitely. Will such a deal get picked up by the powers-that-be who track internet spending? Probably not.
2. Video and social media need an ad model -- It's true that in order to make money the way that Yahoo, MSN, and Platform-A do, Facebook will need to improve its ad model. And yes, something will have to come along that can replace pre-roll and overlay ads in video. But hinging digital's growth potential on these ad model conundrums is a mistake, I think.
If video advertising won't scale appropriately (and I do believe it will to a certain degree in 2009), marketers might turn to other non-advertising ways to leverage video. Viral strategies, video syndication, and content sponsorship are all ways of making video work in ways that enhance the bottom line without registering on someone's radar as an ad spend.
As long as social networks can continue to capture everyone's attention the way they have in the last few years, I doubt the lack of an ad model will put them under. Not as long as I'm spending what I do on things like Facebook gifts and Facebook ads. I think there's a lot of potential in something like Facebook ads -- not the big banner deals they do, but the smaller, targeted buys that would appeal to small business marketers. I've used Facebook ads both to recruit people for positions at Underscore and to try to sell my home. In both cases, sub-$100 investments have yielded huge gains. If Google still has plenty of potential to roll up many thousands of small, self-serve ad deals in order to make money, why not Facebook?
3. Performance-based advertising will be where the growth is -- I've seen this prediction made by many of the pundits, followed by some Google-flattering comment about how search will drive modest growth in 2009. In the short term, this might be the case, but I think we've already seen what happens in digital when too many advertisers shift their focus to DR and performance-based digital media. Things quickly get crowded. Clearance issues abound. Lead and sale volumes drop sharply unless concessions are made with respect to price and environment. This is how we weathered the last downturn, and display never really went away and experienced a rebirth when the economy turned around and marketers learned to trust digital again.
I question these three assertions, and I'm skeptical that the equation is as simple as many of the pundits make it out to be. I'm also optimistic for another reason: Analysts and pundits who don't work in digital on a day-to-day basis often have trouble understanding the dynamic of how marketing budget decisions are made. I see a lot of potential out there for marketers and brand managers to come to the conclusion that their diminished budgets can't afford last year's levels of broadcast, and for those marketers to consider digital-heavy or digital-only options for marketing campaigns.
However, it turns out in 2009, I don't think we should resign ourselves to slowed growth or declines this year. People who work in digital tend to be people who thrive in chaos. There's certainly a good deal of chaotic behavior out there in the floundering economy, and I wouldn't be surprised if we figure out how to capitalize on it this year.
Tom Hespos is president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.

Gasta Mobile News:Buongiorno

Buongiorno uses viral to push mobile social network

A viral ad campaign supporting digital entertainment company Buongiorno's mobile social network has been viewed over 400,000 times.
The 411,101 views in the first three weeks of the campaign resulted in 3,135 visits to the Real Time Real People website, which contains more information about the mobile-specific social network.
According to the company, around 12% of unique viewers requested an invitation code to Blinko with over 27% subscribing.
Blinko is a pan-European attempt from Buongiorno to enter mobile social networking following success from established online players including Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.
The viral campaign was designed and created by DLV Proximity to generate interest in the new product. Buongiorno has allocated a total marketing budget of €500,000 (£426,000) to promote Blinko.

Gasta News:UK Government Open data

The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the masses of data it collects.

It is hoping to find new uses for public information in the areas of criminal justice, health and education.

The Power of Information Taskforce - headed by cabinet office minister Tom Watson - is offering a £20,000 prize fund for the best ideas.

To help with the task, the government is opening up gigabytes of information from a variety of sources.

This includes mapping information from the Ordnance Survey, medical information from the NHS, neighbourhood statistics from the Office for National Statistics and a carbon calculator from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

None of the data will be personal information, the government is keen to stress.

Mr Watson is hoping to attract a wide range of people from "the technology community we already work with, to hard-core coders to adolescents in their bedroom".

He admits that throwing open public data could be a risk but he believes that it will yield results.

"If someone comes up with a great idea we will make a prototype and then hopefully a fully-fledged piece of technology that will make peoples' lives better," he said.

"I strongly believe in co-design and in the digital age it makes sense to work with citizens to make public service better," he added.

To help inspire ideas the team behind the idea has put dozens of examples of innovative ways of reusing public information on its Taskforce wiki.

These include a website which maps crimes around the UK, the FixMyStreet website, which allows users to alert others to litter, vandalism and graffiti in their local environment, and the prototype RateMyPrison, which invites those who visit friends and families in jail to comment on the experience.

Technology commentator Bill Thompson was one of the first to see the Show Us a Better Way website, which details the competition.

"It's great to see a government department with enough sense to realise that it doesn't have all the good ideas," he said.

"There are terabytes of expensively accumulated information sitting in databases, but it goes unused and unexploited because of restrictive licenses and lack of awareness," he added.

The government will evaluate the ideas over the course of the summer.

Gasta Press Release :Channel 4IP

Gasta Latest Channel 4 News

From 2nd July, potential suppliers will be given an opportunity to register their interest and ask questions about the 4IP fund at http://channel4.com/4ip. We will keep the site updated with information on how to submit ideas, the range of projects we are looking for, as well as how our partnership arrangements work. Throughout July & August, the Channel 4 team will be taking part in a number of activities and events - including sponsoring 2gether, a new festival taking place in London in July - in order to talk broadly about Channel 4's ambitions for digital media and engage informally with some of the people who may want to submit ideas and look for funding from 4IP when we launch in September.

The official 4IP launch will involve a range of events (currently planned for 17-25 September) at which we will outline our vision for the fund, introduce our partners and provide examples of the type of projects 4IP will be looking to invest in. We will also begin actively soliciting ideas and responding to proposals.

We will be in touch again soon with details of the September launch events, but if you would like any more information in the mean time then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Gasta News:Brand Identity

Here at Gasta HQ we have noticed a pattern in our advertisers inluding the brand names of competitors in their advertising keywords, we have seen an upsurge of brand identity marketing of terms such as Louis Vuitton, 12th Sreet by Cynthia Vincent, Adidas, Alexander McQueen, Anya Hindmarch, Bottega Veneta, Chloé, Derek Lam, E-bags, Erva, Fendi, Gucci, Hoss, Intropia, Jimmy Choo, Kate Moss, Laccoste, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Net-a -Porter, Nike, Orange, Oscar de la Renta, Puma, Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, Samsung, Sony, Stella McCartney, Toni&Guy, Valentino, VBH, Vivienne Westwood, Red, Zoe&Morgan.
This change is due to the new rules introduced by Google about brand keywords, and the savvy marketers are the ones using the Gasta search marketing keyword tools to capitalise, Big brands you have been warned. buy your brand keywords now!