Equator Live

Ad view-ability has always been important to advertisers – of course we want to make sure our ads are being seen!  So we’re pretty interested in the news about “Sticky” the new “state-of-the-art eye-tracking technology (which) uses consumers’ own eye movements to verify what ads they have looked at”.

This technology allows tracking in real-time and in real-life. The technology could influence all kinds of things – from rates relating to how media is traded, to publisher accountability.  In any case, we think it means a good thing for the online display industry.

Posted on May 17th, 2013 in Uncategorized with no comments

In April, it was announced that Enhanced Campaigns will also include social annotations where they can improve performance, without additional edits required to campaign settings.  All you need to qualify is a Google+ page with at least 100 followers and a linked website that matches the URL in your ads.

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Posted on April 24th, 2013 in PPC, Uncategorized with no comments

Many PPC specialists have been reticent about the release of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns (EC) in AdWords for fear of increased CPCs (cost-per-clicks) with the integration of mobile and tablet and desktop bids into one campaign.  Some were confused as to why Google would launch these new campaigns to encourage mobile, but then only allow the user to modify their bids at campaign level.

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Posted on April 24th, 2013 in PPC, Uncategorized with no comments

In our world there are lots of tech conferences. But only one worth making a 20 hour pilgrimage to. The biggest and best – South-by-South-West. Our Creative Director James Jefferson shares his experiences of this year’s conference in Austin, Texas.

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Posted on March 25th, 2013 in Uncategorized, We're talking about, What we're up to with no comments

We would dare to say that most display campaigns now include RTB (Real Time Bidding) as fairly standard practice.  This is because RTB allows advertisers to respond in a timely way to audience and customer cues, and at a very good rate.  The problem is, as with all blind buys, we lose control of complete brand safety, transparency and of course the quality media – as outlined in this stat-heavy article on MediaPost. Unfortunately the article does not offer a solution.  With all of our campaigns we do try to include an element of straight publisher buys to balance out these factors, which seems to address the holes that RTB can’t fill.  However, with how fast RTB has developed we’re sure there will be a full solution soon.

Posted on November 13th, 2012 in Marketing, Media, Uncategorized with no comments

On May 30^th Google converted Google Places to Google+ Local. Google made these changes with minimal fuss, in fact the transition was seamless and completed in two days so there is no need for marketers to do anything to their places pages.

This move has led to a few notable changes, the biggest being  changes in user interface that have appeared during the move from Google Places to Google+ Local.

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Posted on July 5th, 2012 in Marketing, SEO, Uncategorized with no comments

As we know, Google update their search engine algorithm on a regular basis. On 24^th of April Google released an update that has since gained the nickname ‘Penguin’ – continuing the animal theme from the previous ‘Panda’ updates.

The ‘Penguin’ update was introduced to tackle over optimised websites, targeting those that have used over-aggressive techniques (such as keyword stuffing and link schemes) to manipulate Google’s search engine rankings. The update also favoured big brand websites with high levels of Domain Authority ahead of small to medium size sites with less authoritative domains, who would previously have been able to compete strongly in the search engines.

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Posted on May 24th, 2012 in Marketing, SEO, Uncategorized with no comments

As part of my ongoing involvement in the Apps for Grandpeople module I headed back up to Dundee for a second session with the level 3 Interaction Design Students. The first stage of the project, involved every student working individually to come up with a solution to an everyday life problem that their grandperson (relative or acquaintance of retirement age) faced. The session involved each student pitching an idea for an app developed from researching and working with their grandperson. Each student was given 3 minutes to pitch their idea to myself and lecturer Kate Saunderson. There was a great variety of apps covering a whole load of different areas and a number of the apps had definite commercial potential.

The afternoon session involved the students splitting up into groups of 4-6 and whittling down their concepts to one idea that they would take forward as a team. The decision making process was not an easy one for any of the groups as they all had some great ideas to choose from. In order to make their decision they had to take into account their personal skills, timescales, complexity and commercial viability in order to create the best possible solution. Some tough decisions were made and in some cases really good ideas had to be dropped in favour of simpler solutions that would produce a better quality final solution. This is an important lesson because when working on a commercial project budget and timescales can lead to better ideas being dropped in favour of more practical solutions. After a lot of very democratic discussions each of the groups selected the idea they would be focussing on until the end of the module.

There are now 5 exciting concepts being developed and I am very much looking forward to seeing the prototypes on my next visit on Tuesday 24th of April 2012.

Posted on March 21st, 2012 in Uncategorized with no comments

After enjoying working with the first year students on the ‘What is interaction design’ module on the Digital Interaction Design course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design(DJCAD), I was keen to become further involved.

I know from personal experience that the working environment between university and agency is very different and something I could have been better prepared for. I feel it is essential to educate students about the working practices of a design agency before graduation to help them gain employment and make the transition as smooth as possible.

After some discussions with the course lecturers at (DJCAD) I was delighted to take on the role of external lecturer for the module ‘apps for grandpeople’. The module takes place in the final semester of 3rd year before the students final year where they work solely on their degree show project. Apps for grandpeople ask the students to conceive, design and prototype an app for a grandperson. A grandperson could either be a grand parent or another person who is past retirement age and someone that could be actively involved in the project. The idea is to create an app that useful to their chosen grandperson whether it be in an assistive, social or entertaining capacity.

To introduce myself to the students I went along to visit them and give an insight into how I got to where I am today and a breakdown of how Equator operates as a full service digital agency. This presentation can be viewed on slideshare:

Further to this I did a second presentation on the same afternoon based around the concept of branding. The students will need to create a visual identity and branding for their app so I covered the essential elements of a successful brand and threw in some pointers and sources for inspiration. I also took the opportunity to talk to the students about how to brand themselves when they move into the process of applying for jobs, which should really be in less than a years time. It is extremely important for creative students to promote themselves well to employers and this is not something that is currently covered well in University education. From my experiences and having seen some pretty awful CVs from creative students I felt it was time to create something to help. Watch this space as there’s something coming soon.

The second presentation on branding can be found here on slideshare.

Over the course of the next couple months I have a couple of days booked out to continue working with the students and help them produce some really nice apps for their grandpeople.

Posted on March 21st, 2012 in Uncategorized with no comments

I graduated from Interactive Media Design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2009. Since my departure, the course has been renamed Digital Interaction Design (DIxD) to bring it in line with the skills being taught and industry terminology. Last October, I was invited to assist on a first year module alongside another 4 alumni.

The module was called “What is interaction design”; a module created to start students thinking critically by reading blogs, journals and magazines then asking questions and forming opinions.

I was asked to help as part of the student’s second assessment: to form questions around the theme, “What is interaction design” conduct an interview. Afterwards, the teams had to create a short 3-5 minute film using the information/footage/audio from the interview.

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Posted on March 21st, 2012 in Uncategorized with no comments