Our online media manager talks us through three interesting observations from recent months – from ensuring pre-roll advertising is effective, to using prospecting to target people who are interested in a product….but may not yet know it exists.
Although the presence of Bing (in UK search at least) is dwarfed by Google (which has around 90% of the search market), the Bing team are providing some valuable information to webmasters.
In recent months there have been two useful updates from Bing. Firstly, there have been new features added to the Bing Webmaster Tools interface – including the launch of a new keyword research tool. Bing has also launched an API for its Webmaster Tools, making its data accessible anywhere.
Along with these updates to its Webmaster Tools, Bing has also launched a ‘Search Quality Insights’ series, which it intends to give “deeper insight into the algorithms, trends and people behind Bing”.
With Google making a number of changes in the past few months – and the prospect of EU anti-trust legislation coming to a point on the horizon – there is a possibility that Bing usage may begin to grow in the medium to long term. These tools are therefore very helpful in helping gain insights into how Bing ranks websites.
Improved data sampling was a noticeable upgrade when a new version of Google Analytics was rolled out a few months ago. So why is data sampling used, and how can it benefit reporting on marketing campaigns?
A well-used tool by the teams at Equator, Google Analytics released an update to their Multi-Channel Funnels this month with a view to delivering even further value to marketing channel analysis. In order to maximise visibility, the Channel Groupings categories have been expanded, breaking down ‘Paid Advertising’ into Display, Paid Search and Other and the Social Network channel now constitutes a longer list of referral domains. That’s nice…but what does it mean for marketers?
What is the Venice update?
The Venice update was a small part of Google’s largest ever algorithm update, which took place in February 2012 and included a total of 40 algorithmic changes to their search engines Google, Youtube and more.
Although Venice was not generally flagged as the most important aspect of this update, it is amongst the most visible and has changed the dynamics of search results in many industries.
Way back in 2007, misuse of voucher codes via the affiliate channel was a hot topic, with numerous instances of big discounts intended for privileged groups of customers going viral. Big brands including Sainsburys, Littlewoods and Hamleys were forced to withdraw codes and issue public statements explaining the blunders.
5 years on and the industry has come a long way. With robust tools in place for monitoring and policing the publication of voucher codes, our clients can rest assured that their exclusive codes won’t be promoted by the mass affiliate base.
Just over a year ago, Google launched its much-talked-about Panda algorithm update. Panda was initially designed to filter out websites with ‘thin’ content that added little to the search experience. Over the course of the last year, there have been various tweaks to the Panda system, culminating in late February with the roll out of version 3.3. In a post on its Inside Search blog, Google announced that over 40 changes to search quality have now been implemented.
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.
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.
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.