Interactivity Over Clicks: Rich Media Benchmarks in Social Media

By Lotame Solutions

This report details aggregate trends in the social media space observed on the Lotame Co-op over the past year. The Lotame Co-op is a collection of over 250 publishers with a significant number of publishers in the mid- and long-tail of the social media space. This report is focused on social media publishers in the Lotame Co-op who, on average, tend to provide lower click-through rates for banner and display advertising, even those employing rich media.

The data in this report is based on over one hundred campaigns using rich media banner advertisements from over thirty advertisers and billions of ad impressions. These metrics can be used not only to gauge the success of a campaign in social media, but also to demonstrate where user behavior in the social media space is fundamentally different from behavior on non-social sites. Each section of this paper will focus on a particular metric of success.

Through each, we’ll focus on how the choice of creative format affected performance for that metric and compare the  benchmarks in social media to those published by DoubleClick in their “Creative Insights on Rich Media” research report, noting differences where significant. Finally, we’ll conclude the report with recommendations on how future campaigns can make the best use of this information.

It is our hope that this paper will demonstrate definitively that there is value beyond the click in the social media space. For best results, advertisers should set clear, achievable performance goals for their campaigns that are in-line with their overarching campaign goals prior to campaign launch, and focus on the metrics that speak to those goals, while aiming to beat industry benchmarks for those metrics.

To download this white paper, click here.

Collaboration Networks: Integral to Entreprise

By BPM Forum and CMO Council

Throughout history, people have relied on networks to successfully conduct commerce. Networks are powerful conduits that allow the unimpeded flow of goods and services. The more efficient the flow of something throughout an ecosystem — be it goods, data packets or even language — the easier it is to gain competitive advantage. It is no surprise that the organization with the best network always wins.

Without question, the development exerting the greatest influence on traditional business networks today has been the advent of the Internet and, with it, the profound technological, social, political and economic changes it has produced around the globe. Today almost 1.5 billion people worldwide use the Internet.

And as the Internet wraps itself around the world, it is connecting countless physical devices to each other and to people, passing data and new services from person to person, business to business and country to country.

This virtually limitless ability to exchange information, services and data has rendered proximity irrelevant, physical barriers inconsequential, and even transformed traditional relationships, changing the ways in which almost all of us live, work, learn and play. As a result, enterprises of all kinds are reinventing the ways in which they define themselves and the relationships that comprise their value chains. Whether it is manufacturing, retail, finance, media or government, an entirely new way of doing business through greater collaboration is emerging.

To download this white paper, click here.

Companies Value Cloud Computing

Sponsored by Google, Inc.

In essence, cloud computing means running software and accessing data that reside somewhere else. ZDNet explains cloud computing in business-trend terms: “Software platforms are moving from their traditional centricity around individually owned and managed computing resources and up into the ‘cloud’ of the Internet.”

Google explores the cloud computing trend at length in another whitepaper, “Cloud Computing-Latest Buzzword, or a Glimpse of the Future?”

This paper picks up where the other paper ended: Examining whether cloud computing makes good business sense for your company. Let’s start with some predictions:

• In the next 12 months, someone in your company will push for at least one on-demand application.
• Your company’s first encounter with cloud computing will be driven by needs to save money, but within a few months of the first deployment, your horizons will expand. You’ll see opportunities where you once saw problems. You’ll see corporate silos tumble as people from different departments and locations collaborate on projects.
• Ultimately, you may find that moving your data to the cloud actually improves security, scalability, access and disaster recovery.

Overly optimistic? Perhaps. But as many companies are discovering, cloud computing offers rapid and significant results.

To download this white paper, click here.

The Role of Google Chrome OS in the Netbook Market

By Jeff Orr, ABI Research

Google’s investment in Internet software began with a search engine and email, and has now expanded to include the Google Apps suite and the Chrome Web browser. Now, Google has announced plans to introduce a Web-centric operating system-Chrome OS-during the second half of 2010.

Based on a Linux kernel, Chrome OS is intended to compete with the upcoming Windows 7 OS from Microsoft and is initially targeted at netbooks. Similar to Google’s strategy with the Android mobile operating system, Google Chrome OS will be moved into the open source community, estimated to be later this year.

Google’s likely entrance into the computing OS market has generated mixed reactions. Consensus from netbook processor and system vendors has been positive. “This levels the playing field,” they say, a reference to the early dominance of Intel Atom-based hardware paired with the Windows XP operating system. ARM-based systems do not have access to desktop versions of Windows. The Chrome OS announcement defines platform support as simultaneous access to functionality for ARM and x86 processors.

General opposition to Google’s announcement comes from what “might” happen in the market over the next 12 months before commercial availability of Chrome OS. Several netbook vendors have announced plans to introduce Android OS on systems this year. Does the Chrome OS carrot stall these introductions or end netbook development on Android altogether?

To download this white paper, click here.

KartOO: Mapping Search Intuitively

INSIDER PROFILE
By Jason Bunyan

When we move through cities, we do so by using a map, a plan. Why not use our sense of direction for searching information? This question is the basic idea behind France-based KartOO, an information visualization company that provides clients with an array of search solutions, including topographic search.

The inventor of KartOO’s cartography technology, Laurent Baleydier came to the search industry by way of ESIM (École des Mines de Marseilles), where he focused on engineering studies and specialized in the design of innovative solutions and project management.

The development project for the visual interface information search systems started in 1997 because of large publishing groups who wished to transpose their encyclopedic contents onto CD-ROMs using an innovative and interactive search system instead of the traditional alphabetical system. Baleydier started to develop educational CD-ROMs and e-learning applications by founding his own company. The company’s current partners include Yahoo!, Google and Intel.

KartOO founder Laurent Baleydier corresponded with DMB’s Jason Bunyan about his company, its features and what types of clients would benefit.

There are said to be nine forms of intelligence. Within those categories, some people are visual, others are tactile and others fall in the other categories. With this in mind, how would you say your search engine is designed, and why is it designed this way?
Our ultimate goal is the ease of use combined with performance and innovation so the user is able to find results in three clicks. KartOO.com’s design comprises naturalistic, logical, spatial and logical intelligence and, by including features on these types of intelligences, we can reach a diverse and larger number of users.

Research results are displayed on topic-based maps showing the relation among different subjects, which is both the spatial and logical intelligence. Then we provide Web users with the means to refine their searches by suggesting related topics and phrases and/or expand the search by using simple + and - buttons, where the user can use both their naturalistic intelligence to select information and also apply their meta-linguistic skills to choose words.

Moreover, KartOO.com makes it possible for users to [articulate] complex requests in an intuitive way, and the information map allows users to detect a pattern, [an] ability related to logical intelligence. Finally, another tool for the naturalist intelligence is our e-trend analysis system, which informs the user about positive, negative and neutral connotations of the term searched, which will facilitate discerning the results.

We are aware of the diverse backgrounds of our users: maybe not everyone is at ease with Internet, has the time to read 8 -10 pages of results or wants to learn and read the instructions to use a search engine, which gives us the opportunity to develop new and innovative options to satisfy the needs of Internet users.

Could there be different search engine formats that would be preferable to different kinds of learners and users?
Indeed, the need was not tackled by the early search engines, which has opened the door for the development of alternative search engines in the last years. The main search engines assumed certain behaviors from the user, and while they provided assistance with grammar correction, Boolean search (though not everyone is familiar with it) or delimiting of their search, it was a very general and standard approach.

If you are a savvy Internet user, the type of intelligence will have a little impact and you will find your results promptly. But other users, who are not familiar, will rely on their skills. So if you are not strong on logical intelligence, you might have a hard time relating the results to your query and finding the best answer, while someone with a naturalist intelligence will be capable to classify and identify a pattern in the responses quickly.

The growth on alternative search engines will allow users to choose more adequately those search engines that facilitate their search according to their type of intelligence. Some are focusing on information visualization, others are working on an ontology search engine based on semantic analysis and in our case, we want to provide a broader solution and incorporate several tools at the same time.

European Union Goes Online

By Linda Broughton

In an effort to connect with a skeptical citizen base, the European Union has decided to go online.

The European Union is a political experiment. Begun just after World War II to replace warfare with fair trade (at least among European nations), the EU has grown in wealth and global influence. Yet in five decades, critics claim the EU, from its capital in Brussels, Belgium, has not achieved a real “Europe” among its member nations or states.

The EU has been online for over a decade now. This online presence was initially directed toward EU academics and at EU officials. The multilingual pages of the official Europa website lacked accessibility and were far from user-friendly.

Now, the EU is cleaning up these official pages to attract more casual users. Pages are being optimized for search engines, online text rewritten for “scan-ability.” Content is being edited for Web target audiences. Kids can play games to “learn about the euro” at Kids Corner, complete with a complicated score storage system to lure them back to the site again and again. There’s a blogactiv.eu blogging platform for Euro-enthusiasts; the free and digitized EU Digital Library, which stores almost every document produced by the EU since 1952; Brussels-oriented blogging communities like CafeBabel and even a “Euroblog” Award, which went to the German Netzpolitik. “The goal is first authoritative visibility and then usability,” a digital communications advisor employed by the EU notes.

EU institutions are also launching comprehensive online communication campaigns to introduce the so-called average European to Europe.

There are several bugs in this digital strategy. First, the EU is still not certain how to define a “European.” It’s difficult to tell a Frenchman and a Polish woman that both are Europeans when neither the French nor the Poles share a language, a political system, a currency, or a culture. In fact, it was only in May that Poles were legally allowed to work in another EU country without a work permit, a right for almost a decade in France. Romanians and Bulgarians are still subject to limited movement, despite their countries having achieved EU membership. But even with these differences in offline European citizenship, all these national citizens have equal accessibility to the EU online.

So the EU hopes to use the Internet to harness what American politicians call crosscutting cleavages. There are portals directed at European small businesses, European entrepreneurs, European environmentalists and European students. Websites include the SME portal, the Erasmus Mundus student portal, and the EU-wide FP7 Research grant programs. The EU institutions — the European Parliament and the various European Commission Directorate Generals — and European agencies and networks are creating podcasts, opening Twitter and flickr accounts, and uploading online libraries. There is even a EUTube channel that shows selective “European” video clips.

The EU is using the Web to organize initiatives like “Small to Medium Business Week,” coordinating local SME events under an EU umbrella and disseminating digital material like online banners, buttons and logos to advertise the week. The EU is using similar tactics to promote “European” volunteering, “European” languages and “European” regional minorities. The EU accompanied the first European Development Report with online press releases emailed to academic bloggers throughout the European member states and “Accession” nations, those states that hope to soon be EU members.

These bloggers, such as Joachim Voth of Vothspeak, director of the new M.Sc. in International Trade, Finance, and Development at UPF-BGSE in Barcelona, give the ERD added visibility combined with intellectual authority and influence among scholars online.

EU officials are looking to the private sector for suggestions, directions and ideas. The European Commissioner for the Information Society Viviane Reding claims “Participation is the real goal of e-government.”

The EU has built the European platform, and now it needs subscribers. The EU wants to copy the success of MySpace and Facebook and then move its online community into the offline world. The EU wants to identify its citizens via the Internet and get them to practice their online participation in real world politics. It’s a massive project, possibly one of the more important projects of our century. But can it be done?

“If the EU and its 25 member states make a clever use of all policy instruments, broadband for all Europeans is not out of reach by 2010,” Reding remarked in 2006. Now the EU has 27 member countries and 23 official languages and only an estimated 50 percent Internet penetration for the whole EU population in June 2009. If 2010 is more than a digital dream, the EU may be limited more by its offline reality than its online ambition.

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