Category: News (page 41 of 1505)

Los Angeles – As most people know, the Internet is a global communications network of massive proportions. What many people do not know is that they can focus the vast power of the Internet to promote their businesses locally in the communities they serve.

Aviel Feuer, webmaster and owner of Site Me, Inc., says many businesses are missing the marketing boat by not properly coding and optimizing their websites. He notes, “There are thousands of businesses that have websites, but not all of them are used effectively to break through the enormous clutter on the Internet. Moreover, they are leaving money on the table by not drawing as much business as possible from their local communities.”

Feuer believes that much of the advertising done on the Internet is wasted on an audience that will not even consider buying a company’s product or service because they are not conveniently located to a prospective customer or, worse yet, the person can’t find the company on the Internet in the first place. He feels the Internet, which has virtually no boundaries worldwide, needs to be harnessed and better, more cost effectively used by businesses to target customers.

As vast as the Internet is, most major search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, Ask, MSN, and others, already provide tools to help address these issues. Feuer says, “If a website is optimized and search terms are featured on the web pages, an individual can register the website as a local business with the search engine companies. By doing this, if a prospect does a search that includes a city (e.g., Thousand Oaks, CA) or region of the country (e.g., Southern California), the odds of that company coming up can be dramatically increased. The company could even end up on the coveted first page of the search, which also improves sales opportunities.“

Many companies use Pay-Per-Click advertising programs online to enhance their visibility. These ads can be scheduled only to appear in a specified geographic area. This feature saves wasteful clicks by people located out of a business service area, allowing the marketing efforts to become more focused, more effective, and less expensive.

Important considerations for successful ad campaigns are being consistent, making offers that are enticing and ensuring that the website is attractive and easily navigated by visitors. Feuer states, “When a prospective buyer is presented with a call to action on a website, the cost per lead is minimal and definitely less than in other media like direct mail, print, radio and television.”

Feuer says another way to go local is to send out monthly or quarterly E-newsletters to clients, prospects and people in the immediate community. With little effort, businesses can grow their own mailing list to hundreds or thousands of recipients. “Create a nice template for a professional look, provide unsubscribe instruction, and you are set to go,” he notes. “You don’t even need to buy stamps. By subscribing to the newsletter, you can draw in business because you are in front of people who have already expressed an interest in what you have to sell.”

Feuer offers a free website evaluation and can be reached by e-mail at aviel@siteme.com or 818-735-4957.
# # #

About Site Me, Inc.:
Backed by over 25 years of engineering, quality assurance, IT and Internet experience, Site Me is an Internet and website development company that provides website design, programming, SEO, content and database management, e-newsletters, e-commerce, online advertising, e-mail, web hosting, and domain registration. Site Me is located at 6493 Joshua Street, Suite 101, Oak Park, CA 91377. Telephone: 818-735-4957. E-mail: aviel@siteme.com. Website: www.siteme.com

custom_html

It never fails.

Time and again, during a speech at a college or at an industry gathering, I’m asked the same question: Why aren’t there more female creative directors in advertising?

Stats report that a shamefully small number, 3% of us, are women. I know the question is coming and I try to prepare, but I always flub it. Because there is no good answer.

Is the world sexist? Maybe. Do women want to have families, which can be hard to juggle with work? Sure. Are women’s sensibilities and humor just different than those of men? Often they are, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What’s most ironic about the woeful number of women in top creative roles is that the advertising field is all about solving problems creatively. It’s our job to change perceptions and culture, yet we haven’t been able to change this one.

I’m optimistic this is a problem we can solve, as long as we stop simply observing the problem and focus more on solving it.

And that requires a practical appreciation on behalf of all agencies — and marketers — to appreciate what’s valuable about the female creative mind and ensure young women starting in this business don’t feel they are set up for failure.

When I started out in advertising, I was naive. I didn’t know the percentages or realize the hurdles. There was no posturing, no observing of how to play with the boys, no brushing up on the latest football stats. I was just a chick working my ass off, like every other creative out there trying to get promoted.

Recently, I read Tina Fey’s hilarious and insightful “Bossypants,” which pokes fun at gender stereotypes but also revels in the fact that women can be women and achieve great success. As Tina puts it, the best course of action is to “do your thing” and pray that people will notice how great you are. Luckily, in my case people noticed. But clearly all that praying isn’t working for everyone.

For the past couple of years I’ve been running the Old Navy account, and the creative team just happens to be mostly women. It’s made me a huge fan of the female creative sensibility. They have all the gender-neutral characteristics that a good creative should have — smart, confident, and funny. But there are some other incredible things I’ve seen from my team that keep me hiring and promoting more women (aside from the fact, per a recent Forbes article, that women make 80% of all purchase decisions).

I made one of my senior creatives an associate creative director just a couple of months after she had her first kid. Becoming a mom actually made her a better creative. When she’s at work now, she’s highly focused and doesn’t waste time; her ideas come more quickly and, importantly, her leadership skills are more fine-tuned. It turns out that her “mom gene” kicked in and is working for her job, as well as her new baby. Being a mom isn’t a liability. It is an asset.

Recently a female creative director and mom rushed to work after a diaper had exploded on her — she didn’t want to miss an early meeting. I went to give her a hug hello and she stopped me, warning not to touch her — she thought she had poop all over her. I couldn’t help but think how well that would prepare her for a particularly tough upcoming client presentation. That’s the kind of training all of us in advertising, men and women, could use.

Women are hardwired to kick ass and nurture at the same time. But unfortunately the advertising business isn’t known for nurturing. It’s competitive, it’s fast and it’s filled with insecurities. We don’t want to be replaced by the newer, younger, better model.

But maybe if we were better mentors for young people, they’d see a reason to keep us around when we were past our prime. If there is one type of person who could both juggle their own life/work balance, as well as nurture new creatives, it’s women. Think about it — if every female creative in a management role could mentor and promote just five other women, each of those can help five more, and onward, and before long we’ll be in the hundreds. Call it a pay-it-forward meritocracy.

This starts to change how we think of our accomplishments. We start basing our personal success on how successful other women are as well. Women at my creative level, including myself, get caught up in feeling that part of our success is based on the fact that we made it in an industry where we shouldn’t have — that maybe we got there because we have a guy’s sense of humor or because we’re tougher. Or maybe because we don’t have kids.

That’s wrong. We made it because we are great creatives and great leaders. And having a fulfilled life can only help our work.

So it’s women who can change this industry for other women. And even for men, too. We live in a world now where moms and dads are reversing and integrating roles, so it’s not as simple as separating it into men vs. women. Men and women both deserve successful careers and families.

If our field is about understanding what motivates people and marketing products that make life better, we should take advantage of the perspective offered by our own real lives.

That’s great creative leadership.

custom_html

It never fails.

Time and again, during a speech at a college or at an industry gathering, I’m asked the same question: Why aren’t there more female creative directors in advertising?

Stats report that a shamefully small number, 3% of us, are women. I know the question is coming and I try to prepare, but I always flub it. Because there is no good answer.

Is the world sexist? Maybe. Do women want to have families, which can be hard to juggle with work? Sure. Are women’s sensibilities and humor just different than those of men? Often they are, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What’s most ironic about the woeful number of women in top creative roles is that the advertising field is all about solving problems creatively. It’s our job to change perceptions and culture, yet we haven’t been able to change this one.

I’m optimistic this is a problem we can solve, as long as we stop simply observing the problem and focus more on solving it.

And that requires a practical appreciation on behalf of all agencies — and marketers — to appreciate what’s valuable about the female creative mind and ensure young women starting in this business don’t feel they are set up for failure.

When I started out in advertising, I was naive. I didn’t know the percentages or realize the hurdles. There was no posturing, no observing of how to play with the boys, no brushing up on the latest football stats. I was just a chick working my ass off, like every other creative out there trying to get promoted.

Recently, I read Tina Fey’s hilarious and insightful “Bossypants,” which pokes fun at gender stereotypes but also revels in the fact that women can be women and achieve great success. As Tina puts it, the best course of action is to “do your thing” and pray that people will notice how great you are. Luckily, in my case people noticed. But clearly all that praying isn’t working for everyone.

For the past couple of years I’ve been running the Old Navy account, and the creative team just happens to be mostly women. It’s made me a huge fan of the female creative sensibility. They have all the gender-neutral characteristics that a good creative should have — smart, confident, and funny. But there are some other incredible things I’ve seen from my team that keep me hiring and promoting more women (aside from the fact, per a recent Forbes article, that women make 80% of all purchase decisions).

I made one of my senior creatives an associate creative director just a couple of months after she had her first kid. Becoming a mom actually made her a better creative. When she’s at work now, she’s highly focused and doesn’t waste time; her ideas come more quickly and, importantly, her leadership skills are more fine-tuned. It turns out that her “mom gene” kicked in and is working for her job, as well as her new baby. Being a mom isn’t a liability. It is an asset.

Recently a female creative director and mom rushed to work after a diaper had exploded on her — she didn’t want to miss an early meeting. I went to give her a hug hello and she stopped me, warning not to touch her — she thought she had poop all over her. I couldn’t help but think how well that would prepare her for a particularly tough upcoming client presentation. That’s the kind of training all of us in advertising, men and women, could use.

Women are hardwired to kick ass and nurture at the same time. But unfortunately the advertising business isn’t known for nurturing. It’s competitive, it’s fast and it’s filled with insecurities. We don’t want to be replaced by the newer, younger, better model.

But maybe if we were better mentors for young people, they’d see a reason to keep us around when we were past our prime. If there is one type of person who could both juggle their own life/work balance, as well as nurture new creatives, it’s women. Think about it — if every female creative in a management role could mentor and promote just five other women, each of those can help five more, and onward, and before long we’ll be in the hundreds. Call it a pay-it-forward meritocracy.

This starts to change how we think of our accomplishments. We start basing our personal success on how successful other women are as well. Women at my creative level, including myself, get caught up in feeling that part of our success is based on the fact that we made it in an industry where we shouldn’t have — that maybe we got there because we have a guy’s sense of humor or because we’re tougher. Or maybe because we don’t have kids.

That’s wrong. We made it because we are great creatives and great leaders. And having a fulfilled life can only help our work.

So it’s women who can change this industry for other women. And even for men, too. We live in a world now where moms and dads are reversing and integrating roles, so it’s not as simple as separating it into men vs. women. Men and women both deserve successful careers and families.

If our field is about understanding what motivates people and marketing products that make life better, we should take advantage of the perspective offered by our own real lives.

That’s great creative leadership.

(CNN) — Marco Arment’s salesmanship could use some work.

To complement the one-time $5 fee he charges for his popular mobile application called Instapaper, Arment added a subscription service in October. And what does the $1-per-month plan get you?

“Right now?” reads the question-and-answer-style come-on. “Almost nothing, except knowing that you are supporting the Instapaper service’s operation and future feature development.”

Not exactly a Steve Jobsian pitch, but Arment, whose iPhone and iPad apps for accessing news articles offline have more than 1.5 million registered users, has found takers. He declined to say how many people subscribe, but “it’s enough to pay for all my servers.”

“I thought I would have to offer a lot more,” said Arment, who recently began testing new integration for Kindle users exclusively with subscribers. So that’s something. “I knew I’d have a lot of goodwill out there, but I thought people would need more of a bonus,” he said.

Instapaper’s subscription-cum-donation model has inspired others, especially those in the online-writing world, to follow suit.

Longreads, a website and popular Twitter feed that links to lengthy articles chosen by editor Mark Armstrong or readers, added a subscription service last month.

Because Instapaper is designed to strip distracting elements from Web pages, the two services often go hand in hand, and Longreads has buttons below each link for sending them to an Instapaper reading list. Also like Instapaper, Longreads’ membership program offers little more than a warm-and-fuzzy feeling.

“I wanted to emphasize that this membership is something people can choose to do mostly to support the service,” Armstrong wrote in an e-mail. “We think our membership perks will grow but don’t want to over promise.”

People who pay $3 per month will eventually get to test new features first. Paying $30 annually gets you a travel mug emblazoned with the logo.

Longform, a similar site with a similar name, allows for one-time donations. Quaint.

Donation buttons have long been a common occurrence in Internet and computer software. Developers have a name for it, “donationware,” which generally offers a full version of the program with an unintrusive request for one-time donations.

But perhaps thanks to the proliferation of the “freemium” model, which gives a feature-rich app for free and then charges for power-user features, and of online subscriptions, such as Audible, Netflix and Spotify in Europe, recurring donations are starting to catch on.

They’re giving podcasters a flowing revenue stream. TWiT founder Leo Laporte, who runs a network of advertising-supported Internet shows, takes his salary from fans’ recurring donations. No Agenda, an online program co-created by podcast pioneer and former MTV personality Adam Curry, asks listeners to donate $50 a month.

A framework called Kachingle gives website owners a button to allow visitors to easily leave tips with a couple of clicks.

Readability, a service similar to Instapaper, also added a subscription program, but the idea is that 70% of each subscriber’s monthly fee (the minimum is $5) is divided among the writers and media organizations the user reads the most.

However, the publisher doesn’t get its cut until signing up for an authorized Readability account. Some publishers, such as the Slate Group, have indicated that they would not bother unless the amount is substantial.

Readability keeps separate escrow accounts earmarked for publishers and does not dip into those funds, creator Richard Ziade wrote in an e-mail. More than 1,000 websites have signed up to be considered for royalties, he wrote. He declined to say how many subscribers Readability has, which publishers are on board, how much money has been paid out, or how much is on hold.

In essence, the only guaranteed payout is the 30% that goes to Ziade and the New York developers who maintain the service.

Arment, who designed a mobile app for Readability that was never released due to disagreements with Apple over financials, echoed the idea that Readability’s business would not make much of a mark on big publishers’ balance sheets. (Apple, by the way, also rejects apps that solicit donations.) While media conglomerates like the New York Times account for the most-saved items on Instapaper, they’re only a faction of the overall publishers being read through the service, so the payout wouldn’t be huge, he said.

Last year when Instapaper began to pick up steam and revenue, Arment left Tumblr, the fast-growing blogging company he co-founded, to focus full-time on his reading tool. (He’s also an advisor to Readability.)

With Instapaper’s recurring app donations, members are charged $3 every three months. (Arment needs to charge at least $3 in order to cope with fees imposed by PayPal, he said.) One guaranteed perk allows subscribers to turn off the small text ads on the site.

Arment felt compelled to call it a subscription service rather than donations, even though he agrees the perks aren’t strong.

“If you call it anything else other than ‘subscription,’ I think you’ll get a lot of angry people when it automatically renews itself,” Arment said. “I don’t want to trick anyone into paying me. It’s $3. The reality is: if you don’t want to give me that $3, I’d rather not take it from you.”

Race Up 55% From ABC’s 2010 Coverage; Pre-race Segment Soars 86%

Mike Reynolds — Multichannel News, 6/12/2011 12:46:52 PM

NBC Sports rode its first telecast of the Belmont Stakes since 2005 to a 55% gain in the overnights from ABC’s broadcast in 2010.

NBC’s coverage of the third leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown, won by 24-1 long shot Ruler on Ice, scored a 4.8 overnight rating and an 11 share for the race portion of the telecast — 6:15 p.m. to 7 p.m. (ET). That was up 55% from the 3.1/7 for last year’s race on ABC, according to Nielsen overnight data.

The pre-race segment  from 5 p.m. to 6:15 p.m., bolstered by a two-hour Belmont Access show on Verus that preceded the NBC broadcast rose 86% to a 2.6/6 from a 1.4/3. That was the  best performance for a non-Triple Crown year since 2006, according to NBC officials.

NBC and  Versus are now stablemates under Comcast’s NBCUniversal

BELMONT STAKES OVERNIGHT RATINGS SINCE 2006 (Race Portion):

2011, 4.8/11, NBC
2010, 3.1/7, ABC
2009, 5.0/12, ABC (jockey Calvin Borel going for unprecedented jockey Triple Crown on two different horses, Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby and Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness).
2008, 9.5/21, ABC (Big Brown vying for Triple Crown)
2007, 3.5/8, ABC
2006, 3.8/9, ABC

We would love your feedback!

Post a comment

• Topics
• Author

No related content found.

More

• VDS

  

  VDS provides broadcast graphics automation systems which are used in fully automated sports, news and financial graphics channels. VDS automation infrastructure products provide management of graphic and audio assets and automated generation of promos in multichannel broadcast or..more

• 
  Improving the Internet TV and Mobile Video Experience – an Adap..
• 
  Mobile Media Strategies That Work
• 
  Increasing Efficiency in Digital Distribution of Media
• 
  The Local Origination/Leased Access Metamorphosis
• 
  Multi Format Encoding for Efficient Content Repurposing