In a nutshell, Addiply tries to offer advertisers the chance to put a hyper targeted ad on a publishers niche site in front of a tightly focused readership, so that the two can meet and hopefully generate a better income offered by services like Google Adsense.

The publishers, who mostly are independent local bloggers, install Addiply’s Javascript widget, set their own prices and then hope local businesses buy an ad. The prices can be CPM, CPA or based on an old-fashioned “post office card” residency model, in which text or display ads are bought up for a month.

Currently a lot of web operations use Google AdSense, a free service which places adverts on sites. However, the Chief executive of Addiply Rick Waghorn believes publishers and advertisers need a more targeted system of getting ads in the right places, and that’s what motivated him to develop the Addiply service. A good example is http://www.greenerleith.org. Greenerleith were fed up with Google Adsense placing supermarket text ads on their site which compromised the “Green” ethos they had tried hard to build and nurture. Using Addiply they can first vet the ad and make sure it is relevant to the user group and site content.

The Chief Executive Rick Waghorn is fiercely passionate about Addiply “We’re not setting out to be the new Google AdSense, rather we believe we are just one part of a new digital age of community engagement and collaboration.”

One of the Addiplys benefits is that you know exactly where your advert is; you can see it. It is not out there, somewhere, lost in the wilds of cyber-space. It’s there – where you want it to be – on a local site where you know your local customers are.

As with everything there are few limitations to the service. Currently they do not support a rich media platform such as HTML5 or Flash nor does is dynamically target users. For instance according to Alexa 11% of Aboutmyarea unique users were served in India. Being a manual service as opposed to Google Adsense the setup and management process is fairly labour intensive especially considering the limited unique users using the network, currently around 25,000 a month.

Similar services worth investigation include the Google Display Network and the Ad Pepper Media RTB platform.

Invented and developed by two digital creative’s from Stockholm Sweden, Oskar Sundberg and Per Hansson are the brains behind the website isitold.com.

Although simple, the website offers users a unique means of establishing whether their eager to be shared content, is either worthy of a post or merely ‘old news’.

By simply using the URL of the items source, the platform scours Twitter to decide the credibility of the links content by identifying the number of times the item has been previously posted by other web users.

Some might argue that this is simply a fantastic tool for the overly self conscious, yet I feel it’s a great way for people to keep their social media activity credible and fresh in a Twitter world that can be full of outdated news and retweets.

Interestingly, despite the fact that there exists internet articles that covered the tool back in October 2011, when entering the websites own URL into its clever little search engine, it seems to think it’s still ‘mad fresh’ but I’ll let you decide on that.

Check it out here:  http://isitold.com/

Follow Oskar on Twitter: @gori

Follow Per on Twitter: @Fimpen

For the business, it’s a huge step change. For our clients, easier access to our offices from Bristol Temple Meads. For our team, more nimble communications, less travelling, and an added level of spontaneity. For both, a massive improvement in the quality of coffee!

Why Bristol? 

Bristol was always home for at least half of the agency for many years, and over time we’ve seen Bristol become more and more established as a creative and cultural hub of the South West. Strong intellectual leadership from groups like BUG or events like the Festival of Ideas ensure that we’re constantly inspired. Plus, there are over a thousand creative businesses in Bristol – 12% of the businesses in the City, and we’re the first of many to move to the new Enterprise Zone at Temple Quarter.

And of course, no project would be complete without some insight-led decision making (thanks James!)?

Personally, I’m thrilled with our new environment and even more thrilled with our accompanying new brand identity. Our new building physically reflects our new brand identity that becomes more and more beautiful each time you see it.

 

We couldn’t have done it without…

A cracking internal team lead by Paul – Hannah, Chris, Simon P and Matt plus a herd of willing volunteers on weekend duty (Oli, Avril, Aime, Shakeela, Tom, Darren, Steve K and Matt B plus Peter C from our friends at TRA).

Gaz and Bruce from the creative team for their stellar work on the rebranding project

The design and fitout team from Kat and The Interiors Group, Harmsen (specifically Becki) for the project management, Artworks for our decals, RHM for managing the phones in the transition, Harrow Green and LSI Workplace for furniture and removals, Avagio for help with the technical rollout, the building managers at One Glass Wharf for ready assistance (Gareth and John) and finally Chris B and Stairways for the cleaning. And of course we can’t forget Siobhan A from TRA who worked tirelessly together with Hannah and our internal team.

Social Media goes local…

In our post on new social networks, we mentioned both uberlife and path; two networks designed to bring social media to the local community. Now it seems that the world’s biggest social network is following suite.

A new app by WillowTreeApps, known simply as ‘Likes’, aims to study the activity of your Facebook friends, and also of their friends, in order to make local recommendations on the back of these.

On a more personal level, ‘Highlight’ is designed to keep you in the loop on people you may know within a close proximity to your physical location. Once the app is connected to your Facebook, it begins alerting you to the presence of other ‘Highlight’ users in your immediate vicinity, with whom you can interact.

Location based deals

2012 began with the usual clamour that this would be the year to sink the daily deal. However, two new apps have signalled new developments within location based services.

Beeptreat is based around the simple idea that in order to claim rewards and deals, users must share the treats they earn through the app on Facebook, thereby publicising the retailer and justifying the provision of the deal.

Whilst primarily based in the US, Shopkick is also of interest. The app, now with 3 million users, rewards you for simply walking into a store via an automatic check-in, which occurs when you open the app. It works at both a deal based and rewards level.

New Networks

It is unsurprising that two of the newest and fastest growing social networks are the ones with the largest amount of current demographic data, illustrated recently by two articles on Mashable.

Google+ demographics are illustrated through website monitoring’s infographic, compiled from various sources such as TechCrunch and socialbakers.

Pinterest usage statistics from Google Ad Planner are compared across the US and UK by Visual.ly.

Established Networks

With the more established social networks we hit a slight problem as we’re no longer seeing a flurry of data visualisations and publications attempting to detail usage and demographics. However, for Facebook we do have socialbakers, which has a wealth of demographic statistics split by country and updated daily from Facebook’s advertising platform.

Linkedin has this slideshare presentation from January 2012, which contains data from their ad platform.

But what about twitter? Unfortunately finding a reputable recent demographic set has been tricky, but we do have this August 2011 infographic from North West marketing agency Touch. Although it is worth taking this data with a pinch of salt as the sources aren’t listed.

Bits and Pieces

Some extra pieces of information on all of the social networks can also be found in the articles below, which are more general but have some great tidbits and are definitely worth checking out!

How people are sharing through social networks (Media Bistro/Voltier Digital/Plastick Media, various sources, January 2012)

The future of sharing on social networks (Beyond/Social Media Week, February 2012)

General Social Media Usage (Wilson.Cooke, various sources, January 2012)

One of the biggest challenges facing all organisations today is the ability to consistently co-ordinate and amplify a single brand voice across all media. At the same time, given the myriad of options available, it’s somewhat ridiculous to expect audiences to automatically pay attention to identikit, predictable advertising as it’s never been easier for someone to scan past work created for the lowest common denominator.

While there will always be new ideas, platforms, services and devices, one lasting truth is that people only have a short attention span when they’re bored.

2012 should be a year defined by ideas that leap out and command attention – remarkable works that people want to share. Great brands have always been about smart and artful storytelling. Great agencies have always given brands a vision of what they could be – and technology pushes things forward.

In the art of persuasion, nothing is more powerful than an understanding of what instincts dominate a person’s actions and what compulsions drive them. For advertising agencies and media owners to stay relevant, they must broaden their scope, especially in those they employ. Agencies and media owners also need to expand their frames of reference to include what’s of influence today and important tomorrow so the work is culture-creating and genre-defining.

Organisations must embrace the responsibility of ensuring business is ethical, likeable and interesting to young people as the new generation’s focus is less on status and more on sustainability. The challenge is to ensure their philosophical approach is about the audience wanting to applaud the work for having the best ideas.

For a development team, it’s about a process of rigorous examination to perfect the product and the experience.

You can see the full article here.

Image from Flickr (used under Creative Commons License, and with thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecrazyfilmgirl/)

Well, when I say “stop” I don’t mean actually stop, I mean start, but maybe go in a different direction. Is that clear? No?

For too long we’ve tried to convey sense and meaning through words rather than action, through email rather than conversations, through self-serving blog posts rather than, erm, oh. (best make this quick then.)

If you believe you can write down, perfectly, what you’d like me to do after reading your presentation/brief/email, then by all means go right ahead. But if you can sketch me a diagram that explains it more clearly, I’d much prefer you do that. You see, lines and blocks convey process, order and logic. Schematics allow a birds’ eye view of a situation. Text requires thorough and methodical readership, often many times over, with opportunity for doubt and misinterpretation. The cold, emotionless flow of a chart with a beginning, middle and end (or a loop!) allows the ‘magic’ of creativity to be assessed, reshaped, adapted and enhanced quickly and with a focus on results and amplification.

So with that all said, I’ll stop.

The changes mean they are now no longer able to offer postcode based location targeting to clients, which had come into effect at the start of this year. This is due to their integration with Facebook, as they are now required to sit in line with Facebook’s location targeting policy. Spotify will now only offer location targeting down to towns/districts e.g. Greater London – Hackney, Greenwich or Surrey – Epsom and Guildford.

This means that moving forward EMO will have to alter its approach, focusing on targeting through either specific towns/districts or alternatively by radius e.g. Bristol + 10 mile radius. Whilst it is undoubtedly a shame to lose the very specific data provided by postcode based targeting, we have now gained some flexibility with two varying approaches.

If the exuberance of the night overtook you, here’s the EMO Values video again. Or, you can also read about them here.