June 2009 Archives

This month DoubleClick published a useful benchmark of online advertising performance rates across all activity in 2008.  This is pretty much the most solid data you'll ever see on display advertising performance, based according to DoubleClick on: "hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions."

It's a useful set of benchmarks showing for instance variations in click rates by size and format of ads.  The data is also split by geography - which shows some fairly disappointing results for the UK.

The table below shows the average click through rate across all formats (static image, flash, video) for the main economies in Europe, plus the United States.  (The DoubleClick report has worldwide performance data for twenty nine countries).

This is really disappointing - and not just for the online advertising industry.  As the Guardian recently pointed out, the British newspaper industry is also desperately hoping for a renaissance from online advertising.

So why the poor performance.  Probably no single reason, but possible reasons would be:

• banner fatigue - advertising creative not being refreshed often enough
• lower percentage of inventory going on larger sizes / more static formats
• larger percentage of media going out across networks which tend to deliver a lower CPC
• more brand advertising versus direct response campaigns

Any more ideas anyone?

Today’s launch of Firefox 3.5 is the latest shot in the long struggle for domination in the browser market. 

The data below – from AT Internet Institute - shows that Firefox has steadily been growing its market share in Europe, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer.  Disappointingly for Microsoft, Internet Explorer’s market share actually dropped in March, coinciding with the long-awaited launch of IE 8.

The same AT Internet research, from April 2009 shows the stark differences in the popularity of Firefox around Europe.  Of the five major European economies, the UK shows the lowest penetration of Firefox with 17% market share – compared with 30% in France and 42% in Germany.

This competition is driving some genuine innovation in the browser market, which is great to see.  Compare and contrast with the situation around email, where Microsoft is lazily exploiting Outlook’s monopoly position to resist innovation and ignore web standards.

When I wrote our last company newsletter I added in a throwaway line about Google Wave:

Meanwhile Google Wave looks genuinely awesome, the best thing to
come out of Australia since... er... anyway it makes Microsoft Exchange
look very last century.

If I’d thought about this for more than a couple of seconds I should have realised that some thin-skinned Australians would take offence.  Sure enough, our receptionist is now not talking to me – and is putting through endless calls from recruitment consultants.  Worse still, we’ve had a very long email from an antipodean who took particular offence to my racist comment:

To whom it may concern,

I am a potential client of Harvest Digital and I recently received the below email from your company.  However I do not understand the need to mention Australia and its lack of successful exports!!

I find it incredibly offensive and hurtful that your company represents such a standpoint.

I would like to let you know about some of the successful things Australia has brought to the world,

1. The Bionic Ear - Melbourne University professor made history in 1978 by inventing the world's first bionic ear.

2. The Black Box Flight recorder - Dr. David Warren from Melbourne invented the first black box flight recorder in 1958.

3. The Cow Fan, During summer temperatures in Australia can soar into the fifties, too hot for most European farm animals. Luckily the ever ingenious Australian farmers have come up with a solution to cool our cows.

4. Meat Flavored Water: Inventor Andrew started marketing meat and vegetable flavored bottled water to canine connoisseurs in December 2003. It's like a sports drink for dogs he said and put his Dog Plus K-9 Water on sale across Australia in flavors ranging from bacon and beef to liver, chicken and corn. A 600ml bottle will set you back $2.95

5. Viagra Oysters - Oysters have long been known as an aphrodisiac, but NSW oyster farmer George thought he could do better and started lacing his oysters with Viagra hoping for lucrative markets in Asia where many men are obsessed with all sorts of ways to increase their virility. ( To the point where they will drink urine from tigers and rhinoceros for perceived benefits.) Unfortunately, no matter how good the idea may have sounded, there are always a few whingers out there, and so the NSW Food Safety authority says it is illegal and breaches the NSW Food Act and also Pfizer was not happy with their trademarked name being used in this way and threatened with legal action, but George reckons that countries outside Australia have different regulations so even if they are illegal in Australia he still sells them overseas, and change the name to get Pfizer off his back.

From the above points it is clear that Australia is a great nation and that we in fact contribute greatly to the world on all different levels from Science to Bovine welfare.

I would like to note that your email asked me “how’s it going????” …….Well as a result of this attack on our proud nation I am willing to say that I am not so good and I will be in touch with more Aussie great inventions in the near future.

Regards

Mac

Well Mac (and Mel!), all I can say is sorry!  The thrust of my argument was to say how good Google Wave was and not to put down Australia. Now that I have the facts in front of me, I can see that Australian ingenuity clearly out-classes second-rate British inventions like television, the telephone and the internet.

Next time I’ll stick to being rude to the French…

Here’s the latest update in our literally all-star celebrity Twitter chart.  Have Coldplay topped the magic one million followers?  You know it!

Almost as shocking, Lily Allen has overtaken the saintly Stephen Fry to take number two in the chart. 

With Wimbledon approaching, it would be nice for Andy Murray to make a return to the chart – sample tweet: “Anyone seen andy roddicks hats? They have really nice sweat stains on them cause he never washes them and thinks they r lucky”.  Sadly he is nowhere near, with just 27,925 followers. 

Another surprisingly poor performer is Aleksandr Orlov with 16,357 followers.  Surprising, because our meerkat chum has almost half a million fans on Facebook – then again, the kids aren’t really down with Twitter quite yet.