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Google, Linked Data and Swine Flu

May 20, 2009

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It was interesting to read about Larry Page talking yesterday about how Google’s saved searches helped predict swine flu. Now, first off, it’s necessary to understand that there is a heavy dose of PR spin in his position, as Google is under pressure from many quarters about the volume of data their servers keep in storage. But, scraping away the PR gloss, there is a very serious point in there. Which is this – can a private company which aggregates huge quantities of search data predict an epidemic or pandemic better than bodies like the World Health Organisation or the Centers for Disease Control?

I imagine it works something like this – Google would be able to pick up on localised searches in, let’s say, the Mexico City region around “flu”, “flu symptoms”, “flu remedies” etc (in Spanish of course!). By piecing this together with anecdotal evidence and media reports, someone with no public health training would be able to make an educated inference that there is indeed an outbreak of disease happening before hospitals and doctors were able to feed the same data into public health monitoring systems.

A valid point that can be made in response to Larry Page is that he has clearly picked an emotive and highly topical issue that has generated a huge amount of public concern around the globe, and it is difficult to see how storing searches longer than 6 months is at all necessary – for a good response, check out this link

What IS clear is that the evolution of the internet will make it possible to map all sorts of data (a current example of a mash-up that maps shootings in the Vancouver metro area against Google Maps would be of great value to police, politicians, community activists, health professionals and those looking to buy a house in Vancouver (!) http://is.gd/BEsg). At this point, I would like to refer you the granddaddy of the World Wide Web, Mr. Tim Berners-Lee, and a fantastic piece of video footage from the TED series – it’s about 16 minutes in length and well worth a watch)

Interesting stuff, no?

By Endaf Kerfoot

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Twitter is for nosey people and people with big egos

February 18, 2009

Ok so I’m a little behind to curve here but I did some Twitter investigating today and even though I am an enthusiast for all things internet it has raised some questions in my head that I’m sure will make me unpopular in the twittersphere.

First of all, some people do this on an extraordinarily regular basis: How do they find time? I can’t see how anyone can have the capacity to be such enthusiastic Tweeters and still do the job they are paid for effectively…

Secondly, what really is the business application for this? The only practical use I have come across is Dell selling $1.5m of stock via Twitter. Now that is impressive but what other successes are there?

Thirdly, my initial reaction to this is that it is only really used by people who have big egos and only read by individuals more interested in other peoples’ lives than their own…

Fourthly, and this ties in with points 1,2 & 3, if the demographic of user is as suggested, surely the real value in marketing terms is extremely limited…

So as you may have worked out I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but none the less I have yet to be converted to Twitter. That said, I am leaving my mind open to be changed…

James Drake-Brockman

Visit Internet World

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Posted in Online marketing, brands | 3 Comments »

Can Barack Obama transform the US government into an administration open to interaction with the populace and wider world via social media?

February 12, 2009

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I read a piece today in Wired about the challenges facing President Obama in maintaining the momentum generated during his campaign in the social media space. Leveraging social media to generate new ideas, raise funds ($500m!), and find out more about voters’ concerns for a presidential campaign is very different from government, and this article usefully outlines the challenges an Obama “social media tsar” would face, from the technical to the political.

For example, there are so many pieces of legislation that potentially scupper web initiatives – one law (the Presidential Records Act, enacted after Nixon) forces all government written communications to be preserved, making it problematic to update websites. When a hyperlink to the Red Cross was inserted into the transcript of a speech President Bush made during Katrina urging people to seek help from them, it had to be removed because the government cannot endorse private sector organisations.

The question can in fact go deeper, and the article hints at this – are politicians ready to embrace the power of mass interactive communication inherent in almost-universal web connectivity (in the developed world at least)? Any thoughts/feedback welcome – here in the UK, what social media initiatives in the government sector are you aware of?

By Endaf Kerfoot
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5 years of Internet World – Part 1 (2005-2006)

January 28, 2009

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This year (almost to the day) is my 5th anniversary working on Internet World.

Anniversaries are traditionally a time to reflect and reminisce so over 3 posts, I will take a brief look back at the last 5 years of Internet World with this one focusing on 2005-2006

Pre-amble…

I remember visiting Internet World when I first started working on technology events in 1999 and followed its stunning growth with envious eyes during the dot com boom. As all that VC money started to disappear there was a realisation that perhaps we were all getting a little over excited. As that VC money was largely what funded the enormous stands at Internet World, it too suffered, falling in size, attendance and exhibitor numbers each year. Here are the approximate stats:

2002: 11000 attendees 292 exhibitors
2003: 9,000 attendees 239 exhibitors
2004: 8,000 attendees 148 exhibitors

Moving from a good job to work an event like this could have been considered a bit crazy, however after a bit of research I saw that there was serious potential and this, combined with the infectious enthusiasm of Phil Nelson, Commercial Director at Penton media (the man behind all that growth during the dot com boom) was enough to persuade me to jump ship and join Penton Media in sunny Isleworth.

2005 to 2006

So what was happening in 2005?

• Tony Blair was elected for his third term and that we
• David Cameron was appointed leader of the Conservative Party
• The UK won the 2012 Olympics and then suffered, an horrific terrorist attack in London the next day
• England regained the Ashes, beating Australia in the ‘greatest test series ever’
• Pope John Paul II Died
• An earthquake in Kashmir kills more than 80,000 and leaves an estimated 4 million homeless
• About 11 million Iraqis turn out to select their first permanent Parliament since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
• Hurricane Katrina kills more than 1,000 and leaves millions homeless.
• Liverpool come back from 3-0 down at half time to win the Champions league final on penalties
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith topped the box office charts
• The IAB reported UK online ad spend grew by 65% to £1.366m (with search representing 56% of it) and broadband penetration reached 70%

Having joined Internet World about 3 months out from the show, it was a case of hitting the ground running and getting through the 2005 show. We had around 5000 attendees and 100 exhibitors, but with positive feedback from both groups we knew we had managed to create a platform from which we could build for 2006.

Shortly after the event, the UK arm of Penton Media went through a management buyout forming Ithaca Media (and you get a prize if you can tell me what the name is and why it is significant).

What was happening in 2006?

• YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65bn.
• A Danish newspaper causes demonstrations and flag burning by publishing several negative cartoons depicting Muhammad.
• Saddam Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court and hanged in Baghdad.
• Italy beat France 5-3 on penalties in the World Cup final, drawing 1-1 after extra time. England were knocked out on penalties by Portugal.
• Borat found his way to movie stardom
• The IAB reported UK online ad spend grew by 42% to £2,015m and broadband penetration reached 89%

After 2005 we went through an intense process of analysis and looking at how the show could best serve the market. The main development was the increase in importance of marketing departments, rather than IT departments in the buying process, with some of the more savvy companies employing a head of online, or digital marketing manager – individuals with a foot in both IT and marketing camps.

As part of the repositioning, we entered into what would become a very important but ultimately painful co-location agreement with The International Direct Marketing fair, then the leading marketing trade show in the UK. It created an event that would look at all aspects of marketing from DM through to online. We also refocused our content and marketing campaigns to ensure that we were touching the right people with the right messages.

This included the introduction of the Internet World Keynote Theatre and worked hard to attract major publishers (MD’s from EMAP and The Times and Editor-in-chief from Conde Nast), leading pure play businesses (Brent Hoberman, CEO from Lastminute.com) and companies at the forefront of taking their traditional businesses online (Director of Boots.com and MD of Blockbuster Online). The focus was largely about how to embrace online and prepare for the impending revolution, but also touched (for the first time in the UK) on a new phenomenon called Web 2.0…

We arranged exhibitors in zones according to the type of product or service the provided (ecommerce, search, email, hosting, content management) which whilst met with some resistance by exhibitors, was a resounding success in the eyes of our attendees, making the process of attending an event of the scale of Internet World a far easier experience.

We also embarked on a new initiative to attract the top decision makers from the UK’s leading brands and companies through an enormous database building exercise and telemarketing campaign, inviting them as VIP’s to the show. This gave us a show floor teaming with big brands looking at how they can invest in online.

The result was significant. The 2006 show had 160 exhibitors and 8580 attendees (an unprecedented 55% increase). it also resulted in an extraordinary onsite rebooking of 106% - meaning we started our campaign for 2007 with a larger show than we had for 2006. A testament to the quality and quantity of the 2006 attendees. What faced us now was a rare opportunity to establish Internet World as the leading event for the market…

Next post I’ll look at 2007 – 2008, which will include running battles in Earls Court 2 (well almost) and 2 changes of venue…

James Drake-Brockman
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Posted in Internet World exhibitors, Internet World visitors, News, Online marketing, Speakers, Sponsors, events | Leave a Comment »

Turning downturns into upturns

December 12, 2008

I read with interest some research that was brought to my attention recently, a McGraw-Hill study of over 600 businesses looking specifically at previous economic downturns.

The tradition when facing tough economic times is to cut marketing and advertising budgets. At first glance this seems sensible: keep costs down so profit is as high as possible. The report, however, suggests that this may be a false economy and those companies who follow this tradition are likely to end up, in the mid to long term, as losers not winners.

Does that sound like crazy talk to anyone else? Well as evidence, here are the stats:

Those companies who maintained or increased ad spend between 1981 and 1982 averaged higher sales growth during the recession AND for the following 3 years.

By 1985 these same companies had sales 256% bigger than those companies who had cut back.

In 2001, companies who marketed aggressively increased their market share by 2 ½ times the average for all businesses during the period following the downturn.

Conversely, the Strategic Planning Institute published research looking at the effect of advertising during economic expansion. Although 80% of businesses increased their ad spend there was no marked improvement in market share. Why is this…?

Because everyone else is doing it.

As we have commented before, downturns, whilst a scary prospect for many, in fact offer enormous opportunities for smart and bold businesses.

Assuming your message is tailored and you are providing people with something they actually need rather than just want, companies can make huge gains in market share during these times. Especially since customers are far more receptive to change during tough times. And once you’ve got them, they are likely to stay with you when times are good.

So the question is “where do you want your business to be when the Olympics hit London in 2012?”

JDB
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Online’s prospects: a look at the coming year…

October 20, 2008

So it’s not all doom and gloom for us here in the world of online. The recent IAB/PWC report showed a year on year growth of 28% in the first half of 2008. Crack open the champagne, keep looking for that expensive holiday and lets all be thankful we find ourselves in the one part of advertising industry that’s going to be OK…

All right, so perhaps it’s not really that good. First up, the last 3 months have seen unprecedented turmoil in the world economy, the most extraordinary having happened in the past few weeks. In fact Guy Philipson admits that ‘online is not immune from the economic downturn’. So where exactly does that leave us and what can we expect for the coming months and years?

Here are few of our thoughts here at Internet World towers:

Downturn doesn’t mean a complete freezing of all expenditure
Companies still need to attract customers and as such will continue to spend money on marketing and advertising. Ok so they won’t be spending as much but what they will be spending it on will be looked at very carefully. ROI will be king and what medium is the most accountable? Online… For example, what FD is going to pull a PPC campaign that cost £xxx but returned twenty times that in revenue? What commercial director is going to let them?

Marketing budgets must follow the consumer
A recent IMRG survey revealed that 77% of shoppers plan to carry out about half or more of their Christmas shopping online (up from 57% the previous year). Clearly online is continuing to grow its share of media consumption, especially when it comes to key issue of buying things. If more customers are going be online this year, where do you think savvy (and even less savvy) advertisers will be looking to spend budgets? Online…

New developments – what effect will they have over the next 6 to 12 months?
BBC iplayer set the bar earlier this year for viewing video content online. Now more and more destinations are cropping up where you can watch perfectly good video content online. This is starting to represent a pretty compelling story for advertisers (OK so not on iplayer specifically) looking to target specific audiences.
Online coupons are allowing the highly sought after FMCG advertisers to have some form of tangible way to track effectiveness of their online campaigns. Whilst people are rarely going to click on a banner ad to buy Coca-Cola, they will print off an online coupon offer and take it to a store to buy it. And in an era of belt tightening, how do you think the popularity of 2 for 1 coupons and other offers are going to be affected? I for one would be amazed if this didn’t take off…
Social Media – if our upcoming conference is anything to go by, there is a huge demand for understanding how social media can help your business. Brands like asos.com, AXA PPP, BBC, Bounty, Cheapflights, Chelsea FC, Clinique, EDF Energy, Ford, Intel, iplayer, ITV, Johnson & Johnson, Orange, Panasonic, Telegraph, Thomas Cook, Tiscali, Transport for London, Unilever, Visa are all part of the 250 strong delegate list that will be descending upon the Hilton, Tower Bridge on the 28th October… AT £500 a pop this suggests to me that budgets are there and companies are looking to invest in Social Media.

So where does that leave us?

Now more than ever customer retention is crucial. Why go through the expensive exercise of generating new customers when you know of a whole group of people who have already bought from you. And you (hopefully) have a whole raft of data about them and what they may be interested in. surely a well crafted campaign of incentives to this group would be money well spent.

And also, if you sell stuff and you don’t do so online, you’re quite likely not to weather the coming storm.

James Drake-Brockman
Find out more about Internet World

Posted in Online marketing, The Future of Social Media, online coupons, online video, social media | 1 Comment »

Help us help you… Have your say about Internet World 2009

July 10, 2008

As an IW Blog “early adopter”, you have enjoyed periodic access to what goes inside our brains here at Internet World Towers. We’d like to reward your close interest in all things IW by giving you a chance to get ahead of the game and start thinking about content you’d like to see at next year’s show.

So, we will be running a total of 7 theatres next year, which will be:

Keynote
Enterprise Content Management
Online Advertising and Search Marketing
Email, Mobile and Web Analytics
Design & Build – Usability & Web 2.0The Masterclass Theatre (incorporating Hosting/Connectivity and cutting edge technologies)
E-Commerce

We will be sending out our official Call for Papers in early September, but in the spirit of user-generated content we would like to give you, blog readers, a chance to suggest some of the hot-button topics our audience will NEED to hear come April 28th next year.

This can either be a topic that you want to hear about or one that you can speak about

Quick tips for getting your proposed content on to the final agenda

Before you send in concrete ideas in response to the official Call for Papers, we would like to suggest some tips for you to maximize your chances of securing one of these prestigious speaking opportunities:

Think about how compelling a session this will be from the layperson’s point of view – YOU may know that Rupert in Marketing is the best public speaker since Winston Churchill, but how can we get that message across to our audience?

Take some time to ask, do we have any clients that we’ve had really strong results in this area from? Would they be willing to come along and spend 30 minutes co-presenting? Our experience shows that sessions featuring prominent end-user client-side speakers get much better response, and also help us as organizers build a buzz that Internet World is THE place to find out what companies are actually doing in the digital space. Not that it isn’t already of course…

Finally, are you thinking of submitting the same presentation title you did last year, and the year before that? Of course, we welcome many many first-time visitors, but try to think about the one thing your company has done (or will have done) since this year’s show that you’re REALLY thrilled about, and then refer back to points 1 & 2 to ensure that you’re giving yourself a fighting chance of making it through the final cut.

So for suggestions, please leave a comment but if you want to submit a proposal, click here

That’s all for now – watch this space for regular updates as we pick up the pace to put together the show the internet space needs, and deserves. Thanks for your time today.

PS – make sure you give us your feedback on the newsletter winging its way to you later today – not that we blow our own trumpets, but we’re rather impressed this month…

Posted in Internet World exhibitors, Online marketing, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Post Show Post

May 16, 2008

First of all, sorry it’s taken so long to get a post show post up. As is always the way, we’ve been dealing with the usual (and some unusual) post show activities.

What a week it was at Earls Court for Internet World! We thought it would be tough to beat the award winning 2007 show however I have to say that was one of the best shows I’ve been involved since I started organising events 9 years ago. There were periods when I thought it might take me half an hour just to walk the length of the show, there were so many attendees. The crowds outside the seminar theatres proved we hit the nail on then head with our educational program and for those who didn’t get the chance to see all the sessions they wanted to, we will be updating the seminar pages on the website with the slides and audio from many of the sessions over the coming weeks.

In addition to this, I am excited to announce the launch of the Internet World Video Player. We filmed all the keynotes and few other sessions at the show so if you join part of the Internet World community (which is free), you will get access to keynotes from the likes of Travis Katz, International Managing Director of Myspace.com, Ashley Friedlein, CEO of E-consultancy and Peter Mercier, Head of Mobile from the BBC. Please keep an eye on the website and The Buzz newsletter for further details.

2009 is already looks set to be another superb event in our new home at the illustrious Grand Hall, Olympia. As you will have seen if you attended the show this year, we were at capacity in Earls Court 2 and the move to Olympia will give us the chance to build bigger seminar theatres, locate them in their natural homes in the various zones around the show and will greatly enhance the attendee and exhibitor experience. Also, with the weight and resources of our new owners CMPi behind it, you can expect Internet World to come back next year with an even better marketing campaign, greater content and even a bit of a facelift… We’ve got a few exciting features lined up for next year including plans for a showcase area of some the most exciting and cutting edge technologies and solutions around.

What was great to see at the show is that online is undeniably the driving force when it comes to many marketing strategies. Whilst the show has always been the natural home for online, digital, new media and ecommerce professionals is was great to see the continued increase in the top marketing decision makers (Marketing Directors/Heads of Marketing/CMO’s) at the show. I remember a few years ago when it was a real struggle to get these people to engage in online. Increasingly these days they are the first through the doors of Internet World and the last to leave. This year there was one Marketing Director (who shall remain nameless) from one of the world’s biggest brands who told me he only intended to pop in briefly on Tuesday and ended up staying all day and returning on Wednesday and Thursday.

On a different note the cricket season has started and as I write, England have started their reply to New Zealand’s first innings total of 277 in the Lords test. I hope Strauss and Cook do better than my personal performances so far this season: 2 matches – 2 innings – 9 balls – 0 runs. As D:Ream pointed out in 1994 and the Labour party reminded us in 1997: “Things can only get better”

And finally you’ll be pleased to hear that I have also managed to book my first holiday the year: a week in Corsica at the start of June. Can’t wait!

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Upcoming Seminars At Internet World

April 28, 2008

Two interesting-sounding seminars in the Enterprise Content Management stream caught my eye. Both customers of Swedish web CMS vendor, EPiServer which is exhibiting at the show.

On Wednesday Cian O’Donovan from Setanta Sports will present the company´s web strategy, experiences learned from implementing EPiServer CMS and the impact of Web 2.0 on the business. For those of you who aren’t sports fans, Setanta is the fastest growing pay television operator in Europe providing premium sports TV channels. Their website is updated continuously by 25 journalists covering the latest news in the world of sport.

Then on Thursday Amanda Neylon, Web manager for Diabetes UK, will share how the organisation developed the website that scooped the prestigious “Best site” award at the 2007 Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Excellence Awards. Diabetes UK is the largest charity in the UK devoted to the care and treatment of people with diabetes.

But apart from them, there are hundreds of other exhibitors with interesting news to tell you – I’ll update you on those as and when I can, but in the meantime keep an eye on our cutting edge news for more.

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Reformed Industry

April 22, 2008

With only one week left to go before the best digital marketing exhibition of its kind begins, I notice another news story rearing its head regarding behavioural targeted marketing. Phorm had already put up a massive PR-offensive wall inviting debate with people not happy about a previous story mentioned in this very blog way back here . It looks like the general public aren’t too happy with being advertised products that they might actually be interested in.

I’ve been so busy organizing the event that I have almost let slide my multimedia collection. How remiss of me! Thankfully there’s a new beta release around at the moment that seems to work pretty well with all the major online media outlets like flickr and facebook. Looks like you can now drag and drop your media between all these apps and make your online media library look better than ever before.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. Still lots to do before all the speakers and exhibitors arrive. My holiday snaps from Bournemouth will have to wait. See you next week!

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