Managing director Rob Shaw said, ”We are very pleased that the judges and Econsultancy recognised our hard work over the last 12 months. Epiphany has seen a dramatic return for our clients due to our innovative approach to search and the successful campaigns we have taken on.”

Epiphany received a trophy for ‘Best Use of SEO‘ at this year’s DADI Awards and was also commended for their work on another campaign within the same category.

To view the list of nominees for the 2012 Econsultancy Awards, click here.

We’ve also created an infographic that looks at the anatomy of an innovative agency. Check it out below!

The lunch time event for this month, ‘Sociality,’ is a discussion on social media and is already sold out, and September’s ‘Get into Gaming‘  is already looking fantastic.

These events have been a great prelude to the main festival activities which will kick off in November. This is not the first Digital Festival in the city. Previous attempts to bring together members of the digital community in Leeds have had limited outreach and impact, but 2011 is already shaping up to be very different. The missed opportunities of previous festivals are already a distant memory as LDF2011 continues to engage more and more people each week by inviting the community to ‘Be a part of it,’ and by taking ownership of some part of the festival and contributing.

The digital community in Leeds has been good to me over the years. With almost ten years of working in the city, I have met a lot of passionate people, worked on some amazing projects and grown professionally. All of this has been because of the culture in the city being rather unique. Leeds is supportive, friendly, creative and ambitious. Not all cities have this back bone of support to help nurture new talent, while pushing more established ones.

We have already seen a fantastic level of commitment from so many people to help make LDF2011 a successes. With loads of people giving up their own time regardless of agency allegiances, family and workloads to make LDF2011 a event with national and international impact.

There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved from workshops to event planning. The idea is to give as much time as you can afford, and any input or suggestion is more than welcome. You can find more information about opportunities to get involved at www.leedsdigitalfestival.com.

This brings me to the crux of this blog post. On Thursday, 4 August the voting process for the branding of the festival comes to a close. The process for creating the brand for this year’s festival is based around a public vote on a number of designs developed at ‘LDS2011 Design Day,’ an event which was held back in April. Bringing together recent design and marketing graduates and old agency bods, randomly selected teams pitched against each other with concepts and possible treatments to shape the brand for the festival.

I was lucky enough to take part in this event, and the team I was in was selected as one of the final designs to go through to a public vote. Now really I should be saying you should vote for Direction B as that was my team, but really I genuinely don’t care who you vote for, as long as you make sure you vote by visiting www.voteforleeds.com.

I believe Leeds Digital Festival 2011 is a chance not only to celebrate the unique culture of the city, but to engage with people outside of the digital community. It demonstrates the creative, cultural and economic impact the digital industries based in Leeds have. This should no longer be a  festival for the digital community; it should be by the digital community for the city.

To be within the digital industries in Leeds and not be involved in LDF2011 to some degree, I believe, is some what short sited. I see it as an investment for the future of the web, gaming, photography, film, and music sectors in the city. A future, I believe, your own success is inherently linked to.

Vote before 5pm on the 4 August here.

In a December press release, the Canadian publisher announced 10 of its newspapers will have iPad apps available.  The newspapers with apps are: the Vancouver Sun, the Victoria Times Colonist, The Vancouver Province, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Regina Leader-Post, The Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the Ottawa Citizen, The Montreal Windsor Star and The Montreal Gazette. The apps will ”give users a rich and personalised experience,” said Malcolm Kirk, Executive Vice President of Digital Media.

The apps are free and include features like saving stories for later, the option to comment on live articles and share it through Twitter and Facebook. There is also a feature that personalises the experience by allowing readers to see what is going on in their neighbourhood and around Canada.

Considered the country’s largest publisher of paid English language daily newspapers and a new media company, Postmedia Network may have found the answer. Scott Anderson, the company’s Senior VP for Content said in a Montreal Gazette article last week, ”This isn’t the newspaper on an iPad, this is an iPad edition with content tailored to take advantage of the technology.”

According to a November article in the London Evening Standard website, Apple had sold 7.5 million iPads by the end of September. In the article, James Murdoch said he expects apps to ”chip away” at print sales far more than the internet does, as readers typically engage with apps far more than they do with websites. News Corp, who owns several UK publications, recently launched an app for The Sunday Times, which allows paid subscribers free iPad issues, but non-subscribers will pay £1.79 per issue.

The truth is technology is constantly changing so it is only natural that newspapers will follow suit. When papers went online almost 20 years ago, people were worried it would negatively affect the print versions, but in fact, it created a brand new avenue for the news to be reported, reaching numbers, both in readership and profit, far surpassing print subscriptions. While there are some who are sceptical, only time will tell if the app is mightier than the pen.

French Artist, Alexandre Oudin seems to have been the first person the take advantage of the new Facebook profile layout to create this super little hack:

Since then there have been a plethora of tutorials on how to hack your photo’s and create this for yourself. The best, and most straight forwards, if you have photoshop can be found here:

But, if you don’t have photoshop, or you just don’t have the time to cut up the images yourself, there is now a really simple App on Facebook that will allow you to create this look for yourself:  http://www.fbcrop.com/index.php?

Enjoy.

There are set to be massive changes in the world of online marketing in 2011, with many ‘game changers’ all on the horizon. Brands are going to have to pay attention to these changes if they want to retain the level of online visibility and conversion generation they currently hold.

So without further ado, let’s get out the crystal ball and delve into digital marketing in 2011.

Mobile Web & Device Diversification

Google has estimated that by 2011 mobile searches will be equal to the amount of desktop searches in 2007. That statistic might be a little optimistic for the UK alone, but there is no denying the fact that mobile web usage will continue to grow strongly during 2011. Next year will be when everyone has to take the mobile web and mobile search seriously if they want to (at least) maintain their current level of online exposure and conversions.

Increased mobile usage will change how users search through text, voice, and images; what they search (shorter searches, mobile/location-related searches), and how they view the content when they find it (limited screen real estate). Mobile websites, mobile SEO and mobile conversation rate optimisation will be essential for those wishing to prosper in this ‘new’ environment. Of course we’re not just talking smartphones here. The growth of tablets opens another whole new area of optimisation possibilities:

• Have you got mobile strategy?
• Have you got device strategy?

‘Appification’

The advantages that software-based Apps offer, both publishers and users, in terms of delivering and consuming content, and functionality, in an ever increasingly diverse device market, will ensure their strong growth during 2011.

In addition, the continued growth of cloud computing (websites as applications) means that for many, the line between what a website is and what a software application is will blur. Eventually many users may not know (or care!) the difference between the two.

It is my own personal belief that the continued growth of Apps will eventually lead to them being considered as a direct competitor to traditional websites.

Apps are already a Universal search option within Google Mobile Search, and this functionality will eventually make its way into the traditional desktop search results.  Have you got App Strategy?

Internet TV

Next year might not quite be when TV search explodes, but Google will look to grow this channel strongly during 2011. Early adopters here in TV SEO might gain themselves a march on their competitors.

Will we eventually see blended TV results in Google like we do with Google Mobile? How about blended tablet results? If Google is committed to delivering users the most relevant content for the device, then this would seem like a logical route to take.

Social Media Marketing

In 2010, both Google and Bing confirmed that Tweets and (possibly) other social media factors directly influence the traditional search engine ranking positions.

This comes as no real surprise. Search engines in many ways are a mirror of the environment in which they find themselves. Why would they not use this data to deliver ‘better’ results?

If your company is not present on Facebook and Twitter, and is having its content and URLs passed around on these and other networks, then your brand is in decline in the eyes of Google. These kind of social signals (and user ‘sentiments’) are going to become increasingly more important to search engines in assessing what is an authority website in any niche.

A well thought out social media strategy can lead to a number of pre-defined outcomes: the creation of brand champions, the generation of incoming links (traditional & social) to your website, and good reviews (for Google Places optimisation). Social Media Marketing, or Social Media Optimisation (SMO), increasingly becomes an integral part of everyone’s overall marketing strategy, as the lines between disciplines blur. During 2011 we are going to see much more campaign integration, not just with SEO and social media, but through utilising traditional off-line marketing to help drive both SEO and social media campaigns….. Have you got a Social Media Strategy?

Personalisation

Personalised results in search engines will continue to grow and become an important part of the listings, forcing organisations to think more intelligently about how to gain exposure. Local optimisation could play a big part for organisations in addressing this issue.

Personalisation won’t just be limited to the search engines though. Expect to see personalisation across more and more websites as universal logins (ie Facebook Connect) continue to proliferate. Users will get used to this and come to expect it. If you’re not making product suggestions based on your user’s social graph, expect your competitors to steal a march on you.

Personalisation in display advertising will also continue to grow strongly. After proving itself in 2010, this method of banner advertising will go truly main stream in 2011.

Web Analytics & Conversion Rate Optimisation

It’s been important to us as a specialist search agency, for Conversion Rate Optimisation to continue to grow strongly across the sector in 2011. As mentioned, this becomes even more important in an ever growing divergent device market. Expect new screen sizes, new interfaces, and new user needs.

I expect Facebook to ramp up their web analytics offerings, possibly even buying out a current supplier to quickly improve their offerings. No doubt Google will have some interesting things up their sleeve over the coming year, watch this space…. Have you got CRO?

Local, Location, & Places

If you are reading this post, no doubt you are probably aware of Google Places and the impact it’s had on the search results screen real estate.

Local search optimisation in Google Places, traditional SERPs and mobile search may well become crucial for many organisations during 2011…. Have you got local?

Semantic Data & the Rise of the Aggregator

The inclusion of semantic data on your own website will become increasingly important for websites wanting to send the right kind of signals to the search engines, in terms of their locality and topic niche. Specifically, all brands should look to include Micro formats and implement Facebook’s Open ID during 2011 (if they haven’t already). Appearing on other sites that also publish semantic data that Google utilises will also be important for many brands.

The Semantic Web and Web 3.0 are just around the corner. To stay visible in this new environment/‘platform’, brands need to start publishing semantic data today.

Those that adopt the use of semantic data across the board today may very well end up enjoying a significant advantage over their competitors, in terms of search engine visibility in the future.

The availability of all this new data and personalisation (from social graphs such as Facebook) will see a plethora of aggregator websites popping up. Some focused on specific niches (shoes perhaps) with others delivering completely unique content to each and every visitor that views the site.

Many predict user’s behaviour will change and switch away from the search engine to more targeted semantic aggregators. Think Amazon and its listing of others products, but on a much bigger scale across the web.

Visibility in the major engines alone may no longer be enough…. Have you got semantic data?

Battle of the Giants (to the death, with laser beams)

Google vs. Facebook, Google vs. Apple, Google vs. Microsoft, Google and Twitter vs. Facebook and Bing/Yahoo.

Whichever way you look at it, the battle to become the dominant player in the consumer computing industry, never mind just the web or just the most popular website/search engine, will intensify. This is a fight that crosses over devices, operating websites, search engines, and third party websites.

The ultimate prize here is us and our eyeballs, and the advertising dollars those eyeballs bring. This topic is huge and spans every aspect of the online world and consumers computing industry. There is however, a few key things we should look out for in 2011.

In the US, a combination of Bing & Yahoo could finally deliver a real challenge to the Google behemoth, clearing and increasing the importance of those engine(s) in terms of visibility.

If Facebook is (even partially) successful in ‘replacing the web,’ as it is currently attempting to do, we could expect to see search behaviours change significantly. Facebook already has Bing there ready and waiting to deliver search results…

Online Marketing takes a bigger bite of the budget
One thing every organisation can expect to do in 2011 is switch more of their marketing budget into digital marketing. The new opportunities, the conversions, the consumers, and more importantly the better ROI, are all there. Digital marketing will undoubtedly continue to grow.

If you’ve got this far into the post, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think is going to be big in digital marketing in 2011. Fill out the little form below!!

The Digital Life Sacrifice saw American celebrities ‘dying online’ on World AIDS Day, which was 1 December, by giving up their Twitter and Facebook accounts until the Keep a Child Alive charity had raised $1 million. These were not D list evictees from Big Brother or America’s Got Talent either. The organiser, Alicia Keys had enlisted the help of Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Seacrest and Kim Kardashian, to name a few.

It’s an inventive use of celebrity power and social media. It was interesting to see just how quickly their devoted followers donated in order to get them back online – the numbers were pretty astronomical. At the last count Gaga alone had more than seven million followers on Twitter and 24 million followers on Facebook, whilst Kim Kardashian has nearly 5.5 million Twitter followers.

It’s a slick multi-platform campaign, with some impressive technology being employed.  Not only were donors able to call in or text their donation, but each celeb was photographed in a T-shirt with a unique bar code on the front. Smart phone users could then scan the barcode from the printed advert, billboard or screen with their phone, using Stickybits or Wimo, to be directed to a microsite where they could donate directly.

Publicising it via social media allowed them to reach audiences that the more traditional forms of media would probably pass by. It would be worth knowing if apart from generating a huge amount of publicity, it actually engaged the online audiences.

With the volume of people involved, it is no wonder these A-listers were silent for only six days.

To spice the infographic up a little, I added a little animation to each of the pieces of information. These all run when the page loads, but if you missed any you can simply hover over the graphic to see it run again (my favourite is the kettle). We think this makes it more interactive and interesting than a flat graphic.

There are a few challenges to having the infographic animated though. The page is coded up in valid HTML5, using some of the newest code available, such as <header>, <section> and <footer> tags, and uses some great new CSS3 tricks to select the different elements on the page.

The animations and movements are done using Javascript. I’m a big fan of the jQuery library, and I’m using it and some of its plugins to rotate images, animate along paths, and a few other tricks. jQuery is robust enough that you can be confident of the animations working across all the different browsers, although I stopped short of supporting Internet Explorer 6 as it would involve rewriting most of the scripts. Instead I’ve put a conditional comment in that swaps the dynamic page for a static image and alerts the user that they could upgrade to a better browser.

Infographics like this are a great way to drive traffic to your site, and fulfil a dual purpose:
1. They show off your knowledge – in this case, how Epiphany has changed over the last 12 months. But it could be facts about your industry, which tells your (potential) customers that you’re an expert in that field.
2. They encourage people to share, and the more engaging the infographic, the more it’ll be shared! Adding a button for your visitors to share the infographic on Facebook or Twitter makes it a simple task for them to share, and gets you more hits and more links.
Our End of Year Infographic is just one example of how you can increase traffic to your website, and one that often spreads to a huge number of people very quickly: simply by being shared on Social Networking sites by a few hundred people you can be exposed to several thousand in a very short time.

With the huge number of infographics out there, it’s important to get it right – simply regurgitating old news won’t get people interested. But by publishing new information or by doing something a little differently, as we have with the animations, you can drive a lot of useful traffic to your site.

Blekko:

This is a really interesting search engine that has just gone live, and looks very promising. It differs from your usual search engine because it works using slashtags. You can basically separate and organise your searches, for example: typing ‘global warming /conservative’ would give you only conservative related results for ‘global warming’. You can find a more in depth analysis of Blekko in this post ‘Blekko: The Slash Tag Search Engine’ by Gavin Smith. (http://blekko.com/).

Seeks:

Seeks is a social search engine that doesn’t intend to rely on web crawlers or indexing of websites. Users of Seeks will be able to submit what they feel is most relevant directly to search groups. Seeks is apparently being developed in response to the monopolisation of information on the internet by search giants such as Google, and their supposed secret collection of user data for their own gain. Seeks believes that through a more social approach they can reduce spam websites that manipulate search engine rankings. They also think that they will be able to increase the variety of search queries to find what a searcher is looking for; at the moment users are funnelled through the same searches again and again. (http://www.seeks-project.info/).

China Mobile/Xinhua:

Google’s plan to dominate yet another user base came to an end earlier this year after allegations of spying and hacking, made worse when Google refused to follow all of China’s strict censorship rules. So, with that revelation in mind, I think we should keep an eye on the venture between China Mobile and Xinhua. At the moment it isn’t 100% clear whether they will try and conquer mobile search or create a traditional search engine (David Temple, Multilingual-search.com) – either way they have initiated a challenge to the current leader Baidu and runner up Google.

NowRelevant:

I really love this concept but hate the way they go about it. A big part of SEO strategy these days is to feature your engaging content on relevant websites. But what exactly does relevant mean? Surely it means different things to different people. NowRelevant in its simplest form is the most ‘relevant’ content and results from the last 2 weeks – bringing users the most up to date information. This isn’t hugely useful for ecommerce sites in my opinion (unless it’s a new range) but should be helpful for news, articles, blogs and general discussion/social sites. (http://www.nowrelevant.com/nrbeta/).

FindtheBest:

I really like the sound of this but I’ll probably never use it, it’s far too gimmicky.

Duckduckgo:

Duckduckgo is another search engine spawned in the wake of anti-Google hysteria. It collects no user data, unlike Google who have come under fire for storing information for indefinite periods. I think Google is trying to enhance the user’s experience by making search more personal; it’s not a huge conspiracy. Eventually people will calm down and Google will grow and grow, and many hysteria born start-ups will die off. Although, I hope this one doesn’t. It’s kind of sleek and flows nicely when you’re searching. It’s definitely designed around usability, with users able to change fonts and much more. Another great thing for users (not businesses) is the fact that there are no ads at the top of organic results. (http://duckduckgo.com/)

There are so many more out there and I really don’t think any of them are going to be ‘Google killers’. This shouldn’t stop anybody aiming to be the fourth, fifth and sixth top search engine. Web users are a smart bunch these days, and many will jump at the opportunity to jump on the band wagon of the latest start-up, hoping to be part of a clique – I was the same when I first discovered Firefox when IE controlled the browser wars. It made me feel so cool!

The site is a partnership between a developer, Aaron Koblin, director Chris Milk (the man behind the amazing Wilderness Downtown video) and producer Radica Media.

Each artist is randomly given a frame from the actual video and asked to interpret it with the drawing tools that are hosted within the site. You draw over the frame you have been given, meaning that you don’t have to be an artist to join in. You just need to be able to use your mouse and have a little bit of imagination.

As more and more people create frames, and already drawn frames are re-drawn, the video becomes a constantly evolving piece of art.  The beautiful thing is that as the video is always changing, no matter how many times you see the video, you won’t be able to match your image to the one before or after yours. You will however be credited for your work each time your frame is shown.

If you don’t fancy having a go at the drawing side of the project, you can also try your hand at editing and assembling the video from the pre-created frames, or you can simply browse the images and ‘rate’ the frames to help ensure they get played.

The IDC have recently predicted that revenue from software provided as a service (such as Google docs) will grow 5 times quicker than normal software, and very soon a third of all software will be delivered via the web. Apparently by 2012, we will be spending more than $42 billion on cloud computing.

The development of cloud computing has been spurred on by many things, primarily the ability to be connected easily where ever you are.

The abundance of free wi-fi spots located all over your city, on your train and even on your next flight means you can connect whilst mobile. The roll out of super fast broadband in many areas has meant that people have come to accept higher speeds as standard. People spend all day connected to the web, so cloud based companies have grown to support this need.

This has been supported by the development of the netbook. As of 2010, netbooks don’t really rival laptops for computing power, so we make do with netbooks and tablets that are slightly underpowered, but that’s OK because they are cheap, portable and you can connect to the web wherever you are.

Netbooks and Tablets are portable and underpowered, but the cloud is powerful and accessible everywhere you go. It’s a perfect match between portability and power.

People begin to use cloud services without even noticing, Gmail or Yahoo allow email to be sent without an email client and from there people move to the bundled services such as Google Docs. Once people see the benefits of these services, the next logical step is to move all your work to cloud.

I started using Google Docs in 2008 and I have now progressed to a free operating system called Jolicloud. It’s based on Linux but almost entirely populated with cloud software. It installs on pretty much any laptop or netbook and offers a seamless experience. It goes to show that you can get pretty much anything you need online and it’s all totally free.

This current trend towards free software isn’t going to continue without some source of revenue for the developers creating and hosting their work. Some offer a license for their software for a small charge, but many provide the service for free. Just as mobile apps are supported by adverts and Spotify is interrupted with voice over’s, your next spread sheet might feature adverts too.

We are officially spoilt for choice (just look at the size of the app store for Android and Apple) There are masses of high quality free applications being developed for your mobile. These apps are all based around the model of selling advertising space within the app; after all, they allow extremely accurate targeting of particular customer types based on their interests. This model of advertising works and it’s the same idea that is being used in the cloud.

Much like the explosion in usage of mobile apps, people will warm to the idea of cloud computing and it will take off in a huge way. Just look at the latest news:

Dell and HP are currently fighting over Boomi, a leader in the cloud business and Microsoft and Google are apparently beginning a bidding war to provide cloud services to the US government. With these giant companies trying to get a foothold in the market, it’s clear that the future of cloud computing is going to be big. There are already hundreds of services available online that do everything from tracking your calorie intake to constructing your next presentation. It’s just a case of getting people to use them. With the rumoured Google operating system coming soon, we might see a sudden uptake in the number of people using cloud services.

Many people complain about how much advertising there is on the web, but the fact is, a lot of websites wouldn’t be around without the revenue that ads generate. People would rather have an ad supported service then no service at all. For the smaller developers, advertising has now become a necessary evil to be able to fund their projects.

Ultimately, as long as the adverts don’t get in the way of the user experience, it’s a small price to pay for such an amazing service that comes at no expense to the consumer. If these cloud based applications thrive in the same way as mobile apps have, we might come to expect all our software to be provided free of charge.

Back in June this year, the Glastonbury Music Festival and sponsor Orange made an attempt to break the World Record for the most people tagged in an online image. I’m pleased to say I am in the picture! Although where, I have no idea!

The panoramic image was taken with two Hasselblad H4D-50 Cameras mounted one on top of the other, and rotated at 10 degree increments to take in the entire crowd, going back 350 meters. The cameras captured more than 70,000 who at the time, like me, were watching the England vs. Slovenia World Cup match on the first day of the festival.

Andrew Pearcey, Head of Brand Partnerships at Orange said: “Looking at the sheer numbers who have tagged themselves in the photo, and knowing it is both a unique and shared experience, is truly fantastic.”

The photo, once taken, was uploaded to Orange’s Glastonbury microsite, allowing those present at the event to find and tag themselves. This however is like a giant Where’s Wally (without the stripy jumper!). Instead everyone looks pretty much the same, and because of the heat, are wearing sunglasses and sun hats making this process of tagging even harder.

The number of people currently tagged stands around 8,000, breaking The Guinness World Record for the “Most People Tagged in an Online Photo”. Even today, the number is still increasing, how I do not know. The photo is of amazing quality, but by that point in the day I had already had a number of home brewed ciders, so have no idea where I was stood and am surprised anyone can remember!

Anyone fancy looking for me???

Thankfully things are changing now. Radiohead’s decision to make the release of their 2007 album ‘In Rainbows’ exclusively online for ‘whatever you wanted to part with’ was obviously a benchmark in desirable content being made available freely (and legally) to the masses online.  And today (remember, remember the 5^th of November), sees the long overdue and widely anticipated return of Alan Partridge. Not at the cinema as most thought it would have been, not even on Satellite channel UK Conquest. No, it’s online EXCLUSIVELY, for FREE on Foster’s website in the shape of 12, 11 minute episodes. That means EVERYONE gets to see it.

Now obviously Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci are getting their money, so it’s not exactly in the same spirit of Radiohead, but it is:

a)      GREAT that there is new Partridge material

b)      A BRILLIANT coup for Foster’s in their quest to position themselves as a brand that celebrates comedy

c)      Going to exponentially boost the traffic www.fostersfunny.co.uk

d)      Make me buy a four-pack of an otherwise terrible lager, just to say “thanks”

I’m now interested to see how other big brands with strategic sponsorship deals are going to follows this. I’m not going to say who I bank with, but just say Barclays were to announce they were to screen all next seasons Premier League matches online, every Saturday at 3pm, exclusively for their online savings customers…. Well in this hypothetical world, I’d rob my own Mother just to get enough money to open an account. Sorry Mum.

There are numerous Internet TV options currently rearing their head, such as Apple TV, Boxee and ‘official’ platforms, such as the UKs YouView. In this article though I am going to focus more specifically on the imminent Google TV (GTV), its potential for market penetration and what that could mean for both digital marketing, and marketing in general.

You can find out more about Google TV by watching the following video.

If you build it, they will come (?)

A large number of us already use media in the way Google TV is suggesting, be it selective DVD box sets, the BBC iPlayer on a laptop, a Media PC hooked up to the TV,  illegal torrents through a DIY home media setup or a closed garden platform such as Virgin and Sky.

It’s a natural progression for TV and the Internet (& the PC for that matter) to converge. This has been a long held assumption by many ‘futurists’.’

• Television is increasingly becoming more interactive and digitised; phone voting, the red button, web tie ins et al.
• The Internet has increasingly become the place we go for video content; YouTube dancing cats, catch-up services, content purchases, illegal torrents.

The market is crying out for a simple, functional, off-the-shelf, affordable device that ties all these uses together in one place. Oh, and it needs a remote.

The consumer market for the right product already exists, Google doesn’t need to invent the market, it just needs to deliver the right product to it.

Television Vs Mobile Phone

The move into the mobile market for Google, both to create advertising space and to sell units (handsets), also makes sense for Television as well, if not more so.

As Google highlighted at GTVs announcement, the current Worldwide TV audience is 4 billion. Personally I’m still waiting for the widespread Mobile Ad revolution, and widespread consumer adoption of Internet TV may also be slow at first, but the potential is certainly there – and it’s huge.

• Which Internet enabled device would you place your money on for ‘universal’ consumer penetration first, your mobile, or your TV?
• Which do you think will end up with the largest consumer market?

The answer maybe mobile for both, but I think these questions raise some interesting and important thoughts. Whilst the attention and hype of many digital marketing agencies is focused on the mobile phone IMHO the sector is overlooking the huge impact Internet TV could have on all of us.

One distinct, and interesting, advantage that TV does have over the mobile is screen eyeball time. The average American spends 5 hours a day watching TV. The Mobile Web can’t get anywhere to close to TVs current consumer market or eyeball time.

Smart PC TVs

Comparisons with the mobile market also remind us that Internet TV, or specifically Google TV, isn’t just a single purpose device. Whilst offering video content, GTV will be based on the Android OS allowing the use of a Web Browser and the installation of Apps.

Welcome to the world of Smart TVs.

Based on the blurb from Google so far, the GTV devices will in essence be ‘mini’ media PCs. The added functionality this offers means your average user could abandon the traditional PC desktop for their Internet and home computing needs entirely. After making do with poor quality devices, or hobbyist Internet TV devices (XBMC) for the past few years the geeks are crying out for a decent TV device with the capabilities of a modern PC, if only to more easily watch all that illegal content they’ve downloaded on a standard TV.

Whilst Google’s deal with Sony may ensure that GTV makes its way into many living rooms ‘by default’,’ Google are going to have to battle hard and release a good quality product to ensure mass consumer adoption.

The user interface

The user interface here is key, if Google can get this right and offer the functionality of a PC, with on demand video content, tied into a universal TV guide, in an easily usable and unified interface, then they are onto a winner. The winning Internet TV device will appeal to both normal & geek users alike. It needs to be cool, sexy and convenient.

Google though doesn’t exactly have a great track record in this area; it took HTC to make a decent interface for Android. If GTV is to become a mainstream success, Google needs to get this right. In fact, this thought makes Apples still half hearted stab at the whole Internet TV thing even more perplexing; Apple TV still offers no App support and other advance functionality.

Internet Television though will kill the iPad, dead. Forever.

Okay, okay so I’m exaggerating for effect and to get the attention of the Apple Fanboys out there (including my company directors!) but I just don’t see consumers watching video at home on an iPad when there’s a big screen TV with Internet in the corner. More interestingly, I also don’t see people getting off their bums and walking over to the PC when they can search right there from their sofa.

A New Advertising Platform

The potential for Internet TV and specifically Google TV is there, and so is the potential to make a lot of money, be it through paid search advertising revenue or the selling of video content.

The consumer market is there, consumers are used to the technology, and the opportunity to possibly make a lot of money is also present. So what could possibly get in the way?

Content is always king

So far I’ve waxed lyrically about the need for, and potential, of Internet TV. There is of course one massive hurdle to all of this, and that is content.

Google’s (and my) worst fears in regards came true recently with multiple US broadcasters stating they will block their traditional broadcasts, and its content, from Google TV. This isn’t surprising, if Google TV became the one of the defacto ways to access TV they could (eventually) capture the entire TV advertising revenue market. TV companies could become merely content producers rather than advertising space sellers.

There are similarities here to both the music & movie industry. Both have tried to hold on to their traditional business models and been reluctant to switch to new digital business models, to their detriment. Eventually though I don’t think the networks will have any choice, Google TV will become so popular that they will have to unlock their traditional channels to the platform for fear of losing even more advertising revenue.

Search Engine Optimisation for Television

Beyond searching for video content, will we see a specific Google for Television users in the same way we have seen a Google Mobile Search? It would make sense for video content, or websites containing video content, to rank highly on such a platform. Clearly the value of viral video expands significantly if there exists a broad user base of people interacting with the web through their televisions. Internet TV though, could, see a fall in the amount of people performing traditional searches from within Google, due to Appification, an increase in users switching from the web for solutions to Apps. That though is an argument for an entirely different blog post.

Clearly,  to perform well in future GTV user keyword searches is to increase video content and optimise it to perform well both in YouTube searches and within Google Universal search, be it hosted on YouTube or your own website, or both.

GTV & Google Adwords

A new facet to their search service gives Google the opportunity to further spread its primary revenue generator, Google Adwords. The conventional text based ads, and their associated web-pages, will still work in GTV due to the built-in Google Chrome web browser.

IMHO as an SEO-er, Google Video Ads haven’t been a huge success for Google to date, could be the widespread adoption of GTV be the thing that finally changes that for good?

The re-invention of TV advertising/ Demographically Targeted TV ads

I’m no Harry Crane (from Mad Men), but as I understand it, TV ads are often placed with specific TV shows in order to reach a certain demographic. Or rather TV shows are often designed to attract a certain demographic in order to show targeted ads.

With access to a user’s account, and its details and history, GTV could give advertisers the potential opportunity to directly access an individual users demographic, rather than a sweeping statement based on the type of TV show they are watching.

• Why do we all need to see the same adverts when we watch TV?
• Would the implementation of the model above actually result in better TV shows?

Is this not the holy grail of advertising, the most effective media with perfectly targeted demographics?
Of course, this simplistic example assumes that the provider has both a users graph and content to deliver around the ads, but it’s a tantalising prospect.

A new type of advertising & a new type of television

Clearly the built-in web browser and ability to install Apps offers the chance for more viewer & advertiser interaction. Arguably the effectiveness of this is yet unproven, but it opens up a huge area for possible innovation both in television and advertising.

How exactly do companies and their agencies currently track the effectiveness and the direct ROI for TVs currently? Ultimately, I imagine, this comes down to sales figures and brand awareness ‘tests’ but like most forms of traditional advertising it’s probably all a little fuzzy and crude in nature.

Internet TV could change the paradigm of TV advertising forever.

Why can’t a TV ad drop the equivalent of a cookie, either attaching to the TV  itself or more interestingly to an individual user account?

With Internet TV, the potential to give clients tangible and direct ROI figures on their TV Ads becomes a possibility.

TV ads could also now have direct calls to action embedded within them, taking the user to the client’s website, or to install a related App. If advertisers can figure out the right incentives for consumers to interact with their TV ads then this data could become extremely useful.

Could we begin to see the process of TV Ad optimisation in the same way we currently do with Google Adwords? With computer generated graphics, could changing a TV Ad become as simple as changing the text on a PPC advert? Why not?

The very nature of TV Ads themselves can also change with Internet (or rather PC) TV. TV advertisers can finally go beyond the static video ad and become more creative and innovative with their ideas.

I can see the possibility of sponsored social games, based on the theme of the TV show, being available during ad breaks for mass audience participation, as just one example.

Internet kills TV ad revenue, Internet re-invents TV advertising

The Web has been cited by many as responsible for dwindling TV ad revenue. This is primarily due to the ROI figures Web Advertising offers and the relative cheap nature of it as a marketing model. The Internet has also been blamed for drawing users from their TV screen. The multitude of channels and dwindling mass audience figures is also cited.

If television adopts the tangible ROI approach the Web has, through Internet TV, this could save the format of TV from further dwindling advertising revenue. Advertisers may no longer have to book their advert for a particular program but simply state they want a specific demographic regardless of the TV show being watched. If users are leaving the sofa to ‘surf the web’ then put the Web in front of them on their TV, and keep them watching those Ads whilst interacting on Facebook at the same time.

Of course if a vision similar to this comes to light it will be Google, not the TV companies, who will gain the majority of this revenue.

Your Thoughts

A lot of what I talk about in this article, at the moment at least, is potential. The innovations I allude to are based on the assumption that the TV content is being fed over the Internet, rather than traditional broadcast methods, so the ads aren’t ‘static’ in nature and can change in line with the user. Even without this though, Internet TV could have a huge impact on us all. If Google TV, or one of its competitors, is a mainstream success it will change how we watch TV, how we advertise on TV and how we use the Web forever.

If you’ve got to the end of this article I would love to hear your opinion on Internet Television and Google TV specifically. Are we witnessing the birth of an advertising and television revolution? Or will ‘open’ Internet TV pass by as a limited user base fad, with most users sticking to closed garden broadcasters such as Sky and Virgin? Add your thoughts in the comments box below!

It’s all about trust

With all the negativity and bad press that Google and the other major search engines receive in terms of their approach to privacy, the team at Blekko have drawn up the following 10 commandments that they will be looking to follow moving forwards:

1.  Search shall be open

2.  Search results shall involve people

3.  Ranking data shall not be kept secret

4.  Web data shall be readily available

5.  There is no one-size-fits-all for search

6.  Advanced search shall be accessible

7.  Search engine tools shall be open all

8.  Search and community go hand-in-hand

9.  Spam does not belong in search results

10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

These commandments/rules are in line with many open source projects around and based upon good intentions around accessibility and privacy.

If Blekko was to ever take off and go main stream, it would be interesting to see how long they stuck to these principles seen as Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra is now thrown back at them at every opportunity.

Features

The most exciting thing about Blekko is the ability for users to add slash tags to the end of their queries to vastly alter the set of search results for the same page.

A good example of the slashtag in action is searching for climate change with the slashtags /health, /science and /conservation. The 3 similar searches deliver vastly different results that deliver unique content dependant on a user’s required perspective defined by the slashtag.

A Human Touch

The elimination of spam is big on the Blekko’s radar, with the company taking open source to heart and using its passionate user base to add and edit URLs for category slashtags.

The company aims to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 top search queries.

So what’s next?!

Well, the easy part is done in launching the search engine; the hard part now is not fading into the obscurity in such a way that Wolfgram Alpha and many others have.

Blekko needs to find a hook and I believe the slashtag has made this search engine much more serviceable for users who are looking in an educational or a research capacity.

Blekko also needs to grow with all slashtags currently falling into one of 7 categories (Health, Colleges, Cars, Personal Finance, Lyrics, Recipes and Hotels). This would obviously need to be increased moving forwards to increase the relevance of results to queries.

If it manages to do all of the above then the obvious aim would be to try and monetise the search engine. CEO Rick Skrent has stated “We’d like to be the No. 3 search engine, and believes that the site could be profitable with 1 million to 2 million (of the 1 Billion) queries a day”!

A lot of companies have been taking advantage of the increasing popularity of smartphones and using GPS enabled apps and location based services allowing you to check in and show the world where you are and what you’re doing. Nike, however, is going back to basics with their latest game by using London’s network of payphones.

They have divided London into a huge grid using 48 of its postcodes. Players run around the grid checking in at payphones to score points (you’re not charged for the calls). Each run scores 10 points and you can also earn badges for various goals etc. to score extra points. The more ways you run, the more badges you can earn. Whoever scores the most points in a postcode owns it. There are also mini games to ‘unlock’ by completing some runs and various prizes up for grabs.

Players register on www.nikegrid.com and can view all their completed runs on their profile page. The game also links in with Facebook, updating your profile page if you win a badge or break a record.

By using payphones to check in instead of smartphones this campaign is much more inclusive as all you need is access to the Internet to register, plus you don’t need to take your expensive phone out running with you! You can play solo or as a team, university or region. Players will have 15 days to run the city and try and win as many grids as possible, the maps were released on Monday (18^th).

And don’t worry about being super fit; points can be earned by finding shortcuts. So grab your trainers and start running!

As someone who really enjoys travelling to new countries I have a rule, never go back to the same place twice until you have been to all the places on your list! That’s a problem when you have a book of 500 places to see and you like the look of them all.

After I’ve picked somewhere to travel, my next course of action is to find out as much about the place as possible and so I usually invest in some form of travel guide which can be pricey, especially if it’s only for a few days and you’re not planning to return anytime soon!

Before heading to Waterstones this lunch I was playing with my IPhone, checking out the weather in Venice when I thought I’d look in the app store to see what sort of information was out there on my booked destination. So my search would return everything I need. I typed in ‘Venice’ and was greeted with well over 50 applications. Straightaway I knew my usual method of purchasing a guide was no longer necessary – all the information I needed would be on my phone which I always have with me, books can easily get left at home or the hotel, the only problem now is looking through the applications to find the right one!

The first free application I came across looked like it ticked most of the boxes with the following features:

• Top 10 things to see in Venice
• Map of the ferry boats to move around
• Useful phone numbers
• Useful phases in Italian
• Daily prices
• Weather forecast

The only things really missing from the list that I would usually want from a travel guide would be a map and restaurant guide. After installing the app and looking further down the list I noticed I could download a map of Venice and walking tour for free and a city restaurant guide for just £1.79. I did begrudge paying the £1.79 after I found so much information for free but looking and reading the app reviews I knew it would be worth it!

I do know one thing, I won’t need to clog my bookshelves anymore with guides to places I will only ever go to once, this way I can download and then delete just as quickly when my holiday is over.

I am interested in seeing what you think.

A while ago, Google Labs released a series of keyboard shortcuts allowing users to navigate search results without using a mouse. These shortcuts were complicated, clumsy and easily forgettable. While making the results accessible, the system wasn’t very user-friendly. Last Friday, the 1^st October, Google rolled out its latest round of keyboard shortcuts which are far better, but in addition to enhancing navigation of SERPs, may have additional impacts in regards to SEO and PPC.

Website keyboard shortcuts have been common place for several years now on the internet, however often tend to be overly complicated and as such, aimed at allowing sites to be accessible to disabled visitors only, and not really intended for use by the majority. For example, below are the complicated shortcuts trialled by Google in Google Labs:

The latest Google keyboard shortcuts released on Friday are far more intuitive and utilise the arrow keys on your keyboard. Once a Google search has been performed and the enter key has been hit, a small allow cursor will appear to the left of the listings. Pressing the up and down arrows on the keyboard will move the onscreen cursor, and pressing enter will select that result and open the resulting website. This is only available via Google Instant at the moment which means you have to be signed in to a Google account.

I’ll let Google themselves explain further:

SEO and PPC Impacts

I’m not one to jump on the ‘SEO Is Dead’ bandwagon every time Google makes changes, however there is the possibility that this may see some knock-on effects to PPC.

The keyword shortcut cursor not only scrolls organic listings, but PPC also. When a search query has been entered and the enter key hit, the cursor is defaulted over the first PPC advert at the very top of the page. The impact may come with people hitting the enter key accidentally and visiting the first sponsored listing.

How people will interact with the new keyboard shortcuts (and ultimately, if it catches on at all) is yet to be seen. We will monitor user behaviour of this here at Epiphany, and should any impacts be seen, we’ll let you know!

So if you’re looking for a platform to build interactive content, is Flash still the way forward?

The emergence of HTML5 has brought with it a couple of alternatives to using Flash: SVG and Canvas. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, and uses XML markup to draw shapes, arcs, lines and gradients on a webpage. The canvas tag is a new HTML5 tag that allows scripts (usually Javascript) to draw inside it. Each has its advantages and both can be used to replace Flash in many cases.

Support for these new technologies is, however, patchy. Whereas all the big browsers have a Flash plugin (with the notable exception of Safari for iPad and iPhone), support for both SVG and canvas can be an issue. The big culprit is, of course, Internet Explorer, which has no support for either. Opera leads the way in support for SVG, with the Webkit browsers (Safari and Chrome) topping the canvas support chart (in fact, canvas was originally developed by Apple to power dashboard widgets and for use in Safari).

There are Javascript solutions to IE’s lack of support, WebSVG for SVG and Excanvas for canvas, which smoothes over many of the cracks, and Internet Explorer 9, released as a beta version last week, has support for both methods.

In the long term these two technologies, coupled with HTML5’s support for native video, may well edge out Flash, but until the statistics show that most people are using SVG and canvas-enabled browsers, Flash is still the option that works for most people most of the time.

Like most holidaymakers, when looking for a hotel, you can believe the tour operator that the hotel is the best thing since sliced bread. What I prefer to do is to run a quick search of the hotel with Trip Advisor, where you can read reviews from people who have stayed at the hotel before. Therefore before we left the UK, we knew that the hotel guests would mainly be German, Russian and Italian – but with good food, all inclusive drink and a stone’s throw from the beach.

Consumer opinions posted online are the second most trusted form of advertising according to Nielsen, with 70% of people trusting this form of advertising only behind recommendations from peers (90%).

A quick search of the Internet also helped us to plan what we would do while we were out there. We discovered our hotel had a water park/entertainment centre next door, so we knew that we could do some water sports while we were there (dummies were spat and egos bruised) and you can’t go wrong with a 4pm swimsuit foam party!

It also became apparent from searching online that quad bikes were popular in Crete, so we decided before we left that we’d hire quad bikes for one day of the trip – with near fatal consequences!

With our resort being a mainly non-English resort, we found out from the Internet that Malia was only 10km away, so we decided this would be where we’d go on our nights of debauchery (however good an idea it seemed at the time, running the 10km back to our hotel fuelled on Red Bull with super cool cowboy hats on, wasn’t such a good idea!)

After a weeklong carb-fest with more pasta than you can shake a stick at and an alcohol induced hazy memory with only photos as memories, it’s now time to use the net to find out how to get the pre holiday body back….

One of the best things I have seen lately is one made by Chris Milk. Google and Arcade Fire have created an interactive video for their song “we used to wait” called “The Wilderness Downtown”.

First you are prompted to enter the address of your childhood home and then the music starts to play. A series of pop up windows appear playing various animations and video clips – try to resist the urge to move them as they are placed about the screen for a reason!

Satellite images of your old home are integrated into the video to create a really personal experience, and you even get to write a postcard to your childhood self. The animations and videos flow seamlessly across the different windows

This creates a beautiful and interesting site that really shows off what can be done with HTML5 by making great use of the audio, video and canvas tags. The custom images of your childhood home rendered from the Google maps API help to create an emotional connection that makes you want to keep watching and interact further with the site.

There is a further level of interaction which will continue over the coming months via the postcards you create. These postcards will be used in several ways both online and off (not yet revealed), including the ‘Wilderness Machine’ which will be part of the bands tour in North America.

Could this be the future of music videos? It has certainly raised the bar for interactive online content.

Google may be king at the moment, but will their reign last forever? Technology is constantly changing, and the online engagement users expect will change along with it. Will traditional text and banner adverts that have worked so well for years, still entice users in the same way they once did? Will users predominantly still use their desktop or laptop computers to browse the Internet, or will more and more begin to make the switch to powerful smartphones like Apple’s iPhone?

We can never be certain with 100% accuracy how user behaviours will alter over time, which as a PPC analyst makes exploring the potential of other advertising platforms all that more important.

This brings me on nicely to discussing Apple’s new mobile ad platform ‘iAd’.

iAd officially launched on the 1st of July with the aim of revolutionising the way mobile advertising currently works. Apple have recognised that the way users browse the Internet on desktop computers, differs massively to way they interact on their phones (particularly smartphones). To try and serve the same styles of adverts that work well in traditional desktop-style search, on a mobile phone, just won’t have the same impact, predominantly, because users expect a different type of interaction.

A hypothetical example: You need to renew your car insurance, and decide that you’ll use the Internet to hunt out the best deal. Do you run a search on Google using your iPhone for ‘car insurance’? Possibly, but unlikely – you know that you can browse full websites on your iPhone, but navigating the site and filling out all the details on your phone puts you off. You’d be more likely to use your desktop PC to make that same search. However, what if there was a custom-designed car insurance price comparison app on your phone that simplified the whole process? This app would allow you to fill out details quickly and easily and return quotes from the simple application. A much more likely possibility than option one.

It is this mentality that Apple is looking to take advantage of – the growing popularity of apps. There may become a point where large businesses will need to look to design user-friendly apps to complement their existing websites. Many are already doing this – some of the big banks for example now have apps allowing you to view your balance, pay bills and transfer money as they recognise that usability of their existing websites on smartphones isn’t good enough.

So most importantly, what exactly is iAd and how will it work?

• iAd is an ad network exclusive to Apple users where adverts are displayed within Apps from the app store. It works on iPhone/iPod touch devices using new Apple OS 4 released in July and will be due for iPad launch in Autumn
• Ads display as banners within existing applications that have opted into use iAd
• Ads are in effect links to mini-branded applications that can be games, applications, ecommerce shops that load like an additional app upon click.
• The platform is likely to make use of use of technology from mobile ad network Quattro Wireless that Apple acquired (http://www.quattrowireless.com/mobile_insight/blog/happy_new_year_from_quattro_wireless) in January.
• Apple will self-serve the ads with 60% share going to the app developer opting to use iAd within their app and the other 40% going to Apple.
• It’s being trialled at this stage with big brands in the USA such as Disney, Nike, CitiBank and Nissan (who have been given exclusivity in their industries to start with).
• There’s no firm indication at this stage what the pricing model will be – whether it’s going to be a CPM or CPC model. Early rumours are that Apple could well be charging $10 per 1000 impressions of banners and $2 a click on top of that.

Now these ads are completely different to anything we’ve seen before. As Apple quote themselves:

“iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web.”

Seeing however, really is believing, so here’s a couple of examples by Nike and Nissan which really highlight how iAds will work.

I think it’s hard to argue that these types of adverts aren’t pretty cool. But I know what the majority of you are now thinking.. that’s all well and good for huge multinationals like Nike and Nissan that have massive marketing budgets to invest in areas like this, but how would it work for more mainstream advertisers with smaller budgets?

Well, clearly iAd is quite exclusive at the moment, but I wouldn’t expect this to last. There will become a point where the platform becomes a lot more mainstream as the technology and resource skills needed to make these types of adverts takes off even further (thus driving the price down).  Just think how many people own smartphones already – can you imagine how many more users there will be in even 1 or 2 years time? With the technology trend moving further into the smartphone era, there may become a point with advertiser have to look towards this type of paid advertising or lose out on a huge chunk of potential business altogether.

It also represents a huge opportunity for those developing the apps themselves. With 60% of click revenue going to the app developer, there may be an even greater shift in companies creating popular apps (and promoting them) just to take advantage of the revenue streams iAds can bring in.

I’m not saying I know what the future of paid advertising will be for certain, but the signs point towards mobile advertising being a big part of it, and I for one want to be ready and excited about it.

This made me think about my brand loyalty, very rarely do hardcore Mac users ever migrate to PC’s, usually for the above reasons. I can’t think of any Mac product or program that I’ve abandoned for a better alternative on another platform — except iTunes. This software went from being horrible, clunky and overcomplicated in the days of Winamp to pretty much the most popular music program available today. (I may have made that up.) The iTunes boom also added to the already rife office one-up-man-ship of “Oh, I have over 84 gigs of music on my computer”. “Really, I have 92 gigs of Indy alone on mine.”

These days have been cut short in our office with the introduction and popularisation of Spotify. I’m still not 100% sure on how Spotify manages its flawless sound quality and uninterrupted streaming of the most eclectic mix of music you’d ever want (for free) but Apple are sure taking a long time to react to it. One can only assume the cost of royalties are covered by the advertisements played on Spotify but can you see Apple’s response running similar advertising campaigns? Knowing their rigorous brand/image protection, I can imagine third party advertising would somehow cheapen their product, which with apple, is the biggest of the big no-no’s.

How are Apple going to quash Spotify’s growing popularity without going down a similar route and making free music economically viable? How are they going to continue earning so many billions from the humble compressed audio format (not just iTunes music store sales but iPod sales also.) As more and more record companies publish their catalogues to Spotify, it’s going to be interesting to see how Apple continues to make the format pay!

Google rolled out their new indexing system codenamed ‘Caffeine’ at the start of June, aimed at providing 50% fresher results for web searches. Instead of the previous layering system where the older layers took a while to index, caffeine is continuously indexing small proportions of the web so the freshest and most relevant information is made available to a user. How does this affect our industry? How will it affect SEO campaigns? Which keywords will be hit the hardest? We have obviously noticed over the last few months certain keywords being affected as Caffeine was gradually introduced. Caffeine is ultimately designed to provide more relevant searches so pages with thin content and poor internal linking structure will be devalued as well as pages with bulk external links of little relevance. A website needs to be the ultimate destination for a Google user’s search criteria. Epiphany’s online community engagement strategy encompasses these elements so it doesn’t cause me sleepless nights. What does cause me sleepless nights are two Apps sitting proudly on my iphone, mocking me, laughing at the fact I entered the realms of the decrepit on Wednesday…. I turned 30.

The below is what my iphone regurgitated, showing me a hideous glimpse of the future.

From left to right; me normally (slightly tired), me fat, me old and finally ‘worst case scenario’ me fat AND old.

‘Fat Booth’ and ‘Aging Booth’ are both very popular applications for iphone and may I say very amusing applications, until they are turned on you. Not pleasant viewing when you’ve just turned your back on your twenties. I think it must be time to get a tattoo, earring and motorbike….

As with any fringe tech, Augmented Reality promises a lot, the possibilities are amazing and the applications endless. Aside from the myriad of functional applications AR will give us, the possibilities for companies to market their wares in an engaging way are also fascinating. Allowing me to experience the product before purchase? Where do I sign up?

So what can hold it back? Well – making it really hard to use and time consuming can’t help the cause, but it’s ultimately the reliance on home kit and the assumption that people know how to use it that could cause its demise before it even gets going.

Let me explain…

I opened up my latest GQ magazine to find a double page advert from watch makers Tissot. In the ad was a detachable watch shaped Augmented Reality marker that I could strap around my wrist….so far so good. I’m excited, I’m guessing that I can see the latest watch in situ – what a great way to engage a potential watch buyer! However, the add doesn’t allude to much else, which is the start of the problem – just a few meaningless icons. Not many people outside of the industry actually know what AR is…so how does Tissot expect users to understand what they need to do next? This ad assumes too much.

On the advert is a URL and, as I know what AR is, I fire up my laptop and type it in expecting to find the gateway to AR watch nirvana. Not yet. I have the same meaningless icons and a video, which isn’t why I’m here and doesn’t help me in the slightest. It tells me to print out the marker I have already, turn on my webcam (OK, this may sound stupid, but how many of you non-techies know how to do this on a laptop? Go on, try it yourself… see?) and then at the bottom I have to download something… ok I’ve invested 6 mins of my time thus far (mostly trying to turn on my webcam!!) but I’m still intrigued, I have a decent web connection, I hit download and fill in the form… to be told that my download will be approx 5 minutes on a fast broadband line. This is starting to get tedious; most users don’t know what AR is and would have switched off ages ago. I’m sure Tissot don’t just want die-hard fans to do this… Nevertheless I’ll give it the benefit – this better be good. So download complete, I have a setup file. I have to install something on my laptop. More time, more frustration, still no AR. Patience wearing thin.

Finally, I have the thing installed, webcam on, excitement high, to be faced with a very fuzzy webcam image of me with a small Tissot watch, that looks very low tech due to my poor webcam. Was it worth it? Sorry, not at all. If anything it was a negative experience which I’m sure wasn’t the brief. The massive potential of AR is there and I can see they have invested heavily, but the problem is that Tissot can’t control the environment in which their AR is being shown and my home technology makes their offering look poor. And I have a decent home setup.

So how likely is it that an everyday user will go through that process again with another AR campaign? Slim probably. Sadly things like this can kill AR in its tracks before it has a chance to take off.

It’s not all bad however. Some companies are really nailing AR. Lego for example took up the flag early and clearly understand how it can really engage their target audience at point-of-purchase, where the technology can be rolled out in a controlled way. In Lego’s case the equipment they use in their fixtures is built in and provides perfect user performance every time – the camera is top notch, the lighting perfect, the computer running the application is fast enough etc. But that infrastructure remains static, it has only one function. So trying to get that same functionality at home is always going to be a tall order for any company.

My hope is that it will be the mobile platform that will be at the forefront in keeping everyday Augmented Reality alive, utilising built in functionality, geo-location and targeted mobile search to empower the user and the marketer alike. And I continue to be very excited about that.

I’m also honest enough to admit that all this is often followed shortly after with disappointment that as an early adopter, the product isn’t quite as polished as you had hoped and that the supplier, in their rush to hit the market early had compromised on functionality.
Many fellow gadget freaks I’m sure will share that sinking feeling when you demonstrate what it currently the pinnacle of any specific area of technology to a non-gadget freak only to be told ‘what , so it’s can’t do…….?’ leaving you trying to explain that your gadget is very, very clever but no, it’s not that good quite yet.

I’ve been going through this gadget cycle since I had pocket money to spend and while my budget may have increased somewhat the process is still the same, excitement, anticipation, joy and regret. I remember going through this in 1993 when our friends at Apple launched the Newton. If you haven’t heard of it do a quick search and you will see that it’s the distant forerunner to the iPad. I loved that product for the potential of what it could be but hated it because it was way ahead of it’s time and the technology simply couldn’t match the vision.

So, 17 years on and here we are, the age of the iPad. As you would expect of a true gadget fan, I went the extra mile and got myself one shipped in from the states so I’ve been living with it for over a month now. I’d love to spend the rest of this post talking about my views on it’s functionality, it’s design, it’s amazing battery life but let’s bring this back to Search Marketing, how do I think it will impact search?

With over 1 million of these devices already sold and the volumes in the UK likely to follow, the iPad is certainly a device that will have rapid penetration into the consumer market, albeit initially into the more tech savvy demographic I believe this will soon change as people realise how simple the device is to operate.

From experience of using the iPad I think that it’s interface based on the iPhone and iPod Touch (which have sold over 85 million units worldwide) will mean that the less technical, once they have seen the device, will see it’s a viable alternative to using a laptop for day to day browsing. We already know the massive volume of people who are surfing the web while watching TV each evening (if you run a PPC campaign for a large brand with TV advertising you will know how quickly your volumes spike during the commercials – literally seconds), this is a perfect device for that sector.

As far as PPC and SEO go, much remains unchanged. The browsing experience on the iPad is similar to that of a PC and the results render the same. What will be key is what happens when the consumer picks your site from the results (either in the sponsored links or the natural results) and arrive on your site. At that point your decision not to test your site in Safari (Apples default browser) will come home to roost. A few years ago many companies would not consider the extra expense of cross browser compatibility, with the growth of Apple and the proliferation of browsers that is no longer the case. Companies who’s sites look good in Safari will look good on the iPad (yes there is a big debate over the issues of Flash – or lack of it on the iPad but that’s a topic in itself).

There is a name for making sure that when someone clicks on your results in a search engine they get an appropriate experience when they arrive at your website – Conversion Rate Optimisation. This is a rapidly expanding area of search and is being taken very seriously by the engines with the launch last year of Google’s Conversion Professional (GCP) accreditation. This is all about making sure that after going to the time and expense of getting your company ranking well through PPC and SEO the customer ultimately transacts in some way (buys a product, downloads a brochure or requests a callback) on your site. I think there will be a number of companies that will need to work on this in the future as we see time and time again companies with a good PPC and SEO strategy that is let down by the site they lead customers to. The iPad will only go to highlight this problem further.

For years now we have been saying that this will be the year of mobile search and each year it isn’t quite the dramatic change we expected. I actually think this age has already arrived and in some ways passed. Many companies are now taking the presentation of their sites on mobile devices seriously and are working on improvements to the experience. The iPad will join this programme of changes. The smart companies will simply add the compatibility with the iPad (or future tablets) in with work they are already doing on mobile devices.

This is a topic that will run and run, there are so many other considerations for tablets of this kind such as dedicated apps to represent retailers (I’m a big fan of the Amazon iPhone app) or the new opportunities in display advertising that such a high quality display will bring. What I do know is that after several weeks with the device I have found it a useful companion in my day to day interaction with the web and look forward to seeing which companies monopolise the opportunities it will bring to search marketing first.

The purchase of the mobile advertising business, Quattro Wireless, represents a major move into advertising by Apple. The move by the software and hardware giant certainly is very interesting, and one thatEpiphany , and no doubt others in the digital marketing industry, have paid close attention to. The reason for that interest? It follows on from another interesting purchase made by Google back in December for a major competitor of Quattro Wireless in the mobile advertising business, a company called AdMob.

So in the space of a couple of months, both Google and now Apple have both made moves to enter the mobile advertising industries. Very interesting indeed! But why have they is the ultimate question? Clearly they both see the mobile advertising market as key areas for the future and want to be at the forefront of it, hence these purchases.

There really is no question that the mobile advertising market is already huge and continues to grow at a rapid pace . In recent research carried out by Nielsen, it was discovered that the number of Britons using Mobile Internet increased by 1.6 million to 10.4 million in Q3 2009 from 8.8 million in Q2 2009. Additionally, the number of people in the UK using smartphones increased 10% between Q2 and Q3 2009 from 5.6 million to 6.2 million. (http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_091110_uk.pdf)

With smartphones allowing users to browse websites in the same way they would with traditional PCs and sales of these types of handsets on the rise, it makes a lot of sense for companies such as Google and Apple to strive to be strong in this market. As the results above prove, the smartphone market is growing, and inevitably is only going to get bigger until the majority of UK phone users own a device of this type.

Many could argue that Apple are the core driving force behind the smartphone market growth ever since their launch of the original iPhone in 2007. The iPhone revolutionised the mobile phone market, allowing users to do things with a phone that many couldn’t have dreamed of a few years back. With subsequent launches of the iPhone 3G and the latest model, the iPhone 3GS, Apples share of the smartphone market continues to grow even bigger.

This has also seen rival competitors ‘up their game’ so to speak and a week doesn’t seem to go by recently without a brand new state of the art handset hitting the shelves from alternative manufacturers.

Speaking of which, this brings us on nicely to discussing Google’s new Nexus One. Google’s Android software, which will power the Nexus One, has been previously used by a number of other manufacturers to power their handsets, but the Nexus One represents Google’s first attempt at a handset themselves.

So here we have two massive business rivals; Google, renowned for its experience and success in search-based internet advertising; and the other, Apple, renowned for its experience and success in the smartphone market. In the space of a week, Apple announces it has taken steps to enter the internet advertising market (albeit the Mobile niche), and Google announces it is entering the smartphone market.

It is seen by many in the industry as a sign of a budding rivalry between the two companies, and a key indication of how important both consider mobile advertising to be. Google has clearly brought out its own handset in an attempt to obtain greater direct control over the mobile advertising market. Apple, on the other side of the fence, has seen the potential in mobile advertising due to the success of the iPhone, and has now decided it wants a slice of the pie itself.

The following quotes from Paran Johar, Chief marketing officer of mobile ad network Jumptap (a rival of both AdMob and Quattro Wireless), sums up the situation quite nicely and makes the prospects for 2010 altogether, rather interesting:

“If there is any doubt that 2010 is the year of Mobile Advertising, Apple just cleared up any speculation. For pessimists who thought the Google acquisition of Admob was a fluke, this reinforces that mobile advertising is here to stay.”
“Handset manufacturers, software providers, infrastructure vendors, and carriers are all looking to connect the dots and carve out a share of what will be the primary access point of the Internet in five years.”

So what actually is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’, it takes reality (the physical real-world environment) and augments it, it adds something additional to the real world in the form of computer generated imagery, in real time.

Imagine,

• Directions to the nearest tube station/ bus stops, special offers and discounts in shops, information about landmarks, your friends locations, are all displayed in front of you as you specify as you walk around where you live.
• Sat Nav directions, fuel & speed indicators, the outline of other vehicles at night, collison detection, braking distances, speed cameras and any and all combination of the forementioned all laid out on the road ahead as you drive.
• Being able to ‘try on’ a new coat, shirt or skirt in the comfort of your own home before you buy, and instantly switch to something new at a click of the mouse/remote.
• Seeing what your kitchen would look like with a particular new appliance or new colour scheme, as you physically walk around the kitchen itself.

To actually view this Augmented reality you need to view the real world through something else, be it a camera, a computer monitor, TV set, a set of special glasses, or ultimately through an implant in your eye.

Before we all get to carried away lets take a look at the current uses of Augmented reality today, and in particular its use as  a marketing tool.

Current real world examples of Augemented Reality

Welcome to WikiTude

Wikitude is an iPhone and (Google) Android application that mixes in information from Wikipedia with your current real world environment via the use of the devices built-in camera. Turn on the WikiTude app and hold your iPhones camera at your surroundings and Wikitude pulls in information from Wikipedia based on your surroundings. If you thought people walking around texting, emailing, and listening to MP3 players was annoying imagine them all viewing their world through there iPhone…

Doritos’ Late Night Augmented Reality

By holding the back of these special packs of Doritos to your webcam and visiting doritoslatenight.com you get to see either Blink 182 or Big Boi perform for you right there in the palm of your hand (via the PC screen). The artists performances can then be further manipulated by moving and shaking the Doritos packaging. After the first song the band will return more quickly for their encore depending on the amount of noise the user makes. It’s this type of marketing in which Augmented reality has seen the most use so far, adding a ‘viral’ element to packaging to encourage sales.

Along a similar theme TOPPS 2009 baseball cards feature 3d Augmented Reality players, which the user can interact with and play games. Check out the following video to get an idea of what this is like.

Hardware is the issue why Augmented reality can’t really flourish just yet

The only commercial and successful use of Augmented Reality in e-commerce so fair has only been concerned with spectacles, Glasses Direct offer visitors the ability to ‘try on’ glasses before buying them. If you have a webcam you can try this out right now after downloading some additional software.

Given the obvious possiblities for ‘see/try before you buy’ applications this does beg the question why the use of this technology isn’t more widespread in the world of e-commerce.

The spectacles application works because the hardware supports it.

To try on clothes in this manner you would need to stand up and move away from your computer screen for the camera to capture your full body. The majority of webcams simply aren’t of a good enough quality at the moment to capture a image good enough to work effectively with Augmented Reality from this distance (in this case).

Then of course there is the issue of actually  seeing what you look like in those 70s flares from where your standing, having to squint at a relatively tiny laptop monitor to see what you actually look like defeats the purpose of the application in the first place.

It just may take take some time

Its worth remembering that many technologies we take for granted today were all tried for many years before their widespread adoption and were deemed to be a failure and ‘dead’,

• VOIP
• Web Video
• On demand television (BT trialled this in the late 90s)

All of these technologies (and probably many more I can’t think of right now) made a comeback years later as soon as the widespread (or at least viable) adoption of the required technology and hardware was available.

Augmented Reality is already with us, and as hardware improves only looks to expand further into our everyday lifes. It may not be your immediate priority, but soon the use of Augmented Reality will become an integral part of many organisations digital marketing plans and  is something everyone needs to begin thinking about how they can apply to their brand and products today.

So what exactly is Boxee?

“Boxee is a free, open-source software platform that integrates personal media with Internet media along with social networking…Boxee’s free software lets you navigate all your personal movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites”

From Boxee.tv.

Imagine using your normal TV set to access:

• all of your own local media (MP3s, TV shows, films)
• all of your favourite Web 2.0 websites (Digg, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr)
• all of your favourite online Video streams (BBC iPlayer, CNN, Hulu)

all at the touch of a button on your remote control, and completely for free.

Add into that the ability to ‘follow’ other Boxee users, recommend content to your friends, rate the media you’ve just watched, and you’ve got Boxee, the Social Media Center.

However, this list doesn’t really do justice to the wealth of features Boxee offers – let’s dig a little deeper to understand just how fantastic this software really is.

Boxee Internet Media

Boxee BBC iPlayer

Joost on Boxee

There is already a wealth of content streaming services and Web 2.0 sites available directly from the interface in Boxee, as well as the ability to add your own media feeds, and this is growing by the day. Here’s just a taster of what’s currently available:

Video and Television: The BBC iPlayer, The Open University, BBC Live, CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, Joost, Netflix, The Warner Brothers Network, Revision3, MySpace Video, Digg Video, MTV Music, CNET,  Apple.com.

Audio and Radio: Last.fm, BBC, Jamendo, National Public Radio, Pandora, SHOUTCast, We are Hunted.

Digg Video via Boxee

Browsing Flickr on Boxee

Photos & Pictures: Flickr, PIcasaWeb, Facebook Photos.

As well as the many services already mentioned you can also add your own feeds to Boxee; video, pictures, audio (podcasts) and even good old text feeds can all be easily added and subsequently accessed from within Boxee.

The Open Platform

Boxee makes extensive use of python and XUL (the same XML platform Firefox uses) and has recently opened up a public API.

Put simply, this means you can expect the services and software available on Boxee to continue growing exponentially, as amateur and professional developers alike have the tools to easily create new stuff; The Open University in the UK and Major League Baseball in America are two very recent additions to the Boxee platform.

Regional access restrictions

As a UK user you may find attempting to access many of these services a little frustrating at the moment due to regional access rights, but don’t despair, it’s only a matter of time before these US services open themselves up to international markets. Just be content with the fact that you’ve got BBC iPlayer and they haven’t .

The Social Aspects of Boxee

Invite your friends to use Boxee

Your Friends Boxee Actvity

Boxee usage requires you have a registered user account, which means that a social network of fellow Boxee users is added too with every new user that signs up. Once registered Boxee will then auto generate an activity feed of the media you’ve just consumed. You can then find, invite and follow as many friends as you want via the Boxee website.

Once you’ve decide to follow someone, their Boxee activity feed shows up as part of your friends feed, accessible from within the Boxee interface. Does this sound familiar to anyone (tweet tweet)? You can also rate and recommend any content that you consume, and easily view recommendations made by your friends. If that media is available online you can watch it instantly, right there and then.  If it’s not available Boxee will try and find an appropriate trailer to show you.

Boxee will also spit out your activity feed into your Twitter account (or Tumblr), so you can tell the whole world what you’re viewing as you watch it! The more adventurous amongst you can then pull these feeds into your other social media accounts, such as Facebook.

The Boxee Media Center

Metropolis Film Synopsis

Another great feature of Boxee is the Media Library.  Once you’ve pointed the software at the location of your files it will automatically scan them and pull down a plefora of information about the files from the internet, including movie & TV reviews and ratings from IMDB, and screenshots, wallpaper and fan art from the TheTVDB; all viewable via the Boxee interface. Once Boxee has this info you can then browse through all your content by genre, title, year, actors, director, title etc.

Will Boxee play X or Y?

Out of the box Boxee will play 99% of all the media types (both audio and video) that you throw at it. Boxee has been based on the open source software XBMC; a stable and long lasting platform that has many thousands of developer hours put into it. The only other media player I’ve used that has ever come close to the level of support for different file types that XMBC does is the infamously good VLC. XBMC/Boxee will even play video files that are incomplete; I’d like to see Microsoft Media Player do that! Boxee supported file types from Wikipedia

The Boxee Box

Boxee set top box mock-up

Currently, if you wanted to use Boxee, you’d have to watch your media on your PC or hook up your laptop or computer to your TV and set up a remote. The other alternative is shoe horn it onto an Apple TV. Not too much of a challenge for the technically inclined, but a big barrier to entry for the rest of the population.

Eventually, Boxee intend to release their own hardware, as well as licence the platform out to as many different platforms they can (think satellite receives, consoles etc) so Boxee will be available in a neat little box to put under your TV in the not so distant future.

Is Boxee the future of social media/television/the internet?

Social Media

People love to think that everyone else is interested in their taste of music, films, and TV shows, and love to tell people about it. Right now, there is no better way to share this information with the world, and make specific recommendations to friends. Spotify has already shown how people love to share their music playlists, Last.FM has demonstrated how people like to make and receive recommendations. For me, it’s an absolute no brainer that technologically inclined users (and many others besides that) will love sharing what TV shows they watched last night, especially if it can be seamlessly slipped into their current social media platform of choice. Boxee isn’t going to change social media wholesale but it’s certainly going to add an important extra dimension to it.

Boxee is also lauded for how it centralises all of your favourite websites and web services into one place that can be easily navigated around – a significant feature that could change how people digest social media, if not social media itself.

Television

If it’s not Boxee, it will be something very similar. Television is changing, be it in the delivery method (on demand & internet streams, as opposed to static over the air broadcasts) or the consumption method (more social/active, or at least the option of activity, rather than passive); television is merging into internet television. Boxee is meeting both these emerging market demands, and in abundance. Boxee is placing itself as a prime candidate to become the internet television and Social TV platform of choice.

The Internet

Clearly Boxee isn’t going to take over the internet but how the internet is being used is certainly transforming and will continue to change over the coming years. For video, at first we had YouTube (and numerous imitators), then we’ve dedicated TV streaming services such as hulu.com (in the US) and the BBC iPlayer here in the UK. Whilst most geeks will happily watch TV shows on a PC, getting your mum to sit in front of the computer and watch a movie is a challenge. And this is how Boxee, and many similar offerings will change the internet. How we view and access web based content is going to change – from the desk chair to the sofa.

Internet Television as a future marketing channel

If you’ve got this far into this article you may have wondered what exactly has all this got to do with digital marketing?! Well ‘internet television’ will become another marketing channel which businesses are going to have to consider as part of an all encompassing digital marketing strategy. We’re not talking about ads in TV shows here (necessarily) but rather, developing applications that let users access your companies’ online content via their chosen method, their TV set!

If I were a company with a wide variety of videos on my current web site, I would, right now, be asking my developers to create an application for the Boxee platform. Sure it’s not going to get huge amounts of eyeballs, but it will mostly certainly gain your company a hell of a lot of kudos and generate buzz around your brand. Remember that the people who adopt social media networks first are the webs big boys, they are the linkerati, the movers and shakers of the web, wow them today and gain the incoming links for your SEO campaign tomorrow; whilst future proofing yourself in an upcoming marketing channel.

Sound interesting? Sign up and download Boxee here. Once signed up don’t forget to follow me, David Wilding, username tinfish.