Devour The Web

Publicis Groupe announced recently it has acquired South-Korean full-service digital agency Portfolio, adding to the group’s existing Asian operations in Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taiwan, and New Delhi.

The agency will be integrated with Publicis’ existing digital global network, Publicis Modem, and re-branded as Publicis Modem Korea.

Portfolio currently provides services such as site development, and search and display campaigns for major international brands including Microsoft Korea, Marriott Hotels, and Nissan.

In a statement, Martin Reidy, CEO of Publicis Modem, said, “Asia is a critical market for Publicis Modem and a key part of our global expansion,” citing the group’s strategy of targeting high growth international markets.

Publicis has acquired two major Chinese digital players in the past year — EmporioAsia in May, and Communication Central Group last July.

The Group also released second quarter results today, claiming it’s on track to reach its aim of generating a quarter of revenues from digital by 2010. Digital constituted 18.8 percent of business in the first half of the year, up from 12.7 percent the previous year.

Sponsored Links

Google is toying with Digg’s style of voting in their search results.

At the same time, it seems they are making a play for the whole darned site as well. TechCrunch reports:

“The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources, although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes.”

Full Story

none

ShareThis

In April of 2000, Saturday Night Live aired one of the few truly classic sketches outside of the 1970s and 80s. The sketch is a spoof of a VH1 “Behind the Music” episode featuring Blue Öyster Cult and the recording of (Don’t Fear) The Reaper (watch it here).

The sketch stars host Christopher Walken as famed producer “THE Bruce Dickinson,” with Will Farrell on cowbell along with a faux Blue Öyster Cult. The whole joke centers around the fact that (Don’t Fear) The Reaper has a cowbell percussion element that will never be more obvious than played by Farrell.

Here’s the point.

Someone came up with the idea for this sketch simply because they paid closer attention to (Don’t Fear) The Reaper than most everyone else. It’s the same with copy… the copywriter who digs deeper into product research and the mindset of the prospect often finds the gem that others don’t see, which leads to a killer promotion.

Successful content relies on the hook, the angle, the tiny little element no one else takes time to notice. It’s not that others are more talented than you, it’s that they work harder finding the winning difference.

I got lucky and caught John Biggs from CrunchGear with bit of time available this morning. CrunchGear is part of the Michael Arrington TechCrunch network. In this chat John talks about what he sees as the future of Web 2.0, social media and publishing.

We also talked about what its like being part of the “Axis of Gadgetry” with Engadget and Gizmodo. John is former Editor in Chief for Gizmodo, so I got to dig up some dirt and good stories about the fierce competition in the gadget reporting world.

Finally we covered social marketing and other things John thinks are most important for aspiring authority site owners. You won’t believe how many posts he made daily when he was working on CrunchGear alone! Nor how many they make now with writers around the world contributing 24 hours a day.

About John Biggs

CrunchGear Editor in Chief

Personal Blog: BigWideLogic

Writing Credits
John has published work in The New York Times, Laptop, Men’s Health, Linux Journal, Popular Science and many others. He also writes for TechCrunch.com. John is also the author of Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age.

“We’ve seen decent price increases on major display units. There has been a bifurcation between premium positions and remnant, which largely includes banner. At NYTimes.com, we don’t see any cannibalization from the remnant business. At About.com, we’ve seen softness in display, mainly due to execution issues, which current investment proposals are attempting to address.”

-Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations for The New York Times Company, commenting on ad prices during the company’s Q2 earnings presentation. (via Paidcontent.org)

Sugar Inc., operator of PopSugar and 14 other sites aimed at women, has nixed its ad sales relationship with NBC Universal and brought those functions in-house. The move comes just a year after Sugar agreed to let NBCU package and sell its inventory alongside that of iVillage.

A blog post about the decision gives little indication as to Sugar’s precise motives, though it’s common for maturing publishers to create a sales team as soon as doing so becomes feasible. That’s because ad network or reseller relationships typically give the seller a cut of between 20 and 40 percent of revenue.

When Sugar fell in with NBC last summer, CEO and Publisher Brian Sugar told ClickZ the firm wanted to build out its own sales staff from the beginning. However, he said, “we realized it takes a large, experienced team to really execute on that. We, as a small company, had to make some decisions early on.”

NBCU brokered deals for Sugar with brands such as Neutrogena, HGTV, Red Bull, Baileys, and AT&T, according to the blog post.

NBC Universal retains an investment stake in Sugar.

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”. Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!

Last week’s post about the new Thesis WordPress theme from Chris Pearson resulted in a ton of happy new Thesis community members. This week, we want to invite you to join us as promotional partners as well, with the brand new DIY Themes affiliate program.

When you join the program, you’ll receive 33% of all sales you generate. This includes the personal and developer memberships to Thesis (currently priced at $87 and $164, respectively), plus all the new designs, add-ons, and other new products we’ve got planned for the near future.

Sign up for the DIY Themes affiliate program here. Thanks!

P.S. If you want to keep up with what’s going on with Thesis, the RSS feed is yours for the taking.

At ClickZ’s Online Video Ad Forum yesterday, a fantastic line up of two dozen speakers offered up examples of their latest creative work and some shared info on tips and tools they think are worth watching.

During the day-long program at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, participants picked up intelligence on these things:

*Deep Focus’ Ian Schafer credited a subtle change in an ad-serving format with improving results for one video ad campaign he worked on. Historically when video ads ran on a site, a loader screen would appear and then the ad would start. A change in DoubleClick’s technology, he said, enables the video ad to launch immediately — without the loader screen. That change, he said, resulted in a 30 percent increase in the interaction rate for a video ad promoting “Recount,” an HBO film.

* In looking to the potential for a richer future for online video ads, Dorian Sweet, a digital strategist, pointed to a cool tool called PicLens. Using this tool, a Web site visitor can view photos or videos from a site such as YouTube on a “3D wall.”

Guest Post By Michel Fortin

A forum post on my copywriters board suggested that too many italics, bolds, underlines, yellow highlighting and the like are not good. One referred to them as “speed bumps,” which reduce usability and readability.

I don’t necessarily agree with this premise.

First, understand that formatting tricks help to drive important points home, or emphasize key points in the copy you want your reader to read, focus on and remember.

When in a face-to-face encounter, a sale is not only made on what you say but how you say it. Including inflection of your voice, rhythm, tone, volume, pausing, nonverbal communication and others.

Because “how” you say it can emphasize, support or contradict your message.

Lower your voice during an important point in your sales pitch causes people to lean forward to make sure they hear everything. Inflect certain key words or phrases can help drive important ideas home. And so on.

Now, on the web, there’s no face-to-face interaction. You don’t have the same luxury. And therefore, formatting can be used as an effective tool to underline (and I mean that literally and figuratively) important points.