Search results matching tag 'Broadband'

A is for Advergame; B is for Banner...

2175094 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Children today are growing up in a digital society. They will never know what it was like living in a world without the internet or mobile devices. They are digital savvy and their distinction between offline and online worlds increasingly blurs by the day. But being media savvy is not the same as being media literate.

Leading child psychologist Professor Tanya Byron, in her report to the UK Government “Safer Children in a Digital World”, concluded: “We must empower our children to take ownership of their safe and responsible digital behaviour.” Her report talked of the importance of information and education for children and parents. Industry is well placed to deliver this and today sees the launch of a national programme – Digital Adwise - to raise children’s awareness of digital advertising. The not-for-profit programme, aimed at 6-11 year olds, comprises a free set of lessons allowing kids to critically evaluate digital advertising in a fun way - for example there are some interactive activities such as “tag the ad” and "ad maker" – and there’s helpful support information for teachers, such as examples from the IAB’s Creative Showcase. The initiative builds upon the successful MediaSmart programme about television, radio and print advertising, now being used by 38% of UK primary schools. The new materials will also be available to all primary schools.

At an event in London yesterday evening to mark the launch of the programme, Creative Industries Minister, Sion Simon, spoke of the importance of “topical and cutting edge media literacy that teachers want and children can relate to”. He concluded that the whole advertising industry should get behind the initiative, promote it and ensure its success. The IAB agrees and we should all help to spread the message.

Follow the IAB on Twitter.

Finland - Its your god given right to have broadband!

1321426 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Yes, we have Nokia & a hand full of other pretty big tech firms but announced today - that by July 2010, it will be your god given right to have high speed broadband in the comfort of your own home! Yep, we're making having access to broadband a legal right, ensuring that every single one of these lovely Finnish citizens has an Internet connection of at least 1Mb/s by July 2010. Pretty cool no...

Makes you wonder why countries like the UK, being major leaders in so many sectors of everything still get away with charging a fortune for broadband... My personal connection is 25eur per month and thats around 5mb... Soon I'll upgrade to 100mb which is around double the price!

Hotel Internet Access - Why Is It So Terrible?

980070 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:17:00 GMT

Now it’s not like me to rant. I’ve spent a lot of time training my brain to see the glass half full. Often I think us Brits love to hone in on the negative instead of seeing the positive glory of the other 95% of whatever it is we're critiquing.

But...........!

What the hell is going on with hotels and internet access!!??

Now I travel a lot. I just counted my North American stamps in my passport and at the end of this month I’ll be making my 30th trip there in past four and a half years.

I’ve just got back from covering the Travel Convention 2009 in Barcelona, and will no doubt have a few more EU trips over the next few months as they arise.

My question is: Where do hotels get off charging such exorbitant prices for shoddy bandwidth and why don’t they provide decent, reasonably priced access at conferences where they are making a ton of cash from the conference delegates and just need to flick a switch to make everyone happy?

To break it down, in-room access needs to change. I’m not saying make it free (or maybe I am) but I was charged $17 per DAY in a hotels in NY last month. We were working on covering AdWeek 2009 and there were a lot of videos we had to preview and write posts about. We couldn’t see any of the videos. I called the hotels internet support team and was told, “we don’t give our guests adequate bandwidth to watch video, just enough to do regular stuff on the web!”

How 1980’s?!!! The last time I looked video was one of the fastest growing content areas on the web, so how is that not regular!?

The hotel I was in in Barcelona said the wi-fi was free in the lobby but if I wanted to work in my room I had to pay for it!

The prices are ridiculous. A quick scan of BB prices in the UK show for about a tenner a month you can get 20MB speeds, and some with unlimited downloads. So why are hotels still trying to fleece us?

Downstairs in the conference rooms, at a lot of events for some reason the main hall won’t have access. “Oh we didn’t pay for that,” say the conference organisers, “the hotel wanted to charge us extra so we just took it in the foyer and speaker room!”

That’s a double-whammy there because I and hundreds of others like to work, blog and tweet live from conferences and if we don’t have access it reflects badly on the hotel and the conference. You might have a dozen or so people there who can be promoting your event for you, but you're tying one hand behind their back from the off!

I’d love to know why there is this disparity between what the rest of the world expects and what hotels and conference centres are willing to deliver. Is it the hotels trying to make some extra cash? Or are they being fleeced by who every provides them with their internet pipe?

Answers on a postcard as that’ll probably be faster!

A BBC licence fee for a digital age?

2175094 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:10:00 GMT

The Government – pioneered by the departing Communications Minister, Lord Carter – today unveiled its final Digital Britain report.

There is welcome acknowledgement of the contribution digital advertising – in particular targeted advertising - will make in helping to monetise online content. The Government also attaches significant importance to self-regulation and education in promoting transparency and protecting internet users’ online privacy, supporting the IAB’s Good Practice Principles for behavioural advertising, as well as www.youronlinechoices.co.uk, the new portal to help educate users. There is also encouraging news in the appointment of Martha Lane-Fox, one of the pioneers of digital commerce, as the Government’s digital inclusion champion.

But all eyes are on two specific proposals contained in the 238 page report which will alter the digital landscape in the years to come:

1. A 50 pence per month levy on all fixed copper and cable lines (but not mobile infrastructure) from 2010 to fund the rollout of next generation broadband. According to Lord Carter that’s £6 per year per household, although low income households would be exempt. The fund would raise between £150-175m a year, allowing next generation rollout to be complete by 2017, a timescale specifically criticised by the Conservative Culture Spokesperson, Jeremy Hunt.

2. Ring-fencing the BBC’s underspend for the so-called Digital Switchover Help Scheme (ie money the BBC receives to help vulnerable people switch to digital TV services - over and above its existing licence fee settlement) to help finance the delivery of regional news, other than that provided by the BBC. This ‘Contained Contestable Element of the Licence Fee’ idea is not the so-called ‘top-slicing (to you and me that’s ‘sharing out’) of the BBC’s licence fee, as has been widely reported in the media.

Significantly, this second proposal fires the starting gun of the licence fee review (due in 2013) and the beginning of a wider discussion about how the BBC’s licence fee should apply (and in what form) in a digital age (eg we don’t pay the licence fee to access the BBC’s website or the iPlayer). The report moots maintaining a ‘Contained Contestable Element’ of the licence fee after 2013 and, in his briefing to industry this afternoon, Carter did not rule out this money being used for (non-BBC) children’s content and programming.

If there is to be a lasting legacy of this report then this is it. The Government has effectively sounded the death knell on the BBC’s licence fee as we know it today and kicked-off the debate about how we fund public service content in a digital age.

Follow the IAB on Twitter.

…And access for all

2460092 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

As you may have read in a previous post, our house is currently a building site and we’re living in temporary accommodation. Although the flat is nice enough, the family and I are all starting to miss our creature comforts: my wife and I the garden and the Sky Plus HD box, the kids their trampoline. But we’re united in yearning for broadband which we’re all struggling to cope without.

My youngest daughter is a fan of the Bratz website (about dolls and accessories, for those of you without young girls), my son his Xbox live gaming & my eldest a constant stream of YouTube - let alone all their homework requirements which seem to demand internet access these days.

As well as for work, broadband access is vital for my late night binges on iTunes & paying the builders. We’ve experimented with 3G cards, but can’t seem to get a good enough reception out in the sticks, so the whole experience becomes frustrating.

We know that around 90 per cent of people who’ve just moved home would chose broadband over a microwave if they could only have one installed in the first month. How consumer behaviour has changed in the last few years. And I hope there are no doctors reading, but I read that 40 per cent of us would rather give up fresh fruit and veg than our broadband connection!

Whatever the industry’s thoughts on Digital Britain, we can applaud the decision to give as many people as possible access to broadband. Not only will it feed my families’ needs & obsessions but it’s great news for the UK’s agencies and advertisers as it expands the vibrant marketplace that the internet creates, as well as delivering consumers all the public service information they need.

Plumbing, poetry, pirates and…people?

2175094 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:30:00 GMT

Last Friday’s Digital Britain Summit at The British Library was themed as an event to discuss the ‘plumbing’ (ie broadband infrastructure) and ‘poetry’ (ie the content) – this is Lord (Stephen) Carter’s very own analogy. Its importance to the Government was on show for all to witness: four senior government ministers, including the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Business Secretary Lord (Peter) Mandelson all made key note speeches and the author of the Digital Britain project himself, Lord Carter, was a panelist.

The Prime Minister and his Secretaries of State all prophesised that ‘Digital Britain’ will help the UK out of recession and is vital to our global competitiveness (there was even a hint about state help in areas where the market might not reach). So there was a lot of ‘political’ talk about the roll out of super-fast broadband where the Government has some influence, but little about where government has less influence: the content. And – as Emily Bell rightly outlines in MediaGuardian today – this is where the Government faces a dichotomy: promoting the very innovation that is killing some of the traditional media landscape.

There was a dedicated panel session on the ‘poetry’ led by Anthony Lilley of Magic Lanterns. The ‘twittosphere’ unanimously claimed Lilley’s speech to be the best of the day. He talked of Digital Britain failing to consider the interests of people and participation, the very heart of web 2.0. The panel session – including Johannes Larcher from ad-funded US video streaming services, Hulu, and Lucienne Grainge from Universal Music – thereafter discussed the problems of 'piracy' and its impact upon online content. Its timing was perfect: only minutes earlier Pirate Bay – the aggregator file-sharing site – had been been found guilty in Sweden. There was a lukewarm response to the Government’s idea to tackle this issue (a Digital Rights Agency) and a strong acknowledgement that such an approach must not throttle innovative new approaches – such as Hulu or Spotify – in making music and film legally available online for consumers for little or no cost.

We’re yet to know the full implications of the Pirate Bay decision. Tackling this issue is clearly important to the future of funding content online but it would be a shame if this verdict gave weight and merit to high-handed approaches. It may not achieve what it sets out to do and may deny businesses the opportunities to beat the 'pirates' at their own game. As Anthony Lilley rightly said, it’s important not to forget the people who matter: internet users. They are the drivers of the technology and the services. We may have their interests at heart in rolling out broadband for all, but we also need their interests at heart in populating the ‘plumbing’ with the ‘poetry’. There may even be a business opportunity…

Follow the IAB on Twitter

Digital Britain…kindly brought to you by advertising (part 2)

2175094 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Over the last few months I’ve written a number of blogs about the Digital Britain project, the Government’s blueprint for the UK’s digital economy. This kicked off last November with a blog arguing that the internet will help the UK economy out of its current recession, followed in late January with the first in the series of ‘Digital Britain…kindly brought to you by advertising’ blogs (this is the second!) which highlighted the Government’s underplaying of the role and value of advertising to the digital economy in its interim report. In late February, I talked of the ‘green shoots of opportunity’ and the Government’s failure - in its interim report - to recognise the UK as one of the best places in the world to do ‘digital business’.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently submitted its response to the interim Digital Britain report calling on the Government to:

· Recognise the importance of fostering the advertising market in order to continue attracting investment from pan-European businesses in the UK.

· Acknowledge the importance of new advertising techniques (such as behavioural advertising) in building strong revenue streams for digital media.

· Support a market structure allowing new entrants to easily develop ad-supported business models rather than create high barriers to new entry.

· Clarify the significant body of self-regulation and good practice already in existence and commit to intervene only when it will deliver enhanced outcomes for consumers.

· Acknowledge the value of novel self-regulatory schemes, such as the recently published IAB Good Practice Principles for behavioural advertising, and offer support for these schemes to encourage other players to make similar commitments.

The final Digital Britain report is expected in the summer (although speculation has mounted that it might come earlier - ambitious!). Whilst I acknowledge the importance of Lord Carter’s ‘top five goals’ (universal connectivity, faster broadband, spectrum liberalisation, resolving the online piracy issue and the role of public service broadcasting/publishing in a digital age), we hope that the Government will also examine the wider digital economy (not just infrastructure issues - 11 of the 22 action items in the interim report) as it would surely be a strategic error to create the circumstances for universal broadband connectivity without fully acknowledging the role advertising plays in supporting the vast majority of the content, services and applications delivered to consumers via broadband.

We’ll get a better idea at the Digital Britain summit in London next week (but where are the new media speakers?). Look out for the IAB Twitter feed providing you with the latest!

Follow the IAB on Twitter

Digital Britain...kindly brought to you by advertising

2175094 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:26:00 GMT

Communications and Technology Minister, Stephen Carter, today finally published his eagerly awaited Digital Britain interim report. The ‘talk’ and speculation in the run-up to publication had been about the BBC and public service broadcasting/publishing and ‘broadband for all’. Would the Government suggest a collaboration between the commercial BBC Worldwide and cash-strapped Channel 4? (it does but doesn’t rule out other options) and will there be high-level commitments for broadband access? (there are). Despite criticism from opposition political parties that the 2Mbs universal broadband commitment is weak, it is a significant move. It is also welcome that the report suggests unleashing mobile operators from spectrum licence agreements encouraging them to do their bit in delivering this commitment. This could enable us to access content and services wherever, however and whenever. The Government hasn’t ruled out giving public money to help this universal broadband commitment either. The final report is due in the summer, but this interim document states the importance of online advertising to the UK digital economy: “Britain has the highest proportion of internet advertising than any developed economy”. However it does seem to question its value to the digital economy and funding creative content. Among the 22 recommendations within the 86-page interim report is an action to “examine measures needed to address the challenges for digital content, including opportunities for providing further support to foster UK creative ambition and alternative funding mechanisms to advertising revenues”. Online will soon be the largest advertising medium in the UK. It pays for free content and services: from search engines to social networks. It’s no surprise that the Government believes that a “successful Britain is a digital Britain”, playing a vital role in dragging the economy out of recession. However, given this and our world-beating position in online advertising, it seems slightly bizarre that it remains to be convinced as to whether advertising is the right model for the digital age. Nevertheless, the point of an interim report is for discussion and debate. Clearly there’s plenty of this to do.

Thank you Virgin...next please!

2175094 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Merry Christmas! And what better Christmas present could there be than super-fast broadband to watch all your favourite festive TV programmes and movies (don't forget Mary Poppins!) as well as browse all that wonderful online content while others in the family enjoy a mince pie and watch the Queen address the nation at 3 o'clock on the dot (set your Sky+ or watch it on Her Majesty's You Tube channel). So its a big welcome this week for Virgin's announcement of the launch of its 50 Megabits per second domestic fibre-optic broadband service (otherwise known as 'XXL broadband'). Next generation broadband here we come!

Even better news is the announcement that the service will be rolled out across the UK in the next few months. Virgin's press release is a little unclear as to what this actually means though. Does country-wide mean that those of us that live in the more rural parts of Britain, who have been experiencing life in the broadband 'slow lane' for some time now, will suddenly be able to watch streamed video and television with no interuptions by next summer? Copper has served us well: no one really dreamed up us doing anything more than talking to each other all those years ago. High-definition television was unthinkable then. Today the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube each take up to 10 per cent of broadband bandwidth (it doesn't surprise me that Internet Service Providers - squeezed at every level by competition and regulation - are crying out for content providers to put some money in the 'fibre optic pot') and we're going to need faster internet speeds if we are to continue to enjoy these data-rich services, such as television (perhaps one day in 3D?), video, gaming and music. More importantly, it will be more than necessary if one or more people in a household are accessing these services at the same time, as is fairly likely.

Thankfully, this issue is at the top of the Government's agenda and this is reflected in the development of a Digital Britain Plan, to be published in June 2009. The regulatory issues around 'access' to wholesale products (such as those provided by BT and Virgin) are complex but critical to competition and affordability, but its good to see Virgin taking the lead and making the investment (as - to be fair - BT has also done). The public is crying out for these services and we depend on faster broadband to deliver them to ensure that we...wait for it...have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious online experience!

This is the end my Friend…

1792681 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Of Advertising and Marketing as we know it!

The most dramatic and disturbing period in modern media history is clearly present, perhaps actually dominant: The transformation to “ digital”. The consequence will be that the traditional marketing and advertising consultants must adapt to a fundamentally different world … or fade away.

“Marketing” has always been a communication discipline that covers many different functions; they typically share a firm anchoring in “the creative”; brainstorms, advertising mascots, pillow fights and fantastic ideas…

The good idea will always have an essential role to play in the battle for the attention of the consumers, but it will gradually lose its strategic significance as the dominant factor when a company needs to define its sales and marketing strategy. In an attempt to establish a competitive strategy, the marketing function will to an ever-greater degree have to refer to more scientific techniques, rooted in analytical methods and statistical models and a deeper “analyzed” understanding of the target group.

Why this shift from the creative and artistic towards a more scientific approach to the marketing function? Simply put to become more accountable, that which passes for accountability in the current marketing environment is, to say the least, highly unsatisfactory.

Marketing – from art to science

From the marketing industry traditionally being dominated by “characteristics” associated with creative qualities, we will in future see a clear shift towards a far more analytically informed approach. The focus will be on the collection and segmentation of customer data and the preparation predictive analysis, which can lead to the decisions that will have a high business value. Marketing will, to a much higher degree, have to employ a detailed analytical method to precisely indicate the customer group that must be reached. Adapt the message to the individual segment to motivate a particular reaction, and deliver precisely the creative message at the exact time where it will create most attention.

In order to solve this task, companies will have to invest more in technological analysis solutions, just as they have to invest in people who understand how to construct models, collect data and make well-documented decisions on the basis of this data.

The traditional advertising agency or the classic creative marketing consultant, who doesn’t know how to acquire these qualifications and develop these tools will have great difficulty maintaining their position as (most) strategically important. The trend is already visible in the large media conglomerates where the “media agencies” are aggressively expanding with large interconnected “business science” divisions and in this way are gaining quickly on their creative sister companies.

This trend only underlines an even more dominant trend; In a world dominated by tendencies like fragmentation, addressability and interactivity, and new media like “broadband Internet”, “wireless” and “interactive television”. It will not only be agencies rooted in the creative, but equally be companies like “Accenture“, “Acxiom“, “Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu” and “Epsilon“, who will define the marketing strategy for the world’s leading companies.