All posts in Advertising

Mobile penetration in India is the second highest in the world today. It is said that the global mobile marketing industry is expected to grow to $24 billion by 2013 and with over 300 million mobile subscribers it is no surprise that the mobile advertising space is bubbling with enthusiasm.
Today, mobile web users utilize their mobiles to access the Internet almost as much as the traditional web. Mobile phones are a constant companion and one is almost certain that the user will read the advertisement. Hence, there can be little doubt that mobile advertising is one of the fastest growing markets in the mobile ecosystem.
Advantage mobile

Apart from online advertising, there is often no way to check if anyone views/ reads/ listens to the advertisements. With mobile advertising, one can overcome this challenge and interact with target customers in a more efficient manner. Today, mobile advertising is finally coming out of the bulk SMS push model to a more sophisticated and targeted mechanism to reach out to the right users, at the right time. There are millions of mobile subscribers and each one of them can be reached through Mobile Application Advertising and marketing.
A mobile phone definitely qualifies as one of the potential marketing and advertising media devices because of its inherent characteristics such as being the most personal touch point, providing anywhere, anytime access to the customer. It can also trigger instant actions, responses and conversions can occur in real-time. Moreover, the mobile channel unlike the online one can be completely controlled so that spam can be minimized, thereby making marketing and advertising relevant and non-intrusive.
The way forward in mobile advertising would be targeted customer data driven marketing and advertising. Subscribers need to be carefully targeted based on their demographics, preferences etc. As long as the operators are able to make sure that they do not irritate the subscribers with too many messages and spam, mobile advertising can be a win-win for all.
Xebec eMedia & Mobile Advertising

Xebec eMedia was launched two years ago in order to bring together their expertise on brand building into the new age medium and offer additional services to their clients. In its endeavor to make advertisements relevant to its clients Xebec eMedia introduced mobile advertising to its array of services. Taking into account the cost of interaction & transaction of a mobile being low, Xebec eMedia leveraged on the future potential that mobile advertising has to offer.
Xebec eMedia works alongside with clients, who understand the mobile medium and are ready to unearth its true potential. It understands the clients requirements and creates specific solutions that have far reaching effects.
Advertising is an important tool for most carriers. Capitalizing on the abundant opportunities such as 3G, mobile video, GPRS and many such interesting models that mobile advertising has to offer, Xebec eMedia is all set to deliver campaigns that would work in measurable ways to achieve the set objectives of its clients.

When we talk about visual advertising then we are talking about a form of advertising focused on the visual perception: for advertising it’s meant every action directed to make something known and public, visual advertising is just a variant that focuses mostly on the appearance and how is perceived by the human eye and therefore the term visual comes to put in evidence this concept. What appears to the human eye is very important: let’s think for example to traffic signs and to the concepts they are able to convey and at their meanings written down, in the first case they are soon absorbed with no time spent in reading. Photos are understood also by analphabets while written things only by who is able to read. Let’s think, for example, to a magazine: where does our attention go ? On the images or on the text ? On the images is the right answer since an image is able to convey concepts and feelings in a blink of an eye. Visual advertising pays also attention to the colors that can be warm or cold and that play an important role in the image choosing process.

Images are one of the most important things on the internet that is the advertising channel of the third millenium, let’s think at when we see a website and at how our attention first focuses on the images, then on the title and last on the text: Google, in the section entitled “Webmasters/Site owners Help”, at the voice “webmaster guidelines” says “Make sure that your title elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate”. Really important is the ALT attribute, in which an alternative text can be specified and appears when someone moves the mouse over an image, since is put along with the title tag that is known for its primary importance: this shows how the text attached to images is important for ranking high in the SERPs. Then we want to pay attention to the images and their colors when we build our website but also out of it in external pages in which we can post images like the forums that allow to do this. Today a very used technique is article marketing that is about writing articles, including a link to our website for further informations, and sending them to the article directories that can be found by searching Google by article marketing.

PubblicitAdvertising is an article directory that allows to insert images along with descriptions, in this way more keywords will be specified making articles found by more queries. Really we can talk about Visual Article Marketing, article marketing enriched by a graphic appearance and therefore more attractive but also more powerful in conquering the top ten in the SERPs.

Outdoor advertising is an affordable way to gain high-frequency visibility to your target audience. There are many forms of Outdoor Advertising. You have conventional forms such as billboards, vehicle advertisements, or street furniture. On the other side of the spectrum, you also have more unconventional means of advertising that hold equal, or more, opportunity to draw attention. One of these more popular unconventional forms is inflatable advertising. In this article, we will discuss some of the advantages to using Inflatable Advertising as an affordable way to enhance your brand.

What is Inflatable Advertising?
Inflatable Advertising is any type of commercial signage that is intended to be filled with air. They can have any type of shape imaginable and come in sizes that can range to handheld to hot air balloons. Custom inflatable shapes, blimps, balloon replicas, balls, air filled display boards, are popular forms of inflatable advertising. Below are the benefits of using inflatable advertising:

High-frequency visibility
To help enhance brand image, you want your advertising as simple to remember as possible, but also as visible to as many people as possible. Imagine being at a festival, convention, or fair working hard to increase exposure for your brand to the public. Now, also imagine an extra large blow up of your company logo, mascot, or signage that overlooks the masses. When youre outdoors, youre fully utilizing commercial space when you can demand consumers attention with a gigantic balloon or blimp.

Its Unconventional
This is by far not your average advertising. It gives a high regard to creativityinflatables are fun! Kids love them. Inflatable Advertising commands attention. Commercial balloons sport brilliant colors and shapes, and because of the 3-dimensional natural, thousands will see it from any direction.

Limitless use
Large billboards and vehicle signage are often large and cumbersome to try to store and reuse. Because of their nature, these forms of outdoor advertising are usually painted, printed, and torn down when done with. Inflatable advertising of company signage and logos can be easily deflated and stored until the next use.

Convenient
Inflatable advertising is highly convenient. Since most of the space it is taking up while on display is air, you can accomplish filling a massive amount of space with little material. When you deflate it, it can be folded neatly and easily carried away as a tent would in camping. For the potential size of your inflatable, the ability to deflate and ship the piece is incredibly convenient.

INTRODUCTION
The internet has come to stay; it came with it a gradual revolution which has improved the views of men about every aspect of human life and business processes. The use of avatars on the internet is one of the gradual changes that are happening to our world, they are animated computer characters that exhibit human like movements and behaviors. Efraim Turban et al (2008:867) Personalized information is now presented in interesting ways instead of looking at the internet as a communication media, we looked upon it as an information environment very similar to a biological environment Peter Small (1997) Advertisements in electronic commerce can now be done with the use of animated computer characters bringing a kind of naturalness to user experience online.

BODY
Internet users are now getting more addicted to the virtual experience being offered on most sites now. Facebook, Yahoo, Vivaty and more now use avatars to improve social networking and increase the euphoria felt by online users. Come to think of it, people derive so much pleasure by identifying with a winning character in a real world situation in a virtual world.

Daily advancements in technology has gone to the level where e-tailers like H&M, Sears, Speedo and adidas allow customers to purchase avaratised versions of their products for online displays. Thus, the benefits of virtual experience enhanced with avatars cannot be overemphasized, they include:-

Improved online sales
Some Companies have increased their sales exceedingly through the use of avatars, an example of this is Mattel, the maker of Barbie that extended her popularity beyond children and must have made increased profits through the increased online activity courtesy of avatars. Efraim Turban et al (2008)

Improved online shopping experience
The users of online shopping facilities get improved experiences; they now enjoy human interactions and real world feelings when shopping online. This replaces the soulless nature of internet transactions that was previously known.

Improved customer loyalty and better online support
Two companies targeting similar age groups might need to outdo each other in order to prove to customers that they have their interest at heart. This could mean that the best company with the use of avatars might retain more of its online customers while dragging more from the other company.

Simulations of real world experiences in electronic forms
Real life experiences are felt online when avatars react in corresponding emotions to different actions of the user depending on what is happening online at the time.

E-learning gets better
With avatars, e-learning becomes better, for example Noah the virtual instructor

Other benefits of using avatars include:
Improved online entertainment for Children
Improved relationships through online social networking
Branding of individuals and businesses
Removes the soulless nature of human-computer relationship
Advertising done with computer characters
Virtual products are highly promoted
Testing of numerous store designs is possible

The drawbacks of using avatars also includes the fact that they are
Sometimes annoying and intrusive to users
Just like so many appreciate the virtual experience of real world feelings online, there are cases when online customers get irritated because of the unusual nature of avatars that to them are not quite necessary.

Very expensive to create in 3D
The cost of the 3D technology involved in digitizing objects is presently enormous.

Installation of certain add-ons
Sometimes add-ons are needed to be installed before a computer can benefit from the interactive abilities of avatars. This ability is hindered unless the computer user activates the add-ons that are pre-requisite to the functionality of the avatars.

Age differences (Children could get fascinated while adults gets irritated with the avatars)
It should be expected that most children of below their teens will surely appreciate an avatarised shopping while the adult generation might find it uniteresting and annoying.

At the same time
Loading 3D effects might be cumbersome
The idea is not easy to sell to top brands

CONCLUSION
Some examples of avatars are
Les Power in the Flex your power show
Herman the bug
Noah as the virtual instructor
These avatars are not necessarily intelligent; they behave in the ways that have been preconfigured in them. My interactions with different avatars revealed that though some individuals might be indifferent to whether there is life on the internet or not. The use of avatars will continue to increase with more 3D technological advancements removing difficulties on a daily basis.

Due to the complexity of the human mind, it has various levels of consciousness: the state of dreaming, conscious-rational and lastly the subconscious level. This last level is one which is not able to function through logic or reasoning abilities, and cannot differentiate between what is real and what is fictional.

Subliminal messages sent into the subconscious mind gives it the foundation to grow the message into reality. It is a form of thought-controlling, as there is a link of communication between the subconscious and the conscious mind, allowing it to affect each other. Hence, there is much controversy surrounding the use of these subliminal messages, as hidden persuasive messages have been used to influence audiences. Such incidents are commonly found in commercials and advertising, and in rock music. There has been much criticism on the use of insidious subliminal messages to maximize revenue.

Subliminal messages used in advertising or subliminal advertising, are most of the time consisting of brief visual or audio messages that our brain does not consciously register what it has seen or heard. Most of the time, there is less than 25% chance that the message will be picked up by the conscious, and is used to provide stimulus for action.

Subliminal advertising does exist. In actual fact, very little marketing agencies endeavor to input such messages due to the powerful impact that they can place on the audience, which would lead to overwhelming bad press that would be received if the subliminal message was found out. This puts off any potential benefit that the subliminal advertising may bring.

According to an April 2006 issue of the New Scientist, research has proven that subliminal advertising messages do work, under the right conditions. The researchers also found that priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant. In plain English, this means youre potentially going to buy a product that quenches your thirst only if you were already thirsty anyway. Subliminal messages are therefore more effective in priming a target audience to choose one brand over another, rather than in recreating an real need for the product.

While it is has yet to be sufficiently proven that the brief subliminal messages can affect your behavior without you knowing, it is still arguable that subliminal advertising can be more effective than normal means of promotional communications which people are consciously aware of.