The campaign saw Nick and Sam Brown (below), a couple from Bath, embarking on a week-long road-trip with a twist – they weren’t in charge of their own itinerary. Instead, Facebook and Twitter users across Britain were ‘in control’ and were given the chance to decide where the couple should go and what they should do.
Over 50,000 people in the UK visited the campaign webpage and 11,500 used social media, resulting in a +1,000% increase in engagement on Tourism Ireland’s Facebook page in the UK. Nick and Sam uploaded more than 20 films during their time in Ireland, which were viewed 23,300 times. Almost 20,000 people entered the competition to win a road-trip of their own.

Bartley O'Connor, PwC and Suzanne McElligott, CEO, IAB Ireland

Display and pay
Display ads recorded the highest level of growth to €20.7m in H1 2011, meaning a 41% growth year on year. Display now represents 34% of total online adspend.
Paid-search ads continue to perform strongly with growth of 17% year on year to €27.2m, representing 45% of total online adspend.

Property and jobs performing
The top spending category for classified ads in the first half of 2011 was property/recruitment at 36% followed by auto in second place at 28%.
Telecoms, FMCG and entertainment/media categories tie at 12% respectively. The strong performance of these three categories reflects that brands are embracing the digital channel and growing their online budgets.

Mobile ads
For the first time an ‘estimate’ of display adspend on mobile has been covered in the adspend study. Mobile advertising is still a relatively new platform. Display adspend on mobile is estimated at €1.6m in H1 2011.
A 55% increase in smartphone ownership is expected in 2012 in the Irish market with smartphones potentially overtaking desktops (Red C: De-Coding Digital Trends Ireland 2011).

Growing and growing
“The record 20% growth tracked in our H1 2011 report highlights that digital advertising has moved centre stage in the media mix,” says Suzanne McElligott, chief executive of IAB Ireland.
77% of the participants in the IAB PwC online adspend study anticipate “growth” or “strong growth” in the next six months.

KEY DRIVERS
Fixed and mobile broadband growth – Fixed broadband increased by 8% between Q2 2010 and Q2 2011. Mobile broadband grew by 14.8% between Q2 2010 and Q2 2011 (ComReg’s Quarterly Key Data Report, Q2, 2011).

Greater time spent online – Time spent online at 2 hrs 44 minutes now mirrors time spent watching TV at 2 hours 49 minutes (Red C: De-Coding Digital Trends Ireland 2011). The average Irish Internet user spends 8 hours per week on social media, the heaviest users of social media are 18-24 year at 11 hours per week (Behaviour & Attitudes: Bacardi Together Poll, July 2011).

Gartner predicts worldwide social media revenue will grow 50% in 2012 from 2011, rising from a projected $10.3 billion this year to $14.9 billion next year and more than $29 billion by 2015.

Social media subscriptions, such as those sold by LinkedIn for enhanced services, will reach $236 million in 2011 and total $313 million in 2012, believes Gartner.

The writing is on the wall. Companies and brands are turning away from one time placement ads on sites and ‘clicks’ and investing more of their budgets in ‘ongoing engagement’ with their customers through social media channels. Facebook is dominant. Facebook is now making serious money.

MenuPages.ie in brief
• Was setup by Ray Egan in 2007
• Number one foodie site in Ireland
• Over 500,000 people use the site each month
• Generates over 3,300 bookings for restaurants per month
• Deals sold €75,722 in four weeks across 1,783 deals
• Filled 3,500 restaurant seats

Karim Temsamani

Google, today, has a clear ‘mobile first’ strategy. As Karim Temsamani explains, “We develop all our key products with mobile in mind. Globally, users are driving device use at a level never seen before. We are activating 550,000 Android devices a day. Obviously lots more iPhones and smartphones are being activated as well. It shows the mobile web is growing eight times faster than the desktop web at the same time of its existence. The world now has five billion people with mobile phones (smart & dumb phones) but in the US, half of all phones are smart and in the UK this will be the same very soon, as well as in most other industrialised nations. In some countries, mainly emerging markets, searches on mobile devices are outpacing desktop searches. The future is clear.”

Temsamani believes our world is becoming augmented and we are entering a phase he describes as ‘augmented humanity’.
“Very soon mobile will be the prime way for people to access information. We’re investing enormously in mobile and making this transition from the desktop web, where everything was processed on the desktop, and we’re moving into the Cloud Web, where you have the ability, with a supercomputer in your hand, to do things you were never before able to do. We want to ensure that we create the right products and services for users and bring people closer to what we call ‘Augmented Humanity’, essentially enabling them to do all the things they like to do in life (socialising, planning, communication, sharing) through mobile devices.”

Thanks to the data storage capabilities and processing power of applications in ‘the cloud’, the average smartphone is now, as Temsamani describes it, a ‘supercomputer in your hand’. These supercomputers, argues Temsamani, can organise the day-to-day aspects of one’s functional existence and leave room for the more human and creative impulses in peoples’ lives.
“For example, speaking different languages is difficult for most people. A mobile can now help you do this. At Google we translate 160 million web pages every day into 70 different languages. This is facilitated by the cloud and you have all the storage and processing ability that enables your smartphone to be a powerful supercomputer. Your phone can become a device that can oragnise your life and allow you to concentrate on the more creative side of human thought, rather than on bus timetables, or traffic or whatever. The best new uses of computing and the best apps are happening on smartphones.”

Google sees four main trends appearing in relation to the modern ‘Mobile Planet’:

1: Entertainment/Gaming – “Game playing and other forms of entertainment, especially watching videos, are key drivers of smartphone usage and application development,” says Temsamani.

2: Immediacy - “People want answers immediately,” says Temsamani. “By being able to get detailed answers where ever people find themselves has major implications for businesses, especially those involved in retail, hotel and travel industries.”

3: Local - “Your mobile goes with you everywhere. One in three search queries on mobile are for local information. Because of the location implications, people are taking steps to buy. 59% of people who search for a local business, will then visit that business. Very strong ‘intention’ is shown by local searches.”

4: Shopping Companion - “This is a very important trend for all retailers. Mobiles are used to check reviews and pricing in-store. This has implications on how retailers train staff to handle very informed customers, who may ask why they can buy the same product for €10 less on a website. It also has deep implications for how retailers handle customer loyalty in the future.”

In brief
Temsamani wouldn’t comment on Google’s recent purchase of Motorolla, so this can only leave us guessing as to what Google will do with all those hardware and software patents. A Google phone is probably not being considered as Google wants to keep its Android OS an open platform that will be used by other device manufacturers. I asked about plans for Google’s Groupon rival ‘Offers’ and was told there are no dates yet set for its roll out in Europe, although its is being tested in Germany. We also briefly discussed Google+, and again Temsamani said the fledgling social network had ‘mobile’ at its heart, like all Google’s latest services and products.

Here’s how to ‘uncheck’ the default setting, courtesy of Steve Woodruff:

Apparently, LinkedIn has recently done us the ‘favor’ of having a default setting whereby our names and photos can be used for third-party advertising. Devious. And I expect that you, like me, don’t want to participate.
This graphic shows you how to Uncheck The Box (click to biggify):

1. Click on your name on your LinkedIn homepage (upper right corner). On the drop-down menu, select “Settings”.
2. From the “Settings” page, select “Account*”.
3. In the column next to “Account”, click “Manage Social Advertising” .
4. De-select the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising” .
Nice try, LinkedIn. But, no thanks!
*UPDATE: After you finish with Account, check the new default settings under E-mail Preferences (such as Partner InMails); and Groups, Companies & Applications (such as Data Sharing with 3rd-party applications). It’s a Facebook deja vu!

Online ads soaring
IAB Europe’s annual AdEx survey is the guide to the state of the European advertising market. Released at IAB Europe’s Interact Congress in Barcelona this morning, it shows the online advertising market accelerating at a growth rate of 15.3% in 2010 – outperforming the overall European advertising market which grew 5.0% in the same period.
Total online adspend was €17.7bn in 2010, compared to €15.3bn in 2009. Market growth ranged from 37% in Russia and 24% in the Czech Republic, to 14% in Denmark and 7% in France.
Compiled by IHS Screen Digest, the research covers the entire European region, from the mature markets of Western and Northern Europe to the emerging markets in Eastern and Southern Europe for the calendar year 2010. New to the report is the Czech Republic.
The markets with the highest online adspend in the report are UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy and Spain (in that order). Together they account for almost three quarters (74%) of the total online advertising market. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) markets now represent almost a tenth (9.8%) of the total.
Online video adspend has doubled in most markets. In Spain online video grew 125% to a value of €13m; growth in the UK was 90%, to a market value of €63m.

Search & destroy
Paid search continued to grow double-digit at an average of 15.1%. It remains the biggest category in online advertising, with 45% of total advertising spend compared with 33% for Display and 22% for Classifieds and Directories. Whilst some of the more established markets experienced smaller increases (UK +8% like-for-like, France +10%) many saw explosive growth (Hungary +44%, Poland +31%).

Mobile is moving
Mobile search and mobile display are included in the AdEx survey for the first time this year. Although mobile adspend figures are available for only 12 of the 25 markets, they confirm that the long-awaited take-off of mobile advertising has been realised thanks to the advent of the smartphone/3G/apps ecosystem. In those markets, mobile adspend already accounts for 2% to 3% of total online adspend.

A €17 billion snapshot in time
With €17.7bn of adspend last year, online now accounts for 18% of the entire European advertising market. It is now beyond 20% in some markets (UK 29%, Denmark 28%) whilst it’s only 5% in Greece and 4% in Romania. European market value is smaller than the US which also experienced a 15% growth rate last year and is now worth $26bn/€19.6bn.
According to Vincent Létang, Senior Analyst at IHS Screen Digest says “Back in 2009, video was the only growth engine in an otherwise flat Display market. In 2010 by contrast, three pillars – mobile, video and social – attracted new advertising investment. On top of fast-growing new formats, let’s not forget that traditional PC-based, banner-style formats have retained their appeal thanks to innovations in design and targeting and a rise in mainstream brands using Display for branding campaigns.”