Advertisers value UK web users most

According to the Financial Times, UK internet users are the most valuable in Europe to advertisers, attracting even more per capita advertising expenditure than online consumers in the US. Advertisers spent an average of €82.46 (£56) marketing to each active UK web user in 2006, according to figures released on Monday by the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe, the trade association, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the professional services group. The sum is more than twice the €39 spent marketing to each web surfer across the 13 European countries measured by the study. The comparable US figure was about €60 last year.

Internet advertising has grown quickly in the UK, making it the most advanced web ad market worldwide in terms of the share of total advertising budgets allocated to web-based marketing. It puts the total amount of revenue from search engine marketing, web classifieds, display, directories and email campaigns in all 13 countries at about €8bn last year.

This is all a long way from Bill Thompson’s article back in 2003 “Why Online ads do not work”

I recently told a tech friend of mine I was about to upgrade to Windows Vista - he promptly referred to a number of really bad reviews Microsoft's new operating system has got:
- "An Open Letter to Bill Gates" from BBC Business Editor Robert Peston
- "A Windows expert opts for a Mac life" by Scott Finnie published at Computerworld
- "Dim Vista" by Stephan Manes at Forbes Magazine



This video review by BBC Click Online Presenter Spencer Kelly provides a useful overview of how the user interface has changed.

I did think that a 5 year gestation period for this new operating system would be sufficient to actually build-in real innovation whilst ensuring clean, bug-free code - I could be wrong. Many of the reviews from aren't good, but what annoys me is that many of the reviews seem to overinflate the importance of small quirks (like not being able to open an MS Word document in Notepad, or renaming things) and most of them complain about not being able to use their peripherals or ipaq pocket pc's - but is this Microsoft's fault? After all a beta-version of the software has been available since September 2005!

For the first point Yes (but that may not be a big deal), for the second point (which is a big deal) I don't think so. It is up to the Manufacturers of devices (printers, scanners, sound cards, etc) which interface with Vista to actually provide the new drivers. Microsoft cannot surely be expected to go around and do it for them. In addition, I think many of the reviewers haven't actually checked to see if the new drivers are available. I checked with ATI and Creative, they have new drivers for both my graphics card and sound card respectively and the new driver for my HP printer comes with Vista anyway.

So what do the techies say? Well Rupert Goodwins, Technology Editor of ZDNet told BBC Click Online:
"the good thing is that they have re-written large chuncks of code so it should be much more secure, its much harder for bad software to get in... the bad side is that this comes at the cost of some bad compatibility.....Windows Vista 64-bit is about as secure as anything on the planet."

Tom Merrit, Executive Editor at Cnet provides his top 5 reasons to buy Vista (not my top 5 I can assure you):
1. Aero Graphic system
2. Built-in Search
3. Windows Media Center
4. New File system
5. Integrated Widgets

Microsoft Founder and Chairman Bill Gates has said:
"if you take parental controls, peer-to-peer meetings, take the way we do groupings....we have always had ten times as many applications....what we are doing with RSS no on has done that before....but..Windows people like Windows and if you like pen and paper go for it!"

So why should I upgrade? Well supposedly for improved security and a better user interface. In addition, you will get; Windows Media Center, Windows Movie Maker with high-definition support, and Windows DVD Maker. Windows Vista Business and Ultimate edition including business networking and centralized management tools. There are also better mobility features such as: Windows Tablet and Touch Technology, Windows SideShow and Windows Mobility Center. But here are two other features (Vista Ultimate edition only) relating to that important issue of backup which haven't been mentioned in the vast majority of reviews:

• Secure Online Key Backup, where Ultimate users can store their BitLocker recovery password and Encrypting File System certificate on Windows Marketplace’s Digital Locker website for access to the key anytime, anyplace, and from any computer that has an Internet connection
• BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool, an automated tool which removes the complexity of setting up your PC to use this exclusive data security feature.
  

Sounds good to me and I might add perhaps better stability (when was the last time your PC crashed, stalled or unexpectedly starting closing programs??). A colleague who has already installed it on a Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz with 3Gig of RAM (scoring 4.3 out of 5 on Microsoft Vista tests) said his PC slowed down when compared with XP. The processor and graphics card heavy nature of Vista may mean that a new PC with Vista already installed may be the best course of action for some.

I am always being asked to use a Mac instead of PC (especially since they can now use intel processesors and run windows in any case) but lets give Microsoft a chance here before we pass judgement. So having bought Windows Vista Ultimate I will now upgrade my PC and thoroughly test-drive this new OS over the next few days.

I will post a summary of my experiences soon - wish me luck!

Recent figures from the the Global Entrepreneurship monitor show how the number of people starting a business in the UK has increased from 4.5% in 2002 to 9% in 2006. Further, their figures revealed significant differences between countries in terms of their level of entrepreneurial activity, with the number of people involved in a start-up business as follows:

- UK 1 in 16
- France 1 in 25
- Germany 1 in 25
- USA 1 in 10
- China 1 in 6

The figures are certainly encouraging for the new media industry and the global economy. The figure of 1 in 6 for China is amazing and shows just how far it has it come.

Its very exciting to see how far viral video has come. Star Wars kid has now been downloaded 900 million times and this is the best video I have seen of him yet.

I also really enjoyed this video involving a friendly great white shark even though it essentially an advert. But it does show the power of viral marketing - combining video as a technology and email as a distribution method for maximum exposure of a brand and a product/service.

Channel boss Steve North said: "It's now official - with viewing figures like this, virals truly are the entertainment of the future. "The magic combination of hilarity and notoriety means that these vignettes are forwarded from inbox to inbox around the world."

I wouldn't go that far, but certainly virals are an important vehicle within marketing and entertainment as they involve video which has undergone a major boom in the past year (since flash video became mainstream and email which is a cheap and effective distribution channel and importantly used frequently by the audience the advertisers are trying to engage.

It was great to be at this major business exhibition for startups again this year. I try and attend every year as startups for a major part of our business and its nice to meet potential customers as well as industry people under one roof and keep my finger on the pulse.

A big theme of this year's seminars seemed to be how to create an e-business. Indeed, there was one workshop titled "how to set-up your e-business in 24 hours" and another titled "how to set-up your e-business in 30 mins" - guess which one more people attended!

Two lecturs stood out for me this year, Gerald Ratner on his rise, fall and rise again and then Lord Karan Bilimoria, CEO of Cobra Beer (pictured right with me) on how he built the company into one with sales of £96m for 2006 having started off with £20k of student debt.

I would really like to wish British Vogue a happy 90th birthday today. The story of Vogue and its prestigious front cover can teach New Media companies a great deal.

We often talk about websites needing to engage their presumed audience with a site design that invites them in and is aesthetically pleasing in addition to being functional.

If you consider the front cover of a magazine to be analagous to a website's home page - it completely changes your view of website design and makes you really think about aesthetics. Thank you British Vogue and happy birthday!

MP Sion Simon's Spoof David Cameron video on YouTube is a great example of how not to use technology to get a political message across, even if it is so-called "satire", it is offensive nonetheless (but it did get 16,000 views within a couple of days!). Despite his defence of the video (rather rudely on Sky and the BBC, the Rt Hon Sion Simon had to apologise the next day (as is often the case with these things).

Sion Simon's offer to remove the video if requested to do so by David Cameron himself actually doesn't mean anything and shows lack of knowledge abou the community, as now people have simply made copies of the original with their digital camera or mobile phone and uploaded those to the site, here is one for example (and another one can be found here). Here is the opening piece of the authentic Web Cameron video on YouTube.

A much better use of technology to discuss politics comes in the form of the Political blogs. The Political Editor of the BBC - Nick Robinson has a decent blog with insights there that he never mentions on TV (or doesn't get the chance to), other good ones include Conservative Home (please note Labour Home coming soon).

Google is buying video-sharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares after a weekend of speculation that a deal was in the offing. The two companies will continue to operate independently with founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley keeping their jobs along with 67 other staff - you can see their personal message on YouTube.

You can see CNN's report of the purchase - via YouTube here and the BBC report is here.

"The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

He went on to say the two companies were "natural partners" to offer a media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers. Mr Schmidt also told investors that YouTube will be "one of many investments" Google plans to make in the video field. However, the company will keep operating its own Google Video as a separate operation.

YouTube, launched in February 2005, has grown quickly into one of the most popular websites on the internet with 100 million videos viewed every day (67,000 new ones added every day) and an estimated 72 million individual visitors each month.

A useful blog post on the acquisition by Paul Mason from the BBC can be found here.

David Milliband's experimental policy formation wiki site has now been locked to prevent vandalism following a spate of not so politically correct messages having been left by the public - not quite the big conversation he had been hoping for. The Times Online reported a Defra spokeswoman saying. “It’s unfortunate that these things do happen. This in no way undermines our commitment as a department to dealing with serious issues and using new technology to pioneer an open style of government.”

Having recently launched a Wiki site we do have experience of such interactive web 2.0 sites and vandalism is a well recognised problem. There are three levels of editing though:
- open to anyone
- registered users only
- admin only (locked pages)

So the level of security for each page much be tailored. I applaud David Milliband for taking this step, using Wiki's could be an important step forward in forming a more open government and may even lead to more better policy formation. 

Search engine Google plans to offer consumers the chance to download and print classic out-of-copyright novels free of charge. The firm's book search tool will let people print classics such as Dante's Inferno or Aesop's Fables, as well as other books no longer under copyright. Previously people were only allowed to read such books on-screen.

Google's book search service stems from a wider project to put books online in a searchable format, which it is undertaking with major universities including; Oxford University, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of California, as well as the New York Public Library.

Volunteers working for a project known as Gutenberg have for some years copied out-of-copyright books as text files, which can then be used for printing, reading or piping into a programme for editing.

Google however, is offering the books in a "print-ready" format, as have several other - albeit much smaller and less well-known - firms. Online shopping site Amazon has offered limited online access to the contents of its huge bookstore.

Publishers might not be shaking in their boots as this is to expected from Google with its vast resources and most of their revenue comes from books and other works covered by copyright. It is great news for the consumer though and I look forward to trying the service.

Sony has teamed up with US biologists who run the distributed computing project, folding@home (FAH). The project harnesses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shape of proteins, critical to most biological functions, affect disease such as Alzheimers. FAH say a network of PS3's will allow performance similar to supercomputers. In fact, 10,000 machines joined together would be nearly four times as fast as the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's BlueGene/L System, capable of 280.6 trillion calculations per second.Before the distributed computing project, I never knew that modelling protein folding would be such an intensive task. But if Playstation 3 can help the process, all the better. However, this process only works when the machine is idle, for PCs that's okay as many are simply switched on and remain on over night or when the user is away from their desk. But who would leave their Playstation 3 idle? If its on, then someone is usually playing and I can't imagine it being idle in the same way a PC is? If Playstation is as good as we hope, then its contribution to FAH might not be that significant.

This video from the BBC illustrates the growing trend of Blackberry addiction (Crackberry). I have also looked at the YouTube videos (and another one here)as well which pay tribute to Blackberry addiction and this illustrates the recognition of just how serious this"problem" is.

I first started using a Blackberry 8700V (the latest model - see right) just over a month ago and it felt great to ditch the mobile and the PDA and utilise a single integrated communications device (albeit without a digital camera - my friends keep reminding me). The important thing is not to let it take over your life and remember who is boss!

But I must admit, it is rather addictive and the increase in efficiency you get from using one is real, just be careful you don't start losing yourself with the efficiency gain.

According to National Statistics, an estimated 13.9 million households (57 per cent, see graph) in Great Britain could access the Internet from home between January and April 2006.

Sixty nine per cent of households with Internet access had a broadband connection with access being highest in London where 78 per cent of households with Internet access had a broadband connection (49 per cent of all households in the London region).

What's amazing about the figures is that dial-up now accounts for about 27% of connections. I would have thought it would be closer to 5% or less by now, especially since broadband is now free at Carphone Warehouse and BSkyB (well almost....) and prices at the other major suppliers have been dropping consistently. Why would anyone pay for dial-up when they can have a connection speed 10 times faster (giving access to movies, music and large files sizes), which is always-on and they don't have to hear those nasty beeping sounds when modem starts dialing.
Anyway, march on broadband......

The BBC reports that Internet share dealing has overtaken traditional methods such as telephone or face-to-face trading, according to market analysts Datamonitor. What amazes me is that this has only just happened!

Real time share dealing has been available via the internet for over 5 years now and some people (like yours truly) feel that service far supercedes the phone and face-to-face trading. I don't know anyone who has ever gone back once they have tried internet share dealing. The great thing about it is that you can literally open one window in which you are doing your market/company research and another in which you are buying as news filters through on wire services and so on. This dramatically cuts down the delays and puts you almost the same league as the stock brokers (well in terms of how quickly you can make the purchase anyway).