Saturday, June 24, 2006
Wireless Access Boosts Online Advertising
You might think that getting rid of the cables connecting your PC to the Internet wouldn't make much difference to marketers. In fact, wireless broadband radically changes how consumers interact with a brand. In April, Yahoo and Isobar unveiled the findings of a piece of collaborative research, Fluid Lives, which sought to identify insights into the use and efficacy of digital technology. The results were fascinating. My interest lay particularly in the behavior of people in the home, when exposed to a sharp upgrade in the technology at their disposal. As part of the study, households were provided with broadband WiFi and a laptop for each of the occupants. Freed from the anchor of a desktop computer, online use changed -- users roamed around the home with the device, leaving it switched on and left open as one would a magazine. They began to use their laptops more often, greatly increasing the time they spent online. It encouraged "grazing" rather than gorging due to its "always on, always there" availability. As a result, online consumption completely changed and they began describing their laptop as a companion, saying that WiFi opened up the world to them.
So what does this mean to advertisers? Essentially, WiFi laptops change online behavior in the home. People more readily search for content or advertisers they had seen in other media, than they would if they had to remember a Web address and search from their desktop later.
Media "meshing" increased substantially, with 51 percent saying they watched television and spent time online simultaneously, compared with 36 percent of people with normal broadband. The immediacy of offline advertising to online connectivity made them more likely to react to ads.
This will have a profound impact on the creative and planning communities. Proximity of messages across platforms requires consistency of message. Where offline and online creative are split between agencies, it makes the briefing process incredibly important, and the execution vital.
The portability of WiFi also allows instant sharing with others. In my view, this type of immediate advocacy of a message or product is incredibly valuable if handled correctly, but dangerous if poorly managed. Once again, it is an example of enabled consumers posing both opportunities and threats to our business, but I believe the opportunities are incredibly compelling, if the potential is recognized and exploited to the full.
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So what does this mean to advertisers? Essentially, WiFi laptops change online behavior in the home. People more readily search for content or advertisers they had seen in other media, than they would if they had to remember a Web address and search from their desktop later.
Media "meshing" increased substantially, with 51 percent saying they watched television and spent time online simultaneously, compared with 36 percent of people with normal broadband. The immediacy of offline advertising to online connectivity made them more likely to react to ads.
This will have a profound impact on the creative and planning communities. Proximity of messages across platforms requires consistency of message. Where offline and online creative are split between agencies, it makes the briefing process incredibly important, and the execution vital.
The portability of WiFi also allows instant sharing with others. In my view, this type of immediate advocacy of a message or product is incredibly valuable if handled correctly, but dangerous if poorly managed. Once again, it is an example of enabled consumers posing both opportunities and threats to our business, but I believe the opportunities are incredibly compelling, if the potential is recognized and exploited to the full.
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Number of Global Millionaires Increases
The increasing ease of becoming a millionaire became clear Tuesday, with the announcement that the ranks of world millionaires had swelled to 8.7 million last year -- half a million more than the population of New York City. Millionaires also invested more aggressively, pouring cash into emerging markets and pulling it out of fixed income holdings, as their wealth reached US$33.3 trillion, more than double U.S. economic output, a study by Merrill Lynch and consultancy Capgemini found. The red-hot Middle East saw nearly 10 percent growth in millionaires -- the world's fastest rate -- with record oil revenues and soaring stock markets pushing 300,000 people over the million-dollar mark. "This is becoming a very attractive place to invest," said Mones R. Bazzy, Merrill Lynch's head of Middle East private banking, based in the Gulf boomtown of Dubai. Bazzy spoke in a hotel conference room overlooking the world's newest international stock market, the futuristic arch-shaped Dubai International Financial Center. One factor in the Middle East's growth in millionaires was the stock markets that spiked by more than 100 percent in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last year. Thus far 2006, those markets have plunged by more than 50 percent, which Bazzy said may have since knocked a few millionaires off the list.
Worldwide, the number of millionaires has nearly doubled since Merrill Lynch found 4.5 million of them in 1996. Last year's 6.5 percent growth in millionaires slowed slightly over last year's 6.6 percent, with the U.S. and Europe slowing most alongside their cooling economies. The ranks of the ultra-rich -- those worth more than $30 million -- climbed by more than 10 percent to 85,400.
Merrill Lynch said the ultra-rich did better because they found "select pockets" of high-growth investments in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast, while most investors stuck with stodgy earnings in North America and Europe. North America held a slight edge over Europe in the population of millionaires, with 2.9 million to Europe's 2.8 million. Asia counted 2.4 million, Latin America 300,000 and Africa 100,000.
The world's millionaires are increasingly branching out from their home countries, with 65 percent paying attention to foreign markets and 30 percent buying homes overseas, the study found.
Growth of private equity holdings in 2005 outlined an increasing preference for aggressive assets, with investors funneling cash into emerging markets, while unloading fixed-income bank deposits and bonds. That phenomenon is only supposed to grow, as some $41 trillion is expected to be passed to heirs over the next four decades, and money managers saying more than 80 percent of inheritors will want to boost their international exposure. Dubai might be one destination. Bazzy said the ease of investment and galloping economic growth in the mushrooming city was spurring the world's premier companies to set up businesses here. "There are no unions, no taxes and administration is very easy. Barriers to entry are going lower and lower," Bazzy said. Overall, the UAE counts 59,000 millionaires, while neighboring Saudi Arabia had 80,000, Bazzy said.
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Worldwide, the number of millionaires has nearly doubled since Merrill Lynch found 4.5 million of them in 1996. Last year's 6.5 percent growth in millionaires slowed slightly over last year's 6.6 percent, with the U.S. and Europe slowing most alongside their cooling economies. The ranks of the ultra-rich -- those worth more than $30 million -- climbed by more than 10 percent to 85,400.
Merrill Lynch said the ultra-rich did better because they found "select pockets" of high-growth investments in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast, while most investors stuck with stodgy earnings in North America and Europe. North America held a slight edge over Europe in the population of millionaires, with 2.9 million to Europe's 2.8 million. Asia counted 2.4 million, Latin America 300,000 and Africa 100,000.
The world's millionaires are increasingly branching out from their home countries, with 65 percent paying attention to foreign markets and 30 percent buying homes overseas, the study found.
Growth of private equity holdings in 2005 outlined an increasing preference for aggressive assets, with investors funneling cash into emerging markets, while unloading fixed-income bank deposits and bonds. That phenomenon is only supposed to grow, as some $41 trillion is expected to be passed to heirs over the next four decades, and money managers saying more than 80 percent of inheritors will want to boost their international exposure. Dubai might be one destination. Bazzy said the ease of investment and galloping economic growth in the mushrooming city was spurring the world's premier companies to set up businesses here. "There are no unions, no taxes and administration is very easy. Barriers to entry are going lower and lower," Bazzy said. Overall, the UAE counts 59,000 millionaires, while neighboring Saudi Arabia had 80,000, Bazzy said.
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Friday, June 09, 2006
Net Neutrality Efforts Suffer Setback
U.S. Internet companies and other advocates of guaranteed network neutrality suffered a setback Thursday when an effort to tack a net neutrality amendment onto a larger cable reform bill could not muster enough votes. After several hours of debate, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 269 to 152 to kill an amendment to the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) that would have made it illegal for broadband network owners to discriminate against Web traffic. Democrats who proposed and backed the amendment framed the debate as a critical one about the future of the Internet and of innovation, saying that the openness of the Web is one reason why technology has advanced as fast as it has.
"The future Sergey Brins, the future Marc Andreessens, of Netscape and Google are going to have to pay taxes" to network owners, said Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who helped craft the net neutrality amendment. "This vote will change the Internet for the rest of eternity."
Lawmakers were lobbied heavily in the days leading up to the debate and vote, with Google calling on its users to add their voices to the fray and free-market groups saying that a law encoding net neutrality would represent the first heavy-handed regulation of the Internet, which they say has thrived in part because the government has avoided stepping in to lay down rules.
Backers of net neutrality will live to fight another day. They will likely turn their attention to the Senate, which has yet to schedule debate on several bills that are circulating on the topic.
Still, the setback represents a serious blow to their efforts to use the bill, which is designed to make it easier for telecom companies to begin offering TV services over Web connections, as a vehicle for a broader debate on the ownership of and access to high-speed networks.
Owners of those networks say they need flexibility to ensure their billions of dollars worth of investments in laying high-speed cable and fiber optics are not stranded. Backers of net neutrality say without legislation, a two-tiered Internet will emerge, with companies giving preferred access to some companies and relegating others to a slower tier where Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies will find it difficult to offer the robust high-bandwidth services expected to be the hallmark of the Internet of tomorrow.
"Unless the Senate steps in, this vote marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as an engine of new competition, entrepreneurship and innovation," said Consumers Union policy analyst Jeannine Kenney. Kenney and others said the attention drawn to the net neutrality debate by the action of the House could help energize voters to raise their voices in time to make a difference when the Senate takes up the issue. While that could happen soon, the entire issue may not return until early 2007, some observers say.
Among those hailing the vote was the Hands Off The Internet coalition, a group supported by companies such as AT&T and BellSouth. "Bipartisan common sense won out over the bottom lines of a few big online companies," said Mike McCurry, the group's co-chairman. Backers of neutrality would in essence "shift the cost of building tomorrow's Internet onto the backs of consumers," he added. The COPE Act does contain a provision dealing with network access, authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to investigate complaints about broadband providers blocking access or impairing delivery of Internet content and allowing fines of up to US$500,000 for doing so. Opponents say that after-the-fact approach will not be enough to prevent damage to Web companies and leaves the door open for a two-tiered Internet, with the language not explicitly prohibiting a so-called "slow lane" where certain content could be relegated.
Cable and telephone companies are seen as more likely to favor certain content as the types of services Web companies provide converge with their own video offerings.
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"The future Sergey Brins, the future Marc Andreessens, of Netscape and Google are going to have to pay taxes" to network owners, said Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who helped craft the net neutrality amendment. "This vote will change the Internet for the rest of eternity."
Lawmakers were lobbied heavily in the days leading up to the debate and vote, with Google calling on its users to add their voices to the fray and free-market groups saying that a law encoding net neutrality would represent the first heavy-handed regulation of the Internet, which they say has thrived in part because the government has avoided stepping in to lay down rules.
Backers of net neutrality will live to fight another day. They will likely turn their attention to the Senate, which has yet to schedule debate on several bills that are circulating on the topic.
Still, the setback represents a serious blow to their efforts to use the bill, which is designed to make it easier for telecom companies to begin offering TV services over Web connections, as a vehicle for a broader debate on the ownership of and access to high-speed networks.
Owners of those networks say they need flexibility to ensure their billions of dollars worth of investments in laying high-speed cable and fiber optics are not stranded. Backers of net neutrality say without legislation, a two-tiered Internet will emerge, with companies giving preferred access to some companies and relegating others to a slower tier where Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies will find it difficult to offer the robust high-bandwidth services expected to be the hallmark of the Internet of tomorrow.
"Unless the Senate steps in, this vote marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as an engine of new competition, entrepreneurship and innovation," said Consumers Union policy analyst Jeannine Kenney. Kenney and others said the attention drawn to the net neutrality debate by the action of the House could help energize voters to raise their voices in time to make a difference when the Senate takes up the issue. While that could happen soon, the entire issue may not return until early 2007, some observers say.
Among those hailing the vote was the Hands Off The Internet coalition, a group supported by companies such as AT&T and BellSouth. "Bipartisan common sense won out over the bottom lines of a few big online companies," said Mike McCurry, the group's co-chairman. Backers of neutrality would in essence "shift the cost of building tomorrow's Internet onto the backs of consumers," he added. The COPE Act does contain a provision dealing with network access, authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to investigate complaints about broadband providers blocking access or impairing delivery of Internet content and allowing fines of up to US$500,000 for doing so. Opponents say that after-the-fact approach will not be enough to prevent damage to Web companies and leaves the door open for a two-tiered Internet, with the language not explicitly prohibiting a so-called "slow lane" where certain content could be relegated.
Cable and telephone companies are seen as more likely to favor certain content as the types of services Web companies provide converge with their own video offerings.
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