The global economy is naturally all about buying and selling and as such advertising is the lifeblood of the economy.  SME’s still tend to adopt more traditional forms of advertising such as directories, newspapers, radio ads etc as they are (generally) cost effective in comparison to their marketing budgets.

However national and global brands with multi million pound A&P budgets are increasingly looking for more creative and innovative ways to promote themselves and stand out in an increasingly competitive market place.

Take the popular US magazine Entertainment Weekly for example, who debuted video advertising in its September 09 edition by placing wafer-thin screens embedded in its pages that promoted CBS TV shows and Pepsi.  Gimmick or not, it demonstrated the corporate desire to innovate and appear current.

The traditional advertising model will be around for a long time yet, however the future of advertising clearly lies in digital mediums.  Google executive, Nikesh Arora, recently stated “People are shifting their spending dollars more and more to the online world – whether it be direct marketing, advertising, or branding and that follows industrial marketing logic, which is that you have to go where the eyeballs are, where the customers are”.  That coupled with the fact that for advertisers digital ad platforms allow accurate performance tracking, which is something offline advertising has always struggled with.

DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) advertising is an up and coming area with some really innovative concepts being developed.  French marketing technology firm Quividi are developing digital signage displays that have built in cameras that instantly identify a passer by’s age and gender using a facial recognition system and then delivers a product that it feels is appropriate – think Minority Report!

We already know what a valuable commodity ‘Consumer Data’ is and its link to effective contextualisation of ad messages / message customisation and therefore it is a natural progression that DOOH advertising will follow suit and the worth of digital signage will be as much in its ability to gather data as in its ad revenues.

Taking the idea of digital targeted outdoor advertising even further, Holosonics, a US based technology company has developed something called the audio spotlight, aptly named because it can create a tight, narrow beam of sound that can be controlled with the same precision as a torch onto a small area over 60ft away.  The DOOH market has naturally taken to this as it enables advertisers to accurately deliver not only their visual, but now also their audio message into a very targeted area.

So what of the online world?

Facebook:

With over 400 million active users on Facebook, this channel is potentially an advertisers wet dream, particularly as Facebook offers advertisers the opportunity to reach targeted and engaged audiences through Facebook ads. These ads are targeted at users based on their likes and interests rather than their searches and although still in its infancy, businesses are now investigating and trialling campaigns to work out how to effectively leverage Facebook ads into their online spend.

In Game Advertising:

Following on from the initial rush with advertising in ‘virtual worlds’ such as ‘SecondLife’.  Advertisers are starting to really understand the benefits of advertising within the gaming community and are being very creative.  For example, Zygna (the creator of Farmville) with a current valuation  of $4 billion are offering an new approach to in game advertising by incentivizing users to ‘interact with adverts’ by completing brand related tasks such as filing in a form or watching a video, in order to be rewarded with ‘virtual currencies’ to use within their game.

With the global gaming industry achieving over $56 billion in revenues it is fast becoming an important focus for media planners, particularly with the growth of social gaming (i.e. on Facebook).  As this area matures, advertisers will be able to utilise in game advertising across different platforms.

Twitter:

Twitter has at last announced the first of its money-making ventures through advertising, with its ‘Promoted Tweets’.  Twitter has teemed up with a number of commercial partners such as Disney/Pixar and Starbucks enabling them to place a ‘promoted tweet’ at the top of a ‘trending topic’ on the results page, with the aim to roll ‘promoted tweets’ out across live conversations once they have a better understanding of the users experience and advertiser value.

Twitter are measuring this first phase of ‘promoted tweets’ to ensure that they are useful to visitors (resonance).  Whether they ‘resonate’ with users will be measured by whether users interact with them, retweet them etc.  Twitter has stated that any ‘Promoted Tweets’ that do not resonate with users will not be allowed to continue. With over 4 billion tweets posted in the first quarter of 2010 alone, this is definitely one to keep an eye on and we at Wampit will be watching this space with interest.

Mobile:

Mobile ad spend rose by a third to 32% between 2008 and 2009, with brands from the entertainment, media and telecoms sectors spending the largest amounts on the medium, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.   The UK spent 36.7m in the UK in 2009 despite a contraction in the advertising market in general.

So what next for mobile advertising?  It seem that it’s all about Location, Location, Location with ‘Location Based Advertising’ (LBA).  These are mobile adverts which target users based on their GPS location and have the potential to represent anything from a coupon for a coffee shop around the corner from where you are standing or a car dealer that has the same make and model of car as the one you where searching for on Auto Trader last night…   Advertisers could even target a banner advert aimed at a certain demographic that would only appear if you were in the vicinity of their business.  Although the market seems relatively small at the moment, the potential for growth is massive.

If all of that seems too ‘out there’ for your business, you could always contact Andrew Fischer at http://www.humanadspace.com/ – The first man to officially e-bay his forehead as advertising space – Genius!

Or if that doesn’t interest you, take a look at Wampit our established UK Directory with over 355,000 businesses listed.  We offer free business advertising including text, images, video and live Twitter feeds and it only takes a minute to register and create your free advert.

Wampit® is a free UK business directory offering high quality advert listings for all companies.  Simply visit wampit.co.uk to register, and create your free advert listing in minutes.

Wampit® was created by UK entrepreneurs Paul Holland and Adam Purrier who decided to use their wealth of experience gained within the advertising industry to create a new breed of business search engine / directory.

Adam and Paul believe that Internet business advertising is still ‘traditionally old school’ and ‘sales focused’ and wanted to bring in a more modernised approach to online business directories.

Working from offices in London, they decided to create a UK business search engine that is not only at the forefront of the developing online video revolution, but also takes in the ethos of social networking i.e. free rich content such as video and images and live twitter feeds.

Let’s break these down further to explain why Wampit® has focussed primarily on these two areas:

The Online Video Revolution:

• The growth of online video has been unprecedented with the number of videos viewed online in the UK growing nearly 50 per cent year on year (source – comScore).
• Businesses are starting to understand that video is something they now need to consider in their marketing arsenal, as it can be the closest thing they can offer their potential customers to actually being there.
• As with any “new opportunities” businesses such as online video production companies are a growth area charging up to £1000 for a professional business promotional video.  Wampit enables you to upload a video for free whether it has been professionally or home produced.
• With the quality of even basic digital camcorders and phones today businesses can make their own video/clip of their products, service, premises and upload it onto their free Wampit advert in minutes.
• The growth of online video is greatly supported by the belief that video increases online conversion rates by up to 300%

The Social Networking Revolution:

• 38 percent of British Internet users now have a social networking site profile which is up from 22 percent in 2007 (source – Ofcom)
• This means that people are not only used to but “expect to” create a profile for free using rich content such as video, images etc.
• Wampit is the first true business search engine that allows you to create your business listing for free using content such as images/video.
• The growth of social networking websites and blogs now account for nearly ten percent of the total time spent on the Internet, exceeding even email, according to a new study released by Nielsen Online.
• 17 per cent of all time spent on the Internet in August took place on either social networking or blogging sites – a 300 per cent increase from the previous year. (source – The Nielsen Company)
• Twitter has also rapidly become the darling of the Internet and approx 19% of Internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others which is an 8% growth since April 09 (source – Pew Research)
• Wampit® is the first UK business directory that enables all businesses to simply create a “live twitter feed” onto their listing to display their latest tweets.

So you can now see why Wampit® has been created for UK businesses, and  in summary,  it offers quality free business advertising listings that are rich in content and innovative in their design (video/Twitter feeds).

Importantly the Wampit® site is clean and easy to use for businesses and users alike, with no superfluous information or third party advertising.  Businesses can register themselves and create their free business advert by completing one, easy to follow registration page.  Also, once registered they can log back in at any time to update / amend their details.

Each business that registers also gets their own individual “landing page” which Wampit® automatically submits to major search engines in order to provide further exposure for their listing, as well as drive traffic back to the site.

To find out more about what Wampit.co.uk offers visit: http://www.wampit.co.uk/freebusinessadvertising.aspx

Or just visit the site and create your Free Advert today: http://www.wampit.co.uk/

For further reading and information, please also visit the Wampit® blog comparing and recommending that you also advertise on the top 10 free business advertising directories such as  BT Tradespace (British Telecom), Free Index, Thomson Local, Yell.com  ( Yell Group / Yellow Pages / Yellow-Advertising ), Scoot and five others…