CardMarketing 2.0

Great IAB article on the exceptional opportunities offered by the hugely undermonetized in-game advertising market. While the piece offers some really solid insights into how the in-game ad space works, not least its web 2 potential, it also delivers some even better insights – drawn from die-hard online gamers – into how companies need to approach online communities.

... soaring yet again. According to research by UK-based, The Advertising Association (which will be published at length in the association's Advertising Statistics Yearbook 2007, to be published in June), online UK adspend rose 47% to £2,016 million in 2006, achieving a 10.6% share of total UK adspend. This is the first time it has surpassed the 10% mark.

Should online advertisers chase the long tail of niche sites or focus their attention on the short head of sites that most people go to day in, day out? This is a question raised by the Internet Advertising Bureau in a recent article. Do you target traffic with a capital T or focus your efforts on smaller, but more relevant audiences?

We've spoken once or twice before about how consumerdom, revolutionized by the second generation internet, is rapidly fragmenting into gazillions of micro communities and niches, whose members no longer have to tolerate products or services produced for a mass audience (perish the thought).

Just a Sunday afternoon thought. As affiliate programs begin to play a more central role in companies' marketing strategies, could issuers commercialize their relationship with cardholders?

If you needed any proof that blogs are wielding tremendous power – and are even beginning to eclipse traditional media in certain sectors – then look no further than what unfolded a few days back...

Most of you have probably heard of Twitter, although there's a good chance you haven't got around to checking it out (it's on the radar, but not the priority list). For those of you who haven't heard of Twitter, it refers to itself as 'a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives'.

Bill Gates didn't hold back this week. Speaking to an audience of online advertisers at the company's Strategic Account Summit in Seattle on Tuesday, he painted a bleak picture of the future for traditional media. You can check out the webcast or written transcript yourself here, but the following snippets from the speech will give you a basic idea of what was said.

With the rise of YouTube and other user-generated video sites, more and more issuers and banks are seeing their products and ad campaigns spoofed by amateur filmmakers who then stick their creations on the internet for everyone to see....

I tapped the words 'world of warcraft credit card' into Google this morning. I wanted to see what other people were writing on this new card issued by Visa, Blizzard Entertainment and First National Bank Omaha. I was taken aback by the amount of coverage the damn thing had generated, the sheer excitement and chit chat in blogs and other online forums. Within a matter of days, coverage of the World of Warcraft (WoW) card has gone through the roof. It's everywhere, and everyone is talking about it. This is the essence of viral, of word of mouth (WoM).