The following article comes from the latest version of AMAS’s State of the Net publication.  The State of the Net can be downloaded from the AMAS site.

2010 marks a watershed for digital advertising in Ireland, with the publication of the first study from IAB Ireland/PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Digital advertising was worth €97.2 million in 2009, or 10.3% of the Irish advertising market. With advertising spend suffering a 20% fall in 2009, digital is proving to be more resilient than other categories.

Search – predominately Google AdWords – was the dominant format, accounting for 46.2% of online advertising spend, followed by classifieds (27.2%) and display (26.6%). A variety of formats, including email, sponsorships and affiliates, are included in the display category. Property, recruitment and motoring were the biggest spenders, accounting for 45% of digital advertising spend.

Why is this study so important? Many large advertisers, notably global brands, tend not to commit budgets without industry-recognised data. And that’s what they’re getting – the reconstituted IAB Ireland is part of a network of similar industry bodies internationally while Price-waterhouseCoopers uses a tried and tested methodology across all markets.

Equivalent IAB research in other markets has accelerated the growth in online advertising, at the expense of traditional media. More mature markets, such as the UK and the Nordic countries, are reporting online advertising market shares in excess of 20%. Expect the next IAB Ireland study, for the first half of 2010, to start plotting that growth curve.

If you are interested in the digital marketing and advertising sector in Ireland and abroad, sign up for one of the many courses that the Digital Marketing Institute offers.

This diploma courses starts on Tuesday October 19th and runs every Tuesday for 12 weeks.  Lectures take place in the Radisson Hotel in Belfast between 6:30pm and 9:30pm.

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Contact us on +353 1 271 1888 or email anthony@digitalmarketinginstitute.co.uk for further details.

One change that hasn’t been released yet that Charles talked about was a Facebook bar which will start appearing at the bottom of pages you browse.  On this bar you will be able to ‘Like’ content, see who else has liked the content, perform searches and much more.  So Facebook will be with you at all times.

Facebook search is also going to be extremely powerful.  With a Google search we have machines that index content and we have search engine optimisation guys that know how this works and can influence this indexing.  But with Facebook the search results are weighted towards what content people like and the personalisation of this is what friends said they liked this content.  This is a manually indexed search completed be real people that has real power.   If you are interested to know where Facebook is going have a look at this video and watch it a couple of times if it doesn’t sink in.  It’s powerful stuff.

Charles Dowd (Facebook) – The Facebook Platform from DERI, NUI Galway on Vimeo.

Well done to Charles on his new role. I worked with Charles many years ago in a software company and we had some fun times.

Where do you think Facebook is heading?

Too Little, Too Late.

Paul O’Toole, the Director General of FÁS, has hinted that the agency could change name, after making comments that the training and upskilling agency would change its focus following a strategic review.  He said that a “comprehensive” set of changes are already in place at the State training authority, and that the authority was doing its best to help the huge numbers out of work at the moment.

The Director General said that he was sorry that a number of trainees hadn’t yet received their certificates at the end of their courses, adding that they would be on the way soon:

‘We have identified some issues and are working our way through them,” he said, ‘We regret that people have had their certification delayed’ he said, adding this would ‘be resolved as soon as possible’

From the RTE web site, we read that the staff at FAS have been told that the break-up of FAS begins next month.  The first major step in the break-up of Fás as it was formerly organised is to take place on the first of next month, staff at the training authority have been told. The Irish Times says that the new director general of the authority, Paul O’Toole has informed them that responsibility for policy and budgets in the employment and community services areas are to be transferred to Éamon Ó Cuív’s Department of Social Protection on October 1. The move means that approximately 40% of Fás staff will move to Mr Ó Cuív’s department while the remainder will “in effect move to a revised form of skills organisation”.  Approximately half of the Fás budget will move from the Department of Education and Skills to Mr Ó Cuív’s department. Responsibility for Fás was moved from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to the Department of Education and Skills on May 1st last. The Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan made a similar move in March of this year in the Cabinet reshuffle. The change next month means the public offices of Fás and the community enterprise aspect of its operations begin the process of transferral to Mr Ó Cuív’s department.

Google’s latest innovation for Gmail, called ‘Priority Inbox’, is aimed at those who are overwhelmed by email.

For many users, particularly if you are signed up to lots of automated newsletters and email updates from companies, it can be overwhelming to open up their email ina morning and sort the wheat from the chaff.

Learns email habits

Google’s Priority Inbox attempts to learn your e-mail habits and then decides which messages are most important to you and places these at the top of your email list.

Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread”, “Starred” and “Everything else”.

Priority Inbox is essentially an automated way of doing what many already do (ie setting up manual filters).

Google Software Engineer Doug Aberdeen, explains thethinking behind Priority Inbox(which is currently in beta) as follows: “Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply.”

Aberdeen says that, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important.”

“So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it tonot only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this”bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is likeyour personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.

This was the question posed by Deanna Lee of The New York Public Library (NYPL) at Blogtalk 2010 last week. The NYPL has recently been acclaimed for its effective use of social media. As the Vice-President for Communications and Marketing Deanna Lee came to Blogtalk 2010 to show how a traditional institution such as a public library utilised social media to spread awareness as well as run campaigns.

Deanna Lee knew they would have to go beyond a Facebook page to get the library’s message across. So they embarked on an online communications strategy than spanned across numerous platforms. The library wrote not only their own blog but also wrote posts for the well known blog the Huffington Post. They wrote about hard news but also maximised the appeal of soft news through their blog and micro-blogs on Twitter.

Deanna’s strategy went further than just blogging, everyone knows the appeal of viral video the problem is coming up with the concept that makes the video popular enough to go viral. While many institutions can afford to pay for celebrity endorsed videos these often don’t provide enough ‘bang for your buck’. Instead the NYPL invited the well know improve group Improv Everywhere to come and perform in their library. I am sure you have seen the video which has received almost three million hits on YouTube, and shows the ghostbusters chasing down ghosts in the NYPL. The video was fun and interesting and took the library out of the ‘normal’ perception that people have about libraries.

The real value of social media kicked in for the New York Public library when budget cuts of $37 million of funding were looming. The New York Public Library pushed their social media up a gear with the ‘Don’t Close the Book’ campaign. A supporters micro-site was set up where people were able to send a letter protesting at the budgets cuts on behalf of their local branch. The map on the site signified all of the branches by dots which grew as the number of letters grew also.

The library needed more traffic to the site so another viral video was concocted. This time it was the turn of Tillman the skateboarding dog. Tillman also happened to be looking for a long corridor to attempt to break the world record for fastest skateboarding dog so it was a win-win for all involved. People of course went wild for the video and the campaign got some great exposure. The campaign over all was a huge success, with over 130,000 letters sent and $144,000 worth of funding was raised. In the end an incredible $27 of $37 million of proposed cuts was recouped.

So what did the library get right? Well it all comes down to Deanna’s first question, are you being interesting? Is the content you are creating worthwhile? Content must be meaningful to people on some level for it to be successful online. Another element of the NYPL’s campaign was that it was a people’s campaign, libraries are a public service and people did not want to see their local branch close. Individuals became personally involved because the message meant something to them. They uploaded videos, there was an independent Facebook page set up and many schools created artwork to show their support.

All of this boils down to ‘engagement’, one of the founding principles for social media and the reason many companies don’t get it right. It does not matter what tools you use to connect with people but without engagement your campaign will never get off the ground.

Facebook Targeting allows you to reach your audience by enabling you to target potential customers by Gender, Likes & Interests, Age and other targeting filters.

Facebook has recently enhanced this feature by offering “broad match” for age targeting.  This means that you can deliver your ad to potential customers just slightly outside of your target age range for less than what it would cost to serve the ad to people within your target range. In addition to getting what might be a good deal on these extra clicks and impressions, you can also increase your opportunity to reach more customers. Before broadened age targeting, choosing to target your ad to people aged 24 – 35, say, meant your ad would have only been shown to people precisely within that age range. But isn’t someone who’s 36 and interested in your ad just as valuable as a 35-year-old.  Hence the  expanded offering.

To update you ad settings, to include  broad match for age targeting, go to the Facebook Ad Manager and

• Go to the Settings
• Click on the “Update” button at the bottom of the page

To include broad match settings in new ads,

• Click on Create an Ad
• In Targeting, leave the “Exact Match” box unchecked

For more information, visit the Facebook Ads FAQ section

I have an aunt who insists that all parties in a house should happen in the kitchen.
She emigrated from Ireland 40 years ago and when she returned last Christmas she stayed with my family for our new year celebrations. She has fond memories of growing up in Ireland and all of her memories are of being with her family in the kitchen. She insists that any gathering or event in a house should take place in the kitchen. Invariably after a few glasses of wine she carves off one of the guests in the sitting room and works them slowly towards the kitchen. Which is always empty and cold.

Much digital marketing is wasted when all it tries to do is move the party.
We try to move people from where they are online to our empty websites. We expend all of our budget, energy and efforts trying to move the party, trying to move the audience from one site to our site. instead of just join the party where ever it is happening.

The solution? Join the party.
Your target audience is active and engaged on the internet. Your challenge is to meet them there.
Meet them where? Meet them where ever they are.
Despite the fact that there are hundreds of TV channels available to us, we all tend to gravitate around 4 or 5. Similarly on line we tend to gravitate around 4 or 5 websites. Trying to move people from one of their haunts or introduce a new haunt is a very expensive and often wasteful activity. Better to find out where the party is happening and interact with your audience where they are rather than expending effort and expense in trying to move them somewhere else.