StreamAudio and MediaSpan sign co-marketing agreement

SteamAudio, an Internet streaming solutions provider, has signed a deal with MediaSpan, a leading digital content management & online marketing provider. The two firms have agreed to a co-marketing partnership for using and selling Audio Streaming, Content Management, Web Design, Online Loyalty services and Network Ad Sales.

According to this deal, StreamAudio will work as the streaming provider for the customers of MediaSpan, thus marketing its web design, online loyalty, network ad sales and content management services to its (StreamAudio) customers.

MediaSpan is among the leading online marketing solutions providers. It boasts an online Network of well over 1,400 local media web sites. It provides streaming solutions for over 60 radio stations and newspapers. According to Steve Barth, EVP & General Manager of MediaSpan’s online services unit, StreamAudio will promote their services to hundreds of its customers.

According to him, with an installed base of over 40 media firms, 500 radio stations and commercial delivery of more than 16 million streaming hours per month, StreamAudio enjoys the capability, experience, and technical know-how to help out a service oriented firm, such as MediaSpan. He added the customers would greatly benefit through this important deal, as the established two firms have been serving local media properties for years.

Samsung looks forward to a more consistent and focused online contact strategy

In a move aimed at providing a more consistent and focused online contact strategy with its customers, Samsung has chosen Merkle as its e-mail marketing agency. The latter will offer a range of services, such as strategy development, e-mail data management, creative design and campaign execution & analysis.

The relationship between Merkle and Samsung is going to be a cross-divisional one. It will cover Samsung Electronics Canada, Samsung Telecommunications America and Samsung Electronics America. Previously, Samsung employed many e-mail providers for these fragmented services.

“Samsung is keen on taking e-mail marketing to the next level,” said SVP & GM of interactive services at Merkle, Eric Kirby. According to him, Samsung is looking to vastly expand the breadth & depth of communications in its current permission-based e-mail marketing programme.

E-mail can assist Samsung, which doesn’t really share a direct relationship with its customers, ‘to both engage as well as deepen the relationships with them’, Kirby stated. He expects this to comprise employing e-mail as a means of conveying educational & new product information as well as for customer feedback.

Privileged Irish teenagers make dotcom millions

Two Irish teenage brothers have become overnight millionaires after they sold their fledgling software start-up. Interestingly, one of them is still at secondary school. Patrick Collison, 19, and his brother John, 17, are two of the four major shareholders in the firm Auctomatic. It’s a US-registered company estimated to be worth £2.5m.

A former winner of Ireland’s BT Young Scientist of the Year, Patrick Collison, confirmed he & his brother indeed had become millionaires after their firm was bought by Live Current Media, the Canadian firm. Two large US Internet firms are also understood to have bid against it that jacked up the value of the Limerick-based business.

Auctomatic offers web-based software, mostly for heavy users of the popular eBay auction site, helping them to manage inventory in a more efficient manner. The service was only launched last summer. The two brothers formed Auctomatic in early 2007, but they were not able to secure funding from either any private Irish investors, or the state investment body, Enterprise Ireland. Instead, they got backing from California’s Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator.

Patrick Collison will now work with Live Current, while his brother appears for his school-leaving examination in Limerick. Live Current boasted a turnover of close to £5bn in 2006 and a market capitalisation of £35m. It owns internet addresses like perfume.com, brazil.com and cricket.com.

Web-enabled real time streaming and bluecasting enhances digital signage

Digital signage is gradually but surely making its way into the advertising world and also getting more sophisticated. Digital signage has also become more affordable. Enhanced technology, comprising the debut of (Web-enabled) real time streaming, bluecasting, RSS feeds, and mobile-enabled barcodes means that these technologies will only grow.

Dynamax Technologies Ltd. recently inked a deal with Clear Channel to build an international network of digital billboards all over the US and Europe. Over the next five years or so, Clear Channel will convert many of its existing outdoor ads - from analogue to digital formats.

“Digital signage 3.0 combines analytics with targeted real time content to measure performance at the register,” said VP of business development at Dynamax Technologies Ltd. (North America), Tom Nix. He added: “If you start thinking about where consumers are engaging these improved technologies and what they’re doing with this information, you can really gain by integrating a traditional ad campaign with a digital sign.”

The firm has previously conducted a successful campaign for the band Coldplay wherein consumers who walked by a digital billboard could interact with it and receive a free song download. Digital signs are frequently employed in conjunction with other new-age marketing channels like mobile, print or Internet ads.

An insight into how and when people perceive an e-mail to be spam

Fifty-six per cent of consumers treat marketing messages, even from known senders, to be spam if the email is ‘just not interesting’ and 50 per cent consider ‘too frequent mails from firms they know’ to be spam, according to a study conducted by Q Interactive conducted in conjunction with MarketingSherpa, a marketing research firm.

The study, Spam Complainers Survey, studied consumer perceptions of what they think to be spam, why they report mails as spam and what they believe happens when the ‘report spam’ button is clicked. According to the study, 31 per cent of respondents stated they consider ‘e-mails, which were once useful, but are not relevant anymore’, to be spam.
Curiously, respondents stated they hit the ‘report spam’ button for many reasons. Forty-one per cent report spam if ‘the mail was not of interest to them’, 25 per cent if ‘they get too much mail from the sender’ and 20 per cent if “they get too much mail from all senders.” Consumers don’t always follow the meaning of hitting this button. Over 56 per cent of respondents feel that clicking the button will ‘filter all mail from that sender’. About 47 per cent of respondents feel, they’ll be unsubscribed from the list by hitting the ‘report spam’ button.