Lesley Richards - Samia Kesseiri of Web Certain

Reach your marketKeyword researchSegmentation and geotargetingDecide on your budgetLocalize your objectivesMedia PlacementLanding page localization (landing page relevancy - unique sale propositions …)Track it !Campaign performance analysisTest it !What not to do …Political factorsdon’t assume everyone purchases onlineAlgerians research online and buy offlineIn China payment is not with credit card but Cash on deliveryGeotargeting is essential in big countries (see Brasil for example)CPC can vary considerably - don’t expect to pay less in india than in the UKEnglish is used in B2B - don’t think you need to go local always …Don’t “translate” your website, localiseLocal Search Engine & media placement don’t think global, go localdon’t underestimate brand awareness that generic terms can offer

• Yandex
• Google.com
• Mail.ru
• Rambler.ru

(liveinternet.ru stats)Google has taken traffic from rambler.rumail.ru is in the business of mail hosting (mail portal using Yandex as search technology)The share is stable, the audience is growing.Internet Advertising Market in Russia.Figures from 2007 are presented - display ads and contextual, display ads look like they will go down with the crisis, contextual will probably stay stable.Contextual Advertising (October 2008)

• Yandex 60%
• Google 32%
• Begun 9%

there are general searches.Search traffic is the best traffic, slightly better in quality.Bidding:Yandex - in units (1 unit = 30 Rub, aprox 1 USD)Begun - in RubelsMinimum order:Yandex 300 Rub. with monthly budget above 21.000 Rub you get a personal manager (english speaking)Begun 140 rubModeration:be prepared to produce certificates to advertise alcohol tobacco medicine, etc.Yandex - do not accept irrelevant keywordsBegun is “tolerant” in moderationYandex has “authorized agencies” they are marked as “reliable” - they are careful on the service provided not so much the turn over. they are relatively reliable.Yandex Direct Now:more than 50.000 advertisers monthly more than 1.200.000 active ads monthlymore than 3.500.000 active keywords in ads monthlyMore than 40% of Yandex reach is in Moscow, then St. Petersburg, other russian 30% other countries 12%Average price for click:high tech $ 0,31Consulting $ 0,62Tourism $ 0,34B2B $ 0,66 (going down along with finance, and education)Yandex offers an English interface but not the best it could be presenting russian where English is not available.Yandex offers premium and guaranteed positions - the most intensive way of promoting your site on Yandex search - then there is rotation.Premium position gives 5 time more traffic.In Begun you bid for positions.Yandex presents an automatic words refining tool (maximizes CTR by adding stop words: if your ads are not triggering clicks they will automatically add some negative keywords that will reduce your add exposition)

• Nielsen Online, what consumers do and consume online, what they say and share online
• Italy 20% increase in the number of people using search engines, uk +6% Spain +12%
• People are spending more time in search online +26% Uk + 10% Italy
• In Sept. 13% of click throughs are paid , 9% (D), 7% (F)
• 28% CTRs are travel, multi category commerce, 27% home and fashion 25% (this is UK, similar in Germany, a bit on the lower side in France 19%-17%-17%)
• drilling down Insurance, gifts 6 Flowers, multi-category, loans, free merchandise, credit card, multi-category level, cruise lines, hotels, automotive
• Secure click throughs: 4.2%(UK) 2.6% (F) 2.1% (D) - a search link will ultimately lead to a secure website
• Google, Google Images, MSN/WL, ASK, YAHOO!, AOL, Virgilio Ricerca, Viola, Trovit, Google Product are the main engines, in this order
• Mobile search becoming an increasingly important aspect of search, Italy in head of Europe, UK, F, D, ES - italy a 2.2 million unique mobile internet users
• Mobile search is a male orientated landscape - roughly 70/30 in Europe, but tends to be closer to a 50/50 split in the UK
• Age group 35-49 is the biggest group (always for mobile)

“In 2008, China’s net-using population has surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest, with 253 million people according to the latest report.’ Robin Li, CEO of Baidu said: “This has brought SEM with greater development opportunities, so I believe that more and more Chinese enterprises will set up departments within the next 5 years to learn and promote SEM.”

Currently, Japanese characters can be used as “郵便局.jp”. There are about 1 million “.jp” domains registered and about 140,000 of them use Japanese characters.

In October, Google had already announced that Google Sites - a tool for creating free sites online - was also available in the Portuguese language.

Accoona launched in 2004 with great fanfare including having former US President Bill Clinton speak at its opening. Accoona claims to list 49,728,000 company profiles on the search engine. In China Accoona has supplied search results to Sina.com and Sohu. Accoona also has an exclusive partnership with the China Daily News, the most widely-read daily newspaper in China.

“We have worked intensely for the last two weeks in order to get all of the legalities and finances in place for the takeover and there is still a great deal of work in front of us to integrate and re-launch the search service,” states Rasmus Refer, founder of the Masterseek Corp.

The study also revealed that Japan recorded the highest penetration of users of Apple iTunes software during the month, when compared with US, UK, France and Germany. 25% of Japanese Internet users accessed iTunes in August.

Yahoo! Music led the category with 7.3 million visitors, followed by Sony Connect with nearly 3 million visitors and Sony BMG Music Entertainment with 2.7 million visitors.

Youa will compete with current C2C marketplace leader Alibaba’s Taobao.com which owns 57% of the marketshare. Alibaba recently announced that it will invest RMB5 billion (US$732 million) over the next five years to further strengthen the Taobao marketplace. Taobao has 80 million registered users and over 1 million sellers. Other C2C marketplaces include Paipai.com, and Eachnet.com. According to Piper Jaffray Youa will make up about 3-5% of Baidu’s estimated revenues in CY09.

Top 10 Properties by Number of Japanese Unique Visitors in August 2008:
Yahoo Sites
Google Sites
Rakuten Inc
Microsoft Sites
FC2 inc.
NTT Group
Wilimedia Foundation Sites
Livedoor
GMO Internet Group
Nifty Corporation

Read more here.

Source: TheNextWeb

Publisher requirements are quite high. Among other factors sites must have an Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better and a minimum of 2,000 pageviews per day. This looks like an interesting option for advertisers targeting the continent or publishers looking to monetize though.

The Electronic Union of Travel Industry EUOTI is launching its FIRST International Congress concerned with the online travel business in Sharm El Sheikh Egypt 15-19/12/08

Appfrica, web portal offering news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship in technology, published information and statistics on the current state of Internet penetration in Africa.

In order to avoid duplicated content I’m linking to Sara Holoubek’s post at DM News.

The Complexity and Social Networks Blog presents an interesting paper on mobile phone users and data stored in service provider databases around the world, discussing the different types of data captured and how it can be used to provide insight into human cultures.

Examples are provided from a variety of cultures and hundreds of millions of individuals, illustrating how phones can be used as a cultural lens, improving understanding of a particular cultures pace of life, reactions to outlier events, and social networks.

The paper in PDF format can be downloaded here.