Reduced price online advertising on indigenous websites is now available with the arrival of a new blind network to the advertising scene.

Blind networks or value networks are a group of websites that have unsold banner ad space on a monthly basis. As this inventory is perishable and useless once expired, they are sold to blind networks at a lower price on the condition that the publisher’s identity is not disclosed. This, of course, is to preserve and protect publishers’ key advertiser agreements and regular income streams.
Advertisers will be unable to target by site, but according to Michelle O’Keeffe, managing director of Media Brokers the latest blind network in the Irish market, advertisers can target ads by channel (news, sport, fashion), gender, demographic, just not by site. Media Brokers is also the first with its offering on indigenous Irish websites.
“The reason I think this is important is from a consumer perception and a consumer trust point of view we believe we’ll get higher click through rates. If you’re an Irish person on an Irish site, you’re going to think the advertising around it is meant to be you.” She gives the example of an Irish person on the New York Times website who didn’t feel that an ad for a specific computer company would be relevant to him because he was on a non-Irish site.
“From our tests we are seeing higher click through rates from Irish sites, there are many explanations for this; ads placed within relevant content, brands are aligned with reputable indigenous sites, a sense of consumer trust on respected and well known publishers,” says O’Keeffe.
Media Brokers will conduct pre campaign analysis of the client and the campaign objectives in order to best place the campaign within their platform. Using pre campaign analysis it intends to achieve strong click through rates from the outset and will optimise by publisher and creative throughout the campaign.

TechCrunch Europe, the European edition of the widely read tech blog, is looking for stories and views from the Irish tech scene.

Editor Mike Butcher last week wrote in a blog post that the blog would like “guest posts for TechCrunch Europe, written by people on the tech scene in Europe”.
Speaking to Prosperity’s Digital Ezine he said “it’s not very dissimilar to a newspaper calling for readers’ letters. But we’re a blog so we ask people to write guest posts.”
However, Butcher commented that he has found the amount of people willing to contribute from Ireland astoundingly low. “I’m generally fairly flabbergasted by it. Every time I go to Dublin … I get my ear talked off and it’s fantastic, there’s so much going on and then I go back to London and … nothing. I don’t hear what’s going on. It seems to be quite an internal conversation a lot of the time in the market there.”
I would love Irish entrepreneurs to ping me with any ideas for guest posts…. You’re native English speakers as much as the Brits so it doesn’t make any sense not to have more contributions and I know the Irish entrepreneurs are fantastic so I’d love more from there.”
People in the technology industry across Europe have been invited to submit pitches for blog posts that are likely to be closer to full-blown articles. So who should get their pen to paper? “We like the people who are CEOs, start-ups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, maybe occasionally the odd social media expert that actually does know what they’re talking about.” Ideally, guest posters should be from within the tech industry but, says Butcher, occasionally people come from left field “who isn’t necessarily an insider but has an interesting take on stuff.”

To find out more see the original blog post from Mike Butcher at: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/my-fellow-europeans-we-want-to-hear-your-voices-write-for-us/

A recent report from public relations company, Wildfire, states that technology companies are missing the point when it comes to social networking sites.
Their research has found that nine out of ten of these companies have a presence on at least two social networking sites, but most of these are disregarding the feedback from customers, and are therefore missing out on the powerful interactive aspect of these sites.

Essentially, these companies are viewing having a social networking presence as a box that must be ticked, but not a resource that can be of value. They miss out on a valuable business resource, but worst than that, they ignore the reality that the modern consumer audience will punish a brand for aloofness.

The study concluded that less than half of these leading technology brands have ever responded to a tweet on their Twitter pages. While only one in four companies responded to comments on their Facebook pages.

According to Danny Whatmough, a consultant at Wildfire “These organisations are using social networks like a press release or old media, but it has to be a two-way dialogue.”

“In some ways, not replying is worse than not having a presence at all. Firms have to monitor networks for mentions of their brands, and certainly respond when people get in touch.”

“These companies should be using these services to let people know about updates or patches and software changes,” said Whatmough. “But more than that, if people have questions then they should be responding with helpful advice and it becomes part of customer service.”

“It’s about being transparent and consumers react well to that, but it requires a big mind shift from companies,” he said.

Surveyed companies didn’t fare any better with their blogs, the report concluded, with less than half even bothering at all with a blog.

Where companies did have a blog, only 25% of blogs received comments on a regular basis, and only 9% of companies replied to comments on their posts.

Read the report: http://www.wildfirepr.co.uk/documents/social_media_report.pdf

Social media agency Simply Zesty hopes to triple the number of people it employs by the end of 2010.
Simply Zesty, which was established a year ago, recently announced that it had accepted an investment of €500,000 for a minority stake in the company, from The Oxford Research Agency (TORA), based in the UK. TORA specialises in FMCG new product development and customer experience research.

Simply Zesty director Niall Harbison told the Prosperity digital media ezine that the company was growing fairly fast without the investment to the point that it had 7 full-time staff.
“But we expect to be up to about 16-18 here in Ireland by the end of the year in Ireland as well as hopefully creating up to 6 jobs in the UK if everything goes to plan. We were a profitable company before investment but this helps accelerate our growth and enter new markets,” he said. Harbison established the business in May 2009 with co-founder Lauren Fisher.
According to Harbison, Simply Zesty, is hoping to add a new level of measurement to its social media offerings while also helping TORA to add a new level of social media to their research capabilities. “We want to add an extra layer of research and measurement to what we do so as we can really demonstrate how effective the work we do is. Measurement is the one area that is really lacking for social media and we want to try and exploit that as much as possible and bring the whole industry forward.”
TORA, he explains, has over 40 FMCG brands in the UK who will all hopefully be open to using social media in their marketing campaigns and as part of their overall strategy around customer service and other elements of their business where it might be relevant. According to Fisher, the company has some exciting projects lined up that will enable it to use social media in a completely new way.
“We are very excited about the level of growth that this will bring to the business and especially that it is going to be creating some much needed jobs here in Ireland in what are tough times,” concluded Harbison.

Keith from Strategem is in the hot seat and delivers a funny and engaging piece around his Digital Integrated Agency.