Media Planning in the digital environment can one define relative media effectiveness?

Media planning should be orientated to optimise effectiveness, however the ongoing digitisation of media channels, proliferation of media vehicles and fragmentation of target audiences (Bianco, 2004), continues to complicate the process of selecting media through which to deliver effective marketing communications and has reinforced the complex, silo driven, intra-media planning environment (Assael, 2011) with channel decisions being taken in isolation via unrelated and unconnected media measurement (Schultz, 2006). But is it possible to identify real media effectiveness? Jenkinson (2007) highlights that planning is often polarised between ‘attitudinal’ and ‘behavioural’ paradigms, which view ‘effectiveness’ differently. A number of studies have sought to identify the most effective medium, either across an ‘all adults’ sample frame (Danaher & Rossiter, 2011, Meulders, 2011) or via media usage structures (Grenville & Novak, 2010) but measurement criteria differ. This study seeks to identify if a common understanding of ‘media effectiveness’ can be found that enables robust comparison of media. In addition, it looks to test the principle of media usage segmentation and explores whether effectiveness varies by such audience segmentation. In depth interviews with agency and corporate media planners will be undertaken followed by a consumer survey segmented across digital natives and digital immigrants

Healthy Food Portal Business Plan and Its Function Model

Business planning is a tool of paramount importance in the process of company management, on the efficiency of which the future functioning of the enterprise depends. Formation of a business plan enables the team to productively and competently use existing funds and resources in their work and apply planning as a very effective management mechanism (Hamm, 2016). The goal of this final project is to develop a business plan for a healthy nutrition portal for Bellyful LLC. Bellyful is based in Boston, USA, and the portal will be its first product. Our client is interested in researching the prospects of launching a new project and planning activities for the implementation of development and promotion. But he was faced with the problem that he could not independently correctly and efficiently develop a business plan for the project. This problem was identified by the client during an interview with him. We chose interviews, brainstorming, content analysis, desk methods (Internet sources, literary sources, articles, media), analysis of competitors, analysis of marketing research as the main methods of collecting information. The object of this project is the portal of healthy nutrition of the company “Bellyful”. The subject of this project is a business plan for a healthy nutrition portal of the company “Bellyful”. Also, during the interview, we were assigned tasks that are required to achieve the goal and solve the problem: develop all sections of the business plan; provide a set of recommendations based on the results of the research that will help the client understand what to focus on during implementation. Based on the interview, during the initial search and analysis of literature and information sources on the research topic, this list of tasks was expanded and clarified: analyze the theoretical foundations and trends of business planning; determine methods of data collection and analysis, possible ethical problems of the project; to give a general description of the project for the development of the portal; research the healthy nutrition market; draw up a marketing plan for the project, taking into account its target audience; draw up an organizational plan for the project; draw up a production plan of the project; assess the potential risks of the project; draw up a financial plan for the project; elaborate the recommendations. To solve these problems, we carefully read the educational and methodologicalliterature on planning a new business, revealed the concept of business planning, the structure of a business plan, considered the main indicators of project performance, studied the trends observed in business planning. After that, we proceeded directly to the description of all sections of the business plan. During this part of our project, we used various methods of analyzing and researching the collected data and distributed them to the points of the business plan. So, we studied in depth the field of healthy nutrition, identified the actual creation of a portal for healthy nutrition, identified the main competitors. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, we were able to determine the functionality of the portal which will be in demand among consumers. Also, we developed a marketing strategy, taking into account the target audience of the new business. An important point of our research was the preparation of a financial plan for the project, which will help us determine the estimated costs and profits of the enterprise. Calculation of project performance indicators helped us prove that the nutrition portal is a project worthy of the investment. In addition, we studied all possible project risks and developed measures to prevent their occurrence. The final result of the work, in addition to a full-fledged business plan, is a list of recommendations for the implementation of a business plan and project development for the client. As one of the recommendations, we suggested the development of portal prototypes. In the modern world, this is a necessary condition for the high-quality development of an information product. Our team has developed a functional model of a healthy nutrition portal for our client. The results of the work can be used in practice when developing a portal for healthy nutrition

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

How much money should a promotional email marketing campaign really cost?

How much money should a promotional email marketing campaign really cost? Nowadays, the business scenario is characterized by being always changing both due to the global economics and financial crisis, and, simultaneously, consumers are becoming more demanding. If, on one hand, advertisers must find new media solutions, with more impact and, necessarily, cheaper and more efficient, because of the crisis and the consequent revenues decrease, on the other hand, the consumer is more susceptible to advertising. This scenario, followed by an Internet growth, caused huge changes on the pricing negotiations established between advertisers and agencies. In this context, new types of media to promote goods and services emerged with the purpose of helping companies to succeed in a so dynamic environment. Email became thus one of the most relevant ways, used by advertisers, to interact with potential customers, making products/services and promotions known. Therefore, the questions that arise are related to the prices being charged by agencies, with respect to email marketing campaigns. Because of it, this dissertation focuses on understanding how agencies, in Portugal, establish the prices that they charge to advertisers and which factors should influence the price of promotional email marketing campaigns. From a detailed literature review, several research questions are identified. Subsequently, interviews are conduced to various players in the Portuguese advertising industry, including full service agencies, digital marketing agencies and advertisers. Throughout those interviews, it is possible to clearly understand the Portuguese email market, concluding about the impact of certain variables in the prices being charged. Finally, a multivariate analysis is developed in order to understand the real correlation between the variables obtained by the interviews and the prices being applied. From the results, it is possible to conclude that the Portuguese email industry is characterized by high information asymmetries, and the prices being charged are not in equilibrium: ads’ supply tend to be higher than demand. Actually, this industry is characterized by a high threat of new entrants as well as substitute products/services, being the bargaining power of buyers (advertisers) high and the suppliers’ (ESPs – Email Service Providers) bargaining power low. The high intensity of competitive rivalry also explains the phenomenon mentioned before. In fact, agencies in Portugal charge the prices of promotional emails taking into account their own expectations, prices being applied in the past and the industry benchmark. Additionally, the size of the advertiser, the number and type of form fields, and the campaign goal (level of persuasion), empirically, can also explain email marketing campaigns’ price.Quanto é que realmente deve custar uma campanha promocional de email marketing? Actualmente, o cenário empresarial encontra-se em permanente mutação, devido à crise mundial, e à procura cada vez mais exigente por parte dos clientes. Se, por um lado, a crise e, a consequente diminuição de receitas, obrigam os anunciantes a encontrarem novas formas de publicidade, com mais impacto e, inevitavelmente, mais baratas e eficientes; por outro lado, o consumidor tornou-se mais sensível. Este cenário, acompanhado pelo boom da Internet, causou alterações nas negociações entre anunciantes e agências, levando à criação de novas formas de promoção capazes de ajudar o cliente a triunfar neste ambiente de rápida mudança. O email deixou, assim, de ser uma mera ferramenta de comunicação, passando a ser uma das formas mais utilizadas pelos anunciantes para interagir com potenciais consumidores. Posto isto, a questão que se impõe encontra-se relacionada com os preços que têm vindo a ser cobrados pelas campanhas de email marketing. Assim, a presente dissertação visa perceber como é que os preços das campanhas de email marketing são determinados e que factores as agências têm em consideração e pensam ser cruciais na determinação destes preços. Neste sentido, várias questões de pesquisa são elaboradas a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica detalhada. Posteriormente, são conduzidas entrevistas a vários actores da indústria da publicidade em Portugal, incluindo agências de meios, agências especializadas em marketing digital e anunciantes. Através destas entrevistas procura-se perceber o mercado português de emails, assim como concluir sobre o impacto de certas variáveis na determinação dos preços das campanhas de email. Por fim, uma análise multivariada é desenvolvida de forma a perceber a correlação entre as variáveis obtidas através das entrevistas e os preços praticados. A partir dos resultados obtidos, conclui-se que a indústria portuguesa de emails é caracterizada por fortes assimetrias de informação, sendo que os preços cobrados parecem não estar em equilíbrio: a oferta de publicidade tende a ser superior à procura. De facto, a forte ameaça à entrada de novos players; a existência de diversos substitutos; o forte e o baixo poder negocial dos compradores e dos ESPs, respectivamente, e a concorrência crescente parecem explicar este fenómeno. As agências em Portugal cobram os preços das campanhas de email em função das expectativas de negócio, dos preços que têm praticado no passado e, considerando, o que a concorrência aplica. Além disto, o tamanho do anunciante, o número de campos existentes na página de submissão de dados e a tipologia destes campos (nível de confidencialidade), tal como o objectivo da campanha (nível de persuasão) parecem ser as principais variáveis que explicam o preço cobrado pelas campanhas de email em Portugal

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Marketing Strategies Used by Specialty Photo Retailers to Grow Revenues

The advent of digital cameras, including those in smartphones, has caused an upheaval in the photo industry that led to the bankruptcy of Kodak and the closure of most independent photo stores. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore marketing strategies that specialty photo retailers in the United States have used to grow revenues after the shift to digital imaging technologies. The conceptual framework of this study was Rogers\u27s diffusion of innovations model specifying typical movement of information through communications channels in a social system over time. Data sources included semistructured interviews with 5 photo retailers, photos of facilities and pointof- sales displays, website pages, and social media. Data were analyzed using inductive coding of phrases and words from interviews, followed by identification of common themes. Additional data gleaned from participants\u27 displays, websites, and other documents supported interpretations of themes through methodological triangulation. Strategies that the 5 participating retailers used to grow revenues were manifest in 3 major themes: adoption of new technologies, market segmentation, and marketing communications. Study participants described various strategies to acquire customers including the use of technology (e.g., enterprise-level management systems), defining market segments underserved by competitors, and customizing marketing communications for specific targeted segments. A viable retail channel can produce social change by providing sources of information on new products that can enhance consumers\u27 lives and create economic growth via new jobs