Back to basics

Paul Mallett, Managing Partner

This week saw Vint Cerf inducted into the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame. No great surprises, but I think, really timely.

The technology news agenda is becoming increasingly dominated by patent squabbles and the consumer version of the internet by Apple’s proprietary walled garden.

None of this was ever meant to be.

What always appealed to me (and the rest of the world) about the internet was its freedom, its lack of walls, its built in democracy. It enabled anyone, anywhere, to have a voice, a point of view. It enabled anyone to be a star, a revolutionary, a diplomat, a journalist. And it did this by being free and open.

Vint Cerf was one of the chief protagonists of this viewpoint. He and his colleagues were born from US counterculture and, funded by the military and the space race, invented a new age, equal in importance to the industrial revolution and the ability to replicate words through printing.

And they always said it should be open and free. As Vint himself said:

“We said we’re not going to patent it, we’re not going to control it. We’re going to release it to the world as soon as it’s available, which we did.”

This spirit lives on in the Open Source world of Linux and Android, but is being continually eroded by the closed systems of Apple and the patent squabbles of the tech giants.

Me, I prefer the world of Vint – the Godfather of Cerfing (I’ll get my coat)

Happy birthday ZX Spectrum

Andrew Brown, Creative Director

The ZX Spectrum was the most important home computer ever made. After two years of prodding the touch-insensitive keys of the black and white, low res 1k ZX81, the Spectrum exploded into our homes with seven colours, one channel of sound, 16k of memory and a high resolution 256×192 pixel screen.  It. Was. Awesome.

It’s often cited that the importance of these Sinclair machines was that they taught a whole generation to code. By sitting for hours inputting line after line from magazines we learned BASIC and grew up with a grounding in the principals of computer logic.  But what really distinguished the Spectrum from its nuts and bolts predecessor wasn’t the code we created ourselves. With the Spectrum we had our first taste of APPS. And APPS have tended to be the killer reason every other home computer innovation has survived or failed ever since.

Ask people to talk about ZX81 games and they might cite 3D Monster Maze and maybe a couple of others. Ask people about Spectrum games and you’ll be lucky to get away as aficionados wax lyrical about Jet-Pac, Ant Attack, Manic Miner and countless other games which were bought on cassette tapes and loaded by audio into the machine.The App(lication) was born, came of age and grew up fast on the Spectrum.  Small companies like the critically acclaimed “Ultimate” (from Twycross in Leicestershire) made small fortunes and grew into big companies. Ultimate later became Rare which in turn became part of Microsoft Studios and currently release games such as Kinect Sports.

There are always small tweaks you can be making for ongoing optimisation, and keeping up with Google’s search quality changelog is a job in itself. It made 50 amends in the last month alone. Did you know about all of them?

This post looks beyond the ongoing optimisation and looks at five aspects of SEO you should consider implementing next.

1. Rich snippets
Rich snippets are pieces of information that are displayed below your search listing which offer users and search engines a better understanding of the content that will appear on your page.

Implementing rich snippets is a must. Google now supports an array of common uses for rich snippets such as business locations, reviews, product information, authorship and recipes. One of the best places to start for rich snippet is Schema.org

Ultimately, rich snippets will increase your natural CTR and, in a competitive market where each listing on the first page of search results offers the user some kind of benefit, rich snippets can help you stand out in the crowd.

2. Mobile content
Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile has been in action from December last year and was introduced to improve search quality on smartphones. Crawling the web, it learns which web pages and content are designed specifically for mobile and no doubt favours them in search listings to improve search quality on smartphone devices.

You may have successfully delivered your SEO campaign on desktop, but mobile results can be very different and it’s important to capitalise on this growing market by making sure your content is mobile-friendly.

3. Broaden your horizon
Other than purchase intent keywords (users looking to purchase immediately or close to purchase) there could be other opportunities further up the purchasing funnel where you have the chance to influence a potential purchaser.

e.g. An e-commerce store selling guitars could target search terms around ‘how to play the guitar’ or even terms as generic as ‘music lessons’.

4. Natural search attribution
Other than direct response, what role does natural search play in your customer’s journey and how can you optimise it by delivering the best suited content? Being able to understand the full customer journey, and the channels they use to purchase, is key for the last point to actually work.

Using the same example, you would probably see traffic for ‘music lessons’ have an awful conversion rate to sale, but measuring how it impacts the overall conversion rate and uplift in sales could demonstrate how valuable this traffic is.

5. Social search
Beyond the number of shares, likes, tweets and +1’s, as technology develops social search will undoubtedly become about the sentiment and context in which a brand is mentioned and, potentially even more importantly, by whom. It is likely that a search engine would place a higher level of authority on a more influential social profile.

This is mainly theory, but I would back it up with the fact that Google is investing time into better indexing of social profiles on over 200 social networks and that it is already able to determine the most relevant profile based on a search query. Given that this is generally more interesting than link building, I hope it happens!

Welcome to this week’s juiciest digital stories, hand-picked for you by the beady-eyed Brasscals, including Tupac lives (or does he), spies and video games, digital v analogue, the first interactive car configurator on YouTube and Instacanvas galleries. Read on and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments bit as always!

The World (of Warcraft) is Not Enough

Andrew Brown, Creative Director

So the US Government has awarded a £110,000 contract to San Francisco-based Obscure Technologies to develop technologies that will allow them to capture date from players communicating on games consoles over voice or instant messaging. They fear terrorists and paedophile rings may be using these channels to communicate.

Encryption of secret communications has a long and fascinating military history, from substitution ciphers used to protect commercially sensitive information on Mesopotamian tablets three and a half thousand years ago, to the famous Enigma code of World War II.  It’s interesting to imagine secret agents tramping around the Eastern Kingdoms in World of Warcraft, trading unusual items stuffed with coded information with other agents across the world:

Thisur: The… spotted cuckoo is flying backwards?

Elándil: It’s a cold day for pontooning.

Pundits are unsure why the US Government believes terrorists might be using these in-game communication channels rather than just the instant messaging services that come as standard on consoles like the XBox, but I’d like to believe it’s because that’s what US spies themselves are using. But which games would spies favour? Call of Duty seems like a safe bet for both secret agents and terrorist cells alike.

Tupac lives! (As a hologram)

James Wheatley, Technical and Scoping Director

I’m not usually one for regrets but I have had a few. The biggest one was that I was unconscious in my tent during James Brown’s set at Glastonbury 2004. It was my maiden voyage to the festival and the general euphoria led me to underestimate my need for sleep. This critical misjudgement meant I completely missed the gig. My initial disappointment was further compounded when the hardest working man in show business died a couple of years later, along with my chance to see him live.

Or so I thought, until I saw this week’s news that despite his murder in 1996, legendary rapper Tupac Shakur made an on-stage appearance with Dr Dre and Snoop Dog at the Coachella festival.  Dying has never really been a problem for Tupac; a string of posthumous releases and a massive online conspiracy theory, ‘Tupac Alive’, has insured his continuing success.

This latest feat was actually achieved through an old technology; it’s based on a 19th century effect called Pepper’s Ghost and was originally created by reflecting an image of glass. The technology has been used before by the Gorillaz and other artists, but Tupac’s impromptu appearance at the festival blew a few minds.

This has prompted a flood of speculation that we will all be going to see our favourite deceased artists in the not too distant future. This will certainly provide some novelty amusement, though personally I think only Tupac and Elvis can really pull this kind of thing off as they didn’t really die in the first place…

Check out the video below. Be warned, the lyrics are NSFW!

Digital or Analogue. Quality or convenience?

George Hurrell, Digital Designer

The format/media that is used to distribute music to the masses has changed massively over the past 20 years. From vinyl to cassette to CD, to minidisc to MP3, to streams such as Spotify and Last FM. The ease, price and convenience that has come about from the rise of MP3s, and now services such as Spotify, mean we can access music where ever and whenever we like, but at what cost? Quality? Even 320kbps mp3s and lossless fomats such as AAC are only a quarter of the quality of something like a CD or vinyl.

2011 saw a 55% rise in sales of vinyl, which seems quite strange considering the current financial climate. Generally you will pay around £6 for two tracks on vinyl compared to 69p for an MP3 bought online. So what is it about vinyl that people are coming back to? Just a retro fad, the warm rich sound, the 12” artwork? For a vinyl junkie such as myself it’s so much more fun to receive a 12” pressed heavyweight vinyl with full colour artwork, than to watch a progress bar as your MP3 downloads.

This all brings me onto this fantastic music video I found which prompted me to throw up the discussion: quality or convenience? Watching this reminds me of listening to a track on Soundcloud where you watch the ‘sound wave’ as you listen to the track/mix. Each piece of vinyl (960 in total) has been pressed, hand labelled, numbered and polished and each one represents that particular frequency in the track.

Such a simple idea and really well executed.

Check out the video here:  Benga – I will never change.

First interactive car configurator on YouTube

Ben Brearley, Senior Account Manager

Breaking the mould of traditional car manufactures, Toyota US has launched the first interactive car configurator on YouTube to promote its Prius C model, aimed at the new generation of tech-savvy first time car buyers. The interactive configurator is like a Flash website, but embedded within the YouTube video interface, which is something I’ve not experienced before. Through a blend of clickable components you can customise your car and choose to watch the background video of the change being made or skip to the next component. Very slick! Gone are the boring drop-down menus of the majority of manufacturer websites.

As well as the innovative configurator there are useful, fun videos that deliver messages about the vehicle’s technical specification from some American comedians. A personal favourite line in the tech talk section: “young adults use the internet to perform their most important tasks from managing bank accounts, to watching cats play musical instruments!”. There are also humorous tutorials on financial planning for purchasing a car, how a dealership works and an MPG calculator. All of these elements have been wrapped up within ‘The Game of Life’ board game setting with the strap line ‘The game of life is full of challenges. Be a winner with the all new Prius C’.

It will be interesting to see how more brands use the YouTube channel to deliver interactive content in the future and if this type of configurator gets adopted by other car manufactures.

All that’s left now is to decide if I want the optional ‘Moon roof’!

Instacanvas

Ally Manock, Head of Digital Strategy, Planning and Insight

Lovers of Instagram will be happy to know that Instacanv.as is now offering to turn your photo filtered efforts into art. The website has been inviting Instagrammers to open up their own ‘gallery’. The catch is that to get your gallery open, you have to ask people to request that it opens. In a last minute attempt yesterday to get more visibility, they asked people to post a photo of themselves and at least five friends holding an “I love Instagram” sign.

This was my entry. Fingers crossed!

This launched four years ago in the US with well-known brands on board including Netflix, Fossil, MBNA and Target. So far announced in the UK is Blue Nile, Onlineticketexpress.com, Orvis UK, Shoes.com and Skechers; not quite as impressive a list of publishers, but time will tell what take-up will be like amongst merchants. Initial integration with Google Adsense should be an attraction for many publishers and will help Google grow its publisher list.

At first glance the interface looks up there with the best affiliate networks with the clean look and easy navigation of other Google products and the added benefit of real time reporting with multiple reports and filters available. Another benefit is integration with Google Merchant Center, allowing affiliates to take your existing product feed and list it on their sites. They also offer free data feed set-up which could be invaluable for ecommerce sites that have yet to get this off the ground.

In terms of technology they do seem to be ahead of the game. The interface suggests additional areas and affiliates for consideration for future growth of the campaign and there is talk of Google + integration for affiliate communication purposes. It is also partnered with new technologies and tools including Coull (video performance network allowing you to add annotations, calls to action and tracking links to video), Ringrevenue (pay per call), and Skimlinks, (converts product links into affiliate links and contextually matches to content).

I am looking forward to testing GAN in comparison with one of the more established affiliate networks. It remains to be seen how much control you will have over campaign initiatives such as tiered commissions and bespoke incentives and affiliate communication, as the human element is an important factor when building long term affiliate relationships. Watch this space!

Google has been forthright in its argument that traditional market research can be expensive and time-consuming. Google Consumer Surveys aims to change all of that. You can watch the promotional film below …

…but the basic premise is as follows.

• The survey will be distributed via the web, using ‘survey walls’. You’ll encounter a survey wall if you try to access premium content (e.g. news articles or films) and can choose to take the survey rather than paying directly. Google and the content owner will share the fee (currently $0.10 – $0.50 per response depending on targeting).
• You can only ask 1-2 questions per response, although you could use more questions across multiple surveys. This means that you won’t necessarily be able to draw analysis across questions in the way you would in a typical survey. This does make GCS ideally placed for mobile surveys however, where brevity is king.
• Demographic questions are not allowed and Google will instead infer demographic information for you to use for analysis through IP addresses and the presence of a cookie belonging to its ad network DoubleClick. This reduces the burden on respondents, but does mean there is a small margin for error.
• It’s the ultimate self serve tool. Create the question, set your target and wait for the responses to roll in which GCS will analyse for you (in the form of cross tabs and basic charts).

Google and GCS fans have been quick to point out that GCS provides a more representative sample than opt in online research panels. Arguably this is true as the respondent does not need to have opted in (thus restricting your sampling pool) and they don’t habitually take part in lots of online surveys. As someone who uses the internet on a daily basis however and rarely, if ever, pays for content, I have to wonder exactly how representative it will be. Is the majority of the internet population paying for content on a regular basis, and if not, what proportion is likely to encounter the survey wall?

GCS is also based on standard, text-based questions at the moment. A lot of discussion in the research industry over the last few years has been around the value of text-based questions and the extent to which they reveal a respondent’s true behaviour or intentions. New techniques such as neuroscience, analysis of facial expression, ethnography and semiotics have been touted as the solutions to this issue, with practitioners claiming their enhanced ability to reveal deeper and more accurate analysis of the human condition. Google has been the largest proponent of behavioural data online to date however, through AdWords, and the two combined make a pretty potent combination.

So what is the likely impact on the market research industry?

• GCS will make large scale research available to small companies who previously couldn’t afford it. If it’s done well, this can only be a good thing.
• GCS won’t replace the full service research agency’s services as Google is not providing any skills or expertise in research design or analysis (as yet, anyway).
• It will bolster the researcher’s toolkit in terms of providing a new, and in some cases better, tool to access consumers online. Minimising the burden on respondents will be a healthy challenge for those used to serving long and boring surveys.
• It won’t necessarily provide a convenient route to target niche or B2B audiences, although this could be something that is introduced as the service develops.

Are you an experienced PR professional able to make a difference at Senior Account Manager or Account Director level?

Working as part of our forward-thinking communications team you should be able to demonstrate that you know the PR business inside-out.

We have a reputation for delivering outstanding results for our clients, which is why we want only the very best people.

If you have already achieved a lot, but you want to achieve a lot more, send your CV in confidence to Rachel Gladwin: r.gladwin@brassagency.com.

Spotify Play button

Simon Marshall, Digital Account Director

I remember when MySpace was popular (yes, I’m that old) and it was commonplace to be able to add music tracks to pages to share your, often terrible, music taste with unsuspecting visitors. Well now you can do the same (almost) with Spotify play lists, thanks to a handy iframe embed feature on their developer pages. It’s not that straightforward (nothing ever is) because you need a Spotify account to listen to the tracks. Clicking the link launches Spotify if you have it installed or asks you to download if not; a clear move to get new users to sign up.

Whilst the customisation isn’t very flexible (you get a few size and two colour options) you can embed a link to any play list or song you want, as long as it’s in Spotify’s ever growing database (10,000 songs a day are added). So what are you waiting for? Share those new loves and old embarrassments… your blog will never have sounded so good.

Here’s our (very random) Brass play list… Hey don’t blame me, I just work here.

A deeper kind of social networking?

Leah Kayles, Social Media Editor

Share your thoughts in the comments bit at the bottom.

Instagram: more than just a vintage filter?

Craig Goode, Digital Designer

Instagram, a popular photo application and social network on iPhone, launched for Android devices on Tuesday and hit the one million download mark in less than 24 hours.

A few years ago, more and more of my friends’ photos started popping up on Facebook, shot with a camera phone and vintage filter. Quickly I couldn’t open Facebook without being hit with a wall of hipster picnics with a red tint and vignette overlayed. The snobbish photographer in me came out and I dismissed these apps as a fad. More and more of my of my creative friends started singing the praises of Instagram to me though and telling me about how much of a friendly and supportive photographic community it had become. So when I finally gave in an got an iPhone it was one of the first apps I installed to have a play with, and I love it.

iPlayer finally on Xbox LIVE

Ben Brearley, Senior Account Manager

Finally it has arrived… BBC iPlayer on Xbox LIVE! The exceptional video-on-demand service offered by the BBC has been available since 2007 online for computer users and has been gradually released across multiple platforms such as Virgin Media, BT Vision, smart TV, mobile phones and game consoles, namely PS3 and Nintendo Wii. However if, like me, you don’t have any of these platforms, watching on your TV has been a little awkward. Until very recently the only way I’ve been able to enjoy iPlayer on the TV was to hook up my computer (messing with lots of cables) and stream via my laptop to the TV. Not really the normal enjoyable experience of watching TV from the sofa with a remote control. Until now!

With the release of the free BBC iPlayer app on Xbox LIVE, I can now simply power on the 360 console through the game controller and access all the great content that is available on iPlayer with the same ease as changing a TV channel with a normal remote control. And better still, if you have the Kinect device you are able to play programmes using hand gestures or voice commands.

The simple user interface design from the website has migrated onto the app in a fabulous way. Big visuals and easy-to-navigate categories make the experience of viewing the player very simple and straightforward.

According to figures released on the BBC website, there were 433 million iPlayer programme requests in 2011 with a quarter coming from TV devices and a prediction that this could be 50% of requests by 2015. And I for one can see this being even larger, as I’m already using the service a lot more now it’s on Xbox LIVE. Watching what we want, when we want has got to be the future.

Eve Online

Paul Mallett, Managing Partner

This week saw one of the biggest breakthrough moments in computer gaming history… and there wasn’t a badly drawn stick man burglar with a gonad on his back in sight.

I am of course referring to the impending launch of Dust514, the console counterpart to EVE Online. 400,000 players of Eve already play the world’s biggest MMORPG space game. It’s like World of Warcraft but for cool people.

What’s radical is that CCP games (the Icelandic developers) have linked a true FPS console game into the same universe. This means that players are not simply playing a scripted story; they’re being paid by Eve players to carry out real missions with real consequences in a much wider universe.  Anyway, enough pre-amble, just watch the demo from last weekend’s EVE Fanfest by clicking on this story’s title. The action starts around 13m 30s.

The votes are in for the UK’s #1 media owner

Claire Stanley, Online Media Director

It’s interesting being an independent media buying agency in 2012 and reading the results from the IPA’s latest media owner survey. It’s great to see how our experience of media owners is represented in the industry as a whole. Many clients may consider smaller agencies not to have the same level of relationship and therefore service with the media owners as the biggest players, but this survey is proof that this is not always the case.

The survey is done by questioning the likes of our online display team on a number of factors; helpfulness, understanding of the brief, speed of response and the like.

The mix is an interesting one, incorporating named sites such as ITV with its pre-roll opportunities; ad networks such as Specific which is powering ahead with its video and sponge cell offerings making rich media more accessible; more traditional media houses like Bauer and the online big boys such as YouTube and Trip Advisor.

It’s great to see some of the more old-school players such as Microsoft Advertising and AOL listening to the feedback we give them to be in amongst the most improved performers alongside whipper-snappers such as Glam and Tribal Fusion.

However, Spotify has been voted a well-deserved ‘number one online media owner’ this spring, and we agree. So much so, that we have invited them to speak at our summer online media event. (Details to come soon!)

Unreal to Real

James Wheatley, Technical and Scoping Director

In between recent digital projects I have been doing a spot of dragon hunting. They are not easy to bring down but a couple of firebolt staffs will usually do the trick.  Okay I confess, I haven’t actually done much dragon hunting yet, I’ve been too busy decorating my house, I now have a fully functioning kitchen, a well stocked larder and a state-of-the-art alchemy lab.  It’s good to have somewhere to hang one’s helmet after a hard day’s decorating.

I am of course talking about Skyrim rather than real life (where I’ve also spent more time decorating than chasing dragons).  It looks like I’m not the only one suffering game world confusion.  The FBI has agreed a deal with Epic Games to license the Unreal Engine to create training simulations.

This actually makes a lot of sense, although the FBI have used virtual simulations for a while it must be frustrating to install a state of the art simulator only to find you can get a more realistic experience with an Xbox, Kinect, projector and a copy of CODMW3.  Though I wonder if this makes gamers a shoe in for the FBI?

Mad Men 8-bit Advergame

Ally Manock, Head of Digital Strategy, Planning and Insight

When I was a kid, I loved reading those books that let you decide which direction to go in the story – “if you’d like to see Carla go to babysit little Jack, turn to page 15. If you want to see Carla sack it off and go riding motorbikes, turn to page 20.”

I’m a control freak, so what’s not to love with an actual story I can control? That’s why I love the new advergame for Mad Men. The 8-bit-y-ness appeals to the geek in me and I get to control how Don Draper meets his maker.

C’mon Betty, let’s get some revenge…