To avoid filters, marketers need to know what keyword would be considered as SPAM in the system.

Interactive advertising can be categorized into few categories. One of the categories of interactive advertising is brand advertising. It is built to gather product awareness by providing the users of what the product benefits and name are. In this category, direct-response advertising is also used. It is made to stimulate action on the users’ side. In addition, customer retention advertising is applied. It will sent out reminders to users about company’s promotions and coupons.

The goal of interactive advertising is no different from the traditional advertising, to sell products or services.

Google AdSense is an example of program for contextual advertising. It provides Google’s webmasters with JavaScript code which it inserts relevant advertisements into web pages from the Google’s inventory of advertisers. The relevance of advertisement is generated by Mediabot, a Google’s tool, which it indexes the content of a web page. AdSense is able to target advertisement  to the site and its content accurately. In addition, if some try to fool the Mediabot by cloaking its web pages, it might result website getting ban.Cloaking the web pages is something like showing a different page to viewer rather than the one showed to search engines.

If a firm decides to use contextual advertising, then it show be aware of Click fraud, a dark side of online marketing. It is done by clicking on a paid advertisement on purpose which can be fraudulent or non-legitimate. It can be done to raise competitors’ marketing expanse or to increase web publishers’ revenue.

Google is the most used and popular search engine services in the world, while Google has a 68% U.S. searches share. Google earn its place because Google has huge data sources and fairness in ranking. It is easy to use and convenient. If companies can optimize their websites for Google, their results will show up in higher rank in Google’s search engine.  Higher the ranking in the results, the higher view to the websites will be generated; therefore, more business.

As Seth Godin Mentioned in this video, Sliced bread and other marketing delights, people that marketers should target are those would listens not those in the middle. People he describes in Japanese term, Otaku. Those who listen then would be influencers for their friends and family, people in the middle.

Marketers can exploit people’ communication using social networking tools like facebook and e-mail, to do what they want. They can influence those who cares. Because companies can achieve the same goal or even better, Viral marketing has become successful. Company do not have to spend same amount of money on TV commercials.

After gathering the precious data, marketers’ job is not done. The most important part comes after, analyze the data. Web analytics systems can be usually categorized into two approaches, server-based and browser-based. Served-based approach is usually generated automatically in first-party server log files form. On the other hand, browser-based approach is useing JavaScript code embedded on html pages to let other server site know each time the page is loaded into a web browser. Google analytics is an example of browser-based approach, it has more flexibility in terms of information that marketers want to record. One of Google analytics’ advantages over its rival is that it is free.

In the article, “Web Analytics Primer: Five Metrics Demystified,” Michelle Megna basically reveals how to do web analytics in five steps. The first step she stated is “to get brief understanding form original data.”  Understand what the data is telling you and what to do next. Following that the second step is describe as understanding what traffic sources are. The third step is to fix stuff and saving money from learning rate metric.” The fourth step is Site Overlay which means the company can understand what pages customers view the most and what pages they do not like in the websites. The last step is focus on the report, outcome, that shows companies areas need to be changed and improvement.

In conclusion, web analytics allow web marketers understand area of improvement needed for their sites, pages are often visited by viewers. Marketers can learn from data analysis and success for future references.

eBay sends out promotion emails to users every week. In the email, promotion details are not just limited to users’ favourite sellers but also other products they think the users might be interested in. While users go through the email in detail, information may draw users’ attention that generates traffic to eBay’s site and possibly makes sales.

NIKEiD is also a form of permission marketing. They allows users to customize/design shoes or gears on the internet with the same amount of price compares what people can get in store. NIKEiD can promote these unique goods towards other users, while users can post goods they customized onto their Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace sites. For facebook, images of customized goods will be posted on the individual’s main page and all individual’s friends will be able to take a look while other possible interests can be generated.

In conclusion, permission marketing is an evolution of direct marketing. From the databases generated, marketers can create strategies which increases support and ultimately changes consumer behaviours.

Is this a good thing for the record companies? Songs and albums been digitalized which allows consumers to purchase them online. Unlike physical goods such as an actual CD, these products are intangible. Instead of storing them on shelves or warehouses, these products are stored in servers which save a lot of cost for the record companies. Such intangible products would not have inventory problems, because they can be endlessly duplicated. However, that leads the downside of digitalized media where people can copy and send to their friends. How to attract consumers to purchase songs from iTune store instead of download them for free would be an important area for marketer to study on.

An interesting model is used by EMI record company and TLC Marketing in UK. EMI Music UK announces strategic partnership with TLC Marketing. They allowed third party to offer EMI’s products through promotions. This alliance creates an incentive to EMI’s consumers.

How important is the digital album sales for the record company? Between the year 2006 and 2007, there was only around 10% of growth in overall music sales; however, sales of digital songs had more than 120%.

In the end, Record companies should be continuously selling their CD in physical form. There are still consumers do not have or use MP3 players. Also there are customers would prefer CD and better sound quality that MP3 cannot offer. MP3 files use a lossy compression algorithmin its codex.

To summarize up, digitalized in media leaded to not just opportunity but threat for the record companies. How to eliminate this threat would be a good area for marketers to work on.

However, as technology advance, people’s privacy can be violated without been aware of it.

Now a day, new laptop often comes out with build in webcam and microphone. It is very convenient, but many people are probably not aware that someone can watch and listen to them by remote their computers. Some can do so simply by Trojans, or even communicate tools like MSN Messenger.

For me, I would like to turn the webcam around when I not using it. You never know whether there are someone watching you or not.