Taking it's lead from the US company, Proctor & Gamble in the 1950's, the marketing industry historically described marketing expenditure as either 'above the line' or 'below the line', covering external expenditure on advertising and internal marketing and promotional costs, respectively. This distinction is now obselete and the important features now are:access to multiple channels, so key decisions are about channel mix; 'coupling' between online and offline channels, with potential for each to affect the other; 'hard' commercial models based on explicit metrics versus 'soft' models based on sponsorship and product placement; exploiting interactivity in channels, including blogging, to filter and amplify impact; harnessing related activity to increase visibility, such as search engine optimisation;harnessing content-driven and surrogate channels to drive PR and other messages;and wide range of yield management tools to optimise expenditure. Advertising is covered separately in Catalyzt.
Mobile content distributor IMI Mobile, based in Hyderabad in India is buying digital music distributor DX3 of London as a beachhead to push in to the European and non-mobile markets. The UK company distributes music to white-label platforms like that of UK broadcaster ITV. IMI's delivery platform distributes to a range of tier-one networks, but is currently limited to mobile services.
Sarita Jones, 25 March 2009
Intuit, the accounting systems and book-keeping solutions player, has confirmed it is moving into the Software as a Service market, with new applications in field services, inventory handling and sales management, which could see the company competing against Salesforce.com.
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22 September 2008
Aegis Group plc, the marketing communications group, has acquired US search engine marketing agency, Range Online Media. The acquisition price was not revealed but Range Online Media has gross assets of $12.0m.
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12 September 2008
Amazon has announced a video-on-demand streaming service in the US as internet and consumer electronics companies try to match the capabilities of US cable and satellite providers. The internet retailer said that advertising-free movies and television shows could be watched instantly within a...
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05 September 2008
BT is finally moving back into the online classifieds space by acquiring the classifieds website site Ufindus for £20m in cash. BT lost its monopoly over 192 directory inquiries when Oftel deregulated the UK telecoms market in 2000, enabling new brands to combine new online and phone listings.
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15 July 2008