A BBC2 Makeover

I’ve posted about BBC ident revamps before and now (a little belatedly) I’ll mention the BBC2 revamp.

Another ?700,000 of licence payers money has paid for 14 new idents, all featuring the number 2 in various settings. Filmed in locations like South Africa these latest idents (very short, channel related film clips between programmes) supposedly convey that the channel has become a window on the world. There’s a new logo too, in deep aqua and a more comtemporary font. I like this cappucciono image pictured here.

Read what the BBC press office has to say on the matter.

I thought the idents used in the 1990’s were quite good.

Affiliate Networks Blogs: CJ Have One

Only spotted earlier this week that CJ have their own blog for us UK affiliates.

Seems to me that network blogs are few and far between. James Little was thinking along similar lines and is (or was) attempting to help affiliate networks/managers blog with this free (and ad free) affiliatemanagement.net offering (jolly decent of him I’d say) – thing is, those that have joined haven’t really posted that much yet from what I can see.

Clarke Duncan, a director of Paid On Results has been blogging for a month or two here and he seems to be letting us know about new merchants on several, competing UK networks. Jess Luthi who publishes this appears to be active in offering consultancy services to would-be affiliated merchants.

If you’re an amazon UK associate then their relatively new blog should be in your feed reader too.

But, to my knowledge, that’s about it really. Sure, most of the networks send regular newsletters via email but there isn’t much blogging going on.

Feel free to let me know me of all the ones I’ve missed (there must be a few at least).

Affiliate Marketing

Next Finding It Tougher Online

Happened to spot a quote reported in The Telegraph from Simon Wolfson, Chief Exec of Next relating to online sales

…not only is the cost of attracting online customers rising, but converting online window shoppers into customers is increasingly difficult.

As I’m an active affiliate of Next that quote makes for interesting reading. I tend to focus on the Next Directory rather than online shopping and although I haven’t encountered a decrease in transactions (I don’t do that many anyway) I wonder if there’ll be a downturn in sign-ups? Presumably, as more and more households own a Directory the demand for new sign-ups via search marketing will decrease anyway?

I gather that a new lowercase “next” logo is on its way too, so I’ll blog about that when I catch sight of it.

Slight aside: Old Next directories (the slimmer, Christmas supplements work very well) make for sturdy laptop and mouse mat supports when you’re sat watching TV in the lounge.

Next Online Shopping Affiliate Marketing

LV= Is The New Name. Where Is The Website?

Liverpool Victoria has announced their £2m investment in rebranding. The result? LV=

I read about this in The Telegraph this morning with interest because of my interests in branding; as a paying investor and as a search marketer with interests in personal finance.

LV= (LV equals) is one of those rebrands that I suspect will give rise to some discussion and possibly some derision. It’s a bit like MoreTh>n who also chose to include a mathematical operator (or meta character) in their brand name and I’m not convinced it works. To me, LV= and MoreTh>n for that matter creates confusion and uncertainty – how am I supposed to pronounce these names? Furthermore, online, how am I supposed to search for a brand such as LV=?

Apparently, Liverpool Victoria only had 2% spontaneous brand awareness. I’d like to hear what improvement they record in the months ahead. I like the new logo and I hope it works for them. The V looks a bit like a heart to me and I surmise that the company thinks so too by looking at some of the graphics on the company website. According to the company, this is what LV= means

The letters L and V have evolved from our heritage as Liverpool Victoria. The equals sign is a contemporary expression of our mutuality. As a “Society of Equals” we are wholly owned by our members and we have a “one member one vote” approach, unlike plcs with their institutional shareholders.Changing our brand name to something shorter and more memorable, that incorporates in a modern way our values of mutuality, we believe maintains the best aspects of our heritage but sharpens up our delivery.

Of course, I can search for LV= (current results). But does it bring back a relevant result for LV= or Liverpool Victoria? Well no, not at the moment. LV= have at least had the forethought to include a paid search ad to capture unsatisfied searchers. Andrew Girdwood, who I understand works in corporate search marketing, has recently discussed similar issues relating to Lynx For Men.

I know that LV= offer an affiliates programme and brand name bidding is not permitted so that should stop any unwelcome brand related, affiliate traffic. I imagine that domain name flippers will be looking to add to their portfolios though (an area that I have no knowledge of).

I wonder what the URL of the official site will become – or will it just remain as is?

Search Marketing Liverpool Victoria Branding

Adsense Referrals Beta – CPA Here We Come

Just received an email from Inside Adsense (no feed in reader yet) detailing the new beta for adsense non-google referrals. I’ve posted upon this topic before and todays beta news ties in with that post neatly. Take a look at adsense referrals beta for the lowdown.

Unfortunately, us UK publishers aren’t being considered for this beta at the moment – only US publishers I’m afraid. It’ll be interesting to see what mix of industries and merchants become available over time.

Glancing at the FAQs I notice this point

You may not use search engine marketing to purchase traffic for the specific and sole purpose of generating conversions, unless you have the express permission of the advertiser.

Always got to watch and abide by the T&Cs of course.

It’ll be very interesting to watch this referral programme develop!

GUtil Plugin For Firefox

I came across the GUtil firefox plugin (mozilla download) a month or so ago and I can recommend it.

It’s simple enough – it adds a menu option and/or button to your firefox toolbars. You get a configurable, dropdown bookmark list of stacks (though possibly not all) of google services from adsense to webmaster tools. Click on one of the bookmarks and it opens in a new tab.

Simple. Useful.

firefox plugins gutil

Adwords To Show Actual Number Of Searches?

SEOptimise report that Adam Parikh has spotted that adwords appear to be testing the display of the actual (well presumably rounded) number of searches for a given keyword phrase.

Such a feature would be more informative than the current 1-5 scale.

I’d really like the ability to have a nested sort on ascending “advertiser competition” within descending “search volume” to save me scrolling up and down looking for non-targetted, popular keyword phrases.

adwords Search Marketing

Google Will Be Highest UK Advertising Earner

The Telegraph reported this week that Google is on track to overtake ITV as the UKs highest advertising earner in about 2 years time. I’d posted back in November that Google was expected to surpass channel 4 – it now has.

Googles filed accounts show it generated £10.6bn in total ad revenues last year with 60% of that generated from US sources. The UK was the second-biggest individual source of ad spending. While reports suggest that the figures indicate a rapid shift away from traditional forms of advertising to the internet it should not be forgotten that google is widely reported to be turning its attention to radio ads and newspaper ads too. I can only assume that if google provide the same quality of ad performance data for more traditional ad media, that too will be a raging success.

Google Advertising