Cost per Engagement

We have heard about CPC (Cost per Click) and CPM (Cost per Mille) as existing forms of ROI in online

advertising. Recently a new form of online advertising is evolving called Cost per Engagement (CPE). This form of advertising allows the web user to take complete control of what they wanna watch on the web. Traditionally we have tried to encourage ((or forced) users to click or view our banners. As per a research conducted by Nielson most pages are viewed for less than two minutes. User sessions may have become shorter and shorter but have definitely increased. Looking at the above graph we can see the comparison between 3 of the most known social networking sites. The number of minutes spent on a website by an average user is trending southward for the list websites except for Facebook. If we calculate the number of minutes spent by an average user per day on each of these sites it averages to approximately 0.46 minutes per day. The traditional form of online advertising doesn’t guarantee user engagement. We would not know if the user was genuinely interested in the ad offering and did he actually view or click the ad. CPE encourages the user to engage with the brand and learn about the product. Again you have few seconds to get the attention of the user on the website to encourage him to interact with the ad for a longer period. In this form of advertising users will definitely cooperate as they have the controls. An advertiser will get genuine customers who may be interested in the product offering. Check out this video which explains the CPE concept.

One of the companies that offer this form of advertising is VideoEgg . It reaches about 50 million users per month, is a leading ad provider to social media sites like Bebo, MySpace and Meebo. It is also one of the most popular ad providers for Facebook application pages.

Check out how has social networking sites taken over search engines.

Sunday - the Death Day

The traffic jams are worse on a Sunday (the first day of the week here in UAE) at the Dubai Sharjah highway. I fail to understand that if almost the same numbers of people travel every day, why is Sunday the death day? Motorists dread the day when accidents happen, because it means that they are stuck in traffic even longer.

Some of my friends had the following reasons for Sunday traffic chaos: -

1) After a long weekend people tend to wake up late, hence this results in traffic jams.
2) It’s first day of the week so you can expect traffic
3) There are many school buses that cause the traffic (C’mon same no. of buses are there on the roads for the remaining 5 days)

On the contrary some of them say it’s Sunday and all of us know that there will be traffic chaos, so they prefer leaving a little early.

Well, of some of them leave a little early while other’s leave late, then why do we have the jams on Sunday?

Arab Youth in the Digital World

Staying in the Gulf, I interact with the citizens of various GCC countries in Dubai on a regular basis. I was wondering how different the culture amongst the youth of the Arab world is? For some people the picture is entirely different and I don’t wanna start a debate on this. The Arab youth like any other young generation is expressive. They are very active in social media, blogs, graffiti etc. The youth are very proud of their culture and prefer wearing their national dress to express their individuality. They are very expressive online in the form of blogs. Try googling the word Saudi Blog and you would find 17 million entries. Saudi government was so impressed, rather annoyed by the art and craft done by kids on public property that they decided to dedicate a graffiti park for the artists. More and more youths are on Arabic chat sites expressing themselves in their code language “Arabizi”.

Middle East makes 2.5% of the total internet users (December 07') in the world as per “World Internet Stats”. Many of the youths are now uploading videos on Youtube trying to express themselves and correct their society’s image which has been ruined by the media. Check out this video found online.The Real Arabs

Earthquake in UAE (Dubai)

Attention Attention - UAE was rocked by few tremors today at around 03:08 p.m. These tremors are a knock on effect of the powerful earthquake that occurred in Bandar Abbas, Iran. measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale. The quake sent a wave of panic among the residents of Ajman, Sharjah and Dubai. Most of the high rise buildings were evacuated. I personally experienced the tremors while I was in a meeting at the Ibn Batutta mall. The sofa on which I was sitting started to slide away, but I thought it may be due to some construction work happening in the area. When I returned back to DIC, I saw most of the offices evacuated with people getting into their cars to rush back to their home. The only rumor I have heard is that an under construction bridge in Dubai Marina has collapsed. This news is yet to be confirmed. It is all fine now as people have gone back to their buildings.

What an Idea - Mumbai...

On my recent visit to Mumbai, I could see all the major hoardings taken over by the new Idea Cellular campaign. The tag line was “Jiska number Mumbai ka, woh Mumbai Ka”. “Mumbai what an Idea”. I have attached one of their creatives. Check out their Mumbai Ka Idea, which allows you to take a Rapchick Mumbaiyya test and earn a certificate. I must say, this is an excellent viral activity which would help one to get more visitors to the website and spread the campaign message. Here is my certificate ;)

Abhishek Bachan is the face of Idea Cellular’s current campaign. Their creatives remain the same on all the ad mediums, which allows you to relate to the campaign. Idea Cellular is part of the Aditya Birla Group, which operates in approx 12 states in India and is one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the country.