Kameir

Pay-per-clicks generated more than $10 billion revenue in the USA in 2005. Pay-per-click is an advertising pricing model in which advertisers pay search engines such as Google or Yahoo based on how many consumers clicked on a promotion.
But Internet advertisers begin to realize that the online market is starting to saturate. Therefore they are branching out into the off-line world in search for new revenue streams.
65% of small businesses are not online yet, according to Colizer Inc. a small but fast growing Internet marketing company in San Diego. Colizer is offering Internet marketing solutions for small business without access to the Internet.
AOL adding a pay-per-call solution to its revenue model in 2005. Pay-per-call ads appear at the top of sponsored links in AOL Search results, and display a toll-free number in the search result. Clicking on the ad directs the searcher to an information page with a description and additional details about the advertiser, rather than to a landing page on the advertiser’s web site.
Colizer’s CEO Christian Kameir explains: ‘The danger of pay-per-click or pay-per-call is that it can be miss-used by individuals who want to harm their competition. If I wanted to deplete my competitors pre-paid account with one of the search engines I simply spend half an hour repeatedly clicking his link. The same could happen with pay-per-call where someone can just repeatedly call the 800-number and hang up or worse program a dialer to do the same.
Colizer developed a solution for small businesses to close the gap between the consumers who wants to find a small business online and the business that does not have an Internet presence yet. Reportedly more than 65% of all US businesses are not yet represented on the Internet. Colizer created a service called LOXTER – the local exchange carrier, a local directory and virtual 800 service. LOXTER’s database holds the records of more than 28,000,000 businesses in the US. Unlike traditional directories like the Yellow Pages, LOXTER does not charge the business for a listing but provides the basic listing 100% free of charge.
Once the web user finds a company he wants to contact, he can simply click a button on the listing and enter his phone number. LOXTER is connecting the web user to the business, free of charge for the user – just like an 800 number. There is no need for the web user to install any software or have a microphone connected to his computer as LOXTER uses the phone number of the user. LOXTER also generates an email to the web user (if he subscribes to the free service) that allows the web user to leave feedback for the business which can be read by other potential clients.
LOXTER has published the BETA version of its system and is currently accepting pre-signups at www.loxter.com.

WikiPedia contributors suggest that the Virtual Economy started with virtual realities such as the popular  massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of WarCraft. However, one could argue that Richard Nixon invented the Virtual Economy in 1971.

First off, for those readers that did not study linguisics: pleonasm is defined as ‘the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense’ (i.e. ‘green gras’). And for those that skipped business class: economy is defined as ‘the orderly arrangement and management of the internal affairs of a state or of any establishment kept up by production and consumption’.

The critical term here is ‘orderly’. Since the day the first note barrer handed in his raw material to receive a promissary note for his goods and went on to use this note in exchange for a different good, there had been a strong relationship between production and consumption. Then around 650 AD, the emperor of China began to issue paper “value tokens” for general use. As Marco Polo reported enthusiastically in 1275, “I tell you that people are glad to take these tokens, because wherever they go in the empire of the great Khan, they can use them to buy and sell as if they were pure gold”.

But these notes were tied to and could be exchanged against a specific piece of metal. However, the United States abandoned gold as the foundation of its monetary system when President Franklin Roosevelt ended Americans right to surrender paper dollars for gold and even to own gold bullion and finally when President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and denied foreign governments the right to turn in paper dollars for gold. The year was 1971. And this was the year the United States accepted a de facto Virtual Economy.

The question you should not ask a man .. particularly a German.

Qualitative data analysis should become a very profitable industry, as companies are accumulating Peta-bytes of unused data. Google seems to agree as the recent purchase of Trendalyzer shows.

Trendalyzer is a data analysis software for animation of statistics that was developed by the Gapminder Foundation in Sweden and acquired by Google Inc. in March 2006. The beta version is a Flash application that is preloaded with statistical and historical data about the development of the countries of the world .

If you can tolerate his Swedish accent watch Gapminder founder Hans Rosling speak at the Googleplex 😉

In the age of open source and crowd-sourcing solutions as well as the social media phenomenon the Marketing Mix as broken down by Jermoe McCarthy into ‘PPPP’ might need to be refined. Traditionally ‘PPPP’ stood for:

• Product (including features and support!)
• Pricing (not only monetary but also time and energy!)
• Promotion (branding, PR, advertising, sales)
• Placing (geo, channels, market segments – gender, age, education etc.)

Consumers today expect a level of involvement in product and service design that cannot adequately be embraced using just four ‘Ps’ alone as these represent a one-way, company-oriented view. What is needed therefore is the opening of a channel that allows for immediate consumer input and feedback by the company in a two-way or ‘many-way’ fashion (i.e. forum).

More about developing the right marketing concept.