Business Marketing

PayPal

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:23:00 +0700

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders.

A PayPal account can be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card. The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either request a cheque from PayPal, establish their own PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to their bank account.

PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It may also charge a fee for receiving money, proportional to the amount received. The fees depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type. In addition, eBay purchases made by credit card through PayPal may incur extra fees if the buyer and seller use different currencies.

On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.[Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Austin, Texas in the U.S., Chennai, Dublin, Kleinmachnow (near Berlin) and Tel-Aviv. As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank.

On March 17, 2010, PayPal entered into an agreement with China UnionPay (CUP), China's bankcard association, to allow Chinese consumers to use PayPal to shop online. PayPal is planning to expand its workforce in Asia to 2,000 by the end of the year 2010.

Between December 4–9, 2010, PayPal services were disrupted due to denial-of-service attacks organized by Anonymous in retaliation for PayPal's decision to freeze the account of WikiLeaks citing terms of use violations over the publication of leaked US diplomatic cables

Beginnings

The current incarnation of PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially featured financial services with email payments as a feature.

At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.

To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal used a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test.

eBay watched the rise in volume of its online payments and realized the fit of an online payment system with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint its official payment system, dubbing it "eBay Payments," but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions. For this reason, PayPal was listed in many more auctions than Billpoint. In February 2000, the PayPal service had an average of approximately 200,000 daily auctions while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April 2000, more than 1,000,000 auctions promoted the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.

Acquisition by eBay

In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay's subsidiary Billpoint, Citibank's c2it, whose service was closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect, whose service was closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay subsequently ceased operations on December 31, 2007.

Some competitors which offer some of PayPal's services, such as Google Checkout, Wirecard, and Moneybookers remain in business, despite the fact that eBay now requires everyone on its Australian and United Kingdom sites to offer PayPal. eBay Australia was subsequently forced to moderate its position by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, mandating that sellers on eBay Australia offer PayPal as one of the (but not necessarily the only) payment methods.[26] These accepted payment methods include bank deposit, cheques and money orders, escrow, and credit cards (processed by other than PayPal).

In January 2008, PayPal agreed to acquire Fraud Sciences, a privately-held Israeli start-up company with expertise in online risk tools, for $169 million, in order to enhance eBay and PayPal's proprietary fraud management systems and accelerate the development of improved fraud detection tools. In November 2008, the company acquired Bill Me Later, an online payments company offering transactional credit at over 1000 online merchants in the US.

PayPal's total payment volume, the total value of transactions, was US$ 60 billion in 2008, an increase of 27 percent over the previous year, and US$ 71 billion in 2009, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year.[31] The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing e-payments for retailers off eBay.

Marketing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Mon, 23 May 2011 01:50:00 +0700

Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Developing a Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results. Commonly, marketing strategies are developed as multi-year plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions to be accomplished in the current year.
Time horizons covered by the marketing plan vary by company, by industry, and by nation, however, time horizons are becoming shorter as the speed of change in the environment increases. Marketing strategies are dynamic and interactive. They are partially planned and partially unplanned. See strategy dynamics.

Marketing strategy involves careful scanning of the internal and external environments which are summarized in a SWOT analysis. Internal environmental factors include the marketing mix, plus performance analysis and strategic constraints. External environmental factors include customer analysis, competitor analysis, target market analysis, as well as evaluation of any elements of the technological, economic, cultural or political/legal environment likely to impact success. A key component of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company's overarching mission statement.

Once a thorough environmental scan is complete, a strategic plan can be constructed to identify business alternatives, establish challenging goals, determine the optimal marketing mix to attain these goals, and detail implementation. A final step in developing a marketing strategy is to create a plan to monitor progress and a set of contingencies if problems arise in the implementation of the plan.

Types of strategies

Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

Strategies based on market dominance - In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are four types of market dominance strategies:

• Leader

• Challenger

• Follower

• Nicher

Porter generic strategies - strategy on the dimensions of strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope refers to the market penetration while strategic strength refers to the firm’s sustainable competitive advantage. The generic strategy framework (porter 1984) comprises two alternatives each with two alternative scopes. These are Differentiation and low-cost leadership each with a dimension of Focus-broad or narrow.
• Product differentiation (broad)

• Cost leadership (broad)

• Market segmentation (narrow)

Innovation strategies - This deals with the firm's rate of the new product development and business model innovation. It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation. There are three types:

• Pioneers

• Close followers

• Late followers

Growth strategies - In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”. There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:

• Horizontal integration

• Vertical integration

• Diversification

• Intensification

A more detailed scheme uses the categories:

• Prospector

• Analyzer

• Defender

• Reactor

• Marketing warfare strategies - This scheme draws parallels between marketing strategies and military strategies.

Strategic models

Marketing participants often employ strategic models and tools to analyze marketing decisions. When beginning a strategic analysis, the 3Cs can be employed to get a broad understanding of the strategic environment. An Ansoff Matrix is also often used to convey an organization's strategic positioning of their marketing mix. The 4Ps can then be utilized to form a marketing plan to pursue a defined strategy.

There are many companies especially those in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) market that adopt the theory of running their business centered around Consumer, Shopper & Retailer needs. Their Marketing departments spend quality time looking for "Growth Opportunities" in their categories by identifying relevant insights (both mindsets and behaviors) on their target Consumers, Shoppers and retail partners. These Growth Opportunities emerge from changes in market trends, segment dynamics changing and also internal brand or operational business challenges.The Marketing team can then prioritize these Growth Opportunities and begin to develop strategies to exploit the opportunities that could include new or adapted products, services as well as changes to the 7Ps.

Real-life marketing

Real-life marketing primarily revolves around the application of a great deal of common-sense; dealing with a limited number of factors, in an environment of imperfect information and limited resources complicated by uncertainty and tight timescales. Use of classical marketing techniques, in these circumstances, is inevitably partial and uneven.

Thus, for example, many new products will emerge from irrational processes and the rational development process may be used (if at all) to screen out the worst non-runners. The design of the advertising, and the packaging, will be the output of the creative minds employed; which management will then screen, often by 'gut-reaction', to ensure that it is reasonable.

For most of their time, marketing managers use intuition and experience to analyze and handle the complex, and unique, situations being faced; without easy reference to theory. This will often be 'flying by the seat of the pants', or 'gut-reaction'; where the overall strategy, coupled with the knowledge of the customer which has been absorbed almost by a process of osmosis, will determine the quality of the marketing employed. This, almost instinctive management, is what is sometimes called 'coarse marketing'; to distinguish it from the refined, aesthetically pleasing, form favored by the theorists.

Business Management

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Sat, 21 May 2011 17:55:00 +0700

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

Because organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to 'manage' oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others.
History

The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially tools), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]

Some definitions of management are:

* Organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of clearly defined objectives. Management is often included as a factor of production along with machines, materials, and money. According to the management guru Peter Drucker (1909–2005), the basic task of a management is twofold: marketing and innovation.

* Directors and managers have the power and responsibility to make decisions to manage an enterprise when given the authority by the shareholders. As a discipline, management comprises the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing the firm's resources to achieve the policy's objectives. The size of management can range from one person in a small firm to hundreds or thousands of managers in multinational companies. In large firms the board of directors formulates the policy which is implemented by the chief executive officer.

Theoretical Scope

At the beginning, one thinks of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Henri Fayol(1841–1925)[2] considers management to consist of six functions:forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. He was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management.

Another way of thinking, Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". She described management as philosophy.[3]

Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."

English speakers may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.

Nature Of Managerial Work

In for-profit work, management has as its primary function the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing rewarding employment opportunities (for employees). In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management/governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers; but this occurs only very rarely.

In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor.

Business Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:06:00 +0700

Business Marketing is the practice of individuals, or organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they offer, or use them to support their operations. Also known as industrial marketing, business marketing is also called business-to-business marketing, or B2B marketing, for short. (Note that while marketing to government entities shares some of the same dynamics of organizational marketing, B2G Marketing is meaningfully different.)

Origins of Business Marketing

In the broadest sense, the practice of one purveyor of goods doing trade with another is as old as commerce itself. As a niche in the field of marketing as we know it today, however, its history is more recent. In his introduction to Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research, J. David Lichtenthal, professor of marketing at the City University of New York's Zicklin School of Business, notes that industrial marketing has been around since the mid-19th century, although the bulk of research on the discipline of business marketing has come about in the last 25 years.

Morris, Pitt and Honeycutt, 2001, point out that for many years business marketing took a back seat to consumer marketing, which entailed providers of goods or services selling directly to households through mass media and retail channels. This began to change in middle to late 1970s. A variety of academic periodicals, such as the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing and the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, now publish studies on the subject regularly, and professional conferences on business-to-business marketing are held every year. What's more, business marketing courses are commonplace at many universities today. In fact, Dwyer and Tanner (2006) point out that more marketing majors begin their careers in business marketing today than in consumer marketing.

Business Markets -- (Business Marketing Management:B2B By Michael D Hutt & Thomas w Speh) Business markets are markets for products & services, local to international, bought by;

1. Businesses,

2.Government Bodies,

3.Institutions such as Hospitals or corporates for incorporation (E.G; ingredient materials or components) for consumption(E.g process materials, office supplies & consulting services) for use or for resale..... The only markets not of direct interest are those dealing with products or services which are principally directed at personal use or consumption such as packaged grocery products , home appliances, or consumer banking The factors that distinguish business marketing from consumer marketing are the nature of the customer & how the customer uses the product.

Business & consumer markets - the link

Business markets have a derived demand - this means that a demand in business markets exists only because of another demand somewhere in the consumer market. Lets take a few examples :

• The government of India wishes to purchase equipment for a nuclear power plant in Jaitapur - a business market demand. The underlying consumer demands that have triggered this demand are that the people of India are now consuming more electricity - they have bought more washing machines, microwaves, computers, charged devices etc.
• The demand for restaurant furniture is based on the consumer demand of more restaurants.

Thus business markets do not exist in isolation. Cities or countries with growing consumption are generally growing business markets too.

A single consumer market demand can give rise to hundreds of business market demands. The demand for cars in India creates demands for steel, tyres, forgings, castings, plastic components which in turn has created demands for mining, rubber, forging machines, casting sand and polymers. Each of these growing demands has further triggered more demands. Thus as the spending power of citizens increase, the country generally sees a upward wave in its economy.

Adsense Policies

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:07:00 +0700

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is a free, simple way for website publishers of all sizes to earn money by displaying targeted Google ads on their websites. AdSense also lets you provide Google search to your site users, while earning money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

AdSense outlined

- Get paid for displaying targeted Google ads on your site

- Customize ads easily to match your site's look and feel

- Track your success with online reports

- Read how publishers found success with AdSense in our case studies

How does it work?

1.Choose the type and placement of ad units to be displayed

-Specify where you want ads to appear

-Choose what types of ads can compete for those slots

2.Highest-paying ads display

- Advertisers bid on your inventory in a real-time auction

- Always show the highest-paying ad

3.Get paid

- Google bills advertisers and ad networks

-Get paid through our reliable payment options

More features

-Filter competitors’ or unwanted ads

-Choose within a wide variety of ad formats

- Identify opportunities with performance reports and Google Analytics integration

- Read how publishers found success with AdSense in our case studies

If you have a website that complies with our program policies and eligibility criteria, we encourage you to give a try to AdSense.

Google AdSense Program Policies

Publishers participating in the AdSense program are required to adhere to the following policies, so please read them carefully. If you fail to comply with these policies, we reserve the right to disable ad serving to your site and/or disable your AdSense account at any time. If your account is disabled, you will not be eligible for further participation in the AdSense program.

Because we may change our policies at any time, please check here often for updates. Pursuant to our Terms and Conditions, it's your responsibility to keep up to date with, and adhere to, the policies posted here.

Adsense Policies.

AdSense

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:57:00 +0700

AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering (also owned by Google). In Q1 2010, Google earned US$2.04 billion ($8.16 billion annualized), or 30% of total revenue, through AdSense.

Google uses its Internet search technology to serve advertisements based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted advertisement system may enroll through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.

Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content; it is the most popular advertising network. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and sales people. To fill a website with advertisements that are relevant to the topics discussed, webmasters implement a brief script on the websites' pages. Websites that are content-rich have been very successful with this advertising program, as noted in a number of publisher case studies on the AdSense website.
Some webmasters invest significant effort into maximizing their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:[citation needed]

They use a wide range of traffic-generating techniques, including but not limited to online advertising.
They build valuable content on their websites that attracts AdSense advertisements, which pay out the most when they are clicked.
They use text content on their websites that encourages visitors to click on advertisements. Note that Google prohibits webmasters from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. The phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program, which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction. AdSense commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (i.e., a bid not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid. Google currently shares 68% of revenues generated by AdSense with content network partners.

Oingo, Inc., a privately held company located in Los Angeles, was started in 1998 by Gilad Elbaz and Adam Weissman. Oingo developed a proprietary search algorithm that was based on word meanings and built upon an underlying lexicon called WordNet, which was developed over the previous 15 years by researchers at Princeton University, led by George Miller.
Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics (company) in 2001,which was later acquired by Google in April 2003 for US$102 million.
In 2009, Google AdSense announced that it would now be offering new features, including the ability to "enable multiple networks to display ads".

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

Ad Serving

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Mon, 9 May 2011 18:30:00 +0700

Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the website or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different advertising campaigns.

Overview

An ad server is a computer server, specifically a web server, that stores advertisements used in online marketing and delivers them to website visitors.

The content of the webserver is constantly updated so that the website or webpage on which the ads are displayed contains new advertisements -- e.g., banners (static images/animations) or text -- when the site or page is visited or refreshed by a user.

In addition, the ad server also performs various other tasks like counting the number of impressions/clicks for an ad campaign and report generation, which helps in determining the ROI for an advertiser on a particular website.[citation needed]

Ad servers come in two flavors: local ad servers and third-party or remote ad servers. Local ad servers are typically run by a single publisher and serve ads to that publisher's domains, allowing fine-grained creative, formatting, and content control by that publisher. Remote ad servers can serve ads across domains owned by multiple publishers. They deliver the ads from one central source so thatadvertisers and publishers can track the distribution of their online advertisements, and have one location for controlling the rotation and distribution of their advertisements across the web.

The history of ad serving

The first local ad server was released by NetGravity in January 1996 for delivering online advertising at major publishing sites such as Yahoo and Pathfinder. The company was founded by Tom Shields and John Danner, and based in San Mateo, California. In 1998, the company went public on NASDAQ (NETG), and was purchased by DoubleClick in 1999. NetGravity AdServer was then renamed to DART Enterprise. In March 2008 Google acquired DoubleClick. Google has continued to improve and invest in DART Enterprise. DART Enterprise 7.5 shipped on October 25, 2010.

The first remote ad server was released by FocaLink Media Services in February 1996 for controlling the delivery of online advertising or banner ads. The company was founded by Dave Zinman and Jason Strober, and based in Palo Alto, California. In 1998, the company changed its name to AdKnowledge, and was purchased by CMGI in 1999.

Another remote ad server was introduced by David Stein at Burst! Media in January 1996 for controlling online advertising or banner ads. The company was founded by Jarvis Coffin, David Stein and Bob Hanna, and based in Katonah, New York. In 2006, the company went public on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (BRST).

Ad server functionality

The typical common functionality of ad servers includes:

* Uploading advertisements and rich media.
* Trafficking ads according to differing business rules.
* Targeting ads to different users, or content.
* Tuning and optimization based on results.
* Reporting impressions, clicks, post-click & post-impression activities, and interaction metrics.

Advanced functionality may include:

* Frequency capping so users only see messages a limited amount of time. (Advertisers can also limit ads by setting a frequency cap on money-spending)
* Sequencing ads so users see messages in a specific order (sometimes known as surround sessions).
* Excluding competition so users do not see competitors' ads directly next to one another. (Usually done by bidding on keywords)
* Displaying ads so an advertiser can own 100% of the inventory on a page (sometimes known as Roadblocks).
* Targeting ads to users based on their previous behavior (behavioral marketing or behavioral targeting).
* Targeting specific IP-adresses i.e. targeting specific individuals or companies

Ad targeting and optimization

One aspect of ad serving technology is automated and semi-automated means of optimizing bid prices, placement, targeting, or other characteristics. Significant methods include:

* Behavioral Targeting - Using a profile of prior behavior on the part of the viewer to determine which ad to show during a given visit. For example, targeting car ads on a portal to a viewer that was known to have visited the automotive section of a general media site.
* Contextual Targeting - Inferring the optimum ad placement from information contained on the page where the ad is being served. For example, placing Mountain Bike ads automatically on a page with a mountain biking article.
* Creative Optimization - Using experimental or predictive methods to explore the optimum creative for a given ad placement and exploiting that determination in further impressions.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_serving
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Online Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Mon, 9 May 2011 17:32:00 +0700

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples ofonline advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Competitive advantage over traditional advertising

One major benefit of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information and content that is not limited by geography or time. To that end, the emerging area of interactiveadvertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy.

Another benefit is the efficiency of advertiser's investment. Online advertising allows for the customization of advertisements, including content and posted websites. For example, AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdSense enable ads to be shown on relevant web pages or alongside search results of related keywords.

Revenue models

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.

* CPM (Cost Per Mille), also called "Cost Per Thousand (CPT), is where advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. "Per mille" means per thousand impressions, or loads of an advertisement. However, some impressions may not be counted, such as a reload or internal user action.

* CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is where advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.
* CPV (Cost Per View) is when an advertiser pays for each unique user view of an advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads).

* CPC (Cost Per Click) is also known as Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allowsadvertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site.

* CPA (Cost Per Action) or (Cost Per Acquisition) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the amount of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. This is the best type of rate to pay for banner advertisements and the worst type of rate to charge.

o Similarly, CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the merchant feels will lead to a sale.
o Also common, CPO (Cost Per Order) advertising is based on each time an order is transacted.

o CPE (Cost Per Engagement) is a form of Cost Per Action pricing first introduced in March 2008. Differing from cost-per-impression or cost-per-click models, a CPE model means advertising impressions are free and advertisers pay only when a user engages with their specific ad unit. Engagement is defined as a user interacting with an ad in any number of ways.[1]

* Cost per conversion Describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising

Forex Fixing

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Sun, 8 May 2011 23:14:00 +0700

An exchange rate is the rate at which one currency may be traded (bought or sold) for another currency. Normally it is more expensive to buy another currency than it is to sell that currency. This differential is referred to as the "spread" and the difference between the buy rate and the sell rate is referred to as the "mid rate".

Unlike gold fixing exchange rate fixing or forex fixing does not have a universal method to globally stabilize the exchange rates. Without any central point of reference, it is up to every country to control their own exchange rates with other currencies in what is now a highly volatile and potentially lucrative but dangerously volatile market.

There are various ways that any country can peg its currency to all the other currencies that it may have forex dealings with. Broadly these fall into three regimes:

* Hard Pegs — No separate legal tender; currency bound by arrangement
* Intermediate — From soft pegging through to tightly managed "floats"
* Floating — Freely managed or freely floating against other currencies, driven by supply and demand economics

Exchange rate fixing or the pegging of an individual country's exchange rate is generally done in an attempt to control that country's inflation. But this may have the undesired effect of slowing growth and even curbing the country's productivity. Assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is often called upon.History

From 1870 to 1914 all exchangeable currencies were linked to a gold standard and the rates between them were therefore fixed. This was abandoned at the start of World War I.

After World War II a meeting was conferred at Bretton Woods to discuss trade and economic stability at the global level. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was set up with the mandate of promoting trade and stability between all countries. This time all currencies were pegged to the U. S. dollar which, at the time, could buy an ounce of gold for thirty-five dollars, fixed!

The IMF could permit countries to adjust their currency's price under fairly stringent guidelines. In 1971 it became obvious that the US$ could no longer remain pegged to gold so the major trading countries started to adopt a free market valuation of their currencies. Any global pegging was completely abandoned in 1985 and individual countries have to decide on the best way to control their liquidity and their trade by adopting the forex fixing regime that they consider works best for them.

It is interesting to note over the last ten years a hardening and a softening of exchange rate pegging. In 1990, developed countries did not use hard pegging at all. In 2001 over fifty percent of them were hard pegging their currencies. Similarly, in 1990, under thirty percent of developed countries could be categorized in the floating forex fixing regime. This grew to over forty percent by 2001.[ibid]

Forex fixing: good or bad?

Some reasons for governments to peg their currencies are:

* The quest for stability
* Encourage foreign investors
* Consistent foreign curreny value
* Controls inflationary tendencies
* Creates demand because of the stability

Unfortunately forex fixing by individual countries is not sustainable in the long term. There are quite a few recent examples of countries suffering serious financial crisis because they have fixed their currencies high for too long. (e.g. Mexico, Russia and parts of Asia). Devaluing or revaluing a currency downwards proves that a government is no longer able to support the high value that is has pegged its currency. Fixing a currency higher than its fair market value requires a government to institute a number of measures to show the rest of the market that it is serious about its desired position. Certainly their dealings must be completely transparent and their financial institutions must be stronger, even bolder than the rest.

The preferable solution is the "floating" or "crawling" peg. Market forces are allowed to control the currency's natural fluctuations but in stepped quantities at arranged times. Government's employing this regime avoid panic devaluations (for the most part) and are well poised to move to a pure floating regime if and when appropriate.

Conclusion

Pegging a currency can work to produce conducive trading environments and fiscal stability respective to world markets but it does have a sinister side if over done.

There are a few difficulties that can be be attributed to floating a currency but ultimately these are far outweighed by the strength and stature a currency attains from the equilibrium attained by floating in the international market.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forex_fixing

Forex Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Sun, 8 May 2011 22:14:00 +0700

Forex AB is a Swedish financial services company. The company was started in 1927 as a currency exchange service for travellers, at the Central Station in Stockholm. The owner of Gyllenspet's Barber Shop, according to the legend, discovered that most of his customers were tourists in need of currency for their trips. The owner began keeping the major currencies on hand.

The company was subsequently acquired by Statens Järnvägar (now SJ AB), the Swedish State Railways, which expanded the operations until it was sold off to one of the managers, Rolf Friberg, in 1965. The company was the only one apart from the banks that was licensed to conduct currency exchange in Sweden.The company, which is still wholly owned by the Friberg family, has expanded into Denmark, Finland and Norway and has over 80 shops, often located at train stations or airports. The decrease in the business brought on by introduction of the euro has made the company look for alternative sources of revenue, like applying for a banking licence and attempting to move into more regular transaction services, earlier handled by Svensk Kassaservice, a subsidiary of the state owned Swedish postal company, Posten.

Since 2003 Forex is a licensed bank.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forex_Bank

FOREX (Foreign Exchange Market)

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Sat, 7 May 2011 20:10:00 +0700

The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a worldwide decentralized over-the-counter financial market for the trading of currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends. The foreign exchange market determines the relative values of different currencies.

The primary purpose of the foreign exchange is to assist international trade and investment, by allowing businesses to convert one currency to another currency. For example, it permits a US business to import British goods and pay Pound Sterling, even though the business's income is in US dollars. It also supports speculation, and facilitates the carry trade, in which investors borrow low-yielding currencies and lend (invest in) high-yielding currencies, and which (it has been claimed) may lead to loss of competitiveness in some countries.

In a typical foreign exchange transaction, a party purchases a quantity of one currency by paying a quantity of another currency. The modern foreign exchange market began forming after February 1973, when countries gradually switched to floating exchange rates from the previous exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Bretton Woods system.The foreign exchange market is unique because of

* its huge trading volume, leading to high liquidity;
* its geographical dispersion;
* its continuous operation: 24 hours a day except weekends, i.e. trading from 20:15 GMT on Sunday until 22:00 GMT Friday;
* the variety of factors that affect exchange rates;
* the low margins of relative profit compared with other markets of fixed income; and
* the use of leverage to enhance profit margins with respect to account size.

As such, it has been referred to as the market closest to the ideal of perfect competition, notwithstanding market manipulation by central banks.[citation needed] According to the Bank for International Settlements,[3] as of April 2010, average daily turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion, a growth of approximately 20% over the $3.21 trillion daily volume as of April 2007.

The $3.98 trillion break-down is as follows:

* $1.490 trillion in spot transactions
* $475 billion in outright forwards
* $1.765 trillion in foreign exchange swaps
* $43 billion currency swaps
* $207 billion in options and other products

Market size and liquidity

The foreign exchange market is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world. Traders include large banks, central banks, currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other financial institutions. The average daily volume in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. Daily turnover was reported to be over US$3.98 trillion in April 2010 by the Bank for International Settlements.

Of the $3.98 trillion daily global turnover, trading in London accounted for around $1.85 trillion, or 36.7% of the total, making London by far the global center for foreign exchange. In second and third places respectively, trading in New York City accounted for 17.9%, and Tokyo accounted for 6.2%. In addition to "traditional" turnover, $2.1 trillion was traded in derivatives.

Exchange-traded FX futures contracts were introduced in 1972 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and are actively traded relative to most other futures contracts.

Several other developed countries also permit the trading of FX derivative products (like currency futures and options on currency futures) on their exchanges. All these developed countries already have fully convertible capital accounts. Most emerging countries do not permit FX derivative products on their exchanges in view of prevalent controls on the capital accounts. However, a few select emerging countries (e.g., Korea, South Africa, India—; ) have already successfully experimented with the currency futures exchanges, despite having some controls on the capital account.

FX futures volume has grown rapidly in recent years, and accounts for about 7% of the total foreign exchange market volume, according to The Wall Street Journal Europe (5/5/06, p. 20).
Top 10 currency traders
% of overall volume, May 2010 Rank Name Market share
1 Germany Deutsche Bank 18.06%
2 Switzerland UBS AG 11.30%
3 United Kingdom Barclays Capital 11.08%
4 United States Citi 7.69%
5 United Kingdom Royal Bank of Scotland 6.50%
6 United States JPMorgan 6.35%
7 United Kingdom HSBC 4.55%
8 Switzerland Credit Suisse 4.44%
9 United States Goldman Sachs 4.28%
10 United States Morgan Stanley 2.91%

Foreign exchange trading increased by over a third in the 12 months to April 2010 and has more than doubled since 2001. This is largely due to the growing importance of foreign exchange as an asset class and an increase in fund management assets, particularly of hedge funds and pension funds. The diverse selection of execution venues have made it easier for retail traders to trade in the foreign exchange market. In 2009, retail traders constituted over 5% of the whole FX market volumes (see retail trading platforms).

Because foreign exchange is an OTC market where brokers/dealers negotiate directly with one another, there is no central exchange or clearing house. The biggest geographic trading centre is the UK, primarily London, which according to TheCityUK estimates has increased its share of global turnover in traditional transactions from 34.6% in April 2007 to 36.7% in April 2010. Due to London's dominance in the market, a particular currency's quoted price is usually the London market price. For instance, when the IMF calculates the value of its SDRs every day, they use the London market prices at noon that day.

Market participants

Unlike a stock market, the foreign exchange market is divided into levels of access. At the top is the inter-bank market, which is made up of the largest commercial banks and securities dealers. Within the inter-bank market, spreads, which are the difference between the bid and ask prices, are razor sharp and usually unavailable, and not known to players outside the inner circle. The difference between the bid and ask prices widens (from 0-1 pip to 1-2 pips for some currencies such as the EUR). This is due to volume. If a trader can guarantee large numbers of transactions for large amounts, they can demand a smaller difference between the bid and ask price, which is referred to as a better spread. The levels of access that make up the foreign exchange market are determined by the size of the "line" (the amount of money with which they are trading). The top-tier inter-bank market accounts for 53% of all transactions. After that there are usually smaller banks, followed by large multi-national corporations (which need to hedge risk and pay employees in different countries), large hedge funds, and even some of the retail FX-metal market makers. According to Galati and Melvin, “Pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other institutional investors have played an increasingly important role in financial markets in general, and in FX markets in particular, since the early 2000s.” (2004) In addition, he notes, “Hedge funds have grown markedly over the 2001–2004 period in terms of both number and overall size” Central banks also participate in the foreign exchange market to align currencies to their economic needs.

Banks

The interbank market caters for both the majority of commercial turnover and large amounts of speculative trading every day. A large bank may trade billions of dollars daily. Some of this trading is undertaken on behalf of customers, but much is conducted by proprietary desks, trading for the bank's own account. Until recently, foreign exchange brokers did large amounts of business, facilitating interbank trading and matching anonymous counterparts for large fees. Today, however, much of this business has moved on to more efficient electronic systems. The broker squawk box lets traders listen in on ongoing interbank trading and is heard in most trading rooms, but turnover is noticeably smaller than just a few years ago.

Commercial companies

An important part of this market comes from the financial activities of companies seeking foreign exchange to pay for goods or services. Commercial companies often trade fairly small amounts compared to those of banks or speculators, and their trades often have little short term impact on market rates. Nevertheless, trade flows are an important factor in the long-term direction of a currency's exchange rate. Some multinational companies can have an unpredictable impact when very large positions are covered due to exposures that are not widely known by other market participants.

Central banks

National central banks play an important role in the foreign exchange markets. They try to control the money supply, inflation, and/or interest rates and often have official or unofficial target rates for their currencies. They can use their often substantial foreign exchange reserves to stabilize the market. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of central bank "stabilizing speculation" is doubtful because central banks do not go bankrupt if they make large losses, like other traders would, and there is no convincing evidence that they do make a profit trading.

Forex Fixing

Forex fixing is the daily monetary exchange rate fixed by the national bank of each country. The idea is that central bank use the fixing time and exchange rate to evaluate behavior of their currency. Fixing exchange rates reflects the real value of equilibrium in the forex market. Banks, dealers and online foreign exchange traders use fixing rates as a trend indicator.

The mere expectation or rumor of central bank intervention might be enough to stabilize a currency, but aggressive intervention might be used several times each year in countries with a dirty float currency regime. Central banks do not always achieve their objectives. The combined resources of the market can easily overwhelm any central bank. Several scenarios of this nature were seen in the 1992–93 ERM collapse, and in more recent times in Southeast Asia.

Hedge funds as speculators

About 70% to 90%[citation needed] of the foreign exchange transactions are speculative. In other words, the person or institution that bought or sold the currency has no plan to actually take delivery of the currency in the end; rather, they were solely speculating on the movement of that particular currency. Hedge funds have gained a reputation for aggressive currency speculation since 1996. They control billions of dollars of equity and may borrow billions more, and thus may overwhelm intervention by central banks to support almost any currency, if the economic fundamentals are in the hedge funds' favor.

Investment management firms

Investment management firms (who typically manage large accounts on behalf of customers such as pension funds and endowments) use the foreign exchange market to facilitate transactions in foreign securities. For example, an investment manager bearing an international equity portfolio needs to purchase and sell several pairs of foreign currencies to pay for foreign securities purchases.

Some investment management firms also have more speculative specialist currency overlay operations, which manage clients' currency exposures with the aim of generating profits as well as limiting risk. Whilst the number of this type of specialist firms is quite small, many have a large value of assets under management (AUM), and hence can generate large trades

Retail foreign exchange brokers

Retail traders (individuals) constitute a growing segment of this market, both in size and importance. Currently, they participate indirectly through brokers or banks. Retail brokers, while largely controlled and regulated in the USA by the CFTC and NFA have in the past been subjected to periodic foreign exchange scams.[8][9] To deal with the issue, the NFA and CFTC began (as of 2009) imposing stricter requirements, particularly in relation to the amount of Net Capitalization required of its members. As a result many of the smaller, and perhaps questionable brokers are now gone.

There are two main types of retail FX brokers offering the opportunity for speculative currency trading: brokers and dealers or market makers. Brokers serve as an agent of the customer in the broader FX market, by seeking the best price in the market for a retail order and dealing on behalf of the retail customer. They charge a commission or mark-up in addition to the price obtained in the market. Dealers or market makers, by contrast, typically act as principal in the transaction versus the retail customer, and quote a price they are willing to deal at—the customer has the choice whether or not to trade at that price.

In assessing the suitability of an FX trading service, the customer should consider the ramifications of whether the service provider is acting as principal or agent. When the service provider acts as agent, the customer is generally assured of a known cost above the best inter-dealer FX rate. When the service provider acts as principal, no commission is paid, but the price offered may not be the best available in the market—since the service provider is taking the other side of the transaction, a conflict of interest may occur.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forex

Google Adwords

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Fri, 6 May 2011 21:50:00 +0700

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$23 billion in 2009 AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one headline and two additional text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Sales and Support for Google's AdWords division is based in Mountain View, California, with major secondary offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company's third-largest US facility behind its Mountain View, California, headquarters and New York City office. Engineering for AdWords is based in Mountain View, California.

Pay-Per-Click advertisements (PPC).

Advertisers select the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they will pay per click. When a user searches Google's search engine on www.google.com or the relevant local/national google server (e.g. www.google.co.uk for The United Kingdom), ads (also known as creatives by Google) for relevant words are shown as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. Clickthrough rates (CTR) for the ads are about 8% for the first ad, 5% for the second one, and 2.5% for the third one. Search results can return from 0 to 12 ads.

The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "quality score" of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business Though Google has released a list of full guidelines for sites, the precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and the parameters used can change dynamically.

The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads is a generalized second-price auction This is claimed to have the property that the participants do not necessarily fare best when they truthfully reveal any private information asked for by the auction mechanism (in this case, the value of the keyword to them, in the form of a "truthful" bid).

AdWords Features

IP Address Exclusion
In addition to controlling ad placements through methods such as location and language targeting, ad targeting can be refined with Internet Protocol (IP) address exclusion. This feature enables advertisers to specify IP address ranges where they don't want their ads to appear.

Up to 20 IP addresses, or ranges of addresses, can be excluded per campaign. All ads in the campaign are prevented from showing for users with the IP addresses specified.

Location-based exclusion is also offered as a method of narrowing targeted users.[11]

Frequency Capping
Frequency capping limits the number of times ads appear to the same unique user on the Google Content Network. It doesn't apply to the Search Network. If frequency capping is enabled for a campaign, a limit must be specified as to the number of impressions allowed per day, week, or month for an individual user. The cap can be configured to apply to each ad, ad group, or campaign.

Placement targeted advertisements (formerly Site-Targeted Advertisements)

In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a cost per impression (CPI) or cost per click (CPC) basis for site targeting.

With placement targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block rather than have the ad block split into 2 to 4 ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.
The minimum cost-per-thousand impressions bid for placement targeted campaigns is 25 cents. There is no minimum CPC bid, however.

AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches, but do not effect quality score.

The "Google Display Network" (formerly referred to as the "content network") shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense and DoubleClick, the other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. Click through rates on the display network are typically much lower than those on the search network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser's quality score. It has been reported that using both AdSense and AdWords may cause a website to pay Google a commission when the website advertises itself.

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. AdSense publishers may select channels to help direct Google's ad placements on their pages, to increase performance of their ad units. There are many different types of ads that can run across Google's network, including text ads, image ads (banner ads), mobile text ads, and in-page video ads.

AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches, but do not effect quality score.

The "Google Display Network" (formerly referred to as the "content network") shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense and DoubleClick, the other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. Click through rates on the display network are typically much lower than those on the search network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser's quality score. It has been reported that using both AdSense and AdWords may cause a website to pay Google a commission when the website advertises itself.

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. AdSense publishers may select channels to help direct Google's ad placements on their pages, to increase performance of their ad units. There are many different types of ads that can run across Google's network, including text ads, image ads (banner ads), mobile text ads, and in-page video ads.

AdWords account management

To help clients with the complexity of building and managing AdWords accounts search engine marketing agencies and consultants offer account management as a business service. This has allowed organizations without advertising expertise to reach a global, online audience. Google has started the Google Advertising Professionals program to certify agencies and consultants who have met specific qualifications and passed an exam Google also provides account management software, called AdWords Editor.

Another useful feature is the My Client Centre available to Google Professionals (even if not yet passed the exam or budget parameters) whereby a Google professional has access and a dashboard summary of several accounts and can move between those accounts without logging in to each account.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool provides a list of related keywords for a specific website or keyword.

Recently, numerous complaints have been filed with the San Jose Better Business Bureau (BBB) regarding treatment small businesses have received from Google Adwords customer service. As a result, the company now has a C- rating with the San Jose BBB.

Click-to-Call
Google Click-to-Call was a service provided by Google which allows users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users enter their phone number, Google calls them back and connects to the advertiser. Calling charges are paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007.. For some time similar click-to-call functionality was available for results in Google Maps. In the Froyo release of Google's operating system, in certain advertisements, there is a very similar functionality, where a user can easily call an advertiser.

History

The original idea was invented by Bill Gross from Idealab who, in turn borrowed the idea from Yellow Pages. Google wanted to buy the idea but a deal could not be reached.[citation needed] Not wanting to give up on this form of advertisement, the company launched its own solution, AdWords in 2000. AdWords followed a model that was significantly similar to Bill Gross' creation which led to legal action between the two parties. Eventually the dispute was settled out of court.[citation needed]

At first AdWords advertisers would pay a monthly amount, and Google would then set up and manage their campaign. To accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns, Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal. Starting in 2005 Google provided a campaign management service called Jumpstarto assist advertisers in setting up their campaigns. However, this service is no longer available, so companies needing assistance must hire a third-party service provider.

In 2005, Google launched the Google Advertising Professional (GAP) Program to certify individuals and companies who completed AdWords training and passed an exam. Due to the complexity of AdWords and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant to manage their campaigns.

In 2008, Google launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge (http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/), an in-class academic exercise for tertiary students. Over 8,000 students from 47 countries participated in the 2008 Challenge and over 10,000 students from 58 countries took part in 2009. The Challenge runs annually, roughly from January to June. Registration is at the instructor rather than student level.

In 2009, Google revised the AdWords interface, introduced Local Business Ads for Google Maps and Video Ads.

Legal context

AdWords has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law (see Google, Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory and Rescuecom Corp. v. Google, Inc.), fraud (see Goddard v. Google, Inc.), and click fraud. In 2006, Google settled a click fraud lawsuit for US$90 million

Overture Services, Inc. sued Google for patent infringement in April 2002 in relation to the AdWords service. Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the suit was settled in 2004 with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license under the patent

Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. The system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL The interface has also been revamped to offer better work flow with additional new features, such as Spreadsheet Editing, Search Query Reports, and better conversion metrics.

As of April 2008 Google AdWords no longer allows for the display URL to deviate from that of the destination URL. Prior to its introduction, Google paid advertisements could feature different landing page URLs to that of what was being displayed on the search network. Google expounds that the policy change stems from both user and advertiser feedback. The concern prompting the restriction change is believed to be the premise on which users clicked advertisements. Users were in some cases, being misled and further targeted by AdWords advertisers.

Google has other restrictions, for example the advertising of a book by Aaron Greenspan called Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, was restricted from advertising on AdWords because it contained the word Facebook in it. Google's rationale was that it was prohibited from advertising a book which used a trademarked name in its title.

Allowed keywords

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on a wide variety of search terms in the US and Canada, including the trademarks of their competitors in May 2008 expanded this policy to the UK and Ireland. Advertisers are restricted from using other companies' trademarks in their advertisement text if the trademark has been registered with Advertising Legal Support team. Google does, however, require certification to run regulated keywords, such as those related to pharmaceuticals keywords, and some keywords, such as those related to hacking, are not allowed at all. These restrictions may vary by location.From June 2007, Google banned AdWords adverts for student essay writing services, a move which was welcomed by universities.

Market Economy Definition

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Thu, 5 May 2011 23:01:00 +0700

A market economy is an economy based on the power of division of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand.[1]

This is often contrasted with a planned economy, in which a central government can distribute services using a fixed price system. Market economies are also contrasted with mixed economy where the price system is not entirely free but under some government control or heavily regulated, which is sometimes combined with state-led economic planning that is not extensive enough to constitute a planned economy.

In the real world, market economies do not exist in pure form, as societies and governments regulate them to varying degrees rather than allow self-regulation by market forces.[2][3] The term free-market economy is sometimes used synonymously with market economy,[4] but, as Ludwig Erhard once pointed out, this does not preclude an economy from having socialist attributes opposed to a laissez-faire system.[5] Economist Ludwig von Mises also pointed out that a market economy is still a market economy even if the government intervenes in pricing.[6]

Different perspectives exist as to how strong a role the government should have in both guiding the market economy and addressing the inequalities the market produces. For example, there is no universal agreement on issues such as central banking, and welfare. However, most economists oppose protectionist tariffs.[7]

The term market economy is not identical to capitalism where a corporation hires workers as a labour commodity to produce material wealth and boost shareholder profits.[8] Market mechanisms have been utilized in a handful of socialist states, such as China, Yugoslavia and even Cuba to a very limited extent.

It is also possible to envision an economic system based on independent producers, cooperative, democratic worker ownership and market allocation of final goods and services; the labour-managed market economy is one of several proposed forms of market socialism.[9]
Systems

Although no country has ever had within its border an economy in which all markets were absolutely free, the term typically is not used in an absolute sense. Many states which are said to have a market economy have a high level of market freedom, even if it is less than some parts of the population would prefer. Thus, almost all economies in the world today are mixed economies with varying degrees of free market and planned economy traits. For example, in the United States there are more market economy traits than in the Western European countries (an exception being the UK, which is considered, even by Greenspan, to be a freer market than the US).

Capitalism (Liberal Market).

Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are all or mostly privately owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income,and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money.

Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism, but most feel that the term "mixed economies" more precisely describes most contemporary economies, due to their containing both private-owned and state-owned enterprises, combining elements of capitalism and socialism, or mixing the characteristics of market economies and planned economies. In capitalism, there is no central planning authority but the prices are decided by the demand-supply scale. For example, higher demand for certain goods and services lead to higher prices and lower demand for certain goods lead to lower prices.

Laissez-faire.

Laissez-faire is synonymous with what was referred to as strict capitalist free market economy during the early and mid-19th century as an ideal to achieve. It is generally understood that the necessary components for the functioning of an idealized free market include the complete absence of government regulation, subsidies, artificial price pressures and government-granted monopolies (usually classified as coercive monopoly by free market advocates) and no taxes or tariffs other than what is necessary for the government to provide protection from coercion and theft and maintaining peace, and property rights.

Market anarchism.

Market anarchism advocates a true free market like laissez-faire and in addition the complete elimination of the state apparatus; the provision of law enforcement, courts, national defense, and all other security services by voluntarily-funded competitors in a free market rather than through compulsory taxation; the complete deregulation of nonintrusive personal and economic activities; and a self-regulated market. Market anarchism argue for a society based in voluntary trade of private property (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) and services in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity. Some forms of market anarchism, such as mutualism, are also forms of libertarian market socialism, advocating an 'anti-capitalist free market' of free worker's cooperatives and self-employed individuals. Mutualism substitutes the idea of property for possession and use of the means of production.

Market socialism.

Market socialism refers to various economic systems in which the government owns the economic institutions or major industries but operates them according to the rules of supply and demand. In a traditional market socialist economy, prices would be determined by a government planning ministry, and enterprises would either be state-owned or cooperatively-owned and managed by their employees. Libertarian socialists and left-anarchists often promote a form of market socialism in which enterprises are owned and managed collectively by the workers, but compete with each other in the same way private companies compete in a capitalist market.

The People's Republic of China currently has a form of market socialism referred to as the socialist market economy, in which most of the industry is state-owned, but prices are not set by the government. Within this model, the state-owned enterprises are free from excessive regulation and function more autonomously in a more decentralized fashion than in other socialist economic systems.

Social market.

he social market economic model is based upon the free market economy, combined with regulative measures from the state to prevent market failure.[11] The theoretical fundament is build on the neoliberalism (in Germany also called ordoliberalism).[12] This model was implemented by Ludwig Erhard after World War II in West Germany. Characteristics of social market economies are a strong competition policy and a contractionary monetary policy.

Theory.

Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek stated that economic freedom is a necessary condition for the creation and sustainability of civil and political freedoms. They believed that this economic freedom can only be achieved in a market-oriented economy, specifically a free market economy. They do believe, however, that sufficient economic freedom can be achieved in economies with functioning markets through price mechanisms and private property rights. They believe that the more economic freedom that is available the more civil and political freedoms a society will enjoy.

Friedman states:

* "Economic freedom is simply a requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction it reduces the area over which political power is exercised" Friedman, Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980, p. 2-3
* "Capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom" Capitalism and freedom

Studies by the Canadian libertarian think tank Fraser Institute, the American conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, and the Wall Street Journal state that there is a relationship between economic freedom and political and civil freedoms to the extent claimed by Friedrich von Hayek. They agree with Hayek that those countries which restrict economic freedom ultimately restrict civil and political freedoms.[13][14]

Generally market economies are bottom-up in decision-making as consumers convey information to producers through prices paid in market transactions. All states today have some form of control over the market that removes the free and unrestricted direction of resources from consumers and prices such as tariffs and corporate subsidies. Milton Friedman and many other microeconomists believe that these forms of intervention provide incentives for resources to be misused and wasted, producing products society may not value as much as a product that is valued as a result of these restrictions.

Criticism.

Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert claim that markets inherently produce class division; divisions between conceptual and manual laborers, and ultimately managers and workers, and a de facto labor market for conceptual workers. Albert says that in a market economy, even if everyone started out with a balanced job complex (doing a mix of roles of varying creativity, responsibility and empowerment), class divisions would arise, as some will be more able than others to capture the benefits of economic gain: if one worker designs cars and another builds them, the designer will use his cognitive skills more frequently than the builder. In the long term, the designer will become more adept at conceptual work than the builder, giving the designer greater bargaining power in a firm over the distribution of income. A conceptual worker who is not satisfied with his income can threaten to work for a company that will pay him more, thus class divisions arise

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy

Marketing History

noreply@blogger.com (Businees Marketing) — Thu, 5 May 2011 21:11:00 +0700

Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in goods or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.

Marketing is used to identify the customer, to satisfy the customer, and to keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that marketing management is one of the major components of business management. Marketing evolved to meet the stasis in developing new markets caused by mature markets and overcapacities in the last 2-3 centuries.[citation needed] The adoption of marketing strategies requires businesses to shift their focus from production to the perceived needs and wants of their customers as the means of staying profitable.[citation needed]

The term marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions. It proposes that in order to satisfy its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors.Further definitions

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to a market to buy or sell goods or services. Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering views marketing as "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions, whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches."

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." A different concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing is defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage."

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also adept at re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Evolution of marketing

Main article: History of marketing.

An orientation, in the marketing context, related to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. Throughout history marketing has changed considerably as consumer tastes are changing faster.

Earlier approaches

The marketing orientation evolved from earlier orientations namely the production orientation, the product orientation and the selling orientation.

Contemporary approaches.

Recent approaches in marketing is the relationship marketing with focus on the customer, the business marketing or industrial marketing with focus on an organization or institution and the social marketing with focus on benefits to the society. New forms of marketing also use the internet and are therefore called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, online marketing, search engine marketing, desktop advertising or affiliate marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.

Customer orientation.

A firm in the market economy survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern. Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA[12] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus. The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, placement, promotion) of marketing management.

Organizational orientation.

In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other departments within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product. Inter-departmental conflicts may occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.

Herd behavior.

Herd behavior in marketing is used to explain the dependencies of customers' mutual behavior. The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.[14] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart card technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 19,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

Further orientations.

An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers, see also employer branding.

Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.

With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.

Marketing Research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's marketing environment and attain information from suppliers. Marketing researchers use statistical methods such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations, frequency distributions, poisson distributions, binomial distributions, etc. to interpret their findings and convert data into information. The marketing research process spans a number of stages including the definition of a problem, development of a research plan, collecting and interpretation of data and disseminating information formally in form of a report. The task of marketing research is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Market Segmentation.

Main article: Market segmentation

Market segmentation pertains to the division of a market of consumers into persons with similar needs and wants. As an example, if using Kellogg's cereals in this instance, Frosties are marketed to children. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are marketed to adults. Both goods aforementioned denote two products which are marketed to two distinct groups of persons, both with like needs, traits, and wants.

The purpose for market segmentation is conducted for two main issues. First, a segmentation allows a better allocation of a firm's finite resources. A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources. Accordingly, it must make choices (and appreciate the related costs) in servicing specific groups of consumers. Furthermore the diversified tastes of the contemporary Western consumers can be served better. With more diversity in the tastes of modern consumers, firms are taking note of the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.

Market segmentation can be defined in terms of the STP acronym, meaning Segment, Target and Position.

Types of marketing research.

Marketing research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be divided into the following parts:

Primary research (also known as field research), which involves the conduction and compilation of research for the purpose it was intended.

Secondary research (also referred to as desk research), is initially conducted for one purpose, but often used to support another purpose or end goal.

By these definitions, an example of primary research would be market research conducted into health foods, which is used solely to ascertain the needs/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research, again according to the above definition, would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm wishing to develop an unrelated product.

rimary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and interpret from data to information. Nonetheless, while secondary research is relatively inexpensive, it often can become outdated and outmoded, given it is used for a purpose other than for which is was intended. Primary research can also be broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which as the labels suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research methods, techniques. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, non-numeric or abstract concepts are required to be studied (qualitative research).

There also exists additional modes of marketing research, which are:

Exploratory research, pertaining to research that investigates an assumption.

Descriptive research, which as the label suggests, describes "what is".

Predictive research, meaning research conducted to predict a future occurrence.

Conclusive research, for the purpose of deriving a conclusion via a research process.

Marketing Planning.

Main article: Marketing plan

The area of marketing planning involves forging a plan for a firm's marketing activities. A marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organization's overall marketing strategy. Generally speaking, an organization's marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction or mission, the intended marketing activities are incorporated into this plan. There are several levels of marketing objectives within an organization. The senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm. However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

Marketing strategy.

The field of marketing strategy encompasses the strategy involved in the management of a given product.

A given firm may hold numerous products in the marketplace, spanning numerous and sometimes wholly unrelated industries. Accordingly, a plan is required in order to manage effectively such products. Evidently, a company needs to weigh up and ascertain how to utilize effectively its finite resources. As an example, a start-up car manufacturing firm would face little success, should it attempt to rival immediately Toyota, Ford, Nissan or any other large global car maker. Moreover, a product may be reaching the end of its life-cycle. Thus, the issue of divest, or a ceasing of production may be made. With regard to the aforesaid questions, each scenario requires a unique marketing strategy to be employed. Below are listed some prominent marketing strategy models, which seek to propose means to answer the preceding questions.

Marketing Specializations.

With the rapidly emerging force of globalization, the distinction between marketing within a firm's home country and marketing within external markets is disappearing very quickly. With this occurrence in mind, firms need to reorient their marketing strategies to meet the challenges of the global marketplace, in addition to sustaining their competitiveness within home markets.

Buying behaviour.

A marketing firm must ascertain the nature of the customers buying behaviour, if it is to market its product properly. In order to entice and persuade a consumer to buy a product, marketers try to determine the behavioural process of how a given product is purchased. Buying behaviour is usually split in two prime strands, whether selling to the consumer, known as business-to-consumer (B2C) or another business, similarly known as business-to-business (B2B).

B2C buying behaviour

This mode of behaviour concerns consumers, in the purchase of a given product. As an example, if one pictures a pair of sneakers, the desire for a pair of sneakers would be followed by an information search on available types/brands. This may include perusing media outlets, but most commonly consists of information gathered from family and friends.If the information search is insufficient, the consumer may search for alternative means to satisfy the need/want. In this case, this may be buying leather shoes, sandals, etc. The purchase decision is then made, in which the consumer actually buys the product. Following this stage, a post-purchase evaluation is often conducted, comprising an appraisal of the value/utility brought by the purchase of the sneakers. If the value/utility is high, then a repeat purchase may be bought. This could then develop into consumer loyalty, for the firm producing the pair of sneakers.

B2B buying behaviour

Relates to organizational/industrial buying behavior.[16] B2C and B2B behavior are not exact, as similarities and differences exist. Some of the key differences are listed below:

In a straight re-buy, the fourth, fifth and sixth stages are omitted. In a modified re-buy scenario, the fifth and sixth stages are precluded. In a new buy, all aforementioned stages are conducted.

Use of technologies.

Marketing management can also note the importance of technology, within the scope of its marketing efforts. Computer-based information systems can be employed, aiding in a better processing and storage of data. Marketing researchers can use such systems to devise better methods of converting data into information, and for the creation of enhanced data gathering methods. Information technology can aid in improving an MKIS' software and hardware components, to improve a company's marketing decision-making process.

In recent years, the netbook personal computer has gained significant market share among laptops, largely due to its more user-friendly size and portability. Information technology typically progress at a fast rate, leading to marketing managers being cognizant of the latest technological developments. Moreover, the launch of smartphones into the cellphone market is commonly derived from a demand among consumers for more technologically advanced products. A firm can lose out to competitors, should it refrain from noting the latest technological occurrences in its industry.

Technological advancements can facilitate lesser barriers between countries and regions. Via using the World Wide Web, firms can quickly dispatch information from one country to another, without much restriction. Prior to the mass usage of the Internet, such transfers of information would have taken longer to send, especially if via snail mail, telex, etc.

Services Marketing.

Services marketing,as the label suggests, relates to the marketing of services, as opposed to tangible products (in standard economic terminology, a tangible product is called a good).

A typical definition of a service (as opposed to a good) is thus:

» The use of it is inseparable from its purchase (,i.e. a service is used and consumed simultaneously)

» It does not possess material form, and thus cannot be smelt, heard, tasted, or felt.

» The use of a service is inherently subjective, in that due to the human condition, all persons experiencing a service would experience it uniquely.

As examples of the above points, a train ride can be deemed as a service. If one buys a train ticket, the use of the train is typically experienced concurrently with the purchase of the ticket. Moreover, a train ride cannot be smelt, heard, tasted or felt as such. Granted, a seat can be felt, and the train can be evidently heard, nonetheless one is not paying for the permanent ownership of the tangible components of the train.

Services (by comparison with goods) can also be viewed as a spectrum. Not all products are pure goods, nor are all pure services. The aforementioned example of a train ride can be deemed a pure service, whilst a packet of potato chips can be deemed a pure good. An intermediary example may be a restaurant (as the waiter service is intangible, and the food evidently is tangible in form).

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org