Tag: digital

Winners and losers in e-commerce

James Dodd 23rd October 2020

Click and collect

The Coronavirus Pandemic has seen a startling change in consumer behaviour trends. Facilitated by advancements in mobile technology, site design, online payment methods and a maturity in digital marketing techniques from social to affiliate, it is common knowledge that e-commerce figures and online traffic have been steadily increasing for years. The figures for 2020 however, are startling. Whilst many of us already use the Amazons of the world with some degree of regularity, coronavirus has driven customers out of the high street and online in their droves. In January 2020, online retail sites generated 16.07bn global visits. By June 2020, this figure had ballooned to almost 22bn, a 35% YOY increase.

So who are the winners and who the less fortunate?

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Smart cities and smart thinking: the Middle East’s tech on the rise

Olivia Ogilvie 21st October 2020

No middling tech

We are now entering a new digital era: the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR). Suffice to say, technology evolves every day and changes the world along with it. Huge strides in technological innovation are made to meet and further propagate demands for faster information, transformation, and increased agility in both our professional and personal lives.

The First Industrial Revolution harnessed the power of water and steam; the Second, electric power; the Third, electronics and information technology to drive automation and efficiency. Building on its predecessor, this Fourth and current phase is

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E-learning trends 2020

Eleanor Morum 21st September 2020

Micro-learning

Unsurprisingly, the e-learning industry is experiencing a major boon at the moment. Returning to schools, universities, and even offices is hotly debated, and e-learning is a clear safe alternative. But even before March, edtech was on a steep upwards trajectory. In 2017, Forbes predicted that by 2020 the global e-learning market would increase 36% from 2015 (USD$107bn to approximately USD$146bn).

As for why, e-learning has several advantages over its classroom equivalents. Firstly, microlearning (a subset of e-learning) accommodates shorter attention spans, a common concern for the more tech-savvy audience that e-learning caters to. In the same vein, its availability on mobile platforms makes learning easier to fit around other responsibilities and on-the-go and is thereby more efficient than classroom learning. E-learning’s use of graphics caters especially well to visual learners, who are estimated to make up the majority of the population. Gamification, a trend we reported last year, holds attention much longer than passive learning styles. Finally, e-learning is believed to provide longer-lasting lasting results. Typical face-to-face training expects retention rates of about 8-10%, while e-learning retention rates

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Media in the Middle East: the relentless rise of digital

Olivia Ogilvie 4th August 2020

Silica valley

Media consumption has changed dramatically around the world over the last few years. The increasingly integral role that smartphones and portable devices play in our personal and professional daily lives has driven a digital revolution.

Nowhere in the world has digital adoption been quicker than in the Middle East. Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE, for instance, now rank among the top countries in the world with 100% smartphone penetration and more than 70% social media adoption, figures which exceed those of the United States. This can largely be attributed to the fact that one third of MENA’s (Middle East and North Africa) population is under the age of 15, and a further one in five are aged between 15 and 24, making the region one of the world’s most youthful populations.

This has impacted and increased internet use across the region. In 2016 mobile internet in MENA accounted for

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Business People Podcast – Sandeep Saujani interview

Martin Tripp 13th July 2020

The aim of the Business People series of podcasts is to explore how businesses, and the people that run them, are coping with the challenges of a changing world: the Covid-19 pandemic, changes in technology, expectations of staff and customers, and all things human.

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Sandeep Saujani, CEO of Contentive Media, for the “How to Stage a Virtual Conference” blog. The conversation was much wider ranging than just about virtual conferences: we talked about the future of his business, socially distanced working, how changing working habits will impact people’s interaction, and the future of media among other things. All neatly edited into 27 minutes.

I hope you enjoy it.

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How to stage a virtual conference

Martin Tripp 13th July 2020

Distance learning

Covid-19 has put a stop to face-to-face events for now, and this has hit many companies hard financially. But over the last few months, we’ve been impressed by the innovation and agility of businesses that have transformed their events into virtual experiences, keeping them central to their communities.

One such business is Contentive, who have run the HRD Summit for the past fifteen years, taking the whole thing online this year. The event brings together senior HR and people leaders to discuss their challenges, with a particular focus on the future of work. We were invited to join to see how it all worked, and afterwards I interviewed Contentive CEO Sandeep Saujani.

He gave a fascinating insight into how the conference was conceived and run, and talked eloquently about the pros and cons. We thought it would be helpful

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Psychometric tests and quality recruitment

Sophia Garibaldi 3rd July 2020

Thinking outside the box-ticking

At all levels, recruitment can be costly and time-consuming. As such, employers understandably aim to maximise the benefits and minimise the frequency of the recruitment process. For the same reasons, improved staff retention is one of the highest priorities for our clients. For recruiters too, it is a sign of a successful hire, since strong retention strategy starts at the recruitment phase when companies look for compatible values in candidates alongside role-related skills.

Core competencies are the focal point during most recruitment processes, tested through competency-based interview techniques or by the assignment of practical projects. However, an increasing number of companies, particularly larger ones, have started

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Not worth the effort: the inertia of the undifferentiated internet

Chris Sutcliffe 7th March 2020

One of the most common criticisms of the internet as a publishing medium is, ironically, also one of its greatest strengths. The fact that anyone can publish inevitably leads onto the fact that many people do publish. That creates an undifferentiated landscape, where the value of any article or video is effectively the same as any other, with no consideration given to the amount of time or research involved in its production.

Less? More?

That is exacerbated by the fact that digital advertising has historically rewarded the production of huge quantities of articles instead of rewarding quality. If you’ve ever despaired at the idea that newspapers’ websites will indulge in churnalism, producing articles that are mutually contradictory, that’s the cause.

That is beginning to shift slightly, as many newspapers’ priorities change from chasing advertising revenue to limiting the number of articles they publish to better serve members and subscribers. However, for generalist titles who have little chance of developing subscription products (usually the tabloid papers), the age of churnalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

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Consensus before Censorship – why the Copyright Directive was rejected

Rhea Mills 13th July 2018

An impossible code

Having only recently recovered from the GDPR frenzy which gripped the continent in May, some media companies will be feeling relieved that the European Parliament last week sent controversial copyright reforms back to the drawing board. The proposed legislation included Article 11, which would require online platforms – search engines, news aggregators, etc. – to pay publications if they link to them. Article 13 meanwhile would have made copyright enforcement the responsibility of online service providers, and asked them to use content recognition technology to censor material at the point of upload.

Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed an increasing inclination from the EU and its member states to privatise tasks which many believe should be undertaken by the police and courts of the respective state. As with the censorship of online hate speech, the ongoing debate has centred around just who ought to be arbiter of these laws – i.e. humans or machines. The trouble is that

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2018 will see the ‘quality revolution’ for digital advertising

Chris Sutcliffe 19th December 2017

There are any number of predictions for media priorities in 2018 floating around. As with last year’s predictions some will be on point, some will miss the mark, and some will appear laughably naive by the time January 2019 arrives.

Almost certainly, all the predictions will be subject to Amara’s Law – that we overestimate the effect of a technology in the short-term and underestimate it in the long-term. As an example, we saw disappointment with early implementations of A.I. chatbots this year because of early hype around the technology, but the bots have been ubiquitous – and delivering significant revenue – since the middle of this year.

This year has also been the year of the ‘pivot to video’, a term that was used so widely and so often that it became

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Does Gaming still need digital disruption to secure profits?

James Dodd 7th December 2016

Earlier this year, the overall value of the UK games market ‘soared’ past £4.1bn for the first time – so we are overdue a look at how publishers and developers achieve growth in the face of a prosperous secondary games market.

For the uninitiated, the secondary market covers the resale of second-hand games and trade-in (often for store credit). Retailers including Amazon, GAME, and HMV re-sell and, historically, this has been considered to the detriment of developers and publishers.

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Guardian Labs and the play for native advertising

Albert Ng 21st March 2014

Banner advertising has long been the established method by which digital publishers generate income – but an increased use of mobile, difficultly innovating the humble skyscraper, and growing customer ‘blindness’ to banners has led many to re-evaluate their approach and instead start experimenting with native ads.

Guardian News & Media is the latest publisher to jump aboard the native ads bandwagon. The Guardian is by no means the only newspaper looking for new and innovative ways to raise revenue (in fact, the Times has been has been involved with branded content for years), but even by its own forward-thinking standards, its move into native advertising is a compelling one.

The publisher has set up a branded content division – called Guardian Labs – with the aim of creating innovative marketing campaigns that can stretch its revenue stream beyond display ads.

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PR jobs: digital skills are the new currency in communications

OliverLuft 27th January 2014

Whether the job title is Chief Communications Office, Head of Content or Director of Corporate Affairs, the day-to-day tasks in-house professionals in the public relations industry are asked to perform are undergoing fundamental change.

Across sectors as diverse as retail, financial services and health, the nature of PR jobs is being redrafted by the inevitable rise of digital technologies. New skills are needed at the highest level so businesses can compete in a world where new forms of communication are increasingly important.

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Media jobs: paywall vs free newspaper websites

Martin Tripp 4th September 2013

In today’s Evening Standard, Roy Greenslade makes a case for metered paywalls for newspaper websites. As he says, it is the pragmatic (rather than dogmatic) approach: users who get past the maximum number of articles each month are required to subscribe. This has several commercial benefits, not least that it does not hugely impact visitor numbers through redirection from Google and others. Advertisers, therefore, are happy; and potential subscribers become used to the service and are more likely to subscribe – it may even help preserve a few media jobs.

Greenslade notes that, since telegraph.co.uk introduced its ‘soft’ paywall in March, it has remained the country’s third best visited newspaper websites (behind the free to access Guardian and Daily Mail websites).

It is a technique pioneered in the UK – after much indecison – by the FT, which now has over 600,000 online subscribers. After similar debates, the New York Times recently alighted on the same model, and now has 700,000 subscribers – and is adding 100,000 each year. In 2003, I met the then Editor in Chief of the NYT’s website, and the debate on business models was raging – it has taken a good ten years to resolve. But pragmatism has won out.

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Changing face of media – fifteen years as a headhunter

Martin Tripp 9th December 2011

Today marks fifteen years since I first became a media headhunter.

It is astonishing how much the sector has changed in that time. The job titles themselves are indicative of these changes. While we still recruit MDs, Editors, Sales Directors and so on, we are now as likely to be working on roles like Head of Product Roadmap or Chief Scientist. As business models keep changing, so too do the attributes of the individuals who can add value. 

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