Everyone is Watching You Shop…Both On And Offline

As recently reported by BI Intelligence,

“Google has long tracked shoppers’ activity online. Now it’s stepping up its surveillance and watching them offline, as well.

This means that Google is able to tell when you are shopping at Home Depot or your local grocery store.

They do this by tracking data from various websites and apps such as Google Maps, along with credit and debit card transaction data.

Google is packaging all of that information together and sharing it with marketers to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases, whether they buy online or in a store.

Your activity is for sale. Not just by Google but by every, and any, company that is able to acquire usable data about your activities. Your likes, hates, moves, views, texts, tweets, pics, locations, you name it, Big Data wants it. It is valuable. The more active and visible you are the easier you are to track. There is virtually no way to avoid being tracked, sorted, trended, reported on and sold. 

Information is king. Any company compiling customer data has a valuable resource that paints an actionable picture of current customers and by mining and analyzing this data, a company an figure out how to find more customers and sell more to existing customers. With the right data sets, you can “run into” potential customers at the right time and the right place. Today’s technology allows for these collisions to take place as if they were natural events.

Green Rain Media can help you capture and optimize your customer data so that you can leverage it for improved sales performance and new customer acquisition. 

 

Is Internet Radio the future of Newspapers?

“Five years from now, internet radio will be the predominant leader in radio.”
-Jennifer Bertetto Trib Total Media

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has launched an Internet Sports Talk Station. Trib Total Media, the parent company of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has announced the debut of sports talk on Trib Live Radio.

The new internet sports talk station features a number of Pittsburgh sports media personalities and athletes including former Penguins player Chris Tocchet and former Steelers cornerback Deshea Townsend.  Trib Total Media VP and COO Jennifer Bertetto says more shows are being planned to make the station a 24-hour operation.

Internet Radio is Here!

Behold the future of Internet Radio Listening.

Contour Internet-connected digital radio from Pure

The new Contour Internet-connected digital radio that Pure previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show.

This player comes with Pure’s Clearsound technology which, the company said, ensures clear dynamic audio, higher volume levels and, what everyone is waiting for…low power consumption. The Contour also features the company’s Flow technology, “using Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet wirelessly and access thousands of Internet radio stations, podcasts, a library of unique Pure Sounds as well as stream music stored on a home computer or network storage device.”

Producers of Internet audio content can pin their ears back and go for it because companies like Pure have created the much needed distribution beyond PC devices. Once the prices for these devices come down to earth,  listenership to the wide and creative variety of Internet programming should explode.

Next issue for programmers is separating from the very crowded Internet space and grabbing a loyal audience.

Stay tuned…this is a very exciting time to be a leader in Media and Communications!

Mike

It’s time to seriously consider Web advertising!

Study: Digital Spending Will Overtake Print In 2010
A study by Outsell Inc. forecasts that U.S. advertisers will spend $119.6 billion on online and digital advertising this year, outpacing print spending of $111.5 billion. Ad spending overall is expected to rise by 1.2 percent in 2010.

Those of you who have been holding out waiting to see if that “internet thing” is for real or just a fad had better wake up and smell the PC’s and Macs cooking.

As newspaper and magazine readership continues to drop, more advertisers are increasing their use of the Internet. The WWW is so vast and so cluttered  if you do not have proper guidance and planning from an experienced and professional New Media Advertising firm or Consultant, you will struggle to reach your ideal market, and waste lots of money along the way. Hiring a recent college graduate to run your online ad program, “because they are young,”  (yes, a businessman really made that statement to me), is not the answer.

From old school banner ads to proper use of audio, video and social media, Green Rain Marketing can help your company leverage every penny of investment into a proper Internet ad campaign.