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Watch this Space, Issue 42

Tory Pay Per Budget

In a superb demonstration of how quickly paid search marketing can be used to good effect, the Conservative Party recently used Google Adwords to promote their real-time rebuttal of Alistair Darling's budget. Buying up keywords as soon as the chancellor used them during his speech to Parliament, the campaign directed webusers to the Conservative Party website, where they could read the opposition's budget response.

Captain Kickback says: "This shows just how quickly Pay Per Click advertising can be arranged and altered to target a precise audience. If a bunch of fusty old ex-Etonians can get the hang of it, so can we all."

Good News in a Downturn

BSkyB have managed to bag an extra 80,000 customers during quarter one. Presumably due to cash-strapped consumers opting to stay in and entertain themselves, the satellite broadcaster has increased its reach to over 9.3 million households, 15% of whom also rely on Rupert Murdoch's firm for their broadband and phone services. Over the same three-month period, 243,000 of Sky's existing customers upgraded to its HD service.

Google Growth Slows

The last three months have shown a marked slow down in the growth of the search giant's revenue. Year on year, Google's Q1 revenues grew 6.2% from £3.5 billion to £3.7 billion- this is 3% lower than the growth in revenue year on year for Q4 of 2008. Despite the slow down in takings, however, the media giant's profits grew over the some period due to job cuts and a significant reduction in overheads.

In a similar story, recent research has shown the first ever decline in total paid-for search marketing spend. According to a study by Efficient Frontier, the spend over the first three months of 2009 was 6% lower than that of the same period 12 months ago.

YouTrouble

More Google Grief, as speculation grows that its subsidiary You Tube might never turn a profit. A report by Credit Suisse has suggested that the video sharing giant is set to lose $470 million in 2009. Enormous operating costs caused by the website's bandwidth and storage needs mean that even its expected ad revenue of $240 million this year won't touch the sides.

Ask Who?

Having ditched its smarmy butler character Jeeves three years ago, search engine Ask.com is re-branding itself and bringing the self satisfied servant out of retirement. During his break Jeeves has had a bit of a makeover, including a suit designed by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row, and his presence is now being trumpeted across national TV, radio, press, and online. Bringing the character fully up to date with Web 2.0, Jeeves will even have his own accounts on Facebook and Twitter, which he will use to show users what he's been up to during the last three years.

According to a story promulgated by the people at Ask.com, changes to their list of popular searches during Jeeves' sabbatical speak volumes about changes to the wider world since 2006, so terms such have "private school fees", "fake tan" and "flight upgrades" have ceded ground to the likes of "Primark", "property auctions", "Robert Peston" and "left-over recipes." Seems a trifle contrived to me, but believe what you will.

Captain Kickback says: "It's all very well getting the gentleman's gentleman involved with search again, but doesn't that mean that we're all Bertie?"

The Independent in Trouble

It might seem as though I'm picking on the poor old Indie recently, but with the thrashing it has been taking in the ABC figures over the last few months, it's difficult not to see the vultures circling. The daily paper's circulation for March was 16.7% lower than it was last March, while the Sunday Independent has suffered even more, with its circulation declining 24.3% over the same period. Looking at the papers' distribution stripped of the helping hand given by their considerable bulk figures reveals that the Independent now sells only 119,927 copies at the full price, and its Sunday counterpart sells just 79,286. To put this into context, consider that the West Mids Express and Star sells 130,000 copies each week.

Captain Kickback says: "I've predicted before that not all our national press titles will survive this economic downturn. Unless something drastic is done at Indie Towers, it looks like this paper's ahead by a nose in the race to the bottom. The recent price hike to £1 was spectacularly short-sighted, and the paper's switch to the tabloid format might also have been a blunder. In a recession it's always the middle ground that suffers: some people will always pay a premium price for a high quality product, while at the other end of the scale, slashing the costs on a mass market product will ensure that there's still money coming in the door. Unfortunately the newly tabloid Indie is neither fish nor fowl- not a strong enough product to compete with the likes of the Times, yet far too dear to stand alongside its red top tabloid competition." That's all for this time, if you'd like more information on anything covered in this bulletin, reply to this email or contact your Account team.


See you next time!!

CAPTAIN KICKBACK