WPP Inches Back To Growth
Sir Martin Sorrell’s advertising group, WPP, today reported an increase in like-for-like revenues of 1 percent in March – its first since 2008. WPP is now tentatively upping its forecast to 2 percent growth for the year. The group, which in the first quarter last year reported a like-for-like revenue fall of 5.8 percent, has crawled out of the recession with flat year-on-year revenues in the first three months. The 1 percent increase in March, which follows return to growth patterns at rivals Publicis Groupe and Havas, is the first monthly revenue growth it has seen since December 2008.
“I don’t know that 1 percent qualifies for putting us in the growth club, we are now forecasting 2 percent [like-for-like] revenue growth for the year,” said Sorrell, who has lifted the hiring ban in growth markets, with a 1 percent increase in staff since the start of the year. “We haven’t put our neck out there having been too optimistic last year [WPP predicted revenues to fall 2 percent and they fell 8 percent]. We are probably being a little too pessimistic this year. It is a case of once bitten, twice shy.”
Read More: PaidContent.org
What Apple’s iAd Platform Means To Marketers
It has been a few weeks now since Apple launched their iAd platform, and a large amount has been written about the announcement and what it means for the mobile advertising industry. But is this really the ‘revolution’ that Steve Jobs claims it is? Will it capture the imagination of brands and agencies? What does it mean for advertising networks currently targeting iPhone users? And where does it leave all the other makes of phone which make up the majority of the market? Since the launch Apple has stated that to begin with they will create the adverts for brands and that the adverts will cost in excess of $1 million – a significant increase on what advertising executives are currently spending on mobile! How many brands will be willing to pay a premium to target iPhone users? While Apple has sold an impressive amount of iPhones globally, in terms of overall mobile users, the platform still accounts for a very small fraction of the market, making it an expensive way to target consumers. One point that struck me from the beginning of Steve Jobs’ presentation of iAd was how much of the mobile advertising industry he seemed unaware of. He claimed that Apple had created a new ‘revolutionary’ format of expandable in-app advertising which allows the user to stay in whichever app they might be using while interacting with the advert.
Read More: UTalkMarketing.com
Steve Jobs Announces War In An Open Letter To Adobe
The chief executive of Apple, Steve Jobs defended the company’s decision to exclude support for Adobe and Flash, some of their mobile devices, refuting the charge that the measure would aim to protect the applications sold in the electronics store from Apple. The Apple boss has published a long article in which he justifies point by point the reasons for the boycott of Flash. Steve jobs stated “Adobe Flash products are 100% owners. They are only available at Adobe who has full authority over their future development, pricing . . ” Steve Jobs acknowledged that Apple still has as proprietary products like theiPhone OS , but it supports open Internet standards such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. “Flash is the No. 1 cause of crashes in Mac.” Jobs accuses of having failed to resolve the problems that persist for several years. As for the arrival of Flash on mobile devices, now postponed to the second half of the year it almost appears to Arles in the writings of the boss of Apple. Adobe wants to provide tools for developing cross-platform to simplify porting applications on different OSes. An idea that Steve Jobs made a surge that this strategy can only lead to applications of a average quality level. Above all, the fact that a third party come fall between the OS and developers would make these techniques depend on the choices the actor. “Our motivation is simple – we want to provide a platform for the most innovative and most advanced our developers and we want them to keep above the platform and create the best applications that the world has ever seen.” Tomb then the sentence: “(…) Flash is no longer necessary to watch a video or use any Internet content. And the 200 000 applications from the App Store prove that Flash is not necessary for thousands of developers to build graphically rich applications, including games. While there are Apple, but there is no Apple …
“We asked periodically to show us that Adobe Flash works well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for some years. We never saw it happen,” Jobs said in a statement. iPAD, the newest release of Apple has placed a dispute between the companies in focus again. The device does not support the technology from Adobe. Flash is widely used on the internet and is installed in approximately 98% of computers connected to the network, according to Adobe, and is used in displaying more than 75% of all videos available on the Web and in 90% of online advertising .
Read More: WhiteHatFirm.com
