For the longest time Google has been leading the world of E-Marketing and been the industry leader for Advertising. A few years ago Facebook shook the nearly monopolistic market as the entered the industry providing advertisers a more targeted approach to E-Marketing. Now of course these 2 aren’t the only players in the industry but they are by far the most dominant player.

As of late however, Twitter has began stepping up there game. Twitter began serving up ads in 2011 but for the longest time only the big players or US businesses could serve up ads. About a year ago Twitter began expanding this. I remember last year in November I was finally allowed to create a Twitter Ad account for our family business (www.gabatravel.com – travel agency).

Now Twitter is finally preparing some big moves to try and steal market share from Google and Facebook. Twitter is preparing their new platform that is rumored to be called “Fabric.” This product is expected to be officially unveiled by October 22nd. Of course with rumors all details cannot be certain. A few years ago Twitter largely closed off it’s very pro-developer view but this move seems to be a move in the right direction. What I find to be the most exciting feature is, “Digits” which enables new users to use their phone number (which will probably be linked to you twitter previously), to sign up for what developers have to offer. It is said the Twitter will be using “Fabric” to collect user data that will better allow it’s advertisers to target their ads.

If the rumors are true this really does provide a simpler (but possibly more insecure) sign-up/sign-in solution for users. This will allow Twitter to collect a lot more data which is better for e-marketers like us because the more data we have to work with the better we can utilize Twitter Ads.

Sources: Marketing Land; Mashable; CBC

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This morning Facebook (FB) announced that next week they will unveil a new advertising platform which is designed to improve targeting and measuring advertisements. In 2013 they made a purchase from Microsoft and they are using this purchase to implement their new platform.

The product they purchased is called “Atlas Advertiser Suite” and has been renamed as Atlas by Facebook for their uses. Facebook claims that not only will these new product improve the targeting and measuring of advertisements but will also better measure the demand of a platform to best determine an automatic bid. This will also allow marketers to better bid according to their needs.

How does this new system help Facebook though? With this new platform Facebook will be able to better compete with Google (or at least that’s what Facebook is hoping). Facebook already has better targeting abilities than Google in some ways and with this marketers will be able to target users better than ever before. “Google reported second-quarter ad revenue of $14.36 billion. Facebook said it generated $2.68 billion in the same period.”

The real question is how does this help marketers or more specifically e-marketers? Marketers will now supposedly be able to not only better target their end users but also measure the performance of their advertisements. “In addition to the demographic information it holds about its members, Facebook also collects valuable data about the sites users visit and the types of content they click on and post across its service.” But on the negative side Facebook may begin charging more for their CPC and CPM thanks to their new “automated ad-buying tool” also known as a “demand side platform.”

Whether all the claims being made by Facebook will be true will be revealed next week when they officially unveil the product but it will truly be tested once it has been rolled out to Marketers and they are able to actually test it out.

Stay tuned for part 2 when it is released.

Source: WSJ

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In 2013, Samsung spent an astounding $14 billion on Marketing, that’s more than Apple, HP, Dell, Microsoft and Coca-Cola combined! Although not this entire budget goes towards Samsung’s Mobile division, considering it is their highest revenue producer it is safe to assume that a good portion of it went towards mobile. Before Samsung’s Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series gained a lot of traction they began releasing ads that were targeting and mocking the Apple sheep. Although they still continue their “The Next Big Thing is Here™” campaigns they have mostly driven away from mocking Apple products and their consumers. However with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus being announced last week and bearing a great resemblance to products Samsung has had on the market for years, it comes as no surprise with the commercials they released this past week.

The most recent commercial, which was released two days ago, bears the iconic “The Next Big Thing is Here™.” This commercial was released just a day after Tim Cook in an interview stated “We could have done a larger iPhone years ago. “It’s never been about just making a larger phone. It’s been making — it’s been about making a better phone in every single way…”

The other set of commercials, six in total, were released the day after Apple unveiled the iPhone 6. Some of these have been airing on TV whereas the rest are just on YouTube for the time being. With this set they have gone with a new catch phrase, “#NoteTheDifference” to emphasize on the Note 4 that they announced five days before Apple’s announcement. These commercials range from mocking the new size of the phone to the Apple Watch all featuring “Geniuses” another shot at the Apple Genius Bar. The video I have embedded below has over 2.5 million hits so clearly Samsung knows what they’re doing.

The rest of the videos can be seen at the first two Sources below.

Sources: SamMobile; Apple Insider; IBTimes

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How important is the look of your website? In today’s world where people use the internet for everything the first impression of your website can be the difference between a consumer choosing you or your competitor. When a potential customer first sees your website the first thing they see can have a big influence on whether they stay on your website and surf around to learn more about your company or if they close it right away and search for one of your competitors on Google.

The picture on the left is the image from my family business’s old website and the picture on the right is from the newly designed website that went up earlier this year. Since the revamp to the website not only are people staying on our website and visiting other pages of our website but our weekly hit count has tripled! From Oct 27 – Nov 27 our website had 770 visitors and 655 unique visitors compared to the 190 unique visitors last year during a similar period. I believe this is because people that refer there friends now refer them to our website rather then giving them our contact number. Although I cannot tell how long a person spent on our website I can see how many page views occurred during the same period (Oct 27- Nov 27). There have been 1148 page views, that’s 1.8 page views per unique visitor. Before the revamp it was about 300 page views, which is 1.6 page views unique visitor.

By looking at these simple statistics it would seem that majority of the visitors to our original website left after looking at the terrible home page while others may have just gone straight to the contact us page because they were old customers just looking for our number. The look of our website made a big difference.

What do you think of our website? https://www.gabatravel.com/ Leave me a comment or leave me your feedback on our contact us page

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Corporate Vocabulary describes Ethics as “A Philosophical concept that determines the definition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’…” What is right and what is wrong? What you and I consider right may be considered wrong by others. Many people consider lying and cheating to be wrong but are they both really wrong? That answer may differ with every person you ask. Personally I consider cheating to be wrong but for lying it depends and I’m not the only person that thinks this. “About four in 10 think lying is justified sometime, while just over half, 52 percent, said it is never justified. Asked whether lying is OK in a number of circumstances, about two-thirds, 65 percent.” These are the results of a survey conducted in 2006. So basically 6/10 people consider lying to be wrong and 4/10 people say lying is right sometimes. There are many other topics that fall into the same gray area of ethics.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” – Voltaire

Most people think that murder is wrong but what about war? So it is wrong for one person to kill another person but it is somehow right for a country to attack another country and kill thousands of people? War is technically just murdering people in large numbers as Voltaire said, so then why is war okay?

Before you can define ethics you must first find one definition of the words “right” and “wrong.”

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Rohit Bhargava talks about how the recent US election had nothing to do with facts and was all about “Likeability.” He then shows why President Obama was more likable then Governor Romney. So does how much you like a certain person actual make that much of a difference?

If your teacher/professor assigns you a project and he/she tells you that you are to work on this project with one partner. At this point you are approached by two people that would like to be your partner, who do you choose? We’ll call person 1 Aanchal and person 2 James.

Aanchal is a really nice person, very cute, you spend lots of time with her and have a lot of fun, she knows how to make you laugh and is pretty smart, she has a B- average.

James is not such a nice person, he doesn’t ever talk to you outside of class but he is the smartest person in the class and has straight A’s.

Which person would you pick to be your partner? I would pick Aanchal to be my partner because I would rather be with someone that I can enjoy spending my time with and still get a good mark rather then spend time with someone who I cannot stand but get a perfect mark. Clearly I just picked Aanchal only because I like her more and not because she would get me the better result. This is just like what Rohit Bhargava said about President Obama being elected as President again. He was elected because people liked him better and not because he was the better candidate, Obama did a better job at marketing himself to the public. Of course how good of a candidate he is does matter still, if Aanchal had a failing average there would be a lower chance I would pick her but I would honestly still think about it.

Comment and tell me who you would pick.

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Szascha Lim wrote an article called “Can’t Resist The Cake!” and near the start of the post she showed us a video (the same video which I have at the start of this post) and ended her article by saying ” I was blown away by their various projects for well-known companies that I myself love. Actually, The Cake Group promoted themselves perfectly. I was sold.” I agree with Szascha, this video really got me interested in taking a look at what the Cake Group had to offer. So I went to their website to take a look and right at the top of the home page I was greeted by the exact same video which they call “our story.” I then took a look at the “Our Philosophy” tab and it was another video talking about marketing.

I think the Cake Group has done a tremendous job not only promoting themselves in those videos but also a great job understanding what our market is becoming. Before buying anything myself I always go online and check reviews for multiple products. The Cake Group says they are “an ideas company that helps brands become part of peoples’ lives.” They’ve done things like “IKEA HAPPY TO BED” which was basically a big sleepover in Ikea. I know that if they had that here I would for sure go with my friends and if I found the bed I slept on was really comfy I might even replace my current mattress with that mattress.

The Cake Group is really on to something here and I will be keeping a close watch on this “ideas company” hoping that they will soon be coming to Canada. Thank You Szascha for introducing me to this great company!

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Before reading this post make sure you’ve read part 1 of this.

The video above shows a segement of the Jimmy Kimmel show where his team took to the streets showing off the “new iPhone 5” If you watch this video you’ll see that they were in fact going around showing off the older iPhone 4S. When people saw the iPhone 4S and were told it was the iPhone 5 they made comments like “it’s lighter” “it’s way better” “a little thinner” “faster, lighter.” This is proof that Apple’s loyal customers or “iSheep” as most people call them are so loyal to Apple that they could have put out the EXACT same phone with a different name and people would make it better. This is the reason the iPhone 5 was able to get 2 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours and have sold over 5 million phones in the first 3 days with many better phones out there.

Phones 10 times better like the Galaxy S3 are out there or with other amazing phones set to be released in the coming months. CONSUMER LOYALTY and MARKETING! People buy the iPhone 5 just because it’s Apple. Just like why people buy Macbooks. A Macbook is twice the price of a comparable PC but people buy a Macbook just because it has the bitten Apple on the back. Since the iPod Apple has done a great job marketing like crazy. Steve Jobs is my role model not because of the great products he created but because how great he made them seem when compared to others even though they weren’t. How good of a job did he do marketing?

It doesn’t take a genius as Samsung said in their new ad campaign to realize that the iPhone 5 is not the best phone out there but Apple’s brand loyalty continues to help them thrive but is slowly fading. Apple’s market share is dropping in the smartphone 5 and in the last quarter they were overtaken by Samsung. Android’s market share has been much bigger then Apple’s for a long time but this is the first time an individual Android OEM has overtaken Apple. October 5, 2011 was the passing of Steve Jobs. In mid August he stepped down as CEO of Apple being succeeded by Tim Cook. That is the day the downfall of Apple began. Since that day Samsung has been slowly gaining on Apple and finally 1 year later they have taken over. Soon enough if the next 2 iPhones don’t do something extremely amazing their Market Share will continue to dwindle and they will become the next RIM.

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On September 12th, 2012 Apple took to the stage to unveil their long anticipated iPhone 5. They announced the best iPhone ever but when compared to most Android phones in the market it was very outdated. New features included 4G LTE, 4-inch display, 8 megapixel 1080p HD camera, HD front-facing camera, A6 processor that is two times faster than the A5X, Apple’s own maps to replace Google Maps and more

• The world’s first LTE phone was the HTC Thunderbolt released in March 2011. Apple is finally playing catch up releasing a LTE phone 1.5 years late.
• The original Galaxy S came out with a 4 inch screen in June 2010. Samsung has followed with the Galaxy S2 at 4.3 inches and Galaxy S3 4.7 inches.
• A “revolutionary” 8 megapixel 1080p camera that has become standard in all Android phones since June 2010 following the HTC EVO 4G release and Panorama mode following just months after. The HD front facing camera became standard in April 2011 with the release of the LG Nitro HD.
• Now with their new processor they actually did some magic. Benchmark scores rank it to be the 2nd fastest phone currently in the market (not including the LG Optimus G, HTC One X+, Motorola Razr I, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and other phones that have been announced but not released). The only phone to beat the iPhone 5 in benchmarks. The iPhone 5 scored 1601 and the S3 scored 1628. Now this is a really small difference however when the S3 was benchmarked using the Beta Android 4.1.1 instead of the current version 4.0 it destroyed the iPhone 5 by over 100. The few phones that have been announced but not yet released like the Galaxy Note 2 are poised to destroy even the S3 benchmarks sending the iPhone 5 out of the top 10 by November at the latest.
• Now Apple Maps is just a disaster waiting to happen. After relying on Google Maps since the first iPhone Apple decided to ditch everything that is Google except search. They even dropped YouTube. The reason they dropped Google Maps was because the Android version of Google Maps was much more advance then the iOS version (duh! Android=Google). Apple partnered with TomTom the weakest player in the GPS market, I use to have a TomTom GPS not only would it take forever to lock but it would take me the longer way, more time consuming way when compared to any other GPS (including Google and Windows Phone Maps). Google Maps with Navigation was released in 2009, 3 years later Apple is finally playing catch-up.
• Other things the new iPhone 5 includes is a new lightning adapter which is Apple’s version of the Micro USB that every smart phone on the market has been using for many years and recently (last year) have started using USB 3.0 on the other side while Apple stuck with the old USB 2.0. The new iCloud tabs which sync with Safari on your computer. Google Chrome has been doing that with Android since November 2011.
• Still the iPhone 5 is missing new things like NFC and widgets.

Now how does the iPhone 5 get 2 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours… read on in part 2

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