Leadpile’s Blog

Have you ever received a coupon or incentive via email and then forget about it or lost track of it because you didn’t print it right away? Good news! JCPenny has selected a handful of it’s stores to test mobile coupons.
According to ONLINE MEDIA DAILY, 16 JCPenny locations installed “2D” capable scanners at registers that have the capability to read the barcode off the coupon directly from consumer’s cell phones with email capabilities. Customers can download a free application at cellfire.com/jcpenney or by texting “JCP” to 28888 from their cell phone.
JCpenny will be promoting several different incentives to test this during the holiday season. Pending the results of this trial, JCPenny will possibly expand this feature to additional stores.
“Ten million digital coupons were redeemed in the first six months of 2009, up 25% from a year ago.” For the high percentage of Blackberry and iPhone users that have their phones within reach every moment of the day, this could be potentially a great new thing! The incentive to use the coupon could be much greater given that printing, saving, and finding the coupon could be a thing of the past!

Sitting at my desk I can look around and see a LG phone, Dunkin’s cup, Apple computer, and the list can just go on and on. Whether it’s billboards, magazines, people’s clothing, or on the internet, advertising is literally everywhere. But where hasn’t advertising really tapped into yet? Your cell phone.
Mobile advertising is a market that many companies are trying to get more into. With everyone and their mother having a smart phone, it only makes sense for this to be the next big step in advertising. According to emarketer.com, the projected spend for 2009 in mobile advertising is 416 million, and it will soar up to $1.56 billion by 2013. Currently, the main forms of mobile advertising are through texting and banner ads. The mobile banner ads work in a similar fashion as internet banner ads. With mobile texting advertisers can purchase packages to meet their needs (packages can include a certain number of texts per month along with keywords) and then send them out to all their contacts.
Personally, I think that mobile advertising is great. Just the other week, I received a text for free admission to a concert because I had been at that same venue earlier that week. All I had to do is just show the text at the front door and I was in. No strings attached! Marketing strategies with incentives always seem to work the best. It gets the consumer in the door (for free in this case) and it still brings in revenue with other purchases such as food and beverages. If this isn’t a win win situation, then I do not know what is.

It looks like big brand names are maybe seeing that technology (the internet specifically) is where they need to look to to promote their products bigger and better. In recent years, luxury brands have not had to look at using the internet to generate business. They would do costly things like high end fashion magazine layouts or lavish displays at their stores. However, when times are tough (and you see a lot of traffic on your website) you brainstorm on ways you can generate business for the smallest cost. This is why many luxury brands are now looking at the internet as a way to generate more interest in their “brand”. Previously, businesses could solely depend on traditional sources of revenue, but never the internet. Adage.com reports that less than 33% of luxury companies were using the internet to generate business. I can not imagine this, but it seems it is in fact true. The future of the internet is really where it is at, yet some are just a little slower at seeing the “light” it seems. I guess better late than never!

We all know the importance of the internet in all of our lives, however there are some things that will go down in history. It’s like when a baby does little steps, talks, goes to school etc, you want to know what led up to that child to become who they are today. The internet is our world’s little baby!
11 Points.com points out some very interesting facts about “our” internet:

1. The first image posted on the internet was in 1992. This image was a random picture of 4 women.
2. The first email sent was back in 1971 by a programmer named Ray Tomlinson.
3. The first spam email to go out was in 1978 by a company called DEC (which is no longer in business).
4. The first banner ad was created by AT&T in 1994.
5. The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser point in 1995.
6. The first Tweet was performed by one of the founders of Twitter back in 2006.
7. The first search engine (called Archie) was created back in 1990.
8. The first domain name registered (symbolics.com) was in 1985.
9. The first YouTube video was created in 1995.
10.The first pornographic website registered was in 1994.

No matter how involved you are in the internet today, there is a deep history involved in what happened in previous years to create what we all call the internet today. I can’t wait to see the new list of “first” in 5-10 more years……… It’s such a big beast with so MUCH more potential!

Yahoo has come out ahead in a recent court case involving it’s Launch Media division and major record labels. These record labels wanted to be able to mandate a “status” of the media division (Launchcast Webcasting Service) as an “interactive service”. This title would have then made it a requirement for Launchcast to pay higher fees to broadcast it’s music. Instead the court ruled that the webcasting service would be treated as that, a web service, and only be required to pay some small royalty fees. This is great news for Yahoo who could have had to pay a lot more money to run their internet radio service.
This court case, and others involving major record labels, has really put a damper on the record label’s ability to earn revenue from their music being played. This opens up more conversations in the fact that how can record labels continue to earn revenue? Are we potentially looking at a whole new outlook on record labels and what they do to create music? What about the idea of them being run by internet companies? Distribution of CDs has really dropped off in recent years, and court cases like this one will continue to add fuel to this uphill battle the record labels and their artists are going through.

I don’t know about you, but can you remember the last time you went to a post office or mailed something? In the wake of email, online banking and other electronic methods of paying bills and communication, our post offices are suffering. MSNBC is stating that our nation’s post offices are looking at a potential loss of $7 billion this year. This means that the ability to operate all these post office locations is in jeopardy. There are nearly 33,000 post office locations and my guess would be the ones that could be in trouble would be the less populated areas. That only makes sense, but I think that we need our post offices to deliver to those that do not have computer access, those that need to still deliver registered letters/packages, and for those that still choose to receive “paper” copies of their bills.
So what is the resolution to this money issue with the post office besides just closing down offices? Could we see mail getting delivered less than 6 days a week? Leadpile and other lead generation companies are not necessarily focused on direct mail, however this is something that we are considering utilizing as a source of lead generation. I don’t really see the post office issue as affecting that decision.

In the days of companies trying to be the best of the best, companies are trying to always come up with fresh new ideas. Yahoo has rolled out it’s new search tool called “search pad”. This new Yahoo tool will allow those that are trying to do a lot of research on a prticular subject matter, to keep all their results in one common place to reference (a notepad per say). This new tool will allow you to really sort through all the various search results you obtained from a particular subject matter. This is not something that can be organized with search engines such as Google and Bing, so there could be some interest in this new notepad. The unfortunate thing about this new tool is it really is not beneficial for those that are just doing a quick search for simple subjects such as stores in the area.
The idea of this could be really good for students or workers that are doing an indepth report, and need to have a lot of material to complete the report. Unfortunately, the use of libraries has pretty much dwindled, where people now use the internet to research reports for school and work.
Leadpile and other internet companies have to have this same sort of initiative to stay around. The future of your company relies on knowing your competition will always be trying to come up with new/fresh ideas. If you want to stay around and remain competitive you have to come up with ideas to capture a new audience that some other company is not doing. This appears to be that attempt by Yahoo, and it certainly has a uniqueness that other search engines are not yet offering. So maybe it will be received with open arms like Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The key is to not capture of the attention of users, but to keep their attention.

It is not the most amazing thing the effects an “icon” can have on the media? All major networks changed what they were broadcasting this evening because of Michael Jackson passing away, and internet sites are all bombarded by searchers. I am not sure if you are one of those people that heard the possibility of something bad happening to Michael Jackson earlier in the day, but Leadpile was. Scrambling to find out what was going on with this icon was what was on the TV, the radio AND the internet. How amazing is that that someone has so much impact on the whole world? The media (internet, radio and television) is so so powerful to convey such an icon’s legacy!
Leadpile says goodbye to Michael Jackson.

If you have turned on the national news in the last week, there is talk about what is going on in Iran. Unfortunately, there is a lot of uproar going on, and there is some finger pointing going on with internet companies and their involvement. Internetnews.com is reporting,”Internet traffic experts and DPI firms have been hard at work assessing the traffic into and out of Iran, but such data only provides a certain level of insight into the motives and actions of the government of Iran. Experts believe that specific applications are being targeted, but cannot prove that the government is using a specific technology such as DPI. ” This opens up questions of how much should a government be able to interfere with it’s residence with their use of the internet. Are sites such as Twitter that powerful that there needs to be intervention? Technology is powerful, however is it really that powerful to affect results of Iran’s political affairs?

Are you ever watching your favorite television show and some sort of advertisement comes on that really you have no interest in? I know I know a lot of us don’t really care for advertisements at all, but what if the ads that are on your t.v. are things you are potentially interested in? How about if you’re watching a show like Home Shopping Network, and you can then use your remote control, push a few buttons, and charge a purchase from your television? How about voting for your favorite reality show contestant without using your phone?
All these are things that our televisions are going to be soon allowing us to do in addition to relevant commercials. NPRNews points out, “Consumer advocates worry about marketers compromising our privacy by rummaging through our viewing habits and getting us to trade personal information for coupons.” Potentially these marketing companies will know everything you have purchased, however they will not know detail information such as your name. Is this sort of thing crossing the line on your personal t.v time? This sort of thing is already happening with the internet (behavioral targeting) and websites you are visiting (cookies), so why not with your television too? Leadpile Lead Exchange does not use cookies with our lead generation, however many affiliate marketing networks do.

I am not sure if this is something new, or maybe just a White House position I have never really paid attention till now, however President Obama has named 2 high profile company executives to his tech council.  Tech Council?  Yes, there is such a thing and I think this is a sign of the times.  America has gone internet “crazy” and it is only right to have a President working closely with individuals from Google and Microsoft.  Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Craig Mundie have joined a team (PCAST) of 20 advisers to the President.

“PCAST is designed to give the White House a pipeline to some of the leading voices in science, engineering and technology as the administration crafts policies in those areas,” according to Internet News.  Leadpile Lead Exchange, and other internet companies, like the idea of the potential of more advacements and assistance for this growing internet world we are all a part of.  Maybe in the next presidential term there will be representatives from social networking sites and maybe affiliate marketing companies? Now that is a great idea!

We all purchase items, do online banking, pay our bills, apply for credit and all sorts of other tasks each day through the internet.  Companies like ours work with trying to connect those on the intenet looking for services, with those that can provide that service. Unfortunately, no one, including Leadpile Lead Exchange, is 100% safe from online fraud activity.  According to internet news,“Sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish as financial data migrates to the Internet.” It appears a lot of this increased fraud is directly related to the e-commerce industry. Everyone and anyone is buying their products online while supplying their credit card information. Groups such as The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) partner up with agencies such as the FBI to help monitor internet fraud. However, 2008 saw a 33% spike in the the number of complaints received versus the year before.
We all know the internet is the wave of the future, but how are we all going to maintain consumer safety with such a massive conglomerate as the internet? Is there really a way to be totally safe on the internet? Sadly, fraud is not the only issue the internet is dealing with.  Children and young adults are using the internet as a means of socializing and even “bullying”/harassing others.  I am thinking schools will need to incorporate internet communication skills and proper etiquette to help with teaching children proper ways to utilize the internet. This might help prevent some of the fraud and other problems the internet is facing. Educate kids at a young age to help define the future of the internet.