Is there really a need for yet another channel for mass communication?
We already have established channels like banners, spam, tv ads, radio spots, newspaper ads, mass mailings and many more. How will adding another channel with one way communication add to your sales enough to make a difference on the bottom line?

It is considered by some that using these channels at all is a cowards way of spending a marketing budget. No one will question your decision, because they are well known and established channels. On the other hand you won't be selected MVP any time soon either. This is just a way of not making a choice or a decision, or a way of proving that you don't have an original idea for yourself or your brand.

One reason to use digital signs is that you can display video on them. The problem with video is that too much different sound in a store will not create of comfortable shopping environment. However if you show the same video on all screens and it is synchronized, you can have the sound on the in store audio system. But if you are going to show the same content on all screens, you wont be able to have relevant videos to specific products, you can only use generic videos. You could of course mute all videos, but that kind of removes at least one of the dimensions of video.

An other reason to use digital signs is that it will be much cheaper in the long run, since you will be able to replace the content at any time. Unless you limit yourself to non animated content this is not true. Your cost for creative professionals will cost a lot more than changing printed signs every day.

So what do you do when you've already spent a fortune on in store displays? You place the high up above all you merchandise, so the don't steal any space. And since no one really sees the content placed that high, you don't change the content very often since no one notices whether you've changed it or not.

But don't worry, sincy you bought your DOOH (why does the same thing have so many different names?) in the beginning of a boom. Since that was the time when you hade marketing dollars to spend. You will see an increase in sales and your boss will acknoledge that marketing has to have had something to do it.

Good work marketing 

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First of all let me just say that I believe that it's required in most cases to use SEO.

Having said that, I have a number of different topics I would like to discuss with the SEO community.

First of all, why are there so many people still preaching that you should never ever use Flash because it isn't indexed by Google? In July 2008 Google announced that they indexed Flash and in June 2009 Google's Flash indexing got even better. Why then can you still read in countless blogs or comments in forums that you shouldn't use Flash for indexing reasons? If you still doubt that Google can index Flash content read this, which answers many of the questions you might have on how Google's Flash indexing works.

One thing I often come across when talking to SEO experts is the opinion that you shouldn't even bother creating a site or a single page without SEO in mind. I refuse to believe that every site and every page would benefit by maximizing the number of visitors. There are many cases when it is more important that your existing visitors or customers get the right content at the right time, and not as important that you get loads of new visitors.

There is little debate over the importance of incoming links to your site for high ranking. It is also rarely disputed that an incoming link from New York Times is worth more than a link from a fake blog created by an SEO expert. The Google ranking value of a link from the Times is in fact so much higher than a fake-blog link that one could argue that it would be much more efficient to spend all your time and money to get organic links on trusted sites. This is achieved by traditional PR, not by SEO.

When everybody has purchased services from SEO experts, who will be ranked highest?
The most SEO friendly site is black text on white background and no graphic elements, but how do you build a brand in a black and white world? An old truth is still a truth, content is still king. If you have an interesting site with great content, people will want to visit your site. To get people to link to your site, you must have interesting content.

Tags: seo, flash, internet marketing

Who benefits from implementing a Flash CMS? The obvious answer is that everybody wins, but is that the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Of course not, when a new technology that is meant to automate something emerges, the person who did the manual labour before the new technology will sometimes find it hard to embrace this new technology. In the case of Flash CMS, people making their living by creating simple Flash projects that mostly look and work the same way and just replaces images and texts for different customers, will not benefit from customers being aware of Flash CMS. One could argue that people with limited knowledge of Flash that still makes money by doing simple Flash projects, probably doesn't have the customer base that will find out or cares if there is a more efficient way of doing things. With that argument in mind, it is likely that they will not be affected at all by Flash CMS.

How about the web agencies, that have very skilled Flash developers and built their own site as a showcase on what they can do in Flash? This also leads to another question, will Flash CMS "steal" work from skilled Flash developers? Let's look back in time some 10-15 years and try to compare the amount of work available for web developers, before and after the CMS systems. Is there any indication that the introduction of CMS systems has done anything but increased the amount of development time is required for each web project. Most likely, customer requirements for features on their websites have increased in such a rate that any time saved on using a CMS system in development is hard to measure, since your still doing so much development. To transfer the historic wisdom to Flash CMS, it will probably help increase the amount of Flash used in websites to such extent that even more developers will have to learn action script.

How will your average Flash CMS customer benefit from using a Flash CMS? Most likely they will communicate a lot more with Flash than they do today.

Tags: yooba flash cms, flash usage, flash cms implementation, flash cms market impact

The question might seem simple to answer, but how come so few companies actually do it? There are of course a number of answers to both these questions, but let's look at history first. When looking at the traditional CMS market, it has been a well established truth for very long that you need to take control of your content, and minimize the number of consultant hours needed to put your messages out on the web. There is also the issue of time to market, and scheduling and versioning issues. The list could be made long of different reasons why one should use a traditional CMS, and looking at how many do it, it has also become an accepted truth that you need a CMS.

Isn't it strange that everybody use these arguments when investing time and money to release a new site, but somehow these arguments aren't valid when it comes to Flash content. Of course these same arguments apply to Flash content as well, it's just that most people aren't aware that it's possible. It is also true that many agencies that create web sites make a lot of money by updating and creating simple Flash content, these people are often afraid that they will loose revenue if they no longer can charge a weeks worth of time to produce a simple banner.

You can hardly blame people that are unaware of the possibilities for not using Flash CMS, you can however blame us for not telling them. To the companies that are afraid of loosing money if their customers start using a Flash CMS, are you making less money on your developers by selling a traditional CMS? There is also something to learn from the desktop publishing revolution from the 80's, just because everybody have the tools to create content doesn't mean that everybody has the skills to do it.

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