Econet Wireless Corporate Communications Manager, Rangarirai Mberi, told CAJ News that his company had entered the UK’s Mobile Virtual Network market after signing an agreement with mobile firm Orange. The agreement will allow Econet to offer services to its own customers in the UK using the Orange network.

Econet is targeting the broad African community in the UK and already has telecoms operations in 14 markets, including Botswana, Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and will offer cheap call rates to UK customers calling to and from these countries.

CMA will be delivering a series of marketing campaigns across Radio, TV, Print and digital ads as part of its customer acquisition and branding strategy coupled with an effective street marketing campaign to establish a stronghold in point of sale locations.

Brands in the sector, which have not significantly invested in the platform in the past, now account for 11.8% of UK online adspend, up from 9.4% last year, according to research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Marketers invested almost £2bn online between January and June this year, equating to a 10% increase on the same period in 2009.

Online now accounts for 24.3% of total UK advertising expenditure.

The 10% year-on-year growth rate is a marked improvement on the 4.6% increase recorded in the first half of 2009, when the recession was in full swing.

In the first half of 2010, search marketing accounted for £1.2bn, or 60%, of the total spent on online advertising.

Paid-search grew by 8.9%, while spending on display ads increased by 6.4% to £381m. The majority of the latter was devoted to embedded formats such as banner ads.

The total spent on digital advertising by FMCG brands was surpassed only by the expenditure of the media, entertainment and finance sectors.

Media and entertainment brands contributed 14.4% of total spending online, compared with 13.2% for the same period last year.

Finance brands, meanwhile, lowered their online adspend and accounted for 13.3% of the total, compared with 14.9% for the first half of last year.

Jon Ingall, managing director, AIS, said: “Display advertising is getting smarter and, because it can be priced and tailored live, it is now a far more powerful tool than it used to be.”

He cited recent campaigns by Old Spice and Marmite as evidence of established brands directing their advertising online in an attempt to attract new audiences.

Brands spent £20.7m on pre- and post-roll video advertising in the first half on 2010, an 82% rise on the same period last year. This form of advertising is predicted to continue to grow, if web-based TV initiatives such as YouView and Google TV lure adspend.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, said: “FMCG brands have taken time to understand the evolution of online advertising, but they are now engaging with the relevant platforms.

“It was tough for advertisers last year, but they have learned a lot and, now that advertising budgets have returned, it is good to see double-digit growth in online adspend, ahead of overall advertising.”

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk

The research also questioned whether measuring click-through rates alone reflected the branding effectiveness of online video, as they did not take into account the consumers who chose to research their purchase in their own time.

The 12-month study drew on almost 6,000 respondents and covered 11 brands, 24 campaigns and five ad formats. The ads appeared on six Sky websites – Sky News, Showbiz, Sky 1, Golf 365, Planet Rugby and Sky Sports.

A spokesman for the IAB said it was the most in-depth “live” study to date dedicated to online video-advertising effectiveness.

Pre-roll video with a companion banner delivered the highest brand recall at 47%. Qualitative research suggested this was because the banner increased the audience’s anticipation and, therefore, their attention levels.

The recall when only pre-roll was used was 44%, while 43% of respondents recalled a branded video player, 37% recalled post-roll video ads and 36% recalled in-stream overlays.

Brand recall was higher at work (44%) than at home (39%), which suggests brand-centric video ads may be more relevant during working hours, but the opposite was shown for click-through rates, which were higher when users were at home.

Rebecca McQuade, online research manager for Sky, said: “This research provides genuine insight into the effectiveness of the different formats. We’ve delivered an actionable piece of research for the entire industry, which shows how online video can deliver brand engagement for advertisers.”

The respondents were more comfortable about ads on professionally made content, than content posted by others: 47% stated ads were appropriate around entertainment clips and 46% found ads acceptable around TV programmes. However, only 17% said ads were appropriate around content posted by others.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com by Maisie McCabe

STD Transmission

If you have recently found out you have infected with an STD, and you think you may have infected another person through unprotected sex… then the app is for you…

How it Works

When a clinic diagnoses you with an STD, they will issue you with a unique code which you can use with the app. The app will then ask you to provide your sexual partners name and phone number and then your partner will receive a text message from a 3rd party service making them aware of the possibility that an STD infection could have been passed to them.

By using this app, you can tell previous partners about the possible STD infection without them directly knowing your identity saving your the awkardness or interacting with them.

The app is due for release in early 2011