Author: David Iwanow

Finding location, losing privacy

The latest, growing social media trend is location based services like FourSquare, but are consumers ready for the privacy issues that location data  brings? The Apple iPhone is one of the leading smartphone platforms, but has the recent iOS4 Software update enabling iAd gone too far? It seems Apple has created ...

Big clients don't need big media agencies

In what might be a sign of a shift in the agency market, PepsiCo and AB InBev have announced they will be pooling their media buying and, speculation suggests, likely be approaching media companies directly to negotiate better rates. Based on how quickly the buying partnership expanded to encompass buying, ...

WotFlight's launch

Anyone who has worked in the travel industry or booked a hotel in the last few years would recognise Wotif as no stranger to the online travel market. They have proven it is possible for one online company to change the way traveller’s book accommodation, now it seems they’re set to change how you book a flight! Rumours ...

Where was MacBank's 'Miranda' plan?

The staff of Macquarie Bank last week showed how to turn the standard practice of wasting time forwarding emails into instant fame.While Channel 7 recorded a live reaction to the Reserve Bank leaving interest rates unchanged, something caught the viewers attention. In the background a Macquarie Bank staff member, ...

Australian retail's bridge to the future

Leading up to the Christmas period and with all this discussion around crazy discounts offers on Black Friday [Ed: Evidence bag C], I felt it would be suitable to look at new technology solutions for growing the value of the online retail market. One of the most interesting examples, which combines online and offline ...

Media versus Google

Tough question but, do we even need Google? The one topic that continues to be discussed in business and publishing circles has returned to centre stage with recent public tantrums from News Corp screaming they plan to block Google. In September I blogged about how publishers appear to be flipping out over how little ...

The Good, the Bad and the new Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook is continuing to improve solutions for advertisers with a recent upgrade to its Ads Manager. While still in beta I have been testing it for a few weeks with my own client campaigns and it will be rolled out across all accounts in the next few months. The new Ads Manager interface seeks to assist larger ...

US Government seeking blogger scalps

Yesterday, 6 October 2009, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its updated and final guidelines for governing endorsements and testimonials, with several changes to the outdated 1980s version. ...

Publishing flips out

One of the biggest changes to shake up online media consumption has been Rupert Murdoch’s recent announcement that News Corp will charge for access to all its websites from 2010. ...

Is your shopping cart only half full?

The interest in the recent Online Retailer event held in Sydney highlighted that most companies appear to be still struggling to fully benefit from ecommerce and offer their clients/customers a new convenient sales channel. A number of Australian retailers are working to refine their online strategies and understand ...

Agency of the Year video

My inbox is often filled with strange and interesting videos but last week I discovered a wonderful gem. The video starts out with typical agency client request/demand but morphs into something almost evil while retaining a light-hearted element that makes it suitable to share. The whole concept of the clips revolve ...

The great search for the credit-worthy consumer

Google’s financial services team has joined with Compete.com to help advertisers identify ‘credit-worthy consumers’ online, allowing them to be targeted through its display and text ads network. It was one of two projects aiming at working to help advertisers reach a better quality audience by combining Google ...

Game, set, content match!

One of the biggest questions often asked of an SEO Agency is 'Why is my site not ranking?'. One of the many elements is the content, but what does that mean for you? At SMX Sydney earlier this year, there was a 'Copywriting for search' presentation by Chris Thomas head of Melbourne-SEO firm RESEO.   So the ...

Putting Wolfram|Alpha to the test against Google

Every few months there seems to be a new company that releases a new product to the market that is a going to change the whole world with a simple few lines of code maybe this is the beginning of that process? Google the world’s largest search engine has an academic background being born from two students at Stanford ...

An event review of SMX Sydney

As many people are aware, Barry Smyth and his team from Search Strategies recently held the annual Search Marketing Expo in Sydney.  This was one of the first events I had attended since the economy really started to take affect on marketing/advertising agencies and I'm really glad I did as there was lots ...

Got your social media identity?

Social media is an amazing way for companies to engage with customers, customers to engage with companies and generally share information easily. I don’t usually take the time to look at new social media products as they all seem to be trying to do the same task, but I see that a number of companies featured in recent ...

Amazonfail and negative online sentiment

There seems to be a quite a bit of anger online regarding the glitch, hack or censorship that has happened to 'adult' classed books on Amazon.com, and it seems that still yet to be a clear response from the company. Has the world’s so-called greatest customer service team at Amazon.com been burned at the stake for ...

How viral marketing could work for you

The importance of video to any successful online campaign continues to grow but still a number of campaigns are still not being fully used for either marketing or SEO campaigns. Video has jumped in importance for marketing as the recent announcement by the Rudd government that it will be launching a $43 billion National ...

A closer look at the Twitter Skittles campaign

Twitter seems to be the buzzword for most companies, and the real question many agencies are trying to answer is how can social media help grow our businesses or understand more about our customers. A very interesting campaign was recently launched by Agency.com and revolved around using the Twitter service to publish ...

more about our blogger

David Iwanow

David Iwanow is the Director of The Lost Agency, a web analytics focused SEO agency that is helping business get found online, you can follow him on twitter @thelostagency.

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