Entrecard
I don’t know if you have noticed, but I recently added a small widget down on the right hand side of the blog. You con recognize it becuase of the ‘E’, which stands for Entrecard and next to this letter there is a picture with some text and this links to other blogs who are ‘advertising’ on my blog. The payment I receive is in the form of credits, which I can then use to buy ads on other blogs.
At first, I was a little sceptical about the Entrecard system, mainly because it means I have to go clicking around the www to amass enough credits to be able to pay for an ad. This clicking is akin to leaving your business card, (Mine is on the left) which is the way the Entrecard site puts it. I have to say that as a result of clicking I’ve come across some very nice blogs. And far from being a chore, this clicking is more a voyage of exploration. Yes, there is some dubious stuff out there, but there is lots of interesting material too.
In fact, this system is not a bad way to reveal your hidden gem of a blog to the reading world. So, go on, create a wee blog business card and sign up. You might just find it quite a lot of fun. Entrecard is totally free, and, in theory you can even sell your credits to others. Even if money does not bother you, it may not be such a bad way to donate money to a good cause you would like to support.
Any criticisms? A few, but nothing serious. First of all, this system can really eat up your time. And second, I have not come across any new blogs dealing with Italy and things Italian, not just yet, anyway.
And before anyone brings up the point, no, nobody has asked me to write this, I just thought I’d spread the word and, maybe, encourage a few others to read and or, even better, to set up blogs.
Sarkozy likes the BBC, possibly!
UPDATE: 14.01.08 - Having now read more of the articles in Il Sole, I can now understand why the paper used the headline saying that ‘State TV without advertising would not work’. The article basically argues that just about all TV and Internet, is only possible due to advertising. Whilst this is partially true, I would still point out that the BBC does very well without ads, although the BBC does, cleverly, use other ways to generate finance - and, ads are shown on BBC world - although they seem to be very targeted and very slick.
One final thing is that thanks to the recent intervention of one Gentiloni, who introduced a law designed to cut down conflicts of interest (read Berlusconi and Mediaset), a Sarkozy approach to the funding of State TV cannot work in Italy. But, laws can be changed…and often are here. End of update.
Well, he appears to like the fact that the BBC, the UK’s state TV service, is advertising free. I read about this in Il Sole 24 Ore, although the front page leader’s headline had me rather confused - it read ‘Una tv pubblica senza spot alla fine dinventerà inutile’, which translated reads: ‘State TV without advertising will turn out to be useless’. Although the article under the headline did not actually reinforce this view. And nor did the main articles oddly enough, although I shall read them all again to see if I’ve missed something.
What have Sarkozy, and the BBC got to do with Italy, aside from the fact that both were reported in an Italian newspaper? Quite a lot, actually. You see, Italian TV has been under attack recently for its patent lack of decent quality programming. Which is, incidentally, something I go on about on this blog. Finally, it appears, the message is getting though. Not that my ravings will have had any influence I imagine. What the heck, at least I know I am not at all alone in my view that Italian TV is pretty appalling.
It would appear that the complaints of others here in Italy have finally started to stir a few into something close to action, hence the interest in Sarkozy’s ideas. If the French president gets his way, and ads disappear from French state TV, then Italy may even consider doing the same. ‘What about cash?’, you may be asking. Sarkozy has got this covered too, and his ideas are quite innovative. The guy is obviously rather more tech-savvy than Italy’s bunch of pensioner politicians.
What the spritely French young (ish) whipper-snapper of a politician is proposing is that TV funding is gleaned from a tax on mobile phones, Internet, and private TV stations. This tax will be infinitesimal according to him. Not a bad idea, if you ask me. I think I would happy pay another 50 Eurocents per minute of mobile conversation in return for ad free TV here. This innovative funding method would also appeal to the Italian government and their TV channels, because Italians are not the worlds most willing TV licence fee payers.
So, no ads, and plenty of cash, potentially. Next on the agenda is sorting out the quality, and Italian TV may even turn out to be a more worthy competitor to the World Wide Web. OK, this is very wishful thinking.
More waiting and seeing.
Italian TV, one more time…
Well, I’ve gone on about it before, Italian TV that is, and how low the overall quality of programming is. Another of my Italian TV related gripes concerned the inordinate amount of advertising viewers are blessed with.
Some time back, both of the biggies, RAI and Mediaset, were fined over the overuse of advertising. Not a great surprise to yours truly. Now, according to an article on page 20 of today’s Il Sole 24 Ore, the Euro parliament bods have accused RAI and Mediaset of showing too much advertising, and the EC has said that Italian sanctions against the perpetrators are rather too soft.
How strange, these ’soft’ sanctions. Now, I’m sure that this has nothing to do with a certain former Italian prime minister being effectively involved in the control of both of the TV big boys. No, no way.
Springing to their own defence, Mediaset has accused the EC of not understanding the situation in Italy, and of having miscalculated the number of ads. Well, they would have to say something, wouldn’t they?
One thing I would say about Italian TV advertising, much as I dislike it, is that Italy probably has one of the most sophisticated TV advertising systems in the world. Although they go over the top, in terms of quantity, the way in which all these ads are planned is very smart. And a lot of brain power obviously goes into the planning.
It’s a shame the same level of intellect does not go into the production of decent TV programs. With all the ad income there must be a fair amount of cash to invest in commissioning a little more ‘intellivision’. And, if the quality of content were higher, then possibly the viewers may overlook the vast quantity of ads they are bombarded with.
On the subject of non-advertising, the RAI and Mediaset big boys should spend a little (more) time watching Sky. This might give them a few ideas. Although one suspects that the attitude is most probably ‘it’s free so the viewers will just have to put up with the crap’. Indeed, both RAI and Mediast have pay-per-view systems, and by feeding the viewers rubbish on ordinary TV they can encourage them to pay for something better. Or am I just being paranoid?
You get what you pay for, I suppose.
When an advert isn’t. Or is it?
During one of my English language classes today we started discussing one of the projects that my students had worked on as part of their marketing master. This project happened to involve creating a marketing and communications plan for a holiday resort (tourist village/villaggio turistico) in Italy. During our discussion I mentioned Booking.com, one of the foremost on-line hotel booking sites in the world. In an attempt to justify stating that all hotels should be listed on Booking.com, I typed ‘hotels, Italy’ into Google and, lo and behold, the first sponsored ad was for Booking.com. However, one of my students noticed that Booking.com did not appear in the normal search results. Effectively she intimated that she would be more likely to click on a normal search result, than on one of the sponsored keyword generated ads. Indeed, had Booking.com appeared at the top of the normal results she would have visited the site most probably.
Very interesting I thought, how ‘normal’ Google’ results were not perceived by this person as being adverts, even though, in my opinion, they function in much the same way. I wonder how many others think in the same way, and do not perceive search engine results as being advertising. Quite a few, I imagine, and this may indicate that SEO is potentially more effective than keyword advertising.
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