B&T Magazine (21/11/08) has reported that Online Advertising has grown to a record high in the last quarter and the Interactive Advertising Bureau Australia (IAB) anticipates a 20% year-on-year growth with online.  

So with millions of advertising dollars being spent in this area, what better place to find shopping, book travel, get a loan, source info or anything else!  It’s an online world and it’s all at your fingertips!

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News, Search Industry | 1 Comment »

Sydney’s Darling Harbour Chinese Gardens were the tranquil setting that greeted guests attending e-Channel seminar to industry search VIP’s Wednesday 12 November. What a great setting for a function, a few people who have lived in Sydney all their lives commented they had never been to the CBD gardens and were blown away. Massive gold fish, lizards sunning themselves & waterfalls greeted participants.

Guest speaker Caroline Rowe a Senior Lecturer for University of South Australia and Direct Marketing expert with 20 Years advertising and consulting experience gave away some of the secrets used by e-channel staff to build great SEM campaigns and Ads. The seminar lasted an hour and finished with an actual group Ad design session applying some of the newly learnt skills.

e-Channel spent 2 years constructing its search training methodology, called the 7 Elements of Search. The methodology is now a 65 page training manual that it now shares with its key clients.

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News, Search Industry | 2 Comments »

e-Channel, a premium Australian search engine marketing (SEM) company has today announced an agreement with Fairfax Digital to supply its DynamicCreative™ software to manage search engine marketing campaigns across the publishers classified’s websites - Domain, Drive and MyCareer.

The contract follows an extensive trial of the software which saw the publisher’s cost-per-click ratio reduced by 30 per cent in the first 12 months.

DynamicCreative, a search engine marketing platform created by e-Channel, has been designed specifically to meet the criteria established by search engines such as Google and Yahoo! that favours the relevance of ad content above the advertising cost values.

According to Frank Grasso, CEO and founder of e-Channel, while bid management software is still widely used in the market, there have been moves by the dominant search engines to ensure more relevant search results to improve the experience of web users. This has redefined the requirements for successful Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

”Bid management software is quickly becoming old technology that manages the cost per click of a campaign. The reality is that Google does not reward how much an advertiser is willing to pay - they reward relevance. e-Channel’s DynamicCreative software is the first SEM software to market that can assist companies to reach their online audiences in keeping with these requirements.“

As a result of using the DynamicCreative platform, Fairfax Digital has been able to create roughly 300,000 highly customised unique ads and expand their campaign from 20,000 key words to approximately one million keywords.

”Our search engine marketing is now far more effective as a result of significantly expanding our reach. We have crafted highly targeted ads that have resulted in a reduction of our cost per click and cost per acquisition.“ Said Graham Perry, Managing Director - Classifieds for Fairfax Digital.

Version 2 of DynamicCreative launched in early June of 2008 and offers large organisations the ability to efficiently manage their SEM campaigns.

”DynamicCreative is now even more robust and is ideal for clients who have comprehensive or complex websites. Traditionally large, dynamic campaigns have been cumbersome and time consuming to administer and this software automates that process and ensures that they are managed efficiently,“ said Grasso.

The software also includes advanced reporting capabilities to ensure that clients have visibility over all aspects of their campaigns and can regularly update and adjust them to ensure that they are reaping maximum value.

e-Channel has experienced significant growth since its inception in 1999 and has doubled revenues over the last nine months . The agency, currently handling over $15 million in advertising across Google and Yahoo, has grown its sales team by 100 per cent in the same period.

”Our reputation for providing highly effective search engine marketing campaigns and unique software to maximise results for our clients is well known. We have a quality offering, and our expansion reflects this acknowledgment from the market,“ said Grasso.

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News | No Comments »

E-channel one of Australia’s leading search engine marketing agencies has appointed Grant Goodall, a former leading figure in tourism, as its new General Manager.

Grant will bring over 20 years experience in a diverse range of executive management and marketing positions to e-channel and will assist with the company’s growth expectations.

CEO and founder of e-channel Frank Grasso said ‘Grant as a previous Executive Director of the Western Australian Tourism Commission, CEO of Tourism Council Australia (SA), CEO of Travelmarvel and NZTP Travel, General Manager of Hertz Campervans Aust/NZ has recognised credentials in the national and international tourism sector. One of our fastest growing market segments is from tourism businesses, so Grant’s knowledge will be crucial to further growth.’

Mr Grasso said, ‘this is a key senior appointment for our expanding business as the up-take of Dynamic Creative™ our search engine marketing platform, applicable to any business with a website, goes from strength to strength.’

Grant business diversity and depth is further demonstrated with his racing connections as current Chairman of Harness Racing SA.

General Manager Grant Goodall said, ‘he was delighted to be joining such a dynamic company, with exciting growth prospects in Australia and globally.
The e-channel services and product are in my opinion exceptionally unique and world class. The difference we can make to the bottom-line of any business with a website is astonishing, anyone not using our type of product in the marketing and promotion of their business is limiting their businesses profitability and potential!’

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News | No Comments »

Innovator e-channel online has recruited veteran online media strategist Philip Alexander as chairman in a move that opens doors among major publishers for its search engine advertising system.

Mr. Alexander, a former regional corporate development director for Yahoo! in South Asia, intends to play a hands-on role with e-channel by identifying business opportunities within Australian enterprises and using his extensive network to expand the company, both locally and in international markets.

With search engine advertising the fastest growing sector of Australia’s $1 billion online advertising market, e-channel’s Dynamic Creative software boosts productivity for online advertisers by as much as 500 per cent by automating the repetitive, exhaustive and labour-intensive process of creating online search ads.

Dynamic Creative enables large, database-rich websites to automate keyword list creation and optimise the performance of ad campaigns. The software interrogates large content databases to create accurate keywords which are published as compelling content-rich ads in search engines such as Google.

Mr. Alexander, a former chairman, and current director, of the Internet Industry Association in Australia, recently invested in e-channel online alongside Playford Capital and a group of other investors.

Mr. Alexander said he was attracted because “e-channel has the management team, the strategy and the product, in Dynamic Creative, to improve online search advertising results for clients in Australia and internationally”.

“There is a rapid and major transition of advertising and marketing dollars from traditional media to targeted results in online search. This is changing the way advertisers and consumers interact.
“The Dynamic Creative software developed by Frank Grasso and his team is already making a revolutionary impact on a large number of advertisers and publishers in Australia. The product can deliver immediate benefits to organisations that run travel, classifieds, auction and retail websites.”

Mr. Alexander is CEO of online media strategy consultancy OrderPoint Australia. Previous roles include Yahoo!, President and CEO of iBEAM Broadcasting Asia in Hong Kong and founding managing director of Chello Broadband Australia & New Zealand. He also held senior roles with major media company VNU in Asia and Europe.

e-channel online has recruited another experienced director in Doug Adamson, an Investment Manager for Playford Capital. Mr. Adamson is an experienced entrepreneur who has built media and technology businesses in Australia, and Europe. He is also an active angel investor.

Mr. Adamson said a board gave a fast-growing company access to experience and expertise. “It’s critical for a founder or CEO to have access to senior people who have done it before,” he said.
e-channel online CEO Frank Grasso said the board put together by Playford Capital was as important as the money it had invested. “The board contains senior people with extensive industry and business experience who will accelerate the growth of e-channel,” he said.

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News | No Comments »

Search engine marketing specialist e-channel online has been backed by a team of investors led by Playford Capital to fast-track market entry of Dynamic Creative, patented software that optimises website advertising for search engines.

Dynamic Creative enables large, database-rich websites to automate the creation of keyword lists and optimise the performance of ad campaigns. The software creates timely and relevant keywords which are published as ads in search engines such as Google and Yahoo!.

Dynamic Creative boosts productivity for online advertisers by as much as 500 per cent, delivering immediate benefits to organisations that run travel, classifieds, online auction and retail websites.

Search engine marketing is the fastest growing area of Australia’s $1 billion online advertising market. However the process of creating ads is repetitive, exhausting and labour-intensive. Commentators suggest that a skills shortage in this sector may retard the growth of online advertising.

e-channel online developed Dynamic Creative to solve this problem. The hosted software does more than speed up the process by automatically generating relevant keywords, including price and availability details, from website inventory.

Dynamic Creative optimises online ad campaigns by delivering detail-rich advertising creatives for each keyword. It also automatically generates a landing page to match the search. This combination increases click-through and conversion rates by enhancing the “long tail” impact of search ads. “Long tail” marketing generates revenue by selling granular inventory items, often buried deep in a database.

Playford Capital, an Australian investor in innovative companies, is one of four backers that have taken a minority stake in e-channel online.

e-channel online managing director Frank Grasso said the funds would ramp up the company’s growth.

“The beauty of a hosted solution like Dynamic Creative is that we never stop enhancing it. We will continue to extend and improve processes based on feedback from our customers.

“The real benefit of Dynamic Creative is that it equips businesses to get more value from their online advertising campaigns. Our system automates the hard yakka activity up to the search engines. This delivers quicker, cheaper and more relevant online ad campaigns.”

Drive.com.au, Fairfax Media’s automotive website, which lists 73,000+ new and used cars, has used Dynamic Creative for the past year to manage and implement its search engine marketing strategy.

Playford Capital investment manager Doug Adamson said e-channel online was an attractive investment because of its proven success. “It has already sold Dynamic Creative to large advertisers,” he said.

“The company has a market-ready product that solves major problems for online advertisers. With online advertising growing at 50 per cent a year, that’s obviously a very attractive market to supply. As investors, our contribution of cash, contacts and industry experience will allow e-channel online to grow its presence in this space much more rapidly than it could by relying on cashflow.”

Share This (Digg it, Furl it, e-mail it, etc)

Posted in News | No Comments »