      |
Vol 1, #35, Nov. 10, 2009 |
Astral Media web clients earn Aeroplan miles with ad buys Astral Media Radio and Aeroplan has announced the signing of an exclusive multi-year Business-to-Business agreement. The new program will reward Astral Media Radio’s direct radio and web clients with Aeroplan Miles when they purchase airtime and web space. Starting today, Astral Media’s more than 20,000 existing and new direct clients can benefit from this program that will be offered to direct advertisers of Astral’s 83 radio stations in 45 communities across the country. “We are thrilled to be joining forces with Astral Media Radio to create this unique business-to-business offering, the largest of its kind at Aeroplan,” said Steve Allmen, Vice President, Business Development, Aeroplan. “This partnership allows Aeroplan to broaden the scope of our program to provide companies including smaller and medium size businesses in local communities across the country with the opportunity to earn Aeroplan Miles when they advertise.” “Aeroplan is the perfect partner; it responds exactly to our objectives and offers the perfect range of rewards with which to thank our business clientele,” said Martin Spalding, Vice-president, General Manager, Astral Media Radio. “This partnership builds loyalty amongst our clients and proves once again our innovation giving clients yet another reason to invest with Astral.” As part of the Astral Media Radio A+ Reward Program direct clients can register online at www.astralaplus.com to earn Aeroplan Miles on their radio and web ad purchases. Aeroplan Miles earned will depend on ad investments. As a bonus, 1,000 Aeroplan Miles will be awarded upon registration. In addition, direct clients will have special opportunities to earn bonus Aeroplan Miles throughout the year. To celebrate the beginning of the program, Astral Media Radio is launching the One Million Aeroplan Miles Contest. Every direct client registered with the program before August 31, 2010, will automatically be entered into the contest and have the chance to win one of five 200,000 Aeroplan Miles prizes. Working closely with Astral Media Radio and Aeroplan, Elevate Incentives will operate and manage the communications, execution and delivery of the program. Top of Page Adconion Media Group today launched the company’s new global website, www.adconion.com. The site showcases Adconion’s focus on online video advertising and its flagship video distribution network Adconion TV, which connects content creators, publisher sites and advertisers to broadly distribute and monetize online video on a global scale. “As Adconion continues to evolve its cache of online video advertising solutions and effectively align advertiser, publisher and viewer needs through Adconion.TV, we must be certain that the way we showcase the brand, in this case through the website, effectively conveys the services we’re providing our partners,” said Tyler Moebius, CEO and president of Adconion Media Group. “Adconion.com provides visitors an interactive experience that highlights the advantages of partnering with Adconion for online video advertising and reinforces the company’s leadership role in this burgeoning industry.” New site features include:
IAB Canada projects total online advertising revenue in Canada will reach an estimated $1.75 billion in 2009, or 9.2 per cent more than the 2008 actuals. French ad revenues are projected to reach $342 million. Online video accounted for 33 per cent of online advertising revenues in 2008. Top of Page BIMM to drive direct and digital marketing communications for Audi BIMM Direct & Digital has announced it has been awarded a three-year AOR assignment with Audi Canada. The assignment, previously held by Factory Labs Design of Denver, will involve BIMM assisting with the maintenance and evolution of Audi’s web properties effective January 1, 2010. The announcement follows closely on the heels of BIMM’s three-year contract to manage Audi’s ongoing Customer Relationship Management program which was previously held by Fuse Communication of Birmingham, Michigan. BIMM will work closely with Lowe Roche, Audi’s brand agency, on both assignments, according to Karsten Ruwoldt, Audi’s Director of Marketing and Product Management. “The Audi wins encapsulate what we are all about – integrating the art and science of direct response with the speed and engagement of digital solutions," says agency founder and President Brian Bimm. The twin wins mirror BIMM’s new Direct & Digital rebranding which is focused more on the fast-growing digital side of the business. The rebranding has been driven by Mike Da Ponte who was recently promoted to VP, General Manager and has become a shareholder at BIMM. Da Ponte recently recruited Andrew Brady, Senior Director of Digital at BIMM, to build the agency’s digital practice. Brady, formerly Director of Client Service at Delvinia Interactive, brings more than 10 years of digital experience to the agency including stints at Draft FCB and Cossette. BIMM is Canada's leading privately-owned direct and digital response agency with clients including Audi, TELUS, JP Morgan Chase and United Way Toronto. Top of Page Save money with launch of Shopaneer Canada Shopaneer, a top online destination for coupons, promotional codes, and discounts, today announced the launch of Shopaneer Canada to help Canadians save money while shopping online. The new site will provide Canadians with an easy and quick way to redeem coupons from Canadian stores. In addition to providing easy access to over 1000 coupons, Shopaneer.ca offers visitors direct links to merchants' sale and clearance items. Shopaneer.ca is committed to providing Canadian consumers with a great online experience. The new site has coupons from over 500 stores separated into categories such as books, clothing, electronics, video games, and furniture. "With such a vast selection of coupons and stores, there is something for everyone," said Scott Rezka, President of Shopaneer Inc. "Our goal is to provide Canadians with an easy way to save money while shopping online." Shopaneer originally launched in 2007 but has only been available in the United States until now. "Since the company is located just north of Toronto, in Richmond Hill, it only made sense to launch a Canadian site," said Scott Rezka. "When I would talk to Canadians about the website, they would get very excited and ask when we would create a Canadian version. I am very excited to finally tell them we have one now." In order to provide Canadians with the best website experience, some major features of Shopaneer.ca include:
Click, calculate and contribute online By clicking onto www.offsetters.ca, visitors to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games can calculate their carbon footprint for attending, and offset their footprint by purchasing carbon credits immediately online. Offsetters, the Official Supplier of Carbon Offsets to the 2010 Winter Games, created the online calculator to help raise awareness. Spectators attending the event will account for nearly half of the entire green house gas emissions attributed to Games related activities. The Offsetters carbon calculator allows users to easily discover the climate impact of their travel, event and accommodation choices when coming to experience the 2010 Winter Games. With just a click of a mouse, users can purchase offsets from the 2010 Legacy Portfolio - a portfolio of clean technology projects, created specifically for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. In its goal to host a carbon neutral 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Vancouver Organizing Committee, together with Offsetters' will work to reduce a minimum of 118,000 tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, thereby offsetting "direct" emissions from the Games by the same amount. VANOC and Offsetters will also work to offset an additional estimated 150,000 tonnes of "indirect" carbon emissions from the Games. The indirect carbon emissions, will be created by, spectators, guests, sponsors and partners of the 2010 Winter Games and therefore it is important that everyone attending take responsibility for their own offsets. The 2010 Travel & Accommodation carbon calculator can be found online at www.offsetters.ca. Also online, Offsetters provides information about the collaboration with VANOC for the 2010 Carbon Partner Program, information about the 2010 Legacy Portfolio, 2010 Winter Games carbon facts and more ideas on how people can do their part to help make Olympic and Paralympic history in the hosting of carbon neutral 2010 Winter Games. Top of Page Olive Media serves up new video productOlive Media, one of Canada’s leading online media companies, is continuing to deliver flexible and creative innovations by extending its product offering to include a full service rich media video ad solution. Pimento (www.pimentomedia.ca) is a user-initiated full screen rich media video ad solution with a performance based pricing model that delivers interaction across Olive Media’s brand safe performance network, Olive Brand Response (OBR). Pimento includes creative development, ad serving and inventory and is priced on a Cost per Interaction (CPI) model. “We saw an opportunity with the shortage of premium pre-roll inventory to address the growing needs of our advertisers by delivering a rich video product” said Simon Jennings, President Olive Media, “Advertisers will now be able to leverage rich video assets to maximize campaign performance and showcase their brands in an interactive and user-initiated environment across Olive Brand Response”. Top of Page Visa Canada launches financial literacy website Building on Visa's 12 year history of providing free financial resources to Canadians, Visa Canada announced today the re-launch of practicalmoneyskills.ca. The Practical Money Skills website offers an easy-to-navigate user interface with cost calculators, budget templates, games and quizzes to help Canadians understand and better manage their personal finances. "The Practical Money Skills site is packed with information," said Tim Wilson, Head of Visa Canada. "The new site is more engaging, easier to use and has information for young adults, teachers and Canadian consumers contemplating any number of financial decisions." For consumers, personal finance information on the site is organized into three categories: Saving & Spending, Credit & Debt, and Life Events. The sub-topics in each category are paired with corresponding calculators, brochure and information that can be downloaded and helpful links. For educators, Visa Canada's Choices & Decisions: Taking Charge of Your Financial Life, a curriculum based financial literacy resource program developed by educators, is available free for download and hard copies of the kit may be ordered through the site's Educators section. The Choices & Decisions resource was updated in 2009 and, since March, has been distributed to 2422 teachers and resource centres across the country. Visa has committed to reaching 20 million people with financial literacy information globally by 2013. In an effort to expand the reach of its financial literacy materials in Canada, website visitors can download the Practical Money Skills brochure in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Punjabi as well as English and French. Top of Page Kijiji adds horsepower to auto classifieds site With used vehicle transactions predicted to account for nearly 70 per cent of total sales by 2013, Kijiji Canada is making it even easier for Canadians to find a used vehicle online by rolling out significant upgrades to its Cars & Vehicles category. Following a year of growth as the most visited used autos website in Canada, new features on Kijiji.ca empower consumers to find the exact used vehicle they're searching for, in their area. Using research about Canadians' online auto-hunting preferences, Kijiji.ca now provides users with the ability to refine and narrow their criteria. Kijiji users can search using preferences including: manufacturer, model, year, price range, body-type, kilometre range, colour, and whether a vehicle is for sale by owner or dealer. Kijiji has even introduced a distance drag-and-drop slider that lets users choose how large of a geographic area they want to search. Online auto hunters can visit http://autos.kijiji.ca to test drive the new search and browse features. "It's like visiting a used car showroom online," says former race car driver Kelly Williams, Kijiji Canada's resident car care expert. "With the new functionality, Kijiji.ca has become a one-stop-shop for finding used cars locally. It's easier than ever for a shopper to compare prices of the same models, limit searches based on criteria like age, mileage or colour, and even separate hatchbacks from convertibles." On average, Canadians post more than 25,000 free classified postings to the Cars & Vehicles category on Kijiji.ca every day. Last year alone, Canadians posted 8.14-million ads to the category, which buyers can now browse more quickly, efficiently, and safely. Why is Kijiji such a popular choice for owners looking to sell a used car? Posting a free classified ad on Kijiji.ca can take as little as one-minute, and it could take as little as a few seconds for a classified poster to receive his or her first response. Users posting "for sale" ads to the Cars & Vehicle category are prompted to enter details about the vehicle for sale using drop-down menus that help categorize and display their vehicle. The new posting details also help to clearly display photos and attributes for every vehicle on Kijiji.ca. "Whether you're a novice car buyer looking to purchase a used vehicle from a dealer or a car enthusiast searching for a great deal on a luxury car for sale by owner, the new Cars & Vehicles search engine makes it easier than ever to find the perfect set of wheels, locally," Williams added. Each month, more than 8.7-million Canadians visit Kijiji.ca for free local classifieds in 99 cities across Canada. In the month of August alone, more than 3.19-million online Canadians visited the Cars & Vehicles category on Kijiji.ca and spent an average of 8.1 minutes on the site. What are the most popular vehicle brands available on Kijiji.ca? Considering the top five searches reveals that Ford Mustangs, BMWs, Chevy Camaros, Honda Civics, and Jeeps are among the most popular. "Consumers no longer need to drive a car to find a car," said Ran Ravitz, Head of Kijiji Motors Canada. "We know that more Canadians than ever are turning to the Internet to research their next vehicle and Kijiji gives consumers a free and local option for finding exactly what they're looking for. Kijiji.ca's new search capabilities make it even easier to browse the hundreds of thousands of used car listings available on the site at any given time." Top of Page Breakthrough email, web security appliance from McAfee McAfee, Inc. announced McAfee Email and Web Security Appliance 5.5 to help protect customers against the latest email and Web-borne threats, manage Web and email traffic and usage, and reduce system administration requirements. Designed for small and midsized businesses (SMBs), the solution provides comprehensive email and Web security in a single, integrated appliance. The McAfee Email and Web Security Appliances include new features and functionality, including:
"In addition to their market leading security effectiveness, these appliances also provide customers with email and Web usage policy enforcement capabilities, compliance tools, informative dashboards and comprehensive reporting," said Dave Macey, general manager of the Network Security business unit, McAfee. "McAfee's combined intelligence capabilities add an essential layer of protection to guard against today's most advanced threats and work by accumulating data from millions of sensors, creating a real-time profile of all suspicious activity and content, and then watching for deviations based upon expected behavior." The McAfee Email and Web Security Appliances offer better than 99 per cent spam detection accuracy and are backed by the #1 ranked anti-malware detection technology in the industry. By integrating with McAfee's real-time, cloud-based global threat intelligence, the appliances provide increased visibility into Web and email-based threats, protecting customers more efficiently and reducing both security acquisition and operational costs. With 350 threat researchers and tens of millions of data collection sensors, McAfee's global research is extensive. Top of Page Shopster Inc., the leader in e-Commerce software for small and medium sized business announced today it has launched the new Shopster Listing Manager for eBay. The Listing Manager allows Shopster merchants to seamlessly list and track their products and products from the Shopster Network on eBay's auction site. The unique Shopster platform allows merchants to build their businesses through collaboration, including the sharing of inventory. The new Listing Manager for eBay allows Shopster's 16,000 merchants to better market their inventory to the eBay community. Shopster has been an official eBay Certified Solutions Provider since the spring of 2008, and is one of only 24 companies in the world to currently hold this designation. The eBay Certified Provider program allows Shopster to work with the eBay team to create relevant offerings for eBay members. "eBay continues to be one of the key pillars of global e-commerce and sets the standard for all online auctions. Many of Shopster's customers rely on eBay as a key sales channel, and the Shopster Listing Manager for eBay makes integrating the two systems much easier" says Sarath Samarasekera, Co-Founder and CEO, Shopster. "The world of e-commerce continues to evolve at a frenetic pace and online retailing is becoming increasingly fragmented and complicated. Online selling has many aspects, and successful merchants have identified their unique selling proposition, and collaborate on the rest." Adds Samarasekera, "Shopster believes that integrating both technology and service partners into our Merchant community are the keys to success." Top of Page |
|
