Google enlarged its beta test group for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) this week in order for larger clients like retail chains to take advantage of the traffic they’re losing out on by not targeting their keywords properly. DSAs, not to be confused with Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI), create adverts based on the content of your site.Steven Levy, author of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives, speaks of the early Google days when the ...

"When I was old enough to talk, I told my parents I wanted to sell ideas," says Josh Spear. He must be a rich man because he has plenty of them, and they are revolutionising the way we think about the future of the world.Spending time with Spear will take you back to your days as a University student, talking about ideas and possibilities and how the world is going to evolve in the next 20 years.He is a ...

In the latest twist of the tale of BlackBerry’s woes, the smartphone's maker Research In Motion (RIM), is now being sued in Canada and the US as a result of the global BlackBerry Messenger failure.The plaintiff of the suit hope to escalate the case into class-action lawsuit thus representing every BlackBerry user in the respective countries. At the moment, the amount RIM will be asked to pay out has not yet been determined.The US lawsuit accuses RIM of “negligence, unjust ...

Gustav Praekelt and Sebastien Lacour show two very different solutions to the same problem – delivering services to people via mobile when the Web was not a viable option. One was for a philanthropic and social awareness-based project and the other involved a for-profit company. Both show, however, that poor quality bandwidth needn’t be an obstacle to improving the lives of people in emerging markets.Praekelt’s project concerns the metaphorically powerless (poor and youth), while Lacour's deals with the actually powerless ...

As we start winding up 2011, it's time to look back over the year and see which social media campaigns made the grade and really achieved the goals that they set out to. The following list is a grouping of my three favourite international social media campaigns from 2011.I chose these three campaigns because they cross the boundaries between online and offline and really make those influenced by the campaigns “live” the brands.KLM -- The airline (yes it still ...

So you've decided to build a mobile campaign. It makes sense. Everybody has a mobile phone right? And you know a few marketing basics from that course you did once a few years ago. It should be easy right? Even though we're all marketers now, it’s a little more complicated than that.Here are eight things gleaned from three people deeply ingrained in the emerging markets mobile space. The three -- Brett St Clair, head of Mobile for Google South ...

How does Konami’s latest football title fare against its arch-rival, and will it convert new followers to the long-running series?If you are a soccer fan, and you like video games, even just a little bit, you’ve probably heard of the EA Sports FIFA series and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series. Five years ago it was easy to differentiate between the two. Fifa was always the Britney Spears of soccer games; easy to pick up and play, easy on the ...

Queen once sang, "I want to break free". They might easily have been talking about recording artists breaking free from the shackles of the traditional music business model. Headliner.FM embraces this and wants to "spread the music", helping artists to connect with their fan base.Facebook and Twitter users are invited to the party to swap music recommendations based on personal choice and the option of raising awareness for one of the 110 000 musicians currently registered on Headliner.fm.Headliner.fm is a meaty ...

In the first part of this article I discussed -- picking up from talks I gave at PopTech and Nokia World 2011 -- "The Idea of Africa" and how Western abstractions of the continent are often mired in the past, and, with examples, how Africa was turning the world upside down because disruptive ideas happen at the edge.Now, I want to look at the Two Big Trends.Trend #1: Adoption by Africans as consumers is increasing Trend #2: Technology costs are decreasingAt ...

Sculptures inspired by fishnets, a bicycle with a built-in record player and furniture from discarded road signs. Or go in search of a Piece of Mind.Well strungAmerican artist Janet Echelman creates large-scale sculptural installations using age-old net-weaving techniques she learnt from fishermen in India.The installations are either hand-woven or machine-woven, depending on the requirements of the specific project. The sculptures are often suspended between buildings where they interact with the wind and sunlight in an almost magical ...