Watch out, India

The European IT outfits are gearing themselves up to go after a respectable slice of the offshoring pie, writes Deepak Mankar.

According to a high-priced report from PQ Media pqmedia.com blogs, feeds and podcasts are a potentially huge advertising market, indeed "the fastest growing segments of the alternative media industry, as aggregate spending grew 198.4 per cent to $20.4 million in 2005. Total spending on user-generated online media is expected to grow another 144.9 per cent to $49.8 million in 2006." Amy Gahran in her May 8, 2006 post at poynter poses the pertinent question: "How can advertisers and bloggers work together effectively and efficiently to realize that potential?" She may have stumbled upon a workable solution in the noted blogger and media analyst Jeff Jarvis's "intriguing column" in AdAge. It makes the following recommendations. On Metrics: "An open-source standard for measurement that tallies not just audience and views but other key values of citizens' media." On Easy Placement: "Open-source code for placing ads from any advertiser or network on any participating site." On Systems of Trust: "Some direct-response advertisers may be fine with their ads appearing most anywhere... But brand advertisers must protect their reputations." On Easy Buying Process: "An auction system to automate negotiation of rates." Gahran's comment is worth noting: "…media organizations can -- and should - cultivate relationships with the best and most prominent bloggers in their region, simply as a matter of following beats and knowing the local media landscape … [they] also have longstanding relationships with advertisers and ad agencies. So maybe [they] could help jump-start the thorniest part of Jarvis' proposed solution, the system of trust. That is: Rather than view bloggers as competition or 'noise,' seek to leverage the best ones for business advantage." Our previous blog coverage ('EBBTIDE. In the blogosphere.') is here: hindustantimes.

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Watch out, India. The Euros' are out to outmanoeuvre you.

You've go to give credit where it's due, folks. The European IT outfits are gearing themselves up to go after a respectable slice of the offshoring pie. Their main rivals continue to be the biggies from the USA and low-cost Asians like India. According to Andy McCue citing new research from IDC, they're likely to increase "their offshore assets by 65 per cent during 2006". "IDC says this will put them in a stronger position to compete with major global players such as Accenture and IBM, as well as Indian outsourcers such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro," he reports in 'European IT firms ramp up offshore workforce.' The other IDC prediction is, "the threshold for … using offshore outsourcing … will get lower. Cheaper labour now outweighs the increased management cost on projects worth as little as $50,000 to $100,000." Mette Ahorlu, senior analyst at IDC's European services group, sees this development as a spur to "an increasing number of smaller and medium-sized businesses opting for offshore outsourcing". His notable comment in the report: "Offshore will not continue to be an 'exotic' way to save money; it will soon be taken for granted by all customers. Use of offshore resources began as application development services but has expanded to all types of application services, infrastructure services and business process outsourcing." services.silicon. (Our previous outsourcing story hindustantimes was 'Outsourcing. What's in and around?')

Prophesy by Dyson. How the Internet may change advertising

This is what Esther Dyson, CNET Networks' editor-at-large, said about the Internet's likely impact on advertising in the May 5 Wall Street Journal Online pundit powwow on the Internet's future: "… you'll see a fundamental shift in the balance of power towards individuals … [who] …will declare what kinds of vendors they want sponsoring their content, and then those vendors will have the privilege of appearing, discreetly, around the user's content. There will be much less 'advertising' and much more communication to interested customers. Advertisers will have to learn to listen, not just to track and segment customers. … If you can't sell … fix the product! Don't try to change the situation by advertising." Moreover: "Consumers will publish wish lists for marketers to scan. Also, their choices will be influenced by their friends' comments much more than by marketers' messages." And: "… it will be much harder for consumers to get free content anonymously, because advertisers will want to know more about the people they are paying to reach. In many cases, whether e-mail or ads, users may even get a share of the marketer's payments." Finally, "the social downside": "People who buy Porsches can earn more from marketers than people who buy used cars. People without money will find it harder and harder to get free content - which means a role for nonprofits in funding access to content for all." online.wsj.

Public watchdog. Formerly 'Disinfopedia',

The opening blurb at sourcewatch explains how this public watchdog works in a democratic milieu: "SourceWatch [is] a collaborative project of the Centre for Media and Democracy (prwatch) to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch's primary focus is on documenting public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists and government agencies. Unlike some other wikis, SourceWatch has a policy of strict referencing, and is overseen by a paid editor." The latest addition to the site is 'Congresspedia', a "citizen's encyclopaedia of the US Congress" and a joint project of the Centre and the new Sunlight Foundation sunlightfoundation.

The pizza effect. A Swami discovered the secret?

Will all those who feel the pizza we order from Dominoes or whoever is Italian please raise their hands? Sorry, you won't get a slice of the 12-inch we had ordered to reward the clever ones who gave the correct answer. No, the pizza as we know it is American. True, the flat pizza bread was taken by the Italian emigrants with them to the US. The pizza as we eat it now with toppings of our choice was 'invented' by an unknown, unsung American pioneer. Later on, when some successful Italian-Americans went back to visit the land of their ancestors, they introduced the 'American' new-look pizza there. It was welcomed and they started serving it to the tourists as an 'Italian' specialty. It was even re-exported from Italy all over the world. Capiche? Well, the sharp-witted anthropologist, Swami Agehananda Bharati (Leopold Fischer) dci.dk used the phrase, the 'pizza effect' (the 'feedback loop') to describe the process of the 'export' of Hinduism from India, its cultural transformation abroad, its re-import to India and then its re-export as an Indian product. He probably borrowed the term from Stephen Jenkins ('Black Ships, Blavatsky and the Pizza Effect: Critical Self-Consciousness as a Thematic Foundation for Courses in Buddhist Studies''): "Just as it was Americans who made the elaborate pizza and then mistook it for an indigenous Italian product and just as Italians have co-opted the American pizza and now make it for American tourists, so also it was Westerners who created the rational protestant Buddhism of modern Sri Lanka and then mistook it for an indigenous Sri Lankan product, and so also did a Sri Lankan Buddhist spokesman, Dharmapala, sell this protestanized Buddhism back to West when he appeared at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893." teach-buddhism.

That's all for now though there's plenty more out there. Join me again next week, same place.

Copyright (c) 2001- 2006 by Deepak Mankar. All rights reserved. Deepak Mankar, an advertising practitioner on the creative side since 1965, is also intensely passionate about the web and web content creation. Read his online articles at asiaondemand.com. Website: http://www.addgandhi.com/original/. You may e-mail him at dmankar@bom8.vsnl.net.in. Blog: popgoestheslop.blogspot.com.