The end of Banner Advertising?

Banners were once considered as a revolution on communication due to their interactive character and direct effects. They formed the basis of new forms of marketing like display advertising, affiliate marketing and online campaigns. The last years though more and more studies and reports are arguing about the limited value of this form of communication because of low (between 0,01 -0,04% of click through rate (CTR).
A study just completed by our Master student Frederike Dauwe titled "Effects of city targeted banner ads on user engagement" confirmed the low CRT of banners but also concluded that city targeting banners are scoring worst than country targeting ones. The study will be soon available in the University of Twente publications site and in the site of SOMERE.

Co-Innovation, The Customer as Innovation Motor

In the SOMERE web site you can read my white paper on Co-Innovation. What is this? Co-Creation by means of Social Media platforms
http://www.somere.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Innovation-21-white-paper-final-Constantinides-1.pdf

Social Media Research Day in Utrecht

Last week our Social Media Research Center (SOMERE) in cooperation with SOGETI organized the SOMERE Day that takes place every half year. We were guests of the Crossmedia Lab of the Hogeschool Utrecht. Many of the students doing research in Social Media in the University of Twente and many students from Utrecht as well as people from the field attended the session. The afternoon meeting included a short speech of the Lab Lector Harry van Vliet and my colleague and initiator of SOMERE Sjoerd de Vries. I must say that the work of the colleagues in Utrecht is impressive and their web site (fully in English) was a surprise for me. I gave also a short presentation about my research, together with two of our students who spoke about the findings in their Master Thesis on social Media and knowledge management and politics. A representative of the ABNAMRO bank told us about the banks plans to introduce Social Media as knowledge management platform and a presentation of Erik Hekman about the Lab’s research on cultural heritage and Social Media. A panel discussion followed moderated by Menno van Doorn from SOGETI. A very interesting day indeed.

Busy times

The readers of this blog have most probably noticed that no post appeared in the blog the last 20 days. The reason: no time! The last weeks have been really hectic both professionally and personally. In the mean time many interesting things happen in the Web 2.0 /social media world, soon I will be back with new stories and comments. A taste of things happening in the Web 2.0 domain this video about Healthcare 2.0 ( this is by the way also subject of the Social Media Research Center of our University. Hopefully soon some fresh results form our research will be available in this blog

Health 2.0 2009 Opening Video from Health 2.0 on Vimeo.