International Digital Marketing Information April 2012

I am reading some international digital marketing information this saturday afternoon and I summarize some interesting links below.

Europe is still busy thinking about the new European Cookie law. A law that will have a big impact at the online industry this and next year. A big test case will be the United Kingdom, where the law will get into force at the 26th of may. Other countries will follow later.

A lot of things are still very unclear and most likely we will see a big increase of the use of pop up screens or lightboxes asking for certain cookies consent. Mr Dave Evans from the ICO gave a little more explanation and the good news is, that if you use first party analytic cookies you might be left alone, if you inform your users well.

Europe is still not a single e-commerce market, so differences between countries are common. A new e-commerce lobby group called "ecommerce-europe" has started and one of their goals is to optimize Europe's e-commerce. I hope they work better then their website looks. There is no single e-commerce market yet, so Germany has it's own laws an regulations. The parliament there has passed regulation that can have an impact at German webshops and those targeted at Germany. In short certain information is mandatory to provide and the button that saves (and pays) the order must be clearly named and in a good readable font. That's a risk if your website is not mobile friendly for example.
If your button does not fit the requirements as described in the regulation the customer might not have to pay! More information here. (link in German).

If you do online business in Ukraine, be aware, they can close your startup company easily.

A nice international digital marketing newspost is from the London Mayor elections. All 3 candidates opened a Sina Weibo account. See my article about Sina Weibo for more explanation about Weibo and Sina Weibo.

Italian's like to play games. Games and gambling make sure Italy's online industry is still growing. It is good for Italy that they have found a way to get e-commerce growth by the use of games, since they don't expand internationally.

Italians like games. Gambling and gaming makes their online industry growing.


Let's move on to Brazil. Rakuten, one of the world's biggest internet companies, has stopped an e-commerce adventure in China, but expands in Brazil. The shop looks nice. However their "search phrase not found" page can be improved. :)

Always optimize your search not found pages! Don't do it like this Rakuten example

Brazil, by the way, is according to this report really expanding at the digital market. With 81m people now being online there are hughe opportunities.

QR codes are found everywhere nowadays. But they never appeal and encourage to be scanned. Alternatives are on their way, but this Japanese company transforms QR codes to really nice branded visuals. And they even work!

According to a recent report, for Vietnamese people, their mobile is still their prefered media channel. Much more then TV and PC. While Nokia is rapidly losing marketshare all around the world, in Vietnam there are still many people with old Nokia handheld's. But the online mobile ad market grew by 121 percent!
And I believe this can be true. During my Vietnam visits, Especially in the cooler evenings, it is great to sit in a park or take a terrace watch the traffic in HCMC and to be online in this vibrant city.

Mobile advertising can be very important in Vietnam

Finally, let's take a look at the middle east. A report has been released by a mobile advertising agency with some information about mobile phone usage in the middle east. The report is free. Just fill in your details and you will receive an email where you can download the report. Learn about when Saudi women are online and what payment methods are mostly used in these countries.


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