World Space India is no more!!

Yes , Its confirmed . When you would turn on your world space on 1st of January , you would get no song , no channel ,no ads from it. Today i got the call from one of my store stating that World Space is going to quit India from 1st of next month. First i was shocked , then i tried to call the local World Space representative , his phone was unavailable. Then i called its customer care and there i got the news that yes , its true. It was a shocking news for all Music lover and also concernful for those who just invested in it or in its subscription. World Space India is a part of WorldSpace, Inc which has been been under bankruptcy protection since October 2008. India is a major market for company as almost 95% contribution come from here. On refund of unused services , the company is denying to give any claim.

According to reports, US-based media company Liberty Media has already bought out WorldSpace’s liabilities from its creditors. Interestingly, Liberty Media holds 40% stake in Sirius XM Radio and as per reports, chief executives of both the companies had said that there is a possibility of a joint Sirius XM/Liberty Media global satellite radio venture between the two.

WorldSpace has offered a claim procedure to be undertaken next year under US bankruptcy law. However, more than the claims, what bothers Indian subscribers most is the discontinuation of a quality music service, which Indian FM channels have failed to provide.

Future Value Retail :A fancy name for Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar

Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar = Future Value Retail..

Finally the decision has come from Future Group MD , Mr. Kishore Biyani this week. All pantaloons employees were shot a mail about this stating the changes from 1st of January.
According to me these changes have made to focus more on their target customer . I think it is a smart move as it will help building a strong brand name in mind of customers and they also will be able to relate the stores with them. As Wal-Mart has already began its operations in India and in expanding mode , it is crucial to be very clear for PRIL on its branding strategies.
Currently there are around 120 Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar stores across India and company is planning to make it to 140 in 4 to 5 years of span.
They also have come out with a decision to limit their KB's Fair Shop format to Mumbai , Delhi and Bangalore. Company has the plan to open 1200 stores and want to be penetrated across these cities.

A new beginning in Advertising : ZooZoo by Vodafone

ZooZoo is the new revolution in advertisement in India. Everyone loves them and now watching ad has become much funnier than ever. ZooZoo are the characters which is being used in Vodafone Advertisement for VAS (Value Added Services). These ads are designed by keeping in focus of INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE - Season 2. The idea of the company is to introduce one new ad daily during the course of IPL.
The Chracter ZooZoo is the discovery of O&M (Ogilvy & Mather India) , an advertisement agency, and the company has made ads for Fevicol , Amaron , Perfetti , etc.
One thing i really like about Vodafone that they always come up with creative way of advertising. They never used any celebrity in their ads unlike their rivals in india. That cute puppy of Vodafone was a huge brand recall for the company.
Such innovation did wonders for company as the campaign got wide success and that too without spending any huge amount on celebrities. And this ZooZoo campaign is going in the same way.

Here are all the ZooZoo ads in one Video
Enjoy..

RPG's Music World launches first outlet of "Mera World" in Bangalore

RPG's Music World finally opened its new format store by the name of "Mera World" in Bangalore.
Its a 7000 Sqft store and the offering includes Music , Books , Gifting Items , Digital Cameras , Photography solutions and all. Now Music World is working with 3 brands.

First one is its core brand "Music World" which deals in Music , Home videos , Accesseories , Ipods , Digital downloads and so on. Music World is having very strong presence across India by having more than 250 retail stores. Music World provides the best ambience to the customers in the store with great customer service. The highly trained staff always make sure that you find what you are looking for. Its flagship store is present in Kolkata at Park Street. The Park Street store is one of the best Music Store in the country. It is the belief of the people that if u dont get something in parkstreet's Music World , you wont get it any where. Some of the major competitors of Music World are Videocon's Planet M , Tata's LandMark , Odyssey , Raheja Group's Cross World and Rhytm House.

The Second Brand they are operating with is "Books and Beyonds". As the name suggests this is a book store and beyond reflects to toys. Books and Beyond is currently operating in Gurgaon , Chandigarh , Kolkata , Hyderabad and Bangalore. The company is planning to open some more outlets by the end of this year. Some major competitors of Books and Beyond are Crossworld , Odyssey and Landmark.

And "Mera World" is the third brand. Its a new format and still in the learning phase. Company is planning to penetrate it in all metros by the end of this year.

Enrique Iglesias India concert 2009

Enrique Iglesias upcoming India concert is nothing but a big misleading communication from some notorious guys. He hasn't confirmed any dates for India and its clearly mention at the front page of his official website

So stop asking for tickets and venue details of the concert.

Consumer Rights : Know your powers

Some of the government and consumer organisation websites where one can lodge consumer complaints in India are:

http://www.cag.gov.in/
http://www.cai-india.org/
http://www.cccindia.net/
http://www.cercindia.org/
http://www.cgsiindia.org/
http://www.confonet.nic.in/
http://www.consumercomplaints.in/
http://www.consumerhelpline.in/
http://www.consumeronline.org/
http://www.consumer-voice.in/
http://www.corecentre.co.in/
http://www.icrpc.org/
http://www.iepf.gov.in/
http://www.investorhelpline.in/
http://www.irda.gov.in/
http://www.karmayog.org/
http://www.ncdrc.nic.in/
http://www.pgportal.gov.in/
http://investor.sebi.gov.in/
https://secweb.rbi.org.in/BO/compltindex.htm

AdSense Alternatives...

Some of the options where u can earn money if u r not having adsense account.....

1)Adsense by Google - Without any doubt google adsense is the biggest and the most profitable publisher’s program. You can get them at https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/

2)Adlandpro- Adlandpro offers a lot of advertising method. You will also paid $5 per 1000 impressions of your referral page, and $2 per 1000 impressions of referral’s custom page. You can get them at http://www.adlandpro.com

3)Adbrite - Best alternative for adsense and day by day it is increasing popularity. You can get them at http://www.adbrite.com/zones/publisher_dashboard.php

4)Bidvertiser - Another alternative for adsense and it's lay-out is like adsense. You can get them at http://www.bidvertiser.com/

5)Clicksor - It is also good and pays a good amount to the publisher. You can get them at http://clicksor.com

6)Advertising.com - One of the biggest and pioneer in publishers advertising network. You can get them at http://advertising.com/publishers.php

7)24/7 Real Media - It has both Advertiser and publisher program and is best for american audience. You can get them at www.realmedia.com

8)Burst Media - Another publishers advertisement program paying in CPM. You can get them at www.burstmedia.com

9)Commission Junction - Big advertiser and affiliate network available wordwide. You can get them at www.commissionjunction.com

10)Knoodle - This site pays upto 50% of ad revenue. Their website is https://kanoodle.com

11)Linkshare - Another big affiliate network for publishers. Their website is www.linkshare.com

12)Valueclick - This great program is best for bloggers. Their website is www.clickvalue.com

13)Yahoo Publisher Network - Created to compete google adsense. Not available worldwide. However you can get them advance in http://publisher.yahoo.com/


Other available advertising networks.

1) Accelerator Media - Accelerator is an intelligent ad network that features predictive ad serving technology.

2) AdAgency - The leading provider of Internet direct-response adverytising solutions

3) Adynamix - AdDynamix has evolved into a full-spectrum interactive provider delivering ad management, video and digital media services to agencies, entertainment clients and direct marketers.

4) Adengage - Engaging internet advertising

5) Agenta - Agenta is an easy and powerful way for you to unlock the revenue potential of your website or blog.

6) Adknowledge - Expand your reach beyond Google and Yahoo by accessing Adknowledge’s multi-channel behavioral targeting network.

7) Adpepper - The e-advertising network.

8) Adsmart - Digital marketing made clear

9) Adtegrity - Get paid for your hard work! Maximize the value of your traffic and build revenue with us.

10) Affiliatefuture - If you are responsible for a website and want to increase its earning potential, join AffiliateFuture’s network to earn more revenue from your visitors.

11) Affiliatesensor - Get the ease of Pay-Per-Click publishing

12) Azoogleads - The leading performance-based marketplace

13) Bannerconnect - Advertising without boundaries. Many company use them and is becoming popular.

14) BardzoMedia - BardzoMedia is a world wide focused advertising network that can help you monetize your U.S, Canada and Europe internet advertising inventory on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis.

15) BlinkAds - BlinkAds is an online media company dedicated to client services

16) BlueFN - Blue FN, LLC. is the financial services industry’s leading Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Advertising Network with a targeted high-quality publisher base and top brand name financial services advertisers.

17) BlueLithium - BlueLithium is the data driven performance marketing company.

18) Casale Media - Advertising online is better here.

19) Chitika - See how you can fulfill your brand advertising and direct marketing goals in one program. This is becoming popular day by day.

20) ClickBooth - Publisher CPA and affiliate networks.

21) Clickshare - In the Click-Share advertising marketplace, you decide where to target your ads and what price you want to pay per click.

22) ClickXchange - Turn your site traffic into cash!

23) ContexWeb - Online advertising exchange solutions.

24) CPX Interactive - CPX Interactive is a progressive online ad network, dedicated to optimizing revenue generation for both its Advertisers and Publishers.

25) Enhance - Expand your pay-per-click search campaigns now.

26) Esource Media - As Publisher Partner you get access to over 50,000 advertisers and earn 70%.

27) Etype Europe - eType is the UK’s leading online advertising sales house

28) Etype USA - eType USA holds exclusive advertising contracts with a number of the world’s largest and most respected websites.

29) Expoactive- Start Advertising Your Website With ExpoActive In 5 Minutes!

30) Fluxads - Guaranteed on-time payments.

31) Hyperbidder - The Only Ad Auction Network where all bidders win!!!

32) IncentaClick - Their Goal is to bring your online advertising campaign to the next level

33) Industry Brains - You can try of it.

34) Interclick - Transparent ad network.

35) JoeTec - JoeTec is a full service online marketing company. We specialize in display advertising and lead generation for our many clients across many different verticals.

36) Kontera - Leader in content link advertising.

37) Mamma Media Solutions - With Copernic Media Solutions you’ll find the Internet advertising and marketing tools you need to boost your site traffic and drive revenue. MaxBounty Affiliates - with MaxBounty earn revenue from advertising sponsors on a pay-for-performance basis.

38) Mirago 2 revenue streams - Geo-targeted organic / Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search and contextual results.

39) MIVA AdRevenue Xpress - Earn more Revenue from your web site with MIVA MC.

40) Nixxie - UK’s first contextual advertising company.

41) Oridian - Online media solutions.

42) Oxado - Oxado enables you to insert contextual ads on your website within minutes.

43) Paypop-up - According to them every Visitor to your Site is a Potential Customer!

44) Popup Traffic - Popuptraffic is the intelligent way to make extra cash from your website traffic.

45) Quigo - This one is content-Targeted Ad Serving and Search Engine Marketing Solutions

46) RealCastMedia - They say they represent over 500 Web sites and serve 300 million monthly impressions.

47) RealTech - This is average for both publisher and advertiser.

48) Revenue Pilot - Good for monetize your site.

49) Righmedia - Interactive advertising and transparent marketplace.

50) Searchfeed - A leader in pay per click search engine advertising, Searchfeed.com helps online advertisers attract targeted leads while offering Web publishers a greater opportunity to monetize Internet traffic.

51) Share A Sale - This site is for real time reporting - On time payments.

52) TargetPoint - Increase your advertising profits

53) TextLinkAds - For text based ads this is good one.

54) Tremor - Come gradually in the world.

55) Tribal Fusion - Many one says this is good one.

56) Valueclick Media - Quality, control and a robust publisher platform make ValueClick Media a trusted partner to earn the most revenue from every form of online advertising.

credits: http://forum.gol.ge/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=62&t=62432

Brand Game : Google finally won it....

After a very long wait the moment has arrived. We got a new winner of No. 1 spot in brands, Google.
It was become so monotonous to see Coca Cola on the number 1 spot from so many years.

It was actually predicted that from the speed the google was going it was only a matter of time which will make it a king in the world of brands. The innovations which google has maintain to introduce in its service offering is unprecedental. From a fastest search engine to innovative adsense , everything which was introduced by Google was taken like a craze which never came down.

Here is the list of top 10 Brands of 2009 with their brand Values....

Brand	Brand Value (In $M)
Google	100039
Microsoft	76249
Coca Cola	67625
IBM	66622
Mc Donald	66576
Apple	63113
China Mobile	61283
GE	59793
Vodafone	53727
Marlboro	49460

You can get the complete list from here

Source :www.brandz.com

I am Back

I am Back....

Its been almost 1 and a half year since i post anything here.....

I dont really know why i was away from it for so long. But its never too late and here i am , running after retail news again.

Right now the retail in India is facing tough time. Retailers are unable to pay their suppliers on time and emphasizing on returns like anything. The main reason ofcourse is the customer entry in the malls and stores. It has gone down drastically and those who are entering into the malls are not spending free handindly. Some of the big retailers are finding very difficult to survive in this situation. Vishal Retail is one of them and has lost a huge money in the venture. Spencer's is finding very difficult to keep the opexes on track. Subhiksha , as we all know has been doomed because of the wrong management practices.
This is the era of cost cutting and the retailers are ready to sell their space to the concessionaires. Today they are open to give spaces in their stores to anyone irrespective keeping in the view of nature of thier business and concessionaire's business.
The rent is the biggest culprit of increasing opexes , but thank god , the fallen prices of real estate gave some sort of cool breeze to the retailers. The companies are approaching the owners of the real estate and they are more then happy to reduce it (at least they are getting something , because in current situation it doesn't seem that any one would be ready to give such higher prices).

We all are hoping that this global turmoil will come to an end pretty soon the retail industry in India will soon become a shining industry as it was an year ago.