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An interesting story on the Bing-Yahoo deal & the future of Digital Marketing in India. This story was featured on the Brand Equity show on the Economic Times (ET Now) channel.

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by Sana Vishwanath

Microsoft takes Google head-on with its ‘decision engine’ Bing. And Honda reworks its marketing strategy for its premium hatchback Jazz!

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by Aparna Ram

Sixes and Fours galore in South Africa but chances are fans in India missed a lot of the IPL action owing to one of the two matches played everyday being in the non prime-time or office hours. If like most viewers, you usually tune in to catch the second match played in the evening, it looks like the internet could come to your rescue. IPL’s own site iplt20.com, which after crashing due to software glitches on the first two days of the IPL, is slowly coming back to form.

In India, cricket on the internet is still just about live scorecards, commentary and photographs. And video on the web comes with accessibility issues depending on connectivity and your location. So here are the top text sites you can log on to for the IPL this season.
According to internet traffic tracking service Vizsense, of the 7 percent of the total internet user population that went on cricket related sites during the matches, the largest number of page views went to cricinfo.com at 5.3%, yahoos cricket site cricket.yahoo.com came at 4.3%, and cricketnext.in.com at 3.4%. Iplt20.com came at only 1.5%

Cricinfo.com..this site does a good job of ball-by-ball scrutiny of the matches. Its IPL microsite has contests and live chats with the sites editor to keep the ardent fan engaged. Bangalore Royal Challengers cheerleader Rebecca Lees blog quite had us hooked.

Your next pit stop this IPL season should be cricket.yahoo.com. If you do not get enough of your heroes during the T20 matches, then the team news, photographs and insider-columns on this site, will make any team loyalist happy. Or maybe, even Australian great Glenn McGraths exclusive column.

Site No 3…cricketnext.in.com Apart from being a good cricket resource, this site will keep you occupied with games if your favourite match ends up being a washout like it did on Tuesday night.

Mahesh Murthy, CEO, PinStorm, said, “IPL on the web was poorly marketed.”

There’s still a lot of work to be done in the internet video space for IPL then. The major roadblocks in this direction are the facts that internet awareness is just catching on, broadband connectivity is still not widely and easily available, and most workplaces block video-related content for fear of loss of productivity. Once these issues are addressed, there’s every chance the IPLs third season in 2010 will become a better online experience.