The Irish Internet Association congress summary

Fred Caballero — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:31:07 +0000

The IIA annual Congress took place last Thursday at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Santry. The title this year was: “Better Business Online in a Tough Economy: Money, Marketing, Monitoring & Mobile”.
It was a great event, well organised, with loads of very knowledgeable people to network with and fantastic speakers:

Colm Lyon (CEO, Realex Payments): He focused on the importance of goals and how imperative is to know what and where do you want to be in order to achieve real success. He highlighted the crucial importance of business scalability.

Trey Harvin (CEO, DotMobi): “Ireland is the first country in the EU in browsing the Internet on mobile devices.” He also shared www.ready.mobi (testing tool that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards). Interesting: Spanair are using already scannable ticket on mobile screens. Go to mobiforge.com and mobithinking.com for more info.

Ronan Harris (Online Sales Director, Google): Ronan focused on the importance of online measurement through Google tools, providing insights crucial for companies to increase revenue and generate business intelligence. Some highlights: “15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute”. “It’s been a 355% increase in engagement in displayed ads”. “Time spent on site and bounce rate seem to be key metrics to stick to”. (That’s too broad since not every single business has the same KPIs, therefore, the priorities of what’s measured would differ). Social media: Covered the Obama campaign (of course). Interesting story also about Nike: by engaging in social media and making their customers feel brand-ownership they achieved success.

Colm Long (Director Online Operations, Facebook): 200 million active users. Average user spends 25 min/day, 50% return daily (yes! that’s a 100 million), 70% of users from outside the US , 35 years of age and above is now the fastest growing segment (this is crucial information since many people still believe that Facebook is only a platform for teenagers) Colm also shared a fantastic video about the way they used Facebook to localise their site. Coming up: New private setting for different “Groups”!

As ususal, Channelship produced some cool videos to share with you. Check out Trey Harvin (DotMobi) “The Internet on mobile phones”, Ronan Harris (Google) on “Free tools for companies” and Catherine from Hostelworld.com about “The power onf online video”. Enjoy!

Channelship's Video Blog » colm lyon from realex

The Irish Internet Association congress summary