Studies have revealed that banner ads, campaign programs and visits on a branded website helped pharmaceutical companies create a brand awareness and better sales results among prospects and patients.

A recent study by comScore evaluated the impact of banner ads. The study found that interactions and expotures thru online ads improved adherence rates among patients. This resulted in pharmaceutical companies resorting to the brand’s website for online marketing.

Bridget O’Toole, executive vice president at comScore stated, ““The most effective online marketing tool for both patients and prospects is the brand’s Web site.  It’s important to realize, though, that visits to a brand Web site are achieved through the use of a variety of offline and online tactics, such as online banner ads, search and offline advertising.” He also added, “This is why it is essential for marketers to develop fully-integrated campaigns that not only raise awareness and educate consumers but that also drive visitation to a site.”

These reports reinstate the fact that brand value is vital in life saving products as it helps create a trust factor among patients.

U.S. has sort after Yahoo! Finance for information about economic conditions, general inflation and stocks. More than 18 Million visitors have accessed Yahoo! Finance in May making it the top financial news and research site.

According to comScore, a Internet research company, Yahoo! Finance topped the category followed by AOL Money & Finance with 15.2 million visitors. This is a 58 percent increase for Yahoo! And 48 percent increase for AOL when compared to their previous year.

Demographic Indicators

The report by comScore also reveals some interesting facts. 46 percent of unique visitors who accessed the financial news and research category were persons above the age of 50.

Also, 40% of the visitors had a house hold income of above $60,000. A large number of visitors have also been from large families with more than 5 people. This report portrays how families who have more financial responsibilities or needs keep themselves updated on today’s economic growth.

The recent reports by comScore reveals that 81% of internet searches done in India were using Google sites. This shows Google’s monopoly in the country which has the world’s second largest population.

Google reported 1 billion searches in June which is an 81 percent of the total searches done. Google’s dominion was followed in a far distance by Yahoo with just 117 million searches. This is a huge difference when compared to Google. With just 9.4 % by Yahoo other sites like Ask had 1.9 and MSN sites had just 1.7 percent of total search.

Rediff.com, one of the hugely popular internet portals in India shared 1.5 percent of the searches ranking in fifth position.

Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore stated, “As the top local player in the search market, Indian web portal Rediff.com attracts slightly less than 2 percent of all searches, indicating that there is substantial room for growth among the local Internet brands.”

Though 15% of the world’s total population are Indians, India ranks 37th with 53 searches per user per month, the global average being 93. However, with the increase in internet users in India, there seems to be a larger market and tremendous growth for internet search.

E-commerce growth has reduced from 25% during June 07 to just 11% in June 2008. Industry analysts feel this might be the result of the recent economic stimulus by the U.S. government.

comScore, Inc. an internet information provider in its recent release stated that there has been a reduction in purchases during the last two months. The report also reveals that the purchase growth drop off started from November 2007.

According to Chairman Gian Fulgoni of comSore, “With the first round of the government’s economic stimulus checks having been mailed in early May, one would have hoped they would have bolstered online spending in May and June,” He also added, “However, recent comScore research reveals that fully two thirds of consumers said they had not planned to spend their stimulus checks and rather intended to use the cash to pay off debt or put the money into savings, a finding we’ll be taking a closer look at during next week’s webinar. In addition, it’s likely the impact of the stimulus may have been felt more offline, where a variety of merchants made it particularly easy for consumers to cash their checks at retail stores.”

The report also discloses that the top hot sellers were video games, consoles and accessories. This was followed by furniture, appliances and equipments.

Scrabulous would no longer be accessible to users except in India. The restriction is due to the case being held in the Indian High Court.

Most of the Facebook users are aware that Scrabulous cannot be accessed in Facebook. The popular game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta is a game similar to Scrabble. Interestingly, Scrabble owns the rights outside North America and Hasbro another company owns the right to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.
 
Following the complaints and court proceedings, Facebook has replaced Scrabulous with a similar game called Wordscraper. Wordscraper is no different than Scrabulous except that it uses circles instead of boxes.

Not much publicity or hype has been on the new Google Knol [A unit of knowledge]. But it looks like Google prefers ranking its Knol articles in SERP better than other websites.

This favoritism has been noted by a number of publishers. Even an article originally posted in a different website with good PR many months back, if when copied and posted in Knol can give higher results than the original article. This has caused a number of concerns as Google who played the Pope all these days is now trying to promote its own website. This is not a fair game by Google which would just result in loss of reputation.

When a duplicate article is posted on Knol, Google warns that it is a duplicate content as it identifies from where the content was extracted. However, when the same duplicate content is posted, it ranks even better than the original content. Google might claim that this is based on the “Query Deserves Freshness” algorithm which it has been promoting during the recent days. But that doesn’t mean that “new duplicate content deserves more” or “we will add PR to our sites the way we want” Google algorithms are valid.

With Google falsely promoting its own new site, SEO experts have identified the potential in linking to these pages and a large number of search engine experts have already started adding articles or linking their websites to Google Knol.

When many websites experience low page views during the summer, LA Times quietly achieved a massive traffic of 127 million page views during July. This is 7 million more than its May record and 66% growth from its previous year.

LA Times credits its success to its search engine optimization it carries out. Mentioning in its press release, “Latimes.com keeps getting better at SEO (search engine optimization), which means our stories are ranking higher in Google and other search engines.” The release also added, “We are also performing better on sites like Digg.com. All that adds up to more exposure and more readership than ever before.”

The huge traffic has also helped bring up some of its top categories like the “Breaking News” and “Multimedia” to the finals of Online Journalism Awards.

Some of the most read articles in July were the Jackson’s Obama comments which went unnoticed and the earthquake in the L.A area. In addition many blogs like Top of the Ticket and The Dish Rag have hugely contributed to the traffic on July.

16 Serial Bomb Blasts in Ahmedabad

After the Bomb Blasts in IT capital of India, Bangalore two days back, its now Ahmedabad. A stunning 13 bomb blasts have taken place in Bapu anagar, Maninagar, Isanpur, Narol Circle, Narodha Patiya, Hatkeshkar and Hakar areas in 15 minutes of Ahmedabad today. Eighteen people have died in this shocking Ahmedabad bomb blast.

The bomb blasts have happened starting at 6:45 pm to 7:00 pm today. Bapu Nagar faced the first blast happened near Danmanthri Hospital. Bapu Nagar is a very crowded area anytime and is called the diamond city of India with a lot of diamond workers.

A CNG bus was blown away completely during the blast in Sarkhej. Initial reports also state other areas had blasts using cycles and tiffen boxes.

48 have been injured in the blasts and have been admitted in the hospital. Awaiting further news.

7 Bomb Blasts in Bangalore kill 1 Injure Many

Seven bomb blasts rocked the IT Capital today. The blasts made Bangalore on a stand-still today. The locations include Adugudi, Nayandahalli, Ashok Nagar, Koramangala, Madiwala bus stand, Vittal Malya Road. The blast happend subsequently within few minutes in 1:30 afternoon.

One woman and four others have been killed in the bangalore bomb blast and several injured.  Other places include Mallya hospital, Langford Road and Richmond Circle in Bangalore city. Two blasts are reported to be in Madivala.

The first blast has been reported to have taken place near Madiwala check post. This is located close to Forum Mall, an important shopping center where crowds of youngsters hang out usually on a friday evening. The second bangalore blast took place in Nayandahalli which connects Mysore Road. This has a huge number of traffic usually. Nayandhalli has been followed by Adugodi blast.

The bombs are reported to have been made using gelatin sticks. Reports state that the blasts are of low intensity as they were made similar to ones used in coal mines. The bombs had timer devices and were triggered using mobile phones.

The injured have been admitted in St. Johns Hospital in bangalore.  Bangalore City Police Commissioner Shankar Bidri has reqested bangalorians not to panic and to carry on with their normal activities. However, people have restrained from going out and have stayed back in their offices or at home.

Well the IT capital, Bangalore is not new to terrorism. There has been many incidents in the software capital of India. The recent one being a terrorist attack in IISc campus, bangalore.

On october 2007,, police arrested two pakistani nationals in Mysore for attacking the Karnataka Secretariat, Vidhan Soudha.

South India has not been spared from bomb blasts. Coimbatore in 1998 faced a series of bomb blasts followed by Hyderabad with twin bomb blasts in Mecca Masjid.

Further news awaiting on Bangalore Bomb Blasts.

Looks like all Indian companies are in a aqusition stratergy. India based tech company HCL has signed a $2 million deal to buy a U.K based back-office service firm, Liberata Financial Services.

Liberata Financial Services (LFS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberata Limited, provides services for pensioners and life. The company has an annual revenue of about $60 million. LFS multi-year contracts are worth $540 million.

Eyeing on the benefits and profit margin, HCL has made the move to acquire it at any cost. Chief Executive Officer for HCL Business Processing and Outsourcing, Ranjit Narasimhan stated, “This acquisition will equip HCL with a ready capability across the value chain by providing access to an existing revenue stream of policy management, actuarial and analytics,”

HCL Technoloigies has planned to invest $24 million in the next three years to increase its revenue. It should also be noted that HCL would aquire four delivery centers in UK which would be part of the deal. The employee strength would be 800, all four centers combined.

Ahead of deal, HCL Indian shares at BSE closed at 215.35 rupees