The Times becomes the biggest UK newspaper to begin charging its readers to access its online content. If you go onto the site you will see the main news and headlines of the day.

If you however want to read the rest of the articles after you’ve clicked on a link you will be presented with the following image.

I for one was not happy at the thought of having to pay for this content particularly in the digital format.  I believe that content should be readily accessible and free (To and extent).  Yes I understand that advertiser budgets are constanly being cut and the move towards subscription based business models will become more popular.  Bob Dylan wrote the song  The Times They Are A-changin‘ And it seems true that the way in which we consume are content is also changing.  Do you agree?  What are your thoughts on The Times beginning to  charge its readers to access its online content? Leave us a comment and let us know.

For those of you not old enough to remember here’s the original song

LONDON – China will overtake the UK as the world’s fourth largest advertising market in 2010, according to ZenithOptimedia’s latest report, with the emerging economy expected to increase 5.4% this year.

Globally, media spend is expected to plummet 8.5% in 2009 – a larger-than-expected decline compared with Zenith’s April prediction of 6.9%, which the agency accounted for as a result of lower-than-expected Q1 figures. Read full article from Brand Republic

Recent study by Forrester Research suggest that: As the economic recession starts to bite into advertising budgets, growth in online advertising will slow: European online ad spending will grow just 10% in 2009, down from 30% annual growth in 2007. Search will fare best as interactive marketers focus on highly accountable direct response advertising, while display advertising will be hardest hit in this recession just as it was in 2002.

Rich media and video advertising will grow to account for 59% of European online display ad spending in 2013 as marketers of all types embrace richer creative formats to improve the performance of their display ads. To prosper during the downturn, interactive marketers should look for value in highly targeted display ads and seek opportunity in the improved performance of contextual ad networks like Google’s AdSense.

Here is an interesting article posted by EYECUBE that discusses an issue I raised in an earlier post  about brand you.  what are your thoughts on branding and more importantly brand you.

The reason why do I like google sooo much.  Well I like google so much because they are always coming out with new interesting products or services.  Yes they may acquire smaller business’s that created and developed the technology, however they always seem to offer the products for free.  I’m not sure what their overall strategy is however, it will be interesting to see.  One of their new products is  Google Ad Planner 

The benefit of google ad planner is that it lets you look at 250 of the most popular sites for advertising (including Facebook, AOL, Yahoo!, eBay, etc..). You can also specify your target market (by gender, location, education, and so on). You then get to see how much of your traffic is visiting any of these sites. For anyone looking at getting greater insight into user metrics this tool is a welcome addition to google’s stable of products.