Trends and Opportunities in convergence
Convergence? So what is convergence, it is defined in the internet as:
• the occurrence of two or more things coming together
• the approach of an infinite series to a finite limit
• overlap: a representation of common ground between theories or phenomena; "there was no overlap between their proposals"
• he act of converging (coming closer)
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

So convergence is the merging of things to make it better. For example, the death of consumers and the existence of prosumers which most country now adopting. So what do I mean of the death of consumers and replaced by the prosumers. In the past generation customers are only depending on what businesses are producing for them, customers are demanding on what they really want even if they were paying for it. Like when you’re buying a food, you are paying to eat a food in there own desire not in your own desire. Unlike now, people or specifically customers are now demanding; they are paying for what they really want to have; and most customers now are not get easily satisfy on products that business are producing. They are called prosumers because they are the one who demands on what they are paying for not the businesses that produces it. Like in some fast food chains like Mc Donald’s in there past years since they were started, they are just producing foods on their own imaginative mind, now Mc Donald’s are offering free customizing of their products base on what the customers wants and desires. In this case they were able to make more profit because of changes they made.

In this generation many convergence trends and opportunities are existing and some of it is new technologies, new services and new business strategies and market strategies. Business services, some services nowadays offer customizing in your own desire, online ordering, and others. Business strategies, businesses now are creating and imagining new ideas and strategies to make their businesses more productive, like online selling. There are also business adopting and implementing a kind of business strategies like virtual communication by the boss and his or her employees in the company to update the status of the company. Technologies now are playing a big part in the business industries to produce world call products in the market. We can also trends in convergence the making of products to make it more convenient to customers, like what happen in some products now, the existence of instant drinks, instant foods, and others. There are also trends in advertising, as a matter of fact I have search trends in advertising by the Nielsen company.

Though the overall advertising environment in 2009 was glum by most accounts, a number of trends are nonetheless continuing to take hold as the industry evolves to meet new marketplace realities, according to The Nielsen Company.

Most notably, Nielsen said, advertisers are beginning to look at the media mix more holistically and to take seriously the increasing need for accountability beyond simple “click-through” metrics. They also are starting to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer-generated media as advertising and branding platforms that can help them bring consumers closer to a product or brand.

Nielsen’s advertising trends for 2010:
1. Optimizing media convergence will become top priority: Continued corporate mandates and pressure to measure ROI will lead to a better understanding of media convergence and how various media work together. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.

2.New models will emerge to take advantage of smartphones: Accurate mobile measurement will be required for advertisers to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.

3. More cross-media ad campaigns will surface: The massive growth of online video games played and shared online is leading the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of such advertising across screens and activities will increase.

4. Commercialization of social networking hubs will increase: Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.

5. More interesting and interactive online ads will appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of web development.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/convergence-at-heart-of-top-2010-ad-trends-11461/

Opportunities in convergence are been realized because there many things needed to be developed especially in marketing. They seen many problems that occur in marketing,; people are not satisfy on what products they have; and people are demands on what they really want and they are willing to pay for it worth. We have also an opportunity in the development of agriculture with the help of technologies. There are still many improvements needed in the agriculture industry to maximize the productivity of it. We can also minimize their problems in their manual managements to lessen the hassle that they may encounter. By the help of technology in agriculture industry, we may able to help them increase their profit and developed their marketing strategies when they will sell their goods soon. We can also do online promotions of products in some social networking sites. Some social networking sites now are not just for meeting and gaining many friends or to communicate with love ones far from you, now it is also used for online selling and promotions of products, it is also used for campaigned to communicate to many people. Start up businesses can also adopt this kind of strategy because by this you may promote you products to everyone, and by that you can gain more profit in that strategy you apply for you business and we can consider that as an opportunity I convergence because you have able to change your strategies form manual or offline promotions to online promotions. There are also opportunities in mobile applications or the development of cell phone or smart phones. We might think of what improvement needed in the smart and cell phones nowadays, although most cell and smart phones are high-tech because most of it are almost alike to computer, it can access internet access, you can search for information, we can watch TV through our mobile phones and it can also store electronic books. It’s really hard to think of new development in mobile phones but still we can improve the performance of it to make it better because I believe that technologies like mobile phones still needs improvements to make it better. There are many opportunities in some country that are not trying convergence especially in marketing. There are also some who are adopting it now and change their marketing strategies from manual to technological type of marketing strategies like in social networking sites.

Changing the habits of the consumer may improve the mobile technology and it will driving invest to the region’s telecoms infrastructure. For a long time, media convergence was a case of traditional media adapting to the online world. But increasingly, the chosen platform for convergence is mobile devices. More time is spent using data services such as internet browsing, social networking, instant messaging, gaming, mobile TV, video on demand and navigation-based applications. The quality of the data experience has become just as, if not more, important than the voice experience. Convergence allows one media outlet to take advantage of features and benefits offered through other media outlets. For instance, in many areas around the world television programming is now delivered digitally via cable, telephone or satellite hookup. This delivery method uses the same principles of information delivery that is used to allow someone to connect the Internet. The convergence of television and Internet opens many potential opportunities for marketers to target customers in ways not available with traditional television advertising. For example, technology may allow ads delivered to one household to be different than ads delivered to a neighbor’s television even though both households are watching the same program. But convergence is not limited to just television. Many media outlets are experiencing convergence as can be seen with print publications that now have a strong web presence. The future holds even more convergence opportunities. Many experts view this as simply being the tip of the iceberg, as all facets of institutional activity and social life such as business, government, art, journalism, health, and education are increasingly being carried out in these digital media spaces across a growing network of information and communication technology devices. Also included in this topic is the basis of computer networks, wherein many different operating systems are able to communicate via different protocols. The Television, Radio and Newspapers are the world's main mediums in accessing news and entertainment. Now, all 3 mediums have converged into one and people all over the world now can read news on the Internet. Convergence of media occurs when multiple products come together to form one product with the advantages of all of them, also known as the black box. Converging technologies seems to be squashing many types of demanded technologies into one. Mobile phones are becoming manufactured to not only carry out phone calls, text messages, but also hold images, videos, music, television, camera, and multimedia of all types. Manufacturers are now integrating more advanced features such as video recording, GPS receivers, data storage, and security mechanisms into the traditional cell phone. Media convergence in reality is more than just a shift in technology. It alters the relationship that already exists between industries, technologies, audiences, genres and markets. Media convergence changes the rationality in which media industries operate and also the way that media consumers process news and entertainment. Bearing in mind that media convergence in reality is essentially a process and not an outcome, there is no single black box that controls the flow of media into our homes and workplaces.