steinblog.com

shutting down

2007-06-12T11:52:00.001-07:00

It's become pretty clear that I can't keep up to date on the old blog these days. So, I'm going to take my long-absence to shut it down...for the time being.

I'll still be shooting off my mouth, but primarily in my ClickZ column, and maybe on some other people's blogs.

And, I hope to be back. I have a few new ideas, and I'm bound to have some time to work on some of them.

Thanks, all!

Lazy, Lazy, Lazy

2007-05-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

Alright, I haven't been "lazy", per se. But I have been amazingly busy. I did what I said I never would...I lost momentum on blogging. I used to brag that I found blogging addictive: that I would wake up thinking about what I would blog that day. Well, I seem to have let about a month's worth of morning's pass by, while working on those paying clients...but I think I'm back in the swing here.

Plus: I just saw this AdSense ad:

(not clickable)
Yeesh. How stuff like that winds it way through the system is beyond me. Alright...let's get back to keeping a close eye on how technology is changing advertising. Number one of which would be the amazing purchases of the last few weeks: DoubleClick to Google and Aquantive to Microsoft. Amazing (although not unexpected). Here we are in a space where the big software development shops are suddenly sitting at the fulcrum point between advertiser and consumer. I've written previously about how advertising is increasingly becoming a challenge of probability (specifically in ClickZ). These moves definitely show a significant march in that direction.

Cumulative Advantage: Why Marketing Strategy is Dynamic

2007-04-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

NYT has a short article about Cumulative Advantage, which is essentially the effect that occurs in a networked world where a moderately successful item (song, book, Web site, YouTube video) begins to become extremely successful, very quickly, pulling away from highly similar items of equal intrinsic quality.

whew.

Essentially, this is why you are more compelled to watch a video that 1 million people
have seen, as opposed to one that only 5 have seen. You (we) are drawn to things that others have deemed to be good. This is one of the mechanics of word of mouth, and something that clearly sets us up--as marketing strategists--to think of the world in highly dynamic terms.

Past (broadcast world) strategy had more to do with trying to figure out what would work and running it. You'd see if it did work, and try to learn from success and failure. Today, that is myopic and lazy. Today, we live inside of a highly-connected world where there is data, data and more data.

This is the opportunity that we have today. Everything is a living lab, where we can watch our target markets operate in very-close to real time, with stacks of algorithms at the ready. We need to continue to operate in a living way. Running a marketing program is more about optimization today than it is about initial insight. It is about flexibility and the ability to think quickly and recognize patterns as they begin to emerge.

Google and DoubleClick: Match Made in (Data) Heaven

2007-04-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

So, Google gets DoubleClick. What does that mean?

Well, first off, it definitely cements the notion that online advertising is Google and vice-versa. Google controls 60% of search, so they touch all of those ads. I don't know if anyone's clear about the reach of AdSense, but it's pretty big, especially down at the lower end of the tail with small publishers and bloggers. Now, everyone that uses DART is going to have their data pass through a Google server.

Certainly that represents a pretty significant chunk of a big and growing market. But what is even more interesting is the way that Google uses the things it buys. That is, they want the marketshare, of course. But they also want the technology and (more importantly) the way that people use the technology.

I wrote in ClickZ a week or so back about the concept of Adverting by Robots. The idea being that computer scientists are increasingly becoming interested in advertising, but they are approaching it as a math, and not a creative challenge.

The thing that they need, of course, is data about what ads are effective and under what conditions. The DART system is able to catch a lot of that. That great big data set is now going to be available to the Google engineers and their magic algorithms.

Owning the Means of Production: Brands do Content

2007-04-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

MarketingVox is linking to a story in USAToday about brands creating their own content. There's definitely nothing new about this concept. P&G used to own (and still might..I'd have to check) soap operas. That is, they were created by P&G Studios and the P&G owned the rights to them.

You can definitely see how the idea has gained so much favor, and it is really the long-term fallout from the Internet revolution. When we started advertising online, we realized that the ad had to be interesting and valuable in its own right. So, naturally, the ads started to evolve into content.

The question then becomes, how far can this go? Well, in the USA Today story, to the extreme, where the content is compelling enough to capture interest for a full 30 minutes.

Ad about how great newspapers are won't go away

2007-04-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

You know, I actually sort of like this campaign from the Newspaper Association, touting the power of newspapers.

But this morning, the ad just opened up, covering about half of adage.com with no apparent way to close the stinking thing!

It's even covering up an article on ad clutter!

Free 411....of course

2007-04-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Another day, another great big disruption to someone's revenue stream. Google announces free 411 directory assistance. And...they do it better.

411 is a joke (to paraphrase Public Enemy). Why do you have to a) pay for this? and b) pay so much? Plus, I hate the fact that they connect you directly to the listing, but you have no record of the number. So, if you get a busy signal or need to call back? On to 411 again. A bad, overpriced system. Definitely needing shaking up.

Google's new experiment not only is free, but it allows you to get a text message of the business information. How great is that? And how happy are businesses going to be about that? This is a market that has been sitting like a ripe apple for a long time and its good to see it plucked.

The Growth of Ad Auctions

2007-04-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

The idea of an online auction has been around for a good, long time. The idea makes a lot of sense: a ton of ad space is either undervalued or unsold, simply because it too frequently, the process of selling involves people, and people are focusing on buys that are bigger and more interesting than just a bunch of banners scattered across a network.

Or...we realize that ad space has a temporal element to it: if someone doesn't buy the home page at 4:00 on a Saturday, that impression is gone, along with any potential value, just like a hotel room.

But we've got two big stories this week around auctions: Google is doing it with TV and DoubleClick is doing it online. It's a pretty amazing step forward, and one that could potentially change much of the dynamic of buying ad space. The planning portion is going to be a challenge, of course. That is, where CPMs were previously some combination of rate card times relationship, we'll now just get pure market-based pricing.

The big thing to see, of course, is the quality of the inventory that is posted up. That will determine much about whether buyers will see auctions as a way to backfill buys to hit reach and frequency goals, or if they will actively engage as a method of getting high-value placements.

Video Issue #1: What is online video

2007-03-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

My ClickZ column this week focuses on the issues and the opportunities for advertisers around online video. Each day this week, I'll focus a little deeper on each of the issues. Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

I went to the Apple Store this weekend. What a place. The virtues of the Apple retail experience have been listed a thousand times before, so I won't re-hash, but they clearly know how to do Good Store. If nothing else, they realize the value of making the products the heroes, and when you let people touch heroes, they get excited (and buy!)

At the store yesterday, the hero of the day is AppleTV, and its a great illustration of the first issue around online video: what, exactly, are we talking about? Here is a device that (elegantly) blurs the line between online and off in terms of viewing content. The value here is apparent...to the consumer, as well as the producer. A new revenue stream is opened-up for NBC with episodes of the Office.

What about advertisers? We are a little left out of the picture...or are we? The opportunity to talk to consumers may be roughly equal to $1.99 an episode. You can clearly see an opportunity to offer the premier of a show on iTunes for Free, brought to you by SteinBlog Heavy Industries.

The point is that there's not really a single thing called "online video", and--as such--there's really not a good silver-bullet approach to using online video effectively.

YouTube and Advertisers: Wading into the Chaos Pool

2007-03-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

I spoke at the ClickZ video ad conference this week (held here in lovely San Francisco, thank you Rebecca). After our presentation, someone asked the panel "if you have a brand that is controversial, what advice would you give about posting video on social networks?"

My advice was (and I quote) "Tread freakin' cautiously"

I absolutely believe that it is fantastic that we have sites such as YouTube where anybody can post a video and anyone comment on it, or post videos that are responses. That is a good thing and there is so much crackling energy around it that you have to pay attention. But that doesn't mean you, as a brand, need to dive in head-first.

If people out there in the world absolutely love you, a consumer-generated media strategy can be a fantastic thing. If there are people out there in the world who hate you, a CGM strategy can be deadly. Because any latent feelings that consumers have about your brand will come to the surface immediately when they are prompted. If everyone thinks your brand is successful only because you kill bunnies all day long, that message is going to come out the minute you post a video about your non-bunny-killing activities on YouTube.

This week, AdAge is asking the big question about YouTube and Google's purchase: was it worth it? They point to the limbo state of their ad model: it's not what it is now, it's not what it wasn't and it is going to be something, but no one knows what that is. But, they also point to the weak spot: advertisers don't necessarily want to get into a space that is under the control of consumers and therefore, by its nature, based upon chaos.

Sometimes, it helps to think of advertising simply as a math problem. Everything has a probability of success, as well as a chance of failure and a chance of something unexpected. A good ad strategy used to be a clever line and a good consumer insight. That won't cut it anymore. Today, you need to consider the dynamic ecology of the consumer landscape, identify risks and take actions to mitigate issues. Sometimes, that may simply be chosing not to participate in a space where the odds are stacked against you, no matter how attractive that space is, and how many blog posts are written imploring you to embrace a Brave New World.

Calendar meltdown!

2007-03-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

We got all stressed about Y2K and nothing happened.

Congress decides to change daylight savings time, and every computer on the planet screws up its calendar.

Yeeesh!

Attn Email Marketers: Take Jupiter Survey

2007-03-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

If you use email to do business, please take a minute to help out our friends at Jupiter Research with the their annual email survey.

Telling Brand Stories

2007-03-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

One of the big marketing ideas of the last several years is to begin generating stories about your brands and for your business. Mark Thompson wrote a compelling piece a few years back about the concept of having a story in BrandChannel, complete with some very good advice.

I see today, as well that Ira Glass has a series of videos up on YouTube about how to tell stories. Glass hosts This American Life, and I believe he knows more about telling stories than anyone since maybe Mark Twain.

Here at Ammo, we've been up to our neck in stories for a while now. I don't promote my own company here on the blog, and that's not my intention. But we've been doing some deep thinking about stories: why they get told and (more importantly) why they get listened to.

One of the main insights that we've hit on is that, simply, a brand is not a story. They are two distinctly different things. The chart to the left represents the primary differences between a brand and a story, and it is a basis for a process that transforms/evolves brands into stories.

I think that's the most important step: going from a strong brand to a compelling story. It's not always easy, of course, as some brands don't really appear to have anything to say. But there certainly is a process that you can use, where you unpack the brand into a series of parts, and begin to assemble those parts into a tale that unfolds.

That's why the first difference up there is that, while a brand is "Statement of belief", a story is a "chain of events". The brand comes whole: it is everything you need to know in one simple sentence. The story is told in pieces, where each piece sets up the next, and they all lead to one overall truth which tells you something not only about the characters in the story (which could be the product, or its founders, or any other aspect of the business), but about the world as a whole.

When people ask you to think about stories, don't just make them up. Watch Ira Glass and see what he has to say about stories. There's a lot marketers can learn, just by thinking about those who make a living telling stories.

Ning in the SF Chron: Let's not get too excited, OK?

2007-03-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Well...a front page story today in the SF Chronicle about a new Internet company, complete with
photos from the launch party (held at Ruby Skye), analyst quotes overflowing with optimism ("...social networking is about to become, in the words of Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, "like air. You can't escape it, you have to have it. It will be built into everything we touch and do online.") and lots and lots of promises of overwhelming growth.

The Chronicle seems to have gotten over its crush on Google, so that's good news. But it seems like they're ready to dive back to the heady days. We'll keep a close eye on them.

Online Video Ad Models: The Race is On

2007-03-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

Demonstrating an enormous amount of optimism, Eric Schmidt told an audience: "It should be the case that monetizable viewing habits on the Internet should catch up with those on television."

He further added "Our strategy is first and foremost to get as much licensed content on YouTube as possible, index everything, and develop the advertising tools that will allow people to make money." That certainly is a reasonable approach. I mean, they built the entire Google business on that model, first indexing Web sites than developing advertising tools. Well, not developing from scratch, of course. More like liberally borrowing and building out.

But pretty clearly, the race for content is on. Joost's going for, of course, as are a number of other players. Schmidt's optimism is a bit striking. That's the approach we all believed in just before the big crash: content is king, get the people first, monetize it later.

Will this be different? I'm not sure. I do know, at least, that we are building off a model that already has a proven advertising track record, so we should pay attention when Schmidt points that advertisers who value Desperate Housewives watchers will be interested in following them wherever they go.

Joost Ad Model to rely on data

2007-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

MIT's Ad Lab blog has a nice round up of thoughts on Joost's ad mode. Joost is currently in beta, but plans to be a new way to consume streaming content online....as in, watch television shows online.

There's a quote there from the Joosters, which is that they want to really disrupt the current ad buying system for broadcast. Traditionally, you bought ads based on reach and frequency. They want to shift to quality, and the way they are going to do it is by, yes, leveraging data.

Once again, what's happening behind the scenes in the online ad space is way more interesting than what's going on on the front.

The Wow starts....MSFT to go digital with ads

2007-03-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Mich Mathews is
(a) a woman
and
(b) spelled with just one "t" in her last name.

She's now pictured there to the left.

Of course, I would have known that if I did a simple search ;-)

-------------------------------------

Speaking at the 4As conference, Microsoft's Mich Mathews said that the majority of their ad spend would move online in the next few years.

No word on whether or not Mich made it out of the conference hall alive. I imagine she had to hack his way through a sea of media-reps, similar to the last-remaining-human would has to in most zombie films.

That a big company (especially one whose products are all digital) would make such a move is becoming less and less remarkable. Microsoft is following territory already trod (or claimed to ready to trod) by Unilvere, P&G, Bud, Coke and others. What was remarkable was the reason he gave for the shift. Ends up, Microsoft is interested in online because of "the enhanced reporting abilities it brings".

Well that's cool. Especially coupled with the fact that they are still going to do broadcast, but with more targeting. I imagine that the data for that targeting is going to come from online, right? Here we have online, with the data that it throws off, in its proper place in the middle of the marketing mix.

It makes sense for Microsoft to adopt this attitude. After all, they build Ad Center entirely around the ability to target ads. They must have, at some point, realized that these big spreads in magazines haven't amounted to nearly as much as a very well-considered, data-driven campaign.

JetBlue: Failure in Competence:Benevolence

2007-02-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

JetBlue, a brand that I do, in fact, like, screwed up pretty bad last week. Essentially, it seems, the whole system just completely and totally unraveled, leaving passengers in planes, in line, and on hold. What a mess.

The work of apologizing has begun, using the Internet as a primary vehicle. You may have received an email as well, if you've ever flied them. Here are a few excerpts:

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

The red text is my addition. This is a good lesson, here, and it illustrates a key point about what happens when a company blows it. They need to apologize, yes. But they also need to manage the perception of their competence and their benevolence. Consumers (humans) forgive lapses in competence. They do not forgive lapses in benevolence.

That's what JetBlue is doing. They are admitting (in a sense) that they were incapable of handling the disruption to their system. But, more importantly, they re-iterated the benevolence that is built into their brand and their product. That's why it is so critical in this memo to remind people about JetBlue's whole purpose: "bringing humanity back to air travel". That's key. They are built around giving people great experiences. They can't possibly lose that, and in this apology, you can see that they are re-affirming that, far more than they are making promises about upgrading their systems.

Fear Not the Ad Avoiders

2007-02-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Ripped from today's headlines: a shock to the system....Some People Hate Ads!

Big deal. Starcomm and Microsoft have released a report (detailed on Mediaweek) profiling the 15% of the world that does not like and avoids advertising.

"This is the kind of stuff that keeps us up at night" someone from Microsoft was quoted as saying. That is not only an over-reaction, but also missing the key point of advertising.

The point of advertising is not to get people to look at advertising. The point of advertising is to sell stuff, either right away, or at some future date. Advertising an instrument, and generally a blunt one at that. It's not that these people don't buy things (clearly, many are buying technologies that allow them to avoid ads, such as Tivos and Satellite Radios).

Advertisers need to always understand what their role is: move people toward purchase. It is entirely possible that is going to happen at a site that a person chooses to visit...not during a commercial they have been coerced into watching.

Google AdWords Changes

2007-02-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

Andy Beal is reporting that Google is making a few significant changes to its AdWords program. The first is that they will expose the Quality Score behind each ad. The second is that they are making some changes to how that score is determined.

Google has always been very clever about the way it decides the order in which it is going to show ads for a particular keyword. Competitors (up until recently) simply placed the highest-bidding advertiser on top, the 2nd highest next, and so on. Since search engine marketing is a pay-per-click system, this didn't really do the publisher much good. A highly-bid, unattractive ad won't get a click and placing it in the prime spot is a waste. Instead, Google did some complicated math problem to determine how "good" an ad was, multiplied that by the bid and used that to figure rank.

Of course, Google likes to keep all things secret, much to frustration of its customers (many of whom have built their entire business upon this black box). There has been a slow, but steady, effort at the company to open up more of the details of its business, and this is bound to be a welcome addition.

But: they are also sending people into yet-another-tailspin, by also changing the way that score is determined, which--naturally--will shuffle the order of the ads. Andy's right: people will complain, but others will also brag. Whenever Google makes a change, you can be sure that a number of agencies will announce that there was no effect on their business. That is, they have something more solid in place, and I tend to believe it.

The Month that just flew by....

2007-02-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

Well, Happy Valentines' Day to everyone (although, I do recommend you spend a few days with Freestyle creation My Black Valentine).

This last month pretty much flew by me. I don't know about the rest of you, but the pace of business feels pretty brisk. Certainly a good thing, as we get flooded with RFPs and new projects. Things are definitely cruising along here.

But this hasn't been a very good blog month. So, now that a few things have cleared my desk, it seems like a good opportunity to catch up and clean out the notebooks of a few things that have been defining the worlds of technology and advertising.

The Kiss that Killed the Super Bowl Ad Frenzy
Well, that may be a bit of hyperbole, but...c'mon. The Snickers Kiss ad was terrible. The version on YouTube, placed by a consumer has the following tags: "Snickers Mars Homophobic". But more than that, this is an so clearly crafted just to generate a reaction. Not to generate awareness or sales, but just startle people into noticing it. That's no strategy. They pretty much undid the good vibes they created with their outdoor "Hungerectomy" campaign, which was brilliant.

The fact that they assumed people would flock to a site devoted to the ad is even more evidence that this was a strategy gone awry. Send people to the store to buy things. Not to your own playground to prattle on.

Speaking of YouTube: The Hammer Falls
Viacom comes down hard on Google and I have to say I have some mixed feelings. I recognize that this is a big company attempting to throttle what feels like a natural impulse, but...c'mon: Viacom owns content. They paid good money to create The Colbert Report and should have the right to govern the way it is used. Clearly, technology has made it simple to take video from the television and put re-distribute it. It's also dead-simple to slap your own logo on top of it and get a little action from your work. But it seems pretty clearly illegal, from my view point. Ease-of-use does not connote a change of rules. If your bank decided to place all your money in a big pile in the parking lot, rather than in the vault, it would still be wrong from someone to take it.

HOWEVER: it is also clear that big media is breaking a butterfly on a wheel. They send out blanket notices to everyone who they think may potentially be breaking the rules. This, they appear to be doing without a lot of consideration or thought. So, a whole lot of dolphins are getting caught in the tuna net: people who really haven't done anything wrong, as well as people who actually may be creating some new, clever, innovative value for the brands.

The head-to-head conflict is a mess. Nothing's going to get done here. The big media companies are the ones who can act monolithically, and should take the initiative. They need to establish a new set of practices....maybe a new department...that is designed around enforcement (yes), but also innovation and partnership.

If I ran a big media company, that's what I'd do: Stop the blanket threats. Create a group comprised of a lawyer, a new-media specialist, a community organizer and a technologist. Have them scan the world for uses of their content and do one of three things: leave it alone; request its removal; find a way to work with and support the artist.

PEW: 28% of Net Users use Tags

2007-02-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

Wow. There's a report out from PEW about tagging. They claim that 28% of Net users have tagged some bit of content.

That's a significant number. Tags are a key bit of lubricant in the online word-of-mouth machine. A tag is essentially an open-recommendation. If you tag a bit of content with tag X, you're telling the world "if you're interested in X, you should read this thing.

If I were you ;-), I'd start putting an "add to del.icio.us" link on just about everything I put out.

Google TV Hoax? More evidence

2007-01-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Why do I find this so fascinating?

The world is buzzing about the possibility and the potentialy hoax-ed-ness of Google TV. You know, when I watched the video the first time I noticed that when the camera panned down the screen, there was a link called "Affiliate Programs."

That's pretty odd, and definitely not Google standard (which placed a link to "Advertising Programs" on the bottom of pages). So, that would mean one of two things:

1) the hoaxer mis-typed something at the bottom of the page, when creating his fake Google TV site.
2) Google is offering an affiliate program for Google TV.

I understand that part of the story is that Google will charge for subscriptions to Google TV, but I don't know of anything else that they currently refer to as an "Affiliate Program". For what its worth, I think the answer is #1, and the mis-type is the give-away.

(I have screen caps, but for some reason Blogger's not letting them load)

SuperBowl Ad Interest Waning

2007-01-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

"Borrowed interest is always something you look at, but [our marketing] will give us more pop, in our opinion, than going into a Super Bowl environment."

That's the informed opinion of John B. Williams, general manager- Microsoft Windows global communications, talking about the Super Bowl in AdAge. That's right, he's going to skip the Super Bowl this year, despite the fact that he's launching the biggest upgrades to Windows ever.

Is it possible that what Apple started,

Microsoft will finish? It may just be that advertisers are beginning to lose interest in the battle for attention of Super Bowl breaks. We've talked about this for a while, but this may be the turning point year, as not only Microsoft, but also P&G and Unilever look to more natural growth paths for their brands.

Google TV Beta?

2007-01-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

Well, speaking of Google rumors...there are a few videos up on YouTube, similar to the one above, claiming to have screen captures of a Google TV beta. There's a bit of controversy as to whether or not these are real or fake, but I have to admit that it looks fairly real to me.

Of course, even if it is fake, this is bound to happen, right? And, if so, this is a big disruptor in the broadcast space.

UPDATE TechCrunch says "boowowowowowowooooo-gus!"

Google Virtual World?

2007-01-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

MarketingVox is circulating a rumor that Google is working on a virtual world, in the SecondLife vein. I definitely have my doubts. The creation of a destination of this sort seems to go against the Google mindset. That said, they clearly saw value in YouTube, as well as Picasa, and a number of other applications that seem to take them further away from their "organize the world's information" mantra.

What certainly would seem likely would be an interest in indexing Second Life (as well as World of Warcraft and any other virtual worlds). Clearly, there's a lot of new data that is either emerging there, or at least being housed there. In fact, I've heard Linden Lab's business model as simply offering server space to content creators. Should that content also be in Google's index? Assumedly so, especially as more commercial content is created there.

So, how would an island appear in the Google index? How would the crawler index it in the first place? These are the questions that I would imagine Google to be interested in. In fact, if they put out their own virtual world before they solved this (more interesting) problem, I think I'd be a little let down.

Apple Love....ummm...yeah...

2007-01-25T16:57:00.000-08:00

provided without comment...(via Scary Ideas.

AdRants: Nike executes CGM the right way

2007-01-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

AdRants has a post up this morning about Nike's Second Coming site. They see the execution as a way of doing consumer-generated media the right way, and I have to agree with him, to a degree.

If you haven't seen the Nike site, they refer to it as a mash up--a way to take the clips from the TV spots, remix them and add different music. It's cool and clever, and not a massive breakthrough from other executions we've seen. Shoot, Nike themselves did something in 2000 called Nike Digital Video which was more or less the same concept. The Motley Fool wrote about it, back then

Nike Digital Video is one of the funniest parts of the site. Essentially, it is a tool to make your own Nike-style commercial videos to send to your friends. You choose from a list that includes running, basketball, and snowboarding. Then you choose five images from the Nike collection, add two messages, choose your soundtrack, and email the results. The ones I made ended with a white swoosh, just to remind me where the video was made. This is a silly little diversion, but kind of fun to play with.

So, here we are, 7 years on, and Nike's getting accolades for essentially sticking with the same strategy. I think this is worthwhile: CGM is an ad-creative tactic. It is not a strategy. Nike should be commended, but not for sorting out the best way to do CGM. It is for understanding how they want to interact with consumers and not wavering in the face of over-zealousness.

Five Things about....Me!

2007-01-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

Ok, Niki. I'm game. Here are five things 'bout me.

1) I curently hanging out at the Louisville, KY airport (see photo)
2) I have an MA in American Literature, and wrote my thesis on the effects on the Cold War on literature
3) I have 2 fantastic kids: Joad (3) and Eliot (8 months). They freakin' rule.
4) I'm a Cat3 cyclist. Both my wife and I ride on a team called CRC.
5) I co-wrote a book, a long time ago. You seem to be able to buy a copy for 45 cents.

Now what? I tag others. How about Leathern?

The Perfect Hotel

2007-01-22T04:45:00.000-08:00

The Museum 21C hotel in Louisville, KY is about as near to perfect as I can imagine.

You're Soaking In It: When Ads are Everywhere

2007-01-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

MIT's Ad Lab blog (which is always good for a burst of new ideas) has a post about an NYT article, pointing out what we've already known: there are a lot of ads out there in the world, outside traditional media channels.

I think this is a trend that didn't start, but got a boost from a key book, written (yeesh) a decade ago called Under the Radar. The book was written by K&B (of K&B fame). I very clearly remember reading this book, when it first came out. I was full of hope and wonder. The first sentence of the book reads as follows:

"We are in the midst of an epidemic of cynicism"

Hell yes, I believe I thought. Here was a marketing book, an advertising book, that started off by admitting the actual problem: people are actively tuning ads out. They have, in the parlance of the book, tuned their radar to such a fine degree that normal ways of advertising (TV, billboards, etc) just aren't getting in. The authors suggest going "under the radar".

The trouble is, however, that the book's thesis begins to fall down at the execution level. It's been a while since I've picked this book up, but they talked about how they have been successful getting ads in, under the radar, by simply putting them in unexpected places. One example that springs to mind was a Snapple ad on a mango.

OK. That's clever. And I know that a lot of ad-folks saw that and got excited. But was that really effective? Or was it just simply a gotcha-moment for consumers. "Oh! You got me...I certainly wasn't expecting an ad there...on my mango."

Listen: the challenge of getting consumers to notice and respond to your ads is not simply a cat-and-mouse game where we try to sneak some message in when the poor hapless consumer isn't looking. All that does, really, is expand the radar. The consumer now has to be wary of ads on a new medium. The Global MangoPlex is no longer an ad-free zone, and consumers now know this.

But, undeniably, ads are everywhere. I'm going to have to finish this post, but I'll do a follow up in a bit. The point, though, is that the spread of ads is a very clever and interesting reaction to an undeniable reality: if you are an industry dedicated to creativity, how do you re-create yourself in the face of your own doom?

Trend for 2007: Offers, not Ads

2007-01-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

I always felt a little off using the term "Search Engine Advertising". I'm sure I'm not the only one, since we (far) more frequently discuss "Search Engine Marketing".

The reason that I've avoided using "advertising" is maybe a sign of a desire for purity of definitions. I think the ads that (currently) appear alongside search results are more properly called "offers". That is, they are a specific response to a request for a certain product. They are making an offer. In fact, the whole bidding and pay-for-click system is more suited to making offers than it is to placing an ad. Who wants to pay just to offer something?

I think this is a mindset that is going to become more and more attractive, as we become more and more nimble at making offers that are relevant. Witness today's news in ClickZ about Google filing a patent to create an AdWords-type system to be used in-stores. Any medium that has a high-degree of flexibility is naturally drawn toward this kind of system and this approach. It offers a better chance to generate revenue and it even seems to be almost completely automated.

So what's the result? Well, everywhere there is now an ad should be considered as a target to be moved over to be an offer. Taxi tops, bus stops and radio spots are all near-term likely candidates.

I'm back--Happy New Year

2007-01-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Hello: I'm back from a fantastic family vacation down in Saylutia, Mexico. What a great spot. This is the second year in a row that we've gone down there. Certainly getting a bit more crowded, but a great little corner of the Earth.

So....what have I missed?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

2006-12-27T09:38:00.000-08:00

I'm on Blog-hiatus until Jan 8th. Happy new year to all, and looking forward to scribbling more in '07.

=G

WOMMA Trustiness Slides

2006-12-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

I've got my slides from the WOMMA conference posted up. I spoke about trust and the need to establish a structured way to think about the trust you have as an asset. Enjoy!

ClickZ Article Slides

2006-12-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

Hello. If you clicked over from my column today, looking for slides...I'm sorry. I'm on a wireless connection here at the SF Courthouse (got jury duty) and am having trouble uploading the slides. Tell you what: send me an email, and I'll let you know when I can get those posted. Thanks!

What's in a (trademarked) Name?: The LinkSys iPhone Release

2006-12-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Ultra-Insider/Techie Kingdom Blog Gizmodo announced last Friday "Gizmodo Knows: iPhone Will Be Announced on Monday" and followed up with the very tasty post: "It isn't what I expected at all."

Well, they revealed the punchline this morning. There is a new iPhone, but its made by LinkSys, not, as everyone expected, by Apple.

LinkSys, evidently, owns the iPhone trademark, and Apple really hasn't got any rights on it. But this is the sort of thing that truly challenges the notion of trademarks. Clearly, legally, trademarks belong to the owner, and the owner is the one who filed for it first, right? That would be LinkSys.

But, in the real world, trademarks represent companies and people. In the world today, a lowercase "i" before some common word clearly points back to Apple. You can see this quite clearly in the discussions after the Gizmodo leak and before the official announcement. Linksys is clearly going to have to deal with a let-down surrounding their product. "Oh...its not from Apple." will be the first reaction (among many). The second is "Well, I wonder when Apple's phone is coming?"

The Person of the Year is You (Us)

2006-12-17T16:11:00.000-08:00

Hey: you got named person of the year! I'm so proud of you. I know, no one thought you would ever amont to much, but there you are! You go....you.

Good for Time. The individual has certainly moved into the fore this last year. I haven't read the article, but Google buying YouTube (not to mention Yahoo buying Flickr) certainly shows the economic power of the individual.

The changes that the computer and the Internet have brought are more than about media. They are about society and culture. The Age of the Individual is dawning, it seems. Just in time.

Another Fake Blog Uncovered

2006-12-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

It looks like another fake blog has been uncovered, this one thanks to Sony.

Yeeeesh. Why, oh why are people still launching fake blogs? Who doesn't realized by now that this is a bad idea? It's like the headline is "Man surprised that hitting self in the head with hammer hurts, causes bruise".

What WOM is Wot?

2006-12-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

Just finished up my sessions at WOMMA. They keep on attracting great, big crowds of qualified people. Congratulations to Andy and his staff for putting on another excellent event.

Now: what's up with the issue about online vs. offline WOM? As I mentioned before, Pete wrote about it in ClickZ, based on an article in Adage, which referenced a Keller Fay study, telling us that the "Real Action" for WOM is offline (link in the right sidebar).

What on earth does "real action" mean? Clearly the majority of WOM happens face to face. That's definitely clear. But why is there a growing split between the practioners of offline and online WOM? That seems totally counterproductive.

What we've got to come to is a notion that all pieces of the media equation are critical. In fact, I predict that we are going to very quickly move away from discussions about the particular channel, and even the particular form. Consumer Generated Media is important for us to understand and monitor. But, as marketers and not media watchers, we need to look at the end: what does CGM do?

That's the interesting answer. The notion that's going to have to come to the forefront is something along the lines of the Collective Narrative. That is, that the collective--consumers, creators, and commentators--will dynamically form up new stories about brands, which will both hold and drive value.

Online or off is a distracting conversation, especially as the two begin to entangle one another. Time to look toward to the goals of brand value creation, protection and conservation.

@ WOMMA Event

2006-12-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

I'm in DC this morning, speaking at the WOMMA event. If you're there, please say hello. In the meantime, take a read through Pete's comments on what WOM is. Great points; I'm going to follow up when I get a few spare minutes...

Wiki Book on Business

2006-12-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

I just joined onto a project to write a business book, Wiki-style. The project is called We are Smarter than Me, and the ultimate product will be a book about (what else) doing business in a community-driven world. I added my first section, in the marketing chapter (naturally), adding a new theme about CGM.

Join up!

Condolences

2006-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

My deep condolences to our friends at CNET and to James Kim's family.

WalMart Rattles their (toy) Sword

2006-12-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

WalMart sent shivers down the spines of retailers across the land this year, in what could almost be described as the Bizarro World Scrooge Strategy. They told the world that, at this time of year, they are in day-to-day discussions on pricing for toys, and would not rule out dropping the prices on toys between now and the ChanuCristmaKwanzaa season.

(This is Bizarro Scrooge in that they are making other's holiday seasons more miserable by increasing access to gifts.)

I wrote a little about this in my ClickZ column this week, specifically talking about the control that the channel weilds over manufacturers. It's hard to judge the effect this will have on manufacturers, but I wonder if they will call the manufacturer before dropping the price on the Pirates of the Caribbean Isla Cruces Playset?? Or, will they simply do it, then present the numbers back, after the season and tell them how they made up the difference in volume, and therefore should be forgiven (monetarily) for doing what they needed to drive business?

Whatever the deal, the fact remains: manufacturers need to strengthen their brands to avoid being taken advantage of by the channel. If they do this, it will actually protect value on both sides of the purchase equation.

Chicago SES session (live Blogs)

2006-12-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

Just back from a super-fast trip to Chicago for the ClickZ sessions at SES. My presentaiton was "Why Social Media: 3 Wrong Reasons, 2 Right Reasons and a Bonus Concept". I'll get my slides up later, but two people live-blogged it, here and here.

Thanks to Rebecca for inviting me!

The VW Crash Ad: Hot or Not?

2006-12-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

This new VW ad:

has some people upset. The blog Sadly, No has a condemnation of the ad, along with (at last count) 102 comments. The blogger clearly hates the ad, claiming that he'd much rather see the normal, expected forms of car advertising.

Yeah, right.

He's clearly had a strong negative reaction to the ad, but he's off, comparing the work to the normal stuff. In fact, the whole point is that this ad (well done, by the way) sets it apart. Certainly its good to think about cars in terms of adverture, luxury and American Pride. But the truth is that driving also means accidents, and the VW is definitely showing a level of bravery in depicting the scene in this way.

Online Community Research and Data

2006-12-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

There's a new report out today, from USC's Annenberg Center for The Digital Future about online communities. There's some good data bits in the summary, including:

2/3 of Americans are using the Internet at home
more women than men go online
1/3 of Internet users watch less TV
People spend an average of 8.9 hours per week online

But the real excitement in the report comes around their discussion of online communities, and it is where my skeptical nature rears its ugly head. The report says they "found" that people who participate in online communities "feel as strongly" about their online community as they do about the real world.

I don't buy this. I mean, I believe that's what people said, but the truth is a little more complicated. That is, people say they find the online community as important as the offline, but they say this, in part, as a way of communicating how they want to be represented in the real world. They want to be seen as someone who is deeply in touch with an online world.

But, the fact is, online communities are, at their root, media. The real world, at its root, is the real world. There is not mediating agent between two people. Between two avatars, profiles or chat icons, there is. Does that mean that the interaction that takes place is meaningless? Of course not. Deep discussions have occurred online and I understand they have had an effect on people.

Advertisers, however, must be practical about their view of this space (and I am talking to advertisers here). This is a unique and novel media experience, of course. No one ever had a relationship with anything broadcast that approaches the relationship that people have with members of their buddy list.

Interacting in a community, though, remains an activity in which people engage, which is mediated by not only technology, but interface and the allowances made by the designers of the world.

That second part--allowances--is critical to understanding this distinction, partially because it allows us to think about telephones differently and distinctly. That is, you could argue (with me) that a telephone call between two people could be considered a media-activity, under my definition. But the phone remains a part of the real-world, in part because there is only a core feature: transmitting voices. There is no other significant allowances built in by the designers.

Ultimately, I believe we will come to understand online communities, and people's connections with them, along a spectrum, that will absolutely include media. So we will say that it is not watching television, but it is also not sitting down with someone.

Perhaps we can consider a break-up litmus test. That is, we can ask two questions: if you are done with the relationship, do you need to break up with the "person" on the other end, and--if so--can you do it over the medium. So, when you get sick of watching a tv show, you don't need to actually break up. You just stop watching. But if you are dating someone, can you break up with their avatar, and still feel good about yourself?

Nutcracker Suite played on Bike Parts (for an ad!)

2006-11-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

Bike parts, good music, smart advertising. My word, this is the perfect storm of my interests. Goodby hired someone here in San Francisco to create a bit of the Nutcracker Suite solely on bike parts, for use in an upcoming ad for Specialized.

Check out the details and the clip.

The Reccomendation Market: Consumers must get some value

2006-11-21T09:08:00.000-08:00

Check out this CNN Money article about the drive for recommendation engines. They outline the concept and list about a dozen different engines and projects to come up with the ultimate tool for suggesting movies, music, books and other stuff.

I completely agree that this is a burgeoning marketplace. The writer pretty deftly connects the notion behind branding with the develop of this software:

We don't just buy products, we bond with them. We have relationships with our things. DVD collections, iTunes playlists, cars, cell phones: Each is an extension of who we are (or want to be). We put ourselves on display through our purchases, wearing our personalities on our sleeves, literally and figuratively, for the world to see.
And if you don't subscribe to this sort of materialism - if you don't define yourself by the clothes on your back or the neighborhood you live in - well, that's just another brand of expression.
In the real world, we use apparent information, coupled with context, experience and stereotypes, to size each other up. This sort of intuition is useful and often accurate, but it's also fallible.
Online, the picture becomes clearer. Consumers now routinely rank experiences on the Web - four stars on IMDb for "The Departed," three stars on Epinions for a Roomba vacuum, a positive eBay rating, a Flickr tag. Each time you leave such a mark, you help the rest of us make sense of all the look-alike, sound-alike stuff on the Web.

I buy that. I wonder, though, if there is going to be a real push to get the value being created by surfing, choosing, buying, tagging and rating back to the consumer? If I put up a solid rating on a product, I generate some value for some company. If I visit 3 sites about ska-punk, SUVs, or the RNC, I've generated some value. That value is obviously used by the observing company, and (soon enough) will be traded on an open market.

The value that the consumer--the actual creator of this value--gets is...better recommendations. Yeesh. What a let down. If I do the SUV site surfing, suddenly a CPM to me jumps from a measly $5 to $75. I think a company could go extremely far by shuffling some of that value back to the consumer.

Chaos 2006 talk

2006-11-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from the Chaos 2006 conference. I have some things to post up, but thought I'd share the text from my presentation.

(at the conference, someone had this clever idea of giving everyone a T-shirt with just "Advertising Is" printed on it and nothing else. Attendees were supposed to answer the question with a permanent marker, and place their creation in a pile. You could then take any shirt that you found appealing)
--------------------
Someone wrote on an "Advertising Is" t-shirt the following: "Advertising isn't a part of the environment...it is the environment." A bit of hyperbole, I suppose (although not much), but let's accept that premise for a minute. I mean, if it's printed on a T-shirt, it must be true, right?

How do we measure environments? Consider the message inside the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Certainly we can measure individual factors within an environment: the amount of rainfall, the density of glaciers, and the temperature of the ocean.

But if we become wholly factor-focused--dedicated solely to one individual data stream, we will always miss the big picture and never fully understand the environment as a whole. It is time, I believe that we need to face the ad industry's own Inconvenient Truth, and it is that the "Head ON" spot was clearly the most effective ad campaign of the last 12 months.

OK. Just kidding. A little.

Really, our truth is that, although we known that everything done to, with and for a brand either builds or diminishes its value, but our industry is generally not structured to measure in that way. We--as a collection of companies--are hampered by the problem generally known as "who gets the credit". When TV spots air, Web searches go up. Web searches go up, and frequently generate in-store sales. Clearly all of these factors are co- and interrelated. But they are managed by different organizations, and funded from different budgets. There is little sharing of data and significant suspicion around its use.

Here, however, is a humble proposal of how we might begin to get away from this. The company that I work for, Ammo Marketing, has begun implementing this process, but it still is in early development.

The measurement approach begins by accepting the truth that advertising has an environmental effect. SInce all aspects of the environment are connected to one another, moving one (up or down) will have an effect on all the others, and ultimately on the environment itself. The first step, therefore, is to build a model, using all available data that accurately depicts the environment. The short list of potential data sources includes: web site analytics, query volume, buzz data, market growth/shifts, sales data, customer satisfaction scores, call center data and all brand health metrics.

These are all data sources and feedback loops. Before we launch a project, we can build this model and run it for a stretch of time, to get a pre-campaign baseline reading. Then, we launch the campaign and begin to pull in fresh data and--hopefully--begin to see some positive changes in the environment as a whole.

The point I'm trying to communicate is that measurement needs to accurately reflect the world. We have become mired in a world where the PR group measures PR, the search team is looking at search, and the television group is looking at TV. Each one is highly motivated to demonstrate the value they are adding, and are looking for direct, linear connections. That's not reasonable, because they are not necessarily there. This approach requires all players to agree on the model, but if that's possible, then we may be all be able to take a step back and truly focus on generating value for clients.

CHAOS!

2006-11-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm on my way to this new conference titled Chaos 2006 down in Austin. If you're at the event, say hello. I'll try to post during the event as well.

Zune's Uphill Battle

2006-11-14T05:11:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has released their Zune player today. The temptation to title this post "Zune to be forgotten" or something is strong, but I'm not going to do it. I certainly am not a gadget analyst. I actually don't own an MP3 player (but think I may buy a used one off a co-worker...I know. Bleeding-freakin'-edge). I trust Gartie and on all things battery-powered and Cardo on all thing Music related.

That said, it seems to me that the Zune's positioning is off the mark. Microsoft is an enormous company, placed in the role of a challenger brand. That's fine. Nike has demonstrated time and again that big companies can act like scrappy players all the time.

But, if you're going to be a challenger, you need to very strongly and very clearly and very immediately communicate your differentiation from the market leader, in order to jolt consumers into moments of reconsideration.

For a portable MP3 player to do that, it needed to either be radically different, or to offer some bit of killer functionality. I don't know that the Zune does either. It seems that its breaktrhoughs are a built-in radio and the ability to swap songs with other Zuners. The radio is sort of interesting, but only in a convenience kind-of way. I can't imagine adding a radio tuner is a big technological feat, and I'm willing to bet that Apple eschewed it from iPods in the same way they decided not to have floppy drives in the first iMacs, or command lines from the first MacOS. It's a clear break with the past, which communicates to the consumer that this is a different sort of device. Why make a foot in the past a major part of a new release?

That leaves the ability to swap songs as the killer app. Oh wait, not swap songs: help Microsoft sell more music. That's right. The technology only allows the swapped song to be played three times on the receiving device. After that, you have the wonderful opportunity to buy they song. This may become the next great channel for music to spread virally, but I doubt it. Are people clamoring for this ability in the first place?

I watched CNN this morning and Soledad O'Brien literally interrupted the tech-biz reporter, who was talking about the Zune, to extoll the virtues of her new, $70 iPod Shuffle. The next time the story came through the cycle, she had gotten her iPod out of her office and demonstrated how cool it was that you could clip it, and essentially un-sold the Zune, and pitched the iPod.

I'm glad there's another competitor in this space. Few things should ever be sold completely by one company. But, if we're looking for an iPod-killer, I'm afraid this one may not cut it.

Interactive Strategy Template

2006-11-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

My ClickZ article this week is all about writing interactive strategies. I've created (and CC licensed) a template and fake case study that you can use and adapt for yourselves and create your own strategic briefs.

Social Network Burnout Coming

2006-11-02T10:24:00.001-08:00

SF Gate has an article today about burnout on social networks. It's totally natural: there's no way that people are going to continue to keep so many profiles going on so many different networks. There's a quote in the article by the guy who runs Dogster (that would be the social network for dogs):

"I think it's been both overhyped and underestimated," Dogster's Rheingold said. Although some lofty expectations about how big of a business it could become won't pan out, "in the end it is going to be so much bigger than what people are seeing now."

How's that for an inherently non-nonsensical quote. Overhyped, but underestimated? That means that everyone is talking like mad about social networks, but...not quite enough? I don't buy that, at all. Clearly, the guy operating in a niche wants to believe (has to believe) that the market will continue to expand to fill in every little crevice. Or, maybe just that News Corp will expand to fill in/buy every little crevice.

This article is pointing out the obvious, but doing so pretty cleverly, by focusing on a handful of burnt-out consumers: we're bound to see a lot of contraction in social networks very, very soon. Social networks are certainly bound to become core to the online experience, like email. But, like email, there's reason to have only 2 addresses for 99% of people.

this belongs in your next PPT deck

2006-11-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

why do I find things like this so funny? I may need to use this in some upcoming presentation.

Shop.org San Francisco Gig Next Week

2006-10-31T09:09:00.000-08:00

Hey!
If you're in/going to be in San Francisco next week, drop on by to the Shop.org regional meeting. I'm going to do a roundtable with the hyper-smart John McAteer of Goooooogle.

2 Books: "Word of Mouth Marketing" and "Made to Stick"

2006-10-30T14:46:00.001-08:00

A couple of books showed up here at the Steinblog Campus: Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz and Made to Stick by the Brothers Heath.

I'm happy to recommend both of these. I'm pretty critical of stuff like this, but I have to say I found deep value in each of these.

Andy's book is great: the title is simple and tells you exactly what the book is about. It's funny: there are a few comments about how this isn't the first time someone has put this information into a book. But that's not really the issue. It's sort of like a book on HTML: it is enormously valuable for someone (smart) to pull all of these ideas together and synthesize them into a single, focused place.

Made to Stick is similar: this is a book about the hidden reasons why some ideas connect and stay with people, and some just fall away. The writing is straightforward and concise, and the ideas are very clear and actionable.

Even if you're a veteran, I'd get these books. Sometimes, you may just need to hand a client or a prospect some other source that tells the WOM story. These are both great choices!

Separated at Birth: SL and Teva Logos

2006-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

We're having our annual spell of early-fall warm weather here in San Francisco, prompting the wearing of sandals....and it suddenly occurred to me: Second Life and Teva Sandals have almost precisely the same logo.

The NetFlix Prize: The Process is as Valuable as the Product

2006-10-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've written about the NetFlix prize in the past. This is a contest where NetFlix is offering $1mm to anyone who writes a better recommendation engine than they've currently got. I don't know if anyone is close to winning the prize, but something interesting is happening: by making the problem-solving process public, some amazing, unexpected things are starting to happen, and be widely known.

For example: it ends up that the movie most frequently rated on NetFlix is Miss Congeniality. That's right. This easily-forgotten bit of fluff has managed to compel more people to provide a rating than any other. For the sake of completeness, here are the top 5:

Miss Congeniality
Independence Day
The Patriot
The Day After Tomorrow
Pirates of the Caribbean

So, this odd little fact about the world probably would have just sat, somewhere, on someone's desk. But: this is part of an open competition. So, some clever person decided to investigate and he put up, not only his findings, but also his method on the forums.

The result? Best case scenario crowdsourcing, where we learn not just from the final product, but from the process itself, which kicks off all sorts of interesting findings on its way to the goal.

This (evidently) is what the creative process looks like

2006-10-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

The excellent blog Tasty Research has a bit up about the creative process, and the steps the mind goes through in the creation of new ideas.

Google's Precise Problem: Too Much Stuff

2006-10-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

Google's strategy of launching lots and lots of things and seeing what works is good, if you're a R&D lab. But the fact is they are a public company, that needs to operate in the commercial world. I think they started that with a message to engineers to work on fewer things.

But there's a rumor moving today that The Google is going to do a big re-org. I don't know if this means lay-offs, but it certainly could mean a consolidation of product lines. To quote someone giving a leak:

"We don't want people to have to learn about 20 different products that work in 20 different ways," Brin was quoted as having said.

Yup. Precisely. The Google Brand has always run the risk of dilution as they invent, explore and challenge. Getting back to the core is exactly what they need to do, right now.

Social Media: Ethics and Restraint

2006-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

The enemy of ethics is expediency.

We may know what the right thing to do is, but situations tend to appear that cause us to shuffle those things down in our priority list, simply because we see the end...and believe that the end is correct. This, of course, is what tends to get us into trouble. There's trouble brewing in the social-media/WOM marketing space, and, at the heart of the issue is not a misunderstanding of ethics, but rather a desire for expediency.

Word-of-mouth techniques and the use of blogs, message boards and other social media spaces requires more of markters than simple mastery of the channel. Many of us have become wizards of this world, understanding at a deep level not only the technology, but also the mechanics. We have learned how to construct a good blog post, how to get a high Technorati ranking, how to get our articles Digged, delicioused, and well-indexed.

That knowledge gives marketers an enormous advantage when it comes to competing in the Marketplace of Ideas. Here's my (modest) proposal: you should use that knowledge responsibly, especially when it comes to the task of managing criticism online.

This may actually cause some companies to exercise restraint, stopping what may feel like a good idea. The social media space belongs to everyone. It is the bazaar, and not the Cathedral. The Cathedral has always been able to use its strength (economic and otherwise) to come to the bazaar, buy up all the space, slash the prices of their products, or simply be more interesting and exciting than the individual. But they don't. Or, rather, they shouldn't.

I am not going to give you the six points that you need to follow to be an ethical WOMMer in this post. That's a task that is being well executed by WOMMA and their ethics committee (which I am a member of). But what I am going to say is simply this: think about the power that you have, and use it responsibly.

Google Co-Op: Collaborative Vertical Search

2006-10-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

So, just when I write that Google is going to slow down releasing products, they release a new product. Yeesh.

Google today released Google Co-Op, a Web-service where site operators can create their own vertical search engines, focused on the topics of specific interest. The index is Google's, but the interface is your own. And: when I say 'interface', I don't just mean the way that the page looks, but also the middlestuff between the search box and the index, specifically the list of sites that you (as site operator) have chosen to be included in the search.

This is a major step forward for vertical search. The problem of vertical search has been one of interface and of data-structure. This helps to alleviate that first problem. The second one is trickier, but that is solvable partly through APIs, partly through industry agreements.

BUT, the thing that is the most interesting is the name of this product: Co-Op. Yes, that's exactly it--this is a cooperative, collaborative attempt to solve the problem of vertical search. Perfect name for this thing, in that it gets to the heart of the matter: getting a zillion minds focused on the problem. Crowdsourcing, yet again.

Wait...I thought Auto Was Getting Out of Online?

2006-10-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, Yahoo's announcement that they were experiencing a slowdown in online ad revenue, especially from automotive took another hit this morning:

GM to Boost Digital Media Spending
General Motors will be shifting more of its media dollars to digital, especially on the local level, according to an analyst's report.

Whoops. Well, I wonder if the discussion will begin to drift toward, "Well, Yahoo...how come you're the only one not getting the dollars? Hmm?"

advertisr: flickr photos that could be ads

2006-10-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

My ClickZ column today is about integrated advertising. But I'm also working on a new one about photos on flickr (or any other photo sharing service) that could be ads. That is, they feature a brand or a product in a way that is compelling and communicates something meaningful. If you have any examples, I'd love to see them. Either post a link in comments, or send me an email.

Thanks!

Most Significant Google Story All Year: Slow Down

2006-10-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

Evidently, there's a move inside Google to slow down: stop releasing so much stuff, and go back to what you've got and make it better. That's a big deal: Google has always been about cranking tons of stuff out. In fact, I think they did that in lieu of having an actual business strategy. The idea being that something was bound to stick/come together.

Maybe they feel that they've got a big enough box of crayons and its time to start drawing something.

UPDATE: Fellow San Franciscan Chris Gaither of the LA Times points to his story, from a few weeks ago on the topic.

Are Media Companies Stuck?

2006-10-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

There's this astounding article on MediaPost (about an article on Marketwatch). It essentially asserts that media companies are in a position where they must simply deal with their copyrighted material on YouTube, not litigate and strike deals. Here's a clip:

"Media companies will be hard-pressed to find the nerve or the incentive to sue Google for its new subsidiary YouTube." Instead, they'll likely secure distribution deals with the search giant--just as three of the four major record companies have already managed to do.

I think this is an unpopular position, but I firmly believe that media owners have a right to vigorously protect their property. I certainly don't like the idea of companies (or their associations-as-proxies) intimidating teenagers and the like, but the fact is that media companies have every right to expect to make money from the works they own. Producing entertainment and selling it is a legitimate business.

Certainly digital technology has changed the balance of power, moving entertainment assets farther away from the distribution barriers that made it easier to make profits. But that doesn't mean that the concept of copyright should go away. It certainly should evolve (and thank Creative Commons for driving that), but open-content should be respected as an option for media owners.

But the argument now seems to be turning. Google (and their money-printing machine) are now at the helm of the most powerful video distribution system ever. The point of the article and the pundits seems to be "you need to just deal with it".

I suppose this may be a good thing. Maybe the media companies are finally backed into a corner so tight that they need to go with the forces. The people at CC often argue that one of the primary problems with current copyright laws is that they are a throttle on the development of culture. Perhaps the size of GooTube is going to finally drive the owners of the content to comply.

But they are going to do so reluctantly.

Forrester Agency Survey

2006-10-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

Peter Kim over at Forrester is running a new survey for his upcoming report on the next generation of advertising agencies. If you've got 3 minutes, give him some data!

Google (finally) Grooves with Landing Page Optimization

2006-10-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Google's announced a new landing page optimization tool. Good for them. The landing page remains the most frequently overlooking piece of the SEM puzzle. The fact is, making your landing page better at converting is good for both the advertiser as well as the search provider.

If you've got rising click costs, you need to find a way to make each click perform better. Optimizing the landing page is all about being efficient about what you do with each click that arrives. If you can increase your conversion rate, you'll value the click more. If you value the click more, you're more willing to pay more for it.

It just took Google a long time to realize this. Or rather, maybe they realized it but were happy to let people like Offermatica provide the service. Those guys are great. They certainly have been the long-term, early evangelists of the practice, and the ones that I would always look to. The question, naturally, is whether or not this will put them out of business. The answer is no. Not a bit. Just like when Google began to offer free analytics didn't sink Ominture, this move won't sink Offermatica.

That's because Google still makes the bulk of its cash from the tail: zillions of small companies, doing small transactions. They wouldn't buy Offermatica, but the would use a free tool. So, think of this move as a public-service announcement for Landing Page Optimization in general. We'll all learn more about it, and maybe be more willing to invest in a real service.

Edelman WalMart Blog Fiasco

2006-10-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well, what a mess. Edelman created a fake blog that was not identified as such for their client. Jaffe, among others says the appology leaves him feeling a little empty.

WOMMA's got a statement up, and generally forgives and understands that "mistakes will be made". This is clearly a big black eye for Edelman; they are among the elite agencies when it comes to CGM and citizen media and word-of-mouth.

Which, I think, is precisely why we should allow them a little lattitude on this one. They have a top-notch reputation. I don't really see piling on them at this point to do much good. The good guys got caught doing what they shouldn't have. But I have a hard time believing that they sat in a room and said "you know what? we should totally trick people".

Falling on their sword is the right thing to do. Of course, appologizing once you've been caught is (relatively) easy. If they found this out on their own and corrected it, it would be good. But now that they've been pulled out to the spotlight, they are certainly doing the right thing. Knowing a few of the people at Edelman certainly leads me to give them more than the benefit of the doubt.

I know that they are doing training internally and recommitting to the WOMMA guidelines. But they should also make absolute sure that the people at the top who really, really get what's going on are involved down at the execution level.

Fun with Referers

2006-10-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

It's that time, once again. A trip through the logs to see the odd phrases typed into search engines that lead people to this blog. Just two really good ones this time:

I wonder what the intent of the "loving text messages" searcher was?

Advertisers to get more control w/Sony's Game Platform

2006-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Big advertisers want to own the channels of distribution. Coke has Coke Music, P&G has Home made Simple, and Bud will launch Bud.tv. It's a part of a greater push, especially among CPG companies, to make sure that they are in direct contact with their consumers.

One more piece of this trend came today, in the form of Sony announcing their new network platform for the PS3. Among the features is the ability for advertisers to host tournaments on their own servers (as opposed to a central server).

That's amazing. That's like have a television commercial on your own station, as opposed to on NBC. This is the sort of savvy move that makes tons of sense, and provides a great platform for creative concepting by the advertiser and the agency. When you own the space, you can do whatever you want with it.

"Freemium": Services that Start Free, Charge for Services

2006-10-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

I worry about new online businesses that seem too heavily reliant upon advertising as their only source of revenue. Actually, what I worry about are services that launch with no ads whatsoever, but with the intention of inserting ads at some point in the future. I don't see any real value in pretending that you're not in a profit-making business when, in fact, you are.

A great alternative to all this, is the idea of giving away a basic version of your service, then trying to upsell a more valuable version. CNN has a story about this today, along with a clever new buzzword: "Freemium". They give some good tips on the business model. My personal favorite:

6. Harness the collective intelligence of your users. Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, says customer suggestions can help speed up product improvements or inspire ideas for premium services.

Holy CrowdSourcing. That's great: the idea of giving away the service can naturally create a community of people that are clearly involved with the concept and can help to establish the core group of consumer-advocates that can be critical to success.

Reuter's Second Life Bureau

2006-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Reuters has opened a new bureau in Second Life.

SL just continues to grow and expand, with marketers seeming to move into the space at an amazing rate. A news agency certainly seems to make sense, but I wonder what sorts of news we're going to get. I have a sense that they will report on real-world events that involve or impact SL (and other virtual worlds). For example, the primary question right now seems to be about taxation. That is, if someone earns a LindenDollar, and we know that the exchange rate is about 274L$:1USD, well....shoot the government get some cut of that?

I wonder if they are going to start reporting on events that occur wholly within SL? If a big fight breaks out, or two SL celebs start to date, will that be covered? There certainly seems to be a big opportunity for a GossipBlog.

Well, we'll see. I have a sense that a lot of this development right now is done is a way that is very self-aware. The companies moving into SL want everyone to know that they've moved into SL. Which is fine: for a while there it was news that a company launched a Web site. Now, it's just another-day-at-the-office.

Live Customer Service Stats: BicyleTrailers.com

2006-10-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is wicked cool. I just bought a new bike seat for my son at a site called Bicycletrailers.com. I noticed a little widget down at the bottom of their site: live stats on customer service.

These guys may get the Transparency Award of the month. Nice work

Consumer Reviews: The Magic Ingredient of E-Commerce?

2006-10-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

I just flew back from the Shop.org event in New York (and boy are my arms....)

I moderated a panel about amplifying word of mouth. Brett from BazaarVoice was on. They are doing some pretty interesting stuff over there. Essentially, there's is a hosted solution that allows you to put consumer reviews onto your site. They do some great stuff with it as well, like make those reviews crawlable and feed-ready, so the content being created for your site does double-duty for SEO efforts.

The thing that really struck me, though, was the number of data points that he provided where the simple inclusion of consumer reviews boosted pretty much every e-commerce metric worth considering: open-rates for email, click-throughs, purchases, purchase size, etc. I'm probably over-estimating, but it is clear that adding reviews in pretty simply improves the performance of your store.

I asked him why that could possibly be and he gave a great answer. I can't transcribe it, but it's clear: when you see a rating on a site, for a product, it is clear that someone else has already done the decision-making work for you. Reviews help to immediately winnow consideration sets down to a managable size. It's the e-commerce value proposition itself: make decisions quickly.

Chevy's next viral video?

2006-10-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this:

Chevy seems intent on getting people talking about its ads. This is a pretty big statement that Chevy's making, visually associating its product with fairly well-loved images and icons from the 20th century. Can they get away with it? Maybe--Chevy is a brand strongly associated with America.

But, especially in election season, this is bound to touch of some firestorms. It reminds me of the GAP campaign from several years back, noting that several key figures from pop culture "wore kahkis"

Whatever their intent, the comment storm has already begun. As of this blogging: 20K views, 15 comments.

The NEXT thing Google Buys has to be....

2006-10-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

FaceBook.

Oh shoot. Yahoo already got them. Well, there has to be another out there worth owning. The fact is, Google bought YouTube because GoogleVideo is simply not catching on. Google is seeking to be the point between you and the digital world. Video is very clearly a part of that, and their own efforts are a black eye on their sterling reputation. A purchase of YouTube make perfect sense to them: full-speed ahead and damn the cost.

So, what else is in their portfolio that is in the hot-space right now, but languishing? Orkut, their social networking site. They have ignored that thing for long enough. Google can't not have a social-netorking offering for too much longer. YouTube is a remedial purchase for them (as in, it remedies a situation). They are bound to be looking to patch the other holes they have in their dream ultimate online offering.

NetFlix (sorta) does Crowdsourcing

2006-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

The MIT Advertising Blog has a post about NetFlix offering $1mm to anyone who can come up with a better recommendation engine. They characterize the move as similar to Lego, in that they are reaching out to the wisdom of crowds to improve their system. It's not quite that, but it is interesting.

NetFlix is definitely taking a very innovative step. This is not like a contest where it runs for 6 weeks and the winner is decided. This is more like the X Prize. Because this is set up as a competitive event, it is assumed that individuals or team will work in isolation of one another. That's not exactly the notion of Crowdsourcing, where eveyone works completely collaboratively and transparently, like they did with Linux.

I'm certainly not going to be dogmatic about this. I think its a great idea. The interesting thing, of course, will be what happens if/when someone wins. What are the terms of that million smackers? Does NetFlix get the code, the rights and all? If so, $1mm is a bargain. The inventors would do better (assumedly) simply selling NetFlix a license. But, if they are registered for the contest, so that they can get to the data, do they give up that right?

The legalities of the crowd is always an interesting and sticky subject when we talk about anything along these lines. Clearly, there has to be some fairly airtight and mutually beneficial terms in place before any real work gets underway.

The Espresso Book Machine: Instant, On-Demand Publishing

2006-10-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

My undergrad Minor was in "editing and publishing", based on a desire to become an editor in the style of Malcolm Cowley. Clearly, that didn't quite work out.

But I have this very clear memory of one day in class where the instructor talked about the future of book publishing. He said there would be vending-machines--jukeboxes of a sort--that would have an enormous hard-drive filled with manuscripts. Put in your money and pick the title and the book would be printed and bound for you, right there. It would make an enormous amount of content available. I remember this, and it may have been the first time that I began to think about electronic media in any serious way.

Well, the vending machine has not quite gotten here, but there it is one giant leap closer, thanks to something called the Espresso Book Machine. I certainly don't know the book world well enough to pick whether or not this is the sort of thing that would work, but I certainly like the idea. It definitely opens up the possibilities for all kinds of new content to be created, and when there's new content methods, there certainly could be new advertising and marketing models.

Flickr Photo that Could be Ad

2006-09-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

1975 timex automatic
Originally uploaded by aleahey.

Still ticking.....

People's Photos on flickr that could really be ads

2006-09-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Red5 After Clean Off, February 12. 06
Originally uploaded by manahanwill.

I think I'm going to start collecting these.

The one car that is clean and pristene among this snowy nightmare? The MINI of course. Worth protecting.

Macbook enthralls

2006-09-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Macbook enthralls
Originally uploaded by mikefranklin.

Well, let's be fair, of course. Yesterday, I had a post of a photo on flickr with a MacBook in the trash. Today, I happen to find this photo. This should be a print ad. Or a billboard. Or something. The product is the hero, the consumers are clearly delighted. There's even a story behind it. If I ran the Apple acct, I'd be all over this!

The advice? Search flickr for images that use your brand name as a tag.

Schlock.

2006-09-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

Schlock.
Originally uploaded by *nathan.

Wow. I found this on flickr. Pretty compelling brand statement by a consumer.

YHOO Free Fall

2006-09-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

Yikes. Yahoo took a pretty big hit today, after warning that 3rd quarter revenues are going to be on the low end, thanks to a....slowdown in the demand for online advertising.

Seems like not that long ago that everyone was talking about the online ad shortage. Now we see warnings from one of the big 3 that there's a surplus? How did that happen?

Well, I haven't listened to the conference call or anything, so I can't talk specifically about Yahoo, but there are for sure some trends that have risen, as of late.

The first is that there is a tremendous blooming of inventory. YouTube's getting in the game, as are the blog networks and the game developers and my neighor's uncles' barber. Plus, the inventory is getting more interesting, with video stuff, sponsorship packages and better targeting. More stuff means shortage no more, premium pricing no more.

The other thing is that it seems that advertising can sometimes be a very lagging indicator of the economy as a whole. When this week's media plans were being put together, gas was north of $3.00 and the inflation specter was looming. That affects the decision to advertise, especially for anything extravagant. The online ad market has this built in nimbleness, and--if the marketing department felt that something should be cut, it wasn't going to be broadcast or outdoor. Online is easy to pull back on.

The third thing is, not to get too worried. Online advertising's bread and butter is still direct marketing. If you have to have a bad quarter, the third isn't such a bad one to choose, simply because you know the 4th will be great: the holiday buying season will bring all the regular ad buyers out, and Yahoo will see a bounce.

Why lonelygirl15 Matters/Doesn't Matter

2006-09-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

Lonelygirl15 is the screen name of young woman who posted up her diaries on YouTube. Ends up, lonelygirl15 was a big fake. There are three big points that come out of this whole thing.

Thing #1: Quality Matters
The lonelygirl videos were good. They had stylish editing, well-lit sets, good dialog and an attractive presenter. That last element should not be understated, and is not unique to lonelygirl. A good amount of discussion after Amanda Congdon left rocketboom concerned the attractiveness of Amanda.

The big thing about this point is that, the lonelygirl videos were simply posted on YouTube, with no more fanfare than anyone else's videos. And yet, they are the ones that popped. People like good stuff, CGM or not. That is a good thing.

Thing #2: lonelygirl hijacked the YouTube brand
What if the producers of the lonelygirl videos simply put them up on their own site? Or on iFilm or Heavy? The effect would not have been the same, because the YouTube brand stands for independent creation of personal videos. Something on YouTube (unless its marked as an ad, or totally clear that it is from a professional film) is assumed to be real, honest and personal. The lonelygirl producers put this fake diary up on YouTube and gained (greatly) from its success, including the mystery around whether or not it was real.

Of course, this came directly at the expense of YouTube. Personal videos viewed on YouTube are now somewhat tainted, because people were tricked. That means YouTube lost some amount of value. That is a bad thing.

Thing #3: Who really is real?
Not to get all French Deconstructionist here, but so what is Bree was fake? Is anyone we see on YouTube real? Not really. We don't have a direct investment in their reality, and often we simply consume their message and move on. So, Bree is just as much real as anyone else posting a diary. Online personality is a shifting, strange thing and we should not be surprised that any person we encounter is real, fake or somewhere in between.

That is an interesting, odd thing and one that we need to get comfortable with.

Sneaky Retailer tricks

2006-09-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

I was once working on a brand of men's shirts. To do some quick, cheap research, we went to the neighborhood Macy's and wandered around, following people as secretly as we could, while they shopped. The very interesting thing that happened was that we quickly realized that we were being followed, by a rather large dude who seemed to be speaking into a sunglasses case. The store detective! We decided to cut this research project off rather quickly.

Anyhow: I happened upon a list of the tactics that store designers use to increase the effectiveness of their space. I've often thought that web designers should learn from store designers. Not necessarily to copy their actual tactics, but the way they thing about the space is key. Store designers think in terms of revenue per square foot. That forces them to not only be efficient, but to carefully consider what to put in which space, to get the most value out of the area.

Viral Cartoon

2006-09-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Too funny.

Clique Through and Target Taxonomies

2006-09-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

My ClickZ article this week is on Clique Through. This is a topic that I've spoken about at SES and to WOMMA--the idea is to focus viral marketing tactics not on the world at large, but on small, very highly-defined groups of valuable consumers.

The new idea introduced in the ClickZ article is the notion of Target Taxonomies. This is an evolution of the segmentation process, and one that is better fit for the level of data that is available to us in the digital realm. The approach dictates that we don't simply identify groups of people and name them, pretending that these segments are wholly distinct.

Instead, Target Taxonomy is an approach where you begin at a very high level, define it, and then begin to create sub groups underneath each. The subgroups will share many of the same attributes as everyone else within that family, and there are characteristics that define the family as a whole. But, at the group level, there are marked differences.

The point of this is to both better define these cliques, as well as be prepared to take advantage of technologies that would enable you to fine tune messages. It's a way of placing some order in the world, which can then be managed within your marketing/media plan.

Whatdoyathink?

LonelyGirl15 is a Fake!

2006-09-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Wow...I have a hundred thoughts on this, but have to go to a meeting. I'll post more later, but the news is out LonelyGirl15 is the product of CAA.

All atwitter about Confidential Stuff on Google

2006-09-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

A bunch of bloggers are all fired up...seems like a search for "Confidential do not distribute" on Google turns up a bunch of documents that are confidential and are not supposed to be distributed.

I'm sure people are rushing there now, seeing if they can find the manuscript for Harry Potter 9, wiring diagram's for George Bush's debate-ready hidden-earpiece and more. What I found was a bunch of guidelines for submitting papers and presentations to hospital boards.

Oh yeah--and in the top result: a little ad (pictured above). I love it.

Search queries in 1997

2006-09-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

The very cool blog Tasty Research looked up an old report (as in, nearly a decade old) research on search queries. Great stuff. We always assume that people are getting increasingly sophisticated in their use of the Web. Not too much, really. The software is certainly getting better at delivering what people are looking for. And the number of searches for the Nintendo Wii has certainly shot up. But things haven't changed too much on the consumer side.

Subliminal Spam

2006-09-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

And....welcome to the bottom.

Buy yourself a search engine

2006-09-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

The meta search engine HuckABuck is up for sale on eBay. Interesting: the name "huck a buck" sounds like precisely what investors seem to want to do with Web 2.0 companies. They have a very nifty "tuner" interface, which allows you to adjust the levels of the various search sources.

Cool enough of an idea. But you certainly could make it more user-friendly by making the sliders apply to things that people actually care about: mainstream/blog; news/opinion, etc.

Great Advertising Movies

2006-09-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Marketing industry icon/blogging hero Rick Bruner runs (among other things)
an email discussion list about ad research. A thread appeared just a while ago, about movies that feature advertising. The list is just too interesting to let fade, so here it is captured; I'll keep adding as the titles get mentioned. (add your own in comments):

Putney Swope: a classic cult flick that is waaay too politically incorrect.
The Hucksters: Sidney Greenstreet classic
How to get Ahead in Advertising: another odd little underground classic
Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream Home: Cary Grant!

Starbucks WOMs itself into a corner

2006-08-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Whoops.

I got this graphic in an email this morning. Starbucks was offering a free grande iced coffee, all day long today!

Only...they weren't. It seems that Starbucks gave this out to employees and asked them to forward it to friends and family. Ends up, it's really, really easy to forward an email, so it spread way outside of its intended group.

Starbucks, naturally, isn't honoring the promotion anymore. I imagine some people will get bent out of shape on this, as well. But, one more warning: be careful of this series of tubes called the Internet!

Feedback on ClickZ Article

2006-08-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

My latest ClickZ article is up today: "Is Web 2.0 Advertiser Friendly?"

Pete B, who is more finely tuned to the needs of consumers than really anyone I know says:

Your headline should really read: Will Web 2.0 Continue Respecting Consumers?

No one is questioning the role of advertising. The big question now is how much we \"blur\" the line between the advertisers zone and the consumer zone.

Good point. I suppose if the respect goes, so goes the entire model.

MySpace Magazine?

2006-08-25T11:52:00.001-07:00

MySpace is thinking about launching a magazine, says MediaPost.

Right. That's a great idea. Because a magazine tied to Web sites is destined for long term success.

Zach at ClickZ on the Bubble-Issue

2006-08-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Zach Rodgers, father of twins and ClickZ editors writes in the blog today on the question of whether or not we're in a bubble:

I'd argue that to some extent it's also an end-user and advertiser problem, as people become reliant over time on services that are actually not viable businesses, and as marketers struggle to understand and develop relationships with myriad new sites, applications and online services that become more myriad by the day. It's a problem of wasted time and research for harried media buyers.

Yes! I totally agree with ZR. In fact, I was trying to capture this idea yesterday, but Zach has really nailed it. If we look at these Web 2.0 companies, we see a huge, attentive audience. Naturally advertisers crave this, and it should be a seller's market for the publishers.

But, if these companies are built without a business model, as Zach puts forward, is this a market built on a shaky foundation? Meaning that, once the sites start to sell ads, will they loose their audience asset? It's like having a pair of shoes that are absolutely perfect and beautiful, but are too delicate to actually be worn outside. (yes...a male human just made a shoe analogy).

We'll see. We're hitting an interesting inflection point where the VCs are going to start looking for the revenue stream. If opening up that stream of cash also opens up an audience leak, we're in for some trouble.

YouTube Channels Advertisers

2006-08-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

Marketing Rule #14523.322: When in Doubt, throw Paris Hilton at the problem.

I always felt that YouTube had made a critical error in launching without advertising. The system got to be hugely popular, and part of its reputation was that it was ad free. You could look at their growth and know that, at some point in their future, they would have to introduce ads.

And that would be a bad day. They would immediately be vulnerable to another service, which watched YouTube closely and maybe made a few tech improvements--but didn't have ads. Better to just launch with ads. There are enough non-intrusive formats that can put up relevant ads without compromising the experience at all. Even if there wasn't any revenue, it would be fine, because at least you are communicating to your users that advertising was a part of the model, and that it was OK. That advertising was not something to be avoided.

Then, if at some future point, you uncover some alchemical method of generating revenue from content without advertising, you're in great shape. You can have a big announcement that you're turning the ads off, as opposed to on. Or, at least you're changing the method in some way that is better or more interesting that the standard approach.

YouTube is starting to seriously bring advertising in, allowing brands to create their own channels. They are going to allow these advertisers the ability to brand their channels, as well. This is certainly more iteresting that putting up banners or pre-rolls. The first of these channels is for Paris Hilton.

The comments on the video tell the story. here's a sample from the first couple of posts:

Christ, let's hope youtube doesn't turn into the new mtv and just plaster nonsense sponsored content everywhere..
Yeah, I like YouTube how it is, with its own celebrities and the random shit people post...I don't want it to be like MTV.
This is what has pissed me off about youtube. now that it has become "famous", celebrities are all wanting to get on it to post their videos, which are edited so much that its not that great of a video. Most of them never go on these sites before they even become popular or even now to check out other people's videos.

YouTube has turned a corner, I suppose. The resulting product is certainly not bad. But the idea of setting up a company and pretending to shun ads is just not a good approach. It puts a landmine out in the future for you to eventually step on.