April 27, 2004

  • Gag URL Marketing?

    I’m seeing more offline to online campaigns that seem to be built around gag sites.

    There are currently Mott’s ads running on TV in Canada that show inept Bloody Caesar drinkers getting poked in the eye by celery stalks. The last few seconds of the ad include a discrete URL in the bottom corner sending you to www.celeristis.com.

    The site (a fictional research group looking into this affliction) points to Abrams & Ross who seem to be working on a class action suit for sufferers, and both gag sites point to an article on the topic at the CELERY (a not-so-subtle parody of the ONION).

    I’m not so sure that this strategy will work. My guess is that putting legitimate URLs on screen will get more useful traffic than this and there really isn’t much to make the campaign “go viral”.

    The site really seems to be about getting names for a list. I signed up and here’s what I got about 10 minutes later:

April 26, 2004

  • Thought

    Interesting article on ClickZ stating that Tacoda is forming a behavioral ad network:

    “The new network will compete most closely with contextual ad programs run by Google and Overture, jockeying for position on publishers’ pages and in advertisers’ wallets. Tacoda plans to use pay-per-click pricing and a self-serve auction marketplace — conventions popularized by the search players. The biggest difference will be that while the search companies target ads based on what their technology determines to be the content of the page, Tacoda’s network will target its ads based upon member publishers’ knowledge of the site visitor. That knowledge will come from registration data and from information about the person’s behavior across the network: what type of content the person visits, what he searches for, etc.”

    Personally, I’ve always been much more aligned with the idea of context over behavioral alignment. I may be a suburban father of two who loves music, but that doesn’t mean I want to see ads for tickets to Hairspray while I’m searching for a wi-fi router. An ad for a wi-fi router, on the other hand, would be appropriate and effective at that time. My guess is context will beat behavior (particularly reported behavior rather than actual behavior).

April 20, 2004

  • Return Of “The Company That Should Be A Feature”

    Great post by John Battelle about one of my current favourite web apps, Furl.

    I love the concept of “nano-businesses” like Furl. That my phrase for incredibly small companies (one or two people plus free agents added to the mix when needed) that meet a VERY particular need, and do so with little or no capital involved.

    These companies can either be continuing sources of decent income for their creators, or (as appears to be the case with Furl), a way to give birth to a feature that is missing from some larger application.

    Assume you find that a big, valuable product is missing some key functionality that you’ve dreamed up. If you can keep development costs incredibly low and launch it almost as a proof of concept online, it becomes very simple for BigCo product owner to do the math and decide to buy the technology off you for a modest (to them) but also huge (to you) amount.

    This makes sense in a way that wacky dotcoms during the bubble didn’t. Back then the same concept was tried, but invariably there was venture money behind the “company that should be a feature”. That fact alone seems to swell payroll and call for huge marketing budgets which end up making the feature too rich to be bought and everyone loses.

    Now you can use open standards and the blog/feed/technorati/google ecosystem to build and promote these things cheap, cheap, cheap. Expect more of these all the time.

    (Other examples? I say Technorati, Feedster, Blogrolling, del.icio.us, and any other company trying to make money off feeds. Oh and LinkedIn, Friendster, and all YASNS.)

April 19, 2004

April 18, 2004

  • The Third Screen?

    Third Screen: n. A video screen, particularly the screen on a cell phone, that a person uses almost as often as their television and computer screens.

    I hadn’t heard this meme until I read an eweek article earlier today, but I consider it a powerful one. Just like people tend to have a “third place” (work, home, away from home), it makes sense that we’ll have a third screen.

    I find it unlikely that my TV and Computer screen will converge into one screen any time soon. The experience (sitting back, passive, shared vs. leaning in, active, and solo) means that they really aren’t served well by unifying. And while I use a laptop all the time, I don’t want to use one to access quick information on the move. My guess is that the “Third Screen” will be a natural convergence of phone, PDA, and wireless messaging because that is what I need on the road.

    So Third Screen it is.

April 17, 2004

  • Thought

    Cheryl Williams, who is in my E-marketing Certificate course this semester started a blog (feed and all) within 12 hours of the lecture I gave on how weblogs and RSS are fundamentally changing the way businesses and individuals communicate with each other.

    I can now relax this weekend knowing that I’ve accomplished at least that one thing.

  • LinkedIn Etiquette

    Lately I’ve been getting more requests through LinkedIn and I started thinking about how a whole new etiquette is needed to deal with the issues that arise.

    Here are some thoughts around sending requests through others via LinkedIn.

    1. Don’t try to send a request more than two degrees away. Because all the people linking you and the recipient have to pass the message forward, you are counting on links that are too weak to really sustain a request. Better to find another route to the person than have the request die on the vine within LinkedIn.

    2. Always consider what value there is for the recipient to respond. Lots of request are of the “buy something from me” or “help me get a job” form. These won’t work. To establish a relationship with a new contact you need to offer them something that clearly has benefit for them not you. Start to extend your network by offering free tips, free services, suggesting stuff, or just sending them a compliment on some press/product/site, etc. Think of it as making a new friend not a sales pitch. And since LinkedIn gives members the ability to broadly suggest what they want to hear about you should never send messages outside of what they have asked to receive.

    3. Don’t ask the recipient to link to you, that’s for friends and this person by definition is not a friend. Ask them to allow you to contact them directly. Too many people try to build their link count instead of really connecting with people. One exception of course is when you are reconnecting with someone you already know but you don’t have a current e-mail address for them.

    4. Find the right person to connect with. Don’t assume that everyone at company X is involved in their core product. See that you have the right person to connect to first so you don’t waste your connector’s and the recipient’s time because you didn’t do your homework.

    5. You can now find the best path to your recipient if there are multiple connectors, so choose wisely. Choose the shortest path but also the one that appears to have the closest bond and the one you have not already overtaxed with past requests.

    6. Don’t overwhelm any of your connectors. Don’t send more than one request through a particular connector in a week. If you are doing more than that you should be sending them a gift of some sort for the work they are doing on your behalf.

    7. Thank the connector and let them know what happened after they forwarded on a request. Then they’ll be more likely to forward your next request.

April 15, 2004

  • A9 — First Impressions

    You may already know this, but Amazon.com just launched A9, the beta version of their much-anticipated entry into online search.

    I find A9 fascinating and I recommend that you use it as your default search tool for at least a while to understand what this might mean. In particular I’d suggest downloading the toolbar version which adds some really unique features you need to experience.

    Looking past the god-awful colour of the site (which isn’t that easy), the application does some truly brilliant things and starts to answer the questions we’ve been asking about how and when personalization and collaboration will be integrated into search.

    If you do an A9 search for say “Internet Marketing in Canada” you get a page that looks a bit like Google (it seems to be using Google’s page results at this time) but with some interesting enhancements. For example, there is a “Site Info” button that allows you to access Alexa information with meta data about the sites listed. One data point provided — similar to Amazon’s book recommendations — states that “people who visited this site also visited…”. And because this is Amazon, there is a separate pane available for book search. And since book search integrates their “search inside the book” technology, it means that A9 allows you to search online AND offline knowledge.

    The most interesting feature of the site is its use of personalization. Once you log-in to A9 using your Amazon log-on the site will begin to remember past searches for you and display them on the home page. The toolbar also keeps visited page history and I’m sure that some back-end manipulation of results based on this information is (or will be) happening.

    A peek into the potential power of personalization is given in A9’s ability to add to search results the last time YOU last visited a site listed in the results. I just did the above search for the second time and found “clicked 21 hours ago” added beside a link that I had indeed clicked 21 hours ago.

    While the site is still in beta and clearly needs some design and UI work, I have to say I’m pretty impressed.

    I’d be interested in your impressions on this and some analysis around the implications for Google and Yahoo! of Amazon entering the market.

    One big problem I see is that A9 doesn’t lend it self to wordplay like Google does. Will we say “Just A9 me” once we start “A9ing” things?

April 12, 2004

  • Thought

    Seth Godin says that “people don’t know how to search”. How true.

    Seth brilliantly points out that there are probably a few thousand “bad searches” that are incredibly common and a smart search firm (hello Google) should create custom results for those results to help users get to what they want (and maybe teach them a bit about how to search if they’d like to learn).

    Seth’s examples are searches for “shoes” or “web”, but in tracking referrers to Alyson’s site, I’ve found that people also think of search engines as being human.

    For example, someone landed on this page because they searched on “can you catch a cold from being out in the cold without a coat…..at recess in the spring for instince?” And yes, the search did have the four periods, typo, and question mark.

    It gives me great joy that the child who did that search (I’m hoping it was a child) took Alyson’s advice and presented it to the teacher or parent that inspired the search.

    Another kind of search (the most common traffic driver to Alyson’s site in fact), is people typing www.alyson.ca into Google. Go figure. Some people really do think Google is the Internet.

April 1, 2004

  • Thought

    The Globe and Mail’s site has an April Fool’s review of Microsoft’s must-have computer game Solitaire.

  • Thought

    So as of now (morning April 1, 2004) there is no Emzytec when you search Google.

    I only bring this up because that fact was pointed out in this morning’s Fisher comic strip. (Fisher is trying to come up with a new brand for a biotech firm called Higgins Biotech).

    Let’s see how long that empty Google page lasts!

March 30, 2004

  • Death Of Offline Ads By 2010?

    Thanks to AIMS’ intrepid moderator June Macdonald for pointing me to Steve Ballmer’s prediction that 100% of advertising will have an interactive component.

    While Ballmer’s projections might be hyperbole, I think that they may wake up a few offline marketers who are falsely comfortable in the knowledge that the Net has yet to topple them despite dire warnings in the past. I don’t agree with Ballmer that ALL ads will have an online component, but I would say that MOST will.

    Here’s why:

    1. ROI Marketing is about to hit a tipping point: There is a strong move towards accountability of all major business expenses. Marketing won’t be spared from the drive to measurability and accountability. CxO’s are asking tough questions like “What do I get for my ad dollar?” and “Did this campaign make or cost us money?” These are questions that traditional “awareness” marketing can’t answer except anecdotally. Marketers will be forced to adopt direct response models in order to justify their budgets and their jobs. Once enough people move this way, everyone will suddenly make the switch because their careers will be on the line if they don’t learn to go with the ROI flow.

    2. The Net is a perfect response tool: As companies look for ways to measure marketing ROI, more and more cross channel marketing will be directed towards the Net (and inbound call centers which I also expect to do well). Search Engine Marketing is catching fire because marketers who “get direct” see that they can now build testable, trackable campaigns online and that means budgets will be diverted from less measurable channels. And as we get smarter about what works and what online marketing is worth, watch for other DM channels to have to fight for attention and ad dollars. Response marketers look for the most cost effective channel, and if it’s the Net, say goodbye outbound telemarketing and direct mail.

    3. The Next Generation is a Net Generation: We’ve already seen reports that young males are “missing” from the TV audience figures. Look for today’s young adults — raised in a web-based, multi-tasking world to become the core consumers of the next decade, meaning that the Net will be a natural place to find consumers in their peak buying years.

    4. All bits move to the Net: In six to ten years I’m sure that the majority of voice, TV, radio, music, and movies will be entering our homes over a Net connection. So for example, while we may not think of telemarketing as Net Marketing, the calls will undoubtedly be Voice Over IP by then.

March 22, 2004

  • Thought

    Fredrick Marckini’s “Ass-Backwards SEM” article at ClickZ makes some good points. Without an effective site focussed on meeting user goals (or more crassly “converting them”), optimizing search engine ads is tweaking when major work is still to be done.

    Here’s a quote from the end of the article:

    “Pursue a strategy for conversion enhancement first. Then you can double — or triple — your PPC search advertising campaign with great effectiveness. Anything else is inefficient and sloppy.”

  • Thought

    It’s interesting that as soon as I started using Furl I dropped the volume of posts here rapidly. I think this is partly because I often used my blog as a way to keep track of ideas, links, and notes for myself, and incidentally published them for the world. Furl let’s me do the first three without the worry of posting something coherent to others.

    I’ve also noticed that my blogging goes in cycles, partly influenced by how much work I have on my plate, partly by how inspired I am, and probably partly inspired by what is going on in the world. Generally when there is TOO MUCH new stuff and I’m REALLY excited, I tend to blog LESS, undoubtedly because I’m “saving it up” for a great post (that never comes).

February 19, 2004

  • Thought

    Spot-on analysis from John Battelle on the reasonableness of Google using search created context to serve up image-based ads as well as text ads across AdSense sites:

    “In other words, it won’t be long before Google combines the contextual relevance of AdSense text links with more brand-driven, rich media ad units. And that means they start becoming a major ad serving service in the vein of Doubleclick and its kin.”

February 17, 2004

  • Thought

    Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox is “Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength”:

    “E-newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely are often preferred over other media. However, a new study found that only 11% of newsletters were read thoroughly, so layout and content scannability is paramount. “

  • Thought

    Wired News: Webmonkey, RIP: 1996–2004:

    “They finally pulled the plug. Webmonkey, the site that turned humble Web developers into attention-grabbing authors, said last week it is closing down following a round of layoffs in the U.S. division of its parent company, Terra Lycos (also the parent company of Wired News). Judging by blog posts and e-mails, the site’s fans aren’t surprised. Still, they’re sad to see the end of an era.”

February 13, 2004

February 11, 2004

  • Thought

    I’m very happy to see that Puretracks has chalked up one million downloads:

    “The move comes as Puretracks — with a catalogue of more than 250,000 tracks — announced that it has crossed the one-million download threshold after roughly four months of operation. By comparison, Apple Computer Corp.’s iTunes service crossed the four-month mark with 10 million downloads, although that service’s U.S. customer base is also roughly 10 times the size of the comparable market in Canada.”

    I would also note that Puretracks has Canada’s higher broadband penetration in its favor and greater proclivity to use file-sharing networks against it. So on the whole, Puretracks is doing at least as well as iTunes all things being equal. And given that they had a previously unknown brand while Apple had 20 years of headstart as a brand, I’d say they are doing pretty darn well.

  • Thought

    George Colony, Chairman and CEO of Forrester has done a spot on analysis of why Google has fundamentally changed the Internet, but won’t be the stellar IPO that everyone seems to think it will be.

    Read Colony’s My View: Googlescape to find some solid analysis.

January 29, 2004

  • Thought

    I guess this is a sign of the times. Here’s a capture of a message on the Globe And Mail site today, no doubt caused by MyDoom overload.

  • Furl — My New “Filing Web Page Filing Cabinet”

    I’ve never been great a bookmarking stuff, mainly preferring just to redo the search. But lately I’ve been working on multiple projects all of which require lots of online research and collecting and synthesizing this information over time. After looking at a bunch of different bookmarking, archiving, and web page clipping options, I think I’ve found what I’m looking for in a service called Furl.

    The service is free right now and it allows you to store, annotate, rate and sort pages that you’ve collected to Furl. Collecting links is simple because they have bookmarklets and a toolbar to facilitate this without leaving the page your capturing. And because it is online you don’t have to worry about losing them.

    One suggestion for Furl: Let users add topics (categories) for filing directly in the pop-up for saving pages. Quite a few times I’ve gone to save a page and realized that I had not yet set up a proper topic to add the link under.

    Suggestion for all free sites (Furl included): Make sure you tell people how you plan to make money. It is really disconcerting to find a product you like online without knowing if the company will be around for long, or if the service will start costing you at some point. People will pay for well thought out services like Furl, but you have to give us a chance to figure out what you are up to.

  • Thought

    Complying With CAN-SPAM: A 10-Point Checklist for Marketers

    Jeanne Jennings provides a great overview of what compliance with CAN-SPAM entails. I would recommend anyone who uses e-mail as a marketing tool read this and comply. That goes for non-US e-mailers as well since you will no doubt have a few US subscribers that you may not even be aware of.

January 20, 2004

  • Thought

    EDGAR Index is probably the most well thought through RSS-based company I’ve seen so far (other than the fee-based aggregators).

    The site provides subscriptions to RSS Notification of SEC Filings via customized RSS Feeds. The site does a really nice job of explaining how this works and why it is the best way to do this.

    I’m looking forward to some analysis within the community of how the custom RSS feeds work and whether there are any security issues.

January 13, 2004

  • Thought

    InformationWeek’s Fred Langa has determined that E-Mail is Hideously Unreliable. While I could quibble with some of the methodology here (okay a lot of it) I think his point is well taken. You can’t assume that the mail is going through like you could a year ago. We may be on our way back to that early-days of the Net strategy of phoning people to say “did you get my e-mail?” Ugh.

January 6, 2004

  • Thought

    Brian Klais has a great article on MarketingProfs called Google Optimization: E-Commerce @ $0 Cost (Part 1). The article is detailed and, after some good meta-discussion of the importance of search to e-commerce sites, he gets down to a solid overview of how to think about getting products found via Google.

    I particularly liked this analysis of the importance of search to online product sales:

    “This is a critical point. If consumers find e-commerce appealing because it helps them find and buy products easily and in less time, then your Web site is no longer the shortest distance between points A and B: Google is.

    This means that the notion of an e-commerce site itself becomes entirely fragmented, as every page becomes a potential entry point and selling opportunity. In other words, an e-commerce site is no longer a collection of 10,000 product pages that users can linearly navigate. Rather, it becomes 10,000 “micro-sites,” each of which must be programmed to reach and sell its respective keyword market. The selling strategy has gone granular.

    But this market teems with micro-competitors and commoditization. Compounding this new complexity is that the catalog and other marketing venues still play a role in stimulating desire and driving site traffic. Having no visibility at the stage when customers “Google” to compare prices or features raises a merchant’s susceptibility to vast amounts of leakage to competitors. “

  • Thought

    Nate Elliott has a great article on Google’s problems with AdSense. The ClickZ article is called Google’s House of Cards and here’s a quote:

    “The true reason Google refuses to budge is the program is built on a shaky foundation. To secure the large distribution network AdSense needs, Google must pay publishers good prices. But if advertisers make separate bids for contextual ads, most would bid significantly less than they do for paid listings. Publishers would see revenue fall dramatically. This, in turn, would lead many sites to either remove the AdSense tags from their pages or demand a better revenue share.

    AdSense is a house of cards, built on a foundation that forces advertisers to overpay for contextual ads. If Google allowed separate bids, it would risk losing revenue on multiple fronts: from the lower bids, the loss of distribution, and the loss of revenue share. The company bet it could keep prices high and revenue shares low as it built this program. But with smart advertisers turning off their AdSense ads, it’s time for Google to give advertisers what they want.”

December 19, 2003

  • Separating Store From Products

    Signal vs. Noise Weblog asks whether Separating Store From Products is the best strategy.

    My guess (and this is a brand new thought) is that for some sites there are three modes for using the site — browse, search, and shop. This implies that you should be able to access the same information in all three modes. It might be that a “Store” is a way of looking at the information on the site rather than a separate place. I would argue that product pages without a “buy” button are impotent and should be avoided as they leave the potential customer without a way of reaching an obvious goal.

    In this model, “store” might not be a product catalog per se, but rather a view of product lists enhanced by retail merchandizing, suggestive selling, etc.

    Like I said, this is a brand new idea, but I’m warming to it already.