Who’s in it with me? I’ve worked with tens of dozens of companies in my career but there are only a few with leadership willing to take that risk. And for those that have I have made them hugely successful. It’s not a brag. OK well maybe a little. But it’s true. It takes a special kind of business owner, manager, executive to passionately embrace the terrifyingly new. And it takes a special kind of agency, that would be me, who has the jaundiced eye, depth of experience and enthusiasm to steer that company in the right direction. When it works, we make so much more than money, we take businesses to completely new places.

Who’s next? You? Call me. 973-539-6000

Print publications had this problem in the early days and so the BPA provided circulation audits. Yes media kits still whipped up the marketing spin, but as a planner you could lay those green sheets and yellow sheets side by side and make some objective baseline judgements.

This is not too much to ask from media companies today.

After BPA came broadcast and Nielson, boxes on sets reported back to the home office. Beyond that Nielson ratings were a bit shaky but overall, they provided a level playing field.

With perhaps the exception of Life Magazine, (and that is a stretch) no print publication ever came close to the monopolistic power of Google and now Facebook. Even Hearst, with all his power was puny by today’s standards.

And Broadcast bloomed and diluted into 200 channels in three short decades. But that was after the FCC came in and regulated local markets carefully limiting cross media ownership of local licenses.

Monopolies are bad for business.

Today we have ventured into far more dangerous waters. Marketers have become cheerleaders for the media monopolies that are frankly, stealing money from our clients — and frankly from all of us too.

Marketers have always tended to self-delusion and selling self delusion to clients. Those  of us truth tellers in this business are truly misfits. But when you work with a mid-sized B-to-B operation. When you are sitting across the table from the guy who is pulling those dollars out of his own wallet, if you want to earn his trust you’d better speak the truth. You and your client are on the frontlines. If you and your clients play in this very large slice of the market, you’ve taken your knocks. You can smell BS from 20 paces.

And here is what we smell:

Social Media is NOT effective in many cases, Facebook has not provided any answers on true activity. Who will benefit? Why we should buy? They have provided so many reasons NOT to trust them, their “auction” pricing is the least of it!

Search is no longer right for many companies — increasing cost is a huge factor. Google could help by making its auction far more transparent. When you buy shares on the NYSE you know the volume, the last tick — that’s the least Google could do. Who is bidding, how much and when? Why should I trust Google?

SEO has always been smoke and mirrors populated by hyperventilating “experts” who jump tag any twitch of the needle as a Google conspiracy. And yet, marketers are fixated by it! I was at a pre-Bing meeting at Microsoft. The guys there were promising a different sort of search engine, far more open. I said, “Really? How long will that really last?” Not long. It ended when we left the room.

When media companies are making what Google, Facebook et al. are they will never succumb to a tepid third-party audit scheme. Say what you want about Hitwise and Alexa they are not delivering what only the horse’s mouth can.

The only way to get what we need is with swift and sharp government regulation — don’t hold your breadth.

In the meantime what do the truth tellers do? They find their client’s True North. Judiciously, with care, testing, analyzing, tweaking programs and never, ever, following the marketing lemmings.

The result, as we all experience every day, is truly lousy software. Would you buy a car that crashed every time it hit a pebble? Why do we continue to buy Microsoft products? Why do we continue to run like star struck lemmings to Apple? Why do we continue to query Google when it can’t give us the answer to our query? Why do we share our lives on Facebook when they relentlessly leverage our dignity for their gain?

Why is it OK for companies to give us somewhat functional products that deliver a modicum of efficiency? Why do we give them a pass? Our monopoly laws only bruise these behemoths, none truly stop them in their path.

In the meantime, we all lose and we lose big. Competition is stifled so we pay too much for too little. Innovation is snuffed out and great new ideas never see the light of day.

I am really disgusted with Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft – but that does not compare to my disgust with our hapless, toothless government. All talk, no action while the marketplace delivers garbage and our lives, community and the world are gutted.

It is time to chose and to chose critically. Ask yourself: do I really need this software? Is free really free? What is Facebook really good for? Should I really be paying to advertise here? Will I really get the results I need for my business? Is what I am doing, right now, for me, my company, my community, honorable?

Question. Question to discover what will make our world truly more productive.

Why not just make it against the law to collect data! Why not give us all back what we deserve: our dignity. Our right to make decisions based on our deeply personal knowledge of ourselves?

And since media is essentially worthless, because it has been so diluted by way too many media options, why not simply sell it for what it is worth: PENNIES per billion. And then why not create ads that allow people to self select the offer if it is right for them. Wow; what a concept! Paying what media is actually worth and reinstating the dignity of the buyer. Imagine how important each click would be? Buyers would click only on the ads that meant something to them. Advertisers would buy volumes of ads cheaply and attract buyers who really wanted what they were selling.

Says Ngyen: “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but the best way to get things implemented within a large company is through education. Things get done faster when everyone is on board. So that requires constant educating and training. The more people that understand SEO the better. You want advocates for SEO in every area of the business – from engineering to upper management.” See the Team Preparation Process Zebworks Master Class for how to accomplish this in your company.

Says Ngyen: “With a business like Shopzilla, I’m always challenged with the sheer size of our sites. We have millions of products and various different business lines. So keeping everything indexed and ranking is a constant battle. I spend a lot of time thinking about optimal site architecture and site performance. For large sites, even small changes in indexing can equate to significant revenue shifts.” If you’re small you need to do this too, and we’ve covered it in the Site Architecture Best Practices Zebworks Master Class.

Big company mojo can be yours – make that must be yours if you are to succeed on the Internet, because it’s not getting any easier and only the savvy will succeed!

Why not just make it against the law to collect data! Why not give us consumers all back what we deserve: our dignity. Our right to make decisions based on our deeply personal knowledge of ourselves?

And since media is essentially worthless, because it has been so diluted by way too many media options, why not simply sell it for what it is worth: PENNIES per billion. And then why not create ads that allow people to self select the offer if it is right for them. Wow; what a concept! Paying what media is actually worth and reinstating the dignity of the buyer. Imagine how important each click would be? Buyers would click only on the ads that meant something to them. Advertisers would buy volumes of ads cheaply and attract buyers who really wanted what they were selling. I have a name for  it: Masscasting to the Dignified Market.

Never has this been most apparent as on Google Adwords itself. You can’t trust the CPC they project, because it is based on historic data which is impacted by who is bidding and the events in the moment. When testing, a past test is an imperfect test of what will happen in the future because you don’t know who WILL be bidding and how much they will be bidding the moment you actually roll out your campaign.

Now comes Google’s ACE (Adwords Campaign Experiment) that will allow for realtime testing. Allow me a sarcastic moment: in the demo by Google they show how a side by side comparison for a hypothetical company results in spending more per click. Puhlease. Like always Google = Vegas the house always wins. And again, you may be able to AB test in the moment, but future activity will be skewed by future events. It is still imperfect, but it is better.

The opportunity to do direct comparison testing simultaneously is at last a recognition of how lousy/primitive Google analytics truly is. I used to say that it comes in at the right price: FREE but truth be told it’s expensive competitors like Omniture over promise and woefully under deliver. SO free is the right price, but use it with eyes wide open. And that goes for testing ACE now in beta.

Its major failing has been search. Bing’s search simply has not been as granular as Google’s.  Today’s new announcement will help: Bing will start including status updates from Facebook. Even though most FB updates are drivel, many retailers are now actively using FB for promotions so this will help shoppers for one, but it will also fill out the Bing search experience with more rich media content among other things.

It is high time that Google had a tough competitor and if Bing stays on top of the improvements small advertisers may see some relief. Click inflation, the relenting up tick in Google CPCs is absolutely killing small businesses and businesses selling products at lower price points. If Bing becomes a contender in search we will see Google blink and start to offer more promotions to small advertisers. I believe that Google loyalty is eroding and I predict the tipping point for Google is well inside five years. FB has already surpassed it. And Google’s chronic lack of positive user experience (it should not take 200,000 answers for one stupid question) has trained users to go elsewhere: Wikipedia, Amazon…and Bing.

Diapers.com is a “pre-revenue” start-up with $50+ million in VC money. Diapers deliver no margins. They make their margins on other baby stuff. The two founders own about 8% each of their company. Who knew it took that much money to build a diaper dispensary?  If I were a venture capitalist putting up that much dough I’d want a lion’s share too, but this is a bet that’s riskier than just about anything I’ve ever heard of before.

Online retail is in for a crash landing. If you don’t manufacture something original, you will have  no margins in a heart beat. Thanks to the power of search marketing, online retail has been experiencing a race to the bottom for a long time.

And THESE guys are blowing 8% a year on advertising an online retail business that sells a commodity who’s only differentiator is great service? That’s just NUTS! The only reason they still exist is because of the crazy venture capitalists!