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.
But beyond businesses buying Facebook ads, there is the question of whether or not to participate in social activity on Facebook: Where is the measurable ROI? A company can sink time and money and time and money and eventually maybe something happens, but no one is ever really sure. Gee, sounds familiar doesn’t it? We’re back to the good old days of Public Relations!
But in this modern age of being able to “measure everything” it is time for Facebook to cough up some basic information that would allow businesses to make educated judgments as to whether to spend time and money with the Facebook product. Here is my wish list:
These are simple questions for that Facebook can easily provide data. Not detailed personal data, but meta data – in the same way that print publishing historically provided circulation data.
This is not too much to ask.
Face it Sirius you made a bad tech bet. You spent gazillions launching satellites right at the moment when the Internet took over. Then stuffed your programming with dull and boring “celebrities”. Howard for starters…but Martha Stewart’s daughter was, frankly, desperate.
I was an avid Sirius subscriber for a few short years 2003…06ish. I bought a new car and had it fitted with one of the first Sirius Satellite radios. I loved the sound. The endless music. And the genre choices. Then I put a radio in my kitchen. We enjoyed it thoroughly. BUT the cost for the value delivered was prohibitive. We moved back to Internet streaming. I take my Iphone, fit it with a streaming radio app, sit it in the speaker cradle and its free. Free. The same quality sound and my old favorite quality broadcast stations.
Satellite radio is dead. A grand scheme, a huge money sink and a continuing folly — why save it? It is a victim of tech evolution.
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!
1. Productivity (which they say is by far the most important) 2. Compliance, regulatory issues and concern over inappropriate messaging 3. Bandwidth usage (a distant third)
The question of productivity is nothing new. Telephones and “personal” calls or worse “personal long distance” calls caused the same productivity and cost concerns for companies in the mid 20th Century. Businesses had no ability to restrict access so, in the absence of tech tools, they exerted professional discipline on their employees. It was expected that people would stay focused and stay off the phone on personal business. And, in some firms phone bills were spot checked after the fact. Unfamiliar long distance calls were questioned.
Compliance issues do hold a special concern, posting inappropriate content or corporate secrets to blogs, Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook is an issue. But the sharing of confidential information is nothing new. Inappropriate memos and insider trading have been with us forever and there are laws and consequences for such behavior.
So if bandwidth is not an issue, why are CIOs playing Kindergarten Cop? Given other hugely important issues such as Security, shouldn’t CIOs be focusing more time on that and leave the issues of professionalism up to HR and management?
I was awe struck at how ineffective the CIOs were at restricting access to the Internet – people are simply using their mobile digital devices for Internet access – untraceable, available, personal. If ever there was a reason for HR to step in and set parameters for personal professional behavior, mobile access is it. Attempting to control employee Internet access is a total waste of precious CIO productivity.
