What's become of me?

Jeeze. My last blog was titled "Maximize Ad ROI".

What the hell??? When did I lose my sense of humor??

It wasn't even:




"Clippy says: Maximize Ad ROI."
























It's just a matter of energy. I haven't been putting energy into humor. I did help Digg.com ship Microsoft ads, but it wasn't that which sucked my humor away.

I will fix this and hopefully not make this mistake again. But if you ever see another title that is as dry as the last one, please put a sign on my back that says "Kick me!"

Maximize Ad ROI

A non-ad co-worker asked me if I would give some advice for a company that wanted to do more to maximize it's ROI. This was my reply:

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Generically, 1000% better than any other strategy, is for them to sell their own ad space. We are seeing a trend where even medium sized sites have at least one ad sales person. Even if they don’t go that far, having somebody spend a little time on this goes a long way. Since they know their specific users and know what they are generally looking for on different parts of their site, they can link them directly to complementary products. This can bring in 2 to 4 times as much money. Even more if you are willing to work on some joint content that highlights their products.

One-off campaigns, often times called roadblocks, can be very lucrative. One example of this is where you allow every ad placement on your site to be taken over by one company. Sometimes with a special event and content. Or even a few pages/contests etc. One site I work with has tripled their monthly income with just one weekend of this.

Targeting is another key. MSFT gets a 15% bonus for every targeting tag that is applied. I figured that for a few top-of-the line placements people can get $20.00 CPM (1000 views).

Next up is to write the code to be able to swap between a bunch of different advertising networks. Selling ad space is much like the stock exchange. Sometimes they will get $8.00 CPM (for a 1000 views) and sometimes 50 cents. If they can swap networks when the timing is right that can make a big difference. Again, this takes staff. One client has two full time people that do this just for Europe.

And lastly sign up with a single ad network that seems to specialize in their area and implement it and ignore it. Yes it won’t maximize profit, but it also won’t cost you way expensive staff time. For small sites I think this probably has a better ROI.

All of the above are generally combinable.

There are other options, but the above is what I’m seeing being done across the web.

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I'm happy to answer email or comments on this subject.

OMG!!! Pilot funded in Ozzie's org!!

There are games that geeks play with each other. One type will go “I programmed on punch cards” and may more variations like that. A Second type will be “Only true geeks understand the fragile beauty of Popfly/Lisp/OOP/… A third type will say “I shook Bill Gates' hand”. Another of this type will say “I came within 10 feet of running over Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.”

That last person would be me. And although it’s a great story over a beer, it is certainly a rather sad high point to my individual contribution to the computer industry. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done great things. For example, Word for Windows 1.0 and actually more significantly 2.0 are giants among all products, but they were team efforts and that is just different.

There is a fourth type of geek that can say something like this:


I got a pilot program funded. With only Mike’s help I figured out something that Microsoft should be doing and how to do it AND then chased down enough of the details, and then sold it to the right people and I freaking got a pilot project funded in Ray Ozzie’s org.


I don’t know anything else yet. I don’t even know that I will be involved in its actual execution other than as an adviser. I’m hoping.

This just happened Friday afternoon. An hour later I had the last “Go For Launch” meeting with all the Digg guys. And then I stumbled home and drooled. Only in the last few hours have I come back to myself enough to wipe off the drool.

I want to be that fifth type of geek. The one that says “When I shipped the version one product from my idea …”

Office competitor: It's Partner, Pave or Pace

http://www.techdirt.com/

Cool site. Way oversimplified: Companies ask a question and pay for the top 3 answers

One of thier question:

Alternatives To Microsoft Office: Two Goliaths -- What Does David Do Now?
Top 3 Insights Receive $150 Each.
Google has received quite a bit of attention for the beginnings of its office productivity suite that can operate collaboratively online (as well as offline with Google Gears). But there are already several non-Microsoft office suites that are much more mature than Google's current office apps. However, by adding the weight of its brand to the Web2.0 productivity market, Google has apparently stolen the "thunder" of the upstarts who were pitching stones at Microsoft. As one of these alternative office suite developers,
1) What are the weaknesses of Google Docs & Spreadsheets?
2) How does a smaller office software firm promote itself with two giants in the same arena?

I got to thinking about it and wanted to answer it here:

My first answer is to do better research. Office has over 85% of the market. There are not two Goliaths, there is one Goliath and somebody else with a very big mouth.

But I think the solution has to come down to: Partner, Pave or Pace.

Partner:
Do add-ons or extensions to one of the big guys. There is quite a bit of money here as the Goliaths like these people. They don’t have time to enable every feature in the world, but they have given the functionality to do this. They will even pick up a lot of your marketing expenses if you can get their attention.

Pave:
No big company is fast. (Even Google, despite what they say.) There will always be space on the bleeding edge. For example, the last bleeding edge was getting reasonable editors into the different blogging web sites. Word 2007 can do that now, so that opportunity is fading, but I’m sure there is another one raising somewhere. Yes, you will be paving the way for the big guys, but there will always be room here. Monetization might be hard.

Pace:
Run next to the big guys. Find a vertical or two and own it. This is what Apple has done. I would stay away from legal cuz it looks like the big guys are going there, but there are still lots of places untouched.

A combination of all three would probably bring the best results.

Blogging for Cats

When I found out that my company kind-of frowns upon blogging, I decided to lay off for a while, but I’ve rethought the decision.

While surfing, somehow I stumbled onto a very, very, far-left political web site and saw the following:

I’m sorry; I didn’t copy down the URL. I just grabbed the screen shot because I thought it was really funny.

I just had this mental picture of thousands of pale, coke-bottle glasses wearing, significantly over or underweight people, groaning as they got up from too many hours behind their computer and grabbing pitch-forks and brooms to take on the modern U.S. Army. And I pictured the U.S. Army as the life-sized green army men that every little boy plays with. And this mind picture still makes me smile.

And it’s not a mean thing, I fit the above description and I can’t see me taking on an army either, although I don’t think I post enough to be qualify for being a blogger.

The more I thought about this quote though, the less funny it became.

Every day, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of bloggers ring a blow for freedom. Even if it’s just freedom for their cat. They take their time to stand up (sit down) and express their views in a public forum. Even though the average blog is read by 1.5 people. Even though the vast majority of posts make drivel look interesting. Even through inaccurate facts, bad grammar and document frameworks that collectively change the rotation of the earth because of all the dead English teachers spinning in their graves. Through all of this, collectively, they make a difference and that will grow with time. From tiny pieces so trivial comes the power of a collective voice and few things are as powerful.

Actually, I should say collective voices, because they certainly don’t speak with one voice. But they could. Given the right circumstances, they could.

I’m not sure that getting up from behind their computer is a good thing; their power probably lies in the magic they harness inside their computers. Every revolution needs a Thomas Paine to put up pamphlets and schedule meetings. But beyond that, I’m pretty sure that future revolutions are not going to be fought with weapons. They are gong to be fought with crowds. They will be won by thousands upon thousands of people showing up in public squares across the country and standing in front of the tanks. In a world where militaries are as strong as is possible today, the only path lies in the power of the will of the people to keep anybody from taking up arms.

And that’s the power at the fingers of the bloggers.

And if that ever comes to be, it won’t be funny at all.

And I want to be a part of that. Even if I don’t have a cat.

Last newspaper post for a while, I promise.

Seattle Times decided not to hire me, so my brain and blog will be moving on. But I'm still getting mail from readers saying that newspapsers are doomed, including clippings from the mergers that are going on.

I think the national newspapers are in trouble. I think that newspapers without a vibrant web site are in trouble. But I think hybreds and eventually online only papers are just find.

The Seattle Times is doing much better with their ads in the last couple of weeks! I think they are going the right direction, i.e. towards profitability.

Here is another study:


15% Increase in Visits to Newspaper Websites

According to NAdbase released in April, 36 percent of all Internet users visited a newspaper Web site in November, 2006, and page views for newspaper Web sites increased 27 percent year over year during the second half of 2006. This latest report shows that during the second half of 2006, unique visitors to newspaper Web sites averaged 57.3 million visitors a month, or one in three of all Internet users, a 15 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

The 2007 campaign comes on the heels of last year’s success, when more than 1,000 newspapers reached more than 100 million readers, and coincides with the release of the spring 2007 Newspaper Audience Database report. In addition, 136,000 advertisers visited the campaign Web site to learn about the value of newspaper media.

NAA Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, John Kimball, said “…newspapers are succeeding in driving new innovations and growing their audiences in both size and value… no better time to launch our 2007 newspaper value campaign than the very day we provide advertisers with audience data spanning the medium’s full portfolio of print and digital products.”

The report says that newspaper Web sites have contributed to a 13.7 percent increase in total newspaper audience for the coveted 25- to 34-year-old demographic and a 9.2 percent increase for 18- to 24-year-olds.

The NAdbase analysis also shows that:

Nearly three out of four adults in the top 50 markets (115 million) read the newspaper over the course of a week (5 weekdays/1 Sunday)

65.8 percent of 18- to 34-year olds in the top 50 markets read a newspaper during the course of a week

76.9 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds, and 84.2 percent of those 55 and older, read a newspaper in the previous week

John F. Sturm, NAA President and CEO, concludes “… The ad campaign emphasizes newspaper’s ability to combine the strengths of the Internet and print while expanding its reach and influence in a time of critical transformation for the industry.”


For the complete information release, and more about Newspaper Audience Data, please visit here.

Online Advertising 101 - Larry Tate please smile upon me!

I do not think online advertisements are evil.

I think, badly done, untargeted online advertisements are evil.

When you are in the market for a car, isn't it nice to see the different videos for automobiles that you didn't know about? What if "they" knew about your love of Orchids and instead of showing you an obnoxious ad for a mortgage that you are not in the market for, they showed you the latest Orchids that had arrived at your favorite nursery?

The industry is not there yet. Actually, it has a way to go.

I've been coming up to speed on the online advertising world and it's a fun one. Online advertising is not that complicated by itself, it's just that a) they have their own vocabulary and b) the whole industry is much more complex that one would guess.

I guess I thought that:

1. Seller would contact ad agency
2. Ad agency would produce a nice picture of a cow dancing and give to a web site
3. Web site would occasionally show ad
4. Seller would pay ad agency who would pay the web site

And that is true, a little. Well, it's true other than that whole "Devil is in the details" thing.


First thing are Networks.

o Think of a network in a TV way, not connecting computers. NBC and their affiliates take in commercials and display them to their viewers during different targeted
shows.
o A network can be as small as a college student’s blog displaying an ad to sell their
roommate’s bike.
o Or Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

I will limit this to a very simplified discussion on display advertisements. If you go to my personal blog you will see a banner across the top. That is a display advertisement. (And if you haven’t been there in a while, you have got to check out the sound clip I put on last week!)

The place where everything gets much more complicated than you would expect is all around two questions --

o When do you play the commercial?
o When do pay the person with the web site who displayed the commercial?

The basic answers are:

o When your targeted user (demographics) is likely to show up at a web site (keywords).
o Per Click, Per 1000 plays or per some pre-defined activity. These are described below.

A large part of the Ad Network is a bunch of tools that allow the ad people the ability to upload and manage their advertisements. The larger agencies have staffs of people who do nothing but this all day long! A single ad campaign might have over a 1000 keywords. It might also be targeted by gender, age, time of day, day of week, etc. And they might have 200 ad campaigns running simultaneously. Also, one ad might be doing better than another, so they will swap out active campaigns as quickly as they receive the data.

But the big thing here is the Advertising Stock Exchange.

o In a struggle as old as time, sellers want to pay as little per ad as possible, while publishers (web sites) want as much as possible. And because there are so many variable involved the networks (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, et al) create a real time “stock” exchange.
o Advertisers bid on keywords, demographics and time.
o The web sites also have their keywords and prices. So, the MSN Automotive web site may say we will only ever accept advertisements where the minimum cost per 1000 impressions is $2.00. If there isn’t a publisher willing to pay their price, then MSN Automotive will either show a public service advertisement or an in-house one.

Let’s walk through an example:

1. Google offers to sell CPM advertisements. This means that they will pay a fixed sum of money to a web site for each 1000 times an advertisement is displayed. Impressions mean that the advertisement was served to a web page, hence creating a chance for a user to be impressed. Google signs up to manage advertisements from Nordstrom’s and to display advertisements on CNN.com.

2. Nordstrom knows that its target customer is a college educated, 25-35 year old woman, who shops on a weekday. They may offer to pay $4.00 per 1000 impressions to try and reach this woman. But they know they have very poor turn around if it’s a man on a weekend. In this case all they might be willing to pay is $0.15 for 1000 impressions.

3. CNN.com is doing a featured story on the latest shoe styles from Paris. But they get a good return just by running their own ads advertising their own shows. CNN knows that if they don’t get $3.00 per 1000 impressions, they are losing money. So CNN.com would accept the ad from Nordstrom for the woman but not for the man.

There are more types of ads and they are dreaming up even more new ones every day. Different strategies work best for different advertisements and for different web sites and different browsers at different times of the day, etc. Research is figuring out new ways to gather demographic information and tune keywords. As you can imagine, this is a way complex real time mess. And we haven’t even started talking about the technical issues.