Tell me what you want to do

The people at Mozilla Labs have a lovely new add on for the Firefox browser. The add-on, whose name, Ubiquity, gives some indication of it's aspirations, allows users to tell Firefox what you want to do...as opposed to just where you want to go.

You can view the brief tutorial here but a few easy to grasp examples I tried (easy being the pre-requisite for me to try it) included:

"map 400 east diehl rd naperville, il" (which immediately deliverd a Google Map of the place)
"define aggravation" (which displayed an autosuggest box with the definition)
"email" (which allowed me to email a link from the page I was on to someone in my gmail contact list)

Interestingly, this ability also seems to support the trend toward verbifying nouns (e.g., Google me)

Commanding Ubiquity to "Wikipedia Coopetition" took me to the Wikipedia entry for that topic.

Beyond the move to develop a more natural language (albeit typed) interface for the web browser, the add-on embodies the open source developer and individually customizable spirit of the Firefox community.

Become ubiquitous yourself by downloading your very own slice of Ubiquity here

Finding the right answers, part 2: Ad Networks, Search, and Word of Mouse

Just as the destination is less important than the journey we take to get there, finding the right answers sometimes means we'll just discover better questions.

First post on the question here, second post on the answers, part 1 here. And so the question we pick up is "How do you reach people where they are spending 90% of their visits online?"

Ad networks are an advertising answer.

(Click to enlarge)

As seen in the chart above, the major ad networks reach most of the online population, though frequency and the unique visitors are sometimes called into question as valid proxies for audience measurement.

A typical web user’s total monthly habit of 105 sites and 2300 page views means that the total likely monthly inventory for all online universe is 437Billion impressions (assuming 1 impression per page view). This would require all 50 of the top 50 ad networks to serve an average 100 impressions per user per month to use the available inventory (which grows daily).

No single online ad network is capable of delivering reach AND frequency. And covering every ad network is financially impractical.

In general, display advertising (i.e., banners) struggles to efficiently reach online audiences with sufficient frequency to support its awareness/branding mission (Clicks are generally not a role that banners fuflfill well--they aren't sold on that basis for a reason--and we won't even mention the triple challenges of banner blindness, intrusiveness, and falling CPM rates).

Search advertising is another answer. Search is more about engagement than reach because it has the potential to reach the greatest number of online prospects in terms that they use to define themselves (through the dialogue of the search query)...in essence making a frequency of "1" ideal. But search does nothing for those who already know where they are going.

Word of mouse is a 3rd approach for those who know what they want and where to get it. Meeting these folks and getting a few of them to carry the message to the many, or at least a few more, requires more individualized approaches via blogs, discussion boards or social networks. (the term 'viral' is probably not the best way to reference this type of approach online for all the obvious connotations). Again, a frequency of 1 would be ideal.

So for this circular journey of three posts, the right answer to the question is itself an honest couple of questions to ask repeatedly: "If everyone is online, does a media consumption index matter?" and "If frequency doesn't matter--or isn't definable--online, how will success be measured?"

The approaches for reach are: the traditional model (via banner ad networks), the search model (via, um, search engine marketing) and word of mouse (direct engagement).

For more on targetted online placement, demographics and online research, you may want to check out this post on Google's AdPlanner which seems to be sowing the seeds of do-it-yourself online planning.

Finding the right answers, part 1: online reach and frequency

Sometimes the answers are just better questions. As a bit of a followup to yesterday's post on asking the right the question ('where are your prospects online?") I offer this:

(click to enlarge)

Looking at the top 50 properties on the web (in the chart above), Google and Yahoo each reach about 75% of the online population in a month.

So one question, "Where do people go online?" can be answered, "They start with Google and Yahoo." It's as close to a universal destination as we can get online. But beyond where they start, we ask "Where do they end up?"

Looking at the remaining top 48 properties, it’s clear that the online population is going many other places. The top 50 properties account for only 10 visits per month per user. And yet, according to Nielson Media Metrics, “the average U.S. internet user visited 105 web sites in March (2008), viewing a total of 2,437 web pages.” (source here)

So the top 50 web properties account for less than 10% of online user’s destinations.

According to the Netcraft Web Server Survey, a total of 175,480,931 distinct websites were found in June 2008, which did not include domains with multiple sites (like blog networks).

So one right answer is a new, better question:

"How do you reach people where they are spending 90% of their visits online?" In other words, how do you reach them on the 175,480,881 OTHER sites that they may visit outside of the top 50?

Interestingly, Answers.com (#48 in the Top 50 sites) is of no help on this question.

We'll take that up in part 2.

Asking the right question

Here's a question we hear frequently in discussions of online campaigns:

"Yes, but are we sure that [insert customer group] go online?"

It's a fair question, but I think it's a question whose time has passed. You can insert any one-dimensional view of a person you like in the brackets...male or female, pet owner, parent or polo player and the answer will be the same: Yes.

There are only two qualities that have any significance in answering the question no or maybe: income below $40,000 and education below high school. Age only matters above 64. If one is relatively poor, relatively older and relatively uneducated, they may not be online. For everyone else, the percentages are 80% or higher. (Pew Internet + American Life Tracking Study data here.)

Looking at this chart, one can calculate that more than 190 million adult americans are online.

(Click to enlarge)

The right question, it would seem, is no longer "are they online?"...it's "where are they are online?"

Beggar's banquet

Seth Godin is an insightful commentator on marketing. He had a post that made me laugh, though perhaps not for the right reason.

You can read it here, but essentially, he advocates clicking online ads as if you were dropping a few cents into a tip jar. More an acknowledgement of the content provider's efforts than an interest in what's being advertised. That's a funny way to think about advertising's role...and yet it perfectly points out how transparent the online world makes things.

On the one hand, online display advertising is having difficulty sustaining CPM rates (as previously posted here)...if all you are selling is attention, then dropping a few cents into a tip jar is hardly the kind of attention an advertiser is willing to pay top dollar for. They are buying awareness, perception and, even sales online. If the intent in clicking is the equivalent of dropping loose change in a jar--a nearly thoughtless activity--one can wonder if that's what an advertiser is banking on. It isn't exactly attention.

On the other hand, if someone allows ads on their site, then presumably they are reaping a share of the revenue associated with a click...in this case, the advertiser's needs are still unserved, though of course the content provider's are at the expense of the advertiser. If the content provider receives compensation for a page view (as in a CPM model), then the advertiser has already paid for the content with your impression...tip included...no click required.

When advertising online is reduced to the equivalent of a charitable contribution, the economics of the enterprise resemble Robin Hood, where the contribution one makes with their click is paid with someone else's money. When advertising an action with the needs of the advertiser, the content provider, AND the one doing the clicking, the economics look more like search marketing...and more like a business.

All the news that's fit to click

Pew research has released a study on news consumption. Statistical support for the obvious is found in tables (like the one below) showing the slow death march for newspapers, the rapid ascension of always on, online sources and the inevitable shakeout by age group, income and education. The young and the less educated (often the same group) consume less news. Who'd a thunk?

(Click to enlarge)

What the report also does is attempt to segment, into four groups, the news sourcing habits as they blend online, TV, radio and print sources.

An interesting contradiction in pre-existing bias for some (and another example of what happens when one relies too heavily on collectivist notions of demographics!) shows up in the political makeup of the Fox news and CNN audiences. Pew reports that 39% of Fox watchers are Republicans and 51% of CNN consumers are Democrats.

Whatever one thinks about segmentation masquerading as insight, one thing is clear in the attitudes of all groups: the credibility of traditional news sources is seen as low whether the source is traditional print and broadcast or among the news aggregators online (which aggregate stories from traditional media outlets' online services).

If traditional news outlets--be they online or off-- are not seen as beleivable by even a slim majority, it begs the question just how influential these influencers really are at an individual level.

A study focussing on a measure of influence might show that the grounds of the fourth estate are filled with gazing ponds. In which case, they may be alot like bloggers and nontraditional news sources!

Full Pew Study here

Interesting makeup of 'news' sources by gender (and interesting definition of news sources) in chart below

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Sound ideas: the executioner's song

An 11-year-old boy says to his friend "What do candy bars and music have in common?"

"I don't know" says his friend, to which he responds "You should throw the (w)rappers away". Chuckles ensue while the rap music on the radio continues to play.

Like many other creative pursuits, music's quality is ultimately found in the ear of the beholder. But whatever you think about music's different forms and formats, the common theme is that mere sound waves have an amazing ability to stimulate a range of thoughts, emotions and physical reactions among most members of the species.

And if you have any interest at all in music, then you might find SoundJunction of interest.

Sound Junction provides an interactive, ears-on exploration of music and sound. The best part (in my opinion of course) is the point and click composition toolset that lets you compose your own tunes in a browser interface.

Alright already, so what does any of this have to do with marketing?

One area of Sound Junction that caught my ear provides three different composers with a seed rhythym and asks them to create something from it. (here)

The seed rhythym, or idea, seems simple and unremarkable. And yet, when applied by three different people, the end results possess an amazing diversity in approach, quality and theme. So much so as to render nearly imperceptible the common rhythmic idea around which the compositions were built.

And so the next time someone suggests that there is ONE, BIG idea for a marketing effort, it may be worth remembering that it's often not a big idea but great execution that makes all the difference.

Completing the tangents-linked-by-a-slender-thread triple play post, snaps to Neil J for links to two interesting views on science, music and what's good, bad and...strange:

Scientific attempts to create the most annoying song ever

Proof that people have no taste in music

Flash banners: online Badvertising

Banner blindness, intrusiveness, non-existent click thru rates, impression-based pricing models...as if online display (banner) advertising didn't have enough going against it, now comes...hacking!

The nerds at /. carry news of an apparent use of booby-trapped Flash-based banner ads to gain control of the systems of the unsuspecting who click. Thank goodness hardly anyone clicks on banners. As this story gets round the bout, I suspect click thru rates will dive into negative numbers ;-)

It does point out an obvious issue: in an imperfect world, all communication vehicles have pros and cons. But when the balance of pros and cons--to the end user--grows sufficiently lopsided to the con, then the vehicle that suffers such indignity will find itself circumvented. TiVO and popup blockers being but two examples of ad-circumvention tools.

If online display advertising--using the ubiquitous Flash format--is now to carry with it the stigma of being a doorway for malevolance, and not merely something to ignore, I suspect ad blocking technology will become less about annoyance and more an issue of security.

When that happens, falling banner ad CPM rates can continue to zero and still be priced too high.

A map of the world

We prepare maps frequently for our client's planning efforts. For some, the maps are associated with traditional media planning. For others, maps show opportunity clusters of customers prospects and the hybrid also known as "distribution".

We love maps...especially when we are trying to figure out where we are headed. The problem with maps is getting the data to make them. You know data is out there, you just don't know where to get it. Or if you do, you sometimes have to pay upfront for the prospect that it may be of high quality and use. What's one to do?

Well, here's an answer: GeoCommons

Their tag is 'Actionable maps in five minutes'.

Their offering consists of two components: The Finder!, which scans the global web for accessible data sources and then allows you to search for the datasets.

And The Maker! which allows you to create maps from the data you have found.

The Finder! search function is not nearly as nuanced as a Google search in its results, so the more specific your input, the less wading one will do.

The Maker!, unfortunately, is coming soon.

In the meantime, you can download datasets from the Finder! in file formats like Excel or in .KML format, which can be imported directly into Google Earth, or other mapping software.

Here's a screen grab of an FCC dataset on High Speed Lines by State, 2002-07 that I imported into Google Earth using the uber-complicated drag-and-drop method (for the record it took me 7 minutes and 15 seconds, to find, download and create this, but that's because I'm an ID10T):

(click to enlarge)

What my shiny new point-and-click interface shows me is that Wyoming actually has a higher broadband penetration among businesses than residential locations...a whopping 50.8% of businesses are connected at hyper-speeds. Now if I could just find a dataset on wi-fi hotspots, I might be able to publish a point-and-click Google Earth wi-fi locator density map!

In the end, GeoCommons has the potential to remove the inefficiencies in finding and employing data in novel ways. In the short term, it may also challenge proprietary mapping software like MapPoint. What's unclear is whether access to publically available data--with tools to put it to use in 5 minutes-- will encourage or discourage the sharing of that data.

What value junk mail?

Like many definitions, the term 'junk' is in the eye of the beholder. One person's tree-killing, time-wasting, mailbox-stuffing object is another person's opportunity for action. In many ways, junk mail is like email spam: it's all in the economics.

The costs of poor targetting are less than the costs of precise targetting. Of course, email spam's distribution economics are so advantageous to the sender that it actually resembles mass advertising in its indiscriminant bombardment!

So here's a proposal for a definition of junk mail:

"Junk mail is that mail which is not valued by the one who receives it."

It's not defined by form factor or creative approach, whether it's online or not, or whether it uses recycled materials.

Of course, this definition is pretty close to the dictionary definition of junk anything: "anything that is regarded as worthless, meaningless, or contemptible; trash. "

Junk mail, like junk anything, can be defined, solely, by the value a person who receives it finds in it. Value is an individual quality. Thus, mostly, this value will be measurable by marketers in the response their mailings elicit.

The definition, resting as it does on a foundation of value, leaves plenty of room to replace the word 'mail' with any other form of marketing. Junk advertising, Junk offers, Junk PR and of course...junk blog postings ;-)

For a look at the transformative value created from junk mail alchemists, check out The Top 10 Creative Responses to Junk Mail

For a look at the latest trends in direct mail, junk or otherwise, here's the US Postal Service by-the-numbers breakdown:

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A client relationship you can count on

51 - 49

I attended a presentation by R+K's Supreme Leader who flashed these numbers on the screen. He said that this was as good as it ever gets. What 'this' is, is the ownership ratio in the client-agency relationship, where the client is 51 and the agency is 49...and that's at it's best.

He presented this ratio (which he heard at a presentation of agency leaders he attended...and so on, and so on...) as a means of reminding us that we are in the service of our clients. That's the business.

It's always been that way of course, but sometimes the price incurred in changing relationships may have made it seem like the scales might be tipped to the agency. Ever heard someone at an agency say about their client that 'they don't get it'? That's a sure sign that the speaker doesn't understand this ownership ratio.

In a technology-enabled economy, where transactional relationships are formed and re-formed with every exchanged electron, the power relationship--at it's most balanced--remains always, slightly unequal in favor of the client.

For agencies, the client owns the relationship.

For marketers, remembering that the organization's customers and prospects are the client means remembering that customers and prospects call the shots.

In the always-on, always connected era of inexpensive, technology-enabled communications, focussing on the four P's won't change the balance. Remembering the fifth P--People--can help get the ratio closer to 51-49.

Helping clients serve their customers is the challenge to agencies. It's easy to say, but it's the most difficult challenge an agency faces. It's also the relationship we can count on.

Driven to tears: Blame Detroit

Media execs at Viacom, Time Warner and others are blaming a downturn in automobile advertising for some of their continued revenue challenges.

And TNS Media Intelligence supports the conclusion, sort of, reporting that the auto industry spent $414 million less on advertising in 1Q08 than in 1Q07.

The poor (red) ink stained wretches at newspapers were down $131 million alone.

Some might point to the much touted-but-yet-to-be-delivered recession as an obvious impact...except that that would not explain it either. Automobile advertising is expected to be about $15 billion for the whole of 2008, which is down from it's peak of $24 billion in 2004.

Others might point to the migration of many dollars online, such as here.

Still other folks might point to the advertising itself. If advertising is linked as a causative agent of sales when things are good, then shouldn't the link work in reverse?

For the NY times perspective, read all about it.

For a TNS Media Intelligence look at media spend, see table below:

(click to enlarge)

Misperception of reality: The creative class

Perception is reality. I perceive the world as flat...is it? I perceive all children in Lake Wobegon to be above average. Are they?

I perceive that there is a creative class in human society. Is there?

Jeff Jarvis has a well-thought post on the Myth of the Creative Class...and how that myth is being shattered in what he calls the Google Age. The Google Age, to my mind, is a creative way of encapsulating the previously explored trends of cheap computing; always-on, interconnected relationships; and a transparent society into an easy-to-pronounce label.

From the post at Jarvis' Buzz Machine site (full version here):

"...The internet doesn’t make us more creative, I don’t think. But it does enable what we create to be seen, heard, and used. It enables every creator to find a public, the public he or she merits. And that takes creation out of the proprietary hands of the supposed creative class.

Internet curmudgeons argue that Google et al are bringing society to ruin precisely because they rob the creative class of its financial support and exclusivity: its pedestal. But internet triumphalists, like me, argue that the internet opens up creativity past one-size-fits-all mass measurements and priestly definitions and lets us not only find what we like but find people who like what we do. The internet kills the mass, once and for all. With it comes the death of mass economics and mass media, but I don’t lament that, not for a moment."

The notion of the online world enabling a creative meritocracy seems particularly relevant to marketers and agencies. As marketers, we don't have to rely on assertions of superiority: be they about our approach to the four P's, our client's prospects and customers, or our 'creative' product.

In the pre-Google Age (also known as the Mass Age) one could assert, for instance, that half the advertising worked, but that it was impossible to know which half. In the Google Age, we can put such assertions to the test and evaluate them against the facts.

In the Google Age one can know whether any part of our marketing works at all and, if so, how it can work better.

In the Google Age, creative isn't a department.

Perception may be an easy existence in our own private Idaho's. In the Google Age, reality will set us free of our delusions...Class dismissed.

What do people do online?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has been asking that question for years. And what they've found in this year's report is that people are increasingly using search. You can read for yourself of course, so visit the link above if you'd like.

If you would rather see it all in a nifty chart, well, here you go:


The report confirms demographic correlations to high search usage that are consistent with other aspects of being online: namely, better educated, younger and wealthier people index higher for use of search on a daily basis than their less educated, older, less wealthy fellow citizens. Maybe they just have more questions?

One other data point is broadband. With 55% of Americans connected at highspeeds to the internet, broadband is the single most important factor in indexing high for daily use of search.

Search is where people are. The message for marketers would seem clear: we need search no further for a reason to integrate search engine marketing into our campaigns.

What's in your search campaign?

I know, I know, yet another post about some innovation at Google. Sorry, they just keep me coming back for more. This time it's with Insights for Search, which is an enhancement to the ideas of Google Trends.

In this case, marketers can look at search volume against terms over time. Nothing new there.

But wait, there's more!

Added to volume-time series data, users can now see where that search volume comes from based on geographic region. And if you act now, you can see momentum. Which searches are on the rise? Which terms are losing popularity?

Yes, you say, but I already have more data than I can deal with...where's the wisdom?

Like many things online, the wisdom comes with experience. In this case, Google's Insights for Search should help us understand and test some of our assumptions about our prospects.

Assumptions like:

• where is our online search audience? Are they where are marketing plan says they are? Does they conform to our traditional demographic notions?

• what seasonality is associated with our audience's interests? Do our assumptions about when people consider or research purchases conform to what search volume tells us?

• what trends in terminology might reflect the leading or lagging edge of our prospect's perception? Is the terminology we use in our search campaign increasingly--or decreasingly--in the lexicon of our prospects?

As is typical of Google's toolsets, there is much more here than meets the eye... or that we'll try to cover in this post. One enhancement I'd like to see is tighter integration with the Analytics toolset...so many distinct tools of value, so little time to keep logging into different interfaces!

Here's a screen cap of a quick look at the search term 'graduate degrees' that shows some of the high level data available. Who knew those North Carolinians were so interested in graduate degrees?

(click to enlarge)

Prime time: Just another brick in the wall

In part 2 of what is shaping up as Accenture Week (see part 1 here), I'm catching up on Accenture's Consumer Broadcast Study. The document has lots of lovely findings from their global look at consumer interest in the medium formerly known as television.

To quote the challenge being made to the traditional definition of the network television model:

"Consumers are seeking out the content brands they want regardless of channels, rather than sticking with a channel they know. The message is clear: the days of the line-up are numbered − and the value of “must-see TV” in prime time is falling."

Another way to say this is that technology separates the value of the network from the content that rides it. Network television has always tried to own both.

Now, though, if you are a content owner, you want your content on every network that will distribute it. If you are a network owner, you want all the content you can get. YouTube for instance. Or Flikr. Millions of content owners seeking their own audiences. So there's that.

And in addition to the usual youth-is-the-trend-to-watch findings (they want what they want and they want it when they want it on any device they choose...who'd have thought it!), there is a set of charts in the report that caught my eye(s) on the relationship between advertising and economics:

Looking at both charts, regardless of age: more people would choose to pay to download a TV show they want to watch than would choose to watch advertisements in lieu of paying.

Of course I'd like to see how the question was asked and to explore the nuance of the responses (e.g., how much would you be willing to pay, for instance), but it certainly seems that, in a broad sense, advertising's perceived 'underwriting value' to consumers isn't something to bank on.

Then again, online you don't have to implement mass-media approaches. Let those who would pay, pay. And for those who would trade their time on the planet for ad-supported content? Well, let them eat advertising.

Diversionary link on the value of being a brick in the wall:

On the road again

Last weekend I journeyed across parts of two 'I' states and an 'O' state to visit relatives. On the way, I participated in a call with a client. No big deal.

So I decided to try an experiment...use my smartphone's broadband card while in motion. No, I wasn't driving, but from the passenger seat I was able to get--and keep--a pretty decent connection. I was able to launch an online survey for a client, conduct a quick IM session with a colleague back in the office and, of course check email and the financial news, all while travelling at slightly-above-the-posted speed limit. Ok, but what about something that actually required broadband?

That's where things got interesting...here's the score:

1. Music: iTunes connection...lags (resulting in rebuffering the music stream) were unacceptable
2. Video: YouTube video worked pretty well. Two of three videos worked without midstream buffering lags
3. Gaming: Runescape--full resolution mode--played flawlessly...until we lost the connection for about 10 minutes in a particularly remote area of corn country.

So what?

If rich media ads are to work with the increasingly mobile nature of computing, effective broadband connections--wherever the devices are--will be a pre-requisite.

In fact, according to the Accenture Global Content Study (2008), a consistent user experience is the biggest barrier to adoption of mobile broadband after consumer readiness.




More important, though, is the opportunity that mobile broadband holds for enabling engaging experiences, ad-based or otherwise, that might make ready the consumer audience. One can imagine networked, multiplayer gaming setups like Runescape--or those available thru gaming platforms like the Wii, XBox, PS3--combining GPS and mobile broadband to make the storyline and interaction integrated with localized features of culture and landscape.

See that car passing you on the left? Maybe that's a trading partner for you in Runescape...or an enemy scout in Halo. One thing's for sure, the mobile class' time killers won't be found in one place.

Better Dead than (un)Read

Newspapers, as we all know by now, are feeling a world of hurt (here for example or from the Newspaper Association of America for another). The product they sell, mostly local ads, has been diverted to online only ventures. Classified ads represent 63% of newspaper revenue. The news that used to draw an audience is largely available for free online. Combined with the static nature of the medium, newspapers have reduced their size, their employee base and their share of people's attention.

A prescription to save the patient from certain death is written by Doc (all pun intended) Searls (he of last decade's hot book, The Cluetrain Manifesto). On his blog, he suggests that newspapers have two advantages they should leverage:

• Their archives
• Their editorial page

The archive is a wonderful idea, though I suspect it would be a one-time advantage. Perhaps I'm interested in researching old news (like this), but the revenue approach Searl's suggests (targetted advertising) requires a leap of faith that it would outperform the current subscription models... Another challenge: once the archive of one paper is available, how is one newspaper's version of the news in, say, 1945 going to be worth more than another's? All of which sounds a bit like hope and prayer, not medicine...but what is there to lose in trying?

The other thought, making the editorial content the star makes some sense: Put it on the front page. Invite the community to steer the conversation. Have the crazy lady with the letter to the editor about her neighbor's loud parties (or the anonymous 'Sound off' call in) be the headline.

Might get some attention, but even the good Doc has to admit that it doesn't address the chronic problems for newspapers. Self-defined communities expect always-on, near realtime access and interaction. Newspapers move too slow and trade a product--in print--that is priced higher than the online competition...to a diverse community, a single vehicle will have a hard time addressing many conversations taking place online already...newspapers would be late to this game.

Smarter minds are certainly exploring the issue, but I think that a move online is step one (papers need to cut production and distribution costs further, faster, first). Reduce the costs of print by letting individuals print off the news they want on their home printers. Then, take the savings and invest it in their writing, reporting and in enabling interaction...papers will have to compete with everyone else online...For some reporters, the result may end up paying off more in sweat equity than in salary. Competing wiith free is hard work.