Category Archives: internet

Online advertising juggernaut rolls on.

Posted on by
2

This Internet Advertising Bureau report notes that online advertising is still showing explosive growth.    Interesting is the fact that the types of online advertising – with search ads at the top – seems to have stabilized somewhat with “pay for performance” one of the few categories that has clearly increased from last year.   

 I don’t think this stability reflects the “optimal” mix of ads, rather it is more an indication of how the big players take some time to get comfortable with innovations in advertising, and still stick to more traditional CPM style approaches rather than the clearly superior PPC and pay per performance models.   Clearly even many of the big advertisers and agencies still have fairly weak SEM and SEO departments so they’ll choose to use big CPM campaigns that are easy to analyze rather than the more productive – but more complicated to manage – PPC and performance approaches.

Online ads are now a mainstay of any good campaign, but it’ll take some years before advertisers realize the foolishness of many online advertising approaches which generally include bloated CPM impression campaigns.   Much more effective are targeted organic and PPC ad campaigns, but these require more analysis and a newer perspective.

The most conspicuously stupid type of campaign – still extremely popular in travel – is to use expensive print advertising in an attempt to boost online visitation.  I studied this *extensively* across many print ad types during my work marketing southern Oregon several years ago and despite the clear results that showed print ads lead to only a tiny number of online visits, many travel marketers still think print is an effective way to promote online.    It’s not, but it will continue until the incentives and simplicity of squandering money on ineffective print advertising go away.   The lack of research in this area is odd to me given the huge total travel advertising spend, but most travel research is self-serving and often sponsored or conducted by the very agencies or entities that benefit from certain results, so stupid biases remain intact for a long time.

The New York Times Online goes “all in” effective Tuesday Midnight

Posted on by
2

The New York Times has come to understood that traffic, and therefore increased ad revenues, is a better way to go than paid content and tomorrow they’ll not only stop charging for subscriptions, they are going to put archives online without any paywall.

This is a win win for everybody. NYT has some of the best coverage in the world and it’s going to be easier and cheaper to get at that content soon.  That’ll bring millions more to the site, so NYT will also win big in this deal. Their quality content will drive millions of new visitors and tens of millions of new pageviews to the site monthly and increase their advertising revenue by (I’m guessing wildly here) approximately $600,000 per month (this is based on 40,000,000 new page views and the $15 CPM I think NYT can easily command from their huge stable of old and new advertisers) .

People have such a funny, contradictory, and largely misunderstood relationship to advertising. Like it or not, advertising in various forms drives not only much of the content we work with online, view on TV, hear on radio, and read in print. I’d argue that print is the least distorted by the relationship of the media to advertising though I’m not sure why that is. Online varies quite a bit from sites with very pristine content and no ads to those who monetize content with very relevant ads to “made for adsense” sites where the only reason for existence is PPC monetization. TV is probably the most distorted by advertising. Not so much because advertisers can dictate content, but because unprofitable networks or shows will fail, so the evolution of news has been to celebrity gossip and superficial garbage rather than the more important stuff that does not attract our prurient superficial primate interest in sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Britney Spears.

Programmable Web continues to rock

Posted on by
5

If you are interested in how mashups are shaking up the web world, or interested in mashing up your own content, John Musser’s Programmable Web is the best place to start.    This is a  very well-designed website with enormous content depth.   John’s listed thousands of mashups and APIs and categorized them in helpful ways.

Mashups are reshaping the internet in very interesting and dynamic ways and will continue to do this for some time.    For me it’s interesting to see the model of the early internet kind of “swing back” and again be characterized by information sharing rather than the “closed walls” that came about when big money started to flow into the system.  However this poses a challenge for new companies based on mashed up content because ownership of the content that results from a mashup is not always easy to define.   At Mashup Camp 2 I remember talking with Venture Capitalist Peter Rip who at that time felt that mashups *of themselves* were not the key value proposition, rather how the mashup might enhance the prospects of an existing company.   I’m still digesting his notion because it may lie at the heart of how most websites will shake out in the future.

As a user I’m inclined to want an internet that is free or very cheap, very open, very rich with content, and has few restrictions on the use or mashing up of content.   However as a travel website entrepreneur I don’t relish the thought of creating a great site only to have it’s content and ideas nabbed without any compensation.

Google Phone almost here

Posted on by
1

Rediff is reporting that the Google Phone is coming within weeks. I’m skeptical it’ll be available that soon but I think this is a brilliant play for Google, striking at the hot iPhone market with a device I’m guessing will be similar, a bit better due to lessons learned from the iPhone, and cheaper. With Google’s branding power and very positive tech vibe they’ll be selling these as fast as they can produce them and if they provide the most robust connectivity they’ll beat the iPhone handily over time.

My price point? I’ve been wondering about this. My Treo 650 pisses me off about every time I use it, but I hate to trash that little investment. Examples of Treo deficiencies are the endless loop after synching which I just experienced this morning after loading my Google Party Pictures and now fear I’ll have every synch, a cumbersome proprietary desktop system, shitty modem capabilities, and a screen that is too small to use comfortably for browsing. In my view the key enhancement Google could bring would be a larger screen than the iPhone, though the iPhone screen is “large enough” to browse and view movies comfortably. But at $500 I’m keeping the Treo another year or so because applications like Google maps in Java give me “iPhone like” capabilities on the Treo, which I put to good use in the Silicon Valley traffic and road nightmare. At least California has very good signage. New Jersey could learn a lot from Caltrans.  However if Google can get down into the $350 range it’ll be hard to pass and at $250 I’d be in for sure, so go Google Phone go!   In any case I’ll be happy to switch away from Sprint which in rural Oregon is shorthand for “no connectivity”, not to mention the roaming I’m worried about while I was in the heart of silicon valley.   Hey sprint, can you hear me yet saying “I can’t hear you!”

Kijiji starts with a whimper not a bang

Posted on by
2

Lots of buzz today about EBAY’s entry into the online classifieds space with Kijiji.com but I don’t think Craigslist has much to worry about. Kijiji is easy to navigate with maps and Kijiji is easy to understand and Kijiji makes it easy to register….but…. there are practically NO LISTINGS! Obviously it’ll take some time for them to promote the service and gear up, but one of the big 2.0 challenges now is that users don’t want to submit listings to dozens of websites or even to two for that matter. Rather, ideally, you’ll submit to Craigslist and have Kijiji pick up the listing automatically. I’m assuming they’ll bring this functionality in at some point but clearly they have not yet – there appear to be very few listings or registrations so far based on the forum and some quick surfing.

The World According to Cutts

Posted on by
3

I really like Matt Cutts. He’s one of the most personable people in the search business while at the same time discussing and blogging complex search topics in an articulate and authoritative way.

Two really interesting issues are in discussion over at Matt’s blog. The first is Lauren’s controversial “official” Google post criticizing the movie Sicko and suggesting that advertising purchases at Google are the best way to win the info wars. Here’s my take on that little episode:

The challenge with big company “official” blogs is that they tend to suck. They are at best basic information outlets and at worst bad PR nightmares. Not because the authors are bad people, but because “official” company blogs reverse the optimal relationship between blogger and reader. For example here, at Jeremy Zawodny, and at Scoble (when he was with MS), the blogger develops a trusted, somewhat personal relationship with the reader. A company blogger can’t really do that. They are generally trustworthy honest people but they are constrained by not being able to bite the hand that feeds them and also contrained by our expectation that they are beholding to the employer.

Ironically Lauren crossed this line in both directions by giving her own personal opinion (good) at a corporate blog (unusual). But her opinion happened to line up very well with Google’s advertising agenda (hmmmm) and her own personal agenda of selling more ads (hmmmm).

The debates over conflict of interest at blogs are really heating up as they should until we can find ways to keep things transparent, honest as we continue to keep the discussions lively and robust.

The second issue is one I need to digest a bit more. Matt is rejecting the idea that Google’s webspam fight is a sham. Certainly Matt’s team works hard to fight search junk but the spam issue is a lot more nuanced than Matt acknowledges. Clearly there are conflicts between maintaining profits and providing users with the optimal experience. Lighter shading of Google advertising is a good example where it is unlikely users benefit from the lighter shading, yet it is certain Google gets a lot more activity from that User Interface “improvement”. Also, the definition of spam itself is very subjective and also very query dependent. If I’m searching for “Hotels” and get a list of Viagra sites the results are clearly “spammy”, but if I’m searching for Viagra those same sites may be exactly what I want.

Airports Blog and Online Highways Blog

Posted on by
2

Well, I’m going blog crazy these days and hope I can keep up the writing pace needed to maintain a bunch of blogs related to website projects. For me, the blog format makes it a lot easier to write a lot. Perhaps this is because I’m a very fast writer but somewhat design challenged. Blog content management allows me to focus only on the words and ideas and not much on the navigation, design, or overall site structure.

The new Travel blog is Online Highways, a companion to our mega travel site. I’m also starting an Airports Blog
as a companion to my languishing QuickAid.com Airports website project which *will* get a major overhaul as part of this process.

The President Picker blog is one I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up. Here I will try to keep current with the latest presidential stuff though president news is so overwhelming so early in the process I’m hardly providing much of a service here.

More likely to get maintained will be the Prescription Report blog. This will be a companion to the Prescription Report website. The idea here is simple – whenever I see an advertisement for a new prescription drug I’ll review the drug, trying to provide information about the basics of the drugs include the safety and about the pros and cons of the prescription drug as well as links to company sites and sites with alternative views about the drug.

Another one I have yet to start will feature detailed travel tips from Oregon. This is an area where, theoretically, I’m a big expert so you’d think it would be going by now … but … it’s not. Soon though, soon!

Facebook Rules!

Posted on by
2

Today Facebook launches a social media initiative that is significant enough to possibly become a web milestone, depending on how the developer community views and uses all the new capabilities that Facebook is offering to them.

Rafe Needleman‘s got a video of the conference today and Techcrunch will, as usual, have insightful summary of the implications of all this.

Based on my quick first look into what they are up to this really looks like a brilliant move, and a sign they won’t be selling to a bigger player, rather trying to rise up and eat the bigger fish.

If Facebook can capture the imagination of enough developers and become “the” key platform for social media they’ll likely be very glad to have turned down the billion+ dollar buyout offers earlier this year.

At the least Mark Z and his crew deserve huge props for going for the gusto and offering to take the development community along for the ride.  This is not only great stuff for Facebook and social media evangelism, this appears to be consistent with the grand and open internet community vision that one hopes will ultimately prevail.

Make that TWO laptops per child?

Posted on by
2

I’m not sure what to make of Intel’s decision to enter the “market” for laptops to the developing world, though I am frustrated by Negroponte’s quick dismissal of this as Intel being evil rather than noting that this could be a fantastic opportunity to realize his (wonderful) vision of internet computers for all.

Intel’s machines now cost $200 and the One Laptop machines are now $175. Both think pricing should fall as production ramps up.

This reminds me a bit of our local internet broadband fiber network conflict between the city of Ashland, Oregon and Charter Communications.

Several years ago Ashland developed a great fiber network concept that would be run by the city via the public electrical utility. Charter initially tried to get Ashland to work on a project together, partly using strongarm and legal challenge tactics. When that failed and Ashland started competing with Charter for cable and broadband services, Charter countered the city by offering lower rates for cable and internet to their Ashland subscribers. This split up the customer base and created revenue shortfalls for the city project (and probably for Charter as well – my theory is that they wanted to fight this trend in other cities and were willing to take a loss in Ashland to make that happen) . So, the end result now appears to be a lose-lose deal where taxpayers in Ashland have to make up shortfalls, and Charter also probably lost money.

Perspectives vary on motivations and such, but for me the moral of the story (then and now) was that it’s better for non-profit entities to cooperate than to compete. There was a win-win in Ashland when the city could hold out the *threat* of doing their own thing, forcing Charter to lower rates and offer great services. But they foolishly chose to fight, leading to the predictable lose-lose situation.

Extending this to the One Laptop project I’d sure like to see Negroponte at least *carefully examine* all the possibilities of working with or next to Intel. If profit-hungry Intel can produce these for $200 where heavily subsidized One Laptop is at $175 there may be some room here to cooperate in an effort to get the job done.

Negroponte’s motivations in my opinion are virtuous and his integrity in this is almost unimpeachable, but that does not mean he’ll make the best decisions under the changing sets of circumstances. I’d like to see more of an open mind about this one.