How many people craft different blog posts tackling the same subject from different angles and designed to appeal to different Temperaments?

How many people publish their nonfiction/business book in mind with a firm understanding of what they want the book to accomplish for them, what a book reasonably can accomplish, and what it takes to make that happen?

The simple truth is that it’s incredibly unlikely for authors to make money on their non-fiction book, but fairly common for authors to make money because of their book – IF they intelligently market their book.

Seth Godin recently wrote about Blogs, books, and the irony of short, saying essentially that business book should contain more than could be conveyed in a few blog posts, while the market essentially demands that authors be able to summarize their book within the space of a blog post.  Seth then ends the post, saying:

“This is irony (we say we want long and deep and rich but we also insist that it be condensed to a sentence) so it’s not clear what you should do about it as a marketer, other than to accept that it’s going on.”

Well, if you’d like a detailed answer to what you should do to market your book and develop a content strategy to leverage your unique views, I can think of no better authority on the subject than my friend and book marketing genius, Michael Drew.  Michael’s currently running 50 for 50 in putting his client’s books onto the New York Times Best Seller list.  And his answers on how to plan the content, writing, and marketing of a book in this brave new-media world are available through his Book Publishing 2.0 class.  The next one will be held in New York City, May 8th-10th.

Mike has given me 5 free tickets to giveaway. If you can be or are going to be in New York City those days, just comment below and we’ll pick 5 people to attend this amazing course for free.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, do you think that might have some rather profound effects on Domino’s marketing efforts?  Think you’ll be eating at Domino’s anytime soon?

What’s interesting is that the basic principle behind this was predicted not by some far-seeing futurist working in the technology field, but by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak.

Gen. Krulak coined the term “strategic corporal” to refer to the possible strategic foreign policy impact of actions taken by individual Marines in an age of universal media coverage and counter-insurgency warfare:

“In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well. His actions, therefore, will directly impact the outcome of the larger operation; and he will become, as the title of this article suggests – the Strategic Corporal.”

Since the publication of Gen Krulak’s article in 1999, the rise of cell phone video cameras, YouTube, and twitter have further amplified the potential impact of local, tactical actions of seemingly “lower-level” or front-line individuals.

Granted, minimum wage workers operate in a far less dramatic and less-threatening arena than Marines, but the above video offers a stark example of the far reaching strategic impact of their actions.

The Marine Corps response to this has always been to recruit the very best individuals possible and to push decision-making and responsibility as far down the chain of command as possible. Many successful businesses take a similar approach with their front-line workers.  And the results pay-off when the great actions of individual employees hit the social media echo chamber.

What is (or what will be) your organization’s response?

There are a lot of objections to linking, especially linking off the website. The web & the HT in HTML is all about links.

I won’t go there today.

This blog post about New York Times columnist Frank Rich titled “Frank Rich: Why I Link” is worth reading.

Why has Rich embraced linking when his peers have not? “The theory was: Why not be as transparent as possible by showing sources, when we could?” he told me recently.

That’s a philosophy followed by much of the rest of the Internet; it’s the very foundation of blogging. But most newspapers — including their top columnists — haven’t signed on. read more here…

I would like to see more journalists linking to their sources, providing background and generally acting like if they knew their work was going to appear online. What do you think?

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/12/22/linking-matters/feed/ 7 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/04/1462/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/04/1462/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:24:23 +0000 Bryan Eisenberg http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/04/1462/ Hat tip to Sam Decker for pointing out this anthropological introduction to YouTube by Prof. Mike Wesch who presented this lecture at the Library of Congress on June 23rd, 2008. This is fascinating for those interested in understanding why people do the things they do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paula Gignac, Seth Godin, Ken Wong, Joseph Jaffe, David Weinberger, David Usher, Jackie Huba, Shel Israel, John Gustavson, Christopher Loudon, Mary Maddever and our own Bryan Eisenberg were each asked to share their favorite video of the year.

Which videos were your favorites?

(To Mitch Joel, Mark Goodman, Mickael Kanfi, Aubrey Rosenhek and the entire team at Twist Image, joyeuses fêtes à vous tous! Thank you for helping to shape good ideas, as always.)

While this sounds intriguing and may cause a stir on campus, I wonder, can this really bridge the gap in national coverage between the perennial powerhouses and the “What division are they in” schools?

While it may be a start, it’s unlikely that smaller schools will reap the same long term benefits as the household names. Initially, this should increase the support from individual schools by making the games more of an event (”Let’s post that touchdown pass video on ESPNU!”), but it won’t sustain on its own. ESPNU needs to make a concerted effort to highlight videos from all schools, with no bias toward the bigger brand-name schools. If they don’t ensure that there’s fair representation, students and alumni from other schools will stop participating and the experiment will fail. If they’re not careful, ESPNU could easily cave to supply and demand, highlighting content they think viewers want to see instead of promoting the community and its members, which is exactly what drives a thriving social network like NASCAR’s.

With more and more people joining some form of social network each day, ad revenue is pouring into social media. E-Marketer estimates that social network advertising will nearly quadruple in the next 4 years. With such huge potential for a collection of niche online communities (i.e., for smaller schools and for individual sports), ESPNU has the ability to harness all of that growth potential.

If they’re going to do it right, ESPNU should adhere to the 3 triggers of word of mouth by keeping the focus on the online community and its members instead of covering the same old headline-grabbers and stories from the ESPN.com homepage.

…Facebook is now partnering with 3rd party sites and selling your information to them for money. How does this work?

Here’s a scenario: you go to Blockbuster.com and rent a movie. A little interface element pops up and tells you that Blockbuster is sending information to your Facebook account. It gives you ten seconds to say no…and then it sends it anyway. This is called “opt-out”. You only have the option to say no. It sends your personal information by default. “Opt-in” would be where no action is taken by default.

You then log into your Facebook account, and it says that “Blockbuster is sending a story to your account”. You have the option to say no to this, but it is not apparent at all. In fact, Facebook gives you the option “Don’t show me this again”, which seems to suggest that they agree this message is annoying. They have designed this screen for you to focus on the pain of having to read a silly message and dismiss it. But what isn’t very clear is that when you do so you’re also giving implicit instruction that all services can send information to your news feed in the future. This is a HUGE deal to Facebook…this is how they’re going to make money. [Continue reading "Facebook's Brilliant but Evil Design"... ]

It’s an important read for anyone who uses, or advertises with, the popular social networking site.

When I first heard of the site, I said it sounded like “the ad industry’s collective Wet 2.0 dream.” The beta seems to reflect that impression, with a heavy dose of racy* and/or funny and/or creative ads, most of which seem more suited to winning awards than selling product. But there are exceptions, and it is nice to see a venue for (at least some of the) commercials that exceed 30 seconds. And since the US lives inside its own media bubble, it’s good to see a new venue for international commercials like this one from the Barcelona City Council:

Sure, they probably weren’t thinking of someone like me when they made the ad, but suffice it to say, there’s now an even slimmer chance you’ll ever find me double-parked in Barcelona.

Then there are funny and memorable ads like this one for Skittles:

There’s also a bit of irony here for brands who’ve tried to push their own ads on specialty micro-sites; brands like Budweiser, which spent G-d-knows-what creating Bud.tv, only to have me see this ad for the first time on Firebrand instead:

If GrokDotCom was the first place you saw this ad, that could mean one of at least two things:

1. Firebrand could be a success as a destination spot for branded content.
2. Bud.tv shouldn’t make people register and log in, and then not allow bloggers to embed the video (something I’m presuming because I refuse to register for the site).

Here’s the Firebrand “Manifesto”:

We love commercials. We submit, with rare exception, that they’re the best stuff on TV. In under a minute you get the best directors, the sickest special effects, the funniest writers—what’s not to love?

We love commercials. 1984. Mean Joe Green. Whasssup? You know you love them, too. So let’s gather ‘round the best of them. Sort them. Judge them. Share them. Love them.

We love commercials. The eye candy. The laugh out louds. The did-you-just-see-thats. The most loved, the most emailed, the ones we still talk about today. Let every day be Super Bowl Monday.

Welcome to Firebrand.com. (The best stuff on TV, online. )

Seems a bit heavy if you don’t consider the ads to be the best thing about TV. But that’s pretty common. The seductions of overstated “About Us” copy when there’s no copy on the homepage (as if to say, “You must know who we are, right?”) are hard for most startups to resist. Since it’s a beta launch, I’ll reserve judgment for now. Still, they might want to run that through the We-We Monitor.

What do you think? Will Firebrand go the way of Bud.tv, or does it help to have all these commercials in one place?

[*The first commercial that was showing when I went to the site this morning was for Naturisme.fr, a French "naturist" site -- and no, I don't mean organic food in the literal sense -- which wasn't exactly work-safe by "violence good, nudity bad" American cultural standards.]

We’re a tad biased, but this really is a great city to play host to ad:tech’s 10,000+ attendees (if you can believe it). For better or for worse, New York is a giant fishbowl of advertising messages. It’s everywhere — from the subway, to entire sides of buildings, to the Men’s room. It’s a place where multi-channel campaigns take shape in an instant. And when the message is off, you don’t have to be a marketer to notice.The result is sometimes inspiring, often annoying, and — for those who grok — a never-ending source of marketing do’s and don’ts.

If you’ve ever wondered about what it takes to keep NYC’s low:tech ad world moving, take a peek at this cool video from the aptly named Good Magazine.

If you’re in town for the conference, drop us a line in the comments to let us know what you’ve enjoyed or what you’d like to see covered, and we’ll try to accommodate.

[Special thanks to Steve Hall from Adrants for inviting me to guest blog with ad:tech.]

With a heavy sigh, she heads toward the subway, back to Tetris Land, when something catches her eye. Is it? Could it be? Nintendo is walking straight toward her. Does Nintendo actually . . . see her? Nintendo strides right up, makes eye contact and, (gasp!) starts a conversation.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Don’t you just love a good love story? (Sniff.) The best part is that this is no fairy tale. According to Advertising Age, The Nintendo Wii ended the summer selling 403,600 units in August, compared to 276,700 units for Xbox and 130,600 for PlayStation 3. Wii unit sales to date have topped 9 million. And, to top it all off, Ad Age recently crowned Nintendo “Marketer of the Year.”

While everyone seems to love the Wii, women have been especially vocal with their praise. Nintendo specifically reached out to women early on to enslist them as ambassadors for the Wii.

Nintendo executives and designers conjured up a new target. And it began to look like, of all people, a mom. They settled on the household power purchaser — or at least the one with veto power.

“When Nintendo contacted me, I said to them, ‘You must have the wrong person; I don’t even know what Nintendo does,’” says Tracey Clark, a mom, photographer, and blogger who was one of the first Wii Ambassadors.

The “ambassador” title, though lofty sounding, basically meant hosting a Wii party for 30 or so like-minded friends. Ms. Butler’s, “Moms Night Out” drew 27 maternal units — no kids or dads — and was a “huge, smashing success,” says Ms. Butler, mother of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. “Everyone who came who didn’t already own a Wii … ordered one or two. Plus a lot of them are bloggers, and they all blogged about what a great experience it was.” Ms. Clark says the same thing happened at her party.

So what is it about the Wii that women love so much? Karen Bennett has some thoughts:

The revolutionary Nintendo Wii launched in late 2006 has introduced an new concept in video gaming and has seen more and more women getting involved. The physical nature of the game play with the Nintendo Wii has the added appeal of ‘achieving something’ – maybe the thinking is that you can get fit and lose calories while having fun, and all from the comfort of your front room! It would certainly be more cost effective than going to the gym. The social side of gameplay with the Nintendo Wii creates another plus point also, as the whole family can get involved, removing the ‘isolation’ factor of other video games consoles.

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? The Wii ranked 8th on the women’s top 10 list, receiving 9% of the vote and beating the likes of a new Apple laptop and TiVo.

And the Wiimen lived happily ever after.

The End

Atwood shows that YouTube’s copyright tips page, although refreshingly plain-spoken, is a bit self-righteous, considering that, as he puts it, 90% of the content on YouTube is ripped-off copyrighted material…

It’s completely glossed over on the YouTube copyright page in favor of 100% original content, but the loophole in copyright is fair use. Under the banner of fair use, you could legally upload a video without the copyright holder’s permission. Anyone who contributes anything to the web should have the four factors of fair use commited [sic] to memory by now:

1. the purpose of the use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the relative amount of the portion used
4. the market effect of the use on the copyrighted work

Atwood goes on to explain why “The typical YouTube clip does well on the last two factors of the fair use test, but utterly fails the first two.” It’s an eye-opener for anyone who creates original content.

Meanwhile, our attitudes toward the media landscape continues to shift according to generational fault lines. In AdvertisingAge, Mike Vorhaus shares some telling figures:

Americans also believe their use of online video has cannibalized TV. Overall, more than 15% of respondents say they watch TV less as a result of watching online videos. And 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that online video is cannibalizing their TV viewing. In comparison, fewer than 11% of 45- to 54-year-olds report such cannibalization.

Hmm… Does it count as watching TV if you’re watching TV on YouTube?

They claim to be, “QVC for the MySpace generation.”

Now, before you gag, consider that they might be onto something. This isn’t just another startup. Firebrand is backed by Microsoft, NBC Universal, GE’s Peacock Equity fund, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, and the ION television network.

Pardon me while I quote the press release at length:

“Firebrand enters the media landscape as the era of the commercial interruption is coming to an end,” says John A. Lack, CEO/Co-Founder. “We curate the best TV commercials and promotions from around the world – connecting consumers directly with their favorite brands in an integrated environment.”

“On Firebrand, you’ll see more car chases, explosions, gags, drama, heroes, Oscar-winning actors, directors and producers in an hour than in a month of HBO,” says [Chief Creative Officer/Co-Founder Román] Viñoly. “To be true to our consumers, you can’t pay us to air a bad spot. ”

Meanwhile, Steve Hall from Adrants sounds off:

We tried really hard not to laugh when . . . Roman Vinoly said, “We program TV spots like a DJ spins music in a club. There is a rhythm and flow to it.” In an attempt to spin Firebrand as something other than a massive database of commercials, Vinoly adds, “On Firebrand, you’ll see more car chases, explosions, gags, drama, heroes, Oscar-winning actors, directors and producers in an hour than in a month of HBO.” Right, dude. They’re still [f@%!^g] commercials. Not The Sopranos.

Hyperbole aside, it sounds like the ad industry’s collective Wet 2.0 dream, does it not?

Experience Curve’s Karl Long reminds us that the first step is a doozy:

If they create original, edgy, hysterical, and brilliant commercials for it then they have a shot. I think it’s more likely they are going to recycle their 30 second spots that less people are watching every year in which case they will go the same way as BudTV. They have some great investors behind them . . . and advertisers like BMW, Coke, Ebay etc. yet the internet is famous for burning through enormous amounts of money on “big bang” efforts like this. If they don’t get it right out of the gate it will be a losing battle.

But that’s where the “so-crazy-it-just-might-work” factor comes into play. Think about it: They’ll suddenly need tons of content. Where will it all come from? With Firebrand claiming editorial integrity, it could be a chance for smaller brands to shine. Big-budget brands will dump money on it regardless, but creativity could be a currency of its own.

Consider Ice.com executive VP of marketing Pinny Gniwisch, who was recently asked about his YouTube campaign:

Gniwisch is measuring the success of his efforts in the number of views Ice.com’s videos have received on YouTube.com – about 50,000 altogether — in the 6,000 YouTubers who signed up for an Ice.com sweepstakes promoted with one video series release, and the 16,000 who have signed up for “Pinny’s World,” asking to be notified whenever Ice.com puts up new video on YouTube.

“If I can get enough people to watch my channel, I can eventually throw a product video that is both entertaining and ROI-driven into the mix,” figures Gniwisch. “As more people register to your channel, your ability to succeed as an ROI-based investment is more likely.”

If a company like Ice.com can submit content to Firebrand, it could be something bigger than the next go-to spot for Super Bowl ads.

Firebrand has offered us a sneak preview in the coming weeks, so we’ll let you know what we think soon enough.

[GrokDotCom interviewed Pinny about his adventures on YouTube. To hear how how he did it, listen to the podcast.]

When Halo 2 was released for Microsoft (MSFT) XBox in 2004, it broke the record for the highest-grossing launch of any type of media product (yes, really), generating $125 million in revenue — 2.4 million copies — in 24 hours.

And you thought Titanic was big? Ha!

“Mr. Softy” Strikes Back

Lest another pundit call them a “sleeping giant”, Read/WriteWeb points to a Last100 piece that sheds some light on how Microsoft is leveraging Halo 3:

Another product that has benefited from the buzz surrounding Halo 3 is Silverlight, Microsoft’s platform for building rich Internet applications. Like Flash, Java, and many other platforms, Silverlight requires users to install a browser plug-in before they can use it. This presents a common problem — you need users to have the plug-in before developers jump on board, and you need developers on board building great apps for the platform before users want to install the plug-in. Microsoft decided to leverage Halo 3 to help solve this problem. Over the last few weeks, lots of Halo 3 related content has been made available such as trailers, promos, and an online manual. The catch? You’ve got to have Silverlight installed before you can view any of the content. It’s a very smart move. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the early installs of Silverlight can be attributed to fans eager for Halo 3 content.Microsoft’s partners have gotten in on the action too. Mountain Dew launched “Mountain Dew Game Fuel” on August 13th, the first beverage co-branded with a video game. 7-Eleven has been offering three Halo 3-branded Slurpee cups, and has been part of the promotional campaign being run with Mountain Dew and Doritos. Burger King started offering Halo 3-themed packaging yesterday, and will continue to do so right through October 22nd. Other companies that are participating in the Halo 3 campaign include Pontiac and Comcast.

(micro)Soft Money for Facebook?

Meanwhile, Microsoft may be showing its “Mr. Softy” side a bit, now that it’s finally getting serious with Facebook. Let’s hope they cut a deal soon. The constant, boring speculation over exactly how rich Mark Zuckerberg will be is beyond tiresome. Thankfully, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher agrees. Get a load of this critique:

…I believe Silicon Valley can now be considered to be at Delusional Level Red. Or green, given all the cash that is being shoved in Facebook’s direction now.

Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect.Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am.

Indeed, it is growing its media business nicely, with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way.

Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far.

How do I know this? According to many sources, Google is struggling to make ends meet in its own sweetheart guaranteed ad deal with Facebook rival MySpace, which is much larger, and Google has the best monetization engine out there.

Ouch! Swisher goes on to mention other problems, insisting Facebook’s potential is not actual, that most techies weren’t popular in high school and, therefore, overestimate the importance of stuff that seems important to them, and even breaks out the calculator to show that the company’s pre-money valuation is actually $525 million — a far cry from the $15 billion for which they’re rumored to be holding out.

Reiterating her stance from an earlier post, Swisher advises Zuckerberg to “…take the dumb money and run as fast as your flip-flops will carry you.”

Facebook Subpoenaed

In other Facebook news, CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern reports that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed Facebook, claiming they’re not doing enough to protect kids from sexual predators:

“My office is concerned that Facebook’s promise of a safe website is not consistent with its performance in policing its site and responding to complaints,” Cuomo said. “Parents have a right to know what their children will encounter on a website that is aggressively marketed as safe.”

The office setup several “underage” profiles on Facebook and within days began receiving chat requests of a graphic nature. In subpoenaing the company, Cuomo has asked for complaints received by Facebook regarding inappropriate solicitation of underage users and inappropriate content on the site, as well as any responses by the website. The subpoena also calls for all Facebook policies on user safety and all representations made to consumers about the safety of the site.

What makes Facebook less safe than, say, MySpace — which deleted 29,000 registered sex offenders in July — remains unclear.

[Tired of reading other blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fmiTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Buzz Bin.]

Information World Review reports that the German Wikipedia will have “trusted editors” by year’s end. The move from community editing and after-the-fact fact-checking “…could be applied to the English language version of Wikipedia if feedback from users is positive.”

Resource Shelf’s Gary Price reminds us that this move has been in the works for some time:

Three years ago next month, Jimmy Wales was quoted in Red Herring saying that editors to review content were coming.

Wikipedia’s [Founder] Mr. [Jimmy] Wales has said that next year he will begin using editors to review the web site’s content for accuracy and allow users to rate contributions to the encyclopedia for their quality. ‘It’s complex because it’s a social community, and feelings can be hurt,’ said Mr. Wales, but he added that the change will be critical when Wikipedia content is put on more permanent media, such as CD-ROM disks.”

As those who follow this blog may know, we have mixed feelings about Wikipedia, especially after all of the dirty edits uncovered by Wikiscanner, the edit-tracking software developed by Cal Tech grad student Virgil Griffith. Maybe they’re an easy target, but Wikipedia’s hugely important. History, as well as obscure definitions, can now be written by winners and losers alike — for better and for worse.

But the transition to “trusted editors” dredges up a new batch of questions: Who will these editors be? Where will they come from? Why should we trust them? Who edits the editors?

Perhaps a more interesting question is why Wikipedia has captured so much global mindshare in the first place. For one thing, they do a lot of simple things right. While linking to Wikipedia helps to assure they consistently rank well in search results, Search Engine Journal’s Jon Kelly argues that liking to Wikipedia can be good for you, too:

Short URLs. Yes, it’s as simple as that. The shorter the link, the easier it is to deal with when referencing. I know others have some fancy way of getting links into their posts, but I still do a lot of copy and paste and it’s easier with a shorter URL.

No Parameters / No Numbers. In a recent post, I wanted to link to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, mostly to help make it clear that my story was a shaggy dog (ah, that was an easy link!)

He then shows the URL’s for Amazon and Google Books, both of which are hilariously long. Some other reasons…

Momentum. I need a link to make a point. I Google. I check the top 3-4 listings. Guess who’s always one of the choices? Thus the additional links build on the present ranking.

Laziness. Honestly, I think most bloggers just can’t be bothered to find the perfect reference on a subject. Good enough really is good enough if the link is just serving as a bit of background on something you think might be too esoteric to be familiar to all readers.

How do you feel about linking to Wikipedia? Does the idea of having “trusted editors” turn you off, or is it a good thing?

[Hat tip to Search Engine Land for linking us to the Resource Shelf post, which linked us to Information World Review.]

That’s great. But how?

After reading comScore’s methodology overview, a 2-pager with scarce detail — if you don’t mind wading through jargon and registering for the download, click here — I’m stumped. From what’s been announced so far, it’s too early to say whether they’re onto something. The real story will unfold once comScore coughs up the data.

Meanwhile, on his Micro Persuasion blog, Edelman PR’s Steve Rubel shares his views on this research:

Based on a [sic] informal analysis, my belief is that many online communities, bloggers, social networks will never attract a critical mass of advertisers because they are not set up properly to attract visitors who have a commercial intent to buy products and services. Online media is not sold this way now, but I bet it will be in the very near future.

Today, most advertisers size up community sites, blogs and social networks using traditional media buying models – namely, reach and frequency. Unfortunately, the reality is that many Web 2.0 sites, can’t deliver marketers the numbers they want because of the effect of Long Tail [define]. It’s simple supply and demand economics at work. This is why efforts like the one announced by comScore and Federated Media are fundamentally flawed.

Enter (Edelman client) Microsoft. In order for advertisers to assess a blog’s value, Rubel suggests they use a tool developed by Microsoft AdCenter Labs that claims to measure Online Commercial Intent by using “…terabytes of search data to calculate the likelihood of a web site to attract buyers.”

According to the Microsoft tool, Amazon visitors have a 52% intent to buy, or at least find information about buying something. Very cool. Too bad it’s not so reliable (yet, anyway).

I tried to repeat Rubel’s results for several of the sites he mentioned and, in most cases, my results differed from moment to moment. That’s not to say he’s lying. It just seems that, depending on when you search, results vary as much as 20%. Try it out for yourself if you’d like to compare your results to Rubel’s:

Consumerist – 49% of visitors have a commercial intent
Gizmodo – 47%
Autoblog.com – 45%
Treehugger – 41%
Techmeme – 41%
Engadget – 40%
Gridskipper – 38%
YouTube – 38%
TechCrunch.com – 37%
digg.com – 34%
del.icio.us – 29%
PerezHilton.com – 27%
Wikipedia – 14%
Flickr – 14%
Facebook – 10%
Twitter – 5%

Although it’s nice to see GrokDotCom come in at 49%* — give or take 5% — I wonder what all those terabytes can really tell us about niche visitor intent and/or buying modality.

Since we blog about buying online, it’s not a huge surprise that Grok did so well. But at a certain point, volume matters. Just ask celebrity blogger Perez Hilton (a great example from Rubel). Do you think his advertisers care about e-commerce buying modalities? Perhaps, but they must have some sense of whose eyeballs they’re getting, how many, and where they shop without waiting for comScore’s or Microsoft’s data to salt their spreadsheets.

But that’s the point. An entertainment blog has more in common with TV than Wikipedia. Is PerezHilton.com niche media simply because it’s a blog? Not really.

Sometimes volume combines with relevance to create something real. For instance, a search engine’s job isn’t to help you search, it’s supposed to help you find things. In 2003, from data collected by WebSideStory (now Visual Sciences), we found that Google was the lowest-converting search engine for e-commerce. Ask Jeeves all ya want. More people still prefer Google.

*The half of you who intend, at least partially, to hire us should do it.

First, a little background.

In Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Jeff & Bryan Eisenberg compare traditional, mass media advertising methods (i.e., “push” marketing) to Persuasion Architecture’s use of “pull” marketing. With repetition — and a marginally effective message — ads were once able to create an association in the audience’s minds between…

a) a particular need or want, and;
b) the product’s ability to satisfy that need or want.

They did this using the exact same mechanism Pavlov tapped into when he created an association in the mind of his dogs between the ring of a bell and the serving of food. Done correctly, this type of advertising can reach prospective customers before they’re in the market for your product or service, causing them — once they finally have a need for what you sell — to think of you first and feel good about their decision.

It’s called branding, and it works. But the problems with branding in today’s world are many.

First of all, mass media is an illusion. Thanks to a fragmented media landscape — narrowcasting, long-tails, etc. — most companies don’t have the budget to reach enough people with enough repetition to make branding an efficient option. Secondly, people are using technology to screen out ads that are pushed at them. Because they can, audiences (understandably) don’t wish to be interrupted and now have the means to prevent the interruptions altogether.

Pull marketing, on the other hand, capitalizes on an audience’s existing desire for a product or service and creates a strong enough scent trail (define) to “pull” the customer through her buying process. You don’t have to work to plant an associative memory in the mind of the dog between the scent of raw meat and the satisfaction of his hunger. It’s already there; you just have to make sure the dog can follow the scent all the way to the food.

When buying process is satisfying, it’s often repeated. Repeated satisfaction (not repeated ads) creates brand affinity. This aspect of pull marketing eliminates much of the requirement to repeat an advertising message or to try to “break through the clutter” of ads being pushed at people. You’re going with the flow of a prospects attention and desires rather than trying to commandeer it.

The challenge of pull marketing is to correctly presume, and match, customer intent. What are people really intending to do when they search on this or that term? How do your prospective customers think about and describe their problems? if you misinterpret intent, the rest of your efforts at creating relevant scent trails will be in vain.

Pull marketing won’t reach potential customers before they’re in the market for your what your brand offers. If they’re not aware they need, or will need, what you sell, they won’t search for you — and they’ll be unlikely to pick up on your scent trail. Of course, loads of repeatedly satisfied customers have been known to create word-of-mouth that reaches more people, but the question remains: How do you engage prospects — no, that’s not an oxymoron — in an age when push advertising has become prohibitively expensive?

Let’s get back to the NY Times article and problem with sites like VeryFunnyAds.com:

1) Viewer Intent.

Visitors to these sites come there with the intention of finding entertaining ads. They’re looking for jokes. That’s the itch they’re trying to scratch. They’re clearly not coming there from an interest in the products being advertised. So, pull marketing is out, as is any meaningful attempt at conversion.

But, hey, at least they’re watching the ads, right? You’ve now got their attention and you’re not paying painfully high media rates to get it. How about these platforms as a vehicle for push marketing?

2) Repetition.

First, even before mentioning repetition, let’s talk about relevance. Funny/entertaining ads are only useful when the humor is integral to the brand’s Unique Value Proposition (more on UVP here). If humor is an effective way to convey the brand’s benefits, the viewer remembers the product’s promise. But if the humor strictly gratuitous, or only tangentially relevant, it usually falls flat. And when that happens, listen closely. That’s not the cash register in the background; it’s the sound of crickets and tumbleweed.

How many times will they need to see your ad before they feel the product will satisfy their need? Compare that answer to the amount of times you — or anyone — is likely to watch the same video at VeryFunnyAds.com. Two times? Three?

Does anyone need to tell you that’s not enough? Basically, you’d need an entire campaign of funny ads in order to get enough repetition for this “pull” attempt at branding to work properly. This can be done, but it’s a tall order. For instance, I loved this ad, but it fell flat with different personality types.

Google calls the ads not just “engaging” but “viewer-friendly” — which, in PR-speak, roughly translates to, “Well, they’re not as annoying as they could be.”

Of course, in-video banners aren’t a new concept; VideoEgg has been doing it for awhile now. Yes, this approach is less annoying than “preroll” or “midroll” ads that interrupt the experience — and “postroll” ads are just silly, unless the idea is to push people away from the site altogether. Besides, YouTube had to do something, right? How long could they go before denying affiliates — and themselves — ad revenue beyond traditional banner ads?

But can anything that interrupts a 2-minute video really be considered “viewer-friendly”? Rough Type’s Nick Carr sums it up perfectly:

[...] That’s like saying that being hit on the head once with a hammer is a pleasant experience because it’s not as bad as being hit on the head twice with a hammer.I liked the reaction of the first viewer to leave a comment on the YouTube blog: “yuck.” If you’re going to stick ads on the videos, go ahead and stick ads on the videos. But, please, don’t tell us you’re doing it on our behalf. We’re not idiots.

Over at Publishing 2.0, meanwhile, Scott Karp hammers on the need for relevance with in-video ads.

Not being interruptive is the very LEAST that online advertising needs to do in order to thrive — what it really needs to do is be RELEVANT.

The beauty of search advertising is that the format and the relevancy of the ad are PERFECTLY aligned with that of the “editorial” content, through the miracle of search keywords.

That will surely be the case in some instances of InVideo ads, but in many if not most instances, the ads will have nothing to do with the editorial content — and the relevancy to any individual viewer, unlike keyword targeted search ads, will be hit or miss.

And there’s a BIG problem with low relevancy — advertisers only pay if someone views the ads.

Still, in the Times article, VideoEgg’s chief marketing officer, Troy Young, claims that “Viewers click on them at a rate roughly five times higher than banner ads.”

Then what?

Once again, the conversation about online ad placement centers around a lesser-of-evils argument. That’s no surprise. The old media concept of relevance remains tied to demographics rather than customer motivations; a far better anchor. Create a clickable, holographic video widget that transmits banner ads across continents and click-through rates remain meaningless if the ads inspire fatigue instead of action.

UPDATE: Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire says YouTube overlay ads don’t work.

[...] Microsoft has been heavily focused on its own Zune service in recent months, to the apparent detriment of Urge, which had few subscribers. MTV itself no longer invested significant resources in Urge after Zune’s debut [...]

Perhaps, but could this leave room for Yahoo to swoop in? I’ll explain in a moment. But first, the back story…

In the end, if that’s what this is, Urge never really had a chance. Microsoft never had much to offer MTV — unless you’re one of three 16 year-olds named Kristen, who are, like, on their way to Starbucks to wirelessly “share” (read: get limited access to) the new Avril Lavigne album on their Zunes. Is it any surprise that MTV stopped investing in Urge? Why throw more money down the Zune hole? That’s why dropping Microsoft makes perfect sense.

Getting rid of the Urge business model (”get music from people who get music”) and its staff, on the other hand, would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unlike RealNetwork’s subscription-based Rhapsody service, Urge is (was?) focused on hiring some of the top writers in the music biz to compile fresh, genre-specific playlists for subscribers. Urge fancies (fancied?) itself as the new version of the local record store, where the guy behind the counter always knew what to recommend. Rhapsody, meanwhile, relies on content from AMG (allmusic.com) — which ultimately serves as high-quality filler for a lackluster customer experience.

Now, here’s how Yahoo could help them win: Yesterday, Yahoo announced the ability to sample music files with Yahoo! Audio Search. Combine that search functionality with custom content and playlists from the (former?) Urge team and all of the and Rhapsody/AMG content teams and you’ve got something close to a one-stop-shop, subscription-based iTunes competitor. That would also be enough to make #2 music site Emusic.com sweat. MTV may be the biggest youth market brand, but Yahoo still has the largest audience online. Besides, striking a deal with MTV/Real would be a lot cheaper than buying Facebook!

Regardless of how this shakes out, kudos to MTV for side-stepping Microsoft. This is also great news for Rhapsody, as they go from umbilical cord to power chord.

UPDATE: Reuters reports that Wal-Mart will now sell DRM-free downloads for $0.94 — that’s $0.25 cheaper per song than iTunes.

DOUBLE-UPDATE: MTV, RealNetworks and Verizon Wireless have officially announced Rhapsody America, a multi-channel network that will pool resources from MTV’s Urge, Real’s Rhapsody, and Verizon’s V CAST music service.

A few of my favorite revelations:

BBC censors excerpt from BBC-commissioned report criticizing the BBC’s tendency to self-censor. There may be some irony here.

Nortel – Accounting scandal, what accounting scandal?? This sweeping rewrite of Nortel’s page removes all mention of the 2000-2004 accounting scandal that resulted in investigations from the RCMP and the Attorney General, the CEO being fired for cause, numerous directors being shown the door, etc.

Ronald McDonald orders deletion of McDonald’s criticisms. They replaced the critical and best-selling book “Fast Food Nation” with the more friendly book “McDonald’s: Behind the Arches”. They also removed a link to anti-McDonald’s site “McSpotlight”.

Don’t be a Web 2.0 lemming!

Sure, Wikipedia is directionally helpful. For instance, I learned that lemmings aren’t suicidal, they’re just stupid. As you may know, the rumors of these rodents jumping off cliffs en masse are overstated. If you’re looking for myth coverage, Wikipedia’s the place to be. Meanwhile, MSN’s Encarta tells us that lemmings “…swim lakes and rivers, cross mountains, and eat all vegetation in their path. Eventually, some reach the sea; attempting to swim it as if it were a river, they are drowned.”

Reminds us of the a few corporations, does it not?

It’s not surprising that governments and corporations are being outed for their Wikipedia spin-jobs; what’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner. How is it that Wikipedia couldn’t have done this themselves long ago?

Unfortunately, there’s no Wikipdeia entry for “wikiality,” one of Stephen Colbert’s invented words. Still, this video can illustrate the true PR costs of “wikilobbying”.

It’s a tragic tale of copyright hygiene turned hijinks.

You can read the full story at E! Online if you want, but NewTeeVee’s Jackson West gives us a fine example of truthiness (define) in action with this spoof on what might happen when Colbert and Stewart testify in court:

New York Southern District court, the Honorable Louis Stanton presiding. Defense counsel Philip Beck calls Stephen Colbert to the witness stand.

Philip Beck: Mr. Colbert, did you not encourage viewers to re-use material from your show?

Stephen Colbert: Yes, but I didn’t ask them to put their work on YouTube for just anyone to watch for free. I asked them to send their submissions to me. As the legal property of Viacom International, my plan was to publish a special commemorative Colbert Report: Green Screen Challenge DVD, available for only $9.95 exclusively at Wal-Mart, where you can find everyday low prices. My friend Bill Gates was working on an especially restrictive new Digital Rights Management technology just for the occasion — it would check to make sure you weren’t on Homeland Security’s “No Fly” list, preventing terrorists from funding their attacks on freedom with profits from illegal piracy.

Beck: But wouldn’t that amount to free work on the part of your viewers for your benefit?

Colbert: Look, profits make me happy, and I have a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. And how better to make profits than to have people working for you for free? I’m a traditionalist, and as a country we have a long tradition of making people work for free — and I, good sir, am proud to support other people who are willing to give their lives to protect those values.

Beck: So you do believe that fans posting clips from shows serves a promotional purpose?

Stewart: Whoa, doctor! When pundits with books to sell and candidates with a demographic to reach out to agree to appear on the show, it’s with the understanding that I’m beholden to the same media overlords that they are. As a fake news professional, I treat that obligation with respect. You can’t trust the fake news amateurs on the Internet to provide the kind of nuanced context that, say, a double-entendre in an over-the-shoulder title graphic provides.

Keep reading… if you can handle the truthiness.

UPDATE — Here’s how the Daily Show parodied the Viacom/YouTube suit. The video has been slightly doctored by a fan, making it a supposedly legal parody of a parody. (Is there an intellectual property attorney in the house?)

We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we’ll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as “comments” so readers know it’s the individual’s perspective, rather than part of a journalist’s report.

Looks to me like another opportunity for transparency and spin to get pureed in the media blender — for better and for worse. What do you think?

First, Publishing 2.0’s Scott Karp opines the New York Times‘ decision to drop TimesSelect and return to publishing the entirety of its content online — for free. Says Karp:

The ability to charge for content in non-digital media like newspapers, magazines, and cable TV was based on a limited supply of content and monopoly control of distribution. The web and digital media have generated an overabundance of content — not just a spike in high-quality content but, more disruptively, and even larger spike in “pretty good” or “good enough” content. The web has of course utterly destroyed destroyed distribution monopolies. Anyone can create and distribute content on a meaningful scale.

[...] The WSJ.com remains the last great bastion of paid content on the web, and with the News Corp acquisition, the pressure to tear down the walls will likely be too great to resits [sic]. Even if it’s true that the WSJ has the highest quality business content bar none, the web is so awash in good, great, and utterly crappy business content, all free, that WSJ is holding onto its paid subscribers through sheer brand strength alone.

Indeed. Of course, there’s already been plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking about what Murdoch should/can/will do with the Wall Street Journal now that he’s majority shareholder of Dow Jones (DJ), but this Silicon Ally Insider has the best one we’ve seen thus far; a 10-point plan on how to fix Dow Jones from mogul Ted Leonsis, whose very first suggestion is to drop WSJ’s subscription model in order to scale.

Karp believes mobile is the next frontier for free content, and that long-form video content (e.g., movies) remains safe for now. Regardless, all of this raises the stickiest point of the old media probate battle: Should content be free?

UPDATE: Over at paidContent.org, another great post about the numbers at stake if WSJ were set free.

DESPITE an increase in entertainment choices, watching television remains as popular as ever, according to the OECD’s “Communications Outlook 2007”. In 15 of the 18 countries for which data were collected, broadcast-TV viewing increased from 1997 to 2005. Only in Spain, New Zealand and South Korea did people watch less. America takes the couch-potato crown, with households goggling at the box for an eye-straining average of 8 hours and 11 minutes every day. The nearest rival, Turkey, only manages an average of five hours a day.

It would also be interesting to know how many people are online while they watch TV. It’s hard to get people to pay attention when their is so much media coming at them.

In just a few years, the company has seen a lot of change in the video market, from Google’s YouTube acquisition to an influx of competition from newer startups. Through it all, the company has stayed true to its vision, letting fans upload videos of refrigerators that can launch a cold beer right into your hand.

What could be better than a beer-launching fridge? Well, unlike YouTube — which has made some gestures to share the wealth — Metacafe pays the folks who submit video as much as thousands of dollars per month.

Bryan & Arik discuss:

• Why the video market is no longer just for skateboarding dogs.
• The rise of Metacafe, and user-generated content in general.
• How to make a living by submitting video to Metacafe.
• Viral marketing, and how to create videos that people want to watch.
• The “micro-boredom” epidemic, and how to fix it.

Click here to listen to Arik Czerniak & Bryan Eisenberg

To download this podcast for your next flight, car ride, or trip to the beach, right-click here

If you have any follow-up questions for Arik, let us know in the comments and we’ll do a follow-up post with his answers!

The music industry’s in trouble because, it turns out, this Internet thing’s got legs. Record companies have had over a decade to learn how to market online, but they haven’t.

When I read this Rolling Stone piece on the record industry’s decline, a perennial topic for the post-Napster music journalist, I wondered what Don Dodge’s reaction might be. If anyone out there understands the fallout of the music industry’s “sue first, question our strategy later” mentality, it’s Dodge. These days, he heads business development for Microsoft’s (MSFT) Emerging Business Team. But in a recent past life, he was VP of product development for (the original) Napster.

So I forwarded the article with the expressed hope that he would blog it and Dodge was kind enough to oblige, and even linked to a 2005 piece about lessons to be learn from Napster’s demise.

The goal at Napster was to be the online distribution channel for the record labels, much like iTunes and the *new* Napster is today. There were several offers made to the labels that would have given them the vast majority of all of the revenue. The numbers were staggering. We had over 50 million users, many of whom were willing to pay $5 per month or $1 per download for digital music. That translates to about $250M a month or $3B per year. Even if Napster kept just 10% of the revenue that would be $300M per year against expenses of less than $10M. At the stock market multiples of the day that would have been a $15B IPO.

Now that’s a tough pill for any entrepreneur to swallow, but it gives Dodge sage wisdom on the iTunes shake-up:

This is a very high stakes poker game. Apple’s iTunes service would be seriously crippled without Universal’s vast music library. However, iTunes brought in about 15 percent of Universal’s first quarter revenue, or about $200 million.

…Universal Music has a good point about music pricing. They believe that some new hit songs are worth more than 99 cents and some older songs could be worth less, or specially priced for a promotion. They want the ability to set prices for their own product. Wow, what a concept!

Dodge sees Universal’s willingness to take a stand on this issue as a good thing for consumers. It also provides a healthy reality check for Steve Jobs in the wake of iPhone mania. This line from Business Week’s Stephen Wildstrom sums it up:

[Apple] might still be able to sell the special-edition U2 iPod, but the Irish rockers’ music would no longer be available from the iTunes Store.

Money for nothin’ and your clicks for free*

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting the William Morris Agency’s Worldwide Head of International Music, Ed Bicknell; a man as renowned in the music biz for his sharp tongue and quick wit as he is for managing the 100X platinum British rockers, Dire Straits. (For instance, Bicknell recently joked to the London Times that he “…got into this business for sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, now all I do is look at computer printouts of P Diddy’s record sales.”) Bicknell was holding court amid a younger panel at the In The City of New York conference. After listening to him wax on about how much he despised the arrogance of record label executives and how most bands don’t even have the common sense to fire a drummer because his feet stink up the tour bus, I had to ask what I thought was a serious question: “Why does any up-and-coming band need a record label to promote them when the William Morris Agency would do a better job?”

OK, so maybe I did go on to explain why bands need creativity and good marketing more than they need the rock star trappings that folks at major labels or the William Morris Agency can provide. But my point was that, with all the hype about iTunes, people act as though it’s the only credible source for paid music downloads. I talked about how iTunes has ignored the long tail by not cutting enough distribution deals. Then someone raised their hand to point out that iTunes “…only accounts for 15% of album sales.” Only 15% of global market share (um, that’s quite a lot for one channel) and they’re still not doing it right? If you can’t get the Beatles–and, soon enough, U2–imagine what else you can’t get at iTunes.

The thing is, iTunes exists to support the iPod and, although it’s done quite a good job of that, Apple doesn’t have the clout to reshape the music business on its terms, but very soon–with or without them–you will. Ease of distribution is iTunes’ premier selling-point, but not if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a straight answer from Bicknell–who promptly stopped taking questions–but sometimes that in itself is an answer. Much like the print world, the music business is floundering from an early lack of online vision. But things are coming around. The first step is for content industries to realize they’re not at war with the Internet; they’re at war with bad marketing.

[*Limited time offer. See Dire Straits' 1985 sardonic pop anthem "Money For Nothing" for details.]