October 2004 Archives
As I was watching the animated cartoon, SonicX with the my son this morning, I was quite surprised to hear talk about blogs. The villan in the cartoon discovered his grandfather's online diary. There, this scoundrel found out his family history and he wasn't happy. I won't ruin the surprise for you. You'll have to watch SoncX to find out what happened next.
The moral of the story is be careful what you write in your blog. You never know what evil doer is reading it.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 30, 2004 9:59 AM
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October 29, 2004
Pheedo is participating in a coast-to-coast roadshow with the American Marketing Association. They have assembled an a-list group of knowledge speakers on the subject of blogs and marketing. If you are a marketer looking to see how a blog can benefit your business, this is your opportunity.
Event Description
Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website is an important one-day workshop designed to help marketers understand blogs and their marketing implications. Industry leaders will share their experiences with you on what makes a successful blog. You'll leave with a wealth of information and specific techniques that will help you cross the chasm in incorporating this innovative Internet-based strategy into your organization's marketing plan.
Speakers Include
Robert Scoble, Microsoft
Scott Rafer, Feedster
Ben McConnell, Church of the Customer
Dana VanDen Heuvel, BlogSavant
Dave Williams, 360i
Steve Rubel, CooperKatz & Company
Bill Flitter, Pheedo Inc.
Dates and Locations
Seattle - December 17
New York - January 21
Chicago - February 18
I am very honored to be presenting with this great group of marketers. And excited to meet the authors from the blogs I enjoy reading everyday.
Secure your seat now!
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 29, 2004 3:15 PM
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October 28, 2004
It's no secret that a successful blog can be one of your most important tools in your marketing mix. There are several examples of companies doing it right and many companies the blogosphere has called out as doing it incorrectly. I've provided a quick-start guide to help you incorporate blogs into your marketing strategy. Most companies that failed have ignored these simple steps or refused to understand the basic of the new medium
There are three key points to understand about the new medium.
1. Transparency - Tell consumers exactly what you are doing. Be honest.
2. Organic Growth - It is clear how important it is to reach the influencer's, trend setter, and early adopters in the market. When your message or product is adopted by this group, it will spread with a far greater loyalty than mass marketing can buy. This is a not a medium where a message can be forced. Organic growth is a proven way to gain acceptance among trend setters and thought leaders in the blogosphere.
3. Humanize your Brand - In today's consumer controlled marketing, it is extremely important to reach out and break down the corporate walls. You need to put a face on your company that consumers can relate to.
According to Morgan-Stanley user-generated content is the fastest-growing application on the Web today. The viral nature of blogs and the emerging acceptance by consumers of content syndication (RSS/ATOM) will drive deeper usage of your product. Blogs create an opportunity for increased user-engagement, network effects and viral growth. Blogging is just another part of the communications and marketing mix.
Blogging Best Practices
It takes time and attention to effectively reach out and build relationships. Blogging is not a direct response medium. It is a relationship medium. These points where summarized by Charlene Li from Forrester from an email I shared with her on how Pheedo grew its blog.
1. Focus on your core interest area to establish yourself as an expert.
2. Create at least 15-20 meaningful posts BEFORE you open your blog to the public. When people visit for the first time, you'll have more then one post to share with them. If your blog is rich with information, most likely people will continue to read it.
3. Figure out who the a-list bloggers are in your niche and participate on their blog using comments and trackbacks. Links to your blog, outside your blog and within in your blog are all important to search engines.
4. Continue to write on target content
Repeat after me:
1. This is a NOT a medium where a message can be forced.
2. It takes time and attention to effectively reach out and build relationships.
3. Blogging is NOT a direct response medium. It's a relationship medium.
4. Blogging ROI is NOT measured as a cost-per-lead but as a cost-per-influence.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 28, 2004 9:13 PM
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Chris Richardson, contributing writer for Webpronews asks if RSS is in danger of becoming a spam target?
As long as we have unscrupulous people trying to make a quick buck, we will have some form of spam. To be clear, spam is not paid advertisements in feeds. We must recognize that publishers need to create revenue in order to continue providing free content. Spam is sent indiscriminately, randomly or haphazardly without a plan or consideration for the consumer.
Richardson points out how to cheat the system.
1. Someone who has realized that placing popular terms in their news posts will get them picked up by thousands of RSS subscribers.
2. It's easy to imagine a very malicious feed that would just always make its entries appear 'new' - change them subtly, report that they were just written, or whatever - so that its items would always show up in my aggregator.
3. Pop-up ads could be a successful form of RSS spam because it would be difficult to determine which feed produced the advertisement.
Problems one and two are easy to solve - unsubscribe from the feed. It's that simple. Publishers need to recognize the shift in power. The consumer controls their RSS environment and they will vote with their mouse. Put irrelevant ads in your feeds or trick your consumers, you will not have many subscribers left.
Problem three poses more of a concern. I hope the community of publishers, advertisers and aggregators agree that it is NOT ok to put pop-ups in feeds. For pop-ups to work in feeds, you need a feed reader that supports javascript. Most readers don't execute javascript. And not all are browser-based, so what would pop up? You can't pop a browser window if you aren't in the browser. And you'd only have trouble finding the offending feed if you were viewing multiple feeds at the same time in the same window.
Pheedo is advocating for an RSS ad environment that respects the preferences of the user and advertisements that enhance the content - not annoy consumers.
So what will it take to kill spam and pop-ups in feeds before it ruins RSS? The answer is - You, the bloging and RSS community. So what can you do? Blog it. Let publishers know that it is NOT ok to decieve or even include pop-ups in feeds.
Spam desimated email. Let's not repeat it with RSS.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 28, 2004 8:01 PM
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October 18, 2004
Coming back to San Francisco from the East Coast today, I had the opportunity to catch up on some reading. I was paging through Fortune when an article caught my eye about Comcast and their dream of video-on-demand. The article claims video-on-demand is a reality at last.
The realization I came to is the marketplace is changing. We want to time-shift our media consumption. We want content available on our time. We first heard about this when TIVO hit the market but TV is not alone. Time-shifting is occurring with radio and online as well.
Look at the latest trends in time-shifting:
TV: Explosion in digital video recording devices (TIVO) and video-on-demand.
Radio: Podcasting and Replay Radio have yet to go mainstream, however once the technology is cheaper and easier to use, consumers will follow.
Internet: Content Syndication (RSS/ATOM) consumption is doubling every month.
Because we are time-shifting our media usage it means we are time-shifting (or deleting) the advertising that is attached to it. This has huge implications for marketers. Marketers will need to embrace the changes in the marketplace and rethink how they advertise to consumers.
The impact of time-shifting may be small today, but this is one trend marketers cannot afford to ignore. More on this subject later.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 18, 2004 9:56 PM
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October 17, 2004
I've been involved in the online business when we were getting excited about banners and ads in newsletters. Search marketing did not exist. Pop-up advertising, never heard of it. SPAM was non-existent. Rich media wasn't possible. Yes, that's right, back in the stone age the good ole' days when online marketing was polite, non intrusive and effective. Sure, things need to evolve and progress. There are lots of examples of good companies building good online advertising products.
As marketers we did not mind our P's and Q's. We built ad technology for technology's sake. We didn't take into account the consumer. From pop-ups to SPAM to spyware, why do we think these things are okay? Maybe Internet marketing is going through its rebellious teenage years. The state of the online ad market is, "I don't care what you think. I know pop-ups and SPAM are not right, but the more you tell me no, the more I'm going to do it." That is about to change. Consumers are fighting back.
The launch of "Polite Advertising" is upon us. Dotomi realizes it. It is what we are working on at Pheedo. Polite Advertising was not invented by some marketing guy. It is being demanded by consumers. The smart marketers are listening to consumers and building tools to accommodate.
Polite Advertising says, Joe and Sally Consumer, you are in control now, what do you want? Just ask any TIVO consumer who is in control of their TV time, or Podcaster who is controlling their radio and music or a consumer of content feeds controlling their content consumption. It is not the advertisers or media outlets controlling when I consume, where and on what device. I vote with my remote, I read with speed (RSS) and I delete with defiance. I am constantly filtering out unwanted ads, unwanted content and unwanted email. I'm time shifting my media consumption.
Polite advertising is beyond permission. Permission marketing says, "Can I send an ad to you." Polite Advertising says, "Can I send an ad to you? Where can I send it? Which companies do you want to hear from? How often? Please, Thank You, Yes Sir, No Ma'am. Was this okay?"
With the gaining mass adoption of TIVO, TV networks are scrambling to come up with a new ad model. The do-not-call law has devastated the telemarketing business. The CAN-SPAM law sent ripples through the email ad business. Online marketers should take notice and learn from their offline older (wiser) siblings before it gets any further out of hand. With the growing popularity of weblogs, any irrelevance, annoyance, or lack of control will spread through the blogosphere in no time.
Content syndication (RSS & ATOM) is gaining steam. It will have a dramatic affect on the online ad business just as TIVO has affected TV advertising. Consumers have more control with RSS. Publishers will soon realize consumers will want more out of their content feed. They'll want to customize it to their specific needs (PubSub). But that also means RSS needs to grow-up and meet the demands of the consumer.
Let's work together to keep the RSS channel user-friendly. Let's mind our P's and Q's this time around. Consumers are demanding Polite Advertising.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 17, 2004 12:49 PM
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October 16, 2004
Recently, the blogosphere has been buzzing over ads in RSS. Overture made a statement that RSS ads are something they will explore. Topix made headlines because they inserted an ad for Overstock in a feed. Wired Magazine recently highlighted a few companies who are exploring ads in RSS.
Pheedo has been playing in this market for about a year. We have seen growth in RSS that reminds us of growth in email. There has been a lack of information on the size of the market. How big is it really? Should advertisers pay attention? Of course my answer is yes, but let the numbers tell the story.
The numbers below only include stats on blogs with RSS and are estimates based on our own research and data provided by Technorati. They do not include the feed traffic from traditional online publications like CNet, Forbes or Yahoo.
Blogosphere is doubling every: 5 months
Number of post created per day. 21,600
Number of feeds added per day: 3,700
Percent of blogs with feeds: 31%
Number of content feeds: 3.1 million
RSS consumers: 3.8 million
RSS Ad impressions: 2004 - 77 million, 2005 - 308 Million, 2006 - 1.2 billion
Tools, like the ones Pheedo is creating, to insert, track, and monitor ads in feeds will continue to evolve. Subscribers will grow expodentially and the market will mature very rapidly.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 16, 2004 11:44 PM
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October 15, 2004
The idea of click fraud has been making its way into the news as of late. Estimates range from 5 percent to 50 percent of advertising fees paid to all search networks are fraud. Google acknowledged the problem in their pre-public offering documents, "fraudulent clicks are a risk worth noting." But they are not the only victims. It was reported in the Times of India that groups of people were hired to click on ads on major search engines.
When ads first appeared online, they were charged on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis but soon after the Internet bubble burst, performance based advertising become the flavor including cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-lead, and cost-per-sale. Google furthered the cause of CPC pricing with the popularity of keyword buying.
A new pricing model is gaining popularity - flat rate. It is creeping in through the smaller ad networks (a few of the larger ones are testing it) and smaller publishers. Flat rate pricing is based on the philosophy of associating your brand with popular websites. As an advertiser, you scroll through a list of publishers and choose which sites you want your ad placed on. The predetermined price is set by the publisher. The advertiser determines the length of time in which they want to have fixed placement. It takes the hassles out of buying ads online.
I like flat-rate pricing for these reasons:
Advertiser
- No worries of click fraud
- No key words to manage
- More control over the sites where your ad appears
Publisher
- No reporting discrepancies to debate with advertiser
- More control over revenue
It is another question whether or not advertisers are ready to embrace this type of pricing structure. The networks that employ flat rate pricing say it works and they are seeing repeat buyers.
But it is not without its downside
Advertiser
- Popular websites can get pricey
- Limited inventory availability
- In some cases, you are unaware of the number of impressions served
Publisher
- Possibility of severely limiting revenue opportunity
Time will tell if the market is ready to embrace this new pricing structure. Currently, it is a buyers market as the fixed prices are low.
Posted by Bill Flitter on October 15, 2004 9:55 PM
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