ChaosScenario

Proggresive enhancement, in your face

I sit behind a Chris, a Flash programmer at Click Here. Despite the fact that he went to the University of Oklahoma, he's talented and was the force behind the "Fruit Guys" site, as well as a lot of the rich media stuff we do for our clients.

One of the problems that Flash sites have is that they are pretty much unreadable by most search engine crawlers. Chris wrote an  article on his blog, Flash in Your Face, talking about Progressive Enhancement. It's a programming technique that not only makes a site more accessible to those less technically sophisticated, it also makes the sites easier to crawl by search engines.

I'd recommend reading Flash in your Face from time to time. I think just about every piece of advertising and new marketing online will use some type of Flash technology in the very near future (like within the year) if it's not there already. Understanding a bit about how this technology works will help everyone create more engaging sites in the future.

- Paul Herring

P.S. Man, I want a cool header image for ChaosScenario but I'm creatively and photo shop challenged. If you have ideas, send them to chaosscenario@yahoo.com

Searching

Finding the answer to a question online is getting more difficult. As the web grows there is more and more junk out there. Try searching Google or your favorite search engine and see what happens

I was reading No Man's Blog about his frustration finding information. He found his answer through emails to friends and has high hopes for tools like Yahoo! Answers where questions are posted and people answer for points. (Note: he didn't actually use the tool to get the answer but has high hopes for what it can be).

I think these tools can be useful, but I prefer the Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia has received a lot of bad press lately, but I think it provides a better model for community information. Still it's not enough. Sure, eventually, most of the time you can find the number and facts, but there's not enough interpretation, ideas and sharing that's going on.

I think what we need more of is people willing to contribute. There are way too many people fascinated by all that Web 2.0 has to offer but are just sitting on the sidelines, too afraid maybe try and fail?

It's amazing how many people want to start their own blog, podcast or contribute but don't. I guess if you never put your ideas out there, they'll never be criticize. Then again, if you don't participate, you'll never learn as well.

This blog is certainly not all that it could be. The more I write for it, however, the more I realize that it's about sharing AND my growth rather than publicity and recognition. Here's to participating in the conversation. I've grown because I've taken the time to put my thoughts and research out there for the rest of the world to see.  - Paul Herring

Is paid search getting too much credit?

I have a theory. I believe that, when measuring ROI on online media, search gets too much credit. Take the example of someone who buys a widget online. This person may be exposed to the widget through a banner ad online. Assuming they don't click on the banner (and not many people do these days), what's the next action they take if they want to find the widget? They go to Google where a smart marketer has paid for the search ad. They click on the paid search ad and the ROI on the paid search ad goes through the roof.

Which worked harder? I'd argue in many cases it's the banner ad. It was the initial exposure and engaged the customer so much so that they searched for the product on Google.

The problem is that when we're optimizing media, most company's optimize just on the ROI of the media placement. In the scenario above, the banner ad might be eliminated and paid search increased since paid search was credited with the sale. Even if you're tracking impressions, once someone has clicked on the paid search term, paid search gets credit.

Is this the reason that so many companies are dumping so much money into paid search? Are they getting rid of their online display adverting because they think it doesn't work as well? It's time to go beyond what seems like the easy answers and look deeper. - Paul Herring

Search engine activity as an economic indicator

Bill Tancer from HitWise wrote an interesting article on the Hitwise blog that compares the search term 'homes for sale' with the sales of homes. Although it's not perfectly aligned, the relationship is convincing. If he's right, then economist  predictions of a decline in demand may be wrong.

The analysis has received some attention from Reuters.

Of course this data is onlyfor one year, which isn't enough data to really establish a relationship. You could compare the data to previous years, however, you can't go too far back as the use of the Internet as a way to search for houses is relatively recent (years not decades). Can search predict the future? Only time will tell. - Paul Herring

eBay and Yahoo!?

This just in, there are rumors that Yahoo! and eBay may be in merger talks (via MarketingVox and the New Zealand Herald). Why the merger? According to J.P. Morgan, ""A combined company would have the leading position in auctions, communications, payments, graphical advertising, audience reach, and geographic breadth." What this means to me is that Yahoo! would have the largest purchaser of search terms and eBay would get access to one of the largest online media providers. It should be interesting, especially if they decide to create new customer and advertising options based on the two companies. - Paul Herring

Google trends hysteria

The blogoshpere is on fire this week touting the vitures of Google Trends. For the uninformed, Google Trends graphs a number of search terms and provides graphs about how the terms have been searched over time. The tool allows you to graph multiple terms on the same graph quickly and easily. It also shows you geographical popularity of the terms.

A lot of people are taking some pretty big leaps with the data, however. A post from Micro Persuasion lists 25 things I learned from Google Trends. Things like "Flickr is the king of tagging, followed by del.icio.us..." Does this really an indication of which tagging is more popular? Does the fact that Flickr allows people to upload and share photos  have anything to do with this?  How about "Hockey is starting to surpass baseball in popularity...". I think ticket sales would argue otherwise. 

If you read the Google Trends description, "Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results -- our search-volume graph." Nothing more, nothing less. Are Google searches indication of other trends? Possibly but you need support from other sources to make legitimate conclusions. - Paul Herring

A Modest Proposal (for an index of Advertisers) ...

Go ahead and call me "old school." You can call me an old fool. You can even call me an old-time magazine junkie (which I am, by the way). But I think that there's a time or two when we can learn a lesson or two from the "hapless" and "tired" old media.

Take the index of advertisers for instance.

You know, that feature in magazines where there's a page that lists all the advertisers IN that magazine and then tells you on which page of the magazine you can find advertisements from all of those advertisers.

It's an idea that has even more applicability (note to self: Is applicability a word?) in the online world.

Check this scenario: I was on Gawker Media's computer gaming Kotaku (Gawker media blog devoted to computer and video games) site last week, checking out a story for one reason or another, and I noticed a banner ad that I THINK was soliciting volunteers for Katrina-related relief work. I say THINK, because I clicked away from the page that I was reading to follow a link in the editorial copy. A few minutes later, I asked myself, "What was that Katrina link all about?"

When I went back to the page I was on, the Katrina ad had been replaced by a different ad. I tried refreshing the page, to see if I could cause the Katrina ad to reappear.

No such luck. So I refresh again.

Oh, look, another dating site ad. How nice. But not what I'm looking for.

So, I refresh the page again.

No Katrina ad. Again.

No. Again.

No. Again.

No! Again!!

No!! Now, I am borderline autistic, so this type of behavior delights and enthralls me. But even I was beginning to get a bit frustrated by this point. Again!!!

No!! Again!!

No!! Damn your feckless eyes Kotaku!! Where oh where is your sweet Katrina relief ad?!?!?

Answer: No where that I could find.

But think how EASY it would have been to find that ad if Kotaku had a page where all of their site advertisers were indexed. One click and I would have been able to find that information. And Kotaku wouldn't have driven down their click-through ratio serving me ads that I had no interest in seeing. And the Katrina relief effort - or whatever sponsor I may have been trying to find out more information about (you've probably picked up by now that I was never able to make my way there) - would have had another potential customer. Seems like what we call in the old school yard a win-win-win situation, doesn't it?

Are there any sites out there that provide an index of advertisers? Is there any reason a site would NOT want to do that? Make it a click off the site map page, if nothing else (I think it might be more valuable than that, but what do I know, really, about anything other than old pirate movies?)

I'm just and old fool. I want to know.

Thank you. - Harley Jebens

Click fraud not so bad

In a meeting last week, someone told me that click fraud accounts for 30 to 40 percent of all clicks on paid search terms. I just love it when people make those kind of statements without a source. The idea that someone would go to the trouble to hire people in a third world country or create software to click on competitors links seems like a little far fetched to me. Sure, it might happen but I have a hard time believing that it would happed at a rate of more than a third of all clicks on paid search ads.

A recent article in Information Week confirms my  suspicion. The average click fraud rate is 13.7 percent and even lower (12.1 percent) for tier one search providers like Yahoo! and Google according to a study conducted by Click Forensics.

Next time someone cites an outrageous statistic, ask for a source. - Paul Herring

Microsoft is getting ready for an ambush

Microsoft is making a lot of noise as it begins to compete with Google and Yahoo for search, and probably for good reason. They're beginning to use demographics in their search with results that are beating Google. It didn't take too long for Google to integrate demographics into their product. Microsoft's local search one ups Google and Yahoo's aerial views by providing closer views and by providing a "bird eye" view that allows you to see your map in as close to 3D as you can get on a monitor . Business Week reports that Microsoft will release click-per-call  this week, while Google is still in "beta" test with it. Who will win with this? Advertisers will win as search becomes even more effective than before. - Paul Herring

Google click to call game changing

I posted earlier about how effective click to call has been for Daimler Chrysler. Seth Goodin recently posted about how Google is taking this to the next level, by incorporating click to call into Ad Words very soon. This means including click to call:

1. In the most common method of finding information on the web, search
2. In the largest ad network available (Google Ad Words)
3. In paying for calls based, not on impressions, but on performance (actual calls)

Once nice feature is its ability to remember your phone number. Such a small thing but its huge in terms of re-use. Click to call benefits the consumer by:

1. Still allowing anonimity (they are connected to you)
2. Connecting you with a real person (let's face it, there are some activities that all of us feel better about doing the old fashion way)
3. Not having to search for that elusive phone number on web sites

If your in an industry where personal contact is a big deal, watch for the announcement of the official release of this soon and take advantage of it.

- Paul Herring