ChaosScenario

How Evil Is Google?

If you went through all the trouble to build a website with engaging content, hoping you could monetize it with advertising, what would you do if someone created a tool that allowed users to not just block your advertising, but replace it with ads of their own, and thereby hijacking your revenue stream.  You would not be compensated for any interactions or impressions this replacement ad receives. The company that replaced it, however, would.

This is the dilemma reported by Joseph Farah, the fiery editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily ("Another Reason to Hate Google," August 23, 2007), and he's decided to speak out against it.

Webpronews.com also reported on the charge ("Google is Evil? According to Joseph Farah, it is," August 29, 2007). Both are looking for answers. So far Google has not responded, and I've not been able to locate much else about it on the blogosphere or on the net in general (I even condescended to do a a few searches on Yahoo to be sure there was no intentional suppression of information).

I can't find anything on the Google Toolbar landing page or full feature list page that would lead me to conclude that this tool is actually adware, but the fact that they don't appear to have answered the charge at all after a week is troubling. It seems it would be so easy to address if the charge was untrue.

It's entirely possible that Google is choosing to ignore Farah because they think that he is hopelessly unfriendly to anything the company does, since one chapter in his book is devoted to exposing Google as an evil company. But leave Farah aside. I'd like an answer to this charge, too.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm no friend to most banner ads. They are not usually utilized well, and even when they are, their effectiveness is questionable (though their are cost scenarios that might make their use justifiable as part of a larger strategy to communicate with customers). In general, if Google wants to provide a means for users' computers to track their own behavior and request ads more relevant to them, I can accept that, as long as that information is not fed back to companies wishing to make use of it for their own purposes, except in the aggregate.

However, a good sense of propriety demands that Google not replace ads on pages owned by companies with whom Google has no agreement to do so.

Does anyone have any more information on this? I'd love to hear your thoughts. - Cam Beck

Gen Y Needs to Get a Clue ... Quickly

From MSNBC:

A study by Adecco, a work force consulting firm, showed that 66 percent of Generation Y respondents, those in their late teens and 20s, were not aware that the information they put online can be factored into hiring decisions. Fifty-six percent said they think the practice is unfair.

Welcome to the real world, kiddos. What you do today has consequences for tomorrow. Next time, listen to your parents. - Cam Beck

Steve Jobs Makes A Boo-Boo

After accepting the accolades of consumers who desperately wanted DRM-free music, Apple has run into a bit of trouble because the downloaded music files apparently have customers' personal data embedded in them. As the thinking goes, the only people who have to worry about it are those who seek to illegally share music with others. After all, the information doesn't become public knowledge unless the data is made public in violation of the law. This thinking has merit, but it's incomplete.

If the operating motivation behind this initiative is, as Jobs himself says, that,  "People want to enjoy entertainment when they want it, how they want it, on the device they want it on," then it also follows that the right to use and listen to that entertainment must be transferable.

If I, for instance, downloaded a DRM-free song but decided I didn't like it, I might pass it along to a friend, whom I thought was trustworthy. Of course I would remove the file from my hard drive and all my listening devices. Say that friend passes it along to someone else while deleting the music from his listening devices and hard drive. Eventually, if it gets into the hands of someone who isn't so trustworthy, that person might upload it to a peer-to-peer network, where the legal vultures latch onto it, get my name from the file, and sue me for the violation of the record label's copyright.

The above scenario would rarely happen, but the fact that it could happen provides sufficient reason to cast some scorn on Apple's lack of disclosure, which would have helped its customers make more informed decisions. Now it just looks as if Apple was intentionally hiding something.

In addition, Apple increased quality of these files, but many people can't tell the difference. This increase in "quality" came with a 30-cent price increase IN ADDITION TO this information Apple demands be tied to the file -- requiring the customer be held accountable for its use for all perpetuity (or until someone develops a hack to strip the information from the files).

Make it one or the other, Apple, not both.

According to  the Associated Press (take it or leave it), "Apple declined to comment." It wasn't that a spokesman was unavailable for comment, but that the organization declined to comment at all. I presume they will comment later, but I find it surprising that Apple wasn't already prepared for this.

On the other hand, had they simply disclosed their policy before they made the service available, they would have never had to even worry about it. - Cam Beck

Are the Social Media Outlets Out-Of-Mainstream?

For over a week now, Ron Paul has been the top ranked search term in Technorati. Yet, to hear the mainstream media tell it, he's not even a contender, for his name is barely mentioned in post-debate coverage, and he doesn't even register in the mainstream media's polling data.  He's not even a blip on their radar screen. So the question is how to square one piece of information with the other. I think the answer is relatively simple, but a bit uncomfortable.

Possible explanations include:

1. The mainstream press is lazy
2. The mainstream press is so conceited that it thinks it should be the filter through which you must judge who is relevant to the upcoming election
3. Internet users, primarily those who frequent blogs, pay closer attention to the details than do the people the pollsters question
4. Ron Paul's supporters are gaming the system
5. There is a strong correlation between the use of Technorati and an interest in Ron Paul

For the record, Paul's name isn't the only one excluded from post-debate coverage and polling results, in either GOP or Democrat primary coverage. It just happens to be the only one appearing in the Technorati's 10 most popular search terms list.

I feel like I should give a full disclosure notice about my knowledge and opinion of Ron Paul, but I'm afraid that the real explanation is so convoluted that it will take up the bulk of this post, and it won't add anything to the point I'm trying to make, which is this:

There is often a big difference between what interests bloggers and blog readers and what interests the rest of the world.

What are your thoughts? Does this difference concern you? Are there any other possible explanations I'm missing? - Cam Beck

Nobody Cares What Your Company Wants

Many of us have been singing the virtues of the Internet for awhile as a great way to interact with customers and have them interact with companies. It's also no great secret that the Internet provides a tangible way to measure certain categories of success, even if achieving that success is difficult. Given that difficulty, why is it some companies are still making it harder for customers to interact with their websites regularly?

This weekend, I took the family out to eat at a popular chain restaurant that had just set up a new location. We had stopped going to this chain because the one that is closest to us has delivered us poor service time and time again, but we figured this new spot might be different.

Gladly, it was. However, the experience I had previously at this chain was so bad that a vast improvement raised it to the level of merely "average." Still, I was happy enough to respond to an Internet survey advertised on my receipt. Whereas I'm a firm believer that we always can vote with our pocketbooks, from time to time it's helpful to get direct feedback from customers about their experience. Not all feedback should be given in the form of a complaint.

The problem came a few steps into the survey. Most of the value questions had answers ranging from "Poor" to "Excellent." I considered my experience just "Good," (which, stupid me, I thought was acceptable) so I started putting that down. It was apparent that whoever designed the survey wanted to find out why someone's experience was anything less than, "Very good," because any time I gave an answer of anything less, they punished me by making me explain why.

It didn't help that the survey was too long to begin with and had no predetermined number of questions or steps that would help me know how long it would be before I could finish. By step 6, I wished I never decided to take the survey.

Fine! Fine! It was "Very Good." Will you stop asking now?

Your company's website
A few times I've asked why it is that any particular client would ask for personal and identifiable details at an early stage of the relationship. The answer I always got was, "Because we want that information. It will help us know how to sell to them better."

Pardon me for saying so, but you didn't answer the question. You told me what you want, not why your customers should care. Have you considered that your customers haven't been convinced at this point that it will help them? Structure your site correctly, and you don't even have to ask. Just suggest based on their behavior in a way that protects their privacy.

Companies don't do it because it's harder to build an intelligent site than it is to ask questions in a survey. Unfortunately, the way the questions are asked and when they are asked do affect the answers or the adoption rates -- regardless of what the companies may want. - Cam Beck

A (More) Complete Internet Advertising Solution

Last month, Paul Herring wondered out loud whether paid advertising was getting too much credit. Contrary to what Jakob Nielsen and others say, he speculated that banner ads can work well, in spite of the fact that contextual links get clicked more.

Today, Seth Godin cited a study that seems to lend weight to Paul's theory. He says,

If you run banner ads ... you can increase your brand awareness about 7% after a reasonable buy of banner ads. ... The kicker? In the study, Harris did the banner buy and watched the number of clicks to their contextual ad (you know, the text ads) go up by 249% over the next week.

As Paul asked earlier, which ad worked harder? Perhaps this is a reminder that we need to take a more complete approach to our Internet advertising, and that there is no "Holy Grail" solution that applies equally to everything. - Cam Beck

Wake Up and Smell the Revolution!

Servant of Chaos gives what I consider to be a stunning account of a meeting he attended as a guest of his client. When the topic turned to the Web, the speaker made an incredibly ignorant statement that, had he made it at my agency, without inhibition all of our jaws would have simultaneously dropped to the floor. It was, "Ah yes, but you can't measure the web."

In what must have felt like an old episode of The Twilight Zone, the other people in the room were actually nodding their heads in agreement. Nodding! In SOC's words,

I thought I must have misheard. I looked around the room and the nodding continued. Then I realised that I was just living in a parallel universe ... the one where SOME people get the Net and others don't. Unfortunately, my world was the lesser populated.

I suppose the exec in question remains quite satisfied overspending for media that is giving him a lot of cute creative that wins awards but produces inferior results (because that's the way it's always been done), and then crying and complaining to the courts and the FTC when people are following their own instincts by tuning his message out with DVR or whatever else the marketplace may devise.

When that fails, they attempt the same intrusive techniques on the Web that worked quite well for them when we only had three TV stations and consumers had no other options, and then they blame the measurability of the Web when it doesn't go right.

This is the overall problem with a lot of marketers, including the head nodders in SOC's room, is that there are many companies STILL out there who tend to think of the world in terms of what they need, when they should instead be focused on what the consumers want and need.

I will reserve my analysis of why this might be for another day, but let it suffice to say for now that we will never... ever... be able to make our clients' businesses profitable if we (wittingly or not) give them false information. Just because something is difficult to do right doesn't mean we shouldn't be honest about what it will take. - Cam Beck

The Power of Blogging

As a kid, I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books. It was always great to see how a seemingly small decision could alter how the story ended. Although the phenomenon was man-made in this case, it was a small leap of imagination to picture abstract theories of chaos that spurred concepts such as The Butterfly Effect.

I bring this up because last week I was musing on the future of political Internet marketing, and somehow I ended up finding a hilarious new video by "Weird Al" Yankovic. Surprisingly enough, even though the subject of my reading was "Kinky" Friedman, a comedian songwriter, the path I took to get to the Weird Al video had nothing to do with the comedian-politician's website.

I can't even remember precisely how I got there; I just know it had something to do with the trackbacks of my primary source material. Although I know I can trace my exact path with my browser's history tool, I prefer to leave that question unanswered. There's something to be said in favor of preserving the mystery of the journey.

It got me thinking, though, about the power of blogs and how much more rich our experience becomes because of trackbacks and cross-linking. Through hyperlinks, we can find and enjoy stories that have little or no relationship to our original topic we started researching.

As this was sort of dynamic findability the founders of the Internet had in mind when they created this tool, it is ironic that these blogging features are increasingly being recognized as falling under the rubric of something we denote as only the second version of the original: Web 2.0. - Cam Beck

Update: Mindblob has a pretty interesting post on this subject. Check it out when you get a chance.
 

Farewell, TV. We hardly knew you.

Nielsen Media Research has come up with a new plan that could bode well for Internet professionals. The company, which usually tracks how many people watch programs, will also now start tracking how many people watch the commercials (or at least keep the television tuned to that station). Experts suspect that this will lead to a decrease in advertising rates for television, which could free marketing capital for online channels.

This is significant for several reasons. First, one must presume that advertisers have suspected for some time that they were spending too much for too little in television ads, because NMR wouldn't have made this change out of abject curiosity. Consequently, they must already be ripe for a change of venue. Second, it means that we have to step up to the plate by putting out great work that delivers results. The interactive media put us in a unique position to target specific audiences and measure the results.

As broadband becomes more ubiquitous, researchers are discovering that certain segments of society are spending more time online than watching TV. One study claimed that Britains between 16 and 25 are dominated by their computers. However, as technology is developed that allows users to block ads, our goal as we create advertising should be to lower the inhibitions of people we are targeting by making the ads relevant to our audience. - Cam Beck

Nielsen DVR Metrics Flawed?

Paul made a post earlier this month that Nielsen is beginning to monitor DVR use for the first time this year. Undoubtedly, this reporting from Nielsen is going to influence spending in the more than $70 billion TV advertising industry. But according to David Card, VP and Senior Analyst at JupiterResearch, that may not be such a good idea.

David posts on his blog that a TV Week article (registration required) says Nielsen currently is basing reporting off of only 60 DVRs! We hope this is a typo... If not, no one should be paying attention to these numbers. As David points out, JupiterResearch had 550 DVRs in a study they conducted on the subject. If the TV Week article is right, it will take Nielsen half the year just to catch up.

- John Keehler