I was directed to a post over at the Rubicon Project just now. Interesting read, as it happens. All about how advertisers (and publishers) can benefit from assurances about the standard and quality of inventory on which advertising is bought, sold and displayed. Similar in principle (though not execution) to the good work that IASH do here in the UK.
But while reading the article, I was amused by the piece top left on their blog page – the counter of ads optimised.
For some reason I decided to refresh… and saw the count revert back to the same start point I’d seen earlier.
Seems that Rubicon Project have discovered time travel 
Call me unreasonable, but I tend to take the view that if you quote statistics to back up your argument then you should at least have a basic understanding of what they mean…
Click to play the 1997 Guinness advert
I was leafing through the soon-to-be-lamented November issue of Revolution (specifically the Insider Guide to Digital Marketing) when I came across the following quote:
“The DMA estimates that marketers gain $45.06 (£28.28) in ROI for every dollar they spend on email campaigns.”
Mike Hilts, president & general manager, Yesmail
Now, speaking pedantically, this is factually correct. But so wrong.
This (frequently quoted) statistic is a ratio, that was converted into US dollar terms to help present the finding in meaningful terms to an American audience. So far so good. But why the half-conversion? If it’s $45.06 to $1, then it’s £45.06 to £1, right?
To be fair to Mike, he’s by no means the first to make this error – but surely as an industry it’s in our interest to get the facts right?
Unless, of course, Mike is saying that we’re only getting a little better than 60% of the return in the UK that our trans-Atlantic counterparts achieve? I thought not.
I’ve long thought of First Capital Connect’s ‘thamselink’ service as the train line that time forgot. So I was quite surprised earlier this year when they launched a potentially great Twitter service, promising that, if you tell them where you travel to and from, they will direct tweet service announcements that affect your journey.
The direct tweets generate and email and a text message to give me more-or-less instant notification of problems, so I can plan around them. This is a great customer service/marketing promise… I signed up.
I’ve since had all kinds of updates about stuff happening at opposite ends of their service, on trains that have no connection with my own little branch line. Oh well, you come to expect disappointment from train services I guess. Not the end of the world, just somewhat spammy.
This week, I’ve tried to use their trains on four separate occasions, only to discover that, for reasons that have gone unexplained (unexpected autumn leaf falls?), they have been unable to offer trains. Or, it seems, notifications on their twitter feed.
I’d never seek to discourage organisations from trying new things to improve their customer service or perception – and I strongly believe that the types of service messages First Capital Connect promised show enormous promise.
But if you make a promise, you have to keep it.
My frustration at the cancelled trains is severely compounded by the failure of the train company to keep their notification promise. I’d not have like the cancellation anyway, but would have been impressed with their ability to advise me ahead of time and therfore allow me to make other plans.
In the language of tweets, #fail
*===* UPDATE *===*
(no) more trains?
(12th November, noon) – I’ve found out why First Capital Connect are in such a bad way: they’re suffering from industrial action. They’ve even devised a new timetable. They just haven’t bothered to tell any of their twitter followers (to my knowledge) about this. Genius.
Oh – and it turns out compensation can be claimed at their website. Maybe that’s why they’re not telling anyone?
yesterday's front page
… or so today’s lead piece in the Guardian’s G2 section would have it. Reminds me of the hand-wringing that surrounds the music industry in the wake of rapidly declining record sales.
The story is that Waterstone’s, having once been the darling of the book trade and the book-buying aficionado, has been forced by competition from supermarkets / competition from the internet / ebooks / ownership by HMV to become just like any other high volume retailer. They make offers on high volume sales items and narrow down their list of supported titles to a mere 20,000 items in a typical store.
I have enormous sympathy for the idea of selective punters missing out on the titles they’d love to lay their hands on… and I agree that the current pricing policies mean that you end up subsidising the Dan Brown’s of this world when you buy anything off the top 100 list.
But hold on a second: one of the interesting by-products of internet sales, ebooks and print-on-demand should be the ability to open up new markets and distribution channels for authors who do not appear on the ‘long tail’.
Incremental cost of production reduces close to zero… and then that just leaves the small question of trying to let people know the title is out there. That will then begin to call into question the role of publishers in the same way that record labels have been challenged in the music industry.
Of course, there are differences: despite the calamatous drop-off in sales of CDs, the music industry has grown in recent years. But the growth has come from other revenue streams, such as licensing, tours and merchandise.
That will be a tougher act to pull off in the book trade. Adoring crowds in the tens of thousands shelling out £50 to see Dan Brown read excerpts of The Lost Symbol? Maybe not.
I do, though, wonder whether in years to come, we’ll start to see stores on the high street where you can wander in, choose a title that fits that ‘long tail’ description, then browse more or sip a coffee in the cafe attached while waiting for it to be produced ‘on demand’ for you to walk out with after a brief delay. That, of course, complementing a thriving online industry of shipping virtual books to ereaders. And of course those big, fat discounted blockbusters and celeb biographies.
There are a lot of things that will need to happen for that day to arrive, but it suggests that, publishers aside, the future need not be so apocalyptic.
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