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.
Danger indefinitely...
I spent an interesting couple of hours with a friend of mine this morning who has been a casualty of the melt down in the financial services market. We were chewing over some of the interesting questions about what happens with his industry after the current crisis.
From one perspective, ‘wealth management’ has been based on balancing risk with desire for above-average returns on investment. The industry has been trying to tell us that they’d ‘eliminated’ risk. Right.
So once things do get back to growth once more, will the people who have wealth to invest trust the people who had been looking after it up to now? Will what appeared safe still have that caché? Or will they completely reassess their view of risk?
Our consensus was that there is risk in anything we do, and it’s far better to understand that from the outset. As my friend pointed out, there is now definitely perceived risk in putting money into the bank – or into property. Even government bonds don’t look entirely risk free (Iceland, anyone?)
So is there a technology play that can do better?
Or are we back into trusting investment advisers’ views, based on their past track reconds? And if so, how do we address the problem that it’s almost unknown for any fund manager to remain at the top for any meaningful time horizons?
There are clearly some very bright people in that industry, but there are also a lot of people who, in my friend’s metaphor, command Premiership salaries while being Conference players.
It almost makes me glad that I don’t have the problem of having ‘wealth’ that needs management!
| 3.2 |
G1 vs Jesus-phone
Ah, the mighty battle between T-Mobile’s G1 and Apple’s jesus-phone.
Yesterday morning (having finally made a decision between them) I took delivery of the G1. Tomorrow they’re coming to take it away again.
Now don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to love about the G1 – but it’s all about the Android platform. The problem is the hardware: there are just too many niggles there to let me feel I’ll be able to stand 18 months of this phone.
Matters came to a head when I had to call T-Mobile’s (excellent) customer service centre… and met with the typical “press 1 for…” numeric menu.
To do this on the G1, you have to take the phone away from your ear, open the keyboard and then hit the appropriate key. Madness!!!
I think Android will win through in the end: it’s early stage, but the interface is intuitive, adaptable, amazingly flexible, powerful and very fast. But it’s a genie trapped in a cracked bottle.
The App Store (Android Market) is a delight to use – even better than the iTunes App Store – and will (I firmly believe) win out when the depth of apps swells to fill it, as it has over at Apple.
Meanwhile, as Martina King, then MD of Yahoo! UK & Ireland, once said to me: “A phone needs just one killer app: it needs to make calls.” Both the G1 and the vast range of windows mobile phones appear not to have picked up on that yet.
| 3.2 |
So today is the day – have you got your mouse and your online credit card handy? Apparently every other Brit has.
James Roper – the big cheese over at IMRG - has been garnering masses of (print, broadcast and online) column inches about how, despite the downturn, online retail continues to grow at a pace that will leave other channels (i.e. bricks and mortar) green with envy.
Last week, Monday broke the record for online sales in the UK in a single day. But today will (we’re told) be even bigger.
It seems that online retail is expected to grow 20% this year, compared to 40% or so in previous years. Not bad given the flat to downright messy expectations in the High Street.
Happy shopping – I look forward to the figures!
| 3.2 |
Who moved my nuts?
Many, many moons ago I helped start Associated Newspapers online efforts. Back in those days (mid-90s) there was much debate about how traditional publishers could embrace online media – but essentially two models were emerging: replicate the content online (the most common model) or develop extensions to the core titles that maybe used some content but were likely to originate their own approach ‘in harmony’ with the parent publisher.
Oh, and then there were the others, such as Time Out, who were famously terrified about what online was going to do to the bottom line.
So a decade and a bit slips by, and online is now a major medium. Could overtake TV spend shortly. Over in the US it seems to be getting the blame for ‘killing’ newspapers.
And still we find the print publishers trying to work out how to make their digital strategies pay for the demise of traditional income sources.
The most recent example of this hit me this morning – Asda (!) are launching the wonderfully named ‘Asda Digital Newsagent‘. Yes really.
Asda Digital Newsagent
Seems to me to be a very similar model to Zinio, who I believe do pretty well in the US. And who have a pretty decent (free to air over Safari) version online for the iPhone.
But come on – from a consumer point of view, do I really want to ‘read’ a magazine on my computer? Books, well yes of course – on a handheld, for portability. And I can see some value in the iPhone pages at Zinio… though the ‘free’ price tag about the content suggests no-one expects you to replace buying the magazine that way.
Magazines are typically consumed as a treat. I remember when, at Associated, we were launching the ill-fated Charlotte Street site for femails (sic). My wife, perceptively, pointed out that you couldn’t take a website into the bath and flick through the pages. It’s a different type of experience entirely.
Meanwhile, iGizmo has set up a decent online magazine, which looks at first glance like some of the Asda Digital Newsagent titles, but adds considerable extra functionality to the flat magazine style.
So Asda’s version simply sells you an image of each magazine spread, wrapped in a bit of navigation to dress it up. And then charges you exactly what you’d pay for it in print.
I may well be proved wrong on this, but I really don’t see how this can possibly produce a worthwhile business model. For readers OR for advertisers (the ads (especially the double page spreads) are even easier to skim past than in print.
I, for one, will not be buying.
| 3.2 |
- Samsung mobile unfolds widescreen – watch the vid!
Sandlines, you will not be surprised to hear, likes his gadgets. Always has.
So although I can probably muster a nominal link to a marketing discussion in here somewhere, you’ll know me well enough by now to realise I just wanted to post this link. This is one seriously cool looking development: a folding screen to expand the viewing area in a handy sized mobile.
Those guys over at Samsung are on some wicked coffee overdose.
| 3.2 |
… or at least that was the overriding message, it seemed to me, at the excellent Entrepreneurs in London event where I spent the day yesterday.
Huge thanks to Fresh Business Thinking who kindly invited me to join them – and several hundred others – at the Methodist Central Hall opposite Westminster Abbey.
I struck by how so many entrepreneurs were prepared to stump up not just £400 but a full day of their most precious resource (time) to attend this event. I don’t know whether that signifies that all those ex-bankers are now in start-up mode or just that the entrepreneurial culture is as alive and kicking in this recession as ever it was.
Ben Way and equally entrepreneurial sister Hermione
And one of the key messages is that the businesses that start now – and are well enough thought out and run to survive the current economic conditions – will be brilliantly placed for the post-recession world. Which WILL come, just no-one knows when.
So, apparently, entrepreneurs will save the world. And some of them will produce ideas that help save the planet too – like Ben Way with his Go Green Plumbing company (and 26 others).
| 3.2 |
Breaking up?
I’ve borrowed the Ya-Who bit from AdViking… as mentioned over there (and a few other places!) the collapse of the Google/Yahoo! partnership bodes ill for the latter’s long term survival. I wonder if they’ll still be there in 5 years time.
Sandlines can’t help but wonder if Google entered the discussions in similar tone to how they entered the bidding for a wireless spectrum licence earlier this year. In Planet Google, Stross notes that a Google manager described his team’s anxiety that they might win, after placing the $4.71 billion bid: “We kept hitting the ‘refresh’ button on the browser to see if other companies had bid higher…”
Might Google have entered the deal feeling – “If it goes through, great, if it doesn’t: even better”. It certainly broke up the Microsoft / Yahoo! party and leaves Yahoo! needing a white knight. It will be interesting to see if Steve Ballmer still wants to play. If he does, it would speak to Microsoft’s despair in the battle against Google.
| 2.5 |
yesterday's news? BE MORE DEMANDING!
So it turns out I was right.
Somewhere between 8 and 9pm, Ocado kindly delivered, without direct prior warning, a copy of that day’s Times.
Thanks.
There are at least two things wrong with this:
- What value do you put on the day’s morning paper at 8pm?
- What if I’d already bought it?
In the days of concern about the amount of printed paper we get through, I’d estimate the capacity for dissapointment from this marketing gesture is about 85%. Seriously Ocado, this is a great way to turn something that *should* be a positive into a reason for a customer to feel let down instead.
| 2.5 |
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