Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Billboards That Look Back
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
New technology has made it possible, using tiny cameras, to gather details about people looking at billboard ads, such as their age or gender.
Nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/business/media/31billboard.html?th&emc=th

CITYSEARCH SUED FOR CLICK FRAUD

Yusef Robb wrote:

For Immediate Release / May 27, 2008

Contact: Yusef K. Robb / 323-384-1789

 

CITYSEARCH SUED FOR CLICK FRAUD

 

Los Angeles – Citysearch.com is defrauding its advertising customers of millions of dollars by not only turning a blind eye to click fraud, but in fact encouraging it as well, according to a lawsuit filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court by Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP.

 

"Most click fraud cases involve companies that simply turn a blind eye to it," said the victims' attorney, Brian S. Kabateck, Managing Partner of Kabateck Brown Kellner. "Citysearch does this too, since it has no real program to prevent click fraud.  But Citysearch goes beyond indifference to actively incentivizing click fraud. Citysearch's motive is simple: clicks equal cash, whether they're fraudulent or not."

 

Kabateck recently won a multi-million dollar settlement from Yahoo! and was part of an earlier $90 million settlement from Google on behalf of advertisers who were victimized by click fraud. He also recently filed a federal class action suit against Google for fraud within its "AdWords" pay-per-click advertising system.

 

Citysearch, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which is headed by Barry Diller, pays commissions to its salespeople based on the number of clicks their customers' ads receive, providing an incentive for click fraud, according to the lawsuit.  Furthermore, the suit contends, contrary to Citysearch's own representations to its advertisers, it takes no real steps to prevent click fraud. And when customers become victims of click fraud, Citysearch fails to adequately advise them that they have been victimized or refund the money paid to Citysearch for that fraudulent activity.

 

The lawsuit seeks to represent all people or entities in the United States who paid money for pay-per-click advertising through Citysearch.com.

 

As detailed within the suit, the case of plaintiff Tom Lambotte shows Citysearch refusing to acknowledge blatant indications of click fraud.

 

Lambotte's Citysearch ad received a total of 7 clicks (plus two more that he generated) between December 11 and 25, 2007. On December 26 he received a response from Citysearch to his December 22 request to cancel his ad.  Suddenly, his ad began receiving 12 to 16 clicks a day, for a total of 69 clicks between December 26 and December 31, when his ad was finally cancelled. He received in these five days 10 times as many clicks as he had received in the previous two weeks. Despite this, Citysearch refused his repeated requests to reverse these charges.

 

Click fraud can be detected by software that can track suspicious patterns, such as repeated clicks from the same source. Although Citysearch assures its customers that it applies this technology, the experiences of many of its customers shows otherwise, according to the suit.  Still, customers are led to believe that Citysearch is in fact actively fighting against click fraud.

 

According to Citysearch's "Invalid Click Policy": "Citysearch also has sophisticated algorithms to track sessions and user behavior on our site to assist us in identifying click patterns that would indicate invalid clicks.  In the event we identify a click as invalid, our customers are not charged for such clicks."

 

"Citysearch is operating contrary to its own contract with its customers," Kabateck said.

 

Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP is one of the nation's foremost consumer law firms. Its clients have won more than $750 million against Coca Cola, Farmer's Insurance, Eli Lilly and other major corporations. As a plaintiff's-only firm, Kabateck Brown Kellner is always on the consumers' side.

 

###

Microsoft's Live Search Cashback Opens Questions on Commerce Data Ownership

Dana Gardner

http://www.interarbor-solutions.com/home.html

Talk is bubbling up across the blogosphere, Gillmor Gang and Techmeme daily about social graph personal information. This may be among the most important discussions and topics of our time. How the "social mesh" works out now will affect our lives and businesses for a long time. It may even impact how we define what "me" is online. We really need to get it right, ASAP.

Yet much of the talk focuses on technology, privacy, use rights and still loosely defined standard approaches to protecting user control over data. It's still murky about how the online social network services will own and control the user- and relationships-defining data inside of their social networks, including Twitter. But there's a larger set of issues that has to do with how we want technology and the Internet to affect us people, as a business, as a society, as a market of markets and as a species.

UPDATE: Many of these issues came up, especially toward the end, at Friday's Gillmor Gang with Google (GOOG) Director of Engineering David Glazer. One takeaway is that, ironically, Microsoft (MSFT) should be among Google Friend Connect's best friends.

The discussion on social graph data portability gets to a philosophical level quickly, because the ways we have codified our personal relationships to each other -- and to larger organizations or power centers -- over eons does not necessarily apply adequately to the new virtual boundaries. It's hard to know on the Web what defines the rights of the individual, the family, tribe, community, company, village, town, state, nation, civilization, race, or species. Do accepted and proven cultural patterns offline fully translate into social patterns online?

The older established "contracts" -- from Codex Hammurabi to Magna Carta to Mayflower Compact to U.S. Constitution to the User Terms of Agreement -- do not seem to get the job fully done anymore. It's not clear what I am entitled to online, whereas I'm pretty sure I know what I'm entitled to offline, and I know what to do to enforce getting what I'm entitled to offline legally, ethically and politically.

In essence, we as online users and small businesses don't have any social-order contracts with the online providers, other than what their lawyers put in the small print when you "accept" their free or paid services. And, of course, they have made available their privacy policies for all to see. So there. Click away, users galore, while they store away the user data and relationships analytics.

As a person, you only retain the right not to click (as long as you pay throughout the two-year user subscription agreement, or suffer the penalty charge for leaving). If you're lucky you'll be able to take your phone number with you if you walk, but not necessarily your email address, or your contacts, your social interactions' definitions. Most of the data about whatever you did while nestled in the rosy social bosom of their servers remains with them unless they volunteer to let it be open. So far.

Without belaboring the implications on the metaphysical scale, my point is to show that our online social interactions as currently defined and controlled place us into uncharted territory. And as with any social contracts, the implicit and explicit ramifications of where we find ourselves later on needs to taken very seriously.

We'll want the ability to back out, if the unforeseen future warrants it, without too much pain, with our open data intact. We should all want escape clauses for what we do online the next several years, just to be safe. Who you gonna call if it's not fair?

If things don't go well for the user or individual business, what could be done? Because this is about the Web, there isn't a government to lobby, a religious doctrine to fall back on, a meta data justice code of conduct, nor an established global authority to take directives from. The older forms of social contract enforcement don't have a clue. There is only the User Terms of Agreement, the codex of our time. Read it and weep.

Because this is about the Web, the early adopters basically make it up as they go and hope for the best. It's been a great ride. The service providers try and keep up with the fast-changing use patterns, and then figure out a business model that has legs. They write up more User Terms of Agreement. Startups get funded based on their ability to get some skin in the game, even without a business model. They show the investors the User Terms of Agreement, and get their rounds. More work goes into the User Agreements than into the infrastructure to keep the thing working once the clicks come.

This laissez-faire attitude has worked pretty darn well for building out the Web as an industry, thankfully. But now we're talking about more than building out the no-holds-barred Web, we're talking about social contracts... We're talking about what the user possesses from their role in building out the Web, in populating the social networks, the authoring of the blogosphere. Is there any social collective ownership or rights by the participants in the Web? Or is it only really -- in the final analysis -- owned by those who control the means of production of the services?

There's the Web, and there's the blogosphere -- are they they same? What rights does the individual, the person, the blog entity have on the commercial Web? Does the offline me possess the same social powers online? I really don't know.

What's clear is that people like Mike Arrington, Marc Cantor, Steve Gillmor, Robert Scoble and Dave Winer (among many others) want as much freedom about what they do online as what Western Civilization has endowed on them and their ancestors offline. In some circles, and some of these people, want even more social power online than what has been the norm offline. More power to them.

There is a power clash a-brewin'. The U.S. has long struggled over states rights versus federal rights. The individual has looked to both -- and pitted them against each other -- to define and protect individual rights.

But what about online? When push comes to shove, how do the individual rights assert themselves against what the services provider can perfectly legally assert? If the server farm says they own your online address book, they probably do legally (see the Use Terms). If they say they own the meta data from your click stream on their servers over the past three years, they probably do.

So far, user rights have been strictly voluntary on behalf of the providers. Some are built into agreements. The needed rising tide of online adoption patterns and essential need to generate traffic and clicks has protected users, to a point. Let's hope it continues. I hope voluntary is enough.

Folks, you should recognize that you already have a lot of power, given the fact that social networks are falling all over themselves to show how "open" they are. They fear that you can and will bolt, even if you lose some data (the first time). Data portability is recognized by the Googles and Microsofts as hugely important, shouldn't it be huge to all of us, too?

Because as we move to always-on social interactions across all we do on the Web, what we do socially online may begin to outweigh what we do socially offline. For some of us this is already true. What distinguishes us as online or offline is blurred, and I believe will grow more so and any difference will become irrelevant.

I am social, therefore I am social. It will not matter how or where. Yet online, the fabric of control over my social universe is more under the influence of the User Terms of Agreement than anything else. Will I lose any part at all of the personal freedoms won by my ancestors when I move my social activities online?

What defines any person by what they do online -- is this a business agreement based on User Terms of Agreement or something more defined by centuries-old social contracts and mores? Does freedom trump user agreements?

When would a concept like human freedom trump any user agreement, even if it is well documented in Delaware courts? Am I free to take my social graph data, that which defines me as me, with me anywhere online because it's an inalienable right? If so, I should not need any OpenSocial standards. It's self-frickin-evident! I should not need it in the User Terms of Agreement because it's long established as precedent.

But here's the rub that came to the surface this week when Microsoft crossed the Rubicon in the Web world with Live Search Cashback.

If users can and will assert that their social graph information is theirs by virtue of their culturally endowed freedom as a human, then what about their "commerce graph?" Who you are by what you buy is not too much different than who you are by whom you associate with. Is commerce social, or is being social commerce?

My social graph contains my personal meta data and my index of contacts, their context to me, and what actually defines me as a social creature. My commerce graph exists too, it's on Amazon, Walmart.com, and dozens of other vendors that know me by how I shop, learn, peruse, compare and perhaps buy. If I search as part of the shopping process then my commerce graph is on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (mostly on Google). I do commerce through my social activities, and I may want a social network with those I buy from and sell to.

All this user intentions and activities information is related and should not be separated. I should be able to mix and match my data regardless of the server. I reached those servers through my own device and browser, I made those clicks and punched those keys on my machine before they showed up on someone else's. I own my actions as a free human.

Microsoft is now finding ways to build out a business model via Live Search Cashback (with more to come no doubt) that takes your commerce graph and in essence, sells or barters it to the sellers of goods and services. I'm not saying this is in any way bad, or unproductive. It seems a logical outcome of all that has preceded it online. I expect others to follow suit.

But it does have me wondering. Who owns my commerce graph? Isn't it connected to my social graph? And if Microsoft can make money off of it, why can't I? Can I only make money off of my commerce graph when I use only a certain provider's services and only through its partners? If so, then it's not really my commerce graph. I'm only as free as the User Terms of Agreement say.

If my social graph is mine, and I can move and use it freely, then I surely will want the same to be true for my commerce graph (or any other user pattern graph). This is an essential unalienable right, but I think I want it in writing.

So, please, in order for any of us progeny of Western Civilization to use any of these burgeoning online services, can we have all of this freedom business spelled out clearly in the User Terms of Agreement?

Let's make it the first line item for all online agreements from now on: "Dear User, You are a human and you are free and so that also pertains to everything you do on our Web sites and services."

Until we have technical standards or neutral agencies to route and offer our control over our own use data, then we should all insist on better User Terms of Agreement, those that spell out the obvious. We are free, our data is ours, we should be able to control it.

192.com Urges Consumers To Say No To The Phonebook

 

This social media news release is available at:

http://blogit.webitpr.com/?ReleaseID=8757

 

Title:

192.com Urges Consumers To Say No To The Phonebook

 

Core Facts

• At a time when Ofcom is reviewing BT’s obligation to deliver a phonebook to every household in the UK every year, 192.com is calling for the government to impose a centralised scheme where UK citizens can opt-out of receiving a phone book much like the Mail Preference Service (MPS) setup by the Direct Marketing Association.

• The average UK household receives three printed phone books every year. That amounts to 75,000 tonnes of annual waste – enough to cover Hyde Park twice over.

• Research conducted by 192.com revealed that 4 out of 5 respondents backed an opt-in phonebook delivery system. Popular responses for the decline in popularity of phonebooks included:
  The Internet is quicker for finding information (62 per cent)
  Phonebooks are too cumbersome (56 per cent)
  Phonebooks go out of date too quickly (39 per cent)

• People were also frustrated at how difficult it is to recycle phonebooks: nearly half (49.2 per cent) of those questioned pointed out that they were not aware of any facilities for recycling phonebooks in their area. Add this annual addition to landfill to the huge environmental cost of producing, distributing and recycling the books in a time when the majority of the UK population use the Internet.

• To kick the campaign off 192.com has launched a campaign site, saynotophonebooks.com, where people will be able to sign an e-petition in favour of the proposal and join its Facebook group.

• Phonebooks typically have less than 100,000 local records: online directory enquiries search over 17.5 million phone records across the UK

• 192.com also offers free interactive mapping and aerial photography, more powerful search options and access to a much broader range of datasets. Online data can be updated on a daily basis, phonebook data can only be updated on an annual basis

• At a time when Ofcom is reviewing BT's obligation to deliver a phonebook to every household in the UK every year, 192.com is calling for the government to impose a centralised scheme where UK citizens can opt-out of receiving a phone book much like the Mail Preference Service (MPS) setup by the Direct Marketing Association.

• The average UK household receives three printed phone books every year. That amounts to 75,000 tonnes of annual waste - enough to cover Hyde Park twice over.

• Research conducted by 192.com revealed that 4 out of 5 respondents backed an opt-in phonebook delivery system. Popular responses for the decline in popularity of phonebooks included:

The Internet is quicker for finding information (62 per cent)
Phonebooks are too cumbersome (56 per cent)
Phonebooks go out of date too quickly (39 per cent)

 

• People were also frustrated at how difficult it is to recycle phonebooks: nearly half (49.2 per cent) of those questioned pointed out that they were not aware of any facilities for recycling phonebooks in their area. Add this annual addition to landfill to the huge environmental cost of producing, distributing and recycling the books in a time when the majority of the UK population use the Internet.

• To kick the campaign off 192.com has launched a campaign site, saynotophonebooks.com, where people will be able to sign an e-petition in favour of the proposal and join its Facebook group.

• Phonebooks typically have less than 100,000 local records: online directory enquiries search over 17.5 million phone records across the UK

• 192.com also offers free interactive mapping and aerial photography, more powerful search options and access to a much broader range of datasets. Online data can be updated on a daily basis, phonebook data can only be updated on an annual basis

• Stats
  • 75,000 tonnes of waste
  • Laid end to end they would stretch over half way around the world (22,500km)
  • 680,000 barrels of oil wasted in phonebook production (not including the wasted petrol used for their delivery to your doorstep)
  • 2 billion litres of water is used in the production process (not to mention the amount of water wasted in the recycling process)
  • 437 million kilowatts of energy used in the production process (again not mentioning that used in the recycling process)this equates to enough energy being produced to power 112,000 3 bedroom houses for a year

Quotes

Keith Marsden, Managing Director of 192.com says, "Given that more than 61% of households now have access to the Internet (ONS Aug 07), free online directory enquiry services are now a highly accessible alternative to printed phone books. Sites such as 192.com offer free directory enquiry searching and data nationwide including detailed maps, aerial photography and local business listings thus giving consumers a greener choice. 

The Big Company Doesn't Always Win

Techdirt.com

by Michael Masnick from the a-reminder dept

Our debates over the patent system, one message is repeated over and over again by those defending the patent system: that it's needed to prevent big companies from coming in and stomping out smaller companies. Unfortunately, the evidence just doesn't support this. Yes, it does happen sometimes, but there are so many examples of smaller companies outrunning bigger companies that the idea that a big company can easily beat a smaller company is just rubbish. In fact, the NY Times now is running an article noting how no large tech company has ever really been able to thrive through multiple generations of technologies. A smaller, more nimble "game changer" comes along and out-innovates the larger company -- in many cases because that larger company isn't just slow to react, but also because they have legacy lines of business that prevent them from fully embracing the cannibalizing nature of disruptive businesses. Once again, this highlights the the importance of the process of innovation, rather than just the idea. The big company with lots of money may get "the idea," but if it can't full embrace it, it won't do a very good job implementing it. So, while big companies do have some advantages, it's a clear myth that any big company can step in, take a smaller company's idea, and succeed with it. Microsoft outran IBM. Google outran Microsoft. Netflix outran Blockbuster. YouTube outran Google (and then got bought by it). The list goes on. Being smaller doesn't mean you can't win against a larger player if you do a better job providing what customers really want.

Knowing What Business You're In Includes Knowing Who Your Most Important Customers Are

techdirt.cm

by Timothy Lee from the three-sided-market dept

One of the themes we've emphasized here at Techdirt is that it's essential to know what market you're in. We've mostly talked about that in terms of knowing when to give away infinite resources in order to sell expensive resources. But another key component is recognizing where the value of your business comes from. For example, one of the keys to Google's success has been their recognition that even though their revenue comes from advertisers, their real value is their users, and so they've focused on keeping users happy. Google knows that as long as they have a lot of users, the advertisers will come to them, but if they drive away users they may not come back. The Bits blog has an even more striking example of the same principle: Bits says that Yelp, the restaurant review site, is succeeding because they recognize that the key to success for their market was to cater to a subset of their users -- their volunteer reviewers. If they have good reviews, users will come to them, and if they have users, the advertisers will come. So they've focused on making reviewing an easy and rewarding experience. The site has focused on building community among the reviewers themselves, adding social-networking functionality so reviewers can connect with each other and follow each others reviews, and even hosting social functions where the most prolific reviewers can meet face to face. Yelp is also careful to shield reviewers from irate restaurant owners: a business owner is allowed to send a reviewer one message, but if he doesn't get a response he's not allowed to contact the reviewer again.

One way to look at this is as a multi-sided market. Traditional media outlets, for example, operate in a two-sided market, where they trade content for eyeballs, and then sell the eyeballs to an advertiser. Yelp's business model is similar, except that they exist in a three-sided market. First, they have to make the site appealing enough to reviewers that they'll write a lot of reviews. Then they use the reviews to attract eyeballs, which they finally sell to advertisers. All three of these are "customers" in some sense, but because the reviewers are what ultimately attracts everyone else to the site, they're ultimately the most important to the site's long-term success. Although Yelp certainly has its share of critics, the basic strategy of catering to reviewers seems like the right one for a review-oriented site.

Google Health Now Live: Could Become a Powerful Portal for Third Parties

We’re nearly halfway through the year, and Google Health has launched nearly on schedule. The highly anticipated health tool is now live and accessible to all Google users. There are four basic categories to utilize: Your personal Health profile, Importing of medical records, Exploring online health services, and Doctor search.

The information you provide under your health records is used for your own personal purposes, and can be printed and taken with you to a doctor’s appointment. If an office is integrated with Google health, then the information is already accessible to them In terms of the extended health services provided through Google’s health portal, registering for any of these, and linking it to your Google health profile provides you with automated updates to that third party service.

The doctor search is quite similar to what you’ll find through a regular Google search, except this is a specialized search tool. There are no filtering options, however, so going through a page of results can b a cumbersome task. Once you find a doctor you like, however, they can be linked to your Google Health profile as well.

With the current offering, the most powerful aspect of Google Health is likely its consumer-facing portal, which a number of third-party services will be interested in having a spot. This appears to be more integrated with third parties than Microsoft’s HealthVault. Even though Google is explicitly not in partnership with these third party services, having a select number of these services is almost acting as a recommendation to the end user.

As there are only a handful of services that can be connected to your Google Health profile, including ePillBox and Walgreen’s Pharmacy, the potential for increased user base and added value of integration with Google Health makes it a potentially covted place for which third-party services are accessed.

PR Secrets for Startups

techcrunch.com

At a time when anyone can broadcast their opinions about your startup to the world, public relations requires a new level of engagement on the part of companies and entrepreneurs. But what are the new rules of PR? Guest author Brian Solis, who earlier this month wrote a post for us on the evolution of the press release, explains how public relations has changed and offers up 12 secrets of PR for startups. Warning: This a lengthy post. Its intent is to help companies navigate through the rough seas of traditional PR as its struggles, forcibly, to evolve and adapt to the new rules set forth by the Web (regardless of version number) . Solis is the Principal of FutureWorks, a PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley and also blogs at PR 2.0. Along with Geoff Livingston, Solis recently co-authored Now is Gone, a book that helps businesses learn how to leverage new and social media. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’ve been overwhelmed with requests from executives and PR professionals to explain how this new media (r)evolution applies to them specifically and how they can make PR more effective and personal during these interesting times. I recently discussed it here and have been doing so for a long, long time. But since conversations and attention is discontinuous and distributed, I asked if I could bring this discussion to a more prominent online epicenter to help reach a wider array of those looking for answers. The Long Road Back to Public Relations Public Relations is experiencing a long overdue renaissance and its forcing PR stereotypes out from behind the curtain where they operated comfortably for far too many decades. It didn’t begin this transformation because of Web 2.0 or the latest Social Media wave, but instead in the 90’s when the Web gained mass adoption. Yes, it’s taken that long and it will continue to evolve over the next decade as communications professionals struggle with putting the public back in public relations. Regardless of what we think we know about PR and the New Media or Social Media revolution, the truth is that we actually may know less about everything than we care to believe. These are times where we can lead and learn in order to improve an industry long plagued by misconceptions and the lack of PR for itself. PR is now more than ever, something more capable and influential than simply writing and sending press releases to contacts generated by media databases. The media landscape has been completely blown open to not only include traditional media, but also bloggers and most importantly the very people we want to reach, our customers. PR 1.0 About 100 years ago, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays created and defined the art and science of modern-day PR. Believe it or not, their philosophies and contributions can still be used to further evolve PR today – especially when it comes to Social Sciences. Over the years, the PR 1.0 publicity machine lost its way and its spark. We got caught up in hype, spin, buzzwords, and spam, and forgot that PR was supposed to be about Public Relations. But, its still how many companies continue to approach PR today. Enter Social Media and the democratization of the Web and content. Now media and content producers are pushing back, demanding a more targeted and relevant form of outreach. For those who confuse Social Media with online marketing, Social Media is anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations between people – it is not the practice of social marketing. I say people, because it humanizes the process of communications when you think about conversations instead of companies marketing at audiences. PR 2.0 = Conversational PR The Web changed everything and this ongoing reinvention of PR has been dubbed PR 2.0 or New PR. PR 2.0, as I defined it many years ago, is the realization that the Web changed everything, inserting people equally into the process of traditional influence. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity to not only reach our audiences through media gatekeepers, but also use the online channels where they publish and share information to communicate more directly and genuinely. At the very least, PR 2.0 is going back to the roots of PR to bring back relating to the public back into the process. Now it’s about listening and, in turn, engaging influencers and stakeholders on their level. It forces PR to stop broadcasting and start connecting. It is a chance to not only work with traditional journalists, but also engage directly with a new set of accidental influencers, and, it is also our ability to talk with customers directly. No BS. No hype. It’s an understanding of markets, the needs of people, and how to reach them at the street level—without insulting everyone along the way. Conversational PR is becoming a hybrid of communications, customer service, evangelism, and Web marketing. The evolution from PR 1.0 to PR 2.0 will result in more informed, effective, and meaningful Public Relations, without a version number. It’ll just be good PR. So what does this mean for you? It means you have to start thinking about things more intelligently, differently, and personally. The Secrets Maybe you’re an entrepreneur with a recently funded company in need of users, or perhaps you’re bootstrapped and actively seeking financing and you need a little something that will land you a more attractive term sheet. Every VC, as well as every successful entrepreneur, will tell you that great PR can make you, whereas bad or mediocre PR can stifle your growth and possibly damage existing and prospective relationships. And, they all have ideas on how you should proceed. But right now, the main thing that stands between you and success is getting those customers – and good press (traditional and new media) builds the bridge between you and them. In order to get to the next level, you need to know the secrets of effective PR, especially in today’s competitive Web 2.0 world. These are critical times for your business and you can’t simply entrust the future of your brand to anyone who knows how to write a press release, place it on the wire, and send it via email. Secret #1 Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town Bloggers and reporters are some of the busiest people you could possibly hope to meet. They’re actively looking for the most interesting, relevant, and linkable stories out there, preferably before anyone else can run with it. But truthfully, they spend most of their time hacking through the weeds of generic or over-the-top inbound emails, press releases, Facebook messages, Skypes, SMSes, Tweets, and IMs. It’s almost a small miracle that anyone can ever get their story told. At the end of the day, you’re not the only company with a great story. Just because your story is new doesn’t make it newsworthy. Bloggers and journalists are interested in good stories and the more time you spend developing that story up front, for each person you’re trying to reach, the more you can help them help you. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily

Publishing 2.0

Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On The Web Posted: 24 May 2008 08:58 PM CDT As media companies struggle to figure out their digital future, the elephant in the room is that they have only been able to monetize online audiences for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional media. Here’s why: Traditional advertising formats FAIL on the web. By traditional advertising formats, I mean display ads, video ads, and any other ad whose format and value proposition approximates or imitates that of an offline advertising format. Google is the ONLY company that has succeeded in web advertising. Why? Because they perfected search advertising, an entirely web-native form of advertising, whose value proposition is perfect for the web and which has no offline analogue. Why do traditional advertising formats fail on the web? Because people have no patience for them, as they did in traditional media, where we were habituated to looking at print ads or watching TV commercials. Research by Jakob Nielsen puts this into sharp relief: Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said. This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them. “Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so,” said Dr Nielsen. “People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said. This is why pre-roll ads on online video = fail, why overlay ads on online video = fail, and why online display advertising is a commodity business, where online publishers have to shovel page views and battle for every $1 increase in CPM. Some sites can get $50-100 CPMs on some pages from certain advertisers, but $1 — even $0.10 — CPMs are common on the web. Just ask newspapers and magazines about their ad pricing power in print vs. online. Can you imagine a print publisher getting $1 for 1,000 times an ad was seen? You’d go bankrupt after one issue. Here’s a sobering thought: If all advertising in offline media got converted to current online media CPMs, it would probably be worth a fraction of the value, i.e. $300 billion would become $50 billion. If 1 to 1 transfer of advertising value is at one end of the spectrum and 1 to 0 transfer of classified advertising value to Craigslist is at the other extreme, most of online media is closer to Craigslist — online publishers are vaporizing advertising value in the shift of dollars online. Even Google has struggled with this problem, as they still make virtually all of their money from pay-per-click search and contextual ads. But why, why is this so? Because most online advertising creates NO value for consumers. Search advertising, because it is relevant to what users are already searching for, creates enormous value. But the search advertising is largely about helping people buy what they already know they want. What about the objective of advertising to convince people to buy things they don’t yet know they want or need (or what never otherwise want or need)? Consider this: What is the most successful type of advertising online advertising that convinces people to buy something they weren’t in the market to buy? Email spam. Spam is probably the most inefficient form of advertising every created, and it creates more hate and loathing among consumers than the worst 30 second TV ad ever created. But it works. With millions of emails sent at virtually no cost, a 0.001% response rate can still be highly profitable. The reason why most online advertising fails is that web users see it as little better than spam. Display ads are ignored in the same mindset as spam is ignored — I’m trying to get something done online and your display ad is getting in my way. As Nielsen highlights, web use is driven more and more by utility. Despite the popular notion of viral content, e.g. viral videos, even entertainment on the web most often happens in a utilitarian context. Sure people browse videos on YouTube, but searching YouTube is the killer app. Want to find video content? Search for it on YouTube, and chances are someone has uploaded it (legally or not). Why do you think Google acquired it? Social networks have hit hard against the online advertising wall — I’m trying to talk to my friends and you’re showing me ads — get out of my face. I’m trying to talk to my friends and you’re shoving down my throat notifications of what my friends are buying (i.e. Facebook Beacon) — get out of my face! Is it any surprise that most ad spending still happens offline? Most advertisers use the web themselves. They know how annoying traditional ad formats are on the web. So what’s the solution? We need to invent new forms of advertising on the web. But it’s more than that. Facebook introduced Beacon as a new form of advertising — but it didn’t create a lot of value for users. Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for advertisers. This would seem self-evident, but it has not been the case with traditional advertising, which was developed for CAPTIVE audiences, and web users are increasingly anything but captive.

Microsoft Pays You For Using Its Search (If You Live In The US)

mashable.com

Microsoft has a big announcement today, one that should show the world they’re capable of running a search business even without Yahoo: their Live Search CashBack program will enable you to use special savings “coupons” after you buy stuff you’ve found using Live Search.

The detailed explanation of how this works can be found on here; the lowdown is as follows: You search for deals using Live Search; when you find deals with a special coin shaped icon, it means you’ll receive a small amount of money after you’ve bought something. When your balance reaches $5, you can claim your cash.

If this sounds like those special customer cards your local store clerk has been bothering you with, you’re right. Personally, I don’t care for such deals, but I’m sure there are people who enjoy saving a buck here and there. However, there are several of problems with Microsoft’s cashback; after I list them all, many of you will find that the program simply isn’t for you.

First of all, according to the FAQ, you’re elligible for the program if you are a U.S. citizen or legal resident, and at least 18 years of age. Everyone else, forget about it. Secondly, Microsoft does not guarantee you’ll receive cashback bonuses if you use an alternative payment method when purchasing items, such as PayPal or Google Checkout.

On the merchant side of things, be aware that we’re not talking about cost-per-click advertising model; we’re talking about cost-per-acquisition, which means that the advertiser pays only when a customer clicks on the ad and actually completes a purchase. There are certain situations in which this works well, but we all know that AdWords are mainly CPC and that that’s one of the main reasons behind its success.

Will Microsoft lure more people into using Live Search? Definitely. But my guess is that they’ll only use it to find cheap deals, and use Google for general purpose search. Google is still the best global search engine, while the demographics Microsoft is aiming here is narrow in comparison: US-based surfers, older than 18, who like to shop online and are willing to switch from PayPal for certain payments. It’s a solid initiative, but it’s not enough to move from search engine number 3 to the second and first position anytime soon.