Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Oh no, Twitter makes money

October 23 2009

The folks at Microsoft must be absolutely giddy with Bing’s first place finish in the race for Twitter feed access. That and good press on the launch of Windows 7 put a smile on Bill’s face.

I’m warming to the fact that we have another way to measure social media’s impact? The announcement should generate a revival of sorts for Twitter users that abandoned the medium and spark a wave of net-new users of the online app.

Twitter comes out a winner in this deal. Hello, revenue! This is the best thing to hit Twitter since Ashton Kutcher.
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Google and Bing! fare well. Facebook probably feels like it just got punched in the mouth.

Microsoft clearly is euphoric about beating Google to the punch with plans to integrate real-time tweets and Facebook posts into its Bing generated searches. Google, which has more than 65 percent of the search market, will soon follow with a similar service that could provide new ways to generate social network revenue.

Facebook users have the ability to block access to their posts, but few on Twitter use the invite-only feature. This is the definition of a game changer, and just when the digital marketing world is just starting to heat up.

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Opt-in, Failure & Success

July 6 2009

Two great Internet topics surfaced in recent days with regard to behavioral tracking and new business models. Will privacy policies undercut online business models before they ever get to their feet?

Part One: Privacy
The impact of opt-in and opt-out privacy rules need to be revisited. Behavioral content delivery of ads or media content serve up relevant content and supposedly shield consumers from a barrage of “noise” found on the Internet. Privacy policies are generally buried in the footer or within pop-up legal agreements that are seldom read. We tend to find these policies boring and easily dismissed.

So as the groundswell of debate related to Internet privacy reached Capitol Hill, maybe those of us in the online advertising industry should pay special attention. The House of Representatives’ subcommittees on communication and consumer protection held a joint hearing last week to more closely examine advertisers’ rights to track your behavior online and consumers’ rights to guard that information.

Central to the hearing were rules regarding consumers’ current need to opt-out of behavioral tracking by advertisers. Yahoo! and Google are front-and-center, because advertisements on those two platforms rely heavily on behavioral and content tracking to serve up ads. Details of the hearing and the debate were brought to light by Canadian Greg in a shared-news story. Greg suspiciously omitted from his blog profile, perhaps fearing retribution or an invasion of privacy.

This is not a new debate, but one that enjoys renewed fervor among concerned special internet groups on both sides of this debate.

Part Two: Revenue Models
If anything was learned from the bursting of the Internet bubble, it was that revenue is just as hard to generate online as it is offline. The margins might be higher, which is the lure for “.com” solution and service providers today. In 1998 we could rid ourselves of pricey store-fronts in exchange for central distribution points, thereby reducing overhead and allowing consumers to place orders in the comfort of their own underwear. That was then.

Advertising revenue is manna from heaven today. Revenue models for many Web 2.0 companies since 2000 lean heavily on advertising revenue to pay the bills. Behavior tracking provides a service unmatched by newspapers. You can’t one-off a newspaper and serve Bob one ad and Sally another in the same household, or several, or thousands of households. The Internet can do that, but needs a little help from cookies and behavior tracking.

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Michael Nielsen, though long-winded, presents a cogent argument as to why good companies run by smart people are failing today. (Disclaimer: Nielsen’s article shifts to scientific publishing about halfway through and he lost me.) You’ll find the part about the online news killing newspapers interesting. Behavioral tracking plays a hand in content delivery and not just ads. Knowing your target audience makes it especially easy to serve up content that might actually get read.

The social and anthropological impact of limited content (a.k.a. filtering content) has an Orwellian feel to it, but newspaper editors have been deciding what makes it into the paper and what doesn’t. The fact that online news filtering is determined not by and editor, but by user behavior poses an interesting question. It’s a question I can’t answer, but one that should be discussed.

Part Three: Opt-in Handcuffs
Whether the debate centers on relevant content delivery, or consumer privacy, it should be clear to advertisers and new media (social or otherwise) that behavior tracking is like air in the web space. If we force a user to opt-in each time we track behavior, consumer fatigue will set in and we’ll have to revert to a failing newspaper business model.

The Gray Lady gasping for air?

The Gray Lady gasping for air?

Subscriptions become powerful tools in this potentially brave new world, but why wait. Building a community of the willing gives you the ability to measure, track and deliver content that’s relevant. Social media opens the door to opt-in content delivery in a way that becomes difficult to regulate without imposing an unnecessarily layer of FCC regs on advertisers and consumers.

Businesses fail or succeed online with or without such changes, because the industry seems to be in a constant state of evolution. How should business respond to this debate? Be agile and creative.

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How Long’s Your Sales Cycle?

May 28 2009

When we ask a client how long is their typical sales cycle we get the same replies. It’s six, nine or 12 months. Amazingly everyone experiences the same sales cycle. These folks may not be totally honest with themselves. In a down economy your sales cycles can stretch a month, two months or more depending on your industry, pipeline and go-to-market approach. If you get someone into the sales pipeline today, you’ll probably won’t realize any revenue from that opportunity until December or well into 2010. There are ways to cut weeks off your sales cycle.

Do a quick Google news search for articles about “longer sales cycles“? Once you get past the obvious holes in Google’s search algorithm you’ll see many, many companies are experiencing longer sales cycles. So what’s the answer? Get people into the sales pipeline earlier, craft messaging with surgical precession, and get into “better” conversations earlier in the relationship.

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We’ve been doing direct marketing programs using interactive microsites to fill pipelines for years. These programs are great when the economy is booming. The value of getting customers into a discussion with your sales team is important, really important, now more than ever. In this economy it’s even more critical to stretch that marketing dollar by targeting and getting into conversations with great sales opportunities.

Our clients and prospects seem to consistently weigh a few specific marketing options with tight 2009 budgets. One is a focus on virtual events. They cut down on airfare, hotels, bar tabs, etc. Email can be hit or miss, but it’s cheap. Some are dipping their toes in the social media waters, which is not as cheap as you might think. Social media, if done haphazardly, can waste the time of some valuable in-house resources. Then there is our solution. We offer a hybrid direct mail slash personalized microsite that gives you the best of both worlds–targeted media like dimensional mail and variable messaging with behavior stats generated by a microsite. It’s a powerful one-two punch. It also trims time off the sales cycle by bringing quality discussions forward weeks.

We get it. Budgets are tight. Our clients get it too, which is why they are filling their sales pipelines with VLG’s Dialog Marketing campaigns. Don’t take our word for it. See for yourself.

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