Are You Killing It with Content?
He says we can defeat ourselves. Andrew writes, “When it comes to your marketing arsenal, words can be your most powerful weapon when it comes to getting killer results when you’ve launched a marketing campaign. Unfortunately, too many marketers take a step in the wrong direction and instead kill their leads with poorly developed content.”

Google Aiding Twitter, Facebook in Cyber Attack Investigation
Writing on the Online Media website, Laurie Sullivan reported, “A Google spokesperson confirmed late Monday that the Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant ‘has been in contact with some affected companies,’ Twitter and Facebook, ‘to help investigate’ the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that began last week on some of the world’s most popular social media sites.”

How Super Affiliate Pick Winning Affiliate Offers
Amit, writing on his Super Affiliate Mindset blog, says that he’s “been getting a TREMENDOUS response to the recent videos I’ve been posting. Glad you like the videos, I’ve decided I’ll be doing a BUNCH more!” And he has. There’s a new video posted.

Affiliate Classroom 2 Launches!
Tennyson Rog, writing on the Affiliate Classroom blog, announces, “The next generation of affiliate marketing training is now open! Affiliate Classroom 2 opened up to students yesterday, and it has since had an overwhelming response.” And it WAS big, IS big and GETTING BIGGER by the hour. See http://v2.affiliateclassroom.com for more information.

Cost Per What?!
Barry Silverstein is blogging about David Berkowitz’s post on Social Media Insider. Barry says, “In proposing the possibility of “CPSA” – Cost Per Social Action – Berkowitz recognizes the fact that “social networking, when done right, achieves something much different” from the current pricing models, Cost Per Impression (CPM), Cost Per Click (CPC), and Cost Per Action (CPA). Cost Per Engagement (CPE) gets closer, says Berkowitz, but still falls short.”

The next generation of affiliate marketing training is now open!

Affiliate Classroom 2 opened up to students yesterday, and it has since had an overwhelming response.

And there’s a reason behind it!

Affiliate Classroom is proven to help people make more money online! And all without a list, a website, or a product!

With the time-tested training, tools, and professional expertise that its creator, Anik Singal, brings to the table, it’s the only source you will ever need to learn the skills and tricks of the trade for succeeding online.

And whether you are looking to broaden your skills and establish a stronger foothold in your existing niche, or can barely copy and paste and want to find out what it’s all about, Affiliate Classroom 2 will get you where you want to go!

Affiliate Classroom 2 provides you with:

– What you need to know before getting started
– The basic online business models you can choose from
– The legal and ethical considerations you need to consider
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– The secrets on how to draw people to your site — and keep them there!
– Access to case studies and a wide array of marketing techniques and tools
– The ability to interact with other affiliate marketers, both experienced and new, to gain insight, interact, and exchange ideas and
– Access to 62 courses now, and more added each and every month!

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Television networks always want a clearer picture of American consumers — when they’re watching television, where they are online and what they care about. The Nielsen Company, long the arbiter of television audience ratings, has started tracking viewership online, but the networks are dissatisfied with the company’s methods for TV and aren’t convinced that Nielsen will be able to track audience numbers elsewhere. They’re ready to go it alone. 

As of this week, the major networks, together with some large advertisers and media agencies, are announcing plans to create their own measurement system.

Will that work? Probably not. But it can’t hurt.

The intense measurability of online behvavior has taught us that increased measurement is a good thing. But finding the right data isn’t easy.

As television viewership fragments, getting a complete picture of consumers’ online and offline habits becomes more important. But getting accurate data across categories has proven elusive.

Sam Armando, senior vice president
of audience analysis for Starcom MediaVest, tells the Financial Times: “The most deficient thing is there’s no single source measurement. The thing is not, ‘Let’s
go out to replace Nielsen.’ [However] it’s not a leap of faith to think
that another [measurement company] can come in and do both.”

Among the parties involved in this new venture are News Corp., NBC Universal, CBS, Discovery and Disney. Advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and AT&T, as well as media agencies GroupM and Starcom MediaVest are also taking part.

Leaving audience measurement to the people buying and selling advertising is going to be problematic. And getting all of those companies to agree on metrics will be a feat in itself. While the networks often think Nielsen undercounts viewership, advertisers hold the opposite opinion. When it comes time to make advertising purchase decisions, these new findings are likely to have even less support than Nielsen data.

Which is what happened the last time a group tried to revolt from Nielsen ratings. In the mid-90s, major broadcast networks, together with a few cable networks, advertisers and ad agencies, started the SMART initiative (Systems for Measuring and
Reporting Television). But without major consensus on its ratings, the consortium went nowhere.

That said, relying on one company for audience data is problematic. Currently, ComScore is working on a product to measure television and online audiences. Magid Abraham, CEO of ComScore, tells AdAge that his company is trying to create a “diagnostic tool that would say ‘these are the pieces I’m missing, this
is the audience duplication I see and here’s the incremental reach I
get by using one channel vs. a combination of channels.’”

Sam Armando, senior vice president of audience analysis at Starcom Mediavest tells the Financial Times: “The most deficient thing is there’s no single source measurement [for TV and digital video].”

Nielsen isn’t commenting on this new initiative, but in October 2008 the company launched its TV/Internet Convergence panel,
which measures viewing of about 2,800 consumers across both platforms,
but  they won’t have a nationally representative
sample with that product until 2011.

The Financial Times reports that the consortium would like to award contracts to researchers by the fourth quarter of this year. But it will be difficult for a new group to get the kind of scale neccessary for proper measurement. According to Variety:

“Insiders close to the situation stress that there is no practical way
for the partners to develop the massive infrastructure needed to
replicate the data that Nielsen delivers through its vast networks of
data collection sources.”

Film studios are working pretty hard to make sure that new online rental services don’t steal all their profits. But outside of movie theaters, they aren’t entirely in control of the distribution of their content. And if the studios aren’t careful, in the process of negotiating revenue deals, they might further choke off their own revenue streams.

This week, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox announced they would withhold new releases from RedBox for 28 days or more after videos go on sale. In addition to delayed access to the video kiosk service, Warner is now seeking new deals with Netflix and will impose the same restrictions on the online rental site unless they give the studio “a day-and-date revenue-sharing option.”

Warner is trying to tap into Netflix’s increasing revenue potential. If Netflix gives in to Warner’s demands, other studios will follow suit. And if the studios are too greedy in their demands, they might lose out on even more money.

Warner Bros. currently has a revenue-sharing agreement for some of the movies it
rents through Netflix, but is hoping to negotiate a more lucrative deal as
Netflix’s growth continues.

Redbox and Netflix saw their revenue last quarter grow 110% and 20%,
respectively, and the studios think those profits are coming at their
expense. 

Outside of box office sales at the theater, studios make a good deal of income on DVD sales and through exclusive distribution contracts with rental companies and television networks. For DVD sales, many purchases happen in the first 30 days after release.

Nikki Finke explains Pali Research media analyst Rich Greenfield’s take on the matter:

“Greenfield notes that the movie studios are increasingly concerned that
the buy vs. rent pendulum is swinging far too quickly back to rental
after over a decade of explosive retail sales growth, with the
resurgence of rental led by mail-order subscription (Netflix) and
kiosks (Redbox).”

But here’s the other problem. The market for hard copy DVDs is shrinking. The growth of digital is proving to be a huge scavenger of DVD sales. Even if consumers want to own a film rather than rent it, they don’t really need a physical copy anymore.

In regards to Redbox, Warner says that it could see a place for rentals, just not with new releases. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says: “In general, we think there
may well be a role for rental kiosks, just like movie
theaters.”

But this new proposal is likely to result in a lawsuit from Redbox. Greenfield says “We are fairly certain Redbox will sue Warner, but the bigger question
is will Netflix sue Warner Bros over the windowing issue? Either choice
offered to Netflix by Warner Bros, would appear to negatively impact
Netflix’s profits to the benefit of Warner Bros.”

The three studios threatening to withhold their new content comprise 55% of major studio DVD products that Netflix and Redbox would not have access to. Netflix makes most of its profits from backlog films, but having new, premium content is important for retaining customers.

Throughout the negotiation process, studios should remember one thing — many consumers currently skip this whole dilemma by getting films illegally and for free online. While they might be entitled to a larger cut of the revenue from video sales online, they are not completely in control of how their content gets distributed. And if they aren’t smart about the roll out, they could cut into their own profits further.

For example, the Wall Street Journal cites one way that RedBox might fix this problem if the studios prove stubborn:

“Redbox can work around the studio’s restrictions by stocking its kiosks
with DVDs purchased at retailers such as Wal-Mart, as it has done for
months with other titles from studios that have tried to stymie its
business, say people familiar with the situation.”

TagMan’s Paul Cook recently asked if he could borrow a popular entertainment blog I own for the purposes of running an experiment. I said yes and promptly handed over the keys to Hecklerspray.com.

Paul wanted to figure out how the placement of tags on web pages affects performance. Turns out that the results of the research are a bit of an eye opener.

I’ve interviewed him to find out more about the issues. A link to the research can be found at the foot of this Q&A…

You’ve just published a study on how tag placement affects websites. What were the key findings??

The takeaway is that the standard way to include conversion pixels in iframe container tags can cause a serious loss of conversion data. 

People have assumed that third party cookies were the main reason for the discrepancies between third parties and the client’s own data, but it actually depends more on page download speed and how the tags are included in the page. 

As well as losing conversion data, this means behavioural targeting pixels are not fired which further hinders the marketing optimisation process.

The second surprise was just how impatient people are. We found that on the publisher sites that took part (www.hecklerspray.com and www.askaprice.com) they appeared to lose around 10% of their traffic for every second the page took to load. If tags typically take 1/10th of a second to load then each tag would lose you around 1% of your traffic (if they are found at the top of the page).

How are tags typically added to web pages? ?

Where the client owns the relationship they are generally coded directly into the page at the bottom. 

Some web analytics vendors suggest putting tags at the top of the page, so as to be able to measure the page download / abandonment times but this needs to be thought about because it could have a negative effect on user experience, losing traffic as a result. It’s a good demonstration of Heisenberg’s uncertainly principle, by measuring these things you are changing the result.

Where agencies own the relationship, ad serving container tag solutions from the main ad serving solutions are used. The most popular of these - Doubleclick Floodlight - writes out tags within an iframe. This method came out worst in our tests if placed at the bottom of the page.

What are the main problem areas??

Well the proliferation of tags in general and the inability of traditional content management systems to manage them is the root cause of the problem. Added to this there has been a lack of evidence as to what best practice is, so people either rely on speculation or hearsay or just don’t think about how tags should be deployed at all.

Both of the sites that took part had tags from solutions that were no longer being used. On one of the sites, tags for a free analytics tool that was no longer being used were adding 10% to the page download times.

Tag requests tend to be rushed through at the last minute, this leads to a whole host of issues and most marketers are just happy to get them on the page. The whole issues sits on the line between marketing and IT, although most of the IT people I’ve spoken to are well aware of the issues and put the tags at the bottom of the page.

How big of an issue is this? Is it a widespread problem?

It’s something that just about everyone needs to think about and it’s certainly an issue for the companies we come across. 

Certainly the free container tag solutions have become prolific amongst display advertisers but how big of a problem will vary depending on their brand, value proposition and page load speed.

What are the threats to publishers and website owners, who fail to optimise tag deployment??

As data is becoming an ever more important part of the online marketing ecosystem, leaking data is leaking money.

The threats to publishers are that they are losing traffic if tags block content that users perceive they can get from elsewhere, and for those publishers who are paid for their data by behavioural targeting companies there is an even more direct loss of revenue.

Similar problems apply for clients regarding losing traffic by having too many tags in the page or tags that load slowly. Furthermore, poor data can cloud the picture of online marketing effectiveness and take the edge off their online marketing optimisation.

How do you think media buyers / advertisers will react to this? What do they need to be aware of in future??

One senior agency technology person I’ve spoken to said that they were hardly surprised and that the study explains an awful lot about discrepancies they were already aware off. 

It is something of a double-edged sword for them because on the one hand it could help resolve discrepancy issues that can waste a lot of time, but on the other hand it challenges the free and easy approach.

My main recommendation is to be aware of how performance issues with client websites can affect data loss. Where appropriate they should suggest the client considers putting the tags at the top of the page body. The case study provides a good business case to start the conversation.

What is the recommended best practice in this area? ?

As the study was only on two sites my first recommendation would be to conduct a controlled test. For companies wanting to do this themselves then they should email us for the full report. This includes the code and methodology we used.

One of the global authorities on web analytics told me: “Every responsible web analytics vendor recommends adding the JavaScript tag at the bottom of the page. The reason is simple: data comes second, the customer experience comes first.” In general I agree with this statement but it’s a question of percentages. If adding the tags higher up has little relative impact then it might provide valuable information that could be used to build a business case, to secure investment towards optimising the pages or new hardware.

I would move my container tag solution to the top of the page body and put my web analytics code at the bottom. I would also set up monitoring on the container tag provider to ensure that response times are acceptable and replace it with another provider if the answer comes back negative. 

Additionally, I would move any tags that are in the page currently - and which can be served within an iframe - into the container tag solution. Tags served within an iframe will not block the rest of the page from loading, so I would only need to monitor the container tag solution to ensure user experience is not being affected.

Obviously I’d just avoid all these problems by whipping all the tags off the page, putting them inside TagMan and having just one tag on the page!

Did you learn anything else from the study?

The implications of latency on page abandonment came as real surprise to me. Traffic loss per second is a key metric that every site owner needs to know as well as how likely visitors are to return subsequently. This information makes it is possible to create a sound business case for investment in the wide variety of solutions that can improve page load times (and therefore the user experience). 

Marketers need access to good quality site monitoring data, not just so the traffic they are driving to the site converts but also so they know about it.

—————————————————————————————

You can grab a copy of the two-page summary (PDF) from the TagMan website. A full copy of the research is available on request.

In March it was announced that The Ann Arbor News, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, would be closing. The paper had been publishing since 1835. Sad as it was, it wasn’t an unusual considering the state of newspapers nationwide. What made it unique was what happened next.

The newspaper was closing, but in its place, AnnArbor.com would launch as a mostly online-only, hyperlocal news portal. As the industry remains in flux and more news executives are turning to the web, AnnArbor.com is being seen as a case study in online local news. Ed Vielmetti is AnnArbor.com’s blogging leader. 

There is something beautiful about making complex information palatable, understandable and even attractive. As the the amount of data released into the world grows, this challenge of assimilating masses of information rapidly will also grow, and the skills of visual designers, information architects and statisticians should be appreciated. 

The main reference
name in information visualisation is Edward Tufte who has produced beautifully
illustrated and referenced volumes that deserve pride of place on the coffee
table of ‘info viz’ fans. It is perhaps most obviously applied in the growing
sector of creating ‘data dashboards’ to give people an overview of how their IT
system / profits  / overall business is performing with a quick visual scan.

Some of my favourite
examples are those where the temporal aspects is brought to the fore as the
unifying organising principle for presenting the data. This is the world of the
timeline driven data dashboard. It leverages one of the things that we as
humans are pretty good at (identifying and assimilating broad patterns
especially visually) and combines it with something computers are good at
(holding lots of structured, multi-faceted information).

Some of the best
examples have been spawned by the need for people to understand the recession.
For example, the UK Jobless statistics over the
past couple years and the US hiring / job loss
trends are elegantly
presented in just enough detail for online news consumers trying to get a
flavour of what’s going on as quickly as possible.

They convey a
tremendous amount in simple moving splodges of colour. There is no way that a
data table could convey the bombshell of job losses that started in mid 2008 in
the US northern Midwest, and spread to the coasts.

Other common
examples of slick time-based information visualisation include the BBC weather
map showing the forecast for the next couple days, and the Daddy of them all the
Gapminder site that presents social
and economic statistics across countries and time. The amount of data, and the
ability to control it, is quite mind boggling and many an hour can be lost in
chin scratching exploration of the data (well, by me at least). We liked
Gapminder so much that we wrote a blog about it a few months ago. 

Dean Collins sells a desktop software application called My Twitter
Butler. By all appearances, it’s pretty spammy. It enables Twitter
users to auto-follow other users based on keywords they use and permits
the mass-sending of DMs to followers.

Twitter doesn’t like My Twitter Butler and Twitter’s high-powered
Silicon Valley law firm, Fenwick & West, sent Collins a letter
demanding that he “deactivate” his website, transfer the
MyTwitterButler.com domain name to Twitter, stop using the My Twitter
Butler name and begin complying with Twitter’s Terms of Service. Or else.

Good on Twitter, you might say. After all, the amount of spam activity on Twitter is growing and it’s coming in many shapes and forms. It’s annoying to just about everyone (except the spammers) and defeating it is crucial to Twitter’s success going forward.

There’s little question that Collins’ use of the My Twitter Butler name puts him on shaky legal ground. And it’s pretty obvious that the application he sells does permit its customers to engage in behavior that’s forbidden by the Twitter Terms of Service. I certainly won’t shed a tear if Twitter bans users who are employing My Twitter Butler in less-than-savory ways.

But Twitter’s handling of Collins is troublesome and it’s increasingly apparent that Twitter is approaching IP and developer issues in a “we’re going to have our cake and eat it too” manner.

First, while Twitter, Inc. does hold a trademark registration for ‘Twitter‘ and Collins almost certainly has limited grounds on which to defend himself against a trademark infringement suit, Twitter freely lets other services that it apparently has no qualms with use the word ‘Twitter‘, both in product names and domain names. Examples: Twitteriffic, Twitterholic and Twittercounter amongst many others. Twitter even promotes Twitteriffic prominently.

The problem here is that in the United States the failure to aggressively prosecute trademark infringers can result in the weakening of a trademark or in some cases the total loss of trademark rights. So by that standard, one would think that Twitter’s attorneys would be advising it to treat anyone using the ‘Twitter‘ mark the same. But that’s not the case. Twitter doesn’t at all seem interested in protecting its trademark, defending against infringement wherever it occurs. Rather, it seems to be using its trademark to hit back at individuals and companies that run afoul of its Terms of Service and corporate tastes. Haven’t other corporations been called ‘evil‘ for similar legal shenanigans?

Which gets to the second point: Twitter’s odd relationship with developers. Here, Collins has developed an application that is, in my opinion, most likely to be used for spammy purposes. But given that it’s a desktop software application that enables its users to run afoul of the Twitter Terms of Service, the question becomes: is Collins violating the Terms of Service or are his customers violating the Terms of Service? Where is the line drawn? Couldn’t other powerful Twitter clients be used in an abusive manner?

At a higher level, Twitter’s strong-arm tactics raise serious questions about Twitter’s platform strategy. In the absence of some sort of formal relationship with developers or an App Store-like bureaucracy, Twitter should have the means to effectively enforce its Terms of Service at the platform level. There are simple approaches (eg. more effective API limits) and more complicated approaches (eg. detecting the signatures of API abuse) for accomplishing this. In all cases, applications and users violating the Terms of Service should be banned without the need for high-priced attorneys.

The bottom line is that Twitter risks a lot by trying to have its cake and eat it too. It’s hard to take the company seriously when it threatens one developer over his use of the word ‘Twitter‘ in a product name but actually promotes another product that uses ‘Twitter‘. If Twitter is going to finally defend its trademark, it should defend it across the board on legitimate grounds; it shouldn’t use it as a tool to threaten developers it doesn’t like. And when it comes to its platform, Twitter would instill a lot of confidence by showing developers that it’s capable of stewarding an ecosystem in which the Terms of Service can be enforced by someone in the IT department, not someone in the legal department.

Photo credit: JoshSemans via Flickr.

Proprietary formats and lock-in. When it comes to discussions of digital content, these are terms you really can’t escape.

A lot of that has to do with the evolution of digital content, which
arguably hasn’t gone much smoother than human evolution. On one side,
we’ve seen many content owners fight the ‘digitization‘ of their
content, contributing to rampant piracy and consumer dissatisfaction.
On one side, we’ve seen hardware and software vendors take advantage of
the chaos to push proprietary formats that lock consumers into their
hardware and software offerings.

In the still-immature but fast-growing market for e-books, the future is up for grabs. Will stakeholders get it right this time or will consumers suffer as they make the same mistakes again?

Amazon.com appears to have a head start in the e-book market and cynics probably weren’t surprised when the -commerce giant chose the ‘proprietary‘ path. E-books purchased on Amazon.com can only be read on its Kindle device or iPhone software. Although Amazon.com isn’t yet to e-books what, say, Apple is to digital music, consumers have already been reminded what this path can bring.

But Sony, which is a player in the e-book game through its Reader devices, has decided to take the load less traveled. According to the New York Times, it is set to announce that by year-end, it will only sell e-books in the EPUB format.

The EPUB format is an open standard promulgated by the International Digital Publishing Forum, whose members include major publishers like McGraw-Hill, HarperCollins and Random House, news organizations like the AP and software vendors like Adobe. Ironically, Amazon.com is also a member.

With the EPUB format, consumers may not be free from DRM but they can take the e-books they purchase from device-to-device. That’s far more important.

Steve Haber, chief of the Sony digital reading division, recognizes that and told the New York Times that “There is going to be a proliferation of different reading devices, with different features and capabilities and prices for a different set of consumer requirements“. He went on to note that consumers “are going to want to shop at all the [e-book] stores“.

Of course, Sony’s decision to embrace an open standard probably isn’t entirely altruistic. Amazon.com has a big lead over competitors like Sony and had the roles been reversed, the storied electronics manufacturer probably would have been less kind for obvious reasons.

But the fact that major stakeholders in the market have coalesced around an open standard before the market really takes off is good sign for consumers because it should provide more choice and greater competition.

If Amazon.com provides a better service, a better price or a better total package, it could potentially win with a proprietary format and lock-in. That’d be fair. But the existence of an open standard with lots of backing already appears to be encouraging a different approach. The New York Times notes that Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has stated a desire to “make Kindle books available on as many hardware devices as possible“.

That’s the market at work. In the early days of other digital content markets, players didn’t have to worry about competing with open standards. They seized the opportunity to acquire market share despite their use of proprietary formats. Consumers were largely forced to avoid inconvenient issues like lock-in; convenience and selection was largely only available in the presence of lock-in.

Even if the EPUB format fails to really catch on, if it can give Amazon.com pause and encourage a more competitive marketplace, consumers may be rewarded with a new digital content market that’s a lot friendlier than what they’re used to.

Photo credit: oskay via Flickr.

September is a particularly slow month for airline travel. Situated between the summer rush and the holiday season, consumers usually take September off from traveling the friendly skies. And incentives to move around during the back to school season are further inhibited by economic constraints happening right now. But JetBlue has found a way to get people into their airline seats: they’re offering unlimited Jet Blue flights for the month of September.

Between September 8 and October 8, travelers can take to JetBlue’s planes as often as they’d like. For only 9. The airline, which is known for its social media savvy, sent out a press release about their offer and tweeted about the deal yesterday. Since then, they’ve sold out 1/3 of their inventory.

According to JetBlue spokesperson Jenny Dervin: “September is a slower month for us. Peak seasons are the holidays and summer. So we thought: ‘Let’s find a way to fill seats.’”

And it appears to be working. To announce their offer, JetBlue sent one tweet to their over 1 million Twitter followers, a general press release and a newsletter to their frequent flyers yesterday.

Since making the announcement, JetBlue has found over 10 million mentions of its brand on blogs and news sites. They’ve seen hits to their trip planning route map grow 861%. Meanwhile, other sites are piggybacking on the deal. For instance, travel mapping site Evelater is encouraging people to post their All-You-Can-Jet plans. They were a trending topic on Twitter yesterday and the positive word of mouth continues to grow.

With an average flight price of 0, it won’t take long for frequent travelers to get their money’s worth on the All-You-Can-Jet plan. And excess interest in the offer could be problematic for the airline’s bottom line. Frequent travelers could be keeping money in their pockets that might have otherwise gone to JetBlue for individual flights. But that is a problem that JetBlue is glad to have. Says Dervin:

“It’s a calculated risk. But it is low enough to not stop us from doing this. We think it’s so innovative that we’ll end up with more customers not fewer.”

To combat completely overwhelming their system (and to ensure people who purchase the plans will be able to book seats) JetBlue has limited the number of passes that they’ll be selling. But after one day, they’ve sold 1/3 of the inventory they put aside. Says Devinl:

“Once people try JetBlue, we generally find we’ve made a customer for life. This is a good way for people to give us a try, especially in a month that has more searts available than any other time of year. If we make a little money that’s great too.”

Most people can’t just up and leave for a month to fly around the country. But the word of mouth the company has received so far has been fantastic. If twitterers liked JetBlue before, they’re simply atwitter now. Just a sampling: