Blind Five Year Old

The knuckleball is a very effective pitch if you can throw it well. But not many do. Why am I talking about arcane baseball pitches? Because the Internet has a knuckleball problem.

Image from The Complete Pitcher

The Knuckleball Problem

I define the knuckleball problem as something that can be highly effective but is also extremely difficult. The problem arises when people forget about the latter (difficulty) and focus solely on the former (potential positive outcome).

Individuals, teams and organizations embark on a knuckleball project with naive enthusiasm. They’re then baffled when it isn’t a rousing success. In baseball terms that means instead of freezing the hitter, chalking up strikeouts and producing wins you’re tossing the ball in the dirt, issuing walks and running up your ERA.

If a pitcher can’t throw the knuckleball effectively, they don’t throw the knuckleball. But in business, the refrain I hear is ’X isn’t the problem, it’s how X was implemented‘.

This might be true, but the hidden meaning behind this turn of phrase is the idea that you should always attempt to throw a knuckleball. In reality you should probably figure out what two or three pitches you can throw to achieve success.

Difficulty and Success

The vast majority of pitchers do not throw the knuckleball because it’s tough to throw and produces a very low success rate. Most people ‘implement’ or ‘execute’ the pitch incorrectly. Instead pitchers find a mix of pitches that are less difficult and work to perfect them.

Yet online, a tremendous number of people try to throw knuckleballs. They’re trying something with a high level of difficulty instead of finding less difficult (perhaps less sexy or trendy) solutions. And there is a phalanx of consultants and bloggers who seem to encourage and cheer this self-destructive behavior.

Knuckleballs

In general I think mega menus suck. Of course there are exceptions but they are few and far between. The mega menu is a knuckleball. Sure you can attempt it, but the odds are you’re going to screw it up. And there are plenty of other ways you can implement navigation that will be as or even more successful.

When something has such a high level of difficulty you can’t just point to implementation and execution as the problem. When a UX pattern is widely misapplied is it really that good of a UX pattern?

Personas also seem to be all the rage right now. Done the right way personas can sometimes deliver insight and guidance to a marketing team. But all too often the personas are not rooted in real customer experiences and devolve into stereotypes that are then used as weapons in cross-functional arguments meetings. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think this feature speaks to Concerned Carl.”

Of course implementation and execution matter. But when you consistently see people implementing and executing something incorrectly you have to wonder whether you should be recommending it in the first place.

Pitching coaches aren’t pushing the knuckleball on their pitching staffs.

Can You Throw a Knuckleball?

The problem is most people think they can throw the online equivalent of the knuckleball. And unlike the baseball diamond the feedback mechanism online is far from direct.

Personas are created and used to inform your marketing strategy and there is some initial enthusiasm and some minor changes but over time people get tired of hearing about these people and the whole thing peters out along with the high consulting fees which are also conveniently forgotten.

The hard truth is most people can’t throw the knuckleball. And that’s okay. You can still be a Cy Young Award winner. Tim Lincecum does not throw a knuckleball.

How (and When) To Throw The Knuckleball

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking risks or attempt to throw a knuckleball once in a while. Not at all.

However, you shouldn’t attempt the knuckler simply because it is difficult or ‘more elegant’ or the hottest new fad. You can take plenty of risks throwing the slider or curve or change up, all pitches which have a higher chance of success. In business terms the risk to reward ratio is far more attractive.

If you’re going to start a knuckleball project you need to be clear about whether you have a team that can pull it off. Do you really have a team of A players or do you have a few utility guys on the team?

Once you clear that bit of soul searching you need to be honest about measuring success. A certain amount of intellectual honesty is necessary so that you can turn to the team and say, you tossed that one in the dirt. Finally, you need a manager who’s willing to walk to the mound and tell the pitcher to stop futzing with the knuckleball and start throwing some heat.

TL;DR

The Internet has a knuckleball problem. Too many are attempting the difficult without understanding the high probability of failure while ignoring the less difficult that could lead to success.

If you work with me for any amount of time you’ll likely hear some of my stories and analogies. One of my favorites is an old direct marketing story passed down to me when I was just getting started.

The Pen Salesman

There once was a pen salesman who had two types of pens. One was a very nice but basic model and the other was a fancier, more expensive, high-end model.

The pen salesman was doing a pretty brisk business but he had a problem. He wasn’t selling enough of the high-end model. This was troubling because the margin on his high-end pen was … higher. People seemed to like the high-end model but, on par, most wound up buying the basic model instead.

So what did the pen salesman do?

He decided to create a new premium pen. It would be even fancier and more expensive then his high-end pen. Now the pen salesman had a selection of three pens from which to choose. The secret was that the pen salesman didn’t really want to sell the premium pen! In fact, he wasn’t even really stocking them. But a funny thing happened, customers began to select the high-end (now the middle) model in droves.

When presented with three choices (good, better and best), the middle pen suddenly became far more attractive and looked like a better value. Had the pen changed? No. But the context in which it was presented did, and that made the difference.

That doesn’t mean you can go on forever adding more and more models to your product line and expect similar results. No, I can also talk your ear off about The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz some of which is based on work by Sheena S. Iyengar, author of When Choice is Demotivating (PDF).

In short, consumer behavior is fascinating and powerful.

Internet Marketing Maxima

I sometimes wonder if we as Internet marketers are using these old school techniques and stories when implementing our campaigns. The ability to conduct A/B and multi-variate tests has soared but the root of most successful campaigns is in understanding context and consumer behavior. Don’t get me wrong, I love numbers and am all about data-driven decision making. But not in isolation.

I worry that the technology we rely upon creates local maxima issues, which is a highfalutin way of saying that we constrain ourselves to the best of a limited set of outcomes instead of seeking a new (and better) solution altogether. Harry Brignull of 90% of Everything and Joshua Porter or 52 Weeks of UX explain this far better than I could, so go off and do some reading and then come back to finish.

The pen salesman could have tried different colors (of pen or ink), or a different pitch, or added features or cut prices or offered a gift box with purchase or any number of other typical marketing techniques to help increase sales of his high-end pen. But it’s unlikely any of them would have achieved the monumental shift in sales he saw by introducing that premium pen.

So I hold on to the story of the pen salesman as a way to remind me to think (really think) about context and consumer behavior.

Google has a love hate relationship with the SEO community. They view many SEO agencies, consultants and services as part of the problem – parasites that seek to exploit and game their algorithm. No doubt, many fall into this category.

Unfortunately, Google’s lack of transparency contributes to the problem, spawning a host of poor theories and misguided practices. In addition, the changing nature of the algorithm creates a powerful variant of bit rot – outdated information and myths that stubbornly persist.

In response, Google has worked (perhaps reluctantly) to improve communication with the SEO community. They send employees to search conferences, write blogs, create videos, maintain a forum, provide informational tools and have a presence on social media platforms (Twitter) and sites (Hacker News).

The vast majority of these efforts are undertaken by one person: Matt Cutts.

Last month Google increased their communication efforts, dedicating a blog to search (it’s about time!) and doing a live 90 minute Q&A session via YouTube. I’m encouraged by these new developments but Google still doesn’t have a solid share of voice within the SEO community and when it does it is often viewed with suspicion.

Here are three ways Google could improve SEO relations.

Google Search Summit

Invite select members (perhaps 50) of the SEO community to the Google campus for a search summit with Google engineers. This is very different from a conference where the day-to-day mechanics of the SEO industry are discussed.

Instead, I propose a real exchange of ideas on the nature and problems of search. It could even have a lean component where groups are challenged to propose a new way to deal with a specific search problem.

There are a number of smart folks in the SEO community who could contribute positively to discussions on search quality or web spam. Even if Google doesn’t believe this, understanding how the SEO community perceives certain stances, guidelines and practices would be valuable.

At a minimum, the dialog would provide additional context behind search guidelines and algorithmic efforts. For Google, this means the attendees become agents of ‘truth’. By allowing the SEO community to truly engage and learn, they can help transmit Google’s message. I’m not talking about a Kool Aid conversion but instead building a greater degree of trust through knowledge transfer and personal relationships.

Attendance would require some modicum of discretion and a certain level of knowledge or interest in information retrieval, human computer interaction, natural language processing and machine learning.

Even if I didn’t get an invite (though I’d want one), I think it’s a good idea for Google and the SEO community.

Google Change Log

The SEO community is intensely curious about when  and what changes are made to search, whether they be algorithmic or design oriented. Some amount of transparency here would go a long way. Would it really hurt to let the SEO community know that a certain type of bucket test was in the field?

We’re already seeing most of the UX tests, with blogs cranking out screenshots of the latest SERP oddity they’ve encountered. So why not publish a changelog, using FriendFeed as a model.

FriendFeed makes it clear that this wasn’t comprehensive, but it did provide a level of transparency and insight into pain points and personality. The latter even more so because the user is linked to their FriendFeed account.

Imagine a Google changelog where the user is linked to a Google Profile. God forbid we learn a little bit about the search quality engineers.

I understand that there are certain changes that cannot be shared. But opening the kimono just a little would go a long way.

LOLMatts

Matt Cutts is willing to interact at length at conferences and jump into comment threads (in a single bound). He gets a bit of help from folks like Maile Ohye and John Mueller, but he’s essentially a solo act.

If Google isn’t going to allow (or encourage) more engineers to interact with stakeholders (yeah, I have a business background) then you have to amplify the limited amount of Matt we have at our disposal.

What better way than to create a Matt Cutts meme? LOLMatts!

Yes, this is tongue in cheek, but my point is to do some marketing.

Make the messages pithy and viral.

Break through the clutter and keep it simple.

Make it easier for people to pass along important information. I’ve just created four LOLMatts that cover page sculpting, cloaking, meta keywords and paid links. Of course this can go wrong in a multitude of ways and be used for evil. But the idea is to think of ways to amplify the message.

Develop some interesting infographics. Heck, Danny Sullivan even got you started. Get busy creating some presentations (you could do worse than to use Rand as a model) and upload them to SlideShare. Or create an eBook and let people pay for it with a Tweet.

Let’s see some marketing innovation.

TL;DR

Google’s rocky relationship with the SEO community could be improved through real interaction and engagement, an increase in transparency (both technical and human) and marketing techniques that would amplify their message.

The SEO community and Google would benefit from these efforts.

“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” – Audre Lorde

Okay, there might be some new ideas, but very few of them. Far fewer than marketers would have you believe. But that’s their job right? They come up with ways to make you feel different about an old idea.

Buzzwords

The easiest way for marketers to do this is through buzzwords. Oddly, I think marketers are often more susceptible to buzzwords. They create them and in many instances they wind up believing in their own creations. They become certain that the hot new buzzword is an entirely new and groundbreaking idea.

But it’s not. That’s not to say that it isn’t a good idea, it’s just not new. Here are a two recent examples.

Social Proof

The way some folks talk about it, you’d think social proof was the love child of Twitter and Facebook. Social proof, persuasion and crowd psychology have been around for a long time, even before Cialdini made it popular.

If you see more people liking something, or someone you trust liking something you’re more likely to like that too.

McDonald’s figured this out a long time ago. We’re bombarded with ‘number of satisfied users’ claims. You always remove at least one if not two strips when posting a tear off flyer. And people have been using these things called testimonials, often from celebrities, for quite a while.

Social proof works, it has offline and it will online too. But lets not go crazy making it into something new.

Crowdsourcing

I remember going to Hershey Park as a kid and being asked to describe my perfect candy bar. It was just a guy holding a clip board, scribbling down the ideas of all the kids coming into the amusement park that day.

In 1981 the Chicago White Sox held a uniform design contest. Anyone could enter and the fans could vote on the finalists. To this day, I swear someone stole my design.

Clearly new technologies have enabled businesses to collect more information and to collaborate with others on a larger scale, but the idea of canvassing and engaging with your customers is not new.

Beyond Buzzwords

Just because it’s hot and trendy doesn’t automatically mean it’s right for your business. Look beyond the buzz. Break it down into the fundamentals.

Remember, buzzwords are a new way of feeling about an old idea. It’s rarely as complicated (or expensive) as it seems. Heck, you might be doing it already and not even know it.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

Are content farms really the problem or are you just a snob?

The recent complaints about Google’s search quality (here, here, here and here) range from real spam to indictments of content farms. I think we can all agree that spam (cloaking, scrapers, splogs, status code manipulation etc.) should be weeded out. But that leaves us with the larger issue: the quality of results.

Quality

The definition of quality usually refers to a ‘degree of excellence’ or ‘superiority of kind’. It’s often associated with grade. Think back to your time in school. Did you ever get back a paper you thought deserved a higher grade? You were certain it was an A paper and you got a B+ instead!

Quality is a matter of taste.

Taste

What about beer? I adore Stone’s Ruination IPA. But I’m certain a lot more Coors Light is sold in a day than Ruination IPA in a month, maybe even a year. Even if I were to try to determine the best IPA, there would be many conflicting and passionate opinions on the topic.

Value

Perhaps it’s about value instead? Ruination IPA costs a pretty penny while Coors Light is cheap. Maybe Coors Light is the best value because of the ratio of price to quality. But people value things in very different ways. This is clear when looking at restaurant reviews.

When I read restaurant reviews I can tell whether the reviewer has the same food bias as I do. I treat reviews which laud huge portions, or rock bottom prices, or extol the virtues of never-ending refills differently. Their view of what a good meal is differs from mine. They’re looking for quantity, no matter how mediocre the food. I’m looking for quality and generally don’t want a pound and a half of garlic mashed potatoes.

There’s nothing wrong with either perspective. But they are different.

Popularity

Look around folks. What do you see more of? Fast food or fine dining? It’s fast food hands down.

And you can see this in nearly every area of life. Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are wildly popular musicians but I’m listening to Kasabian and Kaiser Chiefs. I haven’t touched Internet Explorer in years but it’s (sadly) still the most popular browser.

Mahalo, Squidoo and eHow get millions of visitors a month. These site are popular, and while you might find them distasteful, lacking quality or providing little value, many others (clearly) disagree.

Do I like these sites? No. Perhaps I’m a snob. Maybe you are too.

Numbers

The number of searches has skyrocketed in the last five years. Using comScore’s monthly numbers, core searches has gone from 6.9 billion at the beginning of 2007 to 16.4 billion at the beginning of 2011.

At the same time Pew reports a growing percentage of adults are now online and using search engines on a daily basis.

Audience

The search audience has changed. One way to measure this is to plot daily search engine usage by adults against the innovation curve.

The U.S. Census Bureau puts the population of the US at around 300 million. Using the CIA World Factbook we can estimate that 80% of those are over the age of 14. I’m going to use the resulting number (240 million) as my adult population number.

In 2007 Pew reported that 70% of adults were online and that 40% of them used search on a daily basis.

• 240,000,000 X 70% X 40% = 67,200,000

In 2010 Pew reported that 79% of adults were online and that 49% of them used search on a daily basis.

• 240,000,000 X 79% X 49% = 92,904,000

In both 2007 and 2010 daily search usage penetrated the Early Majority. The difference is that the Early Majority now outnumber the Innovator and Early Adopter groups combined.

That’s just in three years, imagine the difference between 2005 and 2010. The picture of a daily search user is very different today.

Mental Models

The nature of our searches (as a whole) is likely changing because of who is now searching. The mental model of an Innovator or Early Adopter is going to be different than that of someone in the Early Majority.

Each group is going to approach search with different ideas and baggage. The Innovator and Early Adopter are more likely to be open to new experiences and to explore. They are more risk tolerant.

The Early Majority and Late Majority are more likely to apply their information seeking behaviors from other mediums to search. They’re looking for the familiar.

Brands

Many seemed surprised when Google Instant revealed a ‘bias’ toward brands. It has since been confirmed that Google is not engaging in any internal bias. That bias is a user bias. It’s a predication based, in large part, on the volume of searches.

Should we really be surprised? Many of these companies are spending a fortune to advertise and market their brand. Their goal is to capture mindshare and they are succeeding. So much so that people, particularly the Early and Late Majority, go online to search for those brands.

In 2005, a DoubleClick report (Search Before The Purchase) showed relatively low levels of brand search. While it accelerated closer to the actual purchase, in some instances only 27% of searches were on brand. Do you honestly think that’s still true today?

eCommerce has certainly grown in that time. The number of navigation searches has climbed, which is closely related to brand. People continue to search (a lot) for Facebook or Craigslist as a way to get to those destination. But last year Bing also reported that Walmart was the 8th most searched term.

Users

Matt Cutts tells us not to chase the algorithm but to chase the user. But who is the user really? The audience has changed! And if the algorithm is trying to use human feedback as a signal, wouldn’t the results reflect that new composition?

Might that be why in October of 2010 many people noticed an algorithm change that seemed to skew toward bigger brands. It’s what Jonathan Mendez called ‘gentrification of the SERPs‘. (I wish I’d come up with that term!)

I may not think the results got better, but perhaps someone from the Early Majority or Late Majority did. They look at those results and see a lot of familiar brands and that instills confidence.

Content Farms

So when you see eHow at the top of a result and cringe, others might be thinking Google has led them to the easiest and best result. When you find a Mahalo page you might grind your teeth, but others could walk away thinking they got exactly what they needed.

I may enjoy reading the works of Shakespeare but plenty of others will be super happy to have the CliffsNotes version instead.

Which User is Google Optimizing For?

I believe Google when they say they want to provide the most relevant results. But there is a fair bit of subjectivity involved because the user is not some monolithic, homogeneous blob. Quality, taste, value and popularity are all going to inform what people think is relevant.

If Google is optimizing for the majority, that may mean a very different interpretation of relevancy. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but if you’re an Innovator or Early Adopter, you might think things are getting worse and not better.

There’s usually a better place to eat right down the street from a McDonald’s, but it’s McDonald’s that still gets most of the business. There are some places (North Beach in San Francisco for instance) that have a ‘no-chains’ policy.

Google could certainly do that. They could stand up and say that fast food content from Demand Media wouldn’t gain prime SERP real estate. Google could optimize for better instead of good enough. They could pick fine dining over fast food.

But is that what the ‘user’ wants?

Okay, I actually don’t have any precognitive ability but I might as well have some fun while predicting events in 2011. Lets look into the crystal ball.

Facebook becomes a search engine

The Open Graph is just another type of index. Instead of crawling the web like Google, Facebook lets users do it for them. Facebook is creating a massive graph of data and at some point they’ll go all Klingon on Google and uncloak with several bird of prey surrounding search. Game on.

Google buys Foursquare

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last 6 months it’s clear that Google wants to own local. They’re dedicating a ton of resources to Places and decided that getting citations from others was nice but generating your own reviews would be better. With location based services just catching on with the mainstream, Google will overpay for Foursquare and bring check-ins to the masses.

UX becomes more experiential

Technology (CSS3, Compass, HTML5, jQuery, Flash, AJAX and various noSQL databases to name a few) transforms how users experience the web. Sites that allow users to seamlessly understand applications through interactions will be enormously successful.

Google introduces more SEO tools

Google Webmaster Tools continues to launch tools that will help people understand their search engine optimization efforts. Just like they did with Analytics, Google will work hard in 2011 to commoditize SEO tools.

Identity becomes important

As the traditional link graph becomes increasingly obsolete, Google seeks to leverage social mentions and links. But to do so (in any major way) without opening a whole new front of spam, they’ll work on defining reputation. This will inevitably lead them to identity and the possible acquisition of Rapleaf.

Internet congestion increases

Internet congestion will increase as more and more data is pushed through the pipe. Apps and browser add-ons that attempt to determine the current congestion will become popular and the Internati will embrace this as their version of Greening the web. (Look for a Robert Scoble PSA soon.)

Micropayments battle paywalls

As the appetite for news and digital content continues to swell, a start-up will pitch publications on a micropayment solution (pay per pageview perhaps) as an alternative to subscription paywalls. The start-up may be new or may be one with a large installed user base that hasn’t solved revenue. Or maybe someone like Tynt? I’m crossing my fingers that it’s whoever winds up with Delicious.

Gaming jumps the shark

This is probably more of a hope than a real prediction. I’d love to see people dedicate more time to something (anything!) other than the ‘push-button-receive-pellet’ games. I’m hopeful that people do finally burn out, that the part of the cortex that responds to this type of gratification finally becomes inured to this activity.

Curation is king

The old saw is content is king. But in 2011 curation will be king. Whether it’s something like Fever, my6sense or Blekko, the idea of transforming noise into signal (via algorithm and/or human editing) will be in high demand, as will different ways to present that signal such as Flipboard and Paper.li.

Retargeting wins

What people do will outweigh what people say as retargeting is both more effective for advertisers and more relevant for consumers. Privacy advocates will howl and ally themselves with the government. This action will backfire as the idea of government oversight is more distasteful than that of corporations.

Github becomes self aware

Seriously, have you looked at what is going on at Github? There’s a lot of amazing work being done. So much so that Github will assemble itself Voltron style and become a benevolently self-aware organism that will be our digital sentry protecting us from Skynet.

Back in 1999 I sat in the San Diego County Courthouse reading Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, hoping that I didn’t get selected to serve on the class-action lawsuit against grocery chains who had allegedly conspired to fix prices on eggs.

I run hot and cold on Godin these days but Permission Marketing made a lot of sense and still does to a large extent. The core principle was that you needed permission to market to your customer.

Make the Permission Overt and Clear – Chapter 9, p 163.

As an early email marketer I recall the days when double opt-in lists were all the rage. Opt-in just wasn’t enough because the methods of collection could have been less than overt and clear. A double opt-in list ensured that you were getting the best list, the Glengarry list.

Opt-In versus Opt-Out

The difference between opt-in and opt-out can be substantial. Opt-in is the active choice to accept something, while opt-out is the passive acceptance of something. The problem here is that inertia can be quite powerful. The default presentation is often used by users as they seek to efficiently complete a task.

That’s not to say all opt-ins are created equal. The acceptance of terms of use (and privacy) before completing a download or registration is a weak opt-in since the majority of people don’t read it and those that do often don’t understand it. This type of coerced opt-in may be better than an opt-out but not by much.

Is Opt-Out Bad?

As a marketer, opt-in can be frustrating. A product or service that you just know would be valuable to a user is gated by their natural inertia. You run the numbers and it’s clear that an opt-out would be better for both the business and the user. Quite simply, you’d be able to deliver a valuable product to more of the right users. Those who don’t see that value can opt-out. No fuss, no muss right?

Well, permission marketing would tell you that you need overt and clear permission from a user to start that relationship. A user must raise their hand. Is opt-out overt enough? That’s debatable but it brings us to another permission marketing principle. Once given permission, you can’t abuse that permission. That’s where things have gone awry.

Opt-out got a bad name because (way) too many businesses abused that weak permission by not being relevant. It’s a shame since a good marketer could probably pull off an opt-out program. And that’s just what Facebook and Google are doing.

Value and Relevance

The value of your product or service and the relevance you deliver to the user are going to be paramount to maintaining that permission, no matter how it was attained. Think about that for a minute.

What I’m saying is that if your product or service is that good, you can acquire those customers in nearly any way. Opt-in, Opt-out, Optimus Prime, it won’t matter. Sure, some people will claim it does, but there’s evidence to the contrary.

Google is Good … Enough

Google tracks and uses your search and site history to personalize your search results. They actually do this when you’re signed-in and signed-out. Here’s a look at how you sign up for Web History.

It’s opt-out and it’s relatively overt, but is it clear? It communicates the benefits quite nicely but what the feature actually does … not so much. But hey, that’s why there’s a Learn More link, right?

Web History actually can make your Google experience better. For most users I’d guess the Web History feature is completely transparent and they have no idea that their actions are being recorded. They simply think Google works great.

But what happens when someone figures out what’s going on?

What People Say and What People Do

People may say they would turn Web History off but how many really do? Sure, sometimes there’s a meme that takes hold and a few folks will very publicly call it quits. But the majority don’t … even when they say they will. The bark is much worse than the bite. And both Google and Facebook know it.

Lets take behavioral targeting (BT) as an example.

Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual.

When people are asked whether they want this type of advertising, the response is generally negative.

Yet, behavioral targeting has proven to be very successful with click through rates substantially higher, often cited at three times the normal click through rate and recently noted in one study (pdf) as having the ability to achieve a 1000% lift. The ads are more relevant and people are voting with their clicks.

Google’s DoubleClick has a BT program. They call it interest-based advertising. The program is opt-out and Matt Cutts recently commented on the opt-out behavior.

Only a relatively small number of people visit that opt-out page each week, and the majority of them change their interests rather than opting out.

Once again, we see a product delivering enough value and certainly enough relevance to overcome any ire users might have about the ‘auto’ opt-in. In fact, the product produces such relevance (as seen by the high CTR) that most users simply think the ads are getting better. They’re not giving much thought to the how, just that it’s a better experience.

What about Privacy?

I still believe in privacy. I actually have Web History turned off and I don’t share much on Facebook. I consciously made those choices. Just like I make the choice not to give my name and address away at the drop of a hat to enter to win the new car parked in the middle of the mall. There’s a certain level of personal responsibility and common sense that must be levied on the user.

I believe that you would see users opt-out of these services if they didn’t provide the requisite relevance and value. Right now, Google and Facebook do for the majority of users.

Marketing Privacy

Google has been careful, outside of Buzz, to not provoke negative user interest. Instead, they’ve worked and publicized their attempts to make opt-out and privacy settings more available. Why? They’ve seen that users are willing to give up a certain amount of privacy to engage in their products. So they’re happy to have 100,000 people a day visit their dashboard.

Facebook, on the other hand, has provoked negative user interest. They make broad sweeping changes that highlight the exchange of privacy for value. Coupled with a poor user interface for the various opt-out settings and Facebook has caught substantially more flak.

Google has been marketing privacy while Facebook has been marketing value.

Intravenous Permission

Have Google and Facebook killed Permission Marketing? Not really. Google, and Facebook to a lesser degree, has short-circuited the natural progression of permission and achieved a type of intravenous permission (the highest level) through the release of great and free products. (Free is important. It creates a subtle user obligation.)

Users can always revoke this level of permission. It will take a break in trust, an abuse of permission, to force users to evaluate their exchange of privacy for value. Even then, that balance will have to be substantially different for users to make a change.

There have been a number of recent posts around selecting the right SEO clients.  And I’ve certainly had my share of frustrations. Yet, one of the issues I often run into are potential clients who think SEO is the only marketing tactic they need to grow their business. This is just as difficult as a client who distrusts SEO.

When SEO won’t work

Okay, SEO will always work but it won’t always be the best way to grow your business. Too many start-ups seem to believe that they’ll be able to drive massive amounts of traffic from Google. End of marketing plan.

The fact is SEO is but one part of an overall marketing plan. Sometimes it can be a very large part of the plan, particularly if you have a long-tail strategy. More often than not it’s going to be a focused SEO effort on a handful of high value keywords. While this is a fine strategy it may not bring a lot of traffic right away.

SEO is not a ‘just-add-water’ solution

SEO is tougher than it looks, particularly if you’re looking at optimizing a handful of competitive keywords. Sure, the basics are easy but the devil is in the details. Even when you’re doing all the right things, it may take time to conquer the rankings for those keywords. Never mind the pesky keyword volume data that can provide a reality check on expected traffic.

Unlike skeptics, SEO converts have a distorted sense of the speed and effectiveness of SEO. While they don’t understand the mechanics, they’re sure that some expert can wave a magic wand and turn on the Google spigot.

SEO Infomercial

The lure of SEO is, of course, that it’s free. In some ways SEO is like a late night infomercial. Promises of flat abs in 30 days with just a 10 minute daily workout! Did we mention that it folds up and fits under your bed too?!

SEO can be a very effective low-cost channel. But to get those flat abs you still need to eat right. And if you’re listening carefully to the legal disclaimer you’ll hear that those magical results were ‘not typical’. That means it’ll take longer than 30 days and more work than 10 minutes daily.

Swiss Army Knife SEO

Your marketing plan should be like a Swiss Army Knife with SEO being just one of the tools. Not only that, but you need to use that tool the right way. Getting a whole bunch of traffic that doesn’t convert isn’t going to help your business. Don’t neglect the other tools at your disposal. In fact, some of those other tools might actually help your SEO efforts in the long run.

And if SEO won’t work there’s always social media, right?

A new study by .Fox Networks and comScore shows (again) the positive relationship between display advertising and search.

Video and display advertising both successfully increased brand engagement in each of the four campaigns analysed. The average uplift across the campaigns saw site visitation increase by more than a factor of seven over a four week period following exposure to an ad, with consumers three times more likely to conduct search queries using brand or relevant generic terms in the same time period.

Advertising Attribution

These studies all point to a synergy between advertising channels. That’s not ground-breaking, though the measurement of it is innovative. What marketers have been trying to figure out is attribution. What channel or channels should get credit for a sale or lead? It goes to the heart of the old marketing adage: I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget, I just don’t know which half.

Impact on Display

Many advertisers and agencies still measure success of a display campaign based on traditional click through rate (CTR) and ROI. The low CTR of display ads makes marketers suspicious. The concept of a view-through conversion made sense to some, but it still seemed like a bunch of hand waving and didn’t solve the problem of attribution. New services like Vizu also go beyond clicks and provide measurable brand lift based on display campaigns.

Studies and tools that provide multi-channel insight into conversion will help advertisers move beyond antiquated success metrics and increase their display advertising budgets.

Impact on Search

Convincing advertisers of the relationship between display and search is only half the battle. How will advertisers respond? The obvious knee-jerk reaction is to increase their display advertising spend. But is that really where advertisers should start?

If display generates more search volume, wouldn’t you first ensure search was optimized to convert that additional volume? Even within search, would you allocate more dollars into PPC or SEO? Would you prefer to pay for that customer twice or once?

Display and SEO

I’d argue that the first action item based on this study would be to invest in SEO. We already know that the vast majority of search clicks come from organic listings. The importance of rank cannot be denied, even with recent studies showing interesting behavior around brands.

Display primes the pump and generates intent. But you could be generating that intent for your competitor if you haven’t done enough SEO. Branded terms are likely safe, but the ‘relevant generic terms’ are a battlefield.

For example, if Best Buy ran a display campaign for HDTVs, this would create additional search volume for branded searches (Best Buy) and relevant generic searches (HDTVs). A brand search works out just fine. But a search for hdtvs returns Walmart as the first retailer result. Best Buy could wind up spending advertising dollars to drive sales for Walmart.

My fear is that instead of investing in SEO advertisers will simply throw money at the problem through PPC. Never mind that you’ll still only capture a small segment of that additional search volume, it’s also eating into your overall ROI.

As we begin 2010, it’s time for me to go on the record with some predictions. A review of my 2009 predictions shows a few hits, a couple of half-credits and a few more misses. Then again, many of my predictions were pretty bold.

This year is no different.

The Link Bubble Pops

At some point in 2010, the link bubble will pop. Google will be forced to address rising link abuse and neutralize billions of links. This will be the largest change in the Google algorithm in many years, disrupting individual SEO strategies as well as larger link based models such as Demand Media.

Twitter Finds a Revenue Model

As 2010 wears on Twitter will find and announce a revenue model. I don’t know what it will be and I’m unsure it will work, but I can’t see Twitter waving their hands for yet another year. Time to walk the walk Twitter.

Google Search Interface Changes

We’ve already seen the search mode test that should help users navigate and refine search results. However, I suspect this is just the beginning and not the end. The rapid rate of iteration by the Google team makes me believe we could see something as radical as LazyFeed’s new UI or the New York Times Skimmer.

Behavioral Targeting Accelerates

Government and privacy groups continue to rage against behavioral targeting (BT), seeing it as some Orwellian advertising machine hell bent on destroying the world. Yet, behavioral targeting works and savvy marketers will win against these largely ineffectual groups and general consumer apathy. Ask people if they want targeted ads and they say no, show them targeted ads and they click.

Google Launches gBooks

The settlement between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers will (finally) be granted final approval and then the fireworks will really start. That’s right, the settlement brouhaha was the warm up act. Look for Google to launch an iTunes like store (aka gBooks) that will be the latest in the least talked about war on the Internet: Google vs. Amazon.

RSS Reader Usage Surges

What, isn’t RSS dead? Well, Marshall Kirkpatrick doesn’t seem to think so and Louis Gray doesn’t either. I’ll side with Marshall and Louis on this one. While I still believe marketing is the biggest problem surrounding RSS readers, advancements like LazyFeed and Fever make me think the product could also advance. I’m still waiting for Google to provide their reader as a while label solution for eTailers fed up with email overhead.

Transparent Traffic Measurement Arrives

Publishers and advertisers are tired of ballpark figures or trends which are directionally accurate. Between Google Analytics and Quantcast people now expect a certain level of specificity. Even comScore is transitioning to beacon based measurement. Panel based traffic measurement will recede, replaced by transparent beacon based measurement … and there was much rejoicing.

Video Turns a Profit

Online video adoption rates have soared and more and more premium content is readily available. Early adopters bemoan the influx of advertising units, trying to convince themselves and others that people won’t put up with it. But they will. Like it or not, the vast majority of people are used to this form of advertising and this is the year it pays off.

Chrome Grabs 15% of Browser Market

Depending on who you believe, Chrome has already surpassed Safari. And this was before Chrome was available for Mac. That alone isn’t going to get Chrome to 15%. But you recall the Google ‘What’s a Browser?‘ video, right? Google will disrupt browser inertia through a combination of user disorientation and brand equity. Look for increased advertising and bundling of Chrome in 2010.

Real Time Search Jumps the Shark

2009 was, in many ways, the year of real time search. It was the brand new shiny toy for the Internati. Nearly everyone I meet thinks real time search is transformational. But is it really?

A Jonathan Mendez post titled Misguided Notions: A Study of Value Creation in Real-Time Search challenges this assumption. A recent QuadsZilla post also exposes a real time search vulnerability. The limited query set and influx of spam will reduce real time search to an interesting, though still valuable, add-on. The Internati? They’ll find something else shiny.