Blind Five Year Old

The other day I received an interesting email from Yahoo!

It’s pretty easy to read between the lines here. In fact, little line reading is necessary. The new comScore beacon is providing more accurate results. Yahoo is not currently participating in the beacon program. Yahoo wasn’t keen on the “apples-to-oranges” comparison that “could create confusion for advertisers” because it would likely negatively impact their display business.

Don’t Forget Yahoo!

Bashing Yahoo! seems to be the cool thing to do these days, and they’ve certainly driven themselves into a ditch. But Yahoo! still holds a powerful position as a portal, content and email provider. This email seems like a not-so-gentle reminder that Yahoo! is still a 900 pound gorilla in some circles.

Beacons and Panel Data

The other takeaway here is the fact that beacons are fast becoming the best way to measure traffic. I see comScore’s introduction of beacon technology as a direct reaction to Quantcast.

The rise of Google Analytics allows more and more companies to know exactly how much traffic they receive. The result of this knowledge is a growing dissatisfaction with panel based measurements that aren’t just inaccurate but are sometimes flat out wrong.

No More Hand Waving

Whether it was the Web 1.0 darling Alexa or recent upstart Compete, panel based services continue to fail. The difference this time around is that we have beacons (like Google Analytics and Quantcast) that let us know when they fail and by how much.

So while Yahoo! has secured a 6-month repreive, the future will be in accurate and transparent traffic measurement.

Last week Twitter began to display ads for March Tweetness and ExecTweets.

When this unit showed up under the follower statistics about a month ago it was a clear prelude to a true advertising unit.

I was expecting a more straightforward advertising pitch, something along the lines of contextually relevant ads based on an analysis of your tweet stream. Instead, the ads above point to sponsored microsites leveraging specific Tweet streams.

I’ve been hard on Twitter before, but in this instance I’m impressed.

Sponsored Microsites is the Twitter Revenue Model

Clicking on these ads bring you to sites that are powered by Twitter and Federated Media and sponsored by Fortune 50 companies – Microsoft and AT&T.

Twitter provides the tweet stream and eyeballs, Federated Media builds the site and lands the sponsors. Twitter and Federated split the advertising revenue.

Scalable and Self-Reinforcing Business Model

Microsites are scalable and the participation on these sites is self-reinforcing for both the microsite and for Twitter as a whole. So, not only can Twitter and Federated Media use these microsites to drive revenue, they also help to create higher engagement that make future microsites viable.

Sidestepping the CTR Debate

The sponsors Federated Media are bringing to the microsites are big. They’re interested in reach and branding not the CTR and ROI on the specific campaign. Twitter and Federated would be wise to do a brand lift study on these microsites to prove their worth from a brand equity perspective.

Privacy and User Issues

While Twitter is public, this is a whole new level of distribution. Could it generate more caution regarding tweets? Will some feel like Twitter is ‘using’ them to make money?

Twitter and Federated Media have already addressed this in some ways by letting people opt-out of ExecTweets. I wonder though, if that’s a slippery slope. Will we all wake up one day and have to check a box to agree to have our tweets used on ‘third party’ sites?

Or maybe that’s the plan.

Syndication or Subscription

If the microsite business model works, perhaps the future is a choice between having your tweet stream syndicated to microsites or subscribing on a monthly basis.

Whatever the future holds I’ll eat some crow and give credit to Twitter for finding a creative way to monetize their product. (Mind you I still think FriendFeed blows Twitter away.)

Are sponsored microsites enough to be a sustainable business model? I don’t know. But I’m more confident that Twitter will figure it out based on this implementation.

Build an Ice Cream Truck

That’s my advice to social marketers. Confused? Well, first let me describe my view of social media.

Social media and conversations are not a natural place to advertise. When I’m sitting down with a few friends for a beer and some idle banter I’m not looking for someone to come up and sell me on something. In fact, it’s one of the quickest ways I can think of to irritate the hell out of me.

But that’s just what many seem to think is appropriate for the online version of that same conversation.

Even if I’m talking about a product or service, say we’re debating cell phone carriers and lamenting our most recent phone bills. That is not the time to pull a chair up at my table and ask “Did you know, AT&T has more bars in more places!?”

If you begin to think of social media as the front stoop or the local corner where people hang out and shoot the breeze you can understand the difficulty of effectively reaching and interacting with them. The context of their conversation is miles away from a purchase decision.

Instead, think about things that can motivate people to break from that context. Something that will cause them to stop their conversations and instead motivate them to take action.

Build an Ice Cream Truck.

The Ice Cream Truck has a product and they have a delivery mechanism that stops conversations and inspires purchase. You hear that distinctive song warbling down the block and you’re taking orders from family members and making sure you’ve got your wallet!

Here’s what people don’t want. They don’t want inventory updates from the Ice Cream Truck. They don’t particularly care that the Ice Cream Truck got a brand new paint job. They don’t need to understand Ice Cream Truck mechanics and supply chain management strategy.

They don’t want to have a conversation with the Ice Cream Truck.

They want their Choco Taco!

Don’t get me wrong, brands and products should still have a voice in social media and that voice should be “open, natural and uncontrived.” Hopefully this leads to positive word-of-mouth, a viral transmission of product attributes and creates brand evangelists.

Conversations with products and brands are not social conversations.

The context of a social conversation and a brand conversation are completely different. And trying to mix the two together is a good way to torpedo your social marketing efforts. Brands really don’t want you to be their friend, they want you to buy their product! Deep down I suspect most people understand this motivation.

Conversations have their place but developing the Ice Cream Truck – whatever that might be – is where marketers should be investing more of their time.

In December I said that testing your call to action should be at the top of your New Year’s resolution list.

On the Internet the call to action often takes the form of a button. So while words still matter, there are other dimensions to consider.

Thinking about the size, shape, color, and placement (among other characteristics), our findings indicate that future testing could reveal surprising – and positive findings – based on changes to the download button.

That’s an excerpt from a post (The Download Button Drives Downloads) on the Mozilla Blog of Metrics. By the way, they’re absolutely right.

Call To Action Button Size

Your call to action buttons should be big and obvious. If you abide by Five Foot Web Design principles you should have no problem seeing the call to action when you take a few steps back from your monitor. If you can’t see it, your users are likely to miss it as well.

Here are a few examples of sites who got it right.

Dropbox

Intense Debate

Songbird

WordPress

Size can be relative based on the placement of the button and other design elements on the page. Your call to action button doesn’t always have to be huge but … you’re probably better off with it being bigger rather than smaller. (No jokes here please.)

Don’t be afraid to make your offer! Be confident. Not doing so is a subliminal sign to users that the product or offer isn’t valuable.

Call To Action Button Colors

Size is a relatively easy subject to tackle. The color of call to action buttons, on the other hand, is a hot topic. Jonathan Mendez (who you should be reading) touts the use of red in his 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization.

Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate. Green can be good as well but most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins.

Not everyone agrees that red is the answer. And clearly none of the examples above took this advice to heart. Yet three out of four (Songbird being the outlier) have buttons that adhere to the site’s current styleguide and color palette. So who’s to say red wouldn’t provide a boost in conversion rate.

Why is color such a big deal?

Research reveals all human beings make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or item within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. [Institute for Color Research]

Each color is associated with different emotions and meanings. The ‘red’ debate revolves around whether the benefits of the color – passion, desire, excitement – outweigh the drawbacks – anger, danger and debt.

Red should be used sparingly, so as not to overwhelm users, and should also be first on your list of colors to test on your call to action button.

Lets face it. The speed of our society has accelerated and time is perhaps our most guarded resource. A site has a very short window to capture, retain and direct a user. So red doesn’t sound like a bad idea. In fact, any contrasting color might do the trick.

Less talked about is the color of the text on the call to action button.

David Ogilvy, often called the Father of Advertising, made black text famous in his book Ogilvy on Advertising. (Yes, the man practiced what he preached.)

Yet the overwhelming number of call to action buttons use white text on a colored background. Ogilvy would certainly have thrown a fit if he saw white text on black.

Three out of the four examples above (Songbird being the outlier again) use reversed out text. Is that a lost opportunity?

Don’t forget to try a black text version when testing your call to action button.

You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by testing the words, size and color of your call to action buttons. It is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your business.

The other night I fell asleep watching Blade Runner.

Before nodding off I got to see a young Edward James Olmos (a nice juxtaposition to seeing him in Battlestar Galactica) and the amazing logo laden neon skylines that serve as the back drop to the epic Philip K. Dick story.

A lot has been made of the product placement used in Blade Runner. Not because it was the first to use it, or that it was so prominent (which it was) but because many of the advertisers fell on hard times.

Among the folklore that has grown up around the film over the years has been the belief that the film was a curse to the companies whose logos were displayed prominently as product placements in some scenes. While they were market leaders at the time, many of them experienced disastrous setbacks over the next decade and hardly exist today. [Wikipedia]

The blatant product placement, track record of the advertisers and new technology got me thinking. What happens when an advertiser or brand ceases to exist? Right now that brand will live forever on film, locked on celluloid for eternity. But does it have to be that way?

Could product replacement be a new advertising venue?

In the digital age the logo of Coca-Cola can be swapped with that of Pepsi. Atari could be replaced by Wii. A dead brand can be replaced by the new thriving brand. Science Fiction has the greatest ability to make these changes because there are no inherent problems with anachronisms.

Period pieces would probably be off-limits (e.g. – Sense and Sensibility) and modern movies would pose potential, but not unsolvable, problems. For instance, the Mellow Yellow car featured in Days of Thunder couldn’t be digitally altered to promote ROCKST★R but could to promote Mountain Dew.

It’s an intriguing idea, though I’m sure some movie purists would howl at the moon if product replacement came to fruition. Yet, the new formats in which we’re consuming media make this type of substitution seem possible.

Product placement localization seems likely too. Imagine a character drinking from a branded bottle of beer. Couldn’t that brand be altered based on localization? Bud Light in the United States, Labatt Blue in Canada, Skol in Brazil and Krombacher in Germany.

Clearly this wouldn’t always make sense and could disrupt the suspension of disbelief necessary for many films. Make no mistake, product replacement is a Pandora’s box. But imagine the additional revenue potential of selling ‘dead brand’ space in movies.

Would you be disturbed by product replacement?

Yahoo is serving ads at the top of email alerts.

Most of my alerts are with Google, but a few of my legacy alerts still reside at Yahoo. So I’m not sure exactly when this began but it seems like it started as of December 1st.

Both search giants are looking for ways to sustain growth in a maturing market. Sponsored search and network search just aren’t going to move the needle in eyebrow arching ways anymore – particularly in a weak economic environment.

This is an interesting move by Yahoo in light of Google’s advertising extensions via Feedburner (FeedSense) and Google Friend Connect (FriendSense).

Remember, Yahoo still dominates news by a nearly 3 to 1 ratio. It’s nothing to sneeze at.

If we use traffic as a proxy for number of alerts it’s easy to see how Yahoo could quickly increase its reach. Effectiveness, well that’s another issue.

But with this move by Yahoo, can AlertSense be far behind?

Now is the time when bloggers go on the record with their thoughts for the year ahead. Place your bets! Stake your claim! Here’s mine.

Facebook Becomes A Portal

Realizing that social media and advertising is like oil and water, Facebook repositions itself as a portal leveraging Microsoft’s Live Search as the revenue model. This also might result in the potential acquisition of Netvibes to provide a more robust offering to compete with Yahoo!

Identity Systems Fail

Confused about the difference between OpenID, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, users throw up their hands and decide not to use any of the above.

Video Advertising Succeeds

The adoption of video is surging faster than many expected. Longer formats and better quality will bring even more eyeballs who will grudgingly accept advertising.

Microformats Go Mainstream

Why they aren’t already is shocking. Nevertheless, in 2009 we’ll see microformats become a standard and search results will become far more robust as a result.

Banner CTR Becomes Obsolete

Brands will finally realize that measuring success by click through rate (CTR) isn’t working. Measurement ‘beyond clicks’ will be the new yardstick, whether that’s through new brand advertising measurement services like Vizu or through monitoring services like Brandwatch and Trackur among a gaggle of others.

RSS Adoption Spikes

Someone will (finally) figure out how to market RSS to ‘the masses’ who will grasp the sublime benefits of having content come to you instead of the other way around.

Kindle 2.0 Flops

Amid a weak economy Amazon releases the newest version of Kindle. Other readers have gained ground where Kindle has not and at the core Kindle is a solution without a problem.

Google Search Share Stalls

The move by Facebook (see above) causes a radical change in the search landscape. Microsoft passes Yahoo! for second place and talks about a Microsoft Yahoo merger are (unbearably) reignited.

FriendFeed Surpasses Twitter

FriendFeed adoption increases at an accelerated pace due to quick innovation, uncluttered design and an interface that lends itself to communication.

Someone ‘Dies’

Users reach social media overload and VCs get even more nervous about revenue creating social media shrinkage. In this instance ‘Dying’ means a company goes under or is purchased for a song. My short list includes Plurk, Twitter, Digg and Seesmic. This isn’t a reflection of the people or product but the inability to truly reach the mainstream with a service that has a profit model.

There are plenty of other things that I believe will happen in 2009, but they seem more obvious or an extension of current trends. Instead I tried to be a bit more bold, at least on a few of my predictions.

We’ll check in this time next year to see how I fared. In the meantime, feel free to comment and provide your feedback and reaction to my predictions.

Okay, not all 3 column blogs are killing CPM rates but the design contributes to the problem by making it easy for bloggers to produce ad clutter.

Ad clutter is a big problem

A recent BurstMedia survey revealed that 75% of users pay less attention to ads on cluttered sites.

Additionally, although respondents accept that advertising will appear on a web page, for a majority (52.6%), there is low tolerance for more than two advertising units per web page. More than one-quarter (29.9%) of survey respondents immediately leave a site if they perceive it to be cluttered.

So, it’s clear that CTR on these ads will go down as will user engagement on cluttered sites. But why not go for the trifecta! Ad clutter also tarnishes an advertiser’s brand equity.

Nielsen has also researched ad clutter and even introduced an ad clutter metric to assist media buyers. MarketingVOX reported the following finding from the Nielsen report.

The study also found that, from a content perspective, more niche websites – which attract smaller audiences – tend to have higher clutter.

Niche websites. Hummm. That seems like a nice way to point the finger at blogs without outright saying it.

Advertising CPM rates are dropping

CPM rates have been falling. The Rubicon Project reported an 11% decline in CPM rates in Q3 2008. Federated Media slashed rates on some of their hottest properties. These aren’t your run of the mill blogs but sites like TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider.

I believe ad clutter is a factor in this decline since it leads to banner blindness, which likely carries over, to some degree, from cluttered sites to those less cluttered. If you think of the Internet as a vast interdependent ecosystem it makes sense that the effects from one part of the ecosystem spill over to all.

The movie Jaws certainly spawned a fear of water beyond just that of the fictional Amity or the New England coast.

Are 3 column blogs really to blame?

Yes! Sure they’re not the only reason, but they are enablers to ad clutter. The two sidebar columns are ready made for advertising not to mention inline units in the main content column. A “more is better” philosophy for advertising exists among many bloggers. And on the face, more opportunities to click often do lead to more clicks. But there is a point of diminishing return which then results in lower CPM rates.

Unfortunately this might create a sort of death spiral. As the effectiveness of these ads go down, the CPM rates go down, which encourages bloggers to place additional advertising units on their sites to help maintain their revenue stream. That, of course, pushes CPM rates down even further.

You can be the proverbial shark or the police chief. Bruce or Brody. So pick your blog template wisely.

Does TweetSense make sense? And more importantly would it make cents?

Twits have been up in arms with the introduction of Twitter based ad networks like twitAD and Magpie. Magpie in particular drew a lot of coverage with notables like Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch weighing in on the topic. Many claimed that it was outright spam that had no place on Twitter. Lots of huffing and stamping of feet. They’d unfollow anyone they saw using such a service!

I’m not opposed to this type of monetization if it’s implemented well.

The fact is, are you really going to notice? If you’re that attached to Twitter you probably use the service quite a bit. You follow a lot of people. Many are very active. The odds that you’re going to see an advertising tweet are quite low and if you did it would be gone from your existence in a matter of minutes.

Advertising tweets would be very ephemeral.

So, that begs the question: will these Twitter based ad networks be effective? Will people click on them enough to make it a viable advertising platform? They will if it’s done right.

Spare me the ‘nobody clicks on those things’ type of indignation. There’s this company called Google. They have these products called AdWords and AdSense. Both seem to be doing just fine even though many say they’ve never clicked on either type of ad unit.

The implementation will be paramount. They’ll fail if the ads become too frequent, overwhelming tweet streams for users. Essentially, if the noise drowns out the signal, it will fail. They’ll also fail if the ad content isn’t relevant. Viagra ad tweets mixed in with a discussion about Motrin Moms isn’t going fly.

The frequency and context of advertising tweets are critical to the success of this type of ad network. So, who is in the best position to pull this off?

Twitter!

Twitter knows your tweet velocity. Twitter has the ability to create dynamic tags for users based on keyword frequency analysis. As such, it is best placed to deliver timely and relevant tweets to their users. By doing so it would also remove the potential abuse of the service by those seeking personal, monetary gain.

Block the third party ad networks! With Twitter at the controls, the odds of success (for both users, advertisers and Twitter) go up, way up.

Twitter does need a revenue model. So why not TweetSense?

The other day I updated my StumbleUpon toolbar (well, I was essentially forced to) and immediately couldn’t Stumble posts from this blog or my Used Books Blog. Each time I tried my Stumble just would not go through, stalling at a blank white box where the review and tagging takes place. I tried numerous times on a couple different browsers. Nothing worked.

I assumed that something had gone awry with the new toolbar. I even posted a message on FriendFeed calling eBay lame. But you know the old saying about assuming, right?

I sent feedback to StumbleUpon about my problem and got a prompt reply as follows.

Hello,

Thanks for writing in.

After reviewing your account history, it appears
that you’ve repeatedly submitted content from one
or more sites in particular.

Our site software detects behavior like this to
prevent the unauthorized use of StumbleUpon to
promote a specific Web site, product or service.

This limit will likely remain in place until you
use the StumbleUpon Toolbar more frequently to
rate, review and discover Web sites that can
shared with other members.

If you’re interested in using StumbleUpon to
advertise a Web site, please look into our
Advertising program:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads

If you have any other questions, please review our
Terms of Service and Community Rules:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/rules.html

Thanks for your feedback,

Oops. I admit, I’ve only been Stumbling my own sites lately. However, I think they’re pretty good so I don’t see anything too wrong with that. Also, I’m pretty transparent. I don’t have a Stumble army nor do I have multiple profiles so I can distribute my Stumbles across accounts and dodge the software.

But I get it and I’m not really complaining. It’s not what StumbleUpon is really supposed to be about. And I respect them for protecting the product and StumbleUpon business model. It also got me to Stumble again and I discovered some interesting sites and images. So … thanks for that.

My one nit would be that I had to contact support to get this information. Instead of presenting the white box of frustration I suggest that StumbleUpon simply insert the text I received into that area. Not only would I have immediately understood what was going on and not throw invective into the htmlosphere but StumbleUpon would have saved a bit of money on customer support.

Forgive me StumbleUpon for I have sinned. My penance? Stumble.