Hi Everyone,

Today, I formally accepted the position of Senior Marketing Manager with Farecast.com, a Seattle-based travel startup which is the first and only site to predict airfare prices for almost all major US markets based on a database of BILLIONS of historical pricing data points.

I’ve enjoyed and treasured my time at Avenue A | Razorfish and am looking forward to bringing my experience in online marketing to Farecast.com to grow the user base and spread the gospel about why Farecast.com rocks.

I’ll post more updates in the coming weeks and you can definitely expect this blog to be much more active as I start writing about my experiences there.

In the meantime, “Know When to Buy”, when it comes to airline tickets by checking first with Farecast.com!

First, some disclaimers, I’m speaking only from my personal experience with major brand-name clients. I’m not talking about your 2nd tier dating site or your sleazy mobile phone ringtone provider. What those guys do, I have no part in. But I can tell you this… whatever it is they’re doing, it’s working. At the end of the day, you have to remember that these companies are running a business and if the advertising isn’t generating a positive ROI, they would have pulled it a long time ago. There are articles about how LowerMyBills.com’s crazy ads generate a really high click-through rate and conversion rate - annoying ads often are effective and that’s why they’re everywhere you go online.

Confession #1 - Snake Oil is Out - Stuff you Want is In

It may be hard for you to believe this, but we really hate trying to sell things you don’t need to you. Seriously, why would any smart advertiser waste money on advertising something that you probably don’t want? The truth is, we try to be smart about targeting our advertising so that you get relevant products and messaging. We do this a lot of ways including looking at what types of sites you’ve visited as well as any type of demographic/geographic data we can figure out.

Confession #2 - We Value Privacy - Tracking is really NOT Evil

This is what gets me boiling. You go on Digg, read the comments, and you always have your 10-20 people who start screaming about “blah blah cookies, spying on me.. blah blah .. conspiracy”. Believe it or not, our clients and us have very strict privacy policies for data collection online. In our system, your computer is nothing more than a randomized number which eventually expires. We don’t identify people, we identify machines and we try to get to some type of profile which helps us figure out what type of ad you would want to see and respond to the most. Most of the data we’re most interested in is actually just whether or not you’ve visited the advertiser’s website. If people would stop freaking out about cookies, you’ll probably get a lot more relevant and useful ads as opposed to totally irrelevant random ads.

Confession #3 - We Want You to LOVE Us

Smart advertisers are not out to sell you but to win your love. We’re not up in some ivory tower thinking about how to bombard you with ads. We actually are thinking about tools, content, and ways to help you. The days of mass advertising are over, we’re trying to engage in dialog now with every consumer. We’re looking at feedback and we’re finding ways to make engaging with our brand worthwhile and valuable to you.

Hopefully, you’ll find that online marketing people are not out to destroy the web as you know it. Advertising plays a very important role online — it’s called generating the revenue that pays the salary for your favorite online writer and it also pays for the servers and the bandwidth. There are definitely a lot of very very bad advertising out there, especially on sites that have low barriers to entry. I suggest that you stop clicking on them if you want them to go away. The business of advertising dictates that if it doesn’t work, drop it. Also, stop freaking out about legitimate 3rd party cookies and tracking because it’s anonymous and is only done to make sure you get ads that make sense. I’m sure everyone can agree on that.

I ran past Paragon when I ran into a group of people leaving the bar and all of a sudden a drunk girl starts running besides me and starts drunk-chatting about how she’s visiting her sister in Seattle and she just graduated from RISD in architecture and how she’s hoping to find a job. She kept up for about 3 blocks which was amazing since she was in full blown “going out” clothes and shoes and had a big red purse over her shoulder. In any case, it was an interesting distraction. Wherever you are, good luck with your job search!

Here’s the route I did tonight:

Studies have shown that adding customer reviews is a great way to increase conversion rates and provides value to the customer in the form of testimonial advice. Among different information sources, a recommendation word-of-mouth is considered the most important and trustworthy according to some studies.

In speaking to many industry insiders, I’ve come across a few key problems that retailers have to customer reviews which I have listed below:

1. Vendor Relationship Management - Some retailers don’t like the idea of having negative reviews of any specific vendor’s products which can both affect sales and hurt the vendor/retailer relationship. At the same time, vendors may often pressure retailers to moderate/change reviews to put them in a favorable light, especially if they have limited exposure to selling online and/or tactics and best practices surrounding customer engagement.
2. Expert/Authoritative Positioning - High-end and specialty retailers often build their brand and image around offering only the best products & services available. As such, all products that they carry should be “5 stars” and the cream of the crop, the idea that customers would rate them otherwise may undermine the idea that they are the experts at choosing products. These companies feel that they have to protect their status and image and believe that although customer reviews would be beneficial to other customers, it would hurt their brand-value and differentiating factor in the long run.
3. Resource Management - All reviews need some sort of moderation system to weed out SPAM, obviously biased or fake reviews, as well as the occassional rude/irrelevant feedback given to a product. Many retailers just don’t have the manpower to moderate the feedback, especially on high traffic sites.

All of these reasons are understandable but I would urge retailers to consider the following benefits and guidelines surrounding creating working customer review systems: (Examples and Guidelines are taken from evaluating the customer review systems on Newegg.com, Amazon.com, as well as 3rd party feedback systems such as Bizrate, Pricegrabber, Shopping.com, and ResellerRatings.com)

Suggestions for Building Working Review Systems

1. Incorporate vendors into your commenting system - Your suppliers and vendors should be looped in from the beginning in making sure that they can provide honest, accurate, and timely repsonse/feedback to customers who comment and review their products on your site. Doing so improves both the image of the vendor and your company and is a win-win situation. Gone are the days when companies can ignore feedback from customers, it’s time to embrace and respond, lest they want to end up on Consumerist.com.
2. Moderate - It’s not censorship, it’s quality control, not content control. Some mild form of moderation should be employed to ensure that fake/immature reviews are edited (with disclosure) or prevented from being posted. In fact, if you suspect a post is from a competitor or is outright outlandish, you should contact the reviewer for them to edit their comment citing the reasons their comment was rejected.
3. Leverage group-enabled content creation - Reviews are often rich sources of unbiased and expert opinions and reviews and as such can become valuable and free content for your site. Take advantage of that and make sure you incorporate the “ROI” from free content in determining whether or not your company has the resources to support a customer comment/review system.

Hopefully, I’ll start seeing more sites with reviews. Let me know if your company starts incorporating reviews and how it goes!

Some Interesting Trends:

• Search spending as % of total budget decreased attributed mainly to boosts in brand advertising (display banners, sponsorships, etc.) - Could Search be hitting a peak in spend? Have advertisers already exhausted their keyword lists and has search engine usage plateaued?
• Yahoo! and AOL are firing on all cylinders for display advertising (heavy revamp of Yahoo! properties has helped) but also reflects a continued decline in billings for Search (Panama is helping a bit)
• The Digital Class Key Findings:
  - Human-computer interaction is about to get intense
  - The network is ubiquitous
  - There’s no middle
  - The Internet is where general interest goes to die
  - Information seeking equals entertainment
  - Transparency is king
  - Social networking ascends to utilitarian status
  - Let’s stay friends
  - Giving back is good
  - Dust is settling on the music library
  - Blogs have yet to achieve media brand status
  - More mobile phones, less talking

Of particular note that I’ve touched upon several times on this blog about the causality of view-based conversions.

From the 2007 Outlook:

View Based Conversions Study

*Update: There’s a response by an insider on the NY Daily News*
*Link to an opinion published over a year ago when (red) launched by Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia who is also on the advisory team to Kofi Annan’s Africa council.*

AdAge published “Costly Red Campaign Reaps Meager $18 Million” two days ago and dozens of comments have already flowed in on AdAge - the majority of which are negative towards the (red) campaign. *(red) responds to AdAge article*

Here’s what the article basically pointed out:

• The (red) campaign has raised $18mm worldwide since launching about a year ago
• Some experts estimate that almost $100mm has been spent promoting red through Gap, Motorola, and other (red) partners
• (red) is a brand - not a non-profit - which was created by a for-profit company with the expectation that partners licensing the (red) trademark would have to give certain % of profits to the Global Fund.
• Private donations to the Global Fund are a small portion of their total funding sources (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $650mm alone).
• Mark Rosenman, a non-profit activist and public-service professor, summarizes the concerns: “There is a broadening concern that business is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it,” he said. “It benefits the for-profit partners much more than the charitable causes.”

Major Themes from the Comments (mostly from professional Marketers):

• Products were “outrageously” overpriced. Many comments noted that a poorly made t-shirt was marked up signficantly benefiting the retailer more than the charity.
• Money could’ve been given directly to the charity instead of being spent on marketing.
• There is skepticism about the true intentions of the companies involved with the (red) campaign.

Personal Opinion

The (red) campaign is an extremely dividing issue but I think it’s important I share my thoughts even if I’m going to get flack. I personally think that the (red) campaign is the wrong way to approach the problems in Africa as pointed out in the Financial Times commentary above. Live 8 and countless efforts to tackle issues in Africa have proven to be futile in many ways due to corruption and focus on care instead of cure and prevention. Anti-viral drugs will help those currently affected but will do little to help those who may be infected in the future. Money would be more effectively spent on prevention and cure.

Let’s read the (red) manifesto:

ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL. THEY ARE NOT.

AS CONSUMERS, WE HAVE TREMENDOUS POWER.
WHAT WE COLLECTIVELY CHOOSE TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY,
CAN CHANGE THE COURSE OF LIFE AND HISTORY ON THIS PLANET.

(RED) IS THAT SIMPLE AN IDEA. AND THAT POWERFUL. NOW YOU HAVE A CHOICE.
THERE ARE (RED) PHONES, (RED) SHOES, (RED) MP3 PLAYER, (RED) FASHION BRANDS.
AND NO, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE ALL RED IN COLOR, ALTHOUGH SOME ARE.

IF YOU BUY A (RED) PRODUCT, AT NO COST TO YOU
A (RED) COMPANY WILL GIVE UP TO HALF THEIR PROFITS TO BUY AND DISTRIBUTE
ANTI-RETROVIAL MEDICINE TO OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DYING OF AIDS IN AFRICA.

WE BELIEVE THAT WHEN CONSUMERS ARE OFFERED THIS CHOICE
AND THE PRODUCTS MEET THEIR NEEDS, THEY WILL CHOOSE (RED).
AND WHEN THEY CHOSE (RED) OVER NON-(RED), THEN MORE BRANDS WILL BECOME (RED)
BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE GOOD BUSINESS SENSE TO DO SO. AND MORE LIVES WILL BE SAVED.

(RED) IS NOT A CHARITY. IT IS SIMPLY A BUSINESS MODEL.
YOU BUY (RED) STUFF, WE GET THE MONEY, BUY THE PILLS AND DISTRIBUTE THEM.
THEY TAKE THE PILLS, STAY ALIVE AND CONTINUE TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR FAMILIES
AND CONTRIBUTE SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.

IF THEY DON’T GET THE PILLS, THEY DIE.
WE WANT THEM TO LIVE.
WE WANT TO GIVE THEM THE PILLS.
AND WE CAN. AND YOU CAN. AND IT’S EASY.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS UPGRADE YOUR CHOICE.

WHAT WE COLLECTIVELY CHOOSE TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY,
CAN CHANGE THE COURSE OF LIFE AND HISTORY ON THIS PLANET.

I think this is a bit too grand of a statement. (red) chooses to focus on simple solutions to complex problems and boils the choice down to a “if you buy it, everything will be alright” type of mentality. What the quote should say is : “What we collectively choose to ignore or not learn about WILL change the course of life and history on this planet”. People need to learn about the issues in Africa that creates the conditions we are trying to fight. Poverty, high HIV/AIDs infection rates, these are not natural disasters. They are here because of polticial, social, and cultural institutions that have failed to combat growing poverty and death in Africa. But these issues would be too complicated for their audience so (red) instead chooses to focus on consumerism as the solution.

IF YOU BUY A (RED) PRODUCT, AT NO COST TO YOU
A (RED) COMPANY WILL GIVE UP TO HALF THEIR PROFITS TO BUY AND DISTRIBUTE
ANTI-RETROVIAL MEDICINE TO OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DYING OF AIDS IN AFRICA.

There is a cost to you the consumer. As most people know, some (red) products (especially from GAP) are priced with a premium. It’s one thing for a company to offer half their existing profit margins to a charity and another thing to price it up exponentially in order to make more money for themselves. After watching the Oprah show on this, I really did go out to GAP and look at (red) products but I couldn’t afford them. A jeans jacket for over $200 (and it wasn’t even made in Africa as Oprah implied many of the products were). I looked at some t-shirt that had obviously shoddy construction which were priced in the $30+ range. I did find a few products made in South Africa but the majority was made in China.

(RED) IS NOT A CHARITY. IT IS SIMPLY A BUSINESS MODEL.
YOU BUY (RED) STUFF, WE GET THE MONEY, BUY THE PILLS AND DISTRIBUTE THEM.
THEY TAKE THE PILLS, STAY ALIVE AND CONTINUE TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR FAMILIES
AND CONTRIBUTE SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.

IF THEY DON’T GET THE PILLS, THEY DIE.
WE WANT THEM TO LIVE.
WE WANT TO GIVE THEM THE PILLS.
AND WE CAN. AND YOU CAN. AND IT’S EASY.

Ahhh how simple it is. We buy stuff, someone gets money, people get pills, people live. No one would be against making sure people live. But is it truly that EASY as (red) implies? No, it’s not. You’re trying to put band-aids on gaping wounds. The problems are more akin to someone hitting you over the head with a bat as medics are trying to stop the bleeding. STOP THE PERSON HITTING YOU WITH THE BAT FIRST. If you don’t educate people about what’s truly causing problems, then we’ll end up in the same place we were 10, 20 years ago. Africa has actually gotten worse as a continent in the last 20 years while almost all other continents & countries have grown richer and have raised living standards.

People like the (red) campaign because many people do care and they want to give in whatever way possible. I applaud their intent. There’s just better ways to help. Give money directly. Lobby your congressman, your senator, the president to do something about corruption, about genocide, about HIV/AIDs deniers in Africa. Take the $100mm spent and use it for prevention public health education instead where we will really make a difference.

Video and Analysis after the Jump

It should be no secret to most people now that the PS3 has fallen short of expectations, and this isn’t coming from me, but from the legions of diehard Playstation fans as well as the press. The PS3 should have crushed the marketplace with it’s incredible hardware, next-generation Blu-Ray drive, and its strong brand which has made the PS3’s predecessor, the PS2 the best selling video game console of the last several years (including this past Christmas).

Despite having made Digg’s frontpage and having been posted over a week ago on February 21st, there is no official response from Sony. Can Sony afford to ignore it’s most diehard fans any longer? I don’t think so. They may see this video as bad PR but it’s really an opportunity for Sony to do what it’s forgotten how to do — address the needs of gamers and regain their trust and loyalty. Normal people don’t go and make videos about how much they think you’ve screwed up unless they’re truly truly engaged with your brand. Heck, they were most likely once Playstation fanboys themselves.

Spike from the Brains on Fire Blog sums it up well:

The bottom line is that agencies and brands don’t need to fear these people. I’m going to speak next month at a session that’s entitled: “Sitting Backseat in a Consumer Driven Marketplace: How consumers are steering the industry and how marketers are being run over.” Nice title, eh? Marketers are going to get run over only if they fight this customer-empowered movement instead of embrace it. The opportunity is for co-creation. And there’s opportunity everywhere. Advertising isn’t going away, people. It’s just evolving like it always has. Only now you have to actually engage your customers instead of bombarding them. Scary? Absolutely. And that’s what makes it so freakin’ fun.

Listen - Respond - Act

Sony, this is your opportunity to address your most diehard fans honestly and openly. If you truly believe that the PS3 is the path to the future, then stand behind it and sell your vision. Do it honestly, own up to your mistakes, and get a human face behind a brand that has so long been a dominant force in the market. Take this opportunity to respond, you owe it to your fans.

It appears that the video is no longer available and it was never really publicized to begin with, living buried within the KFC site. However, you can see that it did once exist since it comes up as the top search result on Google for “KFC President video”.

If anyone has the video saved somewhere, I would love to see it.

Kudos to Influx Insights and Jeremiah Owyang for covering this well in advance.

Overview:

Fisheye Winery of Ripon, California launched a new integrated marketing campaign for a 3-Liter Wine Cask (essentially boxed wine) during the E! Academy Awards red carpet show. According to the press release from their agency B.A.R.C. Communications, the key goal of the campaign is to “reinforce the growing popularity of both Fisheye Wines and Premium Cask packaging”.

Creative Concept:

“To convey the quality of Fisheye’s award-winning wines, San Francisco integrated marketing agency B.A.R.C. Communications links the “new” casks to traditional ones used for centuries to store fine wines. One spot opens on a masterly painting in the William Hogarth tradition, depicting 18th century revelers tapping into a cask of wine. Through the magic of stop-motion animation, the old-world characters come alive and move into a modern-day pop art gathering.”

The creative overall works well for me as it’s unusual to see a winery use animation and CGI in their ads. It reinforces the “relaxed” brand image the winery conveys on their website and should appeal well to the younger wine drinking demos. Wine has been exploding in popularity in the past several years among the 22-27 crowd and the idea of having a premium wine accessible in a “fit-in-your-refridgerator” pack is appealing.

Interactive Execution:

Many companies still don’t see how important it is to have a digital channel strategy in launching integrated campaigns. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with Fisheye’s launch. I first visited the Fisheye Wines website a week ago when I saw the commercial. Here is a list of the problems with the site:

• No mention of premium wine cask when campaign launched on site. Site now features commercial in an embedded video unit on the main page
• Site still contains ZERO information on the wine cask outside of the “tv-to-internet” dump of the commercial.
• Site utlizes an appropriate beach-theme but it takes way too long to get around the different sections. Scrolling from one end of the beach to another takes about 15 seconds at maximum speed. There are no alternative navigation options.
• Site offers recipes and seasonal newsletters …. but in PDF format! Nothing pulls you out of the rich interactive experience like an Acrobat window loading a static page.

Finding Information:

After watching the commercial, I was thinking to myself, “hmmm.. a premium boxed wine, that sounds interesting.” and I pulled up Google and typed in “Fisheye Wine Cask”. The results? Absolutely no paid-search presence. This might be understandable if you have the top organic results but Fisheye was the last result on the first page (and to top it off, it linked to a PDF). Nine other websites are more relevant than Fisheye was at a search term that included their name and their new product. Searches for several other terms including: “fisheye cask”, “fisheye wines”, “fisheye wine” also produced no paid-search results from Fisheye.

Fish out of Water

Fisheye say’s of their audience:

The Millennial generation (aged 22-27) offer the wine industry the kind of growth potential not seen in more than thirty years. This “pool” of consumers are not about the fuss and stuffiness formally associated with the wine generation preceding them. These millennials are looking for interesting, fun wines full of intense flavor that don’t cost a priates ransom – and that’s what FishEye wines deliver!

Fisheye wines may certainly deliver but only if a “millennial” can find them. Don’t they know that their target audience spends more time online than with the TV (not to mention we use DVRs to skip over commercials)? For a campaign supposedly targeting the the 22-27 crowd, Fisheye has missed the mark in the digital portion of their integrated strategy.

Wineries may not be expected to be cutting edge when it comes to digital marketing, but given the prevelance of the medium and how important this channel is to their target audience, Fisheye should have ensured that they had a more robust digital presence outside of adding the commercial to their website.

Campaign Scores:

Creative Execution: 7/10
Interactive Execution: 2/10
Overall Score: 3/10

Key Suggestions for the Fisheye Premium Cask Launch:

• Add more detailed section to website to introduce your new product. You’ve got great content in your commercial about “old world” wine preservation techiques. This needs to be extended onto your website and elaborated upon.
• Upgrade your website’s navigation system. The 22-27 crowd doesn’t have the patience to wait 15 seconds to get from one section to another. Double the scroll speed and add a navigation menu.
• Get rid of all the PDFs on your site unless you’re expecting someone to print it out. Take Nielsen’s PDF notes to heart.
• Start a search engine marketing campaign immediately on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Buy keywords and phrases for all of your products so that people can start finding you. Buy branded keywords as well if you don’t already occupy the top spot in the organic results.
• Think Viral - You are in an industry that is ripe for revolution. People still think of Franzia and box-wine as “cheap” substitutions for bottled wine. Your new product can change that. You need to be evangelists for your box and the best way to do that is to spread the gospel like wildfire. I’m sure you’ve got scientific data to back up the claims of improved freshness — put it on a blog and get the message out there. Wine enthusiasts are vocal and passionate and you’ll stir debate (the cork crowd vs the synthetic crowd vs the spout crowd) and that’s exactly what you need. You need to generate buzz and discussion because that’s how you will connect with your target audience.

I hope readers have found my first official full length campaign review an interesting read. I hope that people from Fisheye and/or their agency will be kind enough to find this review and respond in the comments or provide some insights into their campaign strategy.

1. Only present metrics that are positive. That’s why you collect all those metrics.
2. Only present metrics that are easy to manage.
3. Use many metrics.
4. Be extremely precise with your numbers.
5. Present quickly, drown ‘em with data.
6. Say “you don’t break down metrics” if they aren’t flattering to you.
7. Put lipstick on that pig–apply lots of gloss to your charts. Hello, Crystal XCelsius!
8. Show off your bona fides by sharing some metrics “off the cuff”.
9. Prep your team by feeding them lines.
10.Your job isn’t to educate your audience about your metrics. If people don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s because they’re stupid.

I work with data every day and I’m probably guilty of some of these points myself. However, I don’t necessarily think that all of them are “lies” — some are really a matter of client/personal preference. The biggest challenge is to get people to think about measurement and ROI — in fact, most recent surveys reveal that most managers and executives have no idea what their return on advertising is even though the tools are available to help do that.

I personally do tend to use many metrics (#2) to provide insight into performance and behavior from multiple angles. You don’t just look at sales, you look at average order value, margins, sales categories, sales conversion rates, shopping cart abandonment, etc. in order to get a complete picture of what’s happening. Multiple metrics are needed to go beyond the “what” and get to the “whys” and “hows”.

Fortunately, our agency culture is about accountability and we are very open about how we measure with our clients. We also make sure we take the time to educate and understand what are the measurements that they care about in order to tailor our reports accordingly. At the same time, we do pride ourselves in being precise (#4) and prepared (#9) but not to cover up any deficiencies but because our clients expect us to know the data intimately and to be ready to present it clearly.

My personal advice to those who are victims to #1, #5, and #7 are as follows:

1. Don’t be afraid to share negative metrics. There’s a story there that needs to be told. In my experience, clients are much more interested in the learnings and insights than they are about the actual number. Never give a negative metric without having a plan to turn that around.
2. Use data to support your ideas and insights. Don’t throw up charts into a presentation without preparing the audience for it. Never assume that everyone can read a chart the same way you can — even when it’s extremely obvious to you
3. Please, no more driver’s dashboard themes and pressure gauges on reports from anyone. I stick to clean Excel charts when possible utilizing easy-to-read color themes. Yes, it’s sort of dressing the charts up, but it’s primariliy for visual clarity and to bring Excel’s fashion sensibility up-to-speed. (This doesn’t apply to Excel 2007 which has a modernized palette). We also use a data visualization tool called Tableau which helps us build more interesting data visual aids and allows us to add additional data dimensions through variable line widths and color gradiations based on data set values.

Rebuttals, Agreements, Discussions in the Comments Section Please.

Here’s the part about 3rd party ad serving:

A Bank of America analyst asked Mr. Armstrong about Google’s ad-serving philosophy and whether that was hindering marketer use of its display network. While most major online agencies serve their ads through Doubleclick or Atlas to simplify delivery and reporting, Google hasn’t yet opened up its network to third-party ad serving. That means an agency that uses Doubleclick for virtually all of its ad placement would have to use a separate ad server, Google’s, for buying display ads across AdSense.

Mr. Armstrong said Google faced the same issue in 2000 and 2001 with search — people had asked whether Google would use a third-party ad server for search. Third-party ad servers, he said, “assume they can figure out how to target more effectively than you can.” He said Google has been happy not to use third party ad servers to deliver its search ads and that it’s “working diligently” in the branded ad space to continue to serve ads effectively.

In terms of search text ads, there’s really no reason to use a 3rd party ad server to deliver the actual creative since most advertisers do not consider a “view” of a text-link to have a significant impact. Google already allows 3rd party click tracking through AdWords, advertisers just use Atlas/DART redirects in the Destination URL fields.

The Google display network, on the other hand, would greatly benefit from allowing 3rd party ad serving, but not for the reason the article outlined — “Third-party ad servers, he said, “assume they can figure out how to target more effectively than you can.”

Here are 3 benefits from 3rd party ad serving that would allow advertisers to derive more value and in turn spend more branding dollars with Google’s display network if 3rd party ad serving was allowed:

1. View-Conversion Tracking - Google still takes the “click tracking” approach to display as it has done with text even though advertisers are increasingly looking for brand metrics beyond the CTR including brand engagement and view-based ROI. Without 3rd party ad serving, advertisers are not able to measure whether or not people who see the branded ad are in turn visiting the site, even when they haven’t clicked. Experiments to measure “non-click” activity can also be controlled through testing on 3rd party ad servers which allow for test/control group setups of users who are exposed to branded ads and those who are not. Atlas Institute has already conducted a study into the effects of banner impressions (http://www.atlassolutions.com/pdf/BrandingEffect.pdf)
2. Behavioral Targeting - Contextual relevance is a great first step. When you can overlay behavioral targeting, it gets even better. 3rd party ad serving has nothing to do with where the ad gets served (Google still controls that), it has to do with what message is served for which audience. Using simple targeting on 3rd party ad servers, one can target messages based on past user behavior on an advetiser’s website. For example, if you’re a car manufacturer, having your “Visit AcmeCars.com” is a great message for those customers who are not in-market. What about a user who has already visited your site and browsed for, let’s say, the Acme Destroyer. With 3rd party ad serving on Google’s display network, the ad server can serve up “Test Drive the Destroyer at your local Acme Dealer” and that may improve ROI and response rates.
3. Unified Platform - Agencies and Advertisers hate having to go into multiple interfaces to run and track their marketing programs. Swapping creative and changing landing pages can become part of the existing production/execution process flow once ad serving is consolidated into a 3rd party ad server.

In short, everyone wins.

Related Articles:

Jay Sears at ContextWeb has a write-up on this as well on the ContextWeb Blog.

Disclaimer: I work for Avenue A | Razorfish, a division of Aquantive, which also owns Atlas, a 3rd party ad server. My comments in this post are my opinions and are offered out there as my 2-cents.

On the cover, Pierre Omidyar, one of the founders of EBay, is quoted as saying “please, read the last chapter first.” So the last chapter is called “The Art of Being a Mensch” which is basically Guy’s advice on how to be ethical, decent and admirable.

It’s a pretty short chapter (3 pages) so the basic idea is:

Help Many People

• Do What’s Right
• Keep your Word, Value the Spirit not the Technicality of an Agreement
• Pay for What you Get

Focus on What’s Important

Pay Back Society

Pretty pratical advice if you ask me. I can probably work on the first point, and the last point more but I think I’m pretty good about doing what’s right most of the time. The most important part of this chapter is probably the exercise you’re supposed to do:

“It’s the end of your life. Write down the three things you want people to remember about you”

1. To be remembered as a close and trusted friend to those who were kind enough to have shared a friendship with me.
2. To raise a strong loving family (when the time comes)
3. To have lived with no regrets and lived life to the fullest.

And here’s a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson which I find unwavering inspiration in:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

That is what I would like to be remembered as.

I would like to invite everyone reading to submit their list of 3 things they would like to remembered for and I’ll post them here.