Final Post

This final week of blogging brings sadness with it. Previous to this, I had never blogged before, and considered it a waste of time. However, I have now embraced blogging as a wonderful outlet and release; to virtually scribe my thoughts and feelings from my head and heart onto paper so to speak. It doesn’t even matter to me if anyone is following my blog, because it is therapy for myself, even if they are assignments from my Marketing in the Era of Digital Technology class. Watch out Professor Acito, you may have unleashed a blogging machine. This week I was able to experience all the selections I had set out to in the previous post. These articles/videos/podcasts both re-affirmed my stance of advertising in today’s virtual world, but also provided many examples to disprove my beliefs.

My view towards ads is similar to the one presented in the article “Why advertising is Failing on the Internet.” Most ads are pushed upon users. Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites. “Forrester Research has completed studies that show that advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest”. While this may be true, Google did generate 21 Billion dollars in advertising revenue last year. Do the companies that advertise log increased sales due to these adspots on Google. Well I searched “does internet advertising increase profits” using the Google search engine. The second hit was the link for “Why advertising is Failing on the Internet” and none of the other links on the main page show any evidence that internet advertising has a direct correlation to increased profits. Therefore, I still am not sold that internet advertising actually translates into profits and sales that offset the advertising costs.

Before reading the “Secret of Googlenomics”, I never realized that Google sells their adds via a high speed auction , aka adwords. . However, and this may sound silly, but I never really noticed that Google had ads that accompanied searches. The article stated that ads are located on the right side as “sponsored links”. So I did a search and of course, sponsored links popped up to the right side with ads. These links were text based and non obtrusive, the original intention of the Google founders, “Page and Brin also believed that ads should be useful and welcome—not annoying intrusions”. However, they are so non-intrusive, I didn’t even know they existed until now, and I consider myself very internet savy There must to be some way to create websites that do other services than provide free access to content, some of it proprietary, some of it licensed, and some of it stolen, and funded by advertising.

Another interesting item to note is that I copied and pasted a quote from the “Why advertising is Failing on the Internet” article and the following was also pasted below -

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/#ixzz0pITTKv26

I’ve never seen that before. That is genius, almost better than advertising. I researched to see if there was any information about this on the internet but I couldn’t find any. I’m not sure if this is a feature I turned on from my internet explorer.computer, or if it is embedded in the code of the html.

Final Week

This week’s topic is central to one of the main issues I have been discussing in my posts all semester. This issue is how advertisement and promotion are the main drivers of revenue for many of the “over valued” sites/businesses online. Such examples are Google and Facebook. Yes, these sites have developed niche services that do earn them revenue and are vast resources of collective information that will eventually be useful, but they will admit that their only major source of revenue currently is derived from ads. Therefore, I am very interested in reading the article on “Why advertising is failing on the internet” and “Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Site”. Also, I have always been intrigued by the site Second Life. Recently, I had watched a True Life episode on MTV about a musician who was afraid to perform in public and alternatively held concerts on Second Life to avoid her stage fright issues. However, she had almost 1,000 second life users attend her virtual concert, many more than what she would have received for a non-virtual concert.

Here are the selections I intend to cover throughout this final week.

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability
Camtasia: Advertising in Video Games
Chapter 4: "Promotion within Your Community," in Now Is Gone, pp. 89-115
Why advertising is failing on the internet
Article: "Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Site
Podcast: Marketing and Second Life Part 1
Podcast: Marketing and Second Life Part 2

Week 6 - Data

This week, I was able to enjoy all the articles I intended to look at outlined in my previous post. First, I obtained a headache from simply reading about all the terabytes of data points that are collected by web analytics and research tools. I always overly simplified how easy it was to extract user’s movements on the web and convert that data into useable marketing information. However, this perception of ignorance was validated by the 10/90 rule presented in the “Critical Components of a Successful Web Analytics Strategy” article. I don’t think it is unreasonable to pay 100,000 thousand dollars for a web analytics vendor, but holding to the 10/90 rule (which is just an estimation), you would need to pay 1 million dollars to have a team to extract value from that information. For large companies like Amazon or Ebay, they have the capital to make that investment. Smaller companies or startups may not, and therefore might be losing valuable pieces of information since they aren’t able to convert user web use to profitable results.

Also, I always thought of Google as a power house search engine with most of their revenue generated from advertisements. Well now I can understand why their advertising space is just so valuable. As noted in “the Numerati”, Google is the Marquee company, it is built almost entirely upon math, and it’s very purpose is to help us hunt down data.

The challenge will be to build intelligent software that can analyze user data inputs and target value back to the users. I think there are two approaches to this, passive and active. I see much of the passive approach today. This would be advertisements targeted to you concerning items/services you may have already searched or purchased. If you recently searched for or bought a TV online, and then get advertisements online about Samsung TVs, then this is the passive approach. You may have already purchased a TV, and the ad has not reached you in time. Next, is the active approach. These are ads that try to predict your next step, before you have even thought of it. An example of this is the movie to car rental relationship discussed in the Numerati (I am having a hard time believing there is a connection between these tw)o. More often, there are logical connections that can be made. The best one I have thought of is the relationship status on social media sites (facebook, myspace, ect). When someone changes this status from relationship to engaged, this info should be an instant red flag to analyzers. If it were me, I would display copious wedding advertisements to this user. Before he/she even knew that one needed save the date invitations for a wedding, an ad would appear on their screen for this, and out of ignorance, they would click on this ad, and subsequently purchasing these invitations. This is one example that I would use data and web metrics from the internet, and be able to convert this data into value for the user and business.

Week 6 - Right up my alley

I’m very interested in this week’s articles. While marketing does intrigue me, my background is rooted in electrical engineering, math, and statistics, so this allows me to finally apply my understanding of those subjects to this week’s topic of web metrics and marketing research.

This week, I intend to review the following materials -
-Introduction," in The Numerati.
-Brief History of the Internet
-Chapter 4: "Critical Components of a Successful Web Analytics Strategy
-Kimberly Clark and Virtual Reality Simulations

Unanswered Questions

After watching the must anticipating video,” How will twitter make money”, I am still left with a lot of questions and little answers. The CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams, did not have a solution for this. He stated that most of Twitter’s resources (97%) were being directed at improving the site and business, and not focused on deriving profits from the Twitter service. He did recognize that branding through Twitter is very desirable and many companies want solutions for this, and this is a possible way to extract some of the value Twitter provides. However, Evan’s thought as the site develops is that profits will come in time. First, I disagree with this approach. Not having a model for future profit growth is a horrible business practice. Just believing that the company with make money in the future because people like the service is tantamount to disaster. Personally, I don’t think social media sites will ever make that much money. As far as income, advertising will be there only revenue stream. Yes, if the site is large enough with enough followers, than this should allow for some major marketing potential. So is the company going to charge businesses to have access to their virtual database. Why would a company pay when they can sign up for free and twitter questions like “would you pay for $2.50 for a Big Mac”. If they charge all users, then no one would be a follower of the site. Additionally, the barriers to entry for social media sites are very low. Anyone with some programming expertise and a few resources can start up the next Twitter. This is why in my opinion, only business models like the “Brokerage Model” or the “Merchant Model” will be the ones that thrive financially as outlined in “Business Models on the Web”. The best performers are sites that fall into these models. Some examples are Ebay, Amazon, and Netflix. These sites actually offer value to the customer that can be extracted by the company as opposed to Twitter. The only way for Twitter to become profitable is to build up a social database that can never be destroyed. However, looking at the recent

How will Twitter make money - Week 4

One of the media selections for this week has really peaked my interest. That selection is “Will Twitter Ever Make Money”. This is a topic I have wondered. How does one extract value from the benefits that Twitter or other social media, search engines, ect sites provide. Since this week’s topic is Business Models and the New Era of Competition, I would really like to focus on which business models are best for extracting monetary gains from the internet, and how do sites like twitter plan on monetizing their product.

This week, I will be reviewing the following selections -

Business Models on the Web
Gil and Frank Discuss Business Models
Video: Will Twitter Ever Make Money? Twitter CEO Evan Williams Responds
Article: "The Economics of Giving it Away," The Wall Street Journal
A taxonomy of internet commerce (2006)
5 business models for social media startups (2009)

Social Media Evolution

After reading Chapter 1: "The Origins of Social Media," in The New Influencers, pp. 1-14, it is hard to determine if social media is a net positive or negative for companies. Such examples as AOL and Sony cited in the article are evidence of how quickly negative media can be propagated throughout the social media channels of the internet. Most often, most media published by the public via internet takes a negative form. Most people won’t sit done and take the time to blog about how great the customer service was for Dell, but if they had one poor experience, they will make sure that everyone knows about it, such as the AOL example. It is up to the individual companies to utilize social media and the internet for positive gains.

As my outlook to this week’s learning, I wanted to understand how social media can evolve into a useful tool for businesses. The way social media and marketing can be taken to the next level is to market at the very early stages of inception. This is referred to as the bottom up strategy in "Making the Transition to the Social Web," in Marketing to the Social Web,. If a company has 1 million followers, they can pose the question, “would you purchase this new product”, and obtain real time feedback. This benefit could potentially save companies millions of dollars and avoid wasted time developing products that consumers would not be interested in.

My biggest take away is the pyramid effect social marketing can have. One person blogs about an issue, which is communicated to their 10 friends, which is then communicated to each of their 10 friends, and so on. Anyone can see how quickly this can continue to spiral. Therefore, the internet and social media is quickly becoming a vast and connected web. Companies can obviously see the power of this. Compared to television or radio, where you may only reach a few million people spending millions of dollars, social media can allow companies to reach billions of people, and more shockingly, do it with such ease and at low costs.

Microsegmentation and Social Media

Since the topic for this week is Microsegmentation and Social Media, I am very interested in discovering current and future marketing strategies that utilize social media. I find that social media is used more to keep up with ones favorite celebrity, or to obtain the most friends on ones facebook page. The obvious use to a company would be to connect with current customers and potential future companies. For example, when apple releases a new product, the Ipad , they can tweet and broadcast that information to all their followers, many of whom who will probably go out and purchase that product. However, I want to see how social media marketing can be taken beyond this face value approach and evolve to something greater.

This week, I intend to cover the following materials -
Chapter 1: "The Origins of Social Media," in The New Influencers, pp. 1-14
Podcast: "Gil and Frank Discuss the Long Tail"
LISTEN from Fresh Air: Can The iPad Or The Kindle Save Book Publishers?
Chapter 3: "Making the Transition to the Social Web," in Marketing to the Social Web, pp. 31-47. (Download content.)
Video: A conversation with Evan Williams, Co-founder of Twitter.com (from the Charlie Rose program; length: 22 minutes)
Chapter 1 "The Long Tail," in The Long Tail, pp. 15-26. (Download content.)
The Seven Segment System for Online Marketing

Week 2 Retrospective

This week, I reviewed the following selections -
Introduction: The Dawn of the Human Network" in Crowdsourcing,
"Brand Communities"
Why the Groundswell and Why Now?" in Groundswell,
Web Video: The New, New Thing," in Digital Engagement
The social marketing playbook

I was able to stay on task, and complete my goal of reading/listening/viewing almost all of the media. The fundamental theme of this week’s selections is how powerful a tool the internet (and it’s mass of followers) can be when enough users group together and are focused on a single issue. To quote my favorite movie “The Gladiator”, Russell Crow’s character says the following after one of his gladiator battles “ I am at their mercy (rulers), with the power only to amuse the mob”. The answer he receives, “That is power”. Similarly, the internet has created a global network that allows the real power to be placed back in the hands of the common people. For companies and marketing, this has both positive and negatives effects. The best example is P&Gs “Connect and Develop” program, which helped reignite the company’s innovation base and turned around the company’s revenues. While I never participated in this program, I have helped and profited in similar online innovation networks helping to resolve electrical engineering issues for other businesses. As a live collective of knowledge and resources, questions can be answered much quicker and more cost effectively by tapping into this vast potential of public brainpower. This idea can be utilized for tough issues such as green energy solutions or simple problems like asking for help with home improvement questions.

Another similar example is threadless.com, as presented in The Dawn of the Human Network" in Crowdsourcing. I actually intend to borrow this idea, and use it to market products for my wife’s business. My wife owns a wedding invitation studio. Followers can submit their designs, and the community (future brides) vote on the best design, which will be used in her collection. By doing so, you have already ensured the popularity of the design. The social mob can also generate unwanted media for companies. Examples of this are the vast internet public that viewed the Comcast technician who fell asleep on the job or Jennifer Laylock’s promotion of the other white milk as presented in Why the Groundswell and Why Now?. I did find the discussion about open source technology and the motivation behind users improving the technologies very interested. Unlike Windows, Linux is an open source operating software technology. Software coders worldwide help improve this software, but do not do it for any monetary purpose, instead they want to be part of helping something bigger than themselves. Who knows, even though not profit driven, maybe the motives are selfish, and they want to show off how much smarter they are than everyone else?

Also, I would like to learn more about Harley Davidson and their social networking strategy. I’m not sure if it played a major role in their resurgence. Sometimes I feel that too much emphasis and reward is placed on social networking for the success of a business. Yes, it can be very powerful, but it depends on what field the business operates, and how social networking is used.

I also appreciated the statistics presented in the article below –
http://www.marketingvox.com/study-marketing-execs-must-realize-and-learn-to-use-power-of-social-media-036996/

Week 2- Discovery

The first week of class was utilized to get a sense and feel of the class and the tools we will be using. In Week 2, I can begin to challenge myself and start to understand the past and present situation of marketing and digital technology. This is necessary in order to perceive the possible future of digital market, which I will strive to answer in the next several weeks. Since there are less required and optional materials in week 2 compared to week 1, I intend to view all of the materials.

Week 1 - Reflection and Review

The biggest take away from this week’s suggested media is just how young the internet still is. To quote what Reid Hoffman stated in his interview, “the internet is still at the end of the first inning”, in reference to a baseball game. Currently, the internet is a virtual medium where anyone can upload any information, with minimal verification. A good example of this is Myspace. Myspace is a social network where people can meet/connect virtually, but a lot of them are strangers who are often dishonest about who they were. This has resulted in limited credibility for Myspace and similar social networking sites. Now, the internet and especially social networking sites are fast becoming a center that establishes a true connection between the real world and the virtual world. Sites like Facebook and Linkedin are set up to first guarantee the trust of and between their users.

The other major theme I noticed was how internet companies would be monetizing their ideas. Reid Hoffman’s belief is that if you have the next great idea and people want it, then it needs to be scaled up and profits will be realized in the future. Marc Zuckerberg also fosters this idea, which is why he is not relinquishing his role as CEO of facebook. However, most of these newer ideas (Ning, Facebook, Quick), are not very profitable in their current sate. Their main source of revenue is ads. However, these businesses are working on other avenues to be profitable. One marketing idea that was clever was discussed by Marc Andereesen. The idea is to market a product before the product has even been created in order to determine the demand for the idea. This would be done by placing pop up ads, and calculating how many people click on these ads (nothing would be behind the ads). Similarly, I already do this when I am interested in purchasing a piece of real estate to be used as a rental property. I will place an ad on craigslist about my potential rental property and if I receive enough inquiries, I will know that I will be able to rent the property at the advertised price. This emphasizes that there are still a multitude of unrealized potential for digital marketing on the internet.

That being said, there is still a lot of misperceived conceptions about the internet and marketing. My comment that I would like to add is best summed up by a 15 year old summer intern, Matthew Robson, who worked for Morgan Stanley in the summer of 2009. At the behest of the bank's research team in London, Robson described how he and his friends interact with all kinds of media, from television and movies to Twitter and Internet radio, which got the attention of the CEO. He said that teens devour all kinds of media but are reluctant to pay for it. They listen to music, but prefer online sites, such as last.fm over the radio. They watch TV, but only when their favorite programs are in season. This was further emphasized by Gil and Frank in part 3 about the newspaper industry as they stated younger people are very adept at dodging paying for media on the internet. I completely agree with his final point, which he stated that view ads on Web sites as "extremely annoying and pointless." I personally have never clicked on them, and this is the main source of generated revenue for almost all internet sites. While the Internet and social networking sites are popular among teenagers, he gave micro-blogging service Twitter the thumbs down. This just points to how infant this internet still is. Marketing is continuously evolving in the digital age of technology as businesses begin to understand what works and what does not work. Many practices that work in the physical world will not work in the virtual world.

This article on Mathew Robson can be found here -
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/International/story?id=8070196&page=1

Self-monitoring report , Week 1

Below are the materials I was able to cover during the week. While my ultimate goal was to view all of the selections, that was difficult due to the amount of information provided (some selections were over 100 pages). One comment about this is that it was much easier for me to take in the materials that didn’t require reading, as I was able to listen to the podcasts while working out at the gym or watch/listen to the videos while checking up on my work email. In today’s fast paced lifestyle, multitasking is necessary, and marketers need to recognize that information needs to be conveyed in the easiest and most efficient ways to the consumers. One not of technical difficulty. If I click on the link to some of the selections, I will receive a "navigation to the webpage was canceled" message. In order to access the actual page, I need to right click on the link and select, "open in a new window". This is for Internet Explorer 8.

Chapter 1: "Made to Engage", in The Age of Engage, pp. 1-26
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 1"
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 2
Podcast: "Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 3"
Video: A conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
Report: The Future of the Internet; from the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Book excerpt: "Mastering the Hype Cycle"
Article: "Do You Trust This Face?" by Alex French, GQ, December, 2008.
Video: "A conversation with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos," from the Charlie Rose program
Video: "The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry," presentation by Peter Hirshberg, Silicon Valley executive
Video: "A conversation with entrepreneur and software engineer Marc Andreessen," from the Charlie Rose program
What is new media? (from The New Media Reader)
Technology and ideology: the case of the telegraph (from The New Media Reader)

First Post! - learning goals, outcomes, and questions

This week, I intend to get a better understanding of exactly what this class is about and the types of material and content that we will be learning from. The course is named “Marketing in the Era of Digital Technology”, but will this course be emphasizing more, technology or marketing. I assume it will be a perfect blend of both. After looking at the topics and assignments for this week, there are 14 selections of media to experience. If I am not able to read/listen/watch all of these, I would like to sample several from each different media type (articles/podcasts/videos) so I can get a good feel about the benefits each one provides.