Feeling unlucky?

"$110,000,000 - approximately: amount of money lost by Google annually due to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button"

More mad internet facts here.

Blyk on target as Google adsense goes mobile

Despite consistent mutterings within the mobile industry that Blyk cannot possibly work... here it is hitting its 100K customer target in the UK six months ahead of schedule.
Congrats to all those involved including Jonathan and Alan.

Also today I see google has added Mobile Ads to its adsense suite. So now you can design a mobile-friendly ad to link to your mobile internet site. Potentially very powerful and something I'm sure admob will be watching carefully.
The google tools even include giving the advertiser the tools to create their own mobile internet page for the mobile ad to link to (the horrible flaw in the car-crash they had before was that the ad might point to a standard fixed line web site. All the clicks but none of the business).

All very long tail enabling.

However, that page (an Adwords Business Page) is only an 'information' page. In other words you can't enable easy payment or ordering of an item advertised. Which seems a bit daft. How long before they integrate google checkout?

Engagement Mapping: a fairer distribution of ad dollars

Microsoft has come up with a real challenge to google adsense. It's not a new kind of advertising, it's a new kind of measurement and one which is likely to appeal to anyone in the business of branded advertising and content creation.

'Engagement Mapping' is a well-informed punt at the kind of redistribution of value in the supply chain of advertising so many have called for. It goes into beta on March 1.

Mike Teasdale - planning director at Harvest spoke about the need for something like this at the NetImperative publishing seminar I spoke at in November 2007.

Google (and their ilk) gets the lions share of the CPA (cost per acquisition) cake because the final click is most often from search.

That doesn't seem fair because it's not giving enough value back to the creators of the demand. You don't go searching for something you don't already want. Content creators/hosts are doing the job of creating desire.

Example: User sees an in-context and related banner ad. What we do next is... very often not click it. This may well be because we feel interrupted, irritated or whatever. This doesn't much matter to Mike's case. What does, is that the ad has planted an idea in the user's mind. It may have seeded the demand and it has been displayed in a context in which the user was susceptible to that demand.

So there is no click-thru record of me 'responding'. But I do actually respond to it and I am more prepared to part with cash as a result.

More often than not I'll do a search around the terms the combination of ad and content has planted in my mind and do this because I want to do some comparisons - and perhaps because I don't trust one single ad when I can go comparing and do some consideration with communities I trust.

But despite all that - the combination of content and ad has had a large influence on a deal getting done.

Could Microsoft's new tech share out the revenues in both a measurable and reasonable way?

Microsoft says: "Engagement Mapping takes into account for the first time all the various online touchpoints and interactions a consumer experiences before an eventual sale."
“...The ‘last ad clicked’ is an outdated and flawed approach because it essentially ignores all prior interactions the consumer has with a marketer’s message,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser & Publisher Solutions (APS) Division at Microsoft.

“Our Engagement Mapping approach conveys how each ad exposure — whether display, rich media or search, seen multiple times on multiple sites and across many channels — influenced an eventual purchase. We believe it represents a quantum leap for advertisers and publishers who are seeking to maximize their online spends.”

Can Microsoft's new system ascribe the right proportion of value (and how do you measure what is right?) to the editorial article that made you think you wanted a holiday, or the next one that made you think you wanted a particular type of holiday, or the next one which made you think you wanted to go to a particular location etc etc.

IF advertising were content and content were advertising we would have a complete (and worthy of the name) engagement model. But I get the sense that Engagement Mapping will only ascribe value to interactions (views and clicks I guess) with traditional-style ads (of the kind that don't fit the networked world, as I discussed here).

I'm not even sure if it has a way of adding in the 'engagement' users have with marketing widgets.

There appears no sign of treating 'content' in the same way as advertising - eg ascribing (and paying) a value to this here blog post because it's made you want to go off and sign up to try Engagement Mapping.

If I'm wrong about that Microsoft, my apologies... I imagine the cheque is in the post?

Mobile internet: A new media - no wonder Google gets it wrong

I was lucky enough to stumble on Informa's mobile web2.0 conference at Lord's in London yesterday. I'm indebted to Ajit Jaoker (for the invite) and the good people at Informa for letting me gate-crash.

I caught the last few presentations and final panel of the day (the event continues today). As a result I'll recommend you check out mystrands.com which was presented by Atakan Cetinsoy as an exceptionally well thought-out mobile community play. And I was delighted to catch up with Ajit and Tomi Ahonen, talk with Ken Blakeslee and at least say hi to Jouko Ahvenainen.

But the bit that stayed with me was Russell Buckley's (admob and Mobhappy) scathing analysis of the launch of Google Adsense for mobile.

He pointed out adsense will start appearing on mobilised sites whether the site the ad links to has been designed for mobile or not.

In other words click the adsense link and you could get a very poor experience. That's bad enough for the user. Imagine being the poor sap who is paying per click?

It's astounding really that even Google can't get this right. But as is often pointed out, there's hardly a brand from the old media forms that has successfully transferred to the internet.
So why should we expect the 'experts' on the internet to be able to move smoothly to being the experts on mobile?

How many are really making the effort to understand the vital differences between Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's 6th and 7th mass medias (internet being the sixth, mobile the seventh)?

As Russell points out people might get excited by 450,000 people accessing MySpace from their mobiles but the leaders in the mobile social space are NEW and MADE FOR MOBILE - such as peperonity. They have way more page impressions than the old guard (amusing to think of MySpace as the old guard...).

Russell should know - Admob is currently serving mobile ads at the rate of 1.7bn a month and gathering more data about what the mobile internet accessing public are doing than almost anyone else along the way.

In the evening I was Admob's guest (and many thanks to Ivanka for that) at the Mobile Entertainment Awards - where Admob deservedly picked up the award for Best Marketing and Advertising Provider. Interesting - at this Nokia-sponsored event - to see Admob getting the nod over Enpocket (Nokia's latest squeeze).

A Google rep (picking up some search-related award, obviously) said there was much more from them to come in the mobile space. On the evidence of the adsense effort so far, there had better be.

The ad battle moves to mobile - but maybe they are drawing the wrong lines?

One of the most critical business battles of the early 21st century is raging - for dominance of the mobile advertising market.

Google has lit the blue-touch paper on adwords for mobile and just days later Nokia announces it is buying Enpocket

Nokia says: "Enpocket is a global leader in mobile advertising; providing technology and services that allow brands to plan, create, execute, measure and optimize mobile advertising campaigns around the world.

"By acquiring Enpocket, Nokia will accelerate the scaling of its mobile advertising business, leveraging Enpocket's platform and strong partnerships with advertisers, publishers and operators. In addition to key assets, through this transaction Nokia is gaining a team with strong expertise in global mobile advertising across disciplines."

Big guns - and all blazing.

Looks like the big fish are starting to snap up the clever ones.

Wonder what it all means for Admob?

I also wonder how strategic these decisions are - and how tactical.

For me, the forms of mobile advertising we've seen so far are of the kind Tomi Ahonen would characterise as 6th mass media plays on the 7th mass media. That is the kind of ad styles/inventories are pretty much like internet ones, squeezed on to mobile internet - with less cookie-driven relevance. (see Mobile as the 7th Mass Media, top of page). Which take advantage of what makes mobile different?

No one has gone (alan moore's) engagement marketing route, though I suspect Blyk will get closest of all when it launches before the end of this month.

Expect a lot of eyes pointing in Blyk's direction. And a lot of people wishing they were under 24...

Google moves to own the network

There have long been rumours that google wanted to move from providing the content to providing the network.
Rumours of them buying up large swathes of land, thousands of miles of cable and securing vast energy supplies provide the theory with its legs.
And last weekend it emerged the company will be among those bidding for spectrum in the US - with the potential of making it a hugely disruptive player in telecommunications.
With ads served against content (mobile adsense is now in beta) there's every possibility that serving their core business (adwords) is what google has in mind. Free calls and data anyone?
The emergence of Blyk's model is already demoing the model as an mvno.
What could google do with ownership of the network and potentially of device (the google phone is still a very hot tip)
The operators must be sweating.

Here it comes: Google Adsense for mobile!

Regular participants in this conversation will know I've long been an advocate of the idea that the long tail will shake the mobile internet dog (much earlier, and therefore acquiring significantly more influence, than it did on the fixed line web).
Google Adsense was the critical driver in the explosion of content on the fixed line web (it's one thing to create content left right and centre - quite another to get paid for it).
So the wait for google adsense or its equivalent to deploy on mobile has been pregnant with anticipation.
Well, now it's here.
A very reputable source told me on Friday (July 13, 2007) that in fact it had been available for a couple of weeks. And a quick scan around the blogosphere this morning reveals it is just starting testing with invited mobile content publishers (try here).
In my view, this is a very significant moment (please share what you think by adding a comment).
In combination with the arrival of the I-Phone and Youtube going properly mobile (in June) I think we'll end up looking back at the middle of 2007 as the tipping point of the mobile web.
Admob has already shown how taking the marketplace approach and making their code easy for publishers to deploy - gives long tail content creators a way of earning revenue for their efforts. As a result they are busily co-creating the new value emerging from the mobile internet (4billion ads served so far and currently adding around 1billion more a month).
And their biggest revenue earners are the likes of peperonity, itsmy... in other words User Generated Content in the classic long tail model.
But Admob can't serve in-context related ads. Yet (I'm told a version 2.0 is on its way...)
It's very hard to do for all sorts of very interesting technical reasons. So that makes their ads, despite their text-link design, more interruption than engagement. (though, to be fair to Admob, you can select which sites you want to serve on - and with increasing specialisation (into niches) that may well give a decent approximation of engagement).
However, if google adsense has cracked in-context, related (as it does on the fixed web) then there will be a better match between the 'advert' and the content. It closes the gap between the two. It makes it more engaging.
Both Admob and Google Adsense learned an early lesson many website operators would do well to consider - banners don't work. Text links do. They become part of the (albeit stilted) conversation. Translation: Interruption doesn't get response, Engagement does.

So now we have the staggering marketing power of Apple and the I-Phone, PLUS the global call to action (get a fixed rate data plan - get a 3G phone) of youtube to speed up the charge to mobile (pervasive if you prefer) computing.

AND on top of that there's now an easy-for-everyone AND engaging revenue model, too (Adsense).

Just watch mobile internet go now!

Make sure you are looking in the right direction (towards UGC) or you won't see it coming until it's way too late...

• Life after the I-phone
• Mobile as the 7th Mass Media
• Long Tail will shake mobile internet dog
• YouTube goes mobile - there goes your video revenue stream...
  

Flixya.com: Where the co-creators get their dues... almost

Interesting new arrival on the social media scene: Flixya.com - where co-creators of content earn "100% of the ad revenue they generate" (as seen on killerstartups.com.
At first look you'd think this is way better than just creating your own content and adding google adsense because google adsense only pays you a portion... (certainly not 100%)
And then you discover that this is actually powered by google adsense. So you don't do any better than creating your own content elsewhere (ie on a blogger blog). Flixya offers 100% of what they'd get - but you'd need to talk to google about getting the full amount!
The extra incentive Flixya is offering (apart from the tools) is that it aims to aggregate an audience in the way that facebook or myspace does (and in the way that blogger doesn't).
And if you are a constant updater of facebook, twitter, etc... why not get a little something back?
It treats the user as a much more converged creature (ie creator/consumer/marketeer)
I guess they hope to earn their pound of flesh by offering other services (ie at the moment there are ringtones you can pay to have - but they aren't offered in a particularly engaging way).
To that end, while they may well be offering the co-creators 100% of the available interruptive advertising revenues... it's unlikely they can continue that ratio for the emerging engagement opportunities.
But perhaps this is just semantics - you get to keep the ad revenue - we'll have the engagement marketing cash.
Fair and accurate - or a bit of spin? You decide.
All in all, it's about the most interesting start-up I've seen in a good few months. Didn't see a mobile play in my quick once-over. If you have, let me know!

Widsets ready to open its doors

It seems I may have done Widsets a disservice in this previous post: 'Long tail will wag the mobile internet dog'
In that I said: "Widsets.com allows you to choose fasterfuture as a widget to download to your mobile - and that delivers every post as it's made from this blog to an organised rss feed. But there are few design options, no ad model (from a ugc perspective), no ability to add code etc etc."
And that is the case for a lone user.
But I caught up with Kaj Hege Haggman (Widsets business development manager) last night and he says Widsets will soon be offering a development pack for content owners to have a play with.
Using that publishers will be able to deliver a much richer experience more like the Wikipedia widget currently available in the widset library. So look out for that here by the end of the month.
There's still no plan to allow publishers to add their own code for ad revenues (eg adsense or admob) yet - but this is (says Hege) because this is still an emerging business. They want to grow the thing first.
Interestingly the idea that anyone can create a widget using anyone else's rss feed - a natural assumption for anyone having a play with the tools widsets offers - is ruled out in the small print. In a tipped hat towards copyright law, the T&Cs tell users they must ask the permission of the content owner to use their stream.
I understand why Nokia-owned Widsets wants that get-out clause, and I also understand why they don't want to draw too much attention to it (hello YouTube!).
I think the joy of it will be users mashing up their own feeds/needs etc and taking whichever content they want to use for their personal use.
Which is why, to me, offering a way for the content provider to monetise, is critical.
As, I've said before - look at what google adsense (the most effective widget ever) did for the long tail on the fixed line internet...
Nokia are really buying into the notion of widgets full stop. Nokia's Ganesh Sivaraman is joining with Ajit Joaker to run a Nokia Widgets workshop in London today.

2007: year of the widget


This video, from here

Yahoo launches its mobile internet advertising model

Yahoo weighs in. More here
This is interesting, particulary given yahoo's relationships with operators (eg 3).
Makes it easy for the mobile internet publishers to get their content funded. And look what that (google adsense) did for the amount of content on the fixed line internet.
Sounds like a similar approach to that taken by Nokia with its AdService.
But the great thing is this is global and will work with any mobile internet device. It's offered across the world and to a range of publishers (there is a sub 1 million page impressions a month level to select).
Yahoo says: "The Yahoo! Mobile Ad network lets you leverage Yahoo!’s scale and expertise as a global media powerhouse. Joining the network gives you access to Yahoo!’s worldwide sales force and its relationships with top advertisers across 19 countries. In addition to these advertisers, Yahoo! welcomes those of all sizes who have relevant offers for the mobile audience – increasing further the relevancy and volume of ad inventory available to you."
And more are coming. I hear google's mobile adsense is in test mode.

Google AdNoSense

An interesting issue with Google Adsense has been raised on a forum I frequently use. Having had Google Adsense running for several months, the owner has been told it has been disabled due to invalid clicks...

Fair enough, you may think, but crucially:

"We will not receive any income accumulated over the last month, instantly creating a funding void. We have no idea why they have disabled the account, we have never encouraged clicking on adverts, nor have we clicked on the links to gain income. "

And the appeal procedure is a single email to Google, with a response within 24 hours, only if the appeal is successful. If not, presumably it goes into the Googlebin...


Something to bear in mind if you're implementing Google ads, particularly on a large scale. It would be interesting to see exactly how many ads you would need to serve daily to gain access to any kind of negotiation...

Measure for measure. Why google doesn't publish audience figures

Here's one for those in the business of selling ads (at least until we work out better ways of engaging...)
It's from Web2.0: Click here
See also Famous for 15 people is better than famous for 15 minutes

Google focuses strategy on 'better content'

Spotted on Publishing 2.0.

Google's adsense project has been really good at getting people to create content to run google ads against. But it doesn't distinguish between good and bad.

Ultimately loads of bad content results in loads of ads not getting clicked.

Google appear to admit they've been responsible for accelerating the 'pollution' of the internet in that link above.

I've long thought google has a vested interest in supporting professional publishing groups for exactly this reason.

Effective search needs effective results - and that's where we really can have a role.

The best ad response comes when it is presented with the best content - and this is a notion worthy of serious consideration as we all charge head-long at user-generated content.

Even those entirely committed to the engagement marketing revolution and the 'everyone's a publisher now' digital future also recognise the increasing future relevance of choice editing services.

Perhaps that's what consumer media should focus on?

How to spot new advertisers who want your content

Ok, here's a really simple tip and a very quick way of finding out what other advertisers your brand may be able to target online.

Go to google to download and install their adsense preview tool.

This does require some registry editing (which you may have to get helpdesk to allow on your pc).

It's worth the hassle because using the tool allows you to see which google advertisers are buying keywords that indicate they are extremely interested in advertising against exactly the kind of content you provide. And you can do it without having to sign up for google ads.

For those not familiar - google serves ads against key words to offer related (and in context) ads.

We can use the tool to identify new advertisers. And if you add google ads too, you'll find you get cash from advertisers who wouldn't usually trouble themselves with you. Land Rover has traditionally not advertised in LRO (Land Rover Owner) for reasons best understood by themselves.

When we trialled google ads, guess who started appearing? And we got the revenues each time their ads were clicked - which they were. Nice. Land Rover should see in their accounting that clicks are coming from LRO.com - which should give us a stronger sales story in the future.

BTW: Please don't click any google ads you may see on emap sites (if you're within emap, that is) because that's a sure-fire way of getting us kicked out of the program.

If you use the preview tool YOU CAN click on the ads that appear within it.

If I've made all that baffling, go to the google link above for a fuller explanation.

Please add your thoughts via the comment function, or email me... or whatever!I'd also welcome any links you think should appear on here - and any RSS feeds (see those technology news ones already appearing on the left column).