B.L. Ochmann has forecast some developments in the blogging arena.

At leat two of them are pertinent for users of Qumana, and those who may have heard of Qumana and Q-Ads but have yet to try the tools and service, or are wondering about why and how to integrate them into their work flows.

3. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes.

Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising.

Bloggers won’t tolerate invasive, annoying, flashing, heavy-handed ads, and agencies will stumble as they try to understand the type of advertising that can beat any traditional medium, hands down, when properly executed. I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.

People who read blogs are looking for specialized, high-touch information from experts in particular areas. The right ads directed to those niche audiences can work wonders.

4. Widgets in new Mac and PC operating systems will introduce millions to truly customizing their online experience.

The age of invasive advertising is over and companies will have an enormous branding experience if they provide/sponsor the information people need and want to see every day in widgets.

Essentially, widgets are a way to provide RSS feeds in a frame the user loads onto the page or site of their choice. They allow people to use stupidly named RSS feeds without understanding that they are transferring code.

By lightly branding widgets, companies that provide information consumers want to keep on their desktop or home page have the enormous opportunity to have their brand name in front of customers every day in a positive, almost subliminal way.

Tags: Qumana, Q-Ads, B.L. Ochmann, online advertising, blog advertising, marketing widgets

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Thanks to John Battelle's Searchblog (which in turn thanks Ross Stapleton-Gray) for highlighting this, an academic grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at improving the ways click fraud is dealt with.

Detecting click fraud collaboratively and in real time should be quite a feat.  I suppose it would mean much less relative arbitrary auditing, and probably much more transparency about why any given click would be approved or not.

 If it succeeds, it should make quite a difference.

Govt Study Funds Click Fraud Detection

Just in case the Googles of the world ain't paying attention:

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will provide a commercial solution to click fraud identification and prevention. The current existing solutions can not detect the so-called software click. This STTR project proposes a real time collaborative click fraud detection and prevention system to detect these software clicks. The approach draws on data mining techniques for fraud identification using detailed user activities. An accurate and efficient classification method based on association rule mining and data stream mining will be formulated to identify the click frauds.

The system will protect Pay-Per-Click advertisers from click fraud and improve their return on investment. The new data mining techniques discovered during the course of this research will be applied in multiple fields related to online business marketing, user analysis and other fraud identification processes.

Tags: click fraud, online advertising, Q-Ads, Federated Media, National Science Foundation, John Battelle, Ross Stapleton-Gray

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Via a Globe and Mail update ...

eBay Canada offer member blogs


eBay Canada has introduced eBay Member Blogs to build up an eBay community. The blogs add to the company's member forums, about me pages and eBay reviews and guides.

With the Member Blogs feature, eBay users can create and publish journal-like entries within their own dedicated space and share personal experiences or discuss their categories.

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Via Publishing 2.0 ...  MySpace shielding advertisers from users ?

The rest of the article is not particularly kind to News Corps' emerging strategy for MySpace.

So much for the 2.0 glories of social networking! This is such a sham, and users will see right through it.

Still, it isn’t clear how much attention MySpace users will pay to these advertiser-friendly areas. Many users spend most of their time on their own pages and those of their friends.

This lays bare the emptiness of all the MySpace hype. For USERS, who are the ones who matter in the business equation, it’s all about THEIR content. They don’t really care about wall garden content. That’s not why they use MySpace!
I love this phrase from the article: “the profile pages created by MySpace’s nearly 85 million users — the popular but controversial part of the site” — hello!

That profile pages ARE the site! People don’t got to MySpace to see MySpace. They go to MySpace to see each other.

Tags: social networking, MySpace, advertising, walled gardens, users

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Stowe picks up on a new cut at advertising for *social media platforms* from the global advertising giant JWT (click through to their news section to see the major emphasis it is bringing to this experimentation).

Here's the JWT press release announcing what they are calling an "exclusive partnership" with The Huffington Post.

JWT: Social Advertising

JWT has developed a bunch of what they are calling Social Ads over that The Huffington Post. Basically these ads feel like YouTube videos, kind of grudgy but artsy. The social element is the handy buttons that allow you to send them (via email or AOL IM) to a friend

See JWT's video example over at Stowe's blog post.

Tags: Stwoe Boyd, social advertising, horizontal word of mouth

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Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 has a new article up, titled "Increasing Advertising’s Low Return on Consumer Attention".

On the face of it, the value proposition of search advertising makes perfect sense — ads are chosen based on key word relevance — a consumer is searching for something, and search advertising delivers ads with produce/service offerings related to that search.

But despite this huge innovation, search advertising still provides a relatively low return on consumer attention — in ad brokering systems like Google AdWords, which are based on auctions, relevance is often in conflict with revenue per click. AdWords must balance the likelihood of a click — and its correlation with relevance — against the amount of revenue Google receives for that click. And advertisers who win the key word game can direct consumers to sites that may not be fully relevant to the actual intent of their searches.

Let’s look at a specific example ...

He then takes us through an example using his own searching-and-shopping behaviour, and points to a problem that is likely to endure until there are ways found to pull the reader ... the person who clicks on the advertising ... into the value equation.

But here’s the bigger problem: In my search for the video camera that I will ultimately purchase, money will change hands between advertisers and intermediaries as my attention — and my intention to buy — is “monetized.” But not a dime of that ad money will make it into my pocket.

It’s MY attention, MY intention, and MY purchase — Google and other intermediaries will make all the money, and I won’t see a dime.

In driving towards a conclusion, Scott uses the example of Jellyfish ( a service he previously highlighted which promises to "change the way you shop online, creating a more transparent and valuable shopping environment that benefits both online shoppers and successful retailers alike.").

It looks like Jellyfish launched this past weekend.

Scott's conclusion ?  He mentions the ongoing work of the Attention Trust with respect to "return on attention", and then states:

What we need to really change the attention game — and to dramatically increase advertising’s return on consumer attention — is a way for AVERAGE PEOPLE to increase their skin in the game “seamlessly and without you even thinking about it.”

Tags: attention, intention, paying readers, online advertising, increasing click-throughs

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What seems like a long time ago, though it was only a couple of years, Jon Husband and Fred Fabro asked me to try a little knowledge management app that had been adapted to publish to blogs.  That app is now called Qumana.  It's very different than the app then.  Frankly you wouldn't recognize it.

While working on Qumana we had an idea, what if you could put an ad in your post?  What if you could earn money from the content you write?

Now what we'd like to know is, why don't you put ads in your posts?  What can we do to make Q Ads work for you?

What is interesting to you?  What would make it valuable to you?  Tell us, we'd really like to know.  We didn't come up with this idea for nothing, we came up with idea for you.  We really, truly believe that bloggers should be able to easily make a little coin from your content.

So ... let the commentary begin.

Tags: Qumana, Qumana Ads, Q Ads, blog-vertising

... will be led by John Palfrey of the Harvard Berkman Center.

It will be interesting to follow, online, what the results and outcomes of this session may be.  I suspect that the session will add some additional oomph to the ongoing conversation to which John refers ... "'how do you monetize the long tail?"

If you are a blogger, how do you go about making some money from your work? One obvious answer is the classic approach of throwing BlogAds or Google ads or whathaveyou ads on your blog. That works for some people, but it generates more than beer money only for a select few at the left-hand side of that famous power law distribution.

Some, like Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, have added premium sponsorships to the mix; then again, Mike’s plainly in the select few. Others contend that a blog is itself an advertisement. You don’t make money on the blog itself, but rather you make money on other things (as in the artist who gives away his or her content on a p2p service and makes money on other things to pay the rent).

I trust that we’ll kick around these ideas, but also get into some new possibilities: shouldn’t really simple syndication allow for some new thinking around getting people to pay for the content you create? And are there ways for bloggers themselves to get on the bandwagon of making some of the money that the venture guys are planning to make? How could that work, exactly? Put another away: lots of people have spent lots of digital ink (sound and images too) on the general problem of “how do you monetize the long tail?”

In classic Bloggercon/unconference style, though, this is just a starting point. The beauty and the thrill is in where the conversation may go.

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As we all know, advertisements can be very useful at times  ... and they have come to be accepted as part of the landscape that allows much software or web services to be free or extremely inexpensive.

But, as the final quote (below)  from this recent news story from Search Engine Journal suggests, there are limits.  It looks like AOL is discovering those limits.

AOL Inserts Ads Inside Email


First, a bit of background from InfoWorld (AOL Subscribers Up In Arms Over Email Ads):

“For the first time in its history, AOL is displaying ads along with e-mail messages to its paying subscribers, to increase the delivery mechanisms of its online ad inventory, an AOL spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.
This practice is common in free Webmail services but generally not in fee-based e-mail accounts, where the absence of ads is normally considered a perk of being a paying subscriber.”

[Snip ... ]

TechDirt said (AOL Keeps Working Overtime To Drive Away Subscribers):

“Obviously, there are plenty of email services that are ad-supported, but this is for paying AOL customers, who for years have been able to read email without ads getting in the way. And, of course, these aren’t just any ads, but (of course) intrusive ads that users complain are distracting. Considering that plenty of people seem to have kept their AOL subscriptions going for many years just to keep their email address, pissing off a bunch of those people doesn’t seem like the smartest strategic move.”

Search Engine Journal quote:

"I agree - pissing people off is NOT a prudent business plan, although it seems to have become an important part of AOL’s major strategy over the years. I am assuming that most Search Engine Journal readers don’t have AOL as their gateway to the Internets, but many of us might have relatives (hi Mom!) who have relied on AOL for access. Inserting annoying ads between email messages is not a good way to make friends and influence people."

Tags: unusual business strategies, non-customer-centric, pissing off customers

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I think that this is fair game, and I'm guessing that I won't be set upon by Google, since the subject matter of this post is addressed in an interesting article already in the public domain by Robert X. Cringely of I, Cringely.

Google's AdSense works using a context-matching algorithm .. and, as Cringely notes in his article, Google's offering often tend towards an "almighty algorithm" mentality.

Google is secretive. This started as a deliberate marketing mystique, but endures today more as a really annoying company habit. Google folks don't understand why the rest of us have a problem with this, but then Google folks aren't like you and me. The result of this secrecy and Google's "almighty algorithm" mentality is that the company makes changes -- and mistakes -- without informing its customers or even doing all that much to correct the problems. It's all just beta code, after all. But the business part is real, as is the money that some people have lost because of Google's poor communication skills combined, frankly, with poor follow-through.

Qumana enables you, the publisher, to have closer control over what advertising is used by choosing the keywords you think relate best to the blog post in front of you and using those keywords to pull and place adverts .. and if you don't like the advert that is offered, you can delete it and try for another, or use another keyword.  Your brain is effectively the algorithm ... while selecting and placing adverts is not quite as automated as Google AdSense, it is only a type-keyword-and-one-click operation.

As the inventory of advertising offered by Q-Ads improves, so too will your ability to develop an advertising strategy based on the content of your blog posts.  Tris Hussey of the Qumana team coined a term for this .. we call it a post-centric advertising strategy.

If you ever have a desire to "own your content", or don't necessarily want to share every ounce of your publishing output with Google, you might want to give Q-Ads a try.

Tags: Google, AdSense, algorithms, online advertising, Qumana Ads

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We all know that online advertising is increase by leaps and bounds year over year and quarter over quarter (roughly 30% a year).  But if you look only at the blog, podcast, and RSS segment (or consumer generated media -- CGM) it increased 198% in 2005 and shooting for 145% in 2006.  This is according to a new report by PQ Media (report intro and press release).

In actual numbers the CGM component is was $20.4 million in 2005 and trending towards $49.8 million this year.  The chart above shows where the dollars are going by category and it reflects overall online spending pretty closely.

The question is, why is the growth so fast and why CGM?  The speed of increase is primarily due to the newness of this media segment.  This is also why there will be a "slow down" in spending 2005 vs 2006.  But why CGM?  Frankly marketers are realizing that CGM is where the audience is.  People who read CGM are at the cutting edge of a lot of areas, and they tend to be better educated and earn more than the general online population.  Bloggers and blog readers tend to be the influencers, the connectors, and if you're looking for an affluent audience ... it just makes sense doesn't it.

For consumer electronics, automobile, and similar advertisers blogs are becoming the places people go to not only chance the latest news, but also reviews and recommendations of products.  Great place to advertise ... or sponsor.  Having your brand associated with a top-notch blog and blogger could be a very good thing.

The one piece missing in all this is that the tools to advertise on blogs are only in their infancy.  The models and techniques are just being proven.  2006 might very well prove to be the beginning of the CGM advertising explosion.

Other references: Marketing VOX -- A Feed is Born

Tags: RSS advertising, Blog advertising, Podcast advertising, online adverting, consumer generated media, CGM

I don't think I'm looking forward to anything more in the near future than this event.  Why?  Because I'm going home to Boston to speak with amazing folks like Buzz Bruggerman, Robert Scoble, Bill Flitter, David Geller, and Rick Klau about RSS.  Yawn?  Hardly.  RSS might be the stealth technology of the Internet, but it is the most important (IMHO) and almost most crucial we have now.  I'm going to be on a panel about RSS, talking about using RSS for competitive intel (one of my fav subjects), and leading a hands on workshop after the conference proper (PDF version of the agenda I just got in my e-mail).

It's not too late to sign up and come.  Hey and if you're lucky you might even to get to meet my mom (I think my mom is just as cool as Chris').

See you in Beantown!

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One of the things we have to deal with at Qumana and AdGenta is the age old advertiser question ... how many impressions are you getting?  Now, while granted this is important, it isn't the whole story.  One of the hallmarks of blogs are their ability to attract an audience of like-minded people.  People who might be small in number, but have large influence.

Good thing I'm not the only one saying this ...

"When advertising, don't be concerned with the lack of traffic. If you reach your target audience a few hundred visitors to the blog may be great for you to advertise on," said Bill Flitter, Vice President, Marketing for Pheedo. Source

Tags: rss, online advertising

All guest bloggers will be allowed to link to their blog/website on each and every post made, here. Guest bloggers are allowed to post on any subject, although individuals who are posting on the same general subjects as this blog will be considered, first. As an added incentive, guest bloggers will be able to place Adgenta (Qumana), Amazon Associates, CJ, and Zoundry affiliate ads/links within their posts, using their own IDs.

Bingo!  This is exactly what we're talking about!  Guest blog, put your ads in your posts on their site and ... you get not only credit, but a little cash for your work.  Heck with Qumana you'd be able to write a post for your blog and just cross-post it to another.

The "tipping point" for offline ad dollars moving online may be here in the second half of 2006, according to a report by Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy.

The speed of online advertising's growth, its benefits to offline campaigns, and recent online ad spending increases from major marketers all seem to be converging, according to Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.

"We believe online media now receives about 5 percent of total marketing spending, up from 3 percent two years ago. However, online is on its way to a 10 percent share much faster then we anticipated, and we believe we are now approaching an inflection point when spending growth could accelerate," Rashtchy wrote in a newly-released report. "This point is likely to be in the second half of 2006, as the full impact of some of the recent allocation increases from major marketers becomes evident and creates a momentum that will attract more spending by advertisers who are on the sidelines now."

Rashtchy's "conservative" estimate is that online advertising will exceed $55 billion globally by 2010, a 27 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over 2005. He points to large advertisers like Absolut Vodka, GM and Ford, all of which plan to spend 20 percent of their marketing budgets online next year, he said.

"These allocations are now creating a new momentum in the online advertising space which we believe will be most evident in the first half of 2006, creating the background for the inflection point in the second half of 2006," Rashtchy said in the report. Source: ClickZ

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A new report - 'The Changing Face of Advertising in the Digital Age' - claims spending on Internet ads will account for 10 per cent of all US ad dollars in 2010, from 5 per cent in 2004.

It also claims that almost 21 per cent of surfers consider Internet advertising as the most relevant ad format for them, outscoring more traditional media formats such as newspapers, magazines, and radio. Source MacWorld UK

Using interactive to facilitate the move from desire to buying or to help consumers get the best price at the point of purchase is what the Web is really good for. Interactive can grease the skids, but someone must be on the skids to begin with, something traditional advertising is particularly good at. By going too far either way -- rejecting interactive out of fear or rejecting traditional advertising for being too old fashioned -- we risk not utilizing each medium for what it's best at. Prada probably shouldn't stop advertising in "Vanity Fair," but it'd better make it a lot easier for someone to find its bags via Google. Source: ClickZ