Richard Hartigan

003 | The Past, Present and Future of Online Attribution

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 18:26:00 +0000

When it comes to measurement, the marketers goal has always been the same. To quantify the impact of marketing on commercial metrics in order to validate and optimise marketing strategy and channel mix.

Using data to drive decision making is what first attracted me to digital marketing. I could apply my mathematical background with creative problem solving in order to solve key business challenges. Almost twenty years ago I created a multi-touch cross channel attribution model for First Choice Holidays (part of the TUI Travel Group). Due to the processing power that was required of a standard Windows PC, it had to run on an isolated computer over a Thursday night so that I could analyse the results with a bacon sandwich on a Friday morning.

Today online attribution faces its biggest challenges yet. Fundamental tools required to make connections between the data are going away to conform with new regulations and a privacy conscious consumer. Before examining the future of digital marketing attribution within this landscape, I wanted to spend some time looking back at the journey that brought us to this point. Today’s challenges may be significant but this past will demonstrate that the industry has been able to meet and overcome some sizable problems to get to this point. It is by leveraging the same creative thinning combined with technological innovation that will enable marketers to continue to use attribution models to make the right decisions for their business.

It’s almost impossible to construct a fixed timeline that details the full history of attribution. Organisations of varying sizes developed new models and technologies at different times and many of these were released. Therefore the below is told through the lens of my own exposures and experiences with over a 20 year career in digital marketing. I’d love to be challenged, further educated or corrected by anyone with greater expertise in this field. I love to learn.

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Sales Attribution
c.2000

With the rise of digital marketing in the early 2000’s, effectiveness would initially be judged by the number of times that an ad was shown compared to the forecast. Advertisers would buy impressions at a certain cost per 1000 (CPM = cost / 1000 impressions) and measure whether or not the publisher could deliver the desired quantity.

In 2002 the growth of the pay-per-click model enabled clicks to become the dominant metric to understand ad effectiveness. Advertisers now understood how many people had taken an action directly on their ad with the most common result being a visit to their website. These models the metrics clickthrough rate (CTR = clicks / impressions) and cost per click (CPC = cost / click).

Analytics organisations such as Omniture and WebTrends led the way in further evolving this model. If a visit to a website could be recorded then additional onsite activity can also be captured, including crucially accessing the sales confirmation page. The ability to connect these ‘converters’ with the marketing touchpoints they had used along the journey was the foundation of online sales attribution. A small data file deployed on a consumer's computer allowed websites to identify them and facilitate the connections between the initial click and the action.

New metrics became available to online marketers with the tools to make connections between sales and marketing activity with cost per acquisition (CPA = marketing cost / acquisition / action) used by the majority of organisations. Organisations now understood at a high level how many of their sales / actions were driven by their digital marketing activity.

Multichannel Attribution

c.2005

Recognising that sales and revenue could be directly associated with marketing activity was a powerful tool but challenges soon emerged. As access to information increased, consumers would interact with an increasing number of marketing touchpoints before making a purchase. Allocating the full value of the sale to every single touchpoint led to a biassed view of the digital marketing channel overall. I recall regularly viewing marketing analytics results showing sales recorded through digital marketing were more than double the total sales transacted via the website on the day!

The last-click attribution model became the solution to these challenges. Essentially the last known click on a tracked digital marketing advert from any publisher would receive the full credit for the sale made. Despite universal recognition of these limitations of this model, something I wrote about back in 2009, it became the industry standard for many years.

It was these limitations that led me to develop the cross-platform model used at TUI. This model distributed the value of the sale equally across every recorded touchpoint in the users online journey to purchase. The model was also adaptable depending on the business need. To drive the most efficient sales, it could be weighted towards the last click, or to increase new leads towards the first click. Over the years similar rules based models are available in the majority of online analytics or ad platforms.

Cross-Platform / Cross-Device

c.2010

As the rise of smartphones accelerated during the 2010’s a new problem emerged. Marketing touchpoints increasingly started to occur across multiple devices. These interactions could not be associated back to the same user and as such the path to purchase became fragmented. This was further complicated as media interactions did not always occur via a traditional browser. A user could click on an advert within the Facebook App but later make a purchase via their desktop browser, yet the two events could not be connected.

New deterministic methods were required to try and match the user across their devices. Publishers and platforms would increasingly advocate for users to login to their services to allow them to identify users across their widening portfolio of devices. If a user was logged into their accounts on every device used throughout their journey, then conversions could be attributed accurately.

Probabilistic methods are also used to complement deterministic methods, or where no logged in first party data existed. With this approach, models and algorithms are to match users across their devices using a range of identifiers from mobile devices such as the advertising IDs, IP addresses, browser type or language type.

These methods helped to provide a robust solution to cross-device attribution.

Online to Offline

c.2013

By this time, the majority of organisations were able to recognise how online sales were driven by digital marketing activity at a granular level. But within the majority of verticals, the majority of sales still occurred in physical stores. Research online / purchase offline became the most common route to purchasing products.

Organisations such as Billiups started to leverage data from users who had opted in to location tracking on their smartphones in order to identify movement near physical stores. The smartphone had turned from a tool that complicated online attribution to one that could help connect digital activity to offline actions. In 2014 Google introduced the in-store visits metric into Adwords to provide marketers with metrics such as cost per visit (CPV = visit to a store / cost).

Organisations looking to go further could also understand the impact on instore sales. Propositions emerged that combined publisher clickstream data with offline sales information leveraging user email addresses as the primary key. It was now possible to connect digital marketing activity with total sales regardless of channel.

Data-Driven Attribution (DDA)

c. 2015

Recognising the role of digital marketing activity in driving both online and offline sales was incredibly powerful for organisations at a high level. However the models used by organisations to attribute value across marketing touchpoints had not evolved at the same pace. Although advertisers understood the limitations of rules based attribution models, the outputs of these models had become embedded within their internal reporting frameworks. “We know it’s not ideal but it’s working for us” was a common pushback from advertisers that had driven online growth through paid media.

In the early 2010’s adtech platforms started to BETA test new models that used historical data to analyse the significance of digital touchpoints in generating a conversion and attribute accordingly. These sophisticated algorithms are able to consider factors such as the sequence of interactions, the type of interaction (view, click, impression) and the time between interactions and then assign credit to each touchpoint based on its role in driving the conversion.

Today the majority of advertisers will have migrated to a data-driven attribution model, particularly for their biddable media purchasing. A key strength of DDA is that it can work in almost real-time and therefore can power bidding and buying through dynamic platforms.

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THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET

Third-party cookies have served as the key enabler for attribution within digital media. Used to connect different marketing touchpoints with an eventual sale, they also enabled personalisation, retargeting and help websites remember preferences. However cookies also have the capability of capturing more user data and feeding this back into platforms and publishers. Their uncontrolled usage resulting in extensive tracking and profiling of users was the key factor in the development of reformed data privacy regulations between 2016-2018. These regulations modernised existing data protection directives for the digital age, providing greater user rights and increased accountability for organisations using consumer data. Directives such as GDPR (Europe) set a high bar for data protection internationally.

The movement to a more privacy focused digital world was not just led by regulation. Organisations, evaluated their own positions on responsible use of online data and their own set of principles and ideologies. It then became incumbent on organisations to develop technology solutions to ensure that these principles were upheld. Apple made one of the first moves introducing Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) to it’s Safari browser in 2017. This prevented the ability to track individuals by blocking third party cookies, fingerprinting and more. By the end of 2020, all iOS browsers were required to have ITP in place. By this point the mobile device had become the dominant product for accessing internet services, either via a browser or via an app. In 2020 Apple released IOS 14 with the inclusion of App Tracking Transparency (ATT). With this technology, every single app was required to prompt a user for permission in order to track their activity. Although increasing every year, only 34% of consumers opt in for this tracking.

In January of 2020 Google also announced that Chrome would phase out support for third-party cookies and after a few extensions set the deadline for the removal as the end of 2024. Chrome is the leading internet browser in the world with a global market share of 64% (statcounter) so the ramifications are significant for publishers, website owners and marketers.

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THE FUTURE

c.2025….

The impact of these changes has ramifications throughout the online world. Advertisers will face reduced targeting accuracy leading to increased CPA’s, they will not be able to retarget consumers to encourage them to take an action and they will no longer be able to attribute actions across marketing touchpoints. Publishers may see lower revenues with far fewer signals to develop personalised ads whilst technology platforms need to invest in developing or adopting new solutions.

As a result, the industry as a whole is working hard to develop privacy centric solutions that allow the recording of online actions and for these actions to be attributed back to marketing activity. Here is a non exhaustive summary of potential solutions that are either being proposed or prototyped.

Probabilistic Attribution

In the short term, the new limitations on data collection will move the industry further towards probabilistic approaches. Due to the reduced volume of observable data available, data-driven attribution models driven by machine learning will need to become increasingly predictive when it comes to attributing the value of actions across marketing touchpoints.

Authenticated First Party Data

Solutions such as Enhanced Conversions from Google look to supplement existing conversion tags by sending hashed first-party conversion data (EG email address) from a website to Google in a privacy safe way. This data can then be matched with Google data in order to record a conversion. This solution relies on the user being signed into their Google account when taking the action, with attribution only possible against Google properties.

Identity Graph Solutions

Identity graphs also use hashed user data. An identity graph is essentially a digital map that connects data points about individuals to create a unified view of the user while ensuring anonymity and adhering to privacy regulations. Sophisticated algorithms match and link data points that can also be blended with demographic data with customers segmented based on shared characteristics.

Server to Server (S2S)

Some measurement experts talk about server-to-server (S2S) as a core method of attribution moving forwards. This method involves passing unique identifiers directly between advertisers, publishers and attribution platforms. These unique identifiers do not contain any personal information and data remains secure without the need for cookies.

Clean Rooms

Another option could be ‘clean rooms’, secure and controlled environments where multiple parties can collaborate and analyse data. These rooms do not contain any user specific data so any attributed outputs will always be at an aggregate level. These solutions can be technically challenging to set up creating a barrier for the majority of advertisers right now. However they are privacy safe

Browser Based Attribution

Some of the latest proposals to maintain online attribution involve leveraging the user's browser to record the marketing interaction (source event) and then match this with a conversion. This data alone is later transmitted back to the adtech company and in some cases publishers. To ensure user identity can remain private, some additional noise is added to the reported data. This means that this solution may not be viable in cost per conversion scenarios or when required to make real-time bidding decisions.

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EVERPRESENT MEASUREMENT SOLUTIONS

Some marketing measurement solutions have been used for decades but become more sophisticated and intuitive thanks to advances in digital technology. Limitations on available online data will still impact these models, albeit to a lesser degree. As such these methods will play an increasingly critical role in the marketing measurement toolkit moving forwards.

Econometric / Media Mix Modelling

Econometrics is an established means of testing media activity be it online or offline. Historically econometrics required significant data collection. Granular marketing, website, offline and even external factors like weather and economic trends are fed into advanced statistical models that output insights into channel effectiveness, ROI and attribution.

Media mix modelling (MMM) tends to be a simpler approach that focuses specifically on marketing channels and predefined metrics as outputs. Data is fed into a statistical model (typically a multivariate regression model) with a view to understanding the impact of the marketing channels on sales.

The great strength of econometric modelling is that it is one of the few techniques to incorporate offline marketing activity such as TV, outdoor and print into the model. As such they are often the default source of truth for agencies and brands who invest across these channels. From an online perspective a weakness of econometrics can be a limited recognition of the nuances and granularity of online data. I remember a consultancy advising me to increase investment in branded search following the results of their econometric study across our channels.

While contemporary advertising leverages a wealth of data streams feeding directly into econometric models, studies based on this data rarely translate into frequent and timely insights essential for dynamic bid optimisation, a cornerstone of effective online advertising. This disconnect between readily available data and actionable knowledge hinders advertisers from fully capitalising on its potential.

Incrementality Studies

Incrementality studies are used to understand the significance of a media interaction in driving a conversion. The key question being whether the media actually drove the conversion or if it would have occurred naturally.

Incrementality studies use a test and control methodology often using location to divide users into groups. I was involved in one of the first geo-experiments in the UK and the biggest challenge was creating these groups to ensure the experiment was as fair as possible. Today, the geo-X framework is well established and far simpler to deploy with established granular splits at a geo and a user level built into many advertising platforms.

There remain some drawbacks. In order to achieve statistically significant results and consequently the most valuable outputs, advertisers are encouraged to ensure the experiment is of a certain size and runs for a period of time required in order to capture this data. This means that either the test or control group is exposed to theoretical conditions. For example, turning off marketing to users in the test group for a period of time, could well lead to a drop in sales. As such incrementality tests are most powerful when proof is required to support a hypothesis that is already predicted to be true.

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CONCLUSIONS

At one point in my career I was dreaming of a utopian measurement solution where every marketing and sales touchpoint could be tracked and sales and conversion data recorded appropriately with automated bidding and buying working in tandem. I always looked to evolve models used to ensure that new marketing touchpoints could be considered, in particular championing the inclusion of impressions and views into models previously focused purely on clicks.

It is clear today that this expectation looks unlikely to materialise. If consumers do not want organisations to know their marketing interactions leading to a purchase, then this preference should be respected but an attribution model will never be complete.

Consent has become the bedrock of privacy-compliant data collection which serves as the enabler for digital online attribution. The online industry collectively will need to work harder to communicate the benefits of consent to consumers. In my personal view, the web is a far poorer experience without data driven advertising. Without data driven placements, publishers are forced to find new means of recouping lost advertising revenues by increasing the volume and intrusive nature of adverts in a quest to obtain the all important click.

Greater consent generates more first-party data which can be fed into probabilistic data driven models. The more observable data that can be fed into these models, the more accurate they will become. Today, the majority of data driven models are platform specific, due to the ability to leverage first party data platform data. However I expect more platform agnostic solutions to materialise in the coming years.

2024 promises to be a pivotal year for online attribution as organisations look to adapt to a world without third party cookies and make the necessary adjustments to their online strategy. I believe it will be the organisations that are able to rapidly develop a first party data strategy and combine this with the latest machine learning based models that will reap the rewards.

002 | ATP 2023 Summary | A Tableau Dashboard

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:22:00 +0000

Tableau is an amazing tool for data visualisation. It is intuitive in it's understanding of different data sets, contains a number of different templates that can be customised and incorporated into dashboards and Tableau Public is actually available to anyone, for free.

To show off some Tableau's capability, I wanted to identify a dataset that was structured but disparate, easily obtainable but most importantly would be of interest to a relevant audience.

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OBJECTIVE

The main objective was to demonstrate how the Top10 Male tennis players in the world had earned their ATP Ranking points throughout the year. I also had a few smaller hypotheses I wanted to test:

Hypothesis 1. Novak Djokovic had earned his deserved No 1. ranking through performance in the Grand Slams vs other qualifying ATP tournaments.

Hypothesis 2. Unlike in 2022 there had been no breakout stars accelerating through the rankings in 2023 and entering the Top10.

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DATA PREPARATION

I obtained data about each players performance directly from the ATP Website and consolidated this into a spreadsheet. I then cleaned the data by ensuring that there were no duplicates, evaluating any outliers and removing any irrelevant data.

1. Not every player competes in every event. This led to null values when transforming data using pivot tables and created challenges for generating some of the calculations.

2. Some events occur simultaneously. This led to unexpected duplication of the date field. To solve for this I wrote a formula to identify duplicate dates and concatenate tournaments based on having the same date.

3. Date field recorded only as text. A common problem when importing data into Google Sheets is that it can only recognise dates as text and even resists when you try and convert the format. To overcome this, I use the a combination of left(), mid() and right() formula to rebuild the data in the

=right(F13,2)&"-"&mid(F13,6,2)&"-"&left(F13,4)

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ADDING CALCULATIONS

The key calculation required from the data was the cumulative ATP Points throughout the year. With all the data in one table, adding this data required a small formula to add player points after each tournament (Column G) but importantly reset for each player (Column A)

=If(A2=A3,F3+G2,G2)

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THE TABLEAU DASHBOARD

Tableau has simple connections to multiple different file types meaning importing the data was relatively straighforward. I created a variety of different visuals across different sheets and merged them into the dashboard here. A slightly squashed version can be seen below:

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CONCLUSIONS

Hypothesis 1: Djokovic earned the majority of this ATP Points through performance in the grand slams.

Djokovic scored 72% (7200) of his overall points in the year in the Grand Slams. In what was an almost perfect year, the Serb won the Australian Open, US Open, French Open and was edged in 5 sets by Alcaraz in the final at Wimbledon. Beyond the Grand Slams he entered 8 other tournaments, almost half the average of the other players. However, his performance at slams and the ATP Finals alone would not quite have been enough to finish the year in no.1 position as Alcaraz's 8,845 points picked up across 16 tournaments would have trumped the 8,500 Djokovic scored from these events.

Hypothesis 2: Limited movement within the Top 10 Players in the world throughout 2023.

Whereas 2022 saw the emergence of young starts Carlos Alcaraz, rising from 32 to no.1 in the world and Holger Rune from 111 to 11, 2023 saw a much more stable Top10. The biggest riser throughout the year was perhaps the player who had the strongest end to the year winning the Davis Cup for Italy. Jannik Sinner began 2023 ranked 15 in the world and finished ranked no.4. Lost to the Top10 were Rafael Nadal through injury and Casper Ruud and Felix Auger-Aliassime who struggled for form in the latter part of the year.

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KEY LEARNINGS

This was the second Tableau dashboard I have ever built and quite a bit of trial and error was required to reach the eventual output. As well as the conclusions above, I wanted to document some of the key learnings so that I and others may avoid such mistakes in the future.

1. Tableau does not always play nicely with crosstab data. There are some easy solutions available to solve this but I now know not to invest extra time getting data into a crosstab format for Tableau.

2. Refreshing base data does not always work. If I added data to my Google sheets and refreshed in Tableau it did not always recognise new data. I found it easier to create a new sheet, import it and link them.

3. Dashboards do not resize well for different screen sizes. I understand that this is particularly the case when you are using floating elements vs tiled. I have learnt that it's best to design for a smaller screen so that it can be upscaled.

001

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 15:48:00 +0000

A BRIEF INTRO

I worked for Google for 12.5 years as a Senior Industry Manager for Technology / Retail / Electronics. Throughout this time I managed relationships with over 50 organisations from small startups (who invested multiple millions pa in Google Advertising) so some of the largest multinational organisations in the world.

You can read more about my career to date on my profile page. Sadly my role was made redundant earlier this year (2023) and as such I have been on gardening leave throughout the summer.

A NEW CHAPTER

I was able to use this time to take a step back and reflect on the elements I enjoyed the most about my previous roles. I settled on three core things:

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1. Finding interesting insights from data and building a compelling narratives to drive business impact.

2. Helping other people maximise their own potential by removing barriers and providing clarity and focus.

3. Feeling like I'm playing some role in helping to make the world a better place.

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As a result, I am embarking on a new journey into the world of Data Analytics and Science. The amount of data in the world is growing exponentially. I believe that being able to interpret this data and translate it into meaningful insights with actionable outputs will become and increasingly valuable skillset.

I have already completed the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate where I gained a good understanding of the data cycle and learnt how to use Big Query and Tableau as well as programming languages SQL and R.

I am now working my way through the excellent Data Science Infinity course created by Andrew Jones to go deeper into data science by learning about Machine Learning, Statistical Theory and Python.

WRITING A BLOG IN 2023

When I first started a blog (in 2007), I was looking for an outlet for my thoughts on Digital Marketing mixed in with some of my personal interests in technology, consumer electronics and some comedy gold. This time I plan to document my journey into this exciting new world and also showcase some of outputs along the way.

I welcome any engagement and feedback.

Presenting Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:24:00 +0000

The amount of training available in my new job is absolutely amazing but almost overwhelming. An early piece of advice I received was not to try and take in everything but to focus on the areas that will really make a difference in my job role and leave the cookery courses and sleep training to another day!

The blog has been quiet recently as there are naturally certain restrictions on what I am able to discuss in the public domain given my new position. I have to undertake a communications training course in order to be able to speak about matters relevant to online marketing!

Yesterday however I attended a training course about creating and delivering presentations to large audiences. There are a number of presentation courses available in all organisations but I enjoyed this one as it focussed on a very simple yet effective methodology which I can easily align myself with as it underpins some of my own views.

I am a really keen presenter and continually look for opportunities to talk at conferences and lectures. I picked up some great tips yesterday, the biggest being to requirement to challenge oneself when presenting. Only by taking risks will we become better presenters.

I was however reminded of this excellent and notorious sketch by comedian Don McMillan on the pitfalls of presenting using powerpoint. Until yesterday, this has always been the biggest influence on my presentation style.

Out in Slough Tonight!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 09:14:00 +0000

Hoping to go to a "Hooch for a Pound, Wonderbras get in Free" night!

The Social Factor of Search

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:11:00 +0000

Online analytics tools are often used retrospectively to report on marketing campaigns and standard online KPI's such as visitors and bounce rate. But the power of todays available tools extends beyond historical analysis.

The ability to plug into trends in consumer demand is an amazing resource for an organisation to have at their disposal but one that is rarely used. In a previous job, we examined trends in destination searches to predict future holiday hotspots. For example, if there was a lot of interest in Cape Verde, it would be examined as a potential holiday destination.

It is important though not to confuse online interest with affection. Just because people are searching for a particular subject does not mean that they necessarily feel positively towards it. Nothing demonstrates this power better than the online buzz that surrounds TV talent shows.

Looking at the X-Factor finalists in 2009, Olly Murs was consistently the most searched for contestant throughout the series. Looking at the search volumes in November, it would be easy to predict him as the eventual winner. This trend only seemed to change in the final weeks of the competition, perhaps after Joe McEldery wowed the judges with his rendition of Elton John's "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word".

According to the data, it would not have been wise to have placed any money on Dagenham based Stacey Solomon as she never received as many searches as her rivals. She did however overtake Shaun Ryder to become the most searched for contestant and the eventual winner of this years I'm a Celebrity Get Me out of Here.

Looking at the same analysis for 2010, controversial teenage rapper Cher Lloyd went into the competition as the most searched for contestant. A string of news stories surrounded the precocious talent since her impressive first audition.

Eventual winner Matt Cardle had a surge in search traffic after his performance of Roberta Flack's classic "First Time I ever Saw your Face" but has remained in third position with the searchers despite his popularity with the bookmakers.

Liverpudlian Rebecca Ferguson received praise from the judges since the competition started but failed to gain much interest from the online public, receiving consistently fewer searches than any of the four finalists. Given this evidence, it was perhaps surprising to see Rebecca in the final two.

Boy band "One Direction" appeared to be the dark horses of the competition to date. There was not much hope for the newly formed band at the beginning of the competition as they suffered from comparatively poor vocals and a lack of cohesiveness compared to the more established bands. Since that point, the band benefited tremendously from the power of the Simon Cowell PR machine and the popularity of group member Harry Styles and this is demonstrated by their growth in online searches.

So, like Robin Goad at Hitwise, the free online tools incorrectly pointed to One Direction becoming the first group to win the X-Factor. The fact that the two finalists received the lowest search volumes throughout the course of the competition, shows that it is dangerous for brands to become over-reliant on search volume as a measure of product sentiment.

Increasingly brands should endeavour to understand the context of the interest and tailor marketing strategies appropriately. For example, is the context surrounding the product searches positive or negative. If there is a negative context surrounding an existing product then vendors should use this information as important market research. For positive context marketers can identify key themes to utilise in marketing. For example, Cape Verde visitors may be complementing the value of the destination or the weather.

Search queries represent a free and vital source of product feedback with a sample size larger and more economical than any alternative. In the past five years, the importance of online sentiment has had an increasing affect on customer purchase decisions. Customers rely on reviews and feedback from within social circles to fuel purchase decisions. In 2011 sentiment will play an increasing part in ranking algorithms as well.

Track 5: Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:18:00 +0000

From the new album SpaceJams by Logistics. Great track, not sure about the video!

Pay with a tweet for an exclusive minimix.

Tech Slam!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:12:00 +0000

Google recently introduced Demoslam, a rather brilliant way to demonstrate Google products and services to mainstream audiences. Users upload their innovative demos to YouTube before submitting them to the Demoslam site. There is a real emphasis on creativity and fun when demonstrating the benefits of each product. This is a great example of how technology should be demonstrated.

My current favourite is Instant Elements, by Tom Lehrer. At first look, his catchy song demonstrates the power of the recently released Google Instant search. Look a bit closer however and I think there are some real insights into the power of viral marketing to accentuate natural search positions as well as the importance of optimising for universal results.

In my opinion, introducing products to mainstream audiences in a way that encourages adoption is one of the greatest challenges technology companies face. In the majority of cases, the speed of innovation is far greater than the speed of adoption.

As an example, I regard Gmail as one of the best products available. At the Beta launch in 2004, it transformed the landscape for email providers by providing a far simpler user experience and increasing the inbox capacity to over 100 times the size of some of it's rivals. In 2010 however, it still has only one third of the amount of subscribers of rivals Yahoo! and Hotmail. For a new online startup, acquiring this market share in six years is incredible growth but for Google, is this really success? It will be interesting to see Facebook market their email product as they look to diversify their technology offering.

I believe that we shall see an increasing amount of technology companies advertising in the mainstream media. Google have already advertised Chrome on billboards and on TV. Microsoft have advertised BING on TV and it is only a matter of time before we see more of Facebook and Twitter in the mainstream media.

I may challenge my team to record a slam. Looking at the competition however, I think it would take quite a lot of training to gain a title shot.We don't want to put in an Audley Harrison performance.

Conference Season

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:14:00 +0000

The beginning of Q4 is the time when most e-commerce organisations are finalising plans for the important Christmas trading period, January 2011 and beyond. Therefore it is no coincidence that a number of suppliers and agencies concentrate on this period to acquire new leads. This push for new business manifests itself in an increase in cold calls and a flurry of conferences over this period.

With a number of conferences available, it is always difficult to identify the best ones and quantity the return on investment. Prices usually range from between £300 and £1,000 but price is not always proportional to value; some of the best conferences I have attended have been free. Every conference features sessions with enticing descriptions from big name brands and agencies. The titles of these sessions usually capture current trending buzzwords but this is very often deceptive. One speaker recently admitted during their session on "monetizing social media" that the title was just to get people in the door.

It surprises me that speakers and sessions are not subject to the very reviews and social scrutiny that are very often discussing. This would surely help to increase the standard of presentations and help attendees and prospective attendees decide whether the session is worth attending.

This year, I was fortunate enough to attend two conferences in October. For anyone that is interested in attending conferences next year, I shall weigh up the pro's and con's of both below.

AFU Expo - Excel, London - 12th Oct
Cost - £495

The A4U Expo is a an Affiliate Marketing Conference aimed at merchants, networks and affiliates but the breadth of topics covered make it a worthwhile conference for anyone working in online marketing.

At any conference, attendees will always enjoy the session thsat resonates with their own challenges. The most valuable session of this year was Helen Southgate, Senior Online Marketing Manager at SKY.

Advantages

+ Networking. The networking opportunities are extremely good. Although most affiliates are London centric, there are others that rarely venture down South. I usually capitalise on this to meet with a number of key suppliers and affiliates within the same few days.

+ Layout. Once you eventually get to the Excel Conference center (see disadvantages below) the layout was great and has been improved upon from previous years by moving to the West side of the Excel Exhibition centre. the rooms had considerable space

+ Party! The parties associated with A4U have always been really good events. This year the A4U organising committee put on a pre-party, a party on the first night and a closing party. I only attended the first night party but these are always promise to be late affairs and the smell of alcohol is dominant throughout the second days lectures.

Disadvantages

- Transport. The Excel is one of the most challenging venues to get to in London. For most people it takes a minimum of three modes of transport to get there. The 0900 start time for the conference means that it is an early start for most people.

- Layout. This year saw the introduction of a live conference area which was placed in the middle of the exhibition hall. This area played host to some very interesting speakers but it was too distracting to listen to them above the general noise. Particularly as there was a popular driving simulator situated directly behind the stage.

- Repetition. Like the affiliate industry in general, there is not much in terms of a fresh new content or presenters. Brilliant though some of them are, on the whole it is the same individuals presenting and the same subjects covered.

I have attended this conference for the past three years now and it has become progressively less value to me. Potentially this is as my career has progressed and I am now interested in different challenges. There is no doubt that the A4UExpo has been of value to me over the past three years. It has allowed me to graduate from an affiliate novice to a confident practicioner. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to increase their affiliate knowledge but this was probably my last year.

JUMP - Old Billingsgate, London - 13th Oct
Cost - £875

This conference was aimed at capitalising on the current positive sentiment towards multichannel marketing. It was organised by econsultancy and featured 8 rooms of speakers.

Advantages

+ Content. At any conference it is always important to try and distinguish the valuable sessions from their cryptic titles. I made some mistakes at JUMP but on the whole the content was of a great quality. The sessions from Matthew Tod from Logan Tod on Actionable Analytics and Rowan Gormley the CEO and founder of Naked Wines on founding a truly social business were the highlight for me.

+ Attendees. The event managed to attract a huge number of high profile marketers from some of the most noted online brands in the UK. Therefore I think it would have been valuable to have some round table sessions. Although the panel sessions were extremely well moderated, the time pressure meant that there were a number of questions that remained unanswered.

+ Location. Old Billingsgate is a great venue to hold a conference. Londoners can easily access the venue from a number of different tube stations and it's also not far away from London Bridge, Fenchurch St or Liverpool St station.

Disadvantages

- Crowds. The morning sessions in particular were very overcrowded. On numerous occasions I was turned away from a session as they were too busy. There was the facility to prebook some of the sessions online but this made matters even more complicated as the staff had no way to distinguish and prioritise the individuals that had prebooked.

- Cost. I was fortunate enough to receive a ticket for free but the door price for this one day event was £895. Given the above I would have been extremely disappointed to have paid the full price fee and not have the opportunity to see the sessions I wanted.

- Venue. This was the first conference I have attended at Old Billingsgate and I was less than impressed with the suitability of the venue. Firstly, the door staff would not allow anyone into the exhibition area prior to the event opening at 0900. This led to a number of attendees half queuing, half loitering outside. Secondly, the seminar rooms were not big enough and clearly not designed for this purpose. It was distracting to hear the sound overlapping between the different rooms, which were sometimes only segregated by a curtain.

This was a mixed first year for JUMP. There were some obvious learnings that have already been acknowledged in a email from Ashley Friedlein, CEO of Econsultancy. I am sure that Jump 2011 will be an excellent event.

Best Birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:46:00 +0000

It's always a strange experience having a birthday at work. The requirement to bring in cakes and treats to celebrate and the card that does the rounds in the office are just some of the traditions that need to be observed for an office birthday.

This year was my best ever work birthday. My colleagues really pushed the boat out with a custom made card, gifts, balloons, hats and a lunch time meal out at Tummies, the only good restaurant on the Slough trading estate.

All this effort more than made up for last year, my worst ever birthday at work, when being asked to sign a card for my colleagues birthday was the highlight of my day. I may have referred to this event over the past year!

During the lunch we held a competition to design a new tank top for me. The winning entry is a mathematical effort designed by Nisha Shah in Online Marketing. Congratulations Nisha, your free sims are in the post!!

Thanks to everyone for a great day!

How to win every time at Rock, Paper, Scissors.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 07:37:00 +0000

Courtesy of the rather brilliant Flowing Data blog. I'm currently 10 and 0.

Quiz Night

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:57:00 +0000

A Short Guide to Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:48:00 +0000

Great beginners guide on 3rd party cookies and behavioural targeting, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal (no less).

Hello from Samsung

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:12:00 +0000

Even as an Apple fan and iPhone 4 owner, I was able to smile at this clever ad from Samsung.

Redirects: Using 302's and Losing 301's

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0000

I recently had a very interesting debate with an SEO consultant on the subject of redirects that really challenged my thinking on the use and application of server side redirects.

If you raise the subject of redirects to anyone with basic SEO knowledge, they will inform you that you should always do a 301 server side redirect over a 302 redirect. Others may even tell you that a 301 redirect is permanent and a 302 is temporary.

Understanding SEO best practice is one thing, but understanding the nuances of the algorithm and how the intricate application of server side scripting affects ranking and appearance within the SERP's is what distinguishes the real experts.

Best practice dictates that 302 redirects should never be used. We should always use server side 301 redirects to tell the search engines that a web page has changed address. In Layman's, we are advising the web crawler that the webpage that was once hosted on URL (A) has now moved permanently to URL (B).

However, through the management of the SEO function for an number of complex and inflexible web platforms, I have found a practical SEO use for a 302 redirect. This is best demonstrated using a simple example.

Example.com/productA serves a 302 redirect to a product page with a longer URL, example.com/abc/xyz/cba/zyx. The web crawler will understand that the page content has moved over to the longer URL but the shorter URL will be displayed in the SERP's.

The shorter URL is easily identifiable within the SERP's. It is cleaner and resonates with the user. Any marketing supporting the sale of product A will advertise using the shorter URL, so recall from the SERP's is far more likely.

The disadvantage of using a 302 redirect is that link equity is not transferred between the URL's. Therefore, in the above example, the equity of the first URL and the second URL will remain separate.

If a 301 redirect was used, the longer URL would be displayed in the SERPS. This will help the site reach a higher ranking as all link equity will be passed across. However there is an argument that the less friendly URL may not attract as many clicks, even in a higher ranking position.

Whilst this application of a 302 redirect may be seldom used, I have witnessed occasions where brands have benefited from displaying the friendly URL over a complex dynamic URL.

Best practice of course would be to build the page on the shorter URL but SEO's that have worked on sizable and complex websites would understand that this is not always practical.

Recent evidence has identified that there may be an expiry date ability of a 301 redirect to pass equity. For example, after one year equity will stop being passed through example.com/productA to example.com/abc/xyz/cba/zyx. As a result of this changes, webmasters and developers should aim more than ever to build content on SEO friendly web pages, surrounded by a logical customer facing architecture.

SEO's should understand existing redirects and develop a migration plan for all links coming into the redirected URL.

Redirects and server side scripting is often regarded as the complex side of SEO but the principles are simple to administer, even if the application is not.

They Think it's All Over...

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:30:00 +0000

... and it well and truly is for England now. However any World Cup cannot pass without remembering this classic Partridge sketch from The Day Today.

Email Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:58:00 +0000

I received the below email from Flybe before embarking upon a recent trip. The email kindly wishes me a good trip, reminds me of my booking details and invites me to check in for my flight online.

The intention is great, despite the fact that it invites everyone to check in online, so securing the best seat becomes a scramble for who can open their email fastest.

However they have made a huge mistake within the design of the email. The large red arrow that contains the call to action to check in online is not hyperlinked.

One of the greatest strengths of online marketing is the ability to deeplink customers into further within a site. This could be to a stage within a purchase or registration process or to a page that contains the relevant content. In this instance any deeplink should land me at a minimum on a page that allows me to log in to the early check-in process.

Unfortunately, it looks as if Flybe have missed an element of the design that is essential to delivering the great customer experience they are intending.

The State of the Internet 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:47:00 +0000

Most Desirable Handset 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the Mobile Industry Awards at the Brewery in London.

Amongst the key prizes that were handed out was the prestigious "Hottest New Phone of 2010" award. There have been some amazing developments in mobile technology over the past three years so there was always going to bound to a number of strong contenders.

This years award was given to the HTC Desire, an Android based phone that demonstrates the continued progression of HTC in the SmartPhone market.

e-Lection 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:23:00 +0000

After the US presidential election of 2008, I blogged about the importance of new media in political campaigning and how the number of inbound links to a website could give a good indication as to the swing of the voters. It's no secret that Barack Obama dominated John McCain in terms of online marketing effectiveness and this was demonstrated by the fact his website amassed over double the amount of inbound links of his Republican competitor.

This is the first real UK election of the new media age so it is interesting to conduct the same analysis into the online marketing activity of each party. Whilst other pundits have focused on social media, I thought I would look specifically at the holistic search strategy of each party.

Labour.org.uk

The website for the incumbent party is a simple site that integrates a number of social media elements such as Flickr photos of Gordon Brown and links to Youtube videos of the manifesto and public addresses.

As soon as the website opens, a pop-up is triggered, inviting the user to tell their friends and followers from Facebook and Twitter that they are voting Labour. Despite this being perhaps a bit of a presumptious move and degrading to the user experience, it is not search engine friendly. We know from Adwords editorial guidelines that Google is not keen on pop-ups and can assume the same applies to SEO.

From an SEO perspective, the title and meta tags are all different and reasonably well structured, although there is some inconsistency as you progress further into the site. The site has an unclassified Google PageRank*, meaning that it has been created or redesigned recently, before Google updated their toolbar with the latest update.

It is also interesting to note that Labour have not devoted much attention to paid search, When searching for "Labour Party" in Google, the top result features the title "Labour have Failed". Labour are not bidding on their own brand name or at a minimum protecting it from being used in rivals titles and descriptions which means that rivals can easily enter and manipulate this space.

It is also interesting to note that Labour have not covered themselves in glory on the paid search front. Searching "Labour Party" in Google results in the following SERP. It appears that Labour are not even bidding on their own brand name, allowing rivals to easily enter and manipulate this space.

Conservatives.com

The conservative party is the only one of the big three to use a dot com domain, which is generally more recognisable to the average user. The site itself is very similar to the Labour site but there is a lot more content and a lot less social media elements which in my opinion, are overused on the Labour site.

Searching for "Conservatives" in Google shows the correct website in the number one position in the natural results with no paid search results above it. However a search for "Conservative Party" features a strongly worded anti-blood sport result in the top sponsored result. Like their Labour rivals, the Tories have neglected paid search when building their online strategy.

The website is fortunate enough to feature sitelinks and a site search box on the Google results page, which enables users to use the Google search algorithm to locate relevant parts of their site.

Titles and descriptions are well organised and consistent and there is a lot of content throughout the site. However, of the three main sites, the Tories have attracted the fewest number of inbound links, indicating a lack of SEO strategy or ineffective online PR that builds interest in the site. As a result, the displayed PageRank for the conservative website is 6.

Libdems.org.uk

The Libdems have used a different format for their site design. It is a bit more colourful and cluttered than those of it's competitors. The Libdems do occasionally show a splash page to their users that arrive from different sources. Whilst showing specific landing pages per source is a good thing, it is not best practice to show these instead of the home page.

These splash pages all have different URL's, little content and no meta or title information which could affect how the overall website is displayed within the search engines. The site itself also has little consistency when it comes to titles and descriptions.

It is interesting to note that the Libdems site has 328,366 inbound links, which is more than Labour and the Tories put together. As a result the Libdems also have the highest visible PageRank of the main three parties with 7.

From a paid search perspective, the Libdems face less aggression than the other parties. They maintain the number one position for the majority of their branded terms and also feature sitelinks below their main listing. Like their competitors, the Libdems do not appear to be conducting any paid search activity which is potentially a missed opportunity.

---

It is reasonable to conclude that despite the best intentions to embrace online marketing and some real innovation in the social media space, none of the main political parties have delivered an effective search marketing strategy. This is a big missing. Google have released their own interface that allows users to track the performance of different aspects of the election. It is clear that search volume is heavily influenced by the televised debates and campaign highlights or lowlights in the case of Bigot-gate. It is clear to see that a lot of people are searching on both party leaders and names and the main issues involved Indeed, even if I ask Google who I should vote for, no party competes for my vote.

*PageRank described is the value displayed in the Google toolbar, not actual PageRank.

G-Force

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:15:00 +0000

I read with interest reports from NMA of Google moving into the price comparison space for financial products with Google Comparison Ads. This product has been floating around for a while in the US under the guise of Google Merchant Search but the site of comparison functionality under a search for "secured loans" represents the first sighting in the UK.

The threat of Google increasingly moving into this space must be the cause of many sleepless nights for online comparison websites such as Shopzilla, Kelkoo and Shopping.com. These organisations have built their businesses around a consumer desire for simple online product comparison. The majority of their revenue comes from turning cheap clicks acquired from search engines, into more expensive clicks and sales for advertisers paid on a CPC/CPA rate.

Google have continually denied any desire to move into the price comparison space. A number of years ago, I challenged them on the rumours of a travel price comparison site named Troogle, a new rival to TravelSupermarket and Cheapflights. Although this was categorically denied by Google, the main reason the rumours continue to circulate is that there remains a gap in the market for an all powerful meta comparison engine. I also know some Google staff have made it their life's goal to ensure that purchasing travel online is made so much easier.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons that Google is so reluctant to state any explicit intent to expand into the price comparison space, is the conflict between their desire to innovate and the effect this may have on their cash cow.

Despite continual diversification into new and innovative products and the majority of Google's revenue is still obtained from their original Adwords product. Price comparison sites are traditionally significant spenders in PPC. In the UK, MoneySupermarket is renowned as Google's largest single account. It is also the largest price comparison site.

MoneySupermarket will typically feature and compare the products of many leading brands that also pay to advertise within the Google sponsored listings. Without doubt the competition between direct and indirect advertisers is a major contributor the Google revenue figure (and also one of my personal frustrations).

Whilst Google may see it as desirable for the user experience to combat the additional layer that is the price comparison site and give more value to direct advertisers, there is clearly a risk from the reduced number of advertisers bidding for the top positions.

By creating price comparison functionality within the search engine results pages, Google threatens to bite the very hand that feeds them. They will earn some incremental revenue from the increased clicks from the direct brands that advertise with them directly but I question whether this will compensate for the investment that will lose by marginalising the comparison engines.

I can't help but wonder how this will develop. Comparison Ads infiltrating the UK SERPS, Google Shopping maturing and growing and an increases desire from Google to ensure that they are the first port of call for any activity that takes place online.

Eastwood vs. Hoffman

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:34:00 +0000

Courtesy of XKCD

Beware! - Rapid Data Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:05:00 +0000

I wanted to put this blog together to retell my experience of using Rapid Data Recovery and hopefully warn others as to the dangers of using a cowboy operation to restore faulty hard drives.

In the digital age, data is so precious. Photos, videos, memories and media are all stored on hard drives rather than portable media such as DVD's. Therefore, when your hard drive goes wrong there is not a lot that you won't do to get it repaired.

Rapid Data recovery and their parent organisation Fields Data capitalise on the emotional attachment that users have with their data to get them to invest large sums of money in data recovery services.

My first conversation was with a gentleman by the name of Daniel Reece, who was polite and informative about the services offered. I explained my problem, a 750GB Maxtor hard drive full of my treasured music, video and pictures that had become corrupt and unreadable. I also explained that I would pay more if the exact folder structure of my original drive

The standard practice for this organisation is to allow them to examine the hard drive before they are quote a price for recovery services. Having only a phone contact for the organisation, I was a little bit nervous about simply sending it by post so I asked if I could drop the hard drive off at their registered offices. Upon visiting their offices, I was denied the possibility of speaking with any of the staff at Rapid Data Recovery and asked to leave my valuable hard disk at reception with a note, something to which I reluctantly agreed.

A number of days later, I received a phone call from Mr Reece stating that a full recovery of my data was possible complete with the full, original folder structure. Needless, to say I was delighted and happy to pay a reasonable fee for such an comprehensive piece of work. The price proffered by Mr Reece was £435, which was substantially more than the initial estimation but something I was delighted to pay nevertheless.

I waited the given five days for my hard drive to be returned to me but received nothing. After contacting Rapid Data Recovery, I was informed that it had been delivered. I later discovered that the drive, holding so much of my personal information, had been delivered to a neighbour. When I contacted UPS on this, they informed me that the organisation sending the package has specified that this is perfectly acceptable. I would ask anyone contemplating using Rapid Data Recovery to ask whether they trust their neighbour with their personal information.

When I eventually managed to recover my hard drive and plug it into my computer, I immediately noticed that the original folder structure I had been promised and paid a premium for, was not evident. Therefore, syncing with my iTunes music library was not possible.

Using iTunes, I was also easily able to cross-reference the number of records recovered, with the number of records in my iTunes library. The recovered data was short by missing approximately 33% of the total records. Worse, when I reluctantly loaded the recovered files into iTunes, none of the files appeared to work.

I immediately tried, calling Rapid Data Recovery and left answer phone messages, which nobody returned. Occasionally, on the rare occasion I managed to speak to someone, they would simply put me on hold for as much as twenty minutes, or until I lost patience and hung up. I emailed both Daniel Reece, his manager William Lewis and the generic quality control email available on the Rapid Data Recovery website.

With no repsonse I then spoke to Fields Data Recovery head office and was forwarded to their customer services team who promised a reply within the day. I later received a response from Abigail Richards at Rapid Data Recovery who drew my attention to the following line from the Rapid Data Recovery terms of service.

6.1. The client accepts that Rapid Data Recovery will not examine the contents of any files contained on the media supplied to them. Rapid Data Recovery further accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the contents,integrity, functionality, corruption or usefulness of any data recovered.

This clause seems to distance Rapid Data Recovery from any blame for delivering services that were unsatisfactory. My issue is not their unsatisfactory work, it is the false promises that were made prior to the work being carried out that I believe to be deceitful and fraudulent.

I therefore replies to Abigails email and have sent three further emails without reply, no matter who I send them to. Unsurprisingly, Rapid Data Recovery is amazingly illusive when you are not trying to spend money with them. What originally I thought of as excellent customer service, actually translated into a desparation to take my money from me.

The result, my data is in exactly the same state, I am missing approx 15,000 iTunes audio and video files which cost me a small fortune to buy over a number of years. The drive is also in such a state that no other organisation can perform any sort of recovery on it.

Now I am pursuing via trading standards and if necessary the small claims court. Whilst this process is in place, I want to advise everyone of my experience and to use the comment section of this blog to share their own experiences of Rapid Data Recovery.

I realise that this is but one opinion, so I would urge any doubters to read this thread or this thread or share your experience on this website.

One of the major threats to e-commerce is the faceless nature that some organisations can adopt in order to conduct unethical and sometimes fraudulent services. Better authorities are required in order to take action against such organisations without the potential cost of a legal pursuit.

We are fortunate that these organisations remain the minority, else the ability to make transactions over the world wide web, that some of us strive for every day, will remain an aspiration.

Getting Streamy

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:01:00 +0000

Whilst spending time with family over the festive period I started to miss my media. Music, TV, shows and films that are stored on the hard drive of my home computer that I am constantly accessing. Whilst researching ways to access this, I uncovered a wealth of different software and services available to stream media to various different devices.

Therefore I thought I would take this opportunity to review the various streaming devices I have experienced in order to offer some assistance to users that are potentially experiencing the same problems I had when trying to stream from a singular source.

Windows Media Player
Windows users will be able to take advantage of the default media streaming service via Windows Media Player 11. The service is able to stream media to a number of devices. The method of setting up a shared library is unnecessarily complicated for the user as both library and network options need to be addressed.

In my experience the streaming service offered by WMP11 is tempermental at best, suffering from intermittent crashes and failures over even a wired LAN connection. Currently there is still no support for mobile streaming. This is on the horizon for Windows Mobile operating systems but unlikely for iPhone or Android users at present as Microsoft try to take advantage of their operating system doninance in order to grow their mobile base.

According to recent reviews, Windows 7 which features Windows Media Player 12 offers a far better experience when it comes to sharing media across multiple devices but mobile is a medium that remains unsupported.

However, I am still nervous about updating my operating system for fears that WMP12 is not all it promises to be and I am faced with incompatibility issues with any of my alternative solutions.

Tversity
If you encounter any problems when streaming media from your hard drive to any playback device an online search for the relevant error messages will always result in a strong recommendation to use the media streaming software alternative, Tversity.

The free version allows access to a limited amount of the users media library but $30 allows the user to share their full library across multiple devices. The console is intuitive and illustrates a guide to setting up media streaming for a particular device.

However on the negative side, whilst Tversity does claim to support iPhone playback, in reality this feature materialises in slow, clunky and tempermental performance. It is adept at playing the Quicktime default formats of MP4 and MOV but struggles with MPEG or AVI formats. This is because live conversion is not supported so each file needs to be converted to an appropriate format before it can be played.

Air Video
This solution manifests itself in an application that can be downloaded for Mac or Windows operating system and an application that can be purchased from the iTunes store. Users can purchase the free version which restricts the user to a limited view of their media library but a one time payment of £1.79 removes this restriction.

The application allows Remote Access over WIFI which is very easy to set up on both core and satellite application. It also allows upscaled playback via the component cable output which is incredibly useful when wishing to access movies or TV content from another WIFI destination.

The only downside of the application so far is that depsite claims on the website and within the iTunes store description, it restricts use over a 3G connection. However, restrictions on media streaming are not unexpected as operators rapidly try and upgrade their infrastructure to cope with the exponential increase in demand for bandwidth triggered by mass smartphone adoption.

TVCatchUp
This website has become a cult sensation amongst the SmartPhone community. It allows users to access TV streams from the most popular FreeView channels including BBC, ITV and Channel 4 services. Indeed the number of channels has grown significantly since launch and the service now offers access to 30 free channels over a computer or iPhone.

The application can be accessed via any web browser over WIFI and 3G connections and is free of charge, although further attempts to monetise the product are surely on the horizon in 2010. The user interface is clean and simple and the ability to upscale using a component cable is again supported.

SkyMobile TV
This SKY application allows access to all the main SKY Sports Channels as well as ESPN, At the Races and SKY News services. The user experience throughout the sign up process is made complicated due to the necessity to register for a SKY ID and set up the direct debit for the regular £6 per month payment.

This applications shares the same restrictions on 3G playback as Air Video. However component video playback is not available which dampens enjoyment somewhat. It is understandable that SKY would want to protect the base of users that are persuaded to subscribe to their full channel packages in order to receive Sky Sports but watching live sporting events over the iPhone is simply not practical.

This serves a quick roundup of some of the software and services available for online streaming, I am sure that this number will grow significantly in 2010 and inevitably some of the bigger software providers will increasingly get involved.

In the future however, I envisage that content will be stored in the cloud and users will be required to pay for ownership or access to the content. It is such a waste of resource that users download content to their machines when it can so easily be stored in a central hub. Playback will be available on a multitude of media devices and screens including computers, TV's & mobiles. At the current rate of innovation, this future may become a reality very soon.

L'Homme du Sport

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Hartigan) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:59:00 +0000

I am off to France later on today. Better make sure that I am dressed for the occasion.