http://deconstructed.digital313.com Musings of a New Guy in the Digital World posterous.com Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:41:21 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/zaLhbqTsTuE/my-rant-on-personalized-retargeting-and-data http://deconstructed.digital313.com/my-rant-on-personalized-retargeting-and-data <p> They wanted me to say something interesting. Only time will tell if it actually is.<p><a href="http://marketingland.com/a-look-back-at-2011-were-wrong-about-data-2106">http://marketingland.com/a-look-back-at-2011-were-wrong-about-data-2106</a></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/my-rant-on-personalized-retargeting-and-data">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/my-rant-on-personalized-retargeting-and-data#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/zaLhbqTsTuE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/my-rant-on-personalized-retargeting-and-data Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:55:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/gKKUyO4Yej8/malcolm-gladwell-and-his-relationship-with-sm http://deconstructed.digital313.com/malcolm-gladwell-and-his-relationship-with-sm <p> <p>A video of me at ad:tech was recently featured on the Yahoo Advertising blog. The full blog post is <a href="http://www.yadvertisingblog.com/blog/2011/11/15/video-smart-ads-spice-up-online-advertising/">here</a> or I've embedded the video below for your viewing pleasure.</p> <p>Wow. It's tough to watch yourself in a video. At least I kept the verbal pauses to a minimum, but to watch myself blink like I have a wooden shard stuck in my eye, now that's just painful.</p> <p>Beyond my self-deprecation, it does resonate that the idea of horizontal segmentation should also apply to the creative world. It just wasn't achievable at scale in channels like print and TV.</p> <p>I want to thank the progenitor of Malcolm Gladwell and Smart Ads idea to Pete Kim, the original Smart Ads product manager, who <a href="http://www.petekim.com/?p=50">told me the story in the first place</a>.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><embed src="http://d.yimg.com/nl/vyc/site/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="295" flashvars="vid=27252579&amp;autoPlay=false&amp;volume=100&amp;enableFullScreen=1&amp;lang=en-US" width="500"></embed></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/malcolm-gladwell-and-his-relationship-with-sm">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/malcolm-gladwell-and-his-relationship-with-sm#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/gKKUyO4Yej8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/malcolm-gladwell-and-his-relationship-with-sm Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:13:46 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/-SMbCVUNCVE/why-journalists-eventually-do-themselves-in http://deconstructed.digital313.com/why-journalists-eventually-do-themselves-in <p> So, I was listening to this podcast where a journalist for Slate was being interviewed by Terri and it dawned on me that these guys are actually gnawing off their own feet.<p>He goes and describes the act of collecting data for the purposes of advertising as "sinister". First of all, this assumes that users want crappy ads for products they aren't interested in since no data on the user interests equals no targeting. Second of all, no targeting means that advertising revenues go down or even more crappy ads in an attempt to keep revenues up. Either way, the user experience goes in the toilet. This will be less money to pay journalists for these "free" content services. Sinister? Hardly. As someone in the industry, it'd be so much easier if everyone just paid directly for the content they consumed, but everyone wants it for free and most will give up a little data to keep content freely available.</p><p>On another note, I believe this journalist is being overly simplistic about why Google felt it needed to compete with Facebook and creating Google+. He said it's because of the growing time spent on Facebook and that means less money for Google who makes the majority of their revenues in advertising. Ok. Where's the insight that social is replacing search in the content discovery game? More time is being spent online in general so there's plenty of advertising revenues to go around. The real issue is that social is a direct attack at the core utility of search: finding content.</p><p>Still, Terri Gross is one of the best interviewers on the planet.</p><p>Podcast/Article: <br />NPR: 11-03-2011 Fresh Air</p><p>URL: <br /><a href="http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/13/142006579/npr_142006579.mp3">http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/13/142006579/npr_142...</a></p><p>Description: <br />Stories: 1) The War Between Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple 2) Kelly Clarkson's Vocals Keep Getting 'Stronger' 3) A Critic To Remember: Pauline Kael At The 'Movies'</p><p>This content comes from: <br />NPR Programs: Fresh Air Podcast</p><p>URL: <br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=13">http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=13</a></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/why-journalists-eventually-do-themselves-in">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/why-journalists-eventually-do-themselves-in#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/-SMbCVUNCVE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/why-journalists-eventually-do-themselves-in Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:18:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/xUo7KGkAXN4/hbr-blog-post-interesting-pov-on-platform-str http://deconstructed.digital313.com/hbr-blog-post-interesting-pov-on-platform-str <p> <div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote><div> <p>Innovators who build platforms face a difficult set of trade-offs. To begin with, the very definition of a platform requires buy-in from others &#8212; and not simply from the consumers you hope will purchase your product. The consumers and suppliers of <em>complementary</em> products need to make real investments too, investments that will enhance the overall value of the platform. So the platform owner not only has to build a base of consumers who will use its platform and buy products, it also has to manage the relationship with complementary suppliers and <em>their</em> consumers. Google, Twitter, and Apple have each taken a different path in handling this balancing act.</p> <p>Perhaps the best example of such a complementary supplier is the app developer that provides software programs that you might download on an iPhone or iPad, just like Coke and Huggies supply products that make supermarkets valuable. </p> <p>But if a supermarket chain fails, their suppliers have other options (other supermarkets, for example). This is not so for many of our current technological platforms. Consider the failure of Google Wave, Google's collaboration tool, launched in 2009 and killed in the summer of 2010.</p> <p>In some circles, Google was applauded for experimenting and not being afraid to admit failure. But Google, as a platform innovator, suffered reputational damage as a result of the failure. The company had opened that platform to developers to supply modules that allowed greater levels of interaction among users. Developers had invested in Google Wave, building on the back of Google's seeming commitment only to find themselves at sea without a platform. The next time Google touts a new platform, it will find it harder to entice developers.</p> <p>Twitter's and Apple's platforms also need developers to improve them, but they are walking a different knife's edge. Twitter encouraged developers to make clients so that users could use Twitter in different ways, giving rise to a healthy ecosystem of different ways of accessing Twitter, each of which suited a different kind of user, leaving the fundamental structure of Twitter unchanged.</p> <p>But then Twitter acquired Tweetie &#8212; the most successful iPhone client &#8212; renamed it the Official Twitter App and re-launched it free. Now the platform owner had integrated and siphoned off the potential earnings of the other client developers. To be sure, those developers might react by stepping up their game, which would have given Twitter's strategy some sense. But equally, developers might stop developing altogether, harming consumer variety and innovation. When a few months later Twitter acquired the popular desktop client Tweet Deck and enacted other new rules limiting development access, it became pretty clear that Twitter had reversed its open platform course.</p> <p>With over 400,000 apps in the iTunes App Store, it would be hard to accuse Apple of a similar move to foreclose on app development. But time and time again, Apple has shown itself willing to take successful independent apps and integrate them into their operating system. It did so with iBooks and its Voice memo app. More recently, it embedded HDR functionality straight into its own camera (something that independent camera app makers had already developed) and iOS 5 will include a "<a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/reading_it_sooner_or_later.html">read it later</a>" function for its Safari browser. This prompted Instapaper founder Marco Arment to <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1757796/apples-bloody-assault-on-apps">tweet an expletive</a>. (Arment thought better of it all a little while later and wrote: "Glad I've invested in social and editorial features," he said. "Not dead yet!")</p> <p>We should think a little more about why Apple and Twitter have made such moves. Here is my theory: successful platform owners will defend their turf against platform strategies in their own backyards. They are looking to avoid a fate like IBM's loss to Microsoft. IBM let Microsoft own the operating system and build its own platform tied to IBM's new one. We know how that ended up. Apple and Twitter likely fear the same outcome. They won't worry about Angry Birds having lots of users. The game is short-lived and it is unlikely a game developer will control the platform. But popular clients, especially ones with social features, are another matter. If these kinds of clients become too popular, platform ownership could transfer to them.</p> <p>Perhaps the best case in point is what happened when independent game developers got social and set up Open Feint and the +Plus networks on iOS. These were networks that signed up game developers and allowed users to share scores and leader-boards and even challenge one another to games. It was a clever strategy to leverage popular individual games into a broader network.</p> <p>It turns out it was too clever &#8212; at least too clever for Apple. Last year, Apple integrated its own Game Center right into the operating system and into the Software Developer Kit. Game Center did what those other two networks already did, <em>and</em> came with Apple's seal of approval. While the other game networks limp on, Game Center appears to rule the iOS world. Apple has effectively defended itself against a platform ownership challenge.</p> <p>The defensive strategies of Apple and Twitter do walk a fine line. Just what these platforms should and do regard as a threat isn't transparent. In such an environment, there is every chance they might chill valuable innovation by independent developers as they try to control their platform's evolution.</p> </div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/how_twitter_google_and_apple_w.html">blogs.hbr.org</a></div> <p>This has got to be one of the most difficult strategic decisions for a technology company, yet some companies seem to have executed well. It's a fine balance between "giving away too much" and being disintermediated and "locking it down" and becoming irrelevant. Fun stuff.</p></div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/hbr-blog-post-interesting-pov-on-platform-str">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/hbr-blog-post-interesting-pov-on-platform-str#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/xUo7KGkAXN4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/hbr-blog-post-interesting-pov-on-platform-str Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:57:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/Jff6wd87IB0/demetri-martins-take-on-display-advertising-a http://deconstructed.digital313.com/demetri-martins-take-on-display-advertising-a <p> <p>I don't think the POV on display ads (or advertising) gets more cynical than this. It's Demetri Martin's drawing of the day. Enjoy:</p> <p><a href="http://www.whosay.com/DemetriMartin/photos/37847" title="Demetri Martin's photo Today's drawing. #demetrimARTin &gt;&gt;&gt;"><img src="http://media.whosay.com/37847/37847_la.jpg" alt="Demetri Martin's photo Today's drawing. #demetrimARTin &gt;&gt;&gt;" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.whosay.com/DemetriMartin/photos/37847">Demetri Martin on WhoSay</a></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/demetri-martins-take-on-display-advertising-a">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/demetri-martins-take-on-display-advertising-a#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/Jff6wd87IB0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/demetri-martins-take-on-display-advertising-a Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:07:25 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/q6S1DE8pK98/5-dos-and-5-donts-of-informational-interviewi http://deconstructed.digital313.com/5-dos-and-5-donts-of-informational-interviewi <p> <p>Having recently graduated from Ross School of Business in December 2009, it's still fresh in my mind what it was like to be an MBA student. Having now informally and formally interviewed fresh grads, I was asked to put together a 5 minute podcast, but I figured that it'd be less work to type it all out and is useful information for anyone doing an informational interview, although this advice is geared toward an MBA student calling an alumnus.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The 5 Dos</span></p> <p><strong>Do have lots of research on the target company, target functional area, and the person you're speaking with. </strong>I'm not talking about doing a full financial analysis on the company. You should go in knowing some recent news, basic product portfolio, current market challenges, etc. It's all data you can get pulled from any company report that is provided through a b-school's career development office. Furthermore, you should know something about what functional area you're interested in. Focus is key. The more detailed you can be, the more someone can help. If there's one thing you take away from this, that'd be it. Finally, use LinkedIn and look up the person you're about to talk to. Figure out whether they're really someone who is going to be able to help you out.</p> <p><strong>Do ask actionable questions. </strong>What do I mean by that? Ask questions that result in an actionable result from either you or the alumnus. Again, it's only in our best interest to help you and see our school's footprint at the company expand. However, if you ask softball questions that don't leave us with a set of actions we can take on your behalf, you're doing yourself a disservice and wasting the alumnus' time. Examples of this would be: "What's the process you used to get your position?" or "I'm interested in X. My research is that there are some openings based on my interests. Are there any key steps you would recommend at positioning myself for success for those openings?" The goal is that the alumnus hangs up with you with a clear set of action items to help you.</p> <p><strong>Do pointedly ask for help. </strong>So, this one is tricky as a lot of recruiters will tell you that during an informational interview, you shouldn't be too pushy to ask for a bunch of stuff, and they're right, but you should ask for something based on how strong the relationship is. For example, on an initial call, asking for the person to vouch for you is unlikely a good move. However, if the conversation goes well, it might be appropriate to ask for an introduction to a hiring manager they know well, which brings me to another do.</p> <p><strong>Do use an example or real job that you're interested in. </strong>This makes life really easy for the alumnus because now we have something to work with. "So, I saw posting X on your careers website and it says that you need 2-3 years of product management experience. Is there a way someone with no product experience but a great MBA position themselves for a position like that?" It makes it much easier because now you're working off a template. I had one person call me up who used a posting as a template that happened to be my posting!</p> <p><strong>Do follow back up (without being annoying). </strong>We're busy out in the real world, so when you don't hear back from someone who you've made a connection with, don't take it personally. The best approach is to follow back up with a nice friendly reminder email.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The 5 Don'ts</span></p> <p><strong>Don't ask questions you can answer on your own. </strong>I was asked questions that someone could've just looked up the answer. This is silly because it makes you look you didn't do any research (read: lack of interest/waste of time). It also calls into question your competence. If you're making up questions just to create an excuse to call that person, then don't call them.</p> <p><strong>Don't pester people. </strong>If you've sent 2-3 emails and you haven't heard a response, then you're being ignored. Respect that. If you get overly aggressive, you end up turning someone who was neutral about you into a negative. This is important. It's doubtful an alumnus would ever take it upon themselves to proactively tell hiring managers and recruiters that you're annoying, but if asked, they'll be inclined to tell the truth.</p> <p><strong>Don't assume you've got a second chance, period. </strong>Every interaction with a target company should be seen as an interview. The career development people let you know that's especially true when you're interviewing with consulting companies (e.g. the cocktail mixers they hold are ways to informally interview you without the chairs), but guess what? This is true in general. This is highly related to my point about being highly prepped in my first do.</p> <p><strong>Don't waste people's time. </strong>You'll know in the first 5 minutes if the conversation is going well. If it's not going well, do yourself and the alumnus a favor by politely excusing yourself from the call. They'll respect you more and it'll minimize the damage you've done. Not all calls go well, so it's OK, but get out while you can.</p> <p><strong>Don't be a know-it-all. </strong>I've guilty of this one. I read one article about some topic and I think I can outsmart an expert in the field. Well, that's just plain dumb. Don't make this mistake. It's counterproductive to tell an alumnus that you know better than they do. This is silly because then a) why did you ask the question in the first place? and b) no one wants to work with someone they can't stand.</p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/5-dos-and-5-donts-of-informational-interviewi">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/5-dos-and-5-donts-of-informational-interviewi#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/q6S1DE8pK98" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/5-dos-and-5-donts-of-informational-interviewi Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:46:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/8KIHdiJTILg/two-products-but-one-really-big-bet http://deconstructed.digital313.com/two-products-but-one-really-big-bet <p> <p>I know, I know. I promised I'd write a three part series on attribution and I will! I'm way overdue and Part 2 is going to be a doozie. I'll get to it, but mind you, I'm in the middle of having a second child, just moved, and it's not a simple topic.</p> <p>So, let me take a break from that to write a quick post on something that's easy to write about, my day job. I'm at Yahoo! and currently manage the <a href="http://advertising.yahoo.com/products-solutions/smart-ads.html">Smart Ads</a> product. For those of you too lazy to click on the link to the product site, it's a dynamic creative product with one gigantic differentiator: we power it with our own data (and we have a lot of it thanks to running the world's largest portal for 15 years).</p> <p>In our announcement last Wednesday of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.yadvertisingblog.com/blog/2011/05/11/new-smart-ad-products/">Smart Ads for Homepage and Smart Ads for Video</a>, there's been fantastic press around it all and I'd like to share some of my favorite quotes, but provide some commentary on why we launched these products to be a more interesting topic rather than it's what advertiesrs want and blah blah blah.</p> <p>When we were asked <a href="http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/yahoo-smart-ads/">how we balance the advertiser's creative needs with the consumer's creative needs on AdExchanger</a>, Dev responded:</p> <blockquote class="posterous_medium_quote"> <p><em>We have editorial control over the page, which means these ads don't pop off willy-nilly. They don't control your content consumption experience when you don't want them to. You can do expand on a click or on a hover. There are guidelines that allow us to ensure we don't bastardize the user experience</em></p> </blockquote> <p>I wish John had let Dev talk more about this because he didn't really get a chance at discussing the real underlying strategy here. The entire point is making the ad as relevant as possible and that includes the format itself. Therefore, if we do it right, the ad itself will become a part of the overall user experience and you'll no longer be thinking about tradeoffs between the advertiser and the consumer. They will become one in the same and ads become part of the overall content experience.</p> <p>(For those of you who are cynical about advertising, this isn't about tricking you into thinking that the ad is part of the content. In fact, we go out of our way to make sure you know it's an ad through the AdChoices marker and a really obvious black border around the ad itself.)</p> <p>On <a href="http://www.digidaydaily.com/stories/yahoo-s-dynamic-creative-bet/">Digiday Daily, Brian Morrissey writes</a>:</p> <blockquote class="posterous_medium_quote"> <p><em>Look no further than its bet it can become a leader in the growing market for dynamically generated ad creative. For now, the Web has obsessed -- and poured billions in venture capital and tech resources -- into building a data-based system for delivering ads to audiences efficiently. Great, but what about the ads themselves? Yahoo&rsquo;s answer: SmartAds, a project it began back in 2007.</em></p> </blockquote> <p>1. We're already the leader.</p> <p>2. Yes. What about the ads themselves? You spend all this time rifling through billions of impressions a day to pick those you really think are the right person (demo/geo targeting), in the right mindset (contextual), and in-market (behavioral/search). Then, you serve them some boring generic ad after going through all that trouble? In all seriousness, studies have shown that <a href="http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/10/comScore_ARS_Research_Highlights_Importance_of_Advertising_Creative_in_Building_Brand_Sales">50% of an ad's effectiveness is the creative</a>. If you believe that, then not taking a serious look at any creative technology that purports to deliver awesome results is just plain crazy.</p> <p>I'm excited about both products as they represent a monumental leap forward in capability. Whether it's the massive scale of the homepage with precision messaging with Smart Ads, or taking an already engaging ad format of video to the next level, it's all about:</p> <ul> <li>Delivering exceptional lift in ROAS for advertisers</li> <li>Executing campaigns that weren't even possible a few years ago</li> <li>In-depth campaign insights that reveal surprising and useful take-aways that can be used to power your next buy (even your offline buy)</li> <li>And finally, which tends to be forgotten - makes the overall user experience of the web that much more pleasant. Getting ads that actually might pertain to what you care about. Banner blindness - be gone.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/two-products-but-one-really-big-bet">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/two-products-but-one-really-big-bet#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/8KIHdiJTILg" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/two-products-but-one-really-big-bet Sat, 28 May 2011 11:27:21 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/YspQWIS1rp0/yay-for-banner-ads-and-google-v-yahoo http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yay-for-banner-ads-and-google-v-yahoo <p> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"><p>(written out on iPad so excuse Apple&#39;s word correction or typos)</p><p>While I suppose this is great news for my relatively newly chosen industry post-MBA, I wanted to point out how comparing Google and Yahoo in terms of display dollars doesn&#39;t mean much depending on how you look at it.</p> <p>Yahoo is a media company. Google is a platform company. Almost everyone in the display marketplace reps inventory, so therefore theoretically competes for the same dollars. Using that same reasoning then, we should be comparing any two companies fighting for the same marketing dollar. We might as well pile on newspapers, TV/cable networks, direct mail, or even PR firms.</p> <p>Then again, display is like no other industry where vertical integration has virtually no barriers to entry. You would never compare a component maker to an OEM right? The problem in display is that going from a component maker (e.g. publisher) to an OEM (e.g. Doubleclick/Google) only requires a few business development agreements and willingness to part with a certain amount of margin.</p> <p>At the end of the day, just as newspapers are still dealing with the aftermath of companies like Yahoo! disrupting their industries, now online publishers need to worry about whether they can also have sustainability. The problem is that if everyone decides being the intermediary (platform) is more profitable (which it is), then original/quality content has a unfortunate life span.</p> <p>Eventually this just means three broad possible outcomes:</p><p>1. Platform folks and publishers play a bit nicer and balance is restored so publishers can get good value for generating the impression in the first place. (Best outcome but unlikely.)</p> <p>2. Quality publishers put up pay walls and online content becomes the playground of cheap content (e.g. content mills). (Very possible, but sucks socially because this means you need money to pay for quality content which means the have-nots become extremely ill-informed.)</p> <p>3. Quality publishers exit to the point where professional journalism becomes a throwback career. Content mills and op ed become our primary media sources. (God help us, but we are on our way.)</p><p>Sorry. I started this as a &quot;you can&#39;t just compare two companies who seem to sell the same thing&quot; and ended it with a piece on how media technology disruption is becoming a social injustice.</p> <p><a href="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/image0021.gif"><img title="image002" src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/image0021.gif?w=620&amp;h=382" height="382" alt="" width="620" /></a> Best. first. quarter. evar. Some good news in today from the online advertising industry: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) <a href="http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-052611">has announced</a> that online advertising revenues hit $7.3 billion in the U.S. in the first quarter. While this does not represent the best quarterly performance in history (Q4 2010 takes the cake at $7.45 billion), it does mark the best first quarter on record, and reflects a 23 percent increase since the first quarter of 2010. </p> <p>The overall numbers for 2010 were impressive, with total online ad revenues reaching $26 billion. Search made up 46 percent of that total in 2010, followed by display ads at 38 percent. But display advertising grew twice as fast as search (24 percent growth versus 12 percent), and, today, Karsten Weide of <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=PRF002841">IDC says</a>, display advertising continues to grow faster than search advertising. </p> <p>Some other interesting tidbits from IDC’s report: Worldwide online ad spending grew by 14.3 percent from $15.9 billion in Q1 2010 to $18.2 billion in Q1 2011, and U.S. spending in online advertising increased by 14.2 percent from $7.1 billion in Q1 2010 to $8.1 billion in Q1 2011. The IDC forecasts U.S. online ad spending to grow 13.3 percent to $8.3 billion in Q2 2011 and 13.8 percent total in 2011.</p> <p>Also of note: Google overtook Yahoo as the leader in display advertising, with 14.7 percent of the market compared to Yahoo’s 12.3 percent share. Microsoft declined to 6.5 percent, while Facebook rose to 8.8 percent, according to Weide.</p> <p>While some analysts expected online advertising revenues and spending to cool their jets this year, the data isn’t showing much reason to bet against 2011 becoming another banner year for digital advertising. Viva la Internet.</p> <div><div><div><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/">CrunchBase Information</a></div></div><div><div><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/interactive-advertising-bureau-iab">Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)</a></div> <p /><div>Information provided by <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/">CrunchBase</a></div></div></div> <br /> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/tctechcrunch.wordpress.com/307915/" border="0" alt="" /></a> <img src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techcrunch.com&amp;blog=11718616&amp;post=307915&amp;subd=tctechcrunch&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" border="0" height="1" alt="" width="1" /><p> </p><div> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=c41mKvxdvsU:Vy_dA1MP0dc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0" /></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/c41mKvxdvsU" height="1" width="1" /></div><p /><div style="font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/c41mKvxdvsU/"></a><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/c41mKvxdvsU/">http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/c41mKvxdvsU/</a></div> <p /><br /><div style="">Sent with <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/mobilerss-hd-free-google-rss/id393767734?mt=8" style="">MobileRSS HD FREE</a></div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yay-for-banner-ads-and-google-v-yahoo">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yay-for-banner-ads-and-google-v-yahoo#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/YspQWIS1rp0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yay-for-banner-ads-and-google-v-yahoo Tue, 17 May 2011 19:07:28 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/PFPvEpaavHk/opinions-we-in-another-tech-bubble http://deconstructed.digital313.com/opinions-we-in-another-tech-bubble <p> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;"> <div style="margin-bottom: 21px; height: 80px; background-color: rgb(9, 82, 109);"> <div style="background-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style=""><a href="http://www.economist.com/"><img src="http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/digitaleditions/images/TheEconomist_Logo_157x80.gif" height="80" alt="The Economist" width="157" style="display: block; border: 0pt solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" /></a></span></div> </div> <div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 26px;"> <div style="margin: 0px 0px 26px 0px;"> <div style="color: #FF0000; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 4px;">Silicon Valley and the technology industry</div> <div style="font-size: 22px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 7px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18681576?frsc=dg%7Ca" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;">The new tech bubble</a></div> <div style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 5px; font-weight: bold;">Irrational exuberance has returned to the internet world. Investors should beware</div> <p style="color: #666666; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 13px;"></p> <p style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 13px;">SOME time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: “Please God, just one more bubble.” That wish has now been granted. Compared with the rest of America, Silicon Valley feels like a boomtown. Corporate chefs are in demand again, office rents are soaring and the pay being offered to talented folk in fashionable fields like data science is reaching Hollywood levels. And no wonder, given the prices now being put on web companies.</p> <div><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18681576?frsc=dg%7Ca" style="color: #08526D; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;">See full article</a> </div> </div> </div> <div style="clear: both; padding-top: 8px; height: 64px; background-color: rgb(9, 82, 109);"> <div style="float: left; margin: 0px 20px 0px 26px; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <img src="http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/digitaleditions/images/icon_application_57x57_rounded.png" height="57" alt="The Economist on iPad" width="57" /> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px; line-height: 18px; font-size: 14px; float: left; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sent from <br /><strong><a href="http://www.economist.com/apps" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><i>The Economist</i> on iPad</a></strong></div> <div style="padding-top: 26px; float: left; text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.economist.com/digital" style="line-height: 18px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">See our digital and mobile products</a> </div> </div> </div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/opinions-we-in-another-tech-bubble">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/opinions-we-in-another-tech-bubble#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/PFPvEpaavHk" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/opinions-we-in-another-tech-bubble Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:04:34 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/fjg6_q2kjQ4/attribution-part-i-current-practices http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-part-i-current-practices <p> <p><em>Thanks to Pete Kim for reading through this. You can find him at his <a href="http://www.petekim.com">blog</a> where he hasn't said anything in a while due to the fact he's working 90+ hours a week. His old posts are still very relevant so go visit if you want to read about display optimization or his odd fascination with the United States Postal Service.</em></p> <p><strong>I apologize to anyone who was actually looking forward to reading this. After posting that I was going on a multi-part diatribe on attribution, I moved from Silicon Valley to New York. Now that I'm (partially) settled, we return to our regularly scheduled program.</strong></p> <p>No one in their right mind agrees that last click attribution is the way to go, yet 99% of the advertisers with which I speak use last click. Worst of all, when you ask why they don't use something else, they simply say, "Well, you got a better idea?"</p> <p><em>Current Incentive Structures</em></p> <p>I don't blame them. The real blight on the war on attribution is the industry's incentives.&nbsp;Search engine marketers live and die by last click. Do search guys really have any reason at all to help you move away from last click when that's what they get paid on? Let's think for a moment what happens if it were discovered that the majority of the value of every "touch" you made with your potential customer didn't come from search, even if that was how that customer ultimately converted. Right. The search guys want you keep thinking the click is almighty.</p> <p>Now, you've got Dotomi, Criteo, Fetchback, Buysight (fka Permuto), TellApart, on and on and on. All of these companies are doing a form of personalized retargeting, probably display's closest performer to search. Why am I bringing these guys up? They too have no reason for you to move away from last click. All of them get paid on the sheer fact that a site retargeting campaign is likely the last impression you'll see of an advertier's before you click and convert.</p> <p>All in all, lots of people who have a vested interest in your never moving away from last click attribution. Oh, and let's not forget the strongest incentive of all: laziness. That's right. I might be talking to you. I mean, your site gets a certain number of click-throughs and it just seems so easy to distribute those clicks among all the campaigns you're running. It's simple, easy to implement, and oh so wrong. We'll get into the wrong part in the next post, but c'mon. Can anyone say with good conscience that the one impression that drove the click is 100% responsible for driving the conversion?</p> <p><em>Why We Need To Fix This</em></p> <p>Why is tackling it so tough? I'm going to do something that no one else does in these damn blog posts. I'm going to talk about the guts of the math involved.</p> <p>Let's start with the current practices and methods. Mind you, everytime I've asked advertisers and agencies that they're looking beyond the click, it's rarely a solid answer, but again, it's hard to blame them. As I mentioned in my previous post, if you could do attribution with a high-level of confidence, the game would be over and that person would be rich. However, rather than the conversation be in the private corridors of agencies and their advertising customers, I think we need to be public about the current methods, the flaws, and potential ways to solve them.</p> <p>At the end of the day, <strong>it's costing all of us in the display marketplace money</strong>, mainly through advertisers fearful of shifting dollars from traditional advertising where these issues don't exist due to mature marketing mix modeling techniques. One clear example of money out of the pocket is when the guard changes at a particular advertiser. We've all seen it happen: Old guard leaves behind their way of attribution. New guard comes in and blows it up. In the meantime, their spend usually tanks (usually because before they figure out the "new" way of doing it, they go to last click as a crutch). This simply doesn't happen in other forms of media becuase the bean counters there use the same methodologies. This bad news continues because people who use marketing mix modeling techniques look for stable, predictable measures, so what do they do about display? Ignore it since it more or less becomes a rounding error.</p> <p><em>N.B. This is not to say that marketing mix models aren't flawed themselves as they are riddled with assumptions and plenty of their own "black box" predictive math (read: guessing). Still, CMO's trust this stuff so display severely cripples itself by not being able to plug into that, but that's for another post on another day.</em></p> <p>So, let's start with some ground rules. Let's all agree that last click isn't best (and if you don't agree, then contact me and I'll show you hard data on why it's not).</p> <p><em>The Ugly Math</em></p> <p>The most common method of attribution beyond the click is a weighted average or distribution technique where each touch gets a fraction of a conversion. This method can be represented by the following formula:</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Attrib1" height="78" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-25/BfnugtnEybvioBthddctAfJphJxqAsadBsdsadbtkdFErErwmIoygJcyehiz/attrib1.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="180" /> </div> </p> <p>where&nbsp;&lambda; of t = attribution value of that "touch", t-1 = number of "touches" except for the one we're measuring, w of n = weighted percentage of each "touch", and&nbsp;&Lambda; = value of the customer (typically lifetime value).</p> <p>This formula itself makes a few disturbing assumptions like the fact one knows the lifetime value of the customer, but we'll go into that in my following post.</p> <p>I surveyed four popular companies in the attribution management space and almos<span style="font-size: small;">t every single one talks about assigning proportional credit to each campaign for each conversion. Almost all of them allow you to plug in "customized" attribution models, which is great, but it's not a horribly fantastic feature. If you have a universal tag, then it means you have all the data in the world to apply any attribution model you want. It's just a question of which model you're going to use. Only one hinted at the fact that they have other models from the most simple to the most complex.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">As we'll see in my next post though, complexity can sometimes be your undoing. Next week (hopefully), we'll talk about why proportional credit is fatally flawed.</span></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-part-i-current-practices">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-part-i-current-practices#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/fjg6_q2kjQ4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-part-i-current-practices Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:48:21 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/TGSNKLMsZf0/attribution-is-displays-version-of-a-four-let http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-is-displays-version-of-a-four-let <p> <p>There's a simple answer why the majority of the online advertising industry hasn't moved away from current methods of attribution:&nbsp;<strong>It is the display advertising's version of Pandora's box.</strong></p> <p>Powerful incentives and crippling inertia keep us from away from some real truths.&nbsp;And, we're&nbsp;<a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site:adexchanger.com+attribution">obsessed with attribution</a>. People write countless diatribes about it and give interviews about it. Yet, at the end of the day, we're all still talking about it instead of solving it. True - there are countless startups and mid-sized companies trying to tackle it, but if anyone actually came up with a magic formula to solve it all, they'd patent it, IPO, and we'd all be able to sleep at night.</p> <p>Let's stop talking around it and actually start debating real methodologies. So, here comes a three part series on attribution:</p> <ol> <li>Current Practices and Background</li> <li>Why Current Practices are Hopelessly Flawed</li> <li>Recommendations for Future Practices (aka potentially fixing it)</li> </ol> <p>Each post will be progressively controversial and in #3, I'm not going to offer up any magic formula (because if I had it, I'd do exactly what I said above: &nbsp;patent it, IPO, and make a gadzillion dollars). I do have some interesting starting points, however, and welcome a lively debate about it.</p> <p>I'll try to post one post of the series per week. Job, family, lack of diligence, and general laziness though could all affect that schedule.</p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-is-displays-version-of-a-four-let">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-is-displays-version-of-a-four-let#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/TGSNKLMsZf0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/attribution-is-displays-version-of-a-four-let Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:37:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/ScVzRRPMYPU/yahoo-is-reinventing-retargeting http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yahoo-is-reinventing-retargeting <p> <p><span style="font-size: 13.3px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We've launched a new product, personalized retargeting, using much of my product, <a href="http://advertising.yahoo.com/media-kit/smart-ads.html">Y! Smart Ads</a> along with capabilities from our recent acquisition of <a href="http://www.dapper.net/">Dapper.</a>&nbsp; We've worked hard on the launch, but to make a long story short, Yahoo! needed a refresh on their story in performance display, so this product launch was rolled into the relaunch of Yahoo!'s ad network to Yahoo! Network Plus.<p /> A quote from the <a href="http://www.yadvertisingblog.com/blog/2010/10/31/personalized-retargeting/">Y! Advertising Blog</a>:<p /></span><em>Long story short: You can bring back those who have clicked away from your site to engage with you again, encourage them to perform the actions you want, and we will charge you only on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-action basis (CPA).&nbsp; One of our travel clients was able to see a 97% overall lift in revenue&mdash;and a 104% increase in conversion rates.</em><p />Some other press on this:<p /><a href="http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1866005/yahoo-rolls-site-retargeting-renames-network">http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1866005/yahoo-rolls-site-retargeting-renames-network</a><br /> <a href="http://www.adexchanger.com/ad-networks/yahoo-network-plus/">http://www.adexchanger.com/ad-networks/yahoo-network-plus/</a></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yahoo-is-reinventing-retargeting">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yahoo-is-reinventing-retargeting#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/ScVzRRPMYPU" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yahoo-is-reinventing-retargeting Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:25:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/uEhg8qwenkc/beyond-vanilla-its-spaghetti-sauce-and-brandi http://deconstructed.digital313.com/beyond-vanilla-its-spaghetti-sauce-and-brandi <p> <em><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></em><div><em>This blog post is actually about dynamic creative technologies in the online advertising space, so if you are patient and read the introduction, you may be rewarded, but I cannot offer any promises :)</em></div> <p> First off, I need to attribute all of the ideas I'm about to write to my former boss and mentor,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.petekim.com/" target="_blank">Pete Kim</a>. &nbsp;His last blog entry on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.petekim.com/?p=155" target="_blank">The Curse of the Vanilla</a>&nbsp;and having heard him talk about&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html" target="_blank">Malcolm Gladwell's spaghetti sauce story</a>&nbsp;are really what this is all about. &nbsp;I'm simply trying to add convenience by tying some of these thoughts together. <p> <div>To briefly summarize, Gladwell talks about how the pursuit of science (and in many ways human happiness) has been the attempt to find universals in our world. &nbsp;And, the world of media has followed along nicely. &nbsp;Print, radio, television, and even the internet all follow that paradigm of broadcast: I have one message that I want as much of the world to read/hear/see as possible. &nbsp;Then he talks about this man named&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Moskowitz" target="_blank">Howard Moskowitz</a>&nbsp;who changed the world of food science forever by figuring out that not all people like exactly the same spaghetti sauce, but different types. &nbsp;And, he went on to develop this concept of horizontal segmentation, which is now taught in the most basic of MBA marketing classes.</div> <p> <div>So, what did Dr. Moskowitz really do for the world? &nbsp;Probably a lot, but these are the two I care about the most.</div> <div> <ul> <li>Discovered the diversity of functional, emotional, and aspirational needs of consumers (at least in food)</li> <li>Put forth was the notion that people don't really know what they want.</li> </ul> <div>Remember these two points as they carry directly to the two main points I make later.</div> <p> </p><div>It's scary to imagine that at one point people thought this was foolishness, but yet, the old accepted way of doing a marketing study was by getting a bunch of people into a room and asking them what they wanted. &nbsp;Now, we know to perform market segmentation studies and CPG companies, for example, send our free trials knowing that people won't know if they really want it until they try it.</div> <p> </p><div>So, how does all of this relate to the world of dynamic creative? &nbsp;Simple: &nbsp;People are different and in the online world, there's no reason why we have to show the same creative to every single person, so why do we? &nbsp;It's the same problem that Dr. Moskowitz ran into: Because we had always done it that way in the past. &nbsp;It's not a technology constraint. &nbsp;We've just been programmed into this mindset of "one-size-fits-all" and thought that if it works on TV, it'll work online too.</div> <p> </p><div>I haven't extended any thoughts beyond what's already been written by Pete and others, but here are some slight twists to ideas that have been offered up:</div> <p> </p><div><strong>1. &nbsp;If you already have gone through the trouble of segmenting your market, dynamic creative is a way to make the most effective use of your online media buy.</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right now, marketers go through this sloppy process of trying to line up their market segments with the audiences being offered in various mediums. &nbsp;There are overlaps representing wasted spend and gaps representing missed opportunity. &nbsp;In the online world, it doesn't need to be that way. &nbsp;You just need a way to buy your&nbsp;exact&nbsp;market segments (audiences) at scale. &nbsp;The obvious missing component here is data. &nbsp;For the dynamic creative to get to the right person, you need some idea of who that person is. &nbsp;Whether your segments are composed of something simple like demographics or complex like psychographics, the better data about the user, the more efficient the media. &nbsp;(Psst..digital media buying agencies..this is really important because if you can demonstrate your buys are more efficient than your old media buying counterparts, dollars will come your way.)</div> <p> </p><div><strong>2. &nbsp;Because people don't know what they want, even in advertising, you should always be testing and learning. &nbsp;</strong></div> </div> <div> <div>Go and listen to Gladwell's TED talk, but we all know what we say we want is very different than what we really want. &nbsp;Therefore, it also makes sense that we put new (and old) brand messages out there every so often to see. &nbsp;A good dynamic creative algorithm will never stop showing a particular message, even if it's extremely unpopular. &nbsp;People change. &nbsp;A well-run dynamic campaign will also get messages added in over time. &nbsp;People may like something else. &nbsp;(Psst...creative agencies..this is really important because it gives you a way to quickly see if other message/creative ideas are worth exploring.)</div> </div> <span style="font-style: normal;"></span><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></em><p> </p></p></p></p> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/beyond-vanilla-its-spaghetti-sauce-and-brandi">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/beyond-vanilla-its-spaghetti-sauce-and-brandi#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/uEhg8qwenkc" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/beyond-vanilla-its-spaghetti-sauce-and-brandi Sun, 16 May 2010 13:06:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/PZ_nvhYJj6o/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping.html-0 http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/05/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping.html-0 <p> <div class="posterous_autopost"> <p>So, I was boarding a flight recently and realized the real effect of baggage fees beyond customer dissatisfaction and general proof point of airline industry desperation to make any money.</p> <p>As I was boarding the flight, everyone had a carry-on and a small bag.&nbsp; Everyone's observation is that passengers are now incentivized to carry on as much as possible to avoid the fees. What was interesting is how much it slows down the boarding process when almost everyone has a carry-on. For this one particular flight, the plane was delayed in taking off for two reasons: a) the gate agent had to wait for them to tell her if there was anymore room on the plane for additional carry-ons and b) carry-on bags that didn't fit were gate-checked (at no charge to the passenger).</p> <p>It'd be interesting to see how much the airline loses for every minute they stay on the ground because if it's a relatively large amount, say $100, then staying on the ground for an extra 10 minutes would cost the airline $1,000. I suppose as long as they're making more than that in baggage fees, it's worth it. We know from Southwest's business model that their planes are on the ground for fewer minutes than any other airline, a source of competitive advantage.</p> <p>My guess is the baggage fees might outweigh the flight delay costs by a little, but if you add in the customer ill will caused by this policy, I would contend it's a losing proposition.</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"><a href="http://posterous.com/">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://digital313.com/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping-airlines">T from the D</a></p> </div> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/222388400891735096-8333070350681606576?l=www.antonychen.net" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/05/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping.html-0">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/05/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping.html-0#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/PZ_nvhYJj6o" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/05/why-baggage-fees-are-likely-helping.html-0 Mon, 10 May 2010 19:35:25 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/pg820U6jvOM/theres-more-wrong-with-this-opa-study http://deconstructed.digital313.com/theres-more-wrong-with-this-opa-study <p> While I generally agree with <a href="http://adage.com/digitalnext/post.php?article_id=143655">Russ Fradin&#39;s post on Ad Age</a>, I think it&#39;s simpler to say that the reason why this study done by OPA isn&#39;t right is bias:  If you look at the organizations supporting OPA, the &quot;results&quot; of this study are in their favor (of course).<p /><div>Paying someone to perform a study for you that usually results in positive results for you though is commonplace.  I suppose I should give OPA a pass since the drug industry uses this method to get drug trials done.  They fund a third party to conduct the trial.  I shouldn&#39;t have to say this, but doing a study on drug safety is more important the OPA.</div> <p /><div>I started with an article saying how biased this OPA study is and ended scaring myself about drug safety.</div><p /><div>(Another example of this is audits for publicly traded companies.  The SEC requires them, but the company that gets the audit is the one that funds and controls its budget.)</div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/theres-more-wrong-with-this-opa-study">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/theres-more-wrong-with-this-opa-study#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/pg820U6jvOM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/theres-more-wrong-with-this-opa-study Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:11:49 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/dYRIUAiQltM/its-newsworthy-to-say-that-junky-content-make http://deconstructed.digital313.com/its-newsworthy-to-say-that-junky-content-make <p> So, <a href="http://adage.com/digitalnext/post.php?article_id=143485">we finally know there are similarities between print and digital content</a>:  If you make crappy product, then ads served next to your crappy product won&#39;t perform as well.  This article also assumes that we all believed all audiences were created equal.  I believed no such thing, at least, not since I was five when Big Bird told me I was unique and special. </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/its-newsworthy-to-say-that-junky-content-make">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/its-newsworthy-to-say-that-junky-content-make#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/dYRIUAiQltM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/its-newsworthy-to-say-that-junky-content-make Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:08:24 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/sRpHJRrPjcY/yaprc-yet-another-post-regarding-consolidatio http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yaprc-yet-another-post-regarding-consolidatio <p> Ad Age usually provides news and interesting points of view.  Not today.  <a href="http://adage.com/digitalnext/post.php?article_id=143404">Someone</a> has gone and repeated that the online advertising value chain is extremely crowded and is ripe for consolidation.  Usually, comments to posts are usually folks arguing over arcane points, but in this scenario, the sole commenter (at least when I read the post) calls him to the carpet:<p /> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><i>When everyone decides to take their bat and ball home with them, these middlemen are going to be left with aging IP that does not generate revenue. No one, at least in 2010, is ready to make a big bet on technology. It ages too fast. </i></div><br />Eh.  I&#39;m all for being a contrarian, in fact, I should make it my middle name, but like all views that sit on the polar opposites, what&#39;s most likely to happen is somewhere in the middle.  In some parts of the value chain, it makes absolute sense for some companies to consider horizontally or vertically integration, either backward or forward.  The real issue with online advertising, unlike many other industries, is that you can become very good at say, being a DSP, but if you sit idly while you&#39;re #1, six months later, you are no longer.  We&#39;re not Dunder Mifflin making paper.  The learning curve is extraordinarily steep for <b>every</b> step of the value chain.  Therefore, I think it&#39;d be foolish to think large pools of these companies post-consolidation would be able to move at the right speed.<p /> Then you look at industries that decoupled their value chain, like the car industry.  For them, it was mainly a good idea (except Ford and GM never truly cut the umbilical cord with Visteon and Delphi, respectively).  In others, it ended with disastrous consequences like Boeing&#39;s attempt to outsource most of the Dreamliner&#39;s construction.<p /> Someone point me to a thoughtful notion of what this market may really end up looking like with some solid reasoning.  I want to read something profound. </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yaprc-yet-another-post-regarding-consolidatio">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yaprc-yet-another-post-regarding-consolidatio#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/sRpHJRrPjcY" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/yaprc-yet-another-post-regarding-consolidatio Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:38:30 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/rUsc7ATAiY0/interesting-twist-from-yahoo-labs-on-social-m http://deconstructed.digital313.com/interesting-twist-from-yahoo-labs-on-social-m <p> I must be living in a cave.  People pay Kim Kardashian $10,000 per tweet?  What?  Again, the rise of falsely famous eludes me.  Once, we had to be talented to be famous.  Then, finding a way to be really rich made you famous.  Now, we&#39;re in the world of something else.  I&#39;ll end my rant and get to the point.<p /> I read the Tipping Point and thought of it as insightful and possibly accurate.  What&#39;s interesting is the thought crossed my mind that Malcolm Gladwell, at the end of the day, is a great journalistic author who has noticed these &quot;trends&quot;, but has purported to testing them in any meaningful way.  Yet, his book has shaped how marketers are monetizing social media.<p /> <a href="http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143301">This Ad Age article</a>, though, excerpts research from Yahoo! Labs.  Here&#39;s an excerpt from the excerpt:<p /><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> But in looking at influencers, Mr. Watts found that it&#39;s incredibly hard to predict who will be a major factor on Twitter, a conclusion that runs counter to the prevailing wisdom of social epidemics popularized by the book &quot;The Tipping Point.&quot; While he acknowledges there are certain personalities such as Kim Kardashian who can potentially trigger a larger cascade of re-tweets given her large amount of &quot;followers&quot; (&quot;Tipping Point&quot; enthusiasts call her a connector), close studies of social platforms reveal that influence is spread more efficiently and more reliably when done through many-to-many connections, rather than through a few highly connected individuals. <br /></blockquote><div><br />This makes sense, but using Kim Kardashian isn&#39;t a great baseline for someone who is well-connected.  In Gladwell&#39;s book, he also talks about Mavens as those who are known and trusted to be experts in a certain area.  When you get a tweet from Kim, who are you assuming she&#39;s getting her information from?  If it&#39;s not a Maven, then you might not trust the information as reliable and see it more as pure entertainment.  (In a sense, I&#39;m agreeing with Watts&#39; research.)<p /> What would be interesting would be seeing how her Twitter followers reacted to tweets of hers based on bona fide recommendations from Mavens in her network, rather than shameless bribes by advertisers paying her to leverage her &quot;talent&quot;.<br /> </div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/interesting-twist-from-yahoo-labs-on-social-m">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/interesting-twist-from-yahoo-labs-on-social-m#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/rUsc7ATAiY0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/interesting-twist-from-yahoo-labs-on-social-m Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:03:58 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/18Jn68XHqJ4/ppc-innovation-how-will-googles-new-lead-capt-0 http://deconstructed.digital313.com/ppc-innovation-how-will-googles-new-lead-capt-0 <p> This should be quite interesting.<p /> <p /> <p /> <div style="font-family: sans-serif; overflow: auto; margin: 0px 10px;"><h2 style="margin: 0.25em 0 0 0;" /><div class=""><a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/google-ppc.html">PPC Innovation: How will Google&rsquo;s new lead capture extension affect your pay-per-click campaigns?</a></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em;">via <a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog" class="f">MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas</a> by Corey Trent on 3/29/10</div><br style="display: none;" /> <p>We have been quite busy at the labs here, but I wanted to cover a PPC development that blipped on our radar earlier this year. For many of us, PPC is a critical source of traffic, and can be quite the task to manage. Well to add to the list of things to consider, Google is beta-testing the collection of phone lead information directly from SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).</p> <p>Google generates roughly 97% of its revenue from online advertising, so it makes sense that they delve into new areas of online marketing – which now seems to include part of the sales process as well.</p> <p>Given the huge potential (or threat) this represents to you, the Internet marketer, I think this is a vital development to cover on this blog (and even reached out to a search engine marketing firm to get their ideas for you as well.) While this will not affect all verticals, for some niches this might pour some gasoline (or more correctly napalm), on already very competitive areas.</p> <p><strong>So how does it work?</strong></p> <p>According to Amber from <a href="http://www.ppchero.com/new-contact-form-extensions-beta-from-google-super-cool/">PPC Hero</a>, “The gist of the beta is if you’re running a PPC ad in Google, and you’re in the top position, you can click on a plus sign next to a call to action (the name you give your contact form) and Google will drop down your contact form to be submitted right there in the Google search results.”</p> <p>Here is an image from that article to show the lead collection:</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/contact-form-beta.jpg"><img title="Google-contact-form-beta" src="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/contact-form-beta.jpg" height="412" alt="Google-contact-form-beta" width="795" /></a></p> <p>It’s important to note that, as with all things in beta, this has the potential for change, as I believe Google does do some testing from time to time.</p> <p>And since this new feature is currently in beta, limited to businesses appearing in position #1 of PPC results, and on select keywords, it may not be available to you yet. If you’re interested, the best person to contact is your friendly Google rep.</p> <p><strong>More importantly…how can I make it work for me?</strong></p> <p>While I think this could have potentially large ripples in certain areas of online marketing, I wanted to have a chat with our friends at <a href="http://www.roirevolution.com/index.htm">ROI Revolution</a>, and get another viewpoint as well.</p> <p>As a quick background, ROIRevelution is a company whose main area of focus is in pay-per-click management and they are quite good at it. We had the chance to speak with PPC Account Manager Mike O’Rourke. Here are just a couple of points Mike and I discussed:</p> <p><strong>Upsides</strong></p> <ul> <li>Simplifies the conversion process.</li> <li>No <a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/marketing-q-a/friction-and-anxiety-in-your-marketing-process-defining-the-difference.html">friction</a> (and lead loss) from weak landing pages.</li> <li>Great tracking for businesses that use the phone a lot, a traditional weakness of current PPC tracking solutions<em>.  Interesting, how could this be applied to other voice communication/VOIP solutions like Google Voice?</em></li> <li>The feature will be good for certain verticals (e.g., plumbers) that provide local services tied to specific keywords (e.g., “broken pipes”).</li> </ul> <p><strong>Downsides</strong></p> <ul> <li>Can’t have a conversation in a PPC ad. Landing pages provide a good service for addressing anxiety and questions. So how effective will this lead capture be?</li> <li>Opportunities to increase the value of a lead with a well-optimized funnel are lost (e.g. upsells). Without the ability to do that how valuable will the leads really will be?</li> <li>Because conversion is expected on the search page, you do not have their undivided attention.  On a landing page, you can guide their thinking.</li> <li>Maximum cost-per-click (CPC) rates are applied to leads submitted. This will likely cause your cost per acquisition to rise.</li> <li>Since you must in position #1, the bids for the top position might heat up significantly.</li> <li>Many people also now use many CRM solutions for keeping track of customers and sales. Will this information be easily integrated with common solutions or sent to advertisers in a standardized way?</li> </ul> <p><strong>Won’t you tell me your name? I love you. Hello.</strong></p> <p>Personally, I am interested in seeing are how users respond to putting their information directly into a form on a search engine results page. While I think some users are very trusting, others might be turned off by your attempt to get their number so soon.</p> <p>It might seem like an out-of-sequence conversation. As Flint McGlaughlin, the director of MECLabs Group (our parent company) describes trying to ask for a lead to early in the process, “You don’t ask a girl for a kiss before you have a date with her.”</p> <p>That might seem kind of corny. But think about how you handle your own phone number. Many of us treasure our phone numbers and can guard them quite fiercely. Will a relatively short ad space be enough to capture users and convince them to give up this information? Are you asking for too much, too soon?</p> <p>Also, some of the things we talk about in great detail here are <a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/optimizing-site-design.html">anxiety</a> and <a href="http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/value-proposition.html">value proposition</a>. While you can address these with your ad copy in a limited fashion, the fact remains you only have so many characters to work within.</p> <p>Your pay-per-click ad copy and the space search providers give you is simply to get the conversation going – address why they should click, how you are meeting their motivation, and then get them to a landing page to do the heavy lifting.</p> <p>In skipping that step, you can end up with spending a lot of money (especially by paying max CPC) with leads that are not as qualified or do not convert.</p> <p>Also, since this is a new technology, you might be getting a fair amount of people using it because they wanted to see how it works, rather than being genuinely interested in your message.</p> <p>I have some more thoughts on this that we will post soon, but I want to get your opinion on what impact, if any, you think this new Google innovation will have?</p> <div style="height: 1px; overflow: hidden;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt;">Great tracking for businesses that use the phone a lot, <em>a traditional weakness of current PPC tracking solutions.  How could this be applied to other voice communication/VOIP solutions like Google Voice?</em></span></div></div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/ppc-innovation-how-will-googles-new-lead-capt-0">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/ppc-innovation-how-will-googles-new-lead-capt-0#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/18Jn68XHqJ4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/ppc-innovation-how-will-googles-new-lead-capt-0 Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:54:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~3/DOqIiIYr9Js/brillance-from-my-options-and-futures.html-0-0 http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/04/brillance-from-my-options-and-futures.html-0-0 <p> As a prelude to this post, I've already graduated, so I have no reason to butter up my finance professor for a good grade :)<p />Professor Seyhun taught me something very valuable about the value of money (ha!):&nbsp; Cash, itself, is a derivative.&nbsp; Everything is until you get to the underlying good or service.&nbsp; So, how convoluted is the world of credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities, etc?<p /><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/35831890/SEC_Asks_Congress_to_Regulate_Credit_Default_Swaps">Congress is currently in the process of trying to create an exchange</a> as a way to regulate credit default swaps.&nbsp; This idea would be great if it were commodities that were being traded, but credit default swaps are extremely complex contracts between two entities with very specific risk mitigation needs.&nbsp; In a world where these swaps are like snowflakes where no two are the same, how is an exchange going to work?&nbsp; Exchanges only work when they're efficient and the only way to make them efficient is to make to make what's being bought and sold a commodity.&nbsp; In turn, that commodity is a fairly liquid asset.&nbsp; These derivatives fit none of these criteria.<p />Professor Seyhun has suggested in this <a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/NewsRoom/ArticleDisplay.asp?news_id=18963">article</a> that there's an easy way to do it.&nbsp; The principle of Occam's Razor holds to this problem and solution set.&nbsp; The last thing we need is to make an already complex finance world even more complex.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/222388400891735096-7157337699058401861?l=www.antonychen.net" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/04/brillance-from-my-options-and-futures.html-0-0">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/04/brillance-from-my-options-and-futures.html-0-0#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dotcomdeconstructed/~4/DOqIiIYr9Js" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/437534/IMG_0752.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5eHyqAjQBwVr Tony C Tony Tony C http://deconstructed.digital313.com/2010/04/brillance-from-my-options-and-futures.html-0-0