Online Advertising

I’m enjoying the beta of Google+ that a friend, and Google employee, recently invited me to. I am usually more quick to check out new stuff than hesitant to get freaked out by privacy policies. But my own personal experiences with Google have left me more concerned with Google than with Facebook from a privacy perspective. Primarily because of the vast trove of information Google already has access to. I just don’t think they should have access to so much.

My first real heart-jump was when I bought a Google-powered Android phone and ‘registered’ it with my gmail address. All of a sudden all my voicemails suddenly got routed to Google Voice, as opposed to my usual wireless carrier voicemail. And I wasn’t given a choice in the matter, or able to undo it. My conversation with customer service went something like this “Oh, you entered your gmail address, yeah, all your voicemail goes to Google now, you can’t change it.” I also realized that since I used Google Chrome as my web browser(which I login into with my Gmail address so that it remembers my passwords), now it was possible to link all of my online web browsing activity to my phone usage, including locations/movements around the world, and potentially to my email usage and now to any personal information I give to Google +. This is a lot!  Too much, I think.

I couple these concerns with recent reports that Google (and Apple) keep a log of all of our locations via our cell phones, indefinitely:

• http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/22/tech/cnettechnews/main20056472.shtml

Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s statement that if you don’t want other people to know about what you do online, then you shouldn’t do it online:

• http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

So what? Well, Facebook and Google both make nearly all of their money from online advertising. And when I say nearly all, I mean this is pretty much where all of their revenue is derived from. Google doesn’t exactly rake it in on their phone business. Online/mobile advertising has been my vocation for the past 12 years and I’m keenly aware, as Google is, that the more you know about a person, the better you can deliver that person relevant advertising. The more relevant your advertising, the more advertising money is going to come your way because you’ve done a good job of getting your client’s message in front of their target consumer. Google is very good at this. One might argue that they are the absolute best at delivering advertising to consumers and getting them to respond. That is why in the midst of a recession, they are hiring 4,000+ people in a single year, including no less than 6 other close friends of mine have gone to work for the Goog in the past 6 months. Google is ‘crushing it’ with their online advertising business.

It strikes me that Google+ is not just another fun Google product, but an attempt to head off the massive advantage that Facebook has gained with their treasure trove of personal information on 500 Million + users. Note that likewise, Facebook, is trying to head off Google’s advantage on having access to internet browsing habits by offering websites ‘like’ buttons and other widgets to put up on their sites, like ‘login into this website with facebook’ so that Facebook can also collect information on your browsing habits outside of Facebook. These widgets turn Facebook into a much bigger ‘website’, where they can ‘see’ you on all the sites where they have their hooks. Keep in mind that Facebook recently passed online advertising behemoth, Yahoo, in total advertising revenue.

The stages are set: Facebook and Google are now doing battle for online advertising dollars as the two dominant forces in selling and delivering online advertising. “Do no evil” aside, these two companies are online advertising companies first and foremost and our own personal view of what crosses the line in terms of privacy is being pushed and challenged by them because they have a revenue-driven incentive to challenge it.

I am not a crazy privacy advocate, I placed the very first ad on a social media site years ago, when I struck a deal with Jonathan Abrams at Friendster. Back then, advertising on social media used to be a bad word, now every company’s brand manager is scrambling to understand it and to spend there. This desire to ‘get in’ to social media advertising has been driven by the huge amount of personal information we’ve all become accustomed to sharing with companies in exchange for fun online services, primarily with Facebook.

Will I use Google+ ?, definitely! Especially if it’s fun and my friends are using it. But I returned my Google/Android phone because I felt creeped out by the “you have been assimilated into the Borg” experience, and I’d frankly prefer it if Facebook continued to dominate social media. At least that way I can keep some of my personal information with three distinct and independent advertising companies: my location logs are with Apple, my online browsing habits are with Google, and my social interactions and personal info might stay independently with Facebook.

I was 11 years old when I got my first 1200-baud modem. Shortly after realizing what a computer geek I had become, my parents asked for my opinion, “Scotty, do you think it’s worthwhile to get a CD-ROM for our computer?” “Naw,” I said, “That CD thing is just going to be a big fad, like those tape-backup drives.” That was 1988 and yes, every computer still has a CD-ROM as a critical part of its operation. I was similarly prescient when blogs and RSS technology first came on the scene. By then, I was a moderately-respected online media expert and my comment that blogs were nothing more than “…easy to update homepages and would never represent a valuable advertising opportunity.” Were thankfully never recorded, *ahem*, until now.

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A great ad can entertain and inspire by tickling us with its producers’ creativity. Advertising makes some of my favorite things free (pretty much all my favorite sites on the internet, and also radio) but it certainly can be overdone by front-loading $12 per-ticket movies with too many previews. But a worse offense is to launch an advertising campaign devoid of creativity or innovation. A great ad campaign can move us emotionally. It can make us laugh or cry or bring color and humor to an otherwise mundane city bus.

But I learned a new rule of advertising recently that discourages creativity. Turns out that many ad campaigns Continue reading →

I’ve decided to take a cool new job with Glam Media, serving as the General Manager & VP of their publisher network. It’s an interesting take on a model I’ve got some experience with. Glam has a media network of female-centric beauty, fashion and lifestyle bloggers (that’s *not* the part I have a lot of experience with) that they sell the advertising around (that is) and also provide other services like SEO and content distribution. They have a viciously loyal following and have succeeded in getting relevant advertisers like Levi’s and Macy’s to match the content. I attended one of their publisher functions the other night and met the author of a cool fashion blog called Stiletto Jungle. She had quit her job as an attorney to blog full-time on fashion and Shopping…Glam pays her bills by selling advertising on her site. I’m decidedly impressed with the smarts and positioning of the folks at Glam so far. They’ve achieved a lot in a really short amount of time.

One thing that has me a bit concerned however is that about a day after I accepted the job offer from Glam, I went in to Lens Crafters for a new pair of specs and when I got sized, there was only one pair that really spoke to me…I had to have the Prada eyeglasses. Let’s hope this trend doesn’t escalate for the sake of my pocketbook…

For the past eight years, I’ve chosen advertising for my career, and I often find myself in debates with friends who claim that advertising doesn’t influence them at all. Most people seem to have a lot invested in believing that they are independent thinkers and somehow unaffected by the thousands of messages they receive each day through various media. I can understand that…believing that we are all highly influenced by our environments and to admit that whomever has the most budget to spend on advertising, would be able to influence one’s mind is an admittedly chilling and unsettling thought. And, thankfully, not true. Knowledge, for example, is a far more persuasive message than even the most brilliantly suggestive advertisement. This video, however, gave me pause to wonder how great the power of suggestion actually is….

I’m on my way to Palo Alto today to present ViTrue at the Under the Radar conference. Fresh on my mind today is the backlash that erupted on YouTube in the past few days around the Lip Sync contest that Malibu Rum put together, soliciting YouTubers to do a lipsync to that ‘Lime in the Coconut’ song. I love that song by the way. Always makes me smile and I’ve legitimately wondered if one can relieve a belly ache by drinking a lime/coconut concoction. At any rate, they key thing that’s being called into question on this effort is the authenticity of the brand and their contest. I love that the community has literally risen up and shouted that this particular form of advertising, user-created advertising, needs to adhere to certain standards. And here’s the kicker, the standards aren’t decided by some board of white guys, or by the publisher or by the advertiser– they’re decided by the community on YouTube. I dig it!

CORRECTION: The song is “Day-O, Daaaaay-O”… personally I like the “Lime in the Coconut” song better…

Amidst all of the M&A hoopla surrounding the online advertising space currently, what has my attention the most is friggin’ Google. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. Google’s stock hit $518 today…I remember sitting on a beach in Mexico 2 years ago with some friends who had just sold off some GOOG after the stock had taken a major nosedive. I told them to hold on, that I saw the company entrenched as the hub of advertising in the 21st century. I didn’t fully believe my own words as true when I spoke them…frankly, I’m rarely prophetic certainly about stocks but it turns out a number of investors believe what I believed as I was into my 4th shot of tequila, that Google is poised to own the buying and selling of advertising. With this week’s acquisition of FeedBurner, a company that I’ve been consistently impressed with and whose management team I had the pleasure of meeting last fall. They’ve been long-rumored as a Google acquisition target and in my mind, combined the perfect combination of business integrity, solid technology, and a host of great partnerships. The Feedburner acquisitions expands Google’s dominance into the RSS Feed space and will complement its AdSense network and Doubleclick adserver well. What’s next? Well, my own attention will be closely on the roll out of their AdSense Instream product which they announced last week.

I’ve spent most of my career working at companies best described as Ad Networks. My role has been to work directly, or lead teams that work directly, with publishers who host advertising on their websites. The web publishers host the ads as a means of supporting the web services they offer the public for free. Most see the results of my work as the banners that appear on sites like Dictionary.com or Tribe.net. In the past, I’d often spin my role within greater society as “I help keep the internet free.” A noble cause in the face of flashing banner ads imploring you to “punch the monkey and win $20 banana bucks” to be sure. In many respects, this is really not a very fun job. Serving as the middle man between publishers who believe they’re entitled to more targeted advertising from more relevant advertisers at higher rates, and advertisers who want results from every penny spent and will cancel at the first sign of lack of ROI, could be thankless at times. It’s a tough business, but an admittedly interesting one as the internet and it’s marketing vehicles have evolved into new implementations. Take, for example, some of the video creative that allows the user to initiate a play of the ad, like this one for Sin City. Creativity is driving new ways for users to engage in marketing messages that are continually evolving.
I hear a lot these days from firms desiring to form their own ad network. In fact, the founders of the first ad network I worked for, Flycast, even started a company whose primary offering is to power the technology of ad networks with the idea that you could potentially power hundreds of niche gatherings of web publishers. The flavors run the gamut from Mobile Gaming Ad Networks to Specialty Blog Networks like John Batelle’s Federated Media, and F*#$edCompany’s founder, Pud’s gigantic ad network, AdBrite. There isn’t a single firm that doesn’t seem keen on building an ad network– and I’m flattered with a lot of recruiting calls as a result. But a word of warning: running an ad network is no picnic. It’s an already hugely competitive market, with a number of large players from AOL’s Advertising.com, publicly traded ValueClick and my previous company, Tribal Fusion dominating the top 3 spots. It is hard to gain traction in an “up” market where at the end of the day, the advertiser just wants clicks and sales and the publisher just wants high rates and a big check each month. I’ve done it once before and I wouldn’t wish building an ad network from scratch, in this market, on anyone.