Stemato.com - Stephen Tompkins’ Blog

It seems analysts are always saying, “we have to get the ads where they are seen by the right eyes. Its not just a matter of shear scale.” I couldnt agree more that context is missing from today’s marketplace. And getting advertisements in front of the right eyeballs will advance the online economy tremendously.

In the next few years, technology should begin to improve the relevance of what is being shown to you on any given site. But for now we all have to put up with the random ads that make no sense to us. Aren’t we all sick of the mortgage ads on every site we go too? Is the market for buying a house really that large? I think recent events tell us otherwise!

Yesterday, while I was looking at source code of a few sites, I found this very unique way to get the right eyeballs in front of an advertisement for a job opening. It was on the site Meebo and as you can see its for a posting for a programmer commented out in the source code.

I can’t think of a better way to find a unique programmer than by putting a secret job posting in the source of your website. Congratulations Meebo on being creative and unique in getting your message out there.

For some time now, I have been wondering if it’s possible to beat Google. During a quick flight from Ft. Lauderdale to JFK, I am going to give you step one in my strategy to beating the 800 lb. gorilla that is Google. Just a quick disclaimer before we get started, this is all completely hypothetical and in my brain and in no way represents my company (Microsoft) or any strategies that I have learned while there.

To beat Google you first have to abandon the notion of taking them on in search because a frontal assault would certainly deplete funds and create mass carnage to your organization.  You can eventually beat them at search but first you need to attack their Achilles’ heel.

What is that you ask?

Display Ads

Forget for a moment that this particular category is losing speed; its future is bright despite recent slowdowns. Growth projections still eclipse newspapers and are beginning to do the same to televisions advertising. Furthermore despite, Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick they still have yet to take a dominant place at the table.

Publisher Side Serving

We are starting to see them dominate the publisher side of this industry but are definitely still beatable. It is going to take a major investment in the resources to completely overhaul the current market products and begin to create a new publisher interface to beat them here. Often the interfaces are older and fail to implement the most recent technologies into them. For instance, advanced reporting techniques provide a great starting point. Integrating a great AJAX-like dashboard to your pub tools might be a great starting point.

Advertiser Side Serving

On this side of the server, the ability to beat Google is possibly at its best. Hovering around 45% market share they have really been unable to distinguish themselves. The same as publisher side holds true here. Advertisers are clamoring for my sophisticated systems that they can show ROI on in more complex ways. Analytics integration, advanced reporting, and user-friendly UI’s all represent important milestones for industry dominance.

At my company (Microsoft’s Atlas), we have introduced some of these products including the much anticipated e-mapping (engagement mapping). I want go too much into it here but click the link its some amazing stuff. I will say that these represent important steps to claiming the next online advertising crown.

Display ads represent the low-hanging fruit in the battle against Google. It is a time sensitive fight though as Google furiously works to integrate Doubleclick’s offerings into its own but its can easily be won.

What would the internet look like without ads? No banners, no search and no rich media to interrupt your surfing experience just plain old experience. At first thought it sounds amazing but looking closer into at this proposition reveals some ugly truths.

1. Most people today go to the internet to research product information. Whether we admit it or not, many of the digital ads we see help us to determine the products we research later to buy. With better targeting think of the possibilities of products you never knew existed that could present themselves to you.
2. Online ads are much less intrusive than TV commercials. The so-called “banner blindness” factor has helped to make them just blend into a page seamlessly. In fact, I photoshopped all ads off a few page only to find there was no real difference in new content space available. In most cases, I felt more content would be even more distracting.
3. If the internet is about discovery then online ads have a spot at the table. What is more about discovery than advertisements? Product A is amazing but without promotion, where does it go?

Can anyone else think of other reasons I may have missed? I would love to hear ideas and feedback on the notion of an internet without ads. What is your scenario?

Many people think targeting is the silver bullet to online advertising. I believe it will be a great step forward for all us industry folks and am excited to get better ads. But my question is, have we made any leeway? My answer is no.

Take for example, my Facebook profile. I can remember last year seeing many ads for young single men. I am not exactly looking for a young single man nor would I be using Facebook to find them if I were a gay man. This ad was so far off the mark I figured Facebook was in its infancy with targeting and reading profiles and forgave them.

But alas! I was wrong. Today, I sign onto Facebook and what do I get. Gutter cleaning in San Francisco or somewhere far from NYC. I guess this could be forgiven since I work for Microsoft (which is somewhat of a western company) but the fact that I am not part of a network out west makes it much harder for me to forgive. I would think geo-targeting on Facebook is the easiest to do. I mean I have enough information on the profile that a mule could figure out where I live.

I am completely lost by this and most targeting. Targeting means giving me things I am interested in more than average. Not something I do not or will not need.Simply taking a singular statement on my profile is not enough. You have to apply algorithms and such to make really give me good ads.

Deep insights about my profile are available and I want targeting to move the ball forward this year. Instead I get gutter cleaners and single available men. I anxiously await a new day in targeting.

Yesterday, I read this article from Marketing Vox about online youth’s attitude towards medical information online. And its fascinating to me in light of my last blog post, about local medical search, that more doctors have not exploited this growing trend to establish themselves as local market leaders. With so many online tools available such as targeting and reach, it seems to be a no-brainer to be the first to plant a flag in the online world.

Do small companies innovate enough when it comes to online media and the wealth of new technologies available to them? I recently asked myself this question while talking to my Dad in Florida about my new job. We were talking about online advertising and the possibility of running a small search campaign to advertise a new less-evasive knee surgery that he recently learned. He was completely unaware of the fact that for very little investment on MSN (disclosure: I work for Microsoft), Yahoo or the Other Guy he could run a Zip Code targeted search-term campaign.

It comes as quite a surprise to me that most local physicians on the ground are not utilizing the natural democracy of the web to their favor and buying up more search terms. Every year more and more people search and find medical information online. In fact,  ”Harris Interactive, a national polling firm, found last month that 150 million people this year sought online health information.*”  That is a staggering number of people searching for solutions to their medical issues and certainly a great target-pool for new business.

As my Dad and I talked further about acquisitions and costs to him, we reasoned that with one patient a month coming from CPC and a medium sized budget of 10k he could essentially make a profit. This was really unscientific reasoning but when you sit down and really look at the numbers, I am positive they would still end up well in the black. We spoke further and he was not totally ready to make the dive but in a few months I imagine he will be back with his partners asking more questions.

I am still left to wonder, when will small businesses exploit local search for its natural strengths?

Interesting reads pertaining to this posts found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/fashion/10Skin.html?ex=1208491200&en=867d0d88185b59b0&ei=5070&emc=eta1

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_tumor10.129bd70.html

News today from the IAB and Pricewatherhouse Coopers, suggest that Web ad sales dipped in the second quarter. Big surprise? Not at all considering the current state of the economy. I just read this article from Yahoo and the surprising thing to me is display and search’s stubborness in the face of a global economic slowdown.

It reports that both graphic (13% YoY) and search (24% YoY) ads showed strong growth in the second quarter. I think the real test will come in the third quarter when we see if these online ads can show further resiliance as the economy crumbles even further. My guess is search will be fine but display may show a slight slowdown.

This morning I had my first look at the joint MSN-NBC Olympics videos on the web using Silverlight. I have to say, on first look, the video looks much better than any Flash video’s on the web. Pixelation was at a minimum and the it did not buffer for the 9 minutes I watched President Bush. Realizing my connection speed here at work is fast but still I was impressed with the quality.

I hope more online companies migrate to a platform with this style video. For now, I will just have to enjoy the limited videos that use Silverlight. Check this link out to see some of the material.