It is not uncommon to see News Media Publishers drive un-segmented page views as one of their primary Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) - And one of the biggest page view drivers for online News Media today are the common use of Galleries (slideshows if you will). I would argue that those additional page views, however massive they are, don’t deliver the same value to the advertiser, as compared to the core product (the news article) - and ultimately isn’t really what the user/reader wants. I studied the usage patterns of one of the biggest News Media publishers in the US as part of an optimization dialogue and created the following four News Media content segments : Galleries News articles Front pages Other Giving me a much better understanding of where the bulk of the page views and thus the advertising inventory is generated.

It is not uncommon to see News Media Publishers drive un-segmented page views as one of their primary Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) - And one of the biggest page view drivers for online News Media today are the common use of Galleries (slideshows if you will). I would argue that those additional page views, however massive they are, don’t deliver the same value to the advertiser, as compared to the core product (the news article) - and ultimately isn’t really what the user/reader wants.

I studied the usage patterns of one of the biggest News Media publishers in the US as part of an optimization dialogue and created the following four News Media content segments:

• Galleries
• News articles
• Front pages
• Other

Giving me a much better understanding of where the bulk of the page views and thus the advertising inventory is generated. There is no surprise in the below bar chart that visualize the total number of page views per news media content segment.

Galleries make up for almost 60% of all page views, which is a dramatic number. I believe it is dramatic, because you don’t have to conduct to many studies or interviews, to find that the value of a gallery page view, is probably not the same as news article page view. I was therefore interested in telling a different story with the same data.

I summed up the total time spent on each of the content segments using a simple time spent metric. Whether you believe that total time spent on news media content segments is identical to reader attention, probably doesn’t matter too much, as I am sure you would agree that, if not, it is at least a decent proxy metric.

There might be a positive surprise in the below visualization, which quite clearly shows that galleries might have the most page views in total, but that the core news media article product (and the front page it is promoted on) is where the reader spend most his time, and I would argue his attention.

It is therefore somewhat sad to see quality news articles getting thrown into ad exchanges and sold alongside galleries. I was therefore positively surprised and happy to see that Nick Denton and his Gawker Media announce their move away from measuring success on page-views. Starting 2010 they will measure and compensate success on Unique visitors. I’m no direct fan of one metric over the other and am not sure gawker has the ability to accurately calculate a true unique visitor. I am however a fan of not valuing every page view the same, simply because, any decent publisher knows how to increase page views without adding any real value to their publication (yes, I am talking about galleries).

- OR as Nick said it “An item which gets picked up and draws in new visitors is worth more than a catnip slideshow that our existing readers can’t help but click upon.”

There is some really good commentary on the subject on The Nieman Journalism Lab’s website as well.

Cheers
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

The rest is here: 
News Media that use Galleries to increase Page-views don’t increase Time-spent (Attention)

Popularity: 24% [?]

I was at the l atest SEMPO meetup Thursday night at Razorfish - SEMPO NY Presents: The Great Conversion, which had a ninja panel consisting of: Dennis Mortensen , Entrepreneur, Author and Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! Ben Seslija , Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics for Clickable Jorie Waterman ,  SVP, Director of Search of MRM Eli Goodman , Search Evangelist of comScore , Inc. Andy Fisher , VP of Analytics and National Lead, Razorfish I’m recalling the insights I had listening to these 5 ninjas talk about conversion, entirely from memory, for better or worse, as I didn’t take notes, and decided to just take in what was being said, attentively relaxing, so to speak

I was at the latest SEMPO meetup Thursday night at Razorfish - SEMPO NY Presents: The Great Conversion, which had a ninja panel consisting of:

Dennis Mortensen, Entrepreneur, Author and Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!

Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics for Clickable

Jorie Waterman,  SVP, Director of Search of MRM

Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist of comScore, Inc.

Andy Fisher, VP of Analytics and National Lead, Razorfish

I’m recalling the insights I had listening to these 5 ninjas talk about conversion, entirely from memory, for better or worse, as I didn’t take notes, and decided to just take in what was being said, attentively relaxing, so to speak.

On what to measure for Conversions:

Dennis Mortensen mentioned pre-click data was desirable to track and it’s becoming more possible to do so – most data in site analytics is post-click data which doesn’t reflect search query behavior and lead up to the click on a ad or search result.   Jory Waterman mentioned tracking the entire history of a search funnel is important and that current analytics don’t always capture that (going along with what Dennis said).

Meanwhile, Andy Fisher mentioned that what goes on in Razorfish is no secret – but that his goal, and the goal of his company, is to find information that will allow his clients to succeed, crucial data that drives conversions – the type the client wants – and cited an example of PPC data for cheap auto loans (or something like that) and how the wrongly worded ads would draw people to click on it who don’t have the right credit history, and should not be getting a loan, but who also spend the advertisers dollars, clicking the ad. Razorfish has figured out, so Andy claims, smart ways to save their clients money by doing superior research.   Eli Goodman mentioned the case studies that Comscore freely provide and how their panel data has been successfully used to predict search behavior in the past, and how it’s improving (he said more, but I can’t remember what that was).

Finally, Ben Seslija mentioned the vast difference between pre-click data and post-click data and that, up till now, all of our analysis has been based on what happens after the click, but that, with the layering of third party ad data, and some very smart thinking and analysis – you can do some amazing stuff (again, I don’t recall all that Ben said, but this was the gist of it).

On what is coming up in Conversion tracking in 2010

Dennis Mortensen said that he is now convinced in 2010 Yahoo! Analytics and other analytics platforms will be able to do deeper analysis of search behavior by adding pre-click data to the mix.   He also commented on Google Analytics new offerings announced at Emetrics earlier this week and mentioned that, for all the hoopla, most of those features were already available in Yahoo! Analytics and other vendors for some time.   However, Dennis did mentioned that some of the advanced analysis that Google is doing with the data, which is still basic, has promise, and is probably the most significant enhancement they provided this week (telling a customer what data they should pay attention to that was being tracked, but not highlighted anywhere in the Analytics, previously).

Andy Fisher of Razorfish mentioned that he was excited on the rise of the Ad-Exchanges and the “Futures Exchange” of cookie data that is being brokered by various player in that “market” and how Razorfish is playing in that field and experimenting with, as I call it, “cookie arbitrage“ or, for a better name, call it “online lead scoring” for their clients (buy the cookie value of a visitor for cheaper and resell it to a retailer later -etc).

I had heard a bit about this kind of “Futures Market” on visitor data and online “Lead Scoring”  at Leadscon East, in August, in a very interesting session about Achieving Breakthrough Results via understanding and leveraging  the Advertising Exchanges

Achieving Breakthrough Results

Internet advertising presents a truly accountable medium for the deployment of advertising dollars. In times good and bad, but especially in the more challenge economic environments, those spending money want to know they are getting the most out of their money. This applies for both those whose objectives focus on branding and those with a more specific performance objective such as a sale or a lead. Learn how you can make your dollars go further and get the results you deserve.
Presenter: Murthy Nukala, Founder & CEO, Adchemy
Moderator: Rob Leathern, Chief Executive Officer, CPM Advisors, Inc.
Panelists: Alan Edgett, Sr. Director, Digital Media Strategy & Innovation, Experian Consumer Direct
Paul McLenaghan, Vice President, Interactive Markets, TARGUSinfo
Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google

While the particular approach Nukula’s company, www.Adchemy.com, focuses on providing, as I understand it, the pCTR estimation …. (Adchemy.com does far more than this – but most of their documentation is behind a firewall and isn’t online where it can be freely seen – nor is the presentation and Leadscon East, which i quote, though I did try to find it online)

……estimating the likelihood that a given user will click on a particular ad from a certain advertiser. In the search world, this problem is called “pCTR estimation,” for probability of click-through rate. The ranking algorithms for search advertising, Mr. Nukala explained, incorporate not only the price per click an advertiser is willing the pay, but also the estimated click-through rate (calculated by applying clever algorithms and machine learning to vast quantities of query data).“It is well understood,” Mr Nukala said, “that as pCTR estimates improve, the quality of ranking is better, which leads to higher revenue per search.”

It is also important to understand, he added, that the click-through estimates do not improve merely proportionately as search traffic increases but by something more like an exponential multiplier. Presumably, that is the sort of thing Mr. Ballmer had in mind when he said “scale drives knowledge.”

So, one of the areas of Analytics Conversion, again, one that Razorfish is playing in, certainly in 2010, is, essentially, the best way I can put it is … Online Lead Scoring and Online Lead Arbitrage, with an intricate Futures Market, to boot - and all of that is “pre-click” and based on previous behavior, cookie values stored across a network – suggests … Wall Street.

So, is 2010 and beyond when we get Arbitrage of our clickstream … and will that produce a economic rise and crash the same way the Wizards of Wall Street did with “hedged” bets on each other’s success and failure?   Probably not, since the Futures market for Online Lead Arbitrage is really brokering “attention” and “access to better deals” for better “cookie values”, so to speak … but in another way, the buying and selling of “clickstream data” and the decisions based on it – are, on the face of it, disconcerting - and perhaps, suggesting a need for regulation that is entirely absent right now – so I see, a red flag here.

Moreover, this level of decision making is having in a hundredth of a second – across many servers, with little or any accountability,  and few people outside of insider geniuses like Murthy Nukala, who fully understand what those decision are based on – while exciting, for a profitability standpont, bring up some ethical questions – one’s that I’m undecided about.  I will say that I am troubled about it, but i’m not sure it’s illegal or even unethical – but I feel something in me that believes it’s ….. wrong, but I haven’t actually figured out the reason why, for sure.

If, in 2010, site analytics, in some form, begins to incorporate some form of online lead scoring, or at least, with this form of decision making, may eventually lead to a two or three tiered web – where the best offers and best values are presented only to those who have the “best cookie value” based on an “unregulated exchange” .   In fact, this may already be happening, now – and we’re just not seeing it for what it is.

I don’t like it.   We’re having enough problems with Google’s “unregulated” control of search results now, organic mainly, and paid, as well – I have spoken out about this before in a post last year titled The Google Economy -and while Google will eventually tell publishers what they actually making off of the ads, they haven’t as yet ……. but Google is also running an “arbitrage” in both paid and organic results (I suspect, organic as well – the paid part is well known) and they’re unregulated.  Here’s what I wrote about last year in response to Google’s almost always stellar financial results:

…All Google needs to do at any point, is manipulate the dials to pay out to publishers more or less, as they need to, to make whatever Quarterly Goal they want.

In other words, Google has total control over it’s own Economy -Google is it’s own Economy - and it can alter the payout on advertising to publishers in any way it feels like – without anyone ever knowing how much they actually made, and it can alter its PPC Ads to be easier or harder to click on, as it wants - all which end up controlling how much money it makes and how much money it reports.

Google is the ultimate “rigged” system - as much as I love wearing Google T-Shirts and Swag – as great as their products are – their 3Q08 results each quarter are as “unnatural” as George W. Bush’s winning the Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004 - especially 2004 (Neocons are trying to do it again in 2008, but having a much harder time of it).

In fact, Google can almost, almost make as much money as it wants to make…. as long as people use Google to publish PPC Ads of any variety, and people click on them ….. Google will be profitable. How profitable?

Without getting fixated on this rant about “lead arbitrage” and “cookie arbitrage” – I just don’t feel the mechanics are well understood, by enough people to provide any kind of “peer review” of it (except the insider industry of “leads selling”) or should I all it “Leads Con” that it should be become more pervasive in 2010 – but it appears that – yes, this is where it’s going, as far as I can tell, based on what I heard.

The last speaker I recall a lot about, Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics for Clickable, had some very interesting insights about combining Nielsen and Comscore data for better online advertising results (300% – 400% lift) – he cited using Nielsen to find out the ad copy running in Subway and Bus in Chicago and then aligning online ad copy, and query data pulled from ComScore’s QSearch, to make the same copy that is appearing to an offline viewer match the online message.

This brings up an interesting point – sometimes we make decisions based on being comfortable with the message – and while that’s not the only reason we make a decision to buy something, or do something, we are, at our hearts, still influenced by superstition and the idea an advertiser engages and cares about us – and one way that is now manifested, I feel, is through a better alignment of offline and online messaging.

I think this “alignment” of messaging works now so well because so few can do it well, take the time and buy and “marshall” their resources to produce a coordinated effect – but ….. were everyone to do this say….by 2015, we’d become much more immune to that kind of “persuasion” – and simply running the campaign with the right taglines, and making that campaign consistent, and complementary, across all media, will become a given in the future.  While it works well now,and for the next few years – 10 years from now, this approach will not work as well…that’s my guess.

I also want to add that Jorie Waterman,  SVP, Director of Search of MRM, did mention the understanding and targeting of ads and tactics for each stage of the funnel a searcher is at (along with the locations they are searching at) is crucial in getting the best results, and that’s what she’s working for an hoping for more of in 2010.

Read the original:
Great Insights about “cookie arbitrage” and Analytics 2010 at SEMPO NY Presents: The Great Conversion

Popularity: 17% [?]

I’m at Clickable’s Interesting Cafe tonight to hear Fred Wilson speak about what makes the NewYork Venture Capital Startup scene special. The presentation is up at AVC blog. New York is a great place to do a startup, and the genesis came from a talk he did at Web 2.0 last year

I’m at Clickable’s Interesting Cafe tonight to hear Fred Wilson speak about what makes the NewYork Venture Capital Startup scene special.

The presentation is up at AVC blog.

New York is a great place to do a startup, and the genesis came from a talk he did at Web 2.0 last year.

New York has 150 Technology startups vs. 336 in Silicon Valley this year. Why?

– Diversity of Industry (different ideas)
– NYC is Application Focused
– NYC is media obsessed (access to media)
– NYC is creative minded (and artists interact)
– entrepreneurs abound here
– Life style is more social, walk alot, and easier than many other places.
– Density
– International Trade Hub (non stop flight)
– People want to come here, NYC is the Mecca for many
– commercial mindset
– Immigrants
– world’s biggest stage

New York school of web design – where are we leading the way?

– Commence
– Job Search
– Advertising Tech
– SEO/SEM
– Meetup – get people off the web
– Publishing 2.0 with HuffPo and Gawker
– Email ( Daily Candy)
– Payments?

People build companies to make money.

Continue the discussion at AVC.

Jack Dorsy, cofounder of Twitter, speaks next. Twitter was founded, in a way, to connect people, off the web.

Next Chris speaks, co founder of Flickr, makes a point we need a critical mass that leads most companies to want to start / build here.

Questions:
A. With all the pressure to produce revenue, will many west coast companies move here? Fred thinks not, but NYC is coming into it’s own.

B. How much has Google done (by having it’s 2nd largest office here) to change perception that NYC is a great place to build a large business.

My take is this is the best Clickable Cafe yet and, packed.

An interesting point came up with New York’s lack of talent in Product Management. Fred Wilson said VC’s look for Product Development first, in the founder’s of the companies they invest in.

Originally posted here:
Fred Wilson @ Clickable Interesting Cafe

Popularity: 13% [?]

Been seeing a trend this week that forces are turning against Google , or at least, acknowledging that Google has become too powerful (strange, I’ll be at Google NYC next Thursday for SEMPO NY @ Google: Data Stories , an event I helped create, along with Sara Holoubek ) with Andy Beal ’s post on Government is Going Through the Motions with Google/Apple Antitrust Inquiry and Google: A ‘natural monopoly’?

Been seeing a trend this week that forces are turning against Google, or at least, acknowledging that Google has become too powerful (strange, I’ll be at Google NYC next Thursday for SEMPO NY @ Google: Data Stories , an event I helped create, along with Sara Holoubek ) with Andy Beal’s post on Government is Going Through the Motions with Google/Apple Antitrust Inquiry and Google: A ‘natural monopoly’? - which I thought was a pretty good post because it questioned weather having a monopoly was bad, maybe it’s good, in some cases, according to James B. Stewart’s article in the Wall Street Journal

“Google’s continued gains in market share bear out my contention that Google is that rare breed: the natural monopoly. By natural, I also mean lawful, since the monopoly derives from Google’s skill and qualities inherent in the business, not from anti-competitive behavior.”

Adds Stewart: “I sometimes get the sense that antitrust regulators, in their single-minded zeal to promote competition, ignore the fact that monopolies, in and of themselves, aren’t illegal, or even necessarily bad.”

So go ahead. Call Google a monopoly. But the government hasn’t turned up anything untoward yet. And whatever Google’s doing, it’s making it very hard - for now - for anyone to unseat it from its throne. “

Google countered that it’s not really a monopoly because it has just a small share of the advertising market…

“..Google has been arguing that it isn’t a monopolist because the market is much broader than search, or search advertising. (Pointing to a report by Cowen & Co. that says Google has just 3% of the global advertising market if you count things like billboards and radio, Google says it is only a bit player.)”

But I don’t think the word for Google is monopoly (which if you read past this point, you’ll see that I’m coming to support, but for different reasons than anyone else I know), rather, Google is it’s own “Economy”, self contained -with it’s own ability to regulate it’s prices, not based on competition (because it has no “real” competition in search) but it’s own stock price and quarterly reports - it’s the same kind of stranglehold the United States has with the Dollar in international markets, where most oil money is transferred back to dollars (as best as I understand this - and I’m no banker - thank god for that!).  However, in reporting declines in revenue, bear in mind, Google controls much of even that decline they reported on Thursday in Google Press Day, Live…

…..Cost per click decline: 10Q showed a 14% CPC decline, asked to comment. Eric says they won’t comment much beyond the public statements.

To me, The Google Economy is an argument for regulation - not because Google isn’t better than it’s competitors, it is, it’s more that Google is so good, so big, meaningful competition, which our economics health is based on, can no longer emerge coming of search (organic or marketing).   Right now, any new competitor that had a viable technology would either be stroked into the Google Circle, acquired, or totally ignored.

Google Press Day, Live covered by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch showed more ways that Google is looking to dominate in the future, by …

Monetization of social networks: “we’ve learned a lot about how to monetize this inventory, we believe there are ways to monetize over time but different from search because by nature different from search.” Says they’ve been working on how to serve those ads differently, talks about ads in activity streams.

Google and Twitter: Marissa says lots of interesting things happening. Interesting from a search perspective. Some overlap with google trends. “we’re interested in being able to add microblogging into search, but no specific plans.”

Actually, I figured out what needs to be done - let’s not counter Google, or discourage it, since it actually is better at a lot of things it chooses to go after, lets’ become more like Google.

Here’s what I mean, and I wrote about it in a post I wrote from my iPhone recently on Being Clear

….. It’s almost as if, being present, mindful, alert, yet relaxed, at the very same moment, is that optimal “zone” from which to operate out of.

Steps to reach that place might be different for each person; tried to mentally note what did it for me.

Analytics work can often be full of dry and tedious, diagnostic details and procedures, and I suspect, the very nature of Analytics might interfear with creativity; but in some cases, it enhances it.

Let me put it another way, why does Google excel so much?

Is it just the search algorithm and vision of the founders?   I don’t think so.   I think it has a lot to do with the free time and fun that employees are encouraged to have - their creativity is “harvested” for Google’s benefit and the employees benefit as well- tangibly, every day - not just in stock, but in quality of life.

Right now, most companies work on the Shareholders and Investors benefiting - and Employees are encouraged to own stock - that’s it.  The big cats on top and institutional investors benefit, and the workers just get poorer and poorer.

What Google did,- make working for them fun and rewarding - now people are leaving Google, more and more, to go found their companies, or go work for Facebook or Twitter, the new kids on the block (even there, Google found a way to benefit - see CNet’s  Contrarian Google launches investment fund).

I maintain, we should not bother to compete with Google in their natural monopoly, but instead, learn from Google, and become like them in how Employees are treated.  Like I said earlier, employment needs to move from using the worker (at-hire surf who works their way up the ladder if they’re lucky) to a relaxed, alert worker to finds rewards to work for the company - real rewards, not just a few extra bucks a week - quality of life rewards that lead to ..

…..being present, mindful, alert, yet relaxed, at the very same moment, is that optimal “zone” from which to operate out of.

Read the rest here: 
Google Anti Trust or in Google We Trust?

Popularity: 16% [?]

While attending Search Engine Strategies on Tuesday and Wednesday,  I managed to speak to some people at Facebook and attend a sponsored session at #sesny titled Facebook Workshop: Harnessing the Social Graph Facebook Workshop: Harnessing the Social Graph Are you wondering how to effectively advertise on Facebook? Kasey Galang , Product Marketing Manager and Rebecca Sawyer, Online Sales Operations Manager at Facebook will guide you through the social graph and provide tips and tricks for leveraging and optimizing your advertising on Facebook. Speakers: Kasey Galang , Product Marketing Manager, Facebook Rebecca Sawyer , Online Sales Operations Manager, Facebook Most of the session was basic information about running an ad and answering questions in the audience; some ideas came to me, however.

While attending Search Engine Strategies on Tuesday and Wednesday,  I managed to speak to some people at Facebook and attend a sponsored session at #sesny titled Facebook Workshop: Harnessing the Social Graph

Facebook Workshop: Harnessing the Social Graph
Are you wondering how to effectively advertise on Facebook? Kasey Galang, Product Marketing Manager and Rebecca Sawyer, Online Sales Operations Manager at Facebook will guide you through the social graph and provide tips and tricks for leveraging and optimizing your advertising on Facebook. Speakers:
Kasey Galang, Product Marketing Manager, Facebook
Rebecca Sawyer, Online Sales Operations Manager, Facebook

Most of the session was basic information about running an ad and answering questions in the audience; some ideas came to me, however.

One of the questions focused on the targeting - it’s geographic or keyword based, but I noted it wasn’t action based (ie: without declaring my interests or tastes - Facebook could collect enough information to figure out what I like, or don’t like, just by what I click on and what I post about).

It also occurred to me Facebook has something Google doesn’t - they focus on people who aren’t searching - they’re just on Facebook having a good time.  So much has been put in by Google, in particular, into figuring out what the Search Query means to the Searcher  and Serving Content and Advertising, that pre-intent activity is barely considered.

And even if Google tried to gather information about people logged into their Google Accounts in the way Facebook collects data from Facebook Users, they could not gather as much information about the persons likes and dislikes, etc, as they don’t have as rich a profiling system.

After hearing about free $50 coupons for Facebook Ads, I got a few and applied one to my account, so I can play with advertising and see what I learn.

Meanwhile I spoke with some people at Facebook, and while I was doing so, came up with some ideas such as giving us access to our profiles for as long as a year back, and let ups and others perform searches on our own news feeds - which would also run Facebook Ads.

It’s an interesting idea - Facebook would not confirm or deny any of my ideas.

View original here:
Thoughts on Facebook

Popularity: 21% [?]