At the beginning OMMA wondered if a show on Behavioral Targeting made sense, but it turned out there are a set of disciplines, according to Steve Smith , who invited me, and is in the bottom photo. Wish I can stay around longer, but I’m only here for the first hour or so. Jeff Hirsch, CEO of Audience Science ( used to be Revenue Science till a few weeks ago).

At the beginning OMMA wondered if a show on Behavioral Targeting made sense, but it turned out there are a set of disciplines, according to Steve Smith, who invited me, and is in the bottom photo. Wish I can stay around longer, but I’m only here for the first hour or so.

Jeff Hirsch, CEO of Audience Science ( used to be Revenue Science till a few weeks ago).

First, a video about TelePapers back 20 years ago, then fast forwarding to the future, which is today, which has sexy music, but I don’t get all hot over technology, unless the content is there, and often, it’s not.

Jeff Hirsch talks about the value of Behavioral Targeting and strategies built around audiences more than the technology, which it had, up to this point.

The idea of Behavioral Targeting, Internet spend will surpass TV Spend.

And while Search is important, and often the last click before a buy, Behavioral Targeting is examing the entire funnel and, as a matter of fact, Paid Search only accounts for 5% of your online time spent.

Even President Obama realizes the importance of Behavioral Targeting (but he didn’t say how).

NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) and IAB are creating the forum for Behavioral Targeting, but standards haven’t really been set.

At this time there is so much online data available to target on, but….who owns the standards.

However, Jeff Hirsch feels there need to be standards for growth to continue. We have the data we need, right tools, right ads (Yahoo Smart Ads, for example).

It’s felt in 2020 targeted ads will be everywhere.

Question about Search Ads getting over credited due to Push and forever Cookies. Jeff thinks we haven’t gotten close to figure out this issue, it’s very Ad Server related.  Also Jeff was just at the IAB Conference last week and mentioned the issue with Standards came up there as well, as did Sara Lacy at TechCrunch, who was also present - see Online Ads: Even the Evangelists Turning Bearish she writes:

Plenty of attendees at this week’s IAB conference pointed out that problems like reliable audience measurement are no closer to being solved than they were during the industry’s last identity crisis in 2001. Some people argue, it’s gotten worse. There was also plenty of worried chatter that desperate times would lead to desperate measures, causing advertisers to play fast and loose with user privacy in an attempt to make a sale.

Jeff Hirsch thinks we need standards, first, and then, education. I asked a question about using Behavioral Targeting used for other things, like content!

Read more from the original source:
OMMA Behavioral Keynote -Future of Behavioral Targeting

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Haven’t had a lot of time to think about President Elect Obama’s New Economic Plan (see his address below) but it seems to me that it’s the right thing to do.  I would wish for a plan that creates well over 2.5 million jobs -as he’s said, we’ve lost almost that many jobs this year, alone.   We need to create a lot more than 2.5 million jobs - perhaps,  triple that number - but not, all at one time, of course. Thinking back to Paul Krugman ’s remark about being Worried about next year , along with the  U.S

Haven’t had a lot of time to think about President Elect Obama’s New Economic Plan (see his address below) but it seems to me that it’s the right thing to do.  I would wish for a plan that creates well over 2.5 million jobs -as he’s said, we’ve lost almost that many jobs this year, alone.   We need to create a lot more than 2.5 million jobs - perhaps,  triple that number - but not, all at one time, of course.

Thinking back to Paul Krugman’s remark about being Worried about next year, along with the  U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974, (which totally supports his fears) as reported in the New York Times, yesterday along with the  Terrible employment numbers and meshing it with Barack Obama Pledges Public Works on a Vast Scale

Although he put no price tag on it, he said he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which also includes work on schools, sewer systems, mass transit, electric grids, dams and other public utilities. He vowed to upgrade computers in schools, expand broadband Internet access, make government buildings more energy efficient and improve information technology at hospitals and doctors’ offices.

“We need action — and action now,” Mr. Obama, said in an address taped for broadcast Saturday morning on radio and YouTube.

My feeling is this is the time to start measuring the needs of each of those areas, and to the extent we can, to also monitor sectors using tools such as Compete.com (which is doable - they have the technology), HitWise.com, and other such tools, even Google Suggest - to start a discussion on both the size of the changes needed, and the sentiment/reaction to changes being made next year, as they are rolled out.

I already wrote  ideas about the 1 year old Recession and when i think it’ll end -I think 3 stimulus packages will be needed over the next 15 months, perhaps over 2 Trillion dollars would need to be spent over the next two years - and from the sound of it - Obama and a Democratic lead congress will spend it - even knowing that down the line we’ll have to find a way to pay for it - but that is a better alternative than widespread Economic Collapse which is really, the only alternative.

If we don’t do massive, massive stimulus - we won’t reverse the slide - because it’s not just us - the whole world is sliding down with us.   We’re going to have to pull our selves out - but so will everyone else - and we’ll need to work together to do it - and I think we should take an opportunity now to talk about how we’ll measure it - using the tools we now have (Government says one thing - they have their tools - but we now can measure sentitment - reach, frequency - all this stuff is pretty public).

I can see doing posts about it - how’s the President’s Economic plan doing with Schools - and then pulling data out of Compete (just as they will) - to show how sentiment is changing - to show how this stuff is working - or what they need to do to make it better.

Why?  Because hopefully, the Government will be listening - we’re all in this together.

Read the original here: 
Measuring the New Economy

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While walking to work this morning I thought about news of the last day; that we’ve been in a Recession since December 2007 (one year!), that several of my friends have already lost their jobs, that rents and other fixed expenses continue to rise, but income is falling and the economy,as a whole, is moving toward Deflation. My mind races to paint a picture of what we’re likely to see next year and what I came up with, is this. Economy continues to go deeper into recession as Barack Obama takes office in January 2009; the first stimulus package is passed by early Feb and the first money for stimulus flows out of the Tresuary in late April 2009

While walking to work this morning I thought about news of the last day; that we’ve been in a Recession since December 2007 (one year!), that several of my friends have already lost their jobs, that rents and other fixed expenses continue to rise, but income is falling and the economy,as a whole, is moving toward Deflation.

My mind races to paint a picture of what we’re likely to see next year and what I came up with, is this.

Economy continues to go deeper into recession as Barack Obama takes office in January 2009; the first stimulus package is passed by early Feb and the first money for stimulus flows out of the Tresuary in late April 2009. Unfortunately, the stimulus is too late to help the unemployed and nothing much happens.

A second stimulus happens in late 2009, but 2009 is already a wash out, and it’s not till spring of 2010 that employment starts to grow again, and not till 2011, before it recovers to a pre recession level. I think a third stimulus will happen in early 2010, and that will seal the recovery.

In all, about 2 Trillion Dollars will be spent over the next two years, trying to revive the economy, and that had nothing to do with stimulus going on in other countries at the same time.

I expect the usual challenges that everyone is talking about, but the problem is going to be, how to survive through 2010.

And the problem is that there’s going to be a lot of difficulty around “uncertainity” in when the economy will recover.

Maybe, the best thing Obama can do, at this point, for the economy is bring a sense of certainity back to the markets and to provide as many alternative energy jobs as he can create.

Of course, this is all my own views (no one else’s) and I may be all wet.

We’ll see.

Btw, this post was written on my iPhone, expect the usual spelling and grammar errors.

View original post here:
Ideas about the 1 year old Recession and when i think it’ll end

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Now that I’ve had a chance to look at Google Search Wiki, I think it’s a lot of fun and really, the right direction for search to move in, but I noticed some who liked Google better without the personalization such as Andrew Goodman and Michael Arrington .

Now that I’ve had a chance to look at Google Search Wiki, I think it’s a lot of fun and really, the right direction for search to move in, but I noticed some who liked Google better without the personalization such as Andrew Goodman and Michael Arrington.

The main sentiment expressed by both is that Google is not broken, so why fix it?  In Michael Arrington’s own words:

Google says they’ve created a way to customize search results, and share (via the comments). They say they are striving to improve the search experience, and giving people tools to make search even more useful to them in their daily lives.

” … But Google search wasn’t broken. It’s one of the few things on the Internet that isn’t. I love it, as does 62% of everyone on the Internet. This new stuff is a mess of arrows and troll comments and stuff moving around the page. That doesn’t make my search experience more useful. It makes it move to another search engine.”

Now, I’ve looked at TechCrunch’s results in the Google Search Wiki - with all the results shownand right now - there’s not that much interesting - but imagine what you’ll be looking at in a month or two.  Imagine looking at Google to get information and see what other people are saying - and actually learning what people think - stuff you could never get, not like this, ever before.

Goodman, who I’ve met at SES San Jose recently thinks Google ought to turn the whole thing off and turn the clock back:

” …. It may be just a visceral reaction, but I’m with Arrington, who just pleads with Google to just turn this thing off and stop this cult of the amateur world from spilling over from YouTube into the one workable, reliable techno-thing that is for many of us truly sacred.”

On the other hand, John Jantsch seems to have a more open mind while Seth Godin thinks what Google has just done is the most signficant change in Search …. since Search Engine were launched!

“… If you’re a signed in user of Google, you’ll notice the most significant change in search since their launch.

You can now interact with search results, wiki style.

You can vote them up or down and leave comments. And they will be seen by others.

1. This is going to lead to an incredible rush by small businesses and social networkers. They’re going to go crazy trying to game the system.

2. Google is going to find that millions of people pay a lot more attention to their search results (for now).

Interesting to consider what happens after that. How do they handle the deluge? Does democracy matter when it comes to search? How do you filter out the gamed votes?

Also interesting to think about how a tiny change in a beloved interface changes the way you think about and use it.

Ha, ha, ha … Seth worries about Google’s new interface being “gamed” - but isn’t that what we had all along - thousands of people were gaming Google’s results every day -and as time has gone one - it’s gotten harder to plug the holes in Search Engines.   Spam?   Why… Google is trying to filter it out … but much of it is generated because of Google and the way it is - or has been.

Google Search has been broken for quite some time, and many people, including me, complained about the unfairness of Pagerank algorithm and that links are not the endorsement Google has claimed they are.

Besides, the Search Optimization Industry is, more or less, dead, anyway - Google killed it by improving semantic analysis, plugging spam holes, mixing in other types of content and harnessing all the information they’re collecting from Google Analytics, Google ToolBar, and now, the Google Search Wiki.   We can get rid of those things in a site that prevent Google from processing the information, we can increase the usability and we can learn to focus our content to better match what we really want to put forward, but the rest is really being figured out by Google and no deliberate attempt at SEO is needed, most of the time - and that has been Google’s message, all along.

Yep, all along, Google was sending their people to search conferences while they were also telling people to just focus on content and stop trying to deliberately optimize your sites - Google was had become smart enough to figure out your site content for you - and all you had to do was follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and Google would take care of the rest.

In fact, if you tried to hard to optimize your site, and Google saw that, they’d penalize it - which happened to a lot of sites, often unfairly.

Meanwhile, Google’s emphasis on automation ended up becoming a double edged sword - on one hand, automation allows for many of the routine tasks to be done well enough - but when there’s a problem or issue with the search results, it was difficult or almost impossible to talk to anyone at Google - you can submit a request - but you get back no direct response, since you had no idea who, if anyone, was listening, or cared, since most services Google provides are set up to run on automatic pilot (at least, they make is seem that way, even if it isn’t neccesary true).

And the other reason, the main reason why Arrington and Goodman complained about Google Search Wiki is they benefit much more by keeping Google Search as it was - since they know how to benefit and manipulate Google up till now - but would have a much, much harder time manipulating the Search Wiki (though Arrington is far better positioned than most to take advantage of Google’s new “Digg like” interface, and I bet TechCrunch, will.

Still, the new Digg like Search Wiki interface is far more “democratic”, believe it or not - much “fairer” way to rank results than what Google has been running for the last 10 or 11 years.

True, while Google Search worked OK for general types of queries, it’s not too good at specialized and niche types of  information, mainly because the index is too big.  One solution, gave rise to verticals with more qualified pages (i.e: I’m thinking of specific verticals for Medical, Auto, Pharma, Finance, etc).

But something else has been happening - the same thing that brought Barack Obama to the White House as been slowly corroding the quality of Google’s search results - and everyone else’s, more or less - and that was … the Searcher.    The Searcher is growing up. The Bar has been “raised” and search needed to evolve to become more “social” - because there is wisdom in the crowds.

Here’s some obvious observations - searchers are becoming more sophisticated in phasing Search Queries (the average search query  used to be 2 words 10 years ago, now it’s 4 or 5 words), the average searcher is much more sophisticated in knowing what they want and finding a much harder time going through Google’s massive search results index - the problem - now that more and more people are being creators and commentators on content, the original pagerank algorithm, no matter how much Google “improves” it - is not able to deliver helpful search results in the majority of cases, there is simply too much content and it’s too complex for them to know the meaning of it quickly enough or well enough - primarily because what we say and what we write, we often don’t mean - but the Search Engines are not smart enough yet to tell the difference - and it’s simply beyond the ability of any algorythm to figure out what we mean and what we really want.

Google Search Wiki is what I’ve been asking for all along, for Google to experiment with giving the community of searchers the means to decide what they see or don’t see, and in what order - and let others share in that decision.

I like that idea, I think Google ought to go all the way with it and let’s get to a point where the metadata around a search result is far more interesting than the actual search result.

But some have also noted the abuse that can happen, just as Digg was abused by “Digg Gangs”, including Marketing Pilgrim -Google Gets Personal.

However, just because abuse can happen, doesn’t mean it has to happen - Google, as Digg, knows who is voting and what IP Address they’re using - it also drops persistent first party cookies in your browser cache - Google can find ways to detect certain types of undesirable search behaviors and discourage them, as, in a way, they do now, with the various spam filters they’ve set up.

So… I’m not as worried as many seem to be about Google’s new Search Wiki - I say … bring it on - let’s go all the way with this - and look - maybe to help those who can’t handle this change - to have the old version of Google back - but for those, like me, who want it - let’s go full steam ahead.

Yeah, let’s bring it on and do the same thing to Google News and Google Hot Trends - especially Google News - that could be a great way to share information as it’s happening.  Yes, Google - this is an innovation of yours I’ve been asking for a long time  - and now you’ve introduced it - let’s quickly move forward and add it into Google News.

By the way, one more interesting observation, Google has now moved the “Seat” of commenting - away from the Website (the actual sites in Search Results) and onto Google, itself!

There’s a whole new industry that can be “farmed” by harvesting the information that people are putting onto Google - a new class of ranking tools and comment extraction tools could and should be developed, once this new change in Google has been more fully “absorbed”.

You must realize, that up till now, most comments you got about a site - were either on the site in question, or in some message board or blog - but now ….. now …… it’s in the Search Results.  Wow!

Enough for one post - now, I’ll go back and play with my search results - maybe I’ll learn something from them, finally!

See the rest here:
I’m liking the Google Search Wiki though some others, don’t

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