E-Mail Marketers Get in the Spirit

NOVEMBER 26, 2008

Working to break through malaise and get consumers to shop

Marketers have stepped up their holiday e-mail blitzes with steep discounts and subject-line countdowns such as “5 Days Left to Save Up to 75%,” deadlines like “Buy 1 $50 Item By Dec. 5 And Get Another Free” and “Free Shipping When You Order By Dec. 21.”

Marketers can use e-mail to create a sense of urgency in the last six weeks of the year, according to Huw Griffiths, director of marketing for e-mail marketing software company Campaigner. Mr. Griffiths said e-mail marketers should pay special attention to messaging and be crystal clear about shipping dates, return policies and fees.

Mr. Griffiths also said marketers should think about how consumers view e-mail messages, in HTML or text, and should always test before sending.

“Testing e-mail is one of the most critical things that retailers can do,” he said. “It could be just two words that are different in the subject line. Set up a small subscriber base and test different things like subject lines and calls to action, then compare the two.”

That might seem like obvious advice, but it often goes unheeded. More than one-half of US online retailers surveyed in September 2008 by Knowledge Marketing for Internet Retailer said they did not test their e-mail subject lines.

Kohl’s announced it will start dangling 25 “deals” before Christmas online and in stores. Consumers will opt in for e-mail alerts for the deal of the day and can have them delivered by desktop widget. Similarly, Wal-Mart is sending text message alerts with holiday promotions to an opt-in list. And Sugar, an online publisher of lifestyle content for women, introduced a personalized e-mail service about sales on apparel and home goods.

The year-end e-mail push is something of a last hurrah, as e-mail marketing spending growth is set to drop to 3.5% in 2009, down from 11.3% in 2008.

The slip in e-mail ad spending represents growth at a time when most traditional media ad spending is shrinking, but is still a shift from the double-digit boom of the past few years.

The Future of Online Video Looks Bright - eMarketer

The Future of Online Video Looks Bright - eMarketer: "The Future of Online Video Looks Bright

The Future of Online Video Looks Bright

NOVEMBER 26, 2008

Smaller screens, bigger opportunities

To appreciate how far online video has come, consider a few contrasts between the 2008 and 2004 elections.

In the 2008 campaign season, primary debates were co-sponsored by YouTube, and questions from the public were submitted through the pioneering video-sharing site.

In 2004, YouTube did not exist.

According to Visible Measures, in 2008, footage of Sen. Obama’s election night victory speech received 500 unique online placements within 36 hours. That encompassed unique video clips, as opposed to multiple embeds of the same clip. Further, videos of the speech were viewed more than 6.8 million times in the first 36 hours (not including live streams or feeds from broadcast sites other than NBC.com).

In 2004, the online video infrastructure could not have supported anywhere near that level of viral syndication.

A huge video market is developing online.

eMarketer projects that the US online video audience will grow to 190 million people by 2012—that will be 88% of the Internet user population.

“After some false starts with ill-fated transactional experiments, online video content owners and distributors are pursuing a strategy that closely follows the standard TV business model,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Video Content: Harnessing a Mass Audience. “The bulk of online video programming is now supported by advertising, with ad formats ranging from in-stream ads—prerolls, midrolls and postrolls—to in-text and in-banner ads.”

Although many consumers are loath to sit through ads when watching online video, they seem even less willing to pay directly for content.

According to a study by The Diffusion Group (TDG), as ad-supported video grows the balance of the inventory will tilt toward longer-form content.

TDG analysts projected that in 2013, long-form video will represent 69.4% of ad revenues, up from 41.6% in 2008. Alternately, in the same timeframe, the share of short-form video will decline from 54.8% to 28.7%.

Of course, viewing online content on a television is still unwieldy, costly or both.

“Cable and satellite providers, ISPs, TV manufacturers and developers of set-top hardware have yet to come up with compelling solutions,” says Mr. Verna. “However, once this domino falls—and it is almost inevitable that it will—online video will take a major leap into an interconnected future.”

iMedia Connection: Email marketing's 8 deadly don'ts

iMedia Connection: Email marketing's 8 deadly don'ts

Introduction

I have a confession to make: I love Christmas. I love everything about it, from the music, to the lights, to the general good cheer emanating from everyone you meet. And, of course, the gift giving. On the other hand, I follow very strict rules with regard to the Christmas season, with the most important one being don't start too early. I won't listen to a carol, put up a light or do any serious shopping until after Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, anything goes.

The holiday season is also a very busy time for email marketers, but the last approach you want to take with your holiday email campaigns is "anything goes." So, as the 2008 holiday seasons begins to move into high gear, I've assembled a list of things you need to remember with regard to your email marketing program. You need to approach the kick-off of your holiday email efforts with the same discipline with which I approach my personal kick-off to the season -- even if you've already begun your holiday mailing. And although I'm offering up this list of email don'ts as a holiday reminder, these are ideas you can use the entire year -- it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Next page »

Economy Deals Online Ad Spending a Hit

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

Digital still stronger than traditional

There seems to be more bad news about the economy every day, and falling ad spending numbers are part of the mix. Although online advertising is still on a positive growth curve, that growth is slowing and will dip into the single digits for the first time in 2009.

eMarketer’s revised projection, benchmarked against the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, puts online ad spending at $25.7 billion in 2009. That is only 8.9% over the $23.6 billion that will be spent in 2008.

In August, before the full impact of the economic slowdown was revealed, eMarketer predicted online ad spending would grow 14.5% in 2009.

Not only is the new projection lower, but recovery is expected to take longer. In 2010, online ad spending growth will return (barely) into the double digits at 10.9%, and in 2013 it will only hit 13.5%.

Even paid search, which has grown at an outsize pace for years, will see a mere 21.4% rise in spending this year.

Again, the slowing is relative, since paid search spending growth will still outstrip the overall online market through 2009. There’s a reason paid search will stay robust through the economic downturn, according to David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

“Especially in economic turmoil, search is more trackable than any other ad format,” said Mr. Hallerman. “At this stage, it is a tried-and-true format that is supporting online growth.”

What the Semantic Web -- or Web 3.0 -- Can Do for Marketers Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance

What the Semantic Web -- or Web 3.0 -- Can Do for Marketers
Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance

Posted by Marta Strickland on 11.24.08 @ 03:16 PM
Marta Strickland
Marta Strickland
It's been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a "semantic web," in which all web data -- and the meaning of that data -- could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.
Recently, however, the semantic web has been enjoying a commercial revival of sorts and is often referred to by the new buzzword "Web 3.0." Given how insane the pace of life is these days, I thought I'd offer a few thoughts on what I've been learning about it.
Since I can already feel the rising tide of negative comments as that version number graces the screen, bear with me for a second. Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 -- others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.
But Web 3.0 is not just about improving the consumer experience. And it isn't some industry ploy to sell you more services. The next-generation web -- the semantic web -- aims to solve some of today's biggest problems in marketing.
So what is it? Well, semantics refers to the meaning behind data. Right now, computers are good at sending data back and forth but not great at discerning the meaning of that data. Semantic web aims to change that. Perhaps it's best explained in describing what marketers can hope to gain from it.
Improving Ads
Has your contextual advertising turned into a contextual nightmare? Current contextual advertising depends heavily on keywords. Sure, it seems safe to buy a word like "feet" -- until your ad comes up right next to a story about severed feet. What if there were a technology that could analyze what is really being said on the page?
By using natural language processing and artificial intelligence, semantic advertising solutions, like Peer39, can look at the structure of a sentence and interpret word meaning and sentiment. Semantic text analysis relies on synonyms and relationships between concepts, rather than rudimentary keyword scanning. Identifying sentiment is becoming invaluable for advertising on user-generated sites such as blogs, where you wouldn't want to place ads on a negative post.
Online advertising has another obstacle to overcome: information overload. We live in a world where information evolves at an alarming rate and, let's face it, consumers trust each other far more than they trust advertising messaging. So how do we dynamically pull smarter and more relevant content into ads?
That's where the efforts like Dapper MashupAds come into play. In addition to pulling from a brand site database, the dynamically generated ads can scan social content sites like Yelp and Flickr for the newest (positive) reviews and photos of your restaurant. It's the power of your brand message only promoted by your consumers.
Improving Measurement
One of the toughest marketing challenges of recent times has been in measuring the success of social media. How do you measure the success of a human conversation? We can measure reach (visits, views, clicks, downloads). We can also measure exposure or buzz (what people are saying about our brand). But it's inside those walled gardens that everything interesting is happening: How strong is the community? Are members active? Are we changing their minds? Changing their actions?
It's the tough nut of the new marketing conversation, but Web 3.0 might be the key to cracking it.
Semantic technology is able to pull together connections between words and phrases. How often is concept "X" said in the same breath as concept "Y"? Measurement tools will be moving away from the tag cloud, and we'll be able to immerse ourselves in the trends of the real conversation, not just the keyword of the day.
Next, there is the dilemma of message velocity; i.e., how far is my message traveling and how fast? Sure, that's an easy thing to do when you are measuring a viral video or widget but what about a conversation? Semantic technology builds on meaning, not keywords. And so it doesn't matter if your followers say, "The new Batman movie is going to be awesome" or "You have to see the 'Dark Knight' trailer"; semantic buzz tools will tie the conversation together.
Sentiment analysis is an increasingly popular tool in the marketer toolbox. And its next generation will look at the entirety of a comment or an article, from whom it came and to whom it was directed. It will use natural language processing and analysis of meaningful relationships to distinguish the "good" comments from "bad."
And what about building a community of loyal enthusiasts? What about creating a relationship with your customers? Companies like Chat Mine measure the connections between members of the community and between people and concepts. By looking at both friending and popular dialogue, it can tell you if your brand brought a community together in passionate conversation.
When O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0, the marketing world divided into skeptics and enthusiasts. And a wave of start-ups began rolling out under the 2.0 moniker. It's only wise to fear the same for semantic web or Web 3.0. As nightmares of books and white papers race through your mind, it's important to separate the reality from the hype.
The successful technologist won't approach the marketer with buzzwords. He won't throw out phrases like "dynamic ontologies" or "semantic triples." Because good semantic technology is like movie editing -- you aren't supposed to notice it's there but it fundamentally changes the experience. So when someone approaches you about a "smarter" semantic solution, make sure they can answer this:
How will this make my ads more relevant and my metrics more meaningful?
~~~
Marta Strickland is manager of social-media strategy at Organic, Detroit, where she defines best practices on emerging technology trends and discovers new ways to use social media to connect with consumers for brands including Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Bank of America and Geek Squad. She voices her mind and evangelizes the power of social media as editor in chief of the Organic blog ThreeMinds. Prior to Organic, she was interactive strategist for Q LTD, a strategic design consultancy in Ann Arbor, Mich.
2 Comments
So, Organic is using the semantic web to help sell more cars for Chrysler? Might want to consider another approach. - Bucky Lasek | New York, NY
The whole concept of contextually appropriate advertising is a welcome relief. I'm currently serving a software development company that specializes in Agile software development. Think of all the trouble we can get in to with contextually inappropriate search results about how agile people can be!
Jay Aho is Chief Executive of Gen18, a Sales, Marketing and PR Consultancy in Detroit Michigan. Jay can be reached at www.gen18.com or followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jayaho. - Jay Aho | Detroit, MI

Twitter, Facebook Fizzle Acquisition Talks - MarketingVOX

Twitter, Facebook Fizzle Acquisition Talks - MarketingVOX: "ts infrastructure."

Houston, we're uncomfortable.

Facebook and Twitter have shuttered "several weeks of serious talks" in which Facebook tried buying the microblogging service for $500 million worth of its own stock.

The news was broken by Kara Swisher of All Things Digital. Rumors of Facebook's interest in Twitter first surfaced at the Web 2.0 Summit several weeks ago.

While the idea was dismissed by speculators at the time, it turns out Twitter and Facebook execs were just wrapping up discussions of a potential buyout. Talks were reportedly initiated by Facebook in mid-October.

According to Swisher, discussions dissolved after concerns about integration and related costs were left without a resolution. Twitter was also skeptical about the actual value of $500 million of Facebook stock, pointing to the social network's $5 billion valuation — which would value the offer at $150 million, decidedly too low — and demanding cash in lieu of stock.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed reports that Facebook is strapped for cash and may require VC funding. The company lost a co-founder in October — the type of news that always sparks speculation about the prospects of a once-promising startup.

Meanwhile, Twitter oscillates between traffic growth and financial stagnation. It racked up 343% in year-over-year audience growth, making it one of the fastest-growing social networks online.

But despite its popularity with both high-profile influencers and brands, the site has failed to monetize its business model. Last week it began toying with the idea of charging companies that use it for customer feedback or troubleshooting.

Twitter lost its chief architect, Blaine Cook, in late April. In June, Amazon's Jeff Bezos infused the site with much-needed cash to update its infrastructure.

How-To: Using Social Media Strategically (Pt I) - MarketingVOX

How-To: Using Social Media Strategically (Pt I) - MarketingVOX

How-To: Using Social Media Strategically (Pt I)

VS Pink rocks Facebook well

This how-to was syndicated from a four-part series on social media created by Leigh Householder. Read more about her at the conclusion of the article.

Years ago, when we were first talking about social media, it was Friendster and blogs and not much else. People asked, is it really worth investing in? Or is this just something for early adopters? The province of geeks?

But somehow — while we were all busy finishing college or growing our business — the world's most social people took over the Web and made it their own.

The numbers are now not only compelling, they’re trending toward the ubiquitous:

• 86 million Americans use the social Web
• Including 75% of college students
• And 60% of wealthy adults

The problem now isn't whether it's worth it — it's that it's so overwhelming, it can seem impenetrable. Natives bounce from one social activity to another: navigating, publishing, connecting. All second nature.

What follows is a two-part series on using social media to spread your brand message. We'll cover what social media is, and how companies are using it.

What is social media?

As a trend, it's how people use decentralized, people-based networks to get the things they need from one another rather than from traditional institutions, like business or media.

As technology, it's just the tools and services that power those networks. Generally free- or low-cost platforms that can be customized for each person who uses them. To match the examples above, it could be eBay, wikis or blogs.

Seems like a lot, right? You could be customizing a Dogster page to pimp your favorite pooch OR co-building a new internet browser with a few hundred like minds and still comfortably be in the category of social media.

Even given these vast differences in mission, the ways people use social media fall into three basic categories:

Create: Someone once famously asked if social media allows more amateurs to act like professionals OR if it really just gives us ACCESS to more true professionals. Whether it's writing a blog about knitting, creating the next great viral video or building a virtual world, social media meets the human desire to create things – things that will be saved, read and – if we’re lucky – remembered.

Recommend: Where once we trusted the opinion of 4 out of 5 dentists, today we want the opinions of their patients. Social media has elevated both the value of individual reviews and recommendations and the ability of networks of people to elevate the very best content or ideas with little more than the vote of their mouse.

Interact: People to people. Asking questions, hanging out, trading stuff. Interacting. It's the foundation of social media. And, often, just the best thing about it.

How Companies Are Using Social Media

CNET recently reported that 75% of Fortune 1000 companies will launch a social media campaign this year. 50% of those campaigns are expected to fail.

To stay in the right 50% of those campaigns, marketers, customer service advocates and brand czars follow one of four proven models:

#1: Let customers or employees support each other. Build a central hub where they can ask questions, collect ideas and celebrate the brand.

Pros to this method:

• Very authentic way to use the social Web
• Inexpensive to operate AND can reduce customer service/HR costs

Cons:

• Takes a lot of work to seed and build
• The crowd CAN turn on you if support or product development are unresponsive

Make sure you:

• Set expectations: What does success look like?

An example: Blue Shirt Nation

Best Buy's Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt had a fundamentally simple idea: Use technology to enable employees to talk to and help each other.

In their quest, they developed Blue Shirt Nation: an internal communications platform that generates thousands of conversations across the company. The result: more information, more issues, more solutions, more ideas, more impact — and a corporate culture that is beginning to appreciate that buy-in brings out the best in employees.

#2 Activate ambassadors

Some brands have a leg up in social media. Their fans already consider them a part of their personal identities. Think sports fans wearing the team jersey. Google employees who just can't stop blogging about how great their home base is. Proud graduates of well-known colleges proselytizing their campus experience.

For these lucky brands, the best course is simply to motivate fans to bring the brand social by giving them the right tools, soap boxes or, heck, bling.

Pros:

• Builds relationships with your best customers
• Gets real people talking 1:1

Cons:

• Scale is limited to your biggest fans and their personal networks
• More difficult to listen to the conversation about your brand because it is widely dispersed

Make sure you:

• Encourage fans to be transparent about any direct contact they have with you, samples they receive, etc.

An example: Victoria Secret PINK

Most of the top "fan" pages on Facebook are bands and celebrities – not your typical consumer brands.

But #8 is a brand you’ve probably seen a lot of if you spend any time around teenage girls: Victoria Secret Pink.

A quintessential passion brand, the girls wear it, talk about it, are fiercely loyal to it. So it's no surprise that over half a million of them have linked to it from their own Facebook pages and thousands are talking directly to it online.

—

For more examples of how companies are using social media, and to find out how best to use it yourself, tune in for next week's MarketingVOX How-To.

Leigh Householder is Associate Strategy Director at Ologie. She helps clients tell clear, compelling stories that resonate in both traditional and conversational media.

Leigh is also the author of Advergirl.com, an AdAge Power 150 blog. In addition to blogging, she uses social media – such as Twitter, Facebook and wikis – to interact with friends and colleagues, spot emerging trends and facilitate better work processes and outcomes.

Wordpress Affiliate Datafeeds Made Easy with Datafeedr - 5 Star Affiliate Blogs

Wordpress Affiliate Datafeeds Made Easy with Datafeedr - 5 Star Affiliate Blogs: "5 Star Affiliate Programs Blog
Wordpress Affiliate Datafeeds Made Easy with Datafeedr



Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 8:38am by Linda Buquet

affiliate toolsDatafeeds are an important tool for building affiliate stores but for many affiliates it’s just too much of a technical challenge to convert raw datafeeds into their sites.

Datafeedr is a powerful push-button store creation system that makes it fast and easy for affiliates to set up, manage and update a complete affiliate store WITHOUT touching any techy datafeed files, without having to learn a programming language or hire a programmer.

I’ve been wanting to blog about Datafeedr, but Ros did such a good overview I thought I’d just link to her blog and have her tell you all about it."

Innovation Interactive acquires Netmining NV - DMNews

Innovation Interactive acquires Netmining NV - DMNews: "Innovation Interactive acquires Netmining NV

Innovation Interactive acquires Netmining NV

Mary Elizabeth Hurn

November 11, 2008

Print Email Reprint Font Size: A | A | A

Innovative Interactive, the parent company of 360i and SearchIgnite, has acquired Netmining NV, a provider of landing page and on-site behavioral optimization technology.

The technology, which allows companies to highlight different products on its site based on a consumer's real-time browsing behavior, previous browsing history or buying propensity, will be integrated into the SearchIgnite search optimization platform in the first quarter of 2009.

“We think the combination of optimized search marketing with optimized site marketing is a really powerful opportunity,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of Innovation Interactive. “With the current economic downturn, solutions like this that drive ROI are going to be needed for customers like those in our retail group as well as other sectors.”

The company will now offer Netmining's technology to all of its clients which include NBC Universal, JCPenney, Office Depot and Borders.

“For example [on a retail site] if a user is interested in shoes and stays on those items for a long period of time, they may view many pages,” Margiloff said. “If they came back at later date the retailer could customize the home page to offer up shoe-related content to try and personalize it more than if they had no understanding of the consumer's previous behavior.”

Based in Brussels, Netmining currently provides technology for GM, BMW, Sun Microsystems, Audi and UPC.

Margiloff hopes this move will increase Innovative Interaction's clients' presence in Europe.

“This is a great technology to bring to the US but [Netmining] has incredible customer relationships in Europe that will allow us to bring technology and agency solutions there over time,” Margiloff said.

Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency | Blog | design mind

Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency | Blog | design mind: "Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency
By Tim Leberecht - November 16, 2008

Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency

Now that Barack Obama has appointed YouTube as his “Secretary of Video,” as CNET comments, it raises the question what does Generation O’s new transparency mean for businesses?

At first sight, well, it means danger. The airlines British Airways (BA) and Virgin Atlantic recently experienced that first hand. The Economist reports that several crew members were fired after making derogatory comments on the airlines’ Facebook forums about safety standards and passengers. The staff gushed about cockroaches on board the planes and shared other juicy details that -- if true -- were less than flattering for their employers. Public relations experts such as Aedhmar Hynes from Text 100 were quick to point out (in the Economist article) that online transparency can only be as radical as its regulation is regimented and that employee empowerment needs to go hand in hand with employee education.

Yet Hymes’ recommendation sounds like radical transparency that is not quite so radical, and may run counter to the very notion of transparency. Moderated radical transparency, so to speak, is as oxymoronic as, say, risk-averse hedge funds. So does this episode mark the beginning of the end of radical transparency? Not so fast. It’s all a matter of managing expectations. For starters, it is worth acknowledging that radical transparency can have radical implications. In fact, collateral damage should almost always be assumed; it is part of the game. If you’re not willing to take that risk, don’t take it! But note that in most cases (unless you’re a military defense contractor, the CIA, or another organization that needs to respect strict legal requirements), your customers may then assume you have something to hide. And, if you’re perfectly honest, that’s probably the case, no?

Airlines and other travel industry companies are especially vulnerable when it comes to bad PR because the perception of their service is so critical. Customer expectations are high, and every little interaction -- and there are hundreds of thousands every day -- is closely scrutinized. See Untied, the customer forum for rants about United. Airlines are also impacted by variables that are often beyond their control, at least partly. Remember JetBlue’s winter storm fiasco in 2007? The brouhaha around BA’s and Virgin Atlantic’s Facebook woes does not make for a case against radical transparency; rather it highlights an inconvenient truth: airlines – as well as the majority of service brands – are radically transparent by the very nature of their business.

If flight attendants complain about unpleasant passengers, then it reveals a bigger issue at stake that transcends the sole PR dimension: Radical transparency may bring out the skeletons in your closet. If the bond between your customers and your brand is just a bit flawed, you’re not only facing a PR issue, you’re facing a fundamental issue at the very foundation of your brand promise that can severely threaten your business. Staff members who think not so highly about their customers are the problem, not the fact that they are sharing their opinions on Facebook. BA and Virgin Atlantic did the right thing, and it was not a “fiasco,” as the Economist labeled it, but rather a cleaning of the system. Exposing black sheep among your personnel may hurt in the short term but can serve as a real benefit to your brand in the long term. When your business is in the service industry, those ticking reputation bombs need to be dealt with anyway. Promoting transparency is a valuable concept to preempt them and, well, promote the truth. It will come out anyway, sooner or later. And then radical transparency is not a strategy but the only real option left.

All that being said, reputation protection is only one side of the equation, and it is the defensive one. As much as radical transparency can underscore that you have nothing to hide, it can also highlight that you have a lot to show. In this respect, it presents a huge opportunity for marketers. Dave Balter, founder and CEO of the word-of-mouth marketing firm Bzz Agent, made a compelling case for corporate transparency in a recent interview with the Harvard Business Review: “(…) Companies put rules into place to hide their ideas. They think the rules give them control over people and markets. But that’s totally untrue today. There are so many communication routes that you can’t possibly control the information flowing through them. Furthermore, attempts at secrecy prevent the company from making use of those information flows. You can’t always foresee the benefits of letting ideas out into the world, but they often far outweigh any harm that may result.”

Indeed, in the brave new world of always-on social media, companies may need to share everything about their business, including complaints, profit margins on particular products, and specific corporate strategies. And they may increasingly turn to proprietary channels to do so, bypassing traditional media and becoming media companies themselves. Add to that the fact that customers “own” and manage brands and not companies, and it is time for a fundamentally new concept of “brand presence.” Proactive radical transparency can not only become the mandatory platform for authentic, trust-building interactions with all stakeholders (or “brandholders”) but also open a new avenue for marketers who understand that effective marketing needs to be conversational and open-sourced.

So, here’s an audacious future vision of what radical transparency in corporate communications could look like. Taking social instant messaging one step further than existing formats (such as the micro-blogging service Yammer that applies the Twitter model to the enterprise -- “what are you working on”?), companies could make their live email correspondence public. Let’s call it Reality Email. An open and interactive email feed may propel knowledge-sharing and collaboration but also an ongoing conversation that customers, partners, and media worldwide can join. Remember the “Cluetrain Manifesto”? “Markets are conversations” -- and so are organizations and brands. Reality Email would take this literally literal. Companies “going public” with live-email might create a powerful new marketing broadcasting channel for brand-building in the new age of radical transparency. Does this sound radical? Perhaps. Will it happen? You bet.

Pontiflex™ — The Pontiflex CPL Lead Generation Market - Generate guaranteed returns on online advertising.

Pontiflex™ — The Pontiflex CPL Lead Generation Market - Generate guaranteed returns on online advertising.: "CONNECT ONCE™

The Pontiflex CPL Market — open and transparent lead generation advertising



Pontiflex is the first open and transparent CPL market. With Pontiflex, advertisers pay only for brand-specific leads, instead of clicks and impressions that might never convert.

Advertisers and agencies use Pontiflex AdLeads™ to generate brand-specific marketing leads.

Pontiflex AdLeads is open. Advertisers and publishers can manage all of their campaigns (even those not generated through Pontiflex) for no charge.

Pontiflex AdLeads is transparent. Advertisers can optimize campaigns by mapping leads to their sources and increase returns even further.

Pontiflex AdLeads enables advertisers to centralize and automate every aspect of online advertising:


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ClearForest Gnosis :: Semantic Firefox Add-ons

ClearForest Gnosis :: Firefox Add-ons: "ClearForest Gnosis 1.0.20080623
by Gnosis ClearForest

Smarter browsing and in-depth research with ClearForest Gnosis, leveraging the Open Calais Semantic infrastructure...

Long Description

ClearForest Gnosis is the cutting edge of real time semantic processing for the web. By evaluating the pages you read – as you read them – Gnosis immediately locates key information such as people, organizations, companies, products and geographies hidden within the text.

By simply hovering over any of the identified topics, you can immediately locate relevant news, blog entries, maps, company information and Wikipedia entries.

After you install Gnosis and restart Firefox simply navigate to any site that you are interested in – one of the news sites listed below is a great place to start. Right click and select “ClearForest Gnosis” or click on the Gnosis button in the toolbar. After 1-2 seconds your page has been processed and you’re ready to explore!

Currently, Gnosis automatically processes pages from CNN, Google Finance, Wikipedia, Forbes, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, BBC News and Wikipedia. If you want Gnosis results on any other page – just click the button.

For power users the Gnosis Sidebar provides a constantly updated view of the key information Gnosis has located for you.

Privacy:
Gnosis does not retain any information on the content you submit for processing - including the address of the website submitted. We do maintain normal web server logs including the date and time of the transaction, the length of the content submitted and the submitting IP address.

Visit our Gnosis homepage at gnosis.clearforest.com or drop us a note with feedback and comments to clearforestgnosis@gmail.com.

Semantic Web - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Semantic Web - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.[1][2] It derives from World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.[3]

At its core, the semantic web comprises a set of design principles,[4] collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that are yet to be implemented or realized.[2] Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications.[5] Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), all of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain."

ClearForest Semantic Solutions for a Content Rich World

ClearForest SWS » About: "A brief note to introduce the beta of ClearForest Semantic Web Services (SWS-1).


The first question on everyone’s mind should be - “what the heck is a semantic web service?”. In this post we’ll try to at least start the discussion on what we mean by SWS.

The semantic web is an admirable goal. When it becomes real the web will be transformed from a mass of unstructured stuff into an amazing knowledge repository. Moving far beyond the hypertext library that is the current web - we will have programmatic access to a repository of information that dwarfs anything we can imagine today. But, there’s one catch: it’s not here yet and won’t be for a long long time.

We hate waiting. We know that there is an amazing amount of information out there that is begging to be retrieved, combined, enhanced and generally made use of. The problem is that the vast majority of that information is trapped inside text. Not structured text. Not clean text. Not standardized text. Not gramatically proper text. Just your normal messy everyday text. It’s trapped - and we aim to free it.

Over the last decade ClearForest has developed an amazing suite of natural language processing tools. Big organizations like financial publishers, banks and manufacturers use that technology to extract meaning from text. It works and it works well - but we want to"

Survey Records Shift in Blue Chip Marketing Spend to INTERACTIVE!

New Epsilon CMO Survey Highlights Shift to Digital Marketing;
Decrease in traditional Marketing Budget


NEW YORK, NY — September 8, 2008 — Chief Marketing Officers at many of the biggest brands in the nation are seeing a major shift in the marketing landscape. Almost two-thirds (63%) of the 175 marketing executives surveyed see an increase in their spending on interactive/digital marketing while 59% report a decrease in traditional marketing spend.

The survey additionally describes the tough challenges that top CMOs face in this current economic climate: 65% say that the money spent on advertising as a whole will decrease due to the current economy. In contrast, 94% of CMOs and marketing executives agreed with the statement, 'A tough economic period is precisely the time when marketing plays a key role.'

CMOs are shifting to more targeted and measurable marketing strategies. When asked how their firm determines their target market for each channel, 50% stated that they use data driven marketing techniques: 31% of respondents agreed with the statement: &quote You use sophisticated modeling tools to analyze existing customer data (behavioral, preference and demographic) 'and 19% said that they 'analyze past purchase behavior. 'In contrast, 28% said they made 'rough estimates based on past experience.'

According to Mike Iaccarino, CEO of Epsilon, a leading marketing services firm, "Epsilon's first survey of the nation's Chief Marketing Officers presents a unique look at the changing dynamics of the marketing landscape. In this economic climate, marketing executives are seeking accountability and measurable results. Data driven marketing is an increasingly important component of corporate marketing campaigns as senior marketers employ sophisticated segmentation strategies to recruit and retain customers."

The survey was conducted in August 2008. Participants included 175 U.S. Chief Marketing Officers and marketing executives of some of the largest brands in the nation. 27% of respondents work at companies with $10 billion or more in annual revenues last year.


Marketing Mix:

CMOs of the biggest brands have been early adopters of new media with social computing and blogs receiving the most interest whereas instant messaging and interactive TV ads were the least popular.

* Social computing (including word of mouth, social networking sites, viral advertising, etc.) was the most popular emerging channel with 42% of marketing executives expressing interest in adding it to their marketing mix.
* Blogs were the second most popular emerging channel: 35% of marketing executives want to pursue blogs and 19% already use blogs
* Almost one-third of CMOs mentioned Podcasting as an area of interest: 31% are interested in adding Podcasting to their marketing mix and 18% already have.
* Mobile devices also elicited interest: 29% are interested in Mobile Devices (Phones/PDAs) and 22% have added them to their marketing mix.

Facebook Tries to Woo Marketers - WSJ.com

Facebook Tries to Woo Marketers - WSJ.com

Despite its surging Internet audience, Facebook Inc. has yet to prove it can wring steady revenue out of advertisers. Now it's trying a new tactic to woo Madison Avenue.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company is rolling out a new ad format called "engagement ads" that further blurs the line between marketing and social networking.

The new ads appear on the main screen when a person first logs in to Facebook. They prompt a user to do something within the ad, such as comment on a movie trailer or RSVP for the season finale of a TV show.

If the user completes the action, such as adding Bravo TV's "Project Runway" show to a personal list of events, Facebook tries to get Bravo's ad in front of more eyeballs by sharing a notice about what the user has done with their friends.

Facebook has a lot to prove with the new ad format, which it began quietly testing in August and started making available to all advertisers this month. The company says 70 of the U.S.'s 100 largest advertisers have advertised on its site since 2007. But its share of total number of U.S. online display ad views was just 1.1%, according to market research firm comScore Inc., in its most recent report in June.

News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media Unit, which includes rival MySpace.com, is the market leader with 15.9% of display-ad spending, according to comScore. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

"I haven't heard of anyone purchasing something off an ad on Facebook," says Angie Tulgetske, vice president of RE/MAX Preferred Choice Properties, which resells timeshares and spends thousands of dollars a month on search ads but avoids social-networking sites. "I wouldn't think any of my marketing dollars would be spent advantageously there."

Facebook's new push also comes as economic turbulence hits the online ad market. U.S. online advertising growth is expected to decelerate from 17% in 2008 to 14.5% next year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an internet-advertiser trade group.

Advertising on social-networking sites appears particularly vulnerable, analysts say, because advertisers are still searching for the right ways to measure the effectiveness of ads on those sites.

Advertisers say that buying ads on Facebook and MySpace generally costs far less than buying premium ads on media properties such as Yahoo Inc. or Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, although prices vary widely based on the type of ads and the target audience. Facebook charges more for the engagement ads than other display ads on its site.

The new ads won't appeal to all Facebook users. Heather Watson, 32, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., recently saw the engagement ad for "Project Runway." Ms. Watson says such ads "detract from the [Facebook] experience," and she clicked the "not attending" option to wipe the Bravo ad from her view.

Mark Zuckerberg

In public appearances, Facebook's 24-year-old Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg insists that his company remains more focused on expanding its user base than its revenues. The right business model for the site will emerge over time, he has said.

This year, Facebook's revenue is expected to more than double to between $300 million and $350 million, say people familiar with the matter. But the company has mounting costs. At an industry conference last week, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company didn't need to raise more money and wasn't planning on going public for a few years.

Still, Facebook has intensified its campaign to curry favor with Madison Avenue. It has hired top ad sales executives from companies including Yahoo and periodically hosts teams of senior ad executives at its graffiti-clad offices. It has also sent squads into online-ad agencies, such as Starcom MediaVest Group, to pitch products and generate awareness about its free research tools.

Ads systems are built over time through continual tweaking, says Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. She says Facebook's existing ad offerings are working well but "undersell Facebook's broader opportunity."

Facebook has tried many ad efforts in the past, starting with basic "fliers," the low-budget graphical ads users could buy to promote things like events. The company began building its own internal sales force in 2005, and in 2006 struck a deal to display banner ads sold by Microsoft Corp. It also added products like "social ads" in which Facebook shared a user's action with others on the site.

But many marketers stayed away, concerned advertising alongside user-generated content might tarnish their brands and that the site appealed only to college students. As Facebook has widened its audience, it has run into another problem: users weren't clicking on ads when they browsed each other's profiles. Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research, estimates the rate at which users click on Facebook's display ads is less than 1%. Mr. Owyang also describes Facebook's array of ad offerings as "confusing."

More recently, Facebook has seen some traction with an ad service for smaller advertisers that generally spend the bulk of their budgets on search-engine ads. The service allows users to buy targeted banner ads through a Web site. Facebook says tens of thousands of advertisers are using the system every month.

Online advertising agency G5 Search Marketing Inc. has used the system to buy ads for clients such as a California-based local storage company. The storage company in May found it ended up getting more visitors per dollar spent on Facebook than Google, says Dan Hobin, CEO of G5.

But he adds that only a handful of clients have tried Facebook, in part because Facebook offers to reach specific groups that are far smaller than the size of the audience his clients want to reach.

Seven Steps to Boost Leadership Self-Confidence

By Marshall Goldsmith

I was asked what advice I have for a leader whose bosses say needs to exhibit more self-confidence while still being collaborative and authentic. This is a great question.

I rarely encounter this issue in my work with CEOs and potential CEOs because people at the top of huge organizations don’t often have self-confidence problems. But I have had several inquiries lately about helping future leaders who need to demonstrate more self-confidence.

Here are a few suggestions that I give leaders who have self-confidence issues:

1. Decide if you really want to be a leader. Many of the MBAs who report self-confidence issues are brilliant technicians. They often find the uncertainty and ambiguity of leading people very unsettling. They are looking for the “right answers” – similar to the ones in engineering school. In some cases, brilliant technical experts should continue to be brilliant technical experts – and not feel obligated to become managers.

2. Make peace with ambiguity in decision making. There are usually no clear right answers when making complex business decisions. Even CEOs are guessing.

3. Gather a reasonable amount of data, involve people, then follow your gut and do what you think is right.

4. Accept the fact that you are going to fail on occasion. All humans do.

5. Have fun! Life is short. Why should you expect your direct reports to demonstrate positive enthusiasm, if they don’t see it in you?

6. Once you make a decision, commit and go for it. Don’t continually second guess yourself. If you have to change course, you have to change course. If you never commit, all you will ever do is change course.

7. And finally, demonstrate courage on the outside, even when you don’t feel it on the inside. We are all afraid on occasion -- that is just part of being human. If you are going to lead people in tough times, you will need to show more courage than fear. When direct reports read worry and concern on the face of a leader, they begin to lose confidence in the leader’s ability to lead.

Originally published in Harvard Business Online, 2008.

Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. His latest book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, won the Harold Longman Award for best business book of 2007. Marshall invites you to visit his library (MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com) for articles and resources you can use.

What's Most Important in a Flat, Diverse World?

By Patricia Wheeler

Being the only American in the room is a very cool experience. I had the pleasure of spending a few days coaching a group of senior leaders from a large global company. A cohort of their multinational workforce came together to sharpen their strategic focus and accelerate profits. As part of their experience, they received behavioral feedback through a 360 assessment.

These several dozen leaders were from all parts of the world (with the exception of the U.S.). And they were the picture of diversity….imagine an Italian vice president working in the Far East, married to a Japanese woman working for an Eastern European consulate. There was an Australian general manager working in South America. Add to the mix a Lebanese president of a Dubai-based division, as well as a German executive leading in Singapore. And many more, often working outside their home culture.

For several days they explored global strategy, their personal 360s and learning from leaders within their industry. And they came to an interesting conclusion. It may sound overly simplistic, but here it is: It’s all about the people. People are the critical business success factor, whether their challenges involve driving innovation, aligning operations or increasing sales. And this is especially true in an ambiguous, swirling environment, where security and predictability are low, and the need for flexibility and speed is especially critical.

I’ve heard push-back about this idea. Some leaders say things like, “But, Patricia, we’re in the widget business. My business is not about people….it’s about making widgets faster, cheaper, better!”

Well, let’s look closely at the widget business. Who makes the widgets? Who packages and delivers them to market? Who sells them? Who hires the sales force? Who trains them? Who crafts the marketing message? Who creates corporate strategy? Who decides on innovations? Who answers the company phone? At the end of the day, what business success does not rest on the ideas and efforts of its people?

When faced with the reality that every business is the People Business, I hear leaders express thoughts like these, which were expressed in this session:

“I’ve focused so much on the facts, I haven’t developed my people as much as I need to.”

“I’m so sure of my own viewpoint, I forget to ask others for their opinion.”

“I’m so focused on coming up with answers that are 100% correct that I don’t pay enough attention to innovation.”

If attention to the people in your business is crucial to your success, consider the following questions that we ask our clients:

How much time do you spend developing your people and their capabilities? Do you treat people as important as processes? How often do you meet face to face and talk with them about their successes, goals and aspirations? The best workers, especially within the emerging generations, demand development. Ignore this step and you’ll likely lose them.

To what degree to you actively seek the perspective of others, particularly those at levels below yours? If your answer is “not much,” you're not tapping into grass-roots knowledge that could be crucial to your competitive advantage as well as a great opportunity to motivate your people.

How much do your people feel that you value them? How are you measuring this? Remember this: just thinking about something doesn’t count. They need for you to demonstrate your interest, in words and action. And if you’re not regularly and rigorously assessing employee engagement, you are vulnerable to your talent walking out the door.

How are you preparing your workforce to take on various roles across your enterprise? Leading companies “cross-train” their leaders to take on assignments out of their comfort zone, and rotate leaders regularly. The days of spending your days in one function or department appear to be limited, and this is a good thing, as these rotations serve to break down silos and increase long-term performance.

And know this…even in a challenging financial climate, when many companies are cutting their budgets, there are still organizations allocating time, money and attention to developing their current and future leaders. It’s inspiring to me, because we need good leaders even more in an economic downturn. And if you’re not continuing to develop leaders during a downturn, your most promising leaders may jump ship and go to those companies that continue affirming and investing in their value.

Copyright 2008, Leading News

Patricia Wheeler is an executive and team coach who helps smart people become better leaders. As Managing Partner in the Levin Group LLC, she has spent 15 years consulting to organizations and coaching senior leaders and their teams. You may contact Patricia by E-mail at Patricia@TheLevinGroup.com or by telephone at 404 377-9408.

Study shows how spammers cash in

Spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5m e-mails they send, finds a study.

By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The analysis suggests that such a tiny response rate means a big spam operation can turn over millions of pounds in profit every year.

It also suggests that spammers may be susceptible to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

Slim pickings

The spam study was carried out in early 2008 by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD).

For their month-long study the seven-strong team of computer scientists infiltrated the Storm network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail.

At its height Storm was believed to have more than one million machines under its control.

The team, led by Assistant Professor Stefan Savage from UCSD, took over a chunk of the Storm network to make it easier to run their study.

"The best way to measure spam is to be a spammer," wrote the researchers in a paper describing their work.

They created several so-called "proxy bots" that acted as conduits of information between the command and control system for Storm and the hijacked home PCs that actually send out junk mail.

The team used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them.

Two types of fake spam campaign were run through these machines. One mimicked the way Storm spreads using viruses and the other tried to tempt people to visit a fake pharmacy site and buy a herbal remedy to boost their libido.

The fake pharmacy site was made to resemble those run by Storm's real owners but always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.

While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The vast majority of these were for the fake pharmacy campaign.

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted," wrote the researchers.

The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%. This is far below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

"Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88—a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period," said the researchers.

Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.

While this was a good return, said the researchers, it did suggest that spammers were not making the vast sums of money that some people have predicted in the past.

They suggest that the tight costs might also open up new avenues of attack on spammers.

The researchers concluded: "The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defenses."

Usability Post » Categories vs Tags

Usability Post » Categories vs Tags:

Categories vs Tags

October 17th, 2008 by Dmitry
Usability

Content focused sites like blogs and online magazines have various ways to organize and sort their content. Sorting articles by date and by author is usually done automatically by the content management system. There are two concepts which can be used on top of that to organize your site’s content: categories and tags. While you can use both of them at the same time, it’s probably too much bother — so which one should you use and why? Let’s examine each one in turn.

Categories

Categories are like folders — they’re collections of things related to one theme or topic. This actually isn’t strictly true because in the digital world you can attach more than one category to your content, but the function is the same — to categorize.

The main advantage of categories is that there is a set amount of them — and if you want to utilize them properly then there shouldn’t be too many either. This lets people scan through the list quickly to choose the topic they wish to browse. Categories give your content structure and an easy browsing experience.

The downside of categories falls on the publisher. Firstly, you have to decide on the list of categories you want to use. This is usually harder than it sounds because you need to make sure there aren’t any categories which would have too many or too few posts in them. There is no point making a category if all your posts are included in it or if there is just one post. And secondly, whenever publishing new content, you need to decide which category to put it in. This isn’t too hard if you keep your category list short and assign multiple categories to content, but it still requires a little effort.

Tags

Tags are the digital equivalent of real tags — little labels you attach to things. Tags have an advantage over categories in that they aren’t pre-set. When you attach tags you write them in manually and have the freedom to write whatever you want. If a tag doesn’t exist already, it will once you’ve hit publish. There is no need to worry about finding an existing category to fit the post into — you just write the labels you feel best represent the content.

The downside of tags is in the browsing experience. One of the most popular ways to browse by tags is using something called a “tag cloud”. A tag cloud is a big block of tags listed one after another, with each tag link having its own size depending on how many items are tagged with it.

Tag clouds are great for showing what sort of entries are posted the most on the site, but browsing by tags is difficult because there are usually just too many of them. The other problem is that they’re unbalanced — there may be only entry attached to a particular tag, or there may be thousands.

OK… so which one do I use?

The answer is… it depends. It depends on what type of content you have and how your search works.

If you’ve got a site like YouTube or Flickr where users submit their own content and you have thousands or millions of submissions then categories won’t be as useful as tags because there may be thousands of entries to each category. This makes browsing very difficult and in most cases impossible. Each tag may also contain thousands of entries, but there will be many more tags with a much more focused yield of results; and using combinations of tags will also greatly narrow the number of results your visitors have to browse through.

If your site-wide search uses tags when looking through records then tags can and will add a clear benefit. If your search is something very simple, like an external Google search which simply filters results by your site address, then tags may not be as useful because they won’t be used to find the results.

I don’t think that for blogs tagging makes much sense. Sure, it may be easier to tag things, but the browsing experience isn’t that great. Sometimes you will have just one post attached to a tag — what use is that? People will generally want to find posts on a particular theme, and that’s the primary function of categories. What’s more, you’re not limited to using just one category — attach a couple if you feel the post is relevant to both.

This is just my take on tags and categories, I’m sure some of you may disagree. I’m very interested to hear whether you use tags or categories on your blogs (or both?) and why do you prefer one over the other — please do post your thoughts in the comments below.

Using Light, Color and Contrast Effectively in UI Design

Using Light, Color and Contrast Effectively in UI Design

August 14th, 2008 by Dmitry
Design, Usability, User Interface

User interface (UI) design is both an art and a science. Artistic talent comes in handy when coming up with an attractive style and aesthetic, but at the core of UI design lies logic and method.

Very basic things like light, color and contrast are often overlooked, which can negatively affect the UI by misdirecting user’s attention and not providing enough focus on the things that matter. Here’s a quick overview of how to use each of these elements effectively.

1. Light — create depth using light and shadow.

Light can be used to create depth. Lighter shades appear closer to us and darker shades further away. This isn’t strictly how light works, but since the user interface lives in a very basic environment of a computer display, there’s not a lot we have to work with.

Think of a button. When a button is pressed, most designers tend to make it darker. Why? The reason is simple — we imagine the button as a 3D object. When this object is pressed, we assume it goes further away from us. We may also assume it goes into an opening on the surface of the “device”, and thus is now covered somewhat from a light source.

Using this basic idea we can build the UI metaphor by basing it on 3D objects with depth. Color things you want to appear to be sticking out lighter. Color things that are carved inwards darker. This doesn’t apply to every aesthetic style, but generic things like OS interfaces tend to follow this principle — especially when depicting real world objects like buttons and switches.

2. Color — use heat to manage focus.

Colors don’t all behave the same way. There are those that are considered cold — blue and green shades — and there are those that are warm — red and yellow. Warmer colors expand when placed next to colder colors, they literally spill out and take dominance. Here’s an example:

Take a look at the square on the right with the blue and the yellow color segmens. The yellow is warmer and brighter and so it takes prominence on the image.

What about the red and the green? This one is trickier, but the warmer red is taking control here. The colder green contracts inwards, letting the red move forward.

This is very similar to point 1 — warmer colors are brighter. Not only that, they also appear closer to us. Use warmer colors for elements you want to pop out and get noticed. Colors like red are especially good for this purpose, and it’s no surprise that pretty much all the US presidential candidates’ websites had the donation button in bright red.

3. Contrast — attract attention with higher contrast

Higher contrast items stand out — they catch your eye. Look at the following example of a content window with some text, and a button. Here we’re using both, brightness levels and contrast, to manage the user’s attention and focus.

In the first instance, the text is on a darker background, while the button is on a lighter surface than the rest of the pane. The button has the highest contrast between its black text and the light grey surface it sits on. It’s also the lightest element on the surface — it pops out.

On the right I’ve flipped the shades. Here the text pops out because it sits on a lighter background and has a high contrast between the text and the background. The button now fades away.

Use contrast to manage user’s attention. You don’t necessarily need to make buttons lighter (that will depend on your design style and theme), but you do need to make them stand out enough so that they’re not overlooked. Decrease contrast for less important areas of your UI to make them take a back seat.

Example: The OS X interface

Let’s see a real world example of these principles from a well known usability expert — Apple. This is the interface for the OS X operating system’s control panel for the Mac:

You can see contrast and 3D metaphors at work here. Buttons are light and high contrast, while becoming darker when pressed. Certain content areas are bevelled inwards to group together various items and because they’re less hierarchically important. It looks good and it’s very usable.

Think through your UI design process logically. Are you trying to depict a real life object like a button or a switch? Use shadow and light to create depth and 3D feel appropriately.

Do you need to manage user’s focus, for example give prominence to the welcome message or a notice on your site? Color that box in a warm color like yellow. Ensure that all the important controls have enough contrast to stand out so they’re not overlooked.

I hope you found this useful — please don’t hesitate to post any thoughts or resources in the comments below.

OnlyWire: The Only BookMarklet You'll Ever Need!

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Chantelle White featured in DM Confidential, 11/6

Chantelle was featured in Digital Moses' affiliate tips section again...nice work!

http://www.dmconfidential.com/backissues/2008/11/06/newsletter.11062008.html


Chantelle White
Advaliant
Clear and concise marketing provisions are essential to the long term success of a campaign. Advertisers, ensure you are frequently updating your partner network(s) with marketing guidelines that are relevant to the trends and will allow the publishers to utilize their most valuable skill - their innovation!

If you're interested in contributing an affiliate tip, please contact me lpflager@mediatrust.com