from Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Insights Blog and Podcast - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image
The Agency of the future is the Digital Marketing Agency of today.
(but that's not how they spin the news).
MarketingVox released a news item today titled, Marketers' Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future. The results of a Sapient-sponsored national online survey in the United States of two-hundred CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer) revealed that what really keeps Marketers awake at night is the fact that they are spending more and more in the Digital channel and will continue to do so within the next twelve months. In fact, more than a quarter of the CMOs surveyed indicated that 50% of their marketing efforts are currently done in the digital channels and close to forty percent said that within the next twelve months from 50% to 100% of their marketing will make the digital shift.
The Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future:
1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. With more than a third of marketers surveyed revealing that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising, it’s clear that agencies need to have a greater knowledge of the digital space in order to thrive. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents have switched agencies (or plan to switch in the next 12 months) for one with greater digital knowledge or have hired an additional digital specialist to handle their interactive campaigns. Further, when it comes to an agency’s area of expertise, 79% of respondents rated “interactive/digital” functions as ‘important/very important.’
2. More use of “pull interactions.” When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions’ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push’ campaigns.
3. Leverage virtual communities. An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents expressed interest in leveraging virtual communities (public and private) to understand more about their target audience.
4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Ninety-two percent of respondents said it was ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important that agency employees use the technologies that they are recommending. For example, it is important that agency executives regularly use Facebook, Flickr, wikis, blogs, etc. in their personal social media mix.
5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed said that agencies with chief digital officers are more appealing than those without.
6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. Sixty three percent of marketers surveyed said that an agency’s Web 2.0 and social media capabilities are ‘important/very important’ when it comes to agency selection.
7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. Seventy-six percent of respondents deemed this as an ‘important/very important’ aspect of their agency’s online digital marketing and interactive advertising area of expertise.
8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed ranked strategy/brain trust capabilities at the top of their agency wish list.
9. Branding and creative capabilities. Sixty-seven percent of respondents ranked branding at the top of their agency wish list while seventy-six percent ranked creative capabilities as‘important/very important.’
10. Ability to measure success. It’s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.
(the above list and commentary was pulled from this press release: Sapient - Survey Reveals Brand Marketers’ Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future).
The only challenge to calling the agency of the future the Digital Marketing agency of today is that we're not seeing enough interactive shops take the lead on points #8 (demonstrate strategic thinking) and #9 (branding and creative capabilities). More often than not, most Digital Marketing shops are adapting current/existing Marketing initiatives and are not taking the (or being given) opportunity to drive the over strategy in regards to the brand, marketing goals, outcomes and marketing optimization. It's happening is some instances, but for the Digital Marketing agency of today to really take full ownership of this list from the future, strategic thinking and becoming the guardian of the brand are essential.
What kind of agency are you working with and would you agree that this list looks strikingly similar to the core competencies of the Digital Marketing agency of today?
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Where Online Advertising Fails: The Future of Web Advertising
Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira on February 25th, 2008
antique advertising imageA huge proportion of tech news has to do with online advertising: studies on its efficacy, technologies for serving ads, ad revenue ups and downs, and acquisitions having to do with any of those. The reality, however, is that we don't know much about how to really leverage online advertising, and we have a lot to learn.
What set me off to begin with was an opinion piece on WSJ.com by Esther Dyson, which hovered near getting it, but ultimately missed by a mile. Ms. Dyson made the point that the "traditional" online advertising is fading, but asserts that advertisers' audience members are best accessed in social communities, and that data will ultimately be compiled and disseminated to advertisers by ISPs. As much as I think any ISP would love to get their hands on that sort of ad revenue (as noted by the newish hijacking of my URL typos by Time Warner Roadrunner), it's impractical. How can you assume that the same person is always using the same IP? Are all ISPs going to move to a static IP addressing scheme? What about VPN clients and WiFi access points and mobile browsing? There are too many holes in this concept for it to work until they can track me by serial number on the plug in my head. Three UK ISPs are willing to give it a try, however.
The formation of quadrantONE completely misses this boat, and somehow thinks that trying to compete with Google in the blanket-your-ad model still makes sense. The main problem with newspapers as they exist now is that they are still in the business of trying to have something for everyone, and aren't able to sort content for readers. I'd be far more willing to subscribe to an online newspaper that customized content specifically according to my needs (and feel free to subsidize part of the cost with targeted ads) than I am for a paper copy that arrives in my box every morning with last night's news and ads I never even see. Of course, quadrantONE took some of their advice from Nielsen, who can't even manage to figure out if advertising actually accomplishes anything, so that may have been their first problem.
Ms. Dyson was right, however, when she said that the current model is losing ground. Google themselves saw a dip in their share of the U.S. ad market last quarter, and while they are still performing well, there is already a trend to head more toward niche marketing. Vertical ad/content networks like BlogHer and Glam.com are already eating into Google's model in small bites. What makes more sense as an advertiser? Buying your AdWords and splashing them over how many thousands of sites where people are already immune to seeing the same ads (yelling smilies, anyone?), or focusing your efforts on a specific area of content that appeals to your target demographic?
Here's what we do know: the people who are clicking through on ads aren't the people advertisers really want to go after. A joint study by comScore, Starcom, and TACODA recently discovered that over 50% of click-thrus are from 6% of the online population, and that 6% skews toward a household income under $40,000. In other words, not the people who are going to be doing a lot of online shopping.
The traditional ad folks like Google and Yahoo are trying something new in going to video, with Google testing video ads and Yahoo snapping up Maven. Other ad companies like Gorilla Nation also think that video ads are the next wave in advertising. And of course, we have the social networking idea, which is being flayed virtually everywhere. People don't go to social networks to shop; they go to socialize.
The reality, however, is that if users aren't clicking through ads as they are now, why on earth would they click to sit through a video ad? This is old-school advertising, designed for a time when television also served all things to all people and you sat through commericial breaks instead of fast-forwarding with your DVR. Niche cable networks have found success providing a smaller, more concentrated market for advertisers, and online companies are following suit. GoFish has launched an ad/content network geared at children and teens, while MTV Networks (which also owns Nickelodeon) acquired a whole parenting content network in Babunga.
But even in a combination ad/content network model, an assumption is made about the audience. Fashion and gossip web sites must be read by women. Tech sites must be read by a predominantly male audience. The ads are still going to be fairly predictable, and ignore those outside the "typical" demographic. So who really has the right idea?
Amazon has the right idea, that's who. With their latest move, testing ads, I'm convinced that Jeff Bezos is a genius. Amazon has all the information at its fingertips that Beacon went so very wrong with, and they have been very upfront about collecting it. They have your purchase history dating back to your very first purchase on the site, and display it for you right in your account. They have a wide variety of products from nearly every possible retail market, from groceries to media to electronics, and with the addition of merchant storefronts through the Amazon system, they increase that data set. Who knows you better than Amazon, and who could target you better? They already show you what other people who've purchased what you purchase. The make product suggestions based on your purchase history. Serving the ads will only take it a step further, providing advertisers with as targeted an audience as they could get, and reducing the amount of ad noise you are subjected to. They may or may not succeed, but at least they are on the right track. Imagine Amazon tied into your content network. It may be a little Big Brother-esque, but it's an advertiser's dream.
antique advertising imageA huge proportion of tech news has to do with online advertising: studies on its efficacy, technologies for serving ads, ad revenue ups and downs, and acquisitions having to do with any of those. The reality, however, is that we don't know much about how to really leverage online advertising, and we have a lot to learn.
What set me off to begin with was an opinion piece on WSJ.com by Esther Dyson, which hovered near getting it, but ultimately missed by a mile. Ms. Dyson made the point that the "traditional" online advertising is fading, but asserts that advertisers' audience members are best accessed in social communities, and that data will ultimately be compiled and disseminated to advertisers by ISPs. As much as I think any ISP would love to get their hands on that sort of ad revenue (as noted by the newish hijacking of my URL typos by Time Warner Roadrunner), it's impractical. How can you assume that the same person is always using the same IP? Are all ISPs going to move to a static IP addressing scheme? What about VPN clients and WiFi access points and mobile browsing? There are too many holes in this concept for it to work until they can track me by serial number on the plug in my head. Three UK ISPs are willing to give it a try, however.
The formation of quadrantONE completely misses this boat, and somehow thinks that trying to compete with Google in the blanket-your-ad model still makes sense. The main problem with newspapers as they exist now is that they are still in the business of trying to have something for everyone, and aren't able to sort content for readers. I'd be far more willing to subscribe to an online newspaper that customized content specifically according to my needs (and feel free to subsidize part of the cost with targeted ads) than I am for a paper copy that arrives in my box every morning with last night's news and ads I never even see. Of course, quadrantONE took some of their advice from Nielsen, who can't even manage to figure out if advertising actually accomplishes anything, so that may have been their first problem.
Ms. Dyson was right, however, when she said that the current model is losing ground. Google themselves saw a dip in their share of the U.S. ad market last quarter, and while they are still performing well, there is already a trend to head more toward niche marketing. Vertical ad/content networks like BlogHer and Glam.com are already eating into Google's model in small bites. What makes more sense as an advertiser? Buying your AdWords and splashing them over how many thousands of sites where people are already immune to seeing the same ads (yelling smilies, anyone?), or focusing your efforts on a specific area of content that appeals to your target demographic?
Here's what we do know: the people who are clicking through on ads aren't the people advertisers really want to go after. A joint study by comScore, Starcom, and TACODA recently discovered that over 50% of click-thrus are from 6% of the online population, and that 6% skews toward a household income under $40,000. In other words, not the people who are going to be doing a lot of online shopping.
The traditional ad folks like Google and Yahoo are trying something new in going to video, with Google testing video ads and Yahoo snapping up Maven. Other ad companies like Gorilla Nation also think that video ads are the next wave in advertising. And of course, we have the social networking idea, which is being flayed virtually everywhere. People don't go to social networks to shop; they go to socialize.
The reality, however, is that if users aren't clicking through ads as they are now, why on earth would they click to sit through a video ad? This is old-school advertising, designed for a time when television also served all things to all people and you sat through commericial breaks instead of fast-forwarding with your DVR. Niche cable networks have found success providing a smaller, more concentrated market for advertisers, and online companies are following suit. GoFish has launched an ad/content network geared at children and teens, while MTV Networks (which also owns Nickelodeon) acquired a whole parenting content network in Babunga.
But even in a combination ad/content network model, an assumption is made about the audience. Fashion and gossip web sites must be read by women. Tech sites must be read by a predominantly male audience. The ads are still going to be fairly predictable, and ignore those outside the "typical" demographic. So who really has the right idea?
Amazon has the right idea, that's who. With their latest move, testing ads, I'm convinced that Jeff Bezos is a genius. Amazon has all the information at its fingertips that Beacon went so very wrong with, and they have been very upfront about collecting it. They have your purchase history dating back to your very first purchase on the site, and display it for you right in your account. They have a wide variety of products from nearly every possible retail market, from groceries to media to electronics, and with the addition of merchant storefronts through the Amazon system, they increase that data set. Who knows you better than Amazon, and who could target you better? They already show you what other people who've purchased what you purchase. The make product suggestions based on your purchase history. Serving the ads will only take it a step further, providing advertisers with as targeted an audience as they could get, and reducing the amount of ad noise you are subjected to. They may or may not succeed, but at least they are on the right track. Imagine Amazon tied into your content network. It may be a little Big Brother-esque, but it's an advertiser's dream.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Back from EC-TEL07
Another week, another conference :)
This time, it was the EC-TEL07 (European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning) in Crete. Elisa Dalla Vecchia and I presented the MACE project (slides, video 1, video 2) and besides, met a lot of nice people.
The conference itself was really well organized. The keynotes (Hermann Maurer and Bruce Sterling) were excellent and big picture, covering a wide range of digital lifestyle topics and wild ideas. Digital quacks & charlatans, why Google is not so non-evil after all, telepathy is trivial, flying cars. No kidding. Many of the session talks, on the other hand, were not that exciting at all. I have the feeling many people in this area first build a “framework for…” before actually trying out some ideas on real learners.
More info on the conference blog, wiki and the flickr stream.
Greetings to Martin Memmel from DFKI, who I met to talk about the ALOE project and Christian Glahn, who presented nice work on Smart Indicators for learner feedback, and Joris Klerkx, who is quite into information visualization. I am looking forward to future developments, guys!
And just for the record, here are my favorite insider nerd joke conference memes:
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sci-fi projections
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/sci-fi-projections.html
Systems create images on glass, in thin air
March 22, 2007
By Denise Deveau, CBC News
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device - the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground - captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device — the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground — captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air.
Free floating images in thin air that you can move with your hands, windows that morph into touchscreen displays for passersby — welcome to the new world of projection applications that are literally opening up a new window to the world.
Next generation presentation technologies are now delivering a bona fide interactive experience on anything from solid glass to airborne vapour. And all it takes is a projection system, some cool presentation software, a set of infrared sensors and a few complex algorithms to make it happen.
As with a lot of the high-tech "fun stuff" these days, much of the innovation in this area is coming out of Asia, says Chris Synn, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based Innotive Inc., a developer of interactive presentation software. Innotive's touch-enabled technology, developed in South Korea, is just one example of the types of systems pushing the boundaries of old and familiar interactive display applications.
With the lightest of touches, users can grab and shuffle images around, zoom in and out to see the minutest of details, or simply wave their hands over an image to make it come alive on screens as large as 100 inches or 254 centimetres. "Instead of a stylus you just use your finger to interact," explained Synn.
Adding a touch of interactivity to screens
Since the interface can work with projection technology, retailers can actually turn an entire display window into a screen — and that, said Synn, is where the wow factor comes into play. "Once people try to interact with it, it's breathtaking. Navigation is so fluid."
Toronto-based media specialist Optiadmedia is heading in this "window to the world" direction with its Window F/X offering, a through-glass storefront multimedia projection technology that was developed in Asia. It all works like a floating screen that can run content of all shapes and sizes on store windows or other clear display formats.
Window F/X combines a rear projection system with a near invisible film that is applied to the window to allow light to be captured to display images. It can be programmed to run any kind of digital content, including animated footage and still images. Optional touchscreen features allow passersby to browse catalogues and surf the internet. Window F/X also has the potential to incorporate audio and Bluetooth wireless capabilities into such things as store-window displays.
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand.
Optiadmedia partner Michael Dellios is working on new ways to harness this emerging medium, which was launched into the commercial market in the latter part of 2006. "It puts a new spin on the term window shopping. It's starting to be used a lot for event promotion, because it can be used on portable screen — it's very eye catching."
The Nestings Kids junior home store at Eglinton and Avenue Road in Toronto is among the first to explore the Window F/X experience for its display window, said company owner and president Lisa Rosen. The store's new 46 cm by 61cm translucent screen offers rotating images of products, as well as animations — like snowflakes falling or vintage children's shows to catch the interest of passing shoppers.
"It's great because it doesn't interfere with what we're doing with our window displays, and it makes our products more accessible," Rosen said. "It's just a fun way to get attention. As soon as it was up and running at night, we got calls from people saying how great it was."
Rosen hasn't made the leap to an interactive program for the system yet, but that may come, she said. "That's the fun thing about it all. It's a true idea of what window shopping could be in the future."
Images in thin air
A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers. A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers.
The future has even more interesting possibilities for Chad Dyner, a San Francisco-based developer and founder of IO2 Technologies. He's the creator of Heliodisplay, a projection technology that works with suspended particles of moisture that can create an interactive display experience literally out of thin air.
Heliodisplay projects computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture generated by a particulate emitting device. The moisture film generated by the device captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape.
Heliodisplay can project any kind of static or moving images, from photographs to movies. The piece de resistance — or added "wow" factor if you will — is an optional interactive capability that uses motion sensors to let people move images around with their fingers.
So far, commercial applications have included venues such as museums, trade shows and special events, and Dyner is the first to admit that his innovation is still in its developmental stages. Work is still being done to perfect content and image delivery.
"It's not a mainstream product by any means," he said. "But I definitely think it's the future. I believe we'll start to see more ways to have unobtrusive displays and new ways to interact with information. What we use now is from a previous era."
"This type of thing is not just a novelty item," noted Synn. "You can make it interactive. You can update content. It's all free form so you can do so much with it. It's all pretty cool stuff."
Systems create images on glass, in thin air
March 22, 2007
By Denise Deveau, CBC News
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device - the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground - captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device — the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground — captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air.
Free floating images in thin air that you can move with your hands, windows that morph into touchscreen displays for passersby — welcome to the new world of projection applications that are literally opening up a new window to the world.
Next generation presentation technologies are now delivering a bona fide interactive experience on anything from solid glass to airborne vapour. And all it takes is a projection system, some cool presentation software, a set of infrared sensors and a few complex algorithms to make it happen.
As with a lot of the high-tech "fun stuff" these days, much of the innovation in this area is coming out of Asia, says Chris Synn, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based Innotive Inc., a developer of interactive presentation software. Innotive's touch-enabled technology, developed in South Korea, is just one example of the types of systems pushing the boundaries of old and familiar interactive display applications.
With the lightest of touches, users can grab and shuffle images around, zoom in and out to see the minutest of details, or simply wave their hands over an image to make it come alive on screens as large as 100 inches or 254 centimetres. "Instead of a stylus you just use your finger to interact," explained Synn.
Adding a touch of interactivity to screens
Since the interface can work with projection technology, retailers can actually turn an entire display window into a screen — and that, said Synn, is where the wow factor comes into play. "Once people try to interact with it, it's breathtaking. Navigation is so fluid."
Toronto-based media specialist Optiadmedia is heading in this "window to the world" direction with its Window F/X offering, a through-glass storefront multimedia projection technology that was developed in Asia. It all works like a floating screen that can run content of all shapes and sizes on store windows or other clear display formats.
Window F/X combines a rear projection system with a near invisible film that is applied to the window to allow light to be captured to display images. It can be programmed to run any kind of digital content, including animated footage and still images. Optional touchscreen features allow passersby to browse catalogues and surf the internet. Window F/X also has the potential to incorporate audio and Bluetooth wireless capabilities into such things as store-window displays.
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand.
Optiadmedia partner Michael Dellios is working on new ways to harness this emerging medium, which was launched into the commercial market in the latter part of 2006. "It puts a new spin on the term window shopping. It's starting to be used a lot for event promotion, because it can be used on portable screen — it's very eye catching."
The Nestings Kids junior home store at Eglinton and Avenue Road in Toronto is among the first to explore the Window F/X experience for its display window, said company owner and president Lisa Rosen. The store's new 46 cm by 61cm translucent screen offers rotating images of products, as well as animations — like snowflakes falling or vintage children's shows to catch the interest of passing shoppers.
"It's great because it doesn't interfere with what we're doing with our window displays, and it makes our products more accessible," Rosen said. "It's just a fun way to get attention. As soon as it was up and running at night, we got calls from people saying how great it was."
Rosen hasn't made the leap to an interactive program for the system yet, but that may come, she said. "That's the fun thing about it all. It's a true idea of what window shopping could be in the future."
Images in thin air
A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers. A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers.
The future has even more interesting possibilities for Chad Dyner, a San Francisco-based developer and founder of IO2 Technologies. He's the creator of Heliodisplay, a projection technology that works with suspended particles of moisture that can create an interactive display experience literally out of thin air.
Heliodisplay projects computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture generated by a particulate emitting device. The moisture film generated by the device captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape.
Heliodisplay can project any kind of static or moving images, from photographs to movies. The piece de resistance — or added "wow" factor if you will — is an optional interactive capability that uses motion sensors to let people move images around with their fingers.
So far, commercial applications have included venues such as museums, trade shows and special events, and Dyner is the first to admit that his innovation is still in its developmental stages. Work is still being done to perfect content and image delivery.
"It's not a mainstream product by any means," he said. "But I definitely think it's the future. I believe we'll start to see more ways to have unobtrusive displays and new ways to interact with information. What we use now is from a previous era."
"This type of thing is not just a novelty item," noted Synn. "You can make it interactive. You can update content. It's all free form so you can do so much with it. It's all pretty cool stuff."
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Guide to Taking Money
http://www.dmconfidential.com/blogs/column/Digital_Thoughts/1352/
Those doing lead generation occupy an enviable space. It's a business that has faired well during the ad recovery, and despite some hiccups that arose as a New Century imploded, more verticals than not have an optimistic outlook. Unlike the ad network technology space, instead of a flurry of acquisition activity, deals have occurred steadily, the most recent being a majority investment into Nextag that valued the comparison shopping and lead generation firm north of one billion dollars. Many of the people that I've met in the lead generation space didn't enter lead generation with a grand vision. They saw it as a chance to make money, and usually they had some prior Internet advertising experience as well as some vertical expertise. Much of that prior work experience came at another cash flow focused startup, not at a venture backed firm. Even as they grow now, they don't necessarily think about having outside investors.
If you find your business in a state of growth where having access to more money could help you grow faster, such as pay for more affiliate traffic, then you might consider taking in funding. If you have a technology or process that has played a crucial role in your growth and find that you could do so much more if you could hire more engineers or perhaps sales people to bring in the clients, here too you might want an outside investor. Obviously, having outside investors is not for everyone. They will hold you accountable and push you for results. They will challenge you and have no problems replacing you. For these same reasons they can also become a huge catalyst to growth and guide you towards an exit bigger than you would have thought. And, even if you ultimately decide not to accept funding, the process can add a lot of value. This week, we thought we'd share with you our thoughts on what to expect if you start to engage outside investors from outside the industry and tips for when you do meet.
What to Expect:
· Think High School - Investors come in all types. The ones who came from our industry or work in our industry still, you probably won't think of them as investors. For lack of a better description, they feel like one of us. Others won't, and those we describe here. While a slight over-generalization, some of the ones we have met give off the same vibe as Hollywood A-Listers or the in-crowd at high school. They have their circle, and they look very critically upon those outside the circle. You are there because you might need something of them. Almost all of them have made their money, so they can afford to view you, not with disdain, but indifference. Dealing with them comes with a lot of rejection and comments that an outsider not having to live the day to day can afford to make. It's a different story when you've created the next Facebook. Then, you're like the college quarterback coming back on winter break. The cheerleaders will want your attention and the other jocks will too. If they don't, then you can chalk it up to jealousy, and you won't care anyway. Dealing with some investors is a "what can you do for me" environment.
· Superman or Vampire - An investor can do a lot of things for you, and most have dual developed dual personalities. On the one hand, they have knowledge and resources you don't. They have the ability to open doors, get favorable terms, and increase the value of your brand in ways that a lone entity simply can't. They also have the same power in reverse. They can suck you dry. Take away your spirit, put pressures on you to change your business, even play a role in removing you from your own business. Ultimately, it's a little of both. They are there to add value and take value from you. The trick is making sure it's in that order.
· "Next" - Meeting with investors feels like a different version of MTV's dating show, Next. You will have your time with them. If you make it through the full date, you get funding. But, they can and will lose interest and sometimes for reasons that won't make sense to you or the viewing audience. Like Next, they have other options waiting, but they are also wondering whether the ones that follow you aren't as good. Luckily, they can choose more than one date, but it's a helpful analogy as you remember that they are always in search of the next thing.
Tips:
· Be Confident - Investors invest. They need you to execute. You have created something that got their attention in the first place. They might have a better grasp of how to build a billion dollar business and can lead mind numbingly complex conversations about solving the business ecosystem, but they don't know your business. Ultimately, they have money they need to place, and as often as not, they judge the business by the person. If they can believe in you, that's a huge factor in their decision. When you talk, if you don't agree with their assumptions, don't roll over. Challenge. Push back. Do it based on reason and experience and not simply because they have some doubt.
· Think Like Them - Management books always talk about being able to think like your boss for being a better employee. Understand their objectives and how you can accomplish them. The same holds true for investors. They want growth, and they want an exit. They want longevity even if they will flip your company. They need something that will sell well to others. An over-priced conference series like Elite Retreat is interesting, but an investor won't want to sink money in it or buy it out. It can grow to a multi-million dollar business and make a handful of people quite wealthy, but in its current format it has a ceiling. It's not like Right Media, where if you apply it to Yahoo, you don't see 1+1 = 2 but 1+1 = 3. Now, if Elite Retreat didn't accept money but took a stake in the companies, then it might be more interesting, or if it tried to see more companies than fewer with the aim of putting pieces together to form a larger company, then it has the type of growth and potential outside investors want to see.
· Listen Selectively - Much of what they say will sound like criticism, and you could easily take it personally. Think of it like a movie or reality show. The dialogue used in movies would break up most relationships if used in real life. But it has dramatic flare. Investors often operate in a bubble and talk about you and your business as though you aren't there. Like a movie, listen for the main points, the insight you can use, but don't let the negative get your down. They often don't know they are doing it. You and your business are just business. There is nothing personal in this. In the end, pretend it's not really you that is being discussed, much like a movie is not about you but for you.
Now fully armed, if you would like an introduction or more information, email us.
Those doing lead generation occupy an enviable space. It's a business that has faired well during the ad recovery, and despite some hiccups that arose as a New Century imploded, more verticals than not have an optimistic outlook. Unlike the ad network technology space, instead of a flurry of acquisition activity, deals have occurred steadily, the most recent being a majority investment into Nextag that valued the comparison shopping and lead generation firm north of one billion dollars. Many of the people that I've met in the lead generation space didn't enter lead generation with a grand vision. They saw it as a chance to make money, and usually they had some prior Internet advertising experience as well as some vertical expertise. Much of that prior work experience came at another cash flow focused startup, not at a venture backed firm. Even as they grow now, they don't necessarily think about having outside investors.
If you find your business in a state of growth where having access to more money could help you grow faster, such as pay for more affiliate traffic, then you might consider taking in funding. If you have a technology or process that has played a crucial role in your growth and find that you could do so much more if you could hire more engineers or perhaps sales people to bring in the clients, here too you might want an outside investor. Obviously, having outside investors is not for everyone. They will hold you accountable and push you for results. They will challenge you and have no problems replacing you. For these same reasons they can also become a huge catalyst to growth and guide you towards an exit bigger than you would have thought. And, even if you ultimately decide not to accept funding, the process can add a lot of value. This week, we thought we'd share with you our thoughts on what to expect if you start to engage outside investors from outside the industry and tips for when you do meet.
What to Expect:
· Think High School - Investors come in all types. The ones who came from our industry or work in our industry still, you probably won't think of them as investors. For lack of a better description, they feel like one of us. Others won't, and those we describe here. While a slight over-generalization, some of the ones we have met give off the same vibe as Hollywood A-Listers or the in-crowd at high school. They have their circle, and they look very critically upon those outside the circle. You are there because you might need something of them. Almost all of them have made their money, so they can afford to view you, not with disdain, but indifference. Dealing with them comes with a lot of rejection and comments that an outsider not having to live the day to day can afford to make. It's a different story when you've created the next Facebook. Then, you're like the college quarterback coming back on winter break. The cheerleaders will want your attention and the other jocks will too. If they don't, then you can chalk it up to jealousy, and you won't care anyway. Dealing with some investors is a "what can you do for me" environment.
· Superman or Vampire - An investor can do a lot of things for you, and most have dual developed dual personalities. On the one hand, they have knowledge and resources you don't. They have the ability to open doors, get favorable terms, and increase the value of your brand in ways that a lone entity simply can't. They also have the same power in reverse. They can suck you dry. Take away your spirit, put pressures on you to change your business, even play a role in removing you from your own business. Ultimately, it's a little of both. They are there to add value and take value from you. The trick is making sure it's in that order.
· "Next" - Meeting with investors feels like a different version of MTV's dating show, Next. You will have your time with them. If you make it through the full date, you get funding. But, they can and will lose interest and sometimes for reasons that won't make sense to you or the viewing audience. Like Next, they have other options waiting, but they are also wondering whether the ones that follow you aren't as good. Luckily, they can choose more than one date, but it's a helpful analogy as you remember that they are always in search of the next thing.
Tips:
· Be Confident - Investors invest. They need you to execute. You have created something that got their attention in the first place. They might have a better grasp of how to build a billion dollar business and can lead mind numbingly complex conversations about solving the business ecosystem, but they don't know your business. Ultimately, they have money they need to place, and as often as not, they judge the business by the person. If they can believe in you, that's a huge factor in their decision. When you talk, if you don't agree with their assumptions, don't roll over. Challenge. Push back. Do it based on reason and experience and not simply because they have some doubt.
· Think Like Them - Management books always talk about being able to think like your boss for being a better employee. Understand their objectives and how you can accomplish them. The same holds true for investors. They want growth, and they want an exit. They want longevity even if they will flip your company. They need something that will sell well to others. An over-priced conference series like Elite Retreat is interesting, but an investor won't want to sink money in it or buy it out. It can grow to a multi-million dollar business and make a handful of people quite wealthy, but in its current format it has a ceiling. It's not like Right Media, where if you apply it to Yahoo, you don't see 1+1 = 2 but 1+1 = 3. Now, if Elite Retreat didn't accept money but took a stake in the companies, then it might be more interesting, or if it tried to see more companies than fewer with the aim of putting pieces together to form a larger company, then it has the type of growth and potential outside investors want to see.
· Listen Selectively - Much of what they say will sound like criticism, and you could easily take it personally. Think of it like a movie or reality show. The dialogue used in movies would break up most relationships if used in real life. But it has dramatic flare. Investors often operate in a bubble and talk about you and your business as though you aren't there. Like a movie, listen for the main points, the insight you can use, but don't let the negative get your down. They often don't know they are doing it. You and your business are just business. There is nothing personal in this. In the end, pretend it's not really you that is being discussed, much like a movie is not about you but for you.
Now fully armed, if you would like an introduction or more information, email us.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Why most of the CPA/Brokerage industry will not be around in 5 years.
from Digital Moses March 22, 2007
by Adrian Bye
Many people currently involved in the CPA industry feel that this industry is rock solid and not likely to change anytime soon. They may be in for a shock. There are developments coming from technological, business and legal areas which are going to have huge ramifications on the industry. One of those just happened.
Specifically I am referring the brokerage fees that CPA networks and brokers charge (around 20%) to push offers to fill the internet demand for remnant inventory, and the inefficiencies and expenses that are put in place by having so many humans involved in making web advertising work. Over time these people will be replaced by technology, just as many industries have been overturned in the past by modernization causing blue collar workers to lose their jobs.
The three biggest sources of traffic for a typical network are:
a. Email marketing
b. Pay per click traffic
c. Web inventory such as banners and text links
We’ll talk about these one by one.
CPA search marketing
Pay per click marketing is changing. Google has just announced it is going to offer a CPA model. At the moment it is possible to make a decent living by being good at PPC arbitrage of CPA offers. This works right now because Google and Yahoo have focused their business model around selling clicks, rather than selling actions. They do this because this is their version of branded CPM advertising – they can generally get more for it.
However, this causes huge inefficiencies in the system, because it is time consuming and complicated to figure out how to drive lots of PPC traffic, enabling therefore arbitrage opportunities.
Since Google has now started offering a CPA system, and Yahoo certainly will, this will change dramatically. Advertisers will be able to add a bunch of creatives into the system, along with a list of keywords and a CPA they are willing to pay. The system will then automatically test the base keywords you inserted, along with an extra list of keywords google generated itself. It will test them all against the various creatives you made; keeping pricing under a certain CPA you have set. The entire system will be fully automated, and the current arbitrage which is possible today will go away. Google and Yahoo can make quite a lot of money by making this change, given the average network commissions and the money made by PPC arbitrage players. Google has already switched and it is just a matter of time before Yahoo does as well.
Notice I don’t mention clickfraud – I don’t believe this impacts Google and Yahoo moving to a CPA model.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an area which is going to change on two fronts. CANSPAM is a law with many loopholes, one that allows people to send as much mail as they want under certain (not very restrictive) limitations. A lot of mail is being sent which does not provide true value to consumers, its simply mass market monetization that is driving volume, a process I really disagree with. At some point a new email law will be passed which requires something like "at the time of sign up, the sending FROM address must be displayed clearly so the consumer knows where they will receive mail from". And brokering of email data will be exclusive only. You join one list, you unsubscribe from that list, period. It’s only a matter of time until something like this is legislated. Don’t think so? A few years ago the telemarketing industry was doing great – now its been decimated with the FTC’s do not call rules. This kind of thing can happen literally overnight – look at how the online gaming industry has been affected recently.
Secondly, deliverability is going to get much more difficult. Right now, most ESP’s can get mail delivered almost anywhere except major ISP’s such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Reputation management is a new trend in email which will change this dramatically. Reputation management means that every IP address which is sending email is certified by an independent third party as to how that IP address is being used to send mail. It provides a lot of data to email receivers on exactly how that IP address is being used. If you’re certified and your reputation is positive, a lot of your mail will automatically be delivered. If you’re not, you’ll get blocked as spam.
Right now reputation management is being used by the major ISPs to confirm mail delivery – but once this is rolled out more widely across internet mail servers, mail blocking will improve dramatically, and those who are sending bulk co-reg data will find their deliverability falling through the floor.
Behavioural targeting
Thirdly, behavioral targeting is going to get much better. This has been talked about in the past, and never seems to truly work properly but it is starting to get much better now. Networks like Blue Lithium and turn.com are making a lot of progress with targeting and collecting a lot of data on their userbase. Reports I hear about Blue Lithium in particular are that it performs extremely well.
Impressive things are being done on the advertiser side to take advantage of behavioural targeting. For example, Think Partnership has a new product called Second Bite which saves shopping cart abandoners. If you decided not to buy a product and half completed your shopping cart, Second Bite will work to get you to finish your purchase. Think Partnership is just starting to buy banner inventory to save the cart purchase. What this means is that you can be browsing the web and you’ll see a banner saying "hey – come back and finish your purchase on and get a 10% discount". Once this kind of inventory is brokered out to major behavioural networks, no general interest CPA offer will be able to compete with the CPM’s they will be able to pay to save a purchase. Sure, this is a narrow application, but many more clever targeting applications of behavioural targeting will appear, increasing CPM’s across the board.
In addition, client side behavioral targeting will increase. By this I mean that users will allow more data to be mined from their computers locally, and some of it will be passed back to the network. In an extreme case, imagine if Microsoft made its Windows OS completely free – but in return for being able to mine behvioural data from your machine. This data would be fed back to online targeting networks such as Blue Lithium, to target web advertising more accurately. No popups or any other nasty applications would be included. That could be a huge value add for consumers – with free software AND better advertising. Yes, this has huge privacy implications, but over time these will be worked out – the ECPM increase from accurate targeting will be too valuable, and consumers will not mind their data being mined in aggregate.
That’s not to say that everything is bad. Some areas of the CPA and brokerage industry will continue to work well. These include:
1) Coupon and affiliate sites. Publishers that are actively going out and finding links to promote on their site for consumers will continue to make money and want to use CPA networks. The human interface in this instance provides tremendous value to consumers since the publishers truly understand what their market wants.
2) Newsletters. This will become the standard for email marketing as the more aggressive forms of email marketing will be made illegal. This is similar to coupon and affiliate sites where publishers will actively seek out links to target their audience due to their understanding of their market.
3) Web and chat spam is going to increase. Right now we’re seeing quite a bit of spam on myspace, and given the progress people are making on defeating CAPTCHA mechanisms, this will only increase. If the postings cannot be effectively blocked by computers, then more of it will be done. Unfortunately CPA networks will see more volume from various forms of aggressive webspam as time goes on.
The branding industry will have some impact on these, but it likely won’t change much from the way it is now – some inventory will be sold at higher ECPM’s for major brands, and the rest will be remnant inventory. Of course the big question is how high the ECPM’s can get for behavioural targeting and whether they can beat branded advertising.
Some people will read this article and be thinking to themselves "no, he’s wrong, this has always worked, and it will continue to work". The reality is that the internet marketing industry has been around for a very short time, and we really don’t have any data points to compare against long term. The right way to think about it is "where is the true value for consumers and advertisers". If your business model doesn’t provide true value to all stakeholders, then at some point what you are doing will stop working.
If your business model depends entirely on brokering, you may want to consider how you will operate in a few years time once the above become reality.
A good way to think about whether your business will be around in the future is simply by answering two questions:
1) By running my business, am I creating true value for all my stakeholders (customers, employees, consumers, partners)
And
2) Am I keeping up with the very latest trends that might affect my business, including industries that are not directly related to my daily focus?
For number 2, you can say you’re doing the right thing because you’re reading this. J
Does this mean that all CPA advertising and lead generation will go away? Of course not. These are very fundamental models and the backbone of internet commerce.
Just watch out if your business model is entirely focused around brokering remnant advertising. If this is your primary business, make sure you stay on top of your strategy. You don’t want your company to be made irrelevant like has happened with generations of blue collar workers in the past.
by Adrian Bye
Many people currently involved in the CPA industry feel that this industry is rock solid and not likely to change anytime soon. They may be in for a shock. There are developments coming from technological, business and legal areas which are going to have huge ramifications on the industry. One of those just happened.
Specifically I am referring the brokerage fees that CPA networks and brokers charge (around 20%) to push offers to fill the internet demand for remnant inventory, and the inefficiencies and expenses that are put in place by having so many humans involved in making web advertising work. Over time these people will be replaced by technology, just as many industries have been overturned in the past by modernization causing blue collar workers to lose their jobs.
The three biggest sources of traffic for a typical network are:
a. Email marketing
b. Pay per click traffic
c. Web inventory such as banners and text links
We’ll talk about these one by one.
CPA search marketing
Pay per click marketing is changing. Google has just announced it is going to offer a CPA model. At the moment it is possible to make a decent living by being good at PPC arbitrage of CPA offers. This works right now because Google and Yahoo have focused their business model around selling clicks, rather than selling actions. They do this because this is their version of branded CPM advertising – they can generally get more for it.
However, this causes huge inefficiencies in the system, because it is time consuming and complicated to figure out how to drive lots of PPC traffic, enabling therefore arbitrage opportunities.
Since Google has now started offering a CPA system, and Yahoo certainly will, this will change dramatically. Advertisers will be able to add a bunch of creatives into the system, along with a list of keywords and a CPA they are willing to pay. The system will then automatically test the base keywords you inserted, along with an extra list of keywords google generated itself. It will test them all against the various creatives you made; keeping pricing under a certain CPA you have set. The entire system will be fully automated, and the current arbitrage which is possible today will go away. Google and Yahoo can make quite a lot of money by making this change, given the average network commissions and the money made by PPC arbitrage players. Google has already switched and it is just a matter of time before Yahoo does as well.
Notice I don’t mention clickfraud – I don’t believe this impacts Google and Yahoo moving to a CPA model.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an area which is going to change on two fronts. CANSPAM is a law with many loopholes, one that allows people to send as much mail as they want under certain (not very restrictive) limitations. A lot of mail is being sent which does not provide true value to consumers, its simply mass market monetization that is driving volume, a process I really disagree with. At some point a new email law will be passed which requires something like "at the time of sign up, the sending FROM address must be displayed clearly so the consumer knows where they will receive mail from". And brokering of email data will be exclusive only. You join one list, you unsubscribe from that list, period. It’s only a matter of time until something like this is legislated. Don’t think so? A few years ago the telemarketing industry was doing great – now its been decimated with the FTC’s do not call rules. This kind of thing can happen literally overnight – look at how the online gaming industry has been affected recently.
Secondly, deliverability is going to get much more difficult. Right now, most ESP’s can get mail delivered almost anywhere except major ISP’s such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Reputation management is a new trend in email which will change this dramatically. Reputation management means that every IP address which is sending email is certified by an independent third party as to how that IP address is being used to send mail. It provides a lot of data to email receivers on exactly how that IP address is being used. If you’re certified and your reputation is positive, a lot of your mail will automatically be delivered. If you’re not, you’ll get blocked as spam.
Right now reputation management is being used by the major ISPs to confirm mail delivery – but once this is rolled out more widely across internet mail servers, mail blocking will improve dramatically, and those who are sending bulk co-reg data will find their deliverability falling through the floor.
Behavioural targeting
Thirdly, behavioral targeting is going to get much better. This has been talked about in the past, and never seems to truly work properly but it is starting to get much better now. Networks like Blue Lithium and turn.com are making a lot of progress with targeting and collecting a lot of data on their userbase. Reports I hear about Blue Lithium in particular are that it performs extremely well.
Impressive things are being done on the advertiser side to take advantage of behavioural targeting. For example, Think Partnership has a new product called Second Bite which saves shopping cart abandoners. If you decided not to buy a product and half completed your shopping cart, Second Bite will work to get you to finish your purchase. Think Partnership is just starting to buy banner inventory to save the cart purchase. What this means is that you can be browsing the web and you’ll see a banner saying "hey – come back and finish your purchase on
In addition, client side behavioral targeting will increase. By this I mean that users will allow more data to be mined from their computers locally, and some of it will be passed back to the network. In an extreme case, imagine if Microsoft made its Windows OS completely free – but in return for being able to mine behvioural data from your machine. This data would be fed back to online targeting networks such as Blue Lithium, to target web advertising more accurately. No popups or any other nasty applications would be included. That could be a huge value add for consumers – with free software AND better advertising. Yes, this has huge privacy implications, but over time these will be worked out – the ECPM increase from accurate targeting will be too valuable, and consumers will not mind their data being mined in aggregate.
That’s not to say that everything is bad. Some areas of the CPA and brokerage industry will continue to work well. These include:
1) Coupon and affiliate sites. Publishers that are actively going out and finding links to promote on their site for consumers will continue to make money and want to use CPA networks. The human interface in this instance provides tremendous value to consumers since the publishers truly understand what their market wants.
2) Newsletters. This will become the standard for email marketing as the more aggressive forms of email marketing will be made illegal. This is similar to coupon and affiliate sites where publishers will actively seek out links to target their audience due to their understanding of their market.
3) Web and chat spam is going to increase. Right now we’re seeing quite a bit of spam on myspace, and given the progress people are making on defeating CAPTCHA mechanisms, this will only increase. If the postings cannot be effectively blocked by computers, then more of it will be done. Unfortunately CPA networks will see more volume from various forms of aggressive webspam as time goes on.
The branding industry will have some impact on these, but it likely won’t change much from the way it is now – some inventory will be sold at higher ECPM’s for major brands, and the rest will be remnant inventory. Of course the big question is how high the ECPM’s can get for behavioural targeting and whether they can beat branded advertising.
Some people will read this article and be thinking to themselves "no, he’s wrong, this has always worked, and it will continue to work". The reality is that the internet marketing industry has been around for a very short time, and we really don’t have any data points to compare against long term. The right way to think about it is "where is the true value for consumers and advertisers". If your business model doesn’t provide true value to all stakeholders, then at some point what you are doing will stop working.
If your business model depends entirely on brokering, you may want to consider how you will operate in a few years time once the above become reality.
A good way to think about whether your business will be around in the future is simply by answering two questions:
1) By running my business, am I creating true value for all my stakeholders (customers, employees, consumers, partners)
And
2) Am I keeping up with the very latest trends that might affect my business, including industries that are not directly related to my daily focus?
For number 2, you can say you’re doing the right thing because you’re reading this. J
Does this mean that all CPA advertising and lead generation will go away? Of course not. These are very fundamental models and the backbone of internet commerce.
Just watch out if your business model is entirely focused around brokering remnant advertising. If this is your primary business, make sure you stay on top of your strategy. You don’t want your company to be made irrelevant like has happened with generations of blue collar workers in the past.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Online Dating Lacks Dimension
By Regina Lynn| Also by this reporter
05:00 AM Mar, 16, 2007
Editor's note: Some links in this story lead to adult material and are not suitable for viewing at work. All links of this nature will be noted with "NSFW" after them.
Sex Drive columnist Regina Lynn
Sex Drive
A friend asked me last weekend if I was going to go back to online dating, now that I'm single again. I answered truthfully: It hasn't even occurred to me.
Even if I were looking for another lover, or boyfriend, or husband, or hookup (which I'm not; let's nip that e-mail in the bud right now), I don't think I would return to an online dating service.
If I'm going to get involved online, I'd rather meet people in a 3-D virtual environment. The avatars they wear and the environments they build tell me more about them than their online dating profiles.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. The BBC quoted Mark Kern, president of game company Red 5 Studios, predicting that in just five years, "a social-networking site without a 3-D universe will look like a dinosaur."
The adult sites get it. Social-networking site Utherverse (NSFW) launched in conjunction with its erotic universe, Red Light Center (NSFW). And Naughty America: The Game describes itself as "the evolution of online dating," not as "the Sims on steroids."
Even though MMOs carry an even greater social stigma than online dating, a virtual world more closely resembles the way humans meet and relate than a database of personal profiles. You have a group of people with a common interest spending time in shared pursuits on a regular basis. Shared pursuits other than dating, that is.
The strongest love relationships in my life have been the ones that grew, often unexpectedly, from friendships and community, not from set-ups or browsing through a catalog. And how many people do you know who only fell in love after they stopped trying to?
When UCLA professor Janet Lever studied online romance a few years ago, she was surprised to learn that just as many relationships emerged from chat rooms and what she delicately called "erotic sites" as from online dating services. The couples reported about the same levels of happiness and solidity, regardless of where they first met.
Unlike the internet relay chat rooms of old -- and I am not the only one to have found love there, not by a long shot -- a 3-D universe adds a new dimension of interaction and communication, along with several layers of complexity that help screen out the uninvested.
It takes dedication to reside in 3-D. But in 3-D, you can show each other what you mean when words become inadequate. You see how people interact with their friends, how they handle come-ons or rudeness from strangers, how they respond to fetishized avatars or environments, what they like to build and create and what they will spend money on.
Maybe that's the appeal, for me. I'm apparently drawn to people who are willing to commit to a shared hallucination and make it real. Second Life isn't just in our minds -- residents can supplement the family income through in-world businesses, and the in-world currency has value in the offline world. How long before we stop calling 3-D worlds "virtual"?
And I think I've always preferred to form connections and let attraction, lust and even love arrive in its own time, although I wouldn't have known that five years ago.
In fact, upon reflection, I think my initial response to new sexual and loving relationships has often been surprise. When did this happen? How did I get so lucky? Look at this cute guy I get to make omelets with in the morning!
That is probably why I found love (and sex, and friendships that are still going strong 10 years later) in a text chat room while I can barely remember who I met through online personals, other than that they were all nice men and nothing horrible happened.
For those who recoil in disgust at the thought of meeting anyone through the internet, that's fine too. If the internet is not integrated into your life such that relationships flow online and offline and back again so naturally you can't even remember where things started, we're probably not compatible anyway.
Most of the 3-D worlds I've ventured into provide optional profile pages for adding a "real world" dimension to a place where you represent yourself with a cartoon. But because you are constantly interacting with people in real time, the profile is not the first, or even the primary, point of contact for the relationship.
After that conversation with my friend, I called up my old Salon Personals profile, which has been in the database and set to "invisible" for seven years. It's been at least five years since I last used it to meet someone.
I stared for a while at this artifact from my past, taking in the photo of a younger, slimmer self, reading the double entendres I'd thought said more about me than any long-winded résumé. ("Q: What is the best or worst lie you've ever told? A: It doesn't matter.")
The scary part, the part that made me catch my breath, is that what I wrote is still true. Technically. On the surface.
I could probably set the profile back to "visible" and not have to buy my own soy-chai-latte-with-added-shot for a month and no one would know the difference, because those half-hour coffeehouse dates aren't enough to get below the surface either.
But I have changed so much. I have grown and matured and suffered and discovered and explored and chased dreams (and caught some of them, too). A static profile cannot keep up with life. That the descriptions I worked on so meticulously then could be stretched to fit who I am now shows just how little we learn about a person from a profile.
The New York Times ran a feature last weekend about services that help people capture more of themselves in their personals, showing them how to take better pictures and replace clichés like "I enjoy travel" with specifics like "I hiked the Great Wall of China."
In a 3-D environment, you don't have to list your travel résumé -- you just go do the things you like to do, and see who's there. If there's no great wall to hike you can get a group together to build one or petition the developers to create one.
Maybe I would feel differently if I had a biological clock, like the men Salon writer Elline Lipkin kept running into on dating sites.
Or maybe I have just grown into a person who would rather relate in the here and now with the people I run into on a regular basis, online and off, than comb through a directory looking for someone new. Sexual attraction can be built over time, something those 30-minute coffee dates to assess "chemistry" don't allow for.
Alternatively, immediate sparks can be acted on -- but are no guarantee of lasting satisfaction.
I took one last look at my 30-year-old self, then deleted the profile from the database. If sex is going to find me online, it will find me. And meanwhile, I'm hoping to spend a lot more time in more than just three dimensions. Yes, Luddite, that's right: I'm going to go outside.
But I'll take both my cell phones with me, in case you want to text.
See you next Friday,
Regina Lynn
05:00 AM Mar, 16, 2007
Editor's note: Some links in this story lead to adult material and are not suitable for viewing at work. All links of this nature will be noted with "NSFW" after them.
Sex Drive columnist Regina Lynn
Sex Drive
A friend asked me last weekend if I was going to go back to online dating, now that I'm single again. I answered truthfully: It hasn't even occurred to me.
Even if I were looking for another lover, or boyfriend, or husband, or hookup (which I'm not; let's nip that e-mail in the bud right now), I don't think I would return to an online dating service.
If I'm going to get involved online, I'd rather meet people in a 3-D virtual environment. The avatars they wear and the environments they build tell me more about them than their online dating profiles.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. The BBC quoted Mark Kern, president of game company Red 5 Studios, predicting that in just five years, "a social-networking site without a 3-D universe will look like a dinosaur."
The adult sites get it. Social-networking site Utherverse (NSFW) launched in conjunction with its erotic universe, Red Light Center (NSFW). And Naughty America: The Game describes itself as "the evolution of online dating," not as "the Sims on steroids."
Even though MMOs carry an even greater social stigma than online dating, a virtual world more closely resembles the way humans meet and relate than a database of personal profiles. You have a group of people with a common interest spending time in shared pursuits on a regular basis. Shared pursuits other than dating, that is.
The strongest love relationships in my life have been the ones that grew, often unexpectedly, from friendships and community, not from set-ups or browsing through a catalog. And how many people do you know who only fell in love after they stopped trying to?
When UCLA professor Janet Lever studied online romance a few years ago, she was surprised to learn that just as many relationships emerged from chat rooms and what she delicately called "erotic sites" as from online dating services. The couples reported about the same levels of happiness and solidity, regardless of where they first met.
Unlike the internet relay chat rooms of old -- and I am not the only one to have found love there, not by a long shot -- a 3-D universe adds a new dimension of interaction and communication, along with several layers of complexity that help screen out the uninvested.
It takes dedication to reside in 3-D. But in 3-D, you can show each other what you mean when words become inadequate. You see how people interact with their friends, how they handle come-ons or rudeness from strangers, how they respond to fetishized avatars or environments, what they like to build and create and what they will spend money on.
Maybe that's the appeal, for me. I'm apparently drawn to people who are willing to commit to a shared hallucination and make it real. Second Life isn't just in our minds -- residents can supplement the family income through in-world businesses, and the in-world currency has value in the offline world. How long before we stop calling 3-D worlds "virtual"?
And I think I've always preferred to form connections and let attraction, lust and even love arrive in its own time, although I wouldn't have known that five years ago.
In fact, upon reflection, I think my initial response to new sexual and loving relationships has often been surprise. When did this happen? How did I get so lucky? Look at this cute guy I get to make omelets with in the morning!
That is probably why I found love (and sex, and friendships that are still going strong 10 years later) in a text chat room while I can barely remember who I met through online personals, other than that they were all nice men and nothing horrible happened.
For those who recoil in disgust at the thought of meeting anyone through the internet, that's fine too. If the internet is not integrated into your life such that relationships flow online and offline and back again so naturally you can't even remember where things started, we're probably not compatible anyway.
Most of the 3-D worlds I've ventured into provide optional profile pages for adding a "real world" dimension to a place where you represent yourself with a cartoon. But because you are constantly interacting with people in real time, the profile is not the first, or even the primary, point of contact for the relationship.
After that conversation with my friend, I called up my old Salon Personals profile, which has been in the database and set to "invisible" for seven years. It's been at least five years since I last used it to meet someone.
I stared for a while at this artifact from my past, taking in the photo of a younger, slimmer self, reading the double entendres I'd thought said more about me than any long-winded résumé. ("Q: What is the best or worst lie you've ever told? A: It doesn't matter.")
The scary part, the part that made me catch my breath, is that what I wrote is still true. Technically. On the surface.
I could probably set the profile back to "visible" and not have to buy my own soy-chai-latte-with-added-shot for a month and no one would know the difference, because those half-hour coffeehouse dates aren't enough to get below the surface either.
But I have changed so much. I have grown and matured and suffered and discovered and explored and chased dreams (and caught some of them, too). A static profile cannot keep up with life. That the descriptions I worked on so meticulously then could be stretched to fit who I am now shows just how little we learn about a person from a profile.
The New York Times ran a feature last weekend about services that help people capture more of themselves in their personals, showing them how to take better pictures and replace clichés like "I enjoy travel" with specifics like "I hiked the Great Wall of China."
In a 3-D environment, you don't have to list your travel résumé -- you just go do the things you like to do, and see who's there. If there's no great wall to hike you can get a group together to build one or petition the developers to create one.
Maybe I would feel differently if I had a biological clock, like the men Salon writer Elline Lipkin kept running into on dating sites.
Or maybe I have just grown into a person who would rather relate in the here and now with the people I run into on a regular basis, online and off, than comb through a directory looking for someone new. Sexual attraction can be built over time, something those 30-minute coffee dates to assess "chemistry" don't allow for.
Alternatively, immediate sparks can be acted on -- but are no guarantee of lasting satisfaction.
I took one last look at my 30-year-old self, then deleted the profile from the database. If sex is going to find me online, it will find me. And meanwhile, I'm hoping to spend a lot more time in more than just three dimensions. Yes, Luddite, that's right: I'm going to go outside.
But I'll take both my cell phones with me, in case you want to text.
See you next Friday,
Regina Lynn
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Web Thinks> Web 3.0
January 05, 2007
Efforts are underway to create a new generation of the web that’s smarter and more intuitive than the web we use today. Artificial Intelligence expert Nigel Shadbolt explains “Web 3.0,” and just how smart we can expect the future Internet to be.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.
And I'm Bob Garfield. For a couple of years now, we've been living in a Web 2.0 world. Web 2.0 is the nickname given to the second generation of the Web in which the static pages of the early Internet gave way to something more fluid, where users can more easily find and share information, music and video.
We were just settling into Web 2.0 when suddenly, back in November, The New York Times ran a page-one story about the future of a new Semantic Web, a Web that thinks. Web 3.0? Huh?
Nigel Shadbolt is a professor of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University in England. He says that Web 3.0 will not only give us the facts we seek, it will choose among them, organize them – essentially do our work for us.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: So I might ask of Web 3.0, if it was actually there and running at the moment, book me a holiday in Vienna in a nice resort near Innsbruck for my family next week. Oh, and by the way, I've got a 12-year-old.
Now, that kind of expression of a complex question is nothing that we can precisely enter into the Web as it currently exists. People's hopes and aspirations for this more complete Web are that it will be able to deal with these kinds of complex queries.
BOB GARFIELD: Under Web 3.0, you're talking about the computer actually making some judgments for me. How do it know?
NIGEL SHADBOLT: Well, when you look at the Web page of a holiday provider and look at all of those features on those page, a particular location, a particular hotel type, how long it'll take to get there, you are extracting all of that information using your wetware and your eyeballs and four billion years of evolution. That's what human beings are exquisitely good at.
What we're developing in this next generation of Web are markup languages which are able to take the content on pages and documents like that and describe the bits of that content that are about the hotel and its location, about the expected amount of sunshine at a particular month in the year. It's called metadata, and the metadata is now allowing us to have information about the information available. And that's how the machines know.
Essentially, one machine will be using a particular vocabulary to describe its markup, and it will go and tell another machine that this is the place to look for to find out how it's using those definitions.
BOB GARFIELD: It sounds to me what you're describing is Artificial Intelligence.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: I kind of think of the Web as almost like a natural ecology. And what we're seeing start to pop up in various parts of the Web are simple sorts of micro-intelligences. Now, this isn't full-blown AI, but in just the way that we now have shopping assistants, shop-bots that can go out there and get a good price for us from particular stores, or an auction agent that can sit around and make a bid for us on eBay, these very limited sorts of adaptive behavior are going to start to spring up across the Web.
So I think of the Web starting to illustrate lots of micro-intelligences rather than being some kind of super-sentient information fabric. I think that really does remain in the realm of science fiction.
BOB GARFIELD: In The New York Times, there was a piece about Web 3.0, talking about a system called – forgive me, I don't know the pronunciation, but it's CYC.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: "Sike."
BOB GARFIELD: Okay.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: The CYC Project was an attempt, some years ago now, to try and use AI techniques to construct encyclopedic knowledge that humans have about the world. Now, one of the very hardest things to get our computers to understand is all the common-sense knowledge we have about how the world works and is structured.
The fact that if I have a can of water above a cup and I pour the can of water under normal gravity, that water will just flow into the cup – all that common-sense knowledge that we have packed in over years of development is hard to reproduce in computers.
Now, what CYC has been about is trying to regiment large amounts of common-sense knowledge and put that to work in programs that reason about various aspects of the world.
Now, CYC has been seen as a potential help to Web 3.0. I don't think we're going to be able to kind of plot all of that encyclopedic knowledge into the Web and just have good things happen. It's much more likely that we'll take facets and aspects of CYC's knowledge base and use them for particular tasks.
BOB GARFIELD: This is all fascinating. Is there any reason to think that this is going to materialize in the next year, the next five years, the next thirty years? How close are we to a Web 3.0 Artificial Intelligence online world?
NIGEL SHADBOLT: I don't see that just around the corner. I think what we'll see is increasing amounts of these limited intelligent services. I also see a Web that will be still very much driven by people. People are the real intelligence in the Web.
And what we see happening in very interesting developments like Wikipedia, where you get this collective wisdom, large numbers of individuals collaborating to reveal and put down their experience, their intelligence, what we see there is this key facet of the Web - that people are extremely good at being the general intelligence on the planet.
And what the Web machines deliver up to us are particular ways of holding vast amounts of detailed information and serving and filtering that information in accurate ways.
BOB GARFIELD: Nigel, you're kind to talk with us. Thank you very much.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University.
Efforts are underway to create a new generation of the web that’s smarter and more intuitive than the web we use today. Artificial Intelligence expert Nigel Shadbolt explains “Web 3.0,” and just how smart we can expect the future Internet to be.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.
And I'm Bob Garfield. For a couple of years now, we've been living in a Web 2.0 world. Web 2.0 is the nickname given to the second generation of the Web in which the static pages of the early Internet gave way to something more fluid, where users can more easily find and share information, music and video.
We were just settling into Web 2.0 when suddenly, back in November, The New York Times ran a page-one story about the future of a new Semantic Web, a Web that thinks. Web 3.0? Huh?
Nigel Shadbolt is a professor of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University in England. He says that Web 3.0 will not only give us the facts we seek, it will choose among them, organize them – essentially do our work for us.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: So I might ask of Web 3.0, if it was actually there and running at the moment, book me a holiday in Vienna in a nice resort near Innsbruck for my family next week. Oh, and by the way, I've got a 12-year-old.
Now, that kind of expression of a complex question is nothing that we can precisely enter into the Web as it currently exists. People's hopes and aspirations for this more complete Web are that it will be able to deal with these kinds of complex queries.
BOB GARFIELD: Under Web 3.0, you're talking about the computer actually making some judgments for me. How do it know?
NIGEL SHADBOLT: Well, when you look at the Web page of a holiday provider and look at all of those features on those page, a particular location, a particular hotel type, how long it'll take to get there, you are extracting all of that information using your wetware and your eyeballs and four billion years of evolution. That's what human beings are exquisitely good at.
What we're developing in this next generation of Web are markup languages which are able to take the content on pages and documents like that and describe the bits of that content that are about the hotel and its location, about the expected amount of sunshine at a particular month in the year. It's called metadata, and the metadata is now allowing us to have information about the information available. And that's how the machines know.
Essentially, one machine will be using a particular vocabulary to describe its markup, and it will go and tell another machine that this is the place to look for to find out how it's using those definitions.
BOB GARFIELD: It sounds to me what you're describing is Artificial Intelligence.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: I kind of think of the Web as almost like a natural ecology. And what we're seeing start to pop up in various parts of the Web are simple sorts of micro-intelligences. Now, this isn't full-blown AI, but in just the way that we now have shopping assistants, shop-bots that can go out there and get a good price for us from particular stores, or an auction agent that can sit around and make a bid for us on eBay, these very limited sorts of adaptive behavior are going to start to spring up across the Web.
So I think of the Web starting to illustrate lots of micro-intelligences rather than being some kind of super-sentient information fabric. I think that really does remain in the realm of science fiction.
BOB GARFIELD: In The New York Times, there was a piece about Web 3.0, talking about a system called – forgive me, I don't know the pronunciation, but it's CYC.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: "Sike."
BOB GARFIELD: Okay.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: The CYC Project was an attempt, some years ago now, to try and use AI techniques to construct encyclopedic knowledge that humans have about the world. Now, one of the very hardest things to get our computers to understand is all the common-sense knowledge we have about how the world works and is structured.
The fact that if I have a can of water above a cup and I pour the can of water under normal gravity, that water will just flow into the cup – all that common-sense knowledge that we have packed in over years of development is hard to reproduce in computers.
Now, what CYC has been about is trying to regiment large amounts of common-sense knowledge and put that to work in programs that reason about various aspects of the world.
Now, CYC has been seen as a potential help to Web 3.0. I don't think we're going to be able to kind of plot all of that encyclopedic knowledge into the Web and just have good things happen. It's much more likely that we'll take facets and aspects of CYC's knowledge base and use them for particular tasks.
BOB GARFIELD: This is all fascinating. Is there any reason to think that this is going to materialize in the next year, the next five years, the next thirty years? How close are we to a Web 3.0 Artificial Intelligence online world?
NIGEL SHADBOLT: I don't see that just around the corner. I think what we'll see is increasing amounts of these limited intelligent services. I also see a Web that will be still very much driven by people. People are the real intelligence in the Web.
And what we see happening in very interesting developments like Wikipedia, where you get this collective wisdom, large numbers of individuals collaborating to reveal and put down their experience, their intelligence, what we see there is this key facet of the Web - that people are extremely good at being the general intelligence on the planet.
And what the Web machines deliver up to us are particular ways of holding vast amounts of detailed information and serving and filtering that information in accurate ways.
BOB GARFIELD: Nigel, you're kind to talk with us. Thank you very much.
NIGEL SHADBOLT: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University.
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