WAIT, WHAT?!
I laughed.
When Facebook first commented on the small number of Americans who saw the Russian prompted ads at 10 million, I laughed.
I laughed again last week when Facebook upped the number of Americans who saw the ads to 126 million.
Today, Facebook testified on Capitol Hill that the number is now 150 million.
Still laughing.
Facebook, Google and Twitter are compromised. And there is a reason....a lack of seasoned media professionals.
When Facebook first announced10 Million Americans saw the ads and the dollars they took to run them i held back.
Wait, What?!
The numbers simply did not add up and any traditional media pro could have figured that out.
When Facebook upped the number to 126 million and reasoned that it was a small insignificant number I paused and laughed some more. So .... Facebook is telling its advertisers that the millions reached was not a big deal and are taking money from clients to sell insignifigant performance.
Who's crazy here?
It's just the tip of the iceberg and numbers will rise yet again. It will not end well.

Note to Facebook. Google and Twitter .... get off your high horse and hire some seasoned traditional media pros who know the business of reach and math. You simply do not have the chops nor the required foundations to go it alone.

WHAT IF??

Many pieces make up the whole.

There is much buzz concerning Microsoft's intentions when it announced that IE10 would default to a Do Not Track option for advertising.  What that would do to its ad business (and that of advertiser's ability to target ads) is a concern for many marketers.

Who benefits from such a move? 

It appears that  Microsoft, if it indeed is exiting the ad business, as might also be reflected in its shrinking business staff, is looking to ultimately move users away from Google Chrome, and its tracking default, to a "friendlier" Do Not Track platform.

But let's look under the covers.

What would Microsoft do with its ad business?  The recent announcement by Yahoo's Marissa Mayer to rethink the use of cash from its Alibaba deal (about $7 Billion) leads me to assume a bigger deal is at hand. 

Reverse engineering the merger between Yahoo and Bing, Yahoo could use the cash to buy out the Microsoft ad business, bolstering display and, more importantly Search.  Given Marissa's oversight of Search while at Google, it's not a far fetched scenario.

What do you think?

What You Should Know About Social Media

Stay away.  As the current barbs about Facebook’s IPO fly and as GroupOn takes a dive with its stock closing in on single digits, the Social Media helium craze is drifting further away from the accountable reality of advertising performance.

Tech stars Google and Apple haven’t escaped the hammering of late by the pundits that are blinded by the hope of social media or even mobile media.
 

They are all wrong.

The reality check that follows tracks the opening price for the above mentioned companies and the Dow Jones and NASDAQ averages.  It may not be a precise measure, but it points out the underlying value placed on these firms by analysts and the public at large.

Since the opening stock price on May 18^th (the first trading day for Facebook) and the closing price on May 30^th the result that follows sends a strong signal and a vote for value creation vs. value deterioration.
 

Apple: up 8.5%

Google: down 5.9%

Facebook: down 33.0%

GroupOn: down 11.1%

Dow Jones: down 1.9%

NASDAQ: up 0.8%

While the averages remain relatively unchanged, Google tries to keep pace while the pure play social media darlings are clobbered.  The clear winner in this “race” … Apple.

WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE

It's not a game any more.

From an article last week in The Wall Street Journal ...

"Some of the most widely used apps on Facebook—the games, quizzes and sharing services that define the social-networking site and give it such appeal—are gathering volumes of personal information.

A Wall Street Journal examination of 100 of the most popular Facebook apps found that some seek the email addresses, current location and sexual preference, among other details, not only of app users but also of their Facebook friends. One Yahoo service powered by Facebook requests access to a person's religious and political leanings as a condition for using it.

The popular Skype service for making online phone calls seeks the Facebook photos and birthdays of its users and their friends......a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app.

An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy. "

With thanks to Bob Hoffman at Hoffman Lewis for pointing this out in his blog, The Ad Contrarian.

IS IT TOO LATE?

Have we gone too far to trust the house of cards in whose hands we place our private lives?
Yesterday I was given to understand that banks are now scanning Facebook pages to qualify you for a loan. If they sense your activities through postings, comments and photos are questionable as a loan risk, you just might not get that loan or a great rate.

It is now standard practice for HR departments to do the same when applying for a job.

Unfortunately, what happens online stays online … forever. Online actions have consequences that can haunt from cradle to grave and beyond. The need to connect and share with “friends” is often so intense that it’s easy (especially for younger generations) to lose sight of what can become devastating consequences.

Cyber bullying has become all too common thanks to the Internet flaming and spreading hurtful posts faster than they can be stopped. The trend needs to be arrested before more kids follow in the footsteps of those we already lost.

The social networks have a responsibility to protect their user base on many levels. It’s unfortunate that the business of collecting our data (most often in circumventing ways) completely overshadows the need to protect us. Week after week we read that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Verizon and others have overstepped privacy concerns in an effort to track our online movements and locations.

It will not stop. Data of every size, shape and form has become the currency of choice for all online services. The stakes are too high. Witness the current explosion of Big Data and Cloud computing companies chased by VCs like it was during the pre-bubble days. VCs are tripping over themselves to share the spoils.

In 1984, Big Brother was too far off to be a concern. Today, what we read in 1984 was child’s play.

LOSING FACE(BOOK)

The holidays have come and gone and new year resolutions are on the agenda of millions. My own began on Christmas day when I resolved to quit Facebook. Easier said than done.

Finding the option to delete an account is a formidable task in and of itself. Trawling through settings and management options I finally (simply) typed "Cancel A Facebook Account" into Google's search engine. Results pointed to a direct link for deletion. Several clicks later I was done .... Or was I?

Advisory: STOP! Do Not Pass Go, No U-Turns!

While a de-activated account cannot be accessed by the public at large, it takes 14 days to delete the account entirely. If, during the 14 day "waiting" period you interact with Facebook, the account is automatically reactivated. The simple act of checking to make sure your account was deleted withing the 14 day period will reactivate it. Sneaky? Ya think?!

On January 8th I will be (should be) faceless. In the short period since December 25th I haven't missed one message, one update, one friend request or photo opp. What was it's purpose anyway?

Because it's my business to know what's happening in the digital world, I felt obligated to be part of it. What I finally realized was that all my news feeds keep me up to date without the need to maintain a Facebook account. Want to reach me? Send me a text. E-mail me. Pick up a phone. Write me a note.

I don't want Facebook to be my communication tool. Frankly I find the lazy and evasive, jibber-jabber attitude towards privacy a bit too corporate ... good for Facebook; not good for you.

The jury is also still out on the value of Facebook as a marketing tool for your business. Rushing like so many lemmings to the edge and over, into an abyss of corporate waste, is epic. There have been no real success stories that carry over into sustainable and profitable marketing efforts.

You can e-mail me at pbenjou@gmail.com

LIKE IT OR NOT ...

Obfuscate: To darken, To make obscure. To be evasive, unclear or confusing. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand.

Guilty: Facebook, Twitter and Google.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street journal into the use of "LIKE" buttons and widgets placed on thousands of major sites, signaled yet another serious breach of ethics that will surely have the privacy police up in arms.

It appears these buttons capture a user's visit to the site and feeds it back to the originator. The kicker is that you need not click on the button. Your visit is automatically logged by the likes of Facebook.

Their explanations obfuscate. Do we really believe when they tell us they don't use the data? If so, why are the visits tracked in the first place.

Their real response should be .... We know you're too stupid to understand what we do and we don't want to tell you why we're doing it but we're going to do it anyway.

Gotcha!

Read the story here.

YouTube vs BoobTube

For the sake of clarity, I am posting a chart based on Nielsen estimates that reflects monthly viewing for video .. whether TV, Netflix or YouTube.

Simply stated, TV crushes YouTube.

Yet with all the hype concerning the coming of broadband video, as if it were the second coming of Christ, I see nothing in this chart that comes close to the power of good ol' television.

So why do we continue to get caught up in the gigabit flow of over-hyped, overzealous and hyper-exaggerated use of broadband video? Because it's human nature to want to be on the cutting edge of anything new and cool.

It is a young playground... and "the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience"..Oscar Wilde

Google announced it will spend $100 million to increse YouTube viewership. I would advise Google to take a close look at the chart again. If Google increased viewership by 300% would it make a difference?

The viewing landscape will eventually change .. but for the next decade I'll put my money on television as the most powerful marketing tool we have.

Click on the chart to enlarge it.

SHOTGUN WEDDING: GOOGLE / WPP

Mountain View, CA (Reuters)

In a move that has the potential to rock and dislodge the underpinnings of the advertising community, Google announced a hostile takeover bid for holding company giant WPP.

With an enterprise value just shy of $11 billion Google is expected to pay up to a 60 percent premium for the firm raising the stock price to its 2000 high of $99 per share.

It is expected that Dr. Eric Schmidt, 56, recently sidelined as Google’s CEO will assume the CEO position at WPP as Sir Martin Sorrell, 66, who once described Google as a “frenemy”, takes the title of Executive Group Chairman.

Why would Google put its future at risk by assuming ownership of a major non-core business? Follow this link for a more in depth analysis: goo.gl/BZrKv

FACEBOOK - LIKE AN OIL SPILL

It starts with a small drip, drip, drip....

Unchecked and unregulated it can grow to become a looming disaster affecting all aspects of personal and private information. Like the leaking oil in our gulf it will have lasting impact on individual "environments".

When Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook suggests to his employees that there is no such thing as privacy and when Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google insists that privacy should not be an issue if you have nothing to hide, it's time to worry.

Be very, very worried.

The infographs that follow trace the "privacy spill" perpetuated by Facebook in five short years. They tell the story better than I can in this short blog post.

Click on the graphs to enlarge.

A shout out and thanks to a reader (Yen) for passing this along.

CYBER ATTACK ON GOOGLE?

At 12:01 AM (CST) today, April 1, in Taiwan, it is believed the Chinese government, angered by Google’s decision to circumvent internet censorship rules, launched a global cyber attack on the company effectively hampering its ability to operate.

Initial denial of service attacks and shut downs in Europe and Asia are expected to spread to the Americas sometime today as Google scrambles to prevent further service cuts and begins to restore operations in affected regions.

Chinese authorities deny involvement in the attack.

Google’s vulnerability has been compromised and its stock price is expected to crash, losing as much as 75% of its current market price.

Google representatives are meeting with President Obama’s advisors as a security breach for the world’s largest search engine is also raising concerns for national security breaches across government and financial sectors.

The US Government is on full alert providing assistance to Google in an effort to identify the origin of the attack, determined to be centered in Asia.

Other search engines including Yahoo! and Microsoft appear unaffected but are nonetheless taking precautions. Baidu, China’s largest search engine and benefactor of Google’s exit from the country, is also unaffected.

Please note that it is already April 1st in Taiwan.

So, rather than appear foolish afterward, I renounce seeming clever now.

…William of Baskerville in “The Name of the Rose”.

Happy April Fools Day!

EUREKA! SEO GURU AT SES

Day Two at the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES) in New York launched with a brilliant keynote address by Avinash Kaushik, author, blogger and Analytics Evangelist for Google.

If you can manage to hire away this brilliant mind from Google, do it! Avinash's take on the use of data analysis to build on business intelligence was short of super-genius.

At one point, the SEO Guru used Kodak as an example of poor (very poor) search marketing, focusing on the lack of keyword intelligence by their marketing department. If Kodak was in the audience they got a free analysis and examination of their search tactics (or lack thereof).

Go out and buy his book, Web Analytics 2.0 now.

Unfortunately, the afternoon keynote panel qualified for a big YAWN as the audience trickled out of the ballroom in search of caffeine. Topic -- Video Marketing. Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus and part of the panel, attempting to start controversy, was trapped by a mediocre moderator and fellow panelists. Sorry, Ian.

Rounding out the day, a session on "Selling The C Suite" helped bring life back to the day with thoughtful tips by Kevin Lee, CEO of Didit and Fionn Downhill, CEO at Elixir Interactive. Suggesting what motivates the C suite --- Greed, Fear, Vanity, Loss and Competition were top of mind for Kevin. I would have added blackmail to the list!

ONE PICTURE; ONE THOUSAND WORDS

SORRELL'S PREDICTIONS

The number of high ranking executives at the holding company level, willing to step outside the comfort of their well furnished offices to "tell it like it is" are few and far between.

Except for Martin Sorrell.

At a recent UBS Media Week Conference, Sorrell covered topics that ranged from short-sighted media price guarantees (in a volatile market) to digital media and global emerging markets.

Espousing the danger of taking comfort in a 25 percent decline in revenues he suggested those companies would be out of business in three years. Citing a forecast of a 1 percent global expansion in spending and pointing to Interpublic's forecast of 6 percent growth as "rogue", he suggested the economic climate is "more, less worse".

Turning to the digital landscape as "the driver for growth", Sorrell does not believe firms like Google can sustain long term traction as an advertising company and that the phenomenon of Facebook and Twitter will be short-lived, replaced by the next new social trend.

Sorrell's crystal ball is not that far off.

Price guarantees in this (or any other) economy by ad agencies for media time/space is at best insane. CPMs in the broadcast market have gone up while digital auctions through the on-demand platforms are commanding premiums for hyper-targeted impressions. Betting on media futures is not a good thing.

Twitter recently experienced a drop of 3 million users and activity among current users is declining. Facebook is still bleeding and MySpace is slowly withering away. The social networks have yet to discover the value of audience data applied to the millions of eyeballs they generate. I would venture that applications developed for the Twitter platform are making more money than Twitter ever will.

Reading what is in the cards today, right or wrong, however, will quickly be forgotten in anticipation of the early signs of a modest recovery.

YOUR DATA .... YOUR PRIVACY

Current web searches, even when anonymized, can still reveal personal information about the user.

Over a new quantum version of the Internet now being developed, search engines could return queries to users .... and with the assurance that no one has copies of the data.

A new kind of memory storage, required by quantum searches, is already being demonstrated in the laboratory.

The development of a quantum Internet is a new wake up call that will, in five to ten years, turn data providers, aggregators and behavioral marketers on their ears.

As the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room, Google stands to be most affected by these developments and will likely turn to a tiered business model that will require paid search, by the searcher, for it to remain profitable.

Free "search and surf" may continue to thrive for some time next to a paid model but it is only a matter of time before the use of the Internet will begin to mirror that of cable .... free search for those that are not concerned about privacy and paid search for those that want to maintain privacy.

It's my opinion that privacy will eventually trump free "search and surf".

How all this will affect the future of our business remains to be seen. Quantum technology requires the use of quantum computers which are yet to be developed and a new type of data storage (quantum RAM).

For a more technical overview of quantum Internet initiatives and data collection, read the article in the October 2009 edition of Scientific American.

WAVE BYE BYE

Google is about to release, in test, its newest version of a communication tool wrapping e-mail, chat, blogs,wiki documents and photo sharing into one very neat and confusing package.

Creators of the application (they also developed Google Maps) believe "e-mail is a computer version of snail mail. Wave will be something new, a real-time communication system designed specifically for today's faster-paced, multitasking Internet, he said."

100,000 testers will, over time, address bugs in the platform before general release to the public.

Are we moving too quickly? Do we really need to weave these communication platforms together? It's a neat little trick if Google can pull it off, but I believe only die hard techies will appreciate its development.

It took the developers almost two hours to explain the platform in a video. TWO HOURS.

And it's really only an elaborate form of e-mail with all the bells and whistles attached.

The general user rarely scratches the surface of the power and depth of even our most common programs...Excel and Word. TWO HOURS!?

I have no doubt that the crashing WAVE will reach a level of success For now, keep those emails coming.

GOOGLE IS DOWN AGAIN ...RELAX

Once again, Google's Mail service has experienced an outage. A "limited number" of users cannot access their e-Mail accounts while other have no access to their contacts.

It's time to relax.

We are fortunate enough to be living during a period of exponential technological growth .... often outstripping our ability as humans to cope with disruptive episodes. And while these tears in the fabric of our technology are quickly repaired, we often find ourselves frantic over the disconnect.

Our new methods of communication, while they appear in a heavenly cloud form, are nonetheless driven by machines vulnerable to a host of negative forces. Nature, the force of cyber attacks, sun spots and the chaos that they can precipitate will never go away.

When, not if, the plug is pulled, take a few hours or even the day to recharge and slow down. Earlier this month, the social media guide website Mashable suggested five things to do when Google goes down.

Here are five more ....

Find a library and reacquaint yourself with books .... NOT of the Kindle variety. Buy a newspaper, find a bench and read it.

Write something. Begin with a letter to a friend or a thank you note for a recent client exchange.

Take a survey and a break from your desk. Hit the streets, stop people at random and ask if they Twitter. You might be surprised at the results.

Go shopping for that cashmere sweater you spotted on sale.

Hit a coffee shop or a Starbucks and pick up the tab for the person in line behind you ... start a conversation.

Or...you can sit in front of your screen for the next few hours hitting the F5 key hoping for something to happen. Just remember, it's not Google's fault that you don't have a back-up strategy in place.

THE HOUSE THAT DONOVAN DATA BUILT

Reports are circulating that Donovan Data Systems' (DDS) broadcast business unit, Media Ocean, is in trouble.

It appears thirty (30) employees were pink slipped from the unit.

On the heels of Media Ocean's troubles, Deutsch, an IPG agency, decided to move its agency business from Donovan Data to Harris.

DDS, a pioneer in the agency enterprise software business with the lion's share of the market has, over the years, been admonished for slow or lacking development of its software and the reluctance to support digital initiatives.

Could it be that DDS is conserving cash for an imminent sale of the firm? And if so, who might be courting them?

IT'S WHAT YOU DON'T SEE THAT COUNTS

An article in this Sunday's NY Times focused attention on Disney's secretive research facility in Austin. The research is tracking eye movements as ads of varying size are positioned on mock sites.

Purpose of the studies, whose findings are to be released in a report, promise advertisers a better return on ad investments by setting new rule standards for creative ad units.

The new wizardry combines eye contact with heart rate monitors, temperature reading and facial expressions.

As this facility and others across the country spend millions attempting to decipher a code on cognitive resonance (as intellectual activity intensified by the act of research itself), it is highly likely that findings will be less than optimal.

If successful, the results will be creative automation. Google, looking to automate the entire advertising process has yet to achieve that lofty and mind-deadening goal.... turning advertising away from the creative process, pushing it to a science, driven by algorithms.

An interesting exercise? Yes. A replacement for the creative mind? No

Meet your new Creative Director

WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE ON THE iPHONE

Are your client's using Google AdWords? Chances are that you are also running those ads on mobile devices and the iPhone with not-so-pretty results.

It appears that the user experience for the iPhone delivered ads by Goggle is not properly configured for the device. At a $.20 Cost Per Click advertisers would be spending their marketing dollars to irritate the customer.

Many agencies and marketers are not aware of the problem. But their is a solution. "Simply" opt out of the user experience for AdWords delivered to the iPhone.

Google does not make it easy. But the good folks at Silicon Alley Insider put together a quick step-by-step guide for opting out of the negative iPhone experience.

Click here for the opt out guide.