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About Krish Sailam

Krish is a writer based in the Austin, TX area that is focused on making information easier to digest. Krish's enjoys topics around education, technology, economics and online marketing.

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Passbook in the next 12 months

Posted on September 28, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Apple is a media machine. They not only get great coverage for the release of their new devices, they get coverage for their software and their failures (Apple Maps).

A good portion of the media said they were unimpressed with the iPhone 5 update, partially due to the massive number of leaks prior to the launch and the relatively small changes made to the device.

In my opinion I think the customers and the analysts are missing the true value of the iOS6 update. Two features can help Apple get a foot hold in the social space as well as the mobile advertising space.

Facebook has no idea what just hit them – Photostreams

Shared Photostreams are a direct attack on Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest photo sharing platforms. Apple tried to create a social network based on music with Ping but the reality is that photos, not music are a major driver of social based traffic. These photostreams have the power to link friends directly, and ultimately decrease the need to share photos on Facebook. These streams are not only helpful for friend to friend interaction, I think that Apple will release an Enterprise level version of streams soon. Think about Gucci or Ferrari sharing a stream of photos with you from a recent event. When this happens, major brands will have a major incentive to duplicate their efforts on Facebook fan/brand pages.

Given the fact that Apple controls the physical device, this poses a major threat to Facebook’s mobile growth, especially within first world countries. I think the uptake in developing nations will take much longer due to device penetration.

PassBook was also part of the iOS6 release and a handful of major brands have already thrown their support behind it. If you haven’t had a chance to play with it, it is a virtual wallet or keychain that helps you store your membership cards, coupons, and tickets.

The major differences between your current plastic membership cards and paper tickets is how the app interacts with the phone itself. Passbook allows updates to be pushed to the coupons, tickets or membership cards. It also allows the device to push a promotion to you if you are within a certain location.

For example, if you are at an airport gate, and you have your ticket in Passbook, it will automatically tell you if the flight departure is delayed or if the gate is changed.

Another example is that if you walk in to Target and they have a special promotion on dog biscuits, they will push you a coupon that is only valid that day. By the way, Target’s system is pretty advanced and already has some data on who is in your family and what you regularly purchase.

One other major feature with Passbook is that you don’t need to have a branded app to get a passbook coupon. You can receive Passbook coupons via SMS, Email or via a download link at the moment.

What are the implications of Passbook on Mobile Marketing?

1) Passbook coupons are essentially new ad units. Two companies – WooBox and Socialize have already launched capabilities to send out Passbook coupons via SMS. Socialize is more of a shell coupon in some ways. It allows the coupon to be replaced daily by a central ad server.

I could see these new “ad units” being used for app distribution. There might even be a scenario where you are at Best Buy and Amazon pushes you a coupon to increase the “showrooming” effect. Dangerous stuff.

2) Passbook is a training vehicle for the mobile wallet. People are eager to get rid of all of those plastic key fobs and just dump the data into one digital place. This starts training users on having their phone ready to go when they are checking out. This is going to set up the NFC mindset in the coming 12-18 months. If Apple does not include NFC in iPhone6, there may be a contract dispute holding things up.

3) Passbook in some ways could be Groupon’s savior. However, if Groupon continues down the route of just pushing random deals to your device, it gives the user incentive to delete Groupon all together. Groupon essentially has to get smarter about how they distribute coupons/deals given the new capabilities of Passbook.

4) Passbook can be a post shopping cart experience. For instance you buy a plane ticket to Miami. Once you arrive in Miami, Passbook may suggest a better car rental deal, a place for dinner, and spa. This is essentially very similar to the deals you see upon checkout of Expedia or Orbitz. They are upsells but often times they are generic and too far in advance. This gives the airline or travel site the ability another chance at an upsell which is more timely or potentially even impulsive.

5) Passbook will get smarter, a lot smarter. Given the amount of data it may collect, and the fact that Facebook has some OS level integration, it might be able to suggest places around you with incentives. For instance, your Facebook profile knows you like Bobby Flay from the Food network, and you are in NYC near his restaurant. It could potentially recommend going to his steak house and offer you a free desert.  Passbook may also integrate social features – eg – I redeemed a coupon and shared it with my friends. This can be facilitated by the Twitter or Facebook integration.

6) Passbook brings relevancy back to QR codes. For the past few years QR codes have struggled in America to gain popularity since you usually needed an external app to read the code or people just didn’t understand what they are. Passbook will make QR codes a standard and help bring the concept to the masses.

7) Retailers may see compressed margins due to the increase usage of coupons. In the past major brands put out coupons for two reasons, one for branding the other to increase sales. They always assumed that only a small portion of the coupons would actually be redeemed. If people are always armed with a coupon, retailers may need to adjust their margin forecasts.

8) Passbook starts to push coupons and membership cards into the male market. Traditionally coupons have always been redeemed at a higher rate by women. This app is genderless and will start to allow men to have their info without having to carry around bulky cards or coupons.  This change in demographic could inherently change what types of coupons we see and will necessitate advertising agencies to re-assess persona profiles.

9) Passbook’s secret weapon is its ability to push notifications to your locked screen. This allows people to know what the deal is without even opening an app. This instant push information is incredibly powerful for influencing purchasing decisions. Think of it like the specials board at a restaurant.

10) In the developer documentation for Passbook they have reserved a template for “Generic.” This wildcard placement will be the hot bed of innovation and/or scammers.

11) Apple has issued design “guidelines” around how your passbook should look. This limitation is good in some ways but I think advertisers may need to learn how to boil marketing messages down significantly.

12) Since Passbook is also time aware, this may allow certain retailers to offer various promotions throughout the day. This will ultimately lead to a much heavier workload for small businesses but hopefully it will also result in more business throughout the day. For instance, Burger King offers free super sizing on Saturdays from 2 to 4 pm. As soon as it turns 2 pm and you are near a Burger King, Passbook may push a notification to you.

13) Passbook takes a lot of fluffy social metrics like engagement and amplification and adds a layer of performance to them. REDEMPTION or in other words REVENUE. Brands looking to see real returns on mobile marketing initiatives are going to love Passbook. It will finally give them more concrete data on how their marketing incentives are working. It may also give them insight into location specific improvements, persona validation etc.

Where does Passbook fall short?

I think Passbook has a long way to go. First, it really needs to integrate with a payments service or a major bank to set up the mobile payments part of the strategy. Without that integration, it may end up being a novelty app.

Passbook is an Apple product. If this were available on Android, I would certainly use it. This isolation may make certain large brands hesitant to integrate with it since it only touches a portion of their customers.

The major issue that I see is that Passbook is not a simple experience. The Target App is integrated with Passbook but it is relatively hard to find, and requires a SMS authentication procedure. If Apple can make the integration process easier, adoption and usage rates could skyrocket. Right now, the process of adding a card or coupon to your Passbook is too convoluted. If you are wondering how to get the Target app into Passbook follow these directions.

Passbook is not supported in the iPad at the moment. I see tons of people traveling with their iPad and I know I would be likely to put my plane ticket on there. If the iPad mini comes out, there is a reason to open up Passbook to other devices in the Apple portfolio.

Right now Passbook uses a stacked tab layout. It seems reasonable for 5-10 passbook items but once people start getting the hang of it and the brands realize the power, I could see people having too many options. This may require a UI redesign or create the need for folders or a search function. At the end of the day, I am sure Apple will find a way around the UI issues but I could see it getting messy fast.

The last major issue I can see is that this app will create too many expectations from consumers and force everyone in to the Bed Bath and Beyond model of offering 20% off all the time. American consumers are highly price sensitive and once they get in the rhythm of getting a good deal, it starts to eat into brand loyalty. This was evidenced by Groupon and its impact on small businesses. Many small businesses never saw any repeat customers from their initial offering partially because there was a competing deal going on the next week.

Overall, Apple has the ability to really revolutionize mobile commerce with this app. It may also unlock a whole new mobile advertising model which will trump the standard banner model.

I highly encourage all the analysts to read more on the Passbook app, it will be the new iTunes for Apple.

Here is a list of current apps that support Passbook:

http://appshopper.com/search/?cat=&platform=ios&device=all&sort=update&dir=desc&search=passbook&whatsnew=1

Filed Under: Apple, mobile // Tagged: , , , , ,

iPhone5′s implications for Advertisers

Posted on September 12, 2012 // 2 Comments

September 12, 2012 Apple announced the new iPhone5 which was widely leaked prior to the event. As many suspected the phone is thinner and longer which allows for a larger screen.  This larger screen has several implications for online advertisers. Outside of the screen several enhancements to the phone’s hardware and operating system also will impact advertisers.

Considering that Apple’s products contribute so much of the current mobile traffic, I think it is time Advertisers start to plan for these changes in their respective media plans.

Hardware changes that affect Advertisers:

  • Currently there is no mention of NFC or near field communications which Android phones have been pushing. This means that mobile banking might not become mainstream until next year.
  • The LTE web access which is relatively fast web access is going to increase consumption of information greatly. It will increase the number of web pages you access, the number of videos you watch and the number of apps you check for updates. All of this increases the number of impressions per micro-tasking session. For example if a person is standing in line at Starbucks, you used to just check Facebook, but now you might check Facebook, the weather, and the news.
  • The LTE web access will be so fast, that I can see more and more casual users getting rid of their laptops in favor or their phone and tablet. This clearly requires new ad formats and media plans that take into account more mobile inventory.
  • The larger screen creates black bars on the sides of older apps if they are not upgraded. This could be a new ad spot for something similar to a takeover unit that wraps around the app.
  • The larger screen is longer which has implications on the usability of the phone. People’s thumbs will not grow longer, which means the upper left corner of the screen is actually too hard to reach for most people. Once app developers realize this, they have two options, move the navigation controls to the bottom or make their apps in landscape mode for two handed use. Each of these scenarios potentially moves where ads can be placed in apps and the actual size of the ad unit. Being at the top of the page on a long phone may be the new “below the fold” unit. Just bad CTRs. Being near the navigation of the app will be key to higher CTRs.
  • Given the new physical format of the device, lots of accessory providers are going to be buying advertising this holiday season. There may be a minor bump in online ad competition due to this.  This also takes away spending money from other sectors.
  • Considering that Apple has been rather aggressive with Samsung in terms of patent lawsuits, you may actually see Samsung beef up their advertising of the Galaxy S3 to counter act Apple’s advertising. Once again pushing CPM rates up higher over the holiday season in the tech vertical.

Software changes that affect advertisers:

Apple’s new phone will ship with iOS6. For the most part this is Apple’s first big push to start to eliminate it’s dependence on Google products like Maps and YouTube. From what we have heard, YouTube will not be a default application on the iPhone. YouTube has already announced a native application for iOS6 to counter this. I suspect most people will download this on day one of owning the phone.

  • As Apple pushes out Google, this changes user behavior in terms of how they search and get other basic info. Most of which we used to get from Google. This potentially will reduce Google’s mobile search penetration on Apple devices and therefore lower AdWords revenue from Apple devices. If Siri gets your info via another service, you stop visiting Google Search.
  • The strike at YouTube actually gives advertisers more potential options of video advertising. I think you will start to see new ad units in the native YouTube app over the coming months. This will be an area of strong growth for Google in my opinion especially with the LTE web access.
  • The changes to the email in iOS6 allow you to mark people as VIP which sends them to a different inbox, similar to Google’s priority inbox feature. This potentially puts a major damper in email advertising on mobile phones. If your email ads are not being seen or open your ROI is going to be lower.
  • Given the faster web access, more and more people will be checking their emails on their phones. If for some reason they don’t use the VIP mailbox, and they open your email ad, you need to make sure your email renders properly. Having responsive email design will be paramount to ensure high CTRs.
  • PhotoStreams can now be subscribed to. This is huge for advertisers, especially fashion advertisers. Being able to subscribe to celebrities streams and I am assuming brands, you will see what photos they are taking, similar to Instagram or Facebook. If Advertisers play this well, you will get iPhone5 users to subscribe to your stream and push coupon images to them or pics of new menu items or new clothes in store. This will be a major way to drive traffic to your store and/or website. It will also put a major dent into Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest assuming there is no integration. If Facebook is smart, they will allow the iPhone to publish its photostreams directly to Facebook. As an advertiser it will be important to understand how photostreams work. You may find yourself buying a paid spot in Kim Kardashian’s photo stream sooner rather than later.
  • Passbook seems a bit like TripIt in that it keeps your tickets and travel info in one place. This feature has major potential to monetize geo-location ads. This is  if Apple opens that up. Right now it is more of a pipe dream.
  • Apple switching to its own maps interface, potentially reduces the importance of Google Places or business pages. The effect of this is still yet to be seen but for smaller local advertisers, I would keep asking my customers where they are finding my listing to see if there is a major shift in user behavior.
  • New apps means more consumer spending which means less expendable income for other purchases during the holiday season. In other words Apple will dominate your wallet in the coming months.

Some exciting changes coming up for the advertising world given the new iPhone. Stay tuned for more updates and please feel free to comment.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Google, Internet Trends, mobile // Tagged: , , ,

The Most Comprehensive List of Google Resources

Posted on August 28, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Google has become more than just a search and email company over the past few years. Many of us don’t even realize how many things they now do and more often than not, we get lost in all of the information.

This is the most comprehensive list of resources of Google products and how-to videos which is especially helpful for small businesses looking to navigate the complicated Google waters.

google logo 300x125 The Most Comprehensive List of Google Resources

Policies

Security

Software Principles

 

Google Culture Institute

Politics & Elections Tool Kit

Giving @ Google

AdWords– Watch this Space

Take Action

Gone Google

NewMe Accelerator

 

Think Insights

 

Users

NonProfits

 

 

Education

 

Small & Medium Local Businesses

 

Google Places

 

Google+ Learn More

  • Community

 

UNICEF and Mia Farrow host a live Hangout from Bukavu, Congo to discuss polio, gender violence, and child soldiers as part of UNICEF’s greater campaign to raise awareness of humanitarian issues. Participants joined from around the world, including India, Pakistan, Argentina and the US

 

YouTube

 

Picasa

 

Google Accounts

 

Gmail

 

Gdocs (now Google Drive)

  • Video Support

 

Gcalendar

  • Video Support

 

 

Google Webmaster Tools

 

Google Analytics

 

Google Ads

 

Google Apps 

 

Filed Under: Google //

Responsive Web and Advertising clash

Posted on August 10, 2012 // Leave a Comment

In a recent Digiday article about how the New York magazine online edition is moving towards responsive web design, they describe some of the challenges faced by this school of thought.

As some of you know Responsive Web design is a school of thought that says you should design your web pages in a flexible layout that allows devices with various screen sizes access your site in a somewhat similar fashion.

For instance, you want your website to be usable to the person using a 4 inch iPhone and to the person using a 30 inch desktop monitor. One person would be using their thumb to navigate and the other is using a mouse and keyboard. In the past you would have had to design two different websites but these days you can’t accomodate for every screen size with a custom site, you need to make your layout flexible via the CSS.

I think the majority of online advertisers have no idea what is about to happen to their ads. So let me give you a bit of preview.

  • Currently most ad units are standardized sizes, the IAB standard units of 728 x 90, 300 x 250,  468 x 60 and 160 x 600 etc.
  • These ad units are quite rigid meaning that if the screen is bigger the ads dont get bigger, and if the screen is smaller they don’t really scale down well. The buttons may be too small for a thumb to press or the text might be too hard to read for an average user. They are really optimized for desktop viewing.
  • In recent years mobile advertisers have introduced mobile specific ad units but these too are quite rigid in their design.
  • From a reporting perspective, if your ad unit shows on a small screen but is unreadable, it still counts as an impression. This is a waste of your ad budget.
  • Right now most publishers don’t use ad tags that have operating system detection or device detection. Using a tag like this would help determine what ad unit can be seen given the screen size.
  • Your beloved retargeting campaigns may not work. As more ad networks are allowing cross device pixeling, you are not guaranteed your retargeted ad unit will look correct on the smaller screen.

Some publishers are taking steps to make their websites respond well to the large variations in device size but they need to take steps to monetize this inventory in a comparable manner to their desktop viewers.

As more and more people access the web via their phone or tablet, it will be increasingly important to create responsive ads that scale well and are easy to click on with a thumb or mouse.

Some tips to help make your ads perform better on mobile:

  • Ask your ad network you use, what happens to my ad when a mobile user sees it? Is it possible to show them a different creative size?
  • Test your ad unit on multiple devices. Make sure it is easy to click and make sure the landing page is easy to use regardless of the device.
  • If you don’t have ad units that scale down well, ask the ad network to block those impressions from your campaign. This may cut into your campaign quite a bit but at least you know the user experience is consistent.
  • Ask them if they offer click to call services based on the device. For instance if you are a hotel and a person sees your ad on a smart phone, why not just ask the person to call instead of going to a web page?
  • Use more text based ads which tend to scale a bit better.
  • Do not use Flash ad units. iOS devices do not support flash at all and it renders inconsistently on other mobile devices.
  • Check your analytics data to see what type of devices are accessing your ad specific URLs to get a better idea of the screen sizes
  • Talk with your ad designer to see what they know about responsive web.
  • Check with your webmaster to ensure you are collecting analytics data on your visitors.
Filed Under: mobile // Tagged: , ,

Apple the cool kid with no real friends

Posted on August 10, 2012 // 1 Comment

Apple is always making the news, keeping them cool in the eyes of the media. If you look at most tech blogs the articles around Apple are usually the most heavily commented on and linked to. In other words Apple is good for the media industry.

In the past week or so news leaked that iOS6 would not be including the YouTube app by default. This doesn’t mean you can’t get the app on iOS, it just wont be on the home screen like you are used to.  Is this big news? Not really, it is just Apple putting a line in the sand against Google and it’s Android operating system.

When I saw this news, I started to think, Apple is really good at making hardware and operating systems. However, they come up really short in content generation and social networking. Google is still the most dominant player in search, online video still has the most widely used maps, and is making strides in the social networking space. Facebook clearly dominates the social network space and is making inroads in to the advertising space.

Apple a few years ago buddied up with who they thought was the coolest kid around, Google. Apple these days is dumping Google in favor for Facebook and Twitter offering OS level integration of the two platforms.

I think to some extent these partnerships are keeping Apple a pure hardware and OS play. If they bet on the wrong partnership in the future this could be disaterous for them long term. If they bought a network like Path, which is tiny in comparison to Facebook, could they push it to greatness or would they mess it up and lose market share? Would any of their acquisitions actually cause them to lose partnerships?

I think getting into bed with Facebook and booting out Google is a short cited move in some ways. As a user, I would love the ability to have both Facebook and Google features by default on my iPhone. I don’t want to be tied to one network if possible, and it would be nice if the social integrations were selectable by the user and not just some corporate lawyers.  In my opinion Apple can gain more consumer market share by allowing more than one network to integrate at the OS level.

Otherwise, Apple will continually go through a cycle of being the coolest kid with the best hardware, but it will also be known as the kid who dumps his real friends whenever something new comes by.

Filed Under: Media news, mobile // Tagged: , , ,

Why the MOOC is redefining online education

Posted on July 17, 2012 // Leave a Comment

The MOOC for the past year or so has been evolving very quickly. It really took off when the Stanford AI class shot past 250,000 students.

Since then the model itself has been refined and several startups have aligned themselves around the methodology. A few months ago if you asked me who the leader would be in this space, I would have said Udacity. I thought they had the organic growth and quality that you need early on when building a brand.

Today, my answer would be Coursera. I think they have a few things that are really creating a competitive advantage over Udacity and even sites like EdX.

First, they have quite a bit of money behind them, $22 million to date. That amount is not that significant, but the people putting it in is. Kleiner Perkins and John Doer put in $16 million alone. John Doer is considered one of the most influential investors in the Valley. He is also a master of PR pushing his start ups to the front page of major news outlets and leveraging his connections for strategic deals.

Coursera announced that top schools like Duke and University of Virginia have signed on to be part of their offering. Not only are they attracting major traditional school brands but they are asking them to adapt their teaching to the MOOC model.

The ability to change their viewpoint on how online education should be delivered is a massive step forward. We are no longer just watching videos of a lecture, there is true interactivity, peer to peer learning and instantly updated materials to learn from.

Coursera is making the right moves, and getting rave reviews from students. If they keep the quality high they will make a massive dent into online education.  Some of the courses even offer a certificate. This is a huge step forward for employers. Now employers can verify completion and potentially create better HR paths based on this info.

Lastly, I think Coursera is engaging an audience who wants more education but doesn’t want a full degree. This a la carte option is attractive since it is low cost, but more importantly low commitment. Just a few weeks and you are done. No need to rework your whole life.  Now you have exposed a lot of new people to online education and I think this will potentially impact the for profit education sector faster than the publicly traded schools realize.

For profit EDU has been growing for the past 10 – 12 years, but has only scratched the surface of potential students. Coursera is exploding given the higher broadband penetration and higher number of connected devices. I can see their growth trajectory being much faster. Keep an eye on them, they could impact your stock portfolio very soon….

 

Filed Under: For Profit Education Analysis, Internet Trends // Tagged: , ,

Lead Gen and Mobile

Posted on June 5, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Lead generation on mobile is still somewhat a mythical form of advertising. Some are buying lots of cheap inventory and driving lots of leads. I consider this the brute force method. People don’t like filling out lengthy forms on their phones but they will if they have to.

The other issue is that form filling on a mobile phone just doesn’t make sense. Why ask someone to fill out a tiny form when they are ready to talk right now and have a phone in their hands? Mobile advertising should really be focused on click to call campaigns to generate inbound leads.

There will always be varying opinions of what is right and wrong within mobile marketing but our perceptions can be refined by knowing exactly what the does on their phone during the course of a day.

In a recent IAB report, which can be found here, it highlights what users actually do online during the course of the day. The report is fascinating and shows many of the hurdles that mobile advertisers have to overcome. It also shows why slow or lengthy forms are not the way to go into the future of lead gen.

Here are the highlights:

1) Mobile use is highly time sensitive

Mobile usage spikes during commuting times and decreases during work hours. This is the opposite of many display buys that lead generators have done in the past. We used to buy during work hours, this gives us another medium to explore after the person has left work.

2) Mobile is often seen as a tool for price comparison, especially in store.

People on mobile search are much further down the decision path and ready to commit especially with physical goods. Finding a better price can take the consumer out of the store to complete the purchase with an online retailer.

3) Mobile is often used during another activity like watching TV.

61% of mobile commerce happens in the living room/TV room. 49% of people are watching TV at the same time they are using their mobile phone. Speed is a huge issue with mobile offers. If you can’t complete your lead gen process within 30 seconds, you risk a TV commercial or some other media actually taking the user’s attention away. Focusing on getting the person deep into the conversion flow or on the phone can help break them away from the other media.

Another issue with mobile commerce is the issue of “push notifications” which can pop up frequently during a flow and interup the conversion process. Once again speed becomes the biggest advantage.

4) Boredom is a major reason why people are on their phones

People are waiting at stop lights, in line, for something to download, for a commercial, etc. When people are waiting or bored of the primary task they often use their mobile phone to fill the gap in productivity.  From an advertiser perspective it is necessary to understand that people fill boredom with impulse buys. Focusing on low cost, compelling offers, and easy purchase flows can create more success in the mobile marketing arena. Large purchases can be more enticing if there is a special limited time offer or if there is an obvious incentive to engage right now.

5) Mobile is local

The term “SoLoMo” has become a buzz word since it reflects how many people use their phone throughout the day. It is seen as a tool to help them explore their local community, find restaurants, find a tow truck, find movie times, etc. Small local tasks seem to be a major use model for mobile. The social aspect does not seem to be a major factor in motivating a user yet, but this is partially because the number of social local mobile services is fairly small at the moment. I expect that to change in the coming 6-12 months.

6) Re-targeting may be the key to mobile.

Now here is the golden nugget. If users go to an offer on their notebook or desktop, massive value can be derived if the user is “followed” to their mobile device. For instance the user visits a car insurance website on their computer, and doesn’t fill out anything. They get a retargetting pixel which follows them on to their phones through browser synchronization.  When the user is browsing or searching on their mobile phone they will see ads from that same car insurance company, perhaps with a personalized message of sorts.  This model may even work in the TV realm, imagine watching a Geico commercial, your phone is “aware” or “listening” and then starts showing you more Geico ads.

That will be the holy grail of mobile advertising.

Lots of interesting things to come out of mobile advertising in the near future. Understanding more of what people do on their phones will be key to creating successful marketing campaigns in this market.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Google, mobile // Tagged: , ,

Yahoo Axis and SEO

Posted on May 24, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Screen Shot 2012 05 24 at 11.14.22 AM 300x195 Yahoo Axis and SEOYahoo! Axis is the new browser plugin by Yahoo! which allows people to once again “browse” the web in a visual interface.

My initial thoughts on the interface:

  • It is fast! It is also much more intuitive to use than Bing’s Social Search or So.Cl products.
  • It is a glorified toolbar in some respects. It is attached to the browser which is a great distribution strategy since it works with the major browsers. Any decent toolbar developer with a Yahoo feed could potentially replicate this quite quickly.
  • Ads are either not present or they are very well hidden. I can’t help but think this will not drive more revenue for Yahoo.
  • The flip side of the ads argument is that this tool allows you to stay on your favorite site and search at the same time. So essentially the display ads on the main site still maintain a lot of value since the impressions are much longer now.
  • This is a huge boost for sites like Facebook. Bing should have really done something like this instead of trying to get people to Bing.com. Given that people spend hours and hours on Facebook a day, allowing them to really get true search results while never leaving their “ecosystem” is huge.
  • The touch interface works well with a Mac and iPad but PCs without multi-touch support may not get all the benefits of the simpler UI.
  • Images are an interesting way to browse the web, but when it is not fashion or recipe related, the value of an image is greatly reduced. Just seeing a snapshot of a webpage doesn’t help me know if I should be going to that page.
  • There is not much in the way of social integration.
  • I couldn’t get any video results or image results to appear when searching for things like “lamborghini aventador video” or “lamborghini wallpaper” This seems to be ignoring a large portion of the web.
  • Location at the bottom of the screen is “thumb friendly” for tablet devices.

How does Yahoo Axis affect SEO?

From a technical standpoint, it doesn’t change anything in SEO since the search results are largely served by Bing.

However, from a consumer standpoint, the ranking is not hierarchical anymore. It is horizontal indicating a slightly more egalitarian structure. Subliminally if things are placed horizontally most humans will think they are of equal importance. This is very counter intuitive to Google’s vertical ranking which indicates the one at the top is the most relevant.

Another major point from a laymen consumer is that now your site is largely being chosen based on an image block. Most informational websites are designed around text and navigational elements. For example, if you run a company that provides mortuary services, would you put an amazing photo of a dead person or a fancy casket on your home page? Would this image establish the site as an authority and sway the browswer’s opinion in any way? In other words, would this image get me a click?

This is an extreme example but the reality is that many things can not be conveyed in images. Company logos are a great way of creating trust through branding but Yahoo’s interface focuses on a webpage rather than a logo. Most people don’t associate any brand notions with your webpage especially if they have never heard of you nor interacted with you.

Yahoo! is trying to push the web back to 1999 when we were largely “browsing” or “surfing” versus searching in the mid 2000′s. Visual search is being driven by sites like Pinterest but the content it caters to is inherently a subset of the entire internet. Without support of multi-media searches, the Axis tool seems somewhat of a mobiel accessible toolbar and that is not a huge value generator for the consumer. This tool is really focused on publishers keep their users in one place for the majority of the day.

I think Axis has the bones to become a great tool, but this version is not something I will use.

 

Filed Under: Google, Internet Trends, mobile, SEO // Tagged: , ,

Facebook vs Adsense

Posted on May 15, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Facebook is due to IPO within the next two days and the analysts on the street are wondering how Facebook can keep its current multiple long term.

Is Facebook the next Groupon?

In my opinion, I think Facebook has some interesting plays which could boost revenue in the coming years. Groupon is an accounting mess you don’t want to touch with a 10ft pole.

What will Facebook do to grow revenue?

The key here is that Facebook will have major trouble growing its user base past the 1 billion mark. There are just not enough people online in the world to make that grow. Without a dominance in China, they might plateau around that 1 billion user mark.

Also once they become public you will see a marginal decline in users since they may be forced to disclose how many of the actual users are just advertising accounts or duplicate accounts.

Facebook drives most of its revenue via ads. No surprise here. I think this will remain the core for years to come. Here are the pros and cons of their potential revenue models.

Mobile

A large portion of Facebook users primarily access the site via their mobile devices. Currently the issue is that the majority of interactions are notifications or action items. You tend to browse more on the desktop version of Facebook. The argument here is that the majority of their display ads are for a browsing type audience. Building new ad units for the mobile user and fitting everything within the 4 inch screen will be tough. The only real spot for an add within a native app is in the feed itself.  Or perhaps Facebook allows advertisers to send messages/emails to the users with relevant ads? Either way, the model is subpar at best.

If Facebook were to release a click to call network, that might be something to watch. Perhaps they acquire a company like Marchex to get that technology.

TV

People often forget that TV is still a monster of ad revenue. Facebook users are often on Facebook while watching TV. There is a play to be made here. And advertisers know the breadth of Facebook. Will TV shows start broadcasting on Facebook and will there be regular 15 to 30 second commercials on Facebook? Taking this route directly takes a stab at YouTube which we all know has a massive amount of ad inventory which monetizes fairly well.

AdNetwork outside of Facebook.com

One analyst mentioned that he thinks Facebook will start to attack the AdSense model and go after publishers outside of Facebook.com. This is one of the most valid ideas since it can be executed relatively quickly. Publishers have no loyalty to any ad network so there is little switching cost. Facebook already has a strong ad platform, but it doesn’t have much variability in terms of the ad unit sizes. This could be an issue for pubs. The other issue is that Facebook is largely CPC focused, but for publishers the CPM model might prove more effective. Google is clearly more advanced in this sector but they don’t have the social data to increase overall click through rates for pubs.

As the web moves towards being more mobile, this could also present another roadblock for Facebook. Will they be able to make display ads work on mobile partner sites? Does Facebook have a big enough sales team to go after the publishers that work with Google already?

Will having a transparent network be good for advertisers? Will having a transparent network be good for users?

My guess is that people will start to feel weird about Facebook following them outside of Facebook.com. I bet the privacy lawyers at Facebook will hold back revenue growth in some ways.

Facebook.com

Facebook.com still has more inventory than ads, which means the ads show at a very high frequency compared to some other ad networks. This results in a lower conversion rate for advertisers and lower monetization for Facebook.com. They really need to get more advertisers in the mix so users are always seeing something fresh. The burnout rate for ads is just too fast for most advertisers to keep up with.

CPC rates have risen very quickly for the big advertisers but they are fighting for certain demographic groups which convert. Making the long tail of impressions and users will be important to long term monetization for Facebook.

Apps 

Ah, Apps within Facebook. For the app world it makes sense to compare Apple’s app eco-system to Facebook. Apple makes a ton of money by being fairly agnostic of the user interface, they provide a solid hardware platform and simple monetization engine. They also provide fairly consistent growth in their devices which keeps the market growing.

Facebook on the other hand, provides various speed bumps or walls before you can get to your intended content. It also rapidly and frequently changes the user interface which is key to how app developers gather new users. The concept of “social sharing” is a moving target and can sometimes go away completely with larger changes like the Timeline implementation. Products like social readers blew up in terms of usage and died almost as quickly because of the UI changes Facebook implemented.

Consider how much time it takes to build an app, and the costs behind it. If you can’t deploy within weeks, you may actually miss the entire market opportunity. From an investment standpoint, I think investors will be hesitant to put money behind these ideas since they are unable to drive long term revenue or user growth. The other side of this is that developers will get sick of not being able to drive long term revenue with Facebook. They will focus on iOS where things are stable.

If a company like Zynga were to launch today, it wouldn’t work and it wouldn’t be driving 15% of Facebook’s revenue. Facebook is not allowing new products/companies like Zynga to sprout. This could be a serious issue when considering long term growth.

1 billion member affiliate network

Facebook could be on the brink of releasing the largest affiliate network ever. Imagine if it allows advertisers to pay each individual for getting their friends to buy a product or service? There would be millions of micro payments per day and massive fraud. This particular model could put a serious dent into Facebook’s cool image. But people want money and there will always be a group willing to sell their friends.

Search

Google dominates search, and Bing runs a pretty solid site. Bing.com doesn’t need to exist anymore. It can live within Facebook.com and probably grow much faster. Searching for anything on Facebook is a horrible experience. I would bet that most people still leave Facebook.com to do a Google search, and then come back.

Facebook needs to stop people from leaving the site and truly incorporating Bing into the system will achieve that. It will also create a new ad product within Facebook.com which most advertisers are very familiar with. Search Ads.

There are no real costs associated with this strategy. Bing and Facebook already play nice together and are integrated loosely. But having the full power of Bing within Facebook is the better use case for users. Time for Microsoft to let go of this brand and focus on really attacking Google.

I think this proves to be the biggest threat to Google long term. If they lose their foothold in search, it could spell disaster for their entire product line.

 

Filed Under: facebook, Google, Internet Trends // Tagged: , , ,

Google+ Hangouts on Air and EDU

Posted on May 7, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Google just announced that Google+ Hangouts on Air will be available to everyone worldwide.

What is a Google+ Hangout?

Google+ is a Google’s social network which is more based on friend discovery which is different than Facebook’s model of being a voyeur on your friend’s lives. Google+ hangouts allow you to have an online video chat with multiple people at once. Think of it like a giant video conference call.  Quick promo video is here.

The cool thing is that this is 100% free, and you can join anyone’s public hangout. This means you can really strike up a conversation with people you don’t know and potentially learn new things.

Google+ Hangouts on Air is a way for people to publicly broadcast their hangout and save the video recording on their YouTube channel for a later viewing. Some examples of this are here:

Trey Ratcliffe in a Google+ Hangout.

Here is a quick explanation of how to get your Google+ Hangout started:

Why is this important for Education Marketing?

Marketing in general is about questions and answers. (OBVIOUS STATEMENT). Does your product or service help me do X?

Education marketing is largely form based and a one to one approach. I fill out a form, get on the phone with you, ask a bunch of questions and the school tries to sell me on a course.

Leads are incredibly inefficient in some regards. They ask a person to wait for an answer, sometimes the leads are never called back since they don’t meet certain criteria, and you are in a sales pitch most of the time, not a true consultative approach. Another downside for leads is that they require one call center rep to be talking to one person at a time. Lastly, I would bet that most prospective students don’t have a pen and paper to write down their questions and the respective answers. The majority of the knowledge on the call is lost within seconds of hanging up, resulting in more calls or a lost sale.

Being in a recorded communal chat with video has several advantages.

  • The video is recorded – people can review the video again later if they get interrupted. Being interrupted is almost 100% certain given the volume of communications methods we have these days.
  • The questions come from multiple people. One person may ask a question you never thought of. This benefits everyone in the group.
  • Cost delivery is much lower. One trained person can talk to several people at once.
  • Since it is online, you can continue the conversation after the video. It is easy to take the conversation private or continue via phone.
  • It feels more personal since you can see the other person’s face.  This builds major trust with students that are worried about “fake online schools.”
  • The video itself can be used a marketing material. Real conversations are a great way to show your company has a soul and see that the other prospective students have the same worries as you. Knowing you are not alone is a major psychological element.
  • If a person can successfully communicate via a video chat, they should have no problem learning online. Consider this a quick and free test to assess their technical skill level.
  • You can easily assess their grammar level and communication skills.
  • You don’t have to worry about transparency issues. Everything is recorded.
  • No school is doing this now. The first movers here will establish a major market advantage and potentially drive real sign ups versus useless “likes” on Facebook.

What about B2B marketing?

From a B2C perspective, there are many advantages for using Google+ Hangouts on Air for marketing. However, I think there are also major benefits for using this method for B2B marketing of Education technology.

Imagine being able to host webinars about your technology for a variety of market leaders at once? At first you might think this is a bit odd since your competitors might be on the call.  That may be true in some settings but in other settings you might actually receive valuable insight from the other people in the Hangout.

Instead of traveling to expensive conferences, sometimes it is better to get 5-10 thought leaders into a common place and hash out a guideline, talk about a white paper, or talk about some pertinent news. Or perhaps after a conference, the panel wants to clarify a few points, they can easily hold a hangout to further discuss. The conversations should continue after the convention.

Anyway you look at it, Google+ Hangouts on Air has the potential to really enable a lot of new ways of communicating for the B2B world.

Another potential use for this technology is a shareholder conference. I can easily see quarterly shareholder calls going from boring phone calls to interactive video chats so that shareholders from around the world can question management.

 

 

Filed Under: Google, Media news // Tagged: , , , ,
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