There is constant discussion about ‘value’.
One of the things that one learns as a student of critical reading is to watch for semantics that lead to spurious ‘confusions.’ I am not a fan of spurious conclusions (the real term). In fact they piss me off. But I digress. Also, being pissed off for me is like standing in a line at Disneyland. I’m still at Disneyland. In other words, I don’t really sweat the small stuff.
Oh yeah, and Spurious: Apparently but not actually valid: "this spurious reasoning results in nonsense".
Still, you can’t ignore the small stuff. So back to my point.
There is a difference between Value and Valuation.
To wit:
Value:. the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged or in terms of some medium of exchange.
Valuation: the act of estimating or setting the value of something; appraisal.

So, as we speed down the road, recklessly calling Facebook the 3rd highest valued company on the Internet (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-15/facebook-passes-ebay-in-value-becoming-no-3-u-s-web-company.html) let us be sure to keep our terms clear.

I have a great time on Facebook. I share videos with a select group of friends. I avoid family and High School associates. I keep up with people who would otherwise live in a void in my reality. Facebook has some real benefits. But it has very little value. For me, for you, or for any company that didn’t come into existence as a result of Facebook, and the collective worth of those companies is NOT the third highest value on the Internet, in the world, or even in my backyard.

It has a high valuation. Which is speculation. It also has the support of all the right people, so it’s a good bet. But make no mistake. Its not producing value in your life (at this point) and it’s disappearance would affect the economy minimally.
Some news sources would get high rating for covering the antics of people FREAKING OUT over loss of Farmville or contact with some people, but the Internet would heal. It’s how and why it was designed – to be a rehealing communication network.

But if Google went away? Who could answer sport trivia questions? Find the hotel they are late to reach for a meeting? Discover what the effects of overeating might be?

Sure, Facebook has a ton of traffic and hype, and it’s a lot of fun? But value? Not so much.
Valuation for sure, but who will see the cash out of that? Not the people adding the value – the users.

So keep your cool, enjoy your facebooking time, and go have coffee with a friend.

Until then…..

If you are over 15yrs old, you are an immigrant in Cyberspace

I'm not pulling an Al Gore here, but compared to pretty much anyone I currently interface with, I was a substantive contributor to what we call teh Internetz today. I built the first privately held national backbone. I started the first low-cost ISP with the belief that until everyone was in Cyberspace the content would remain amateur. I have been inside the MAE's and Meet-mes from coast to coast, was at the first several NANOGs and ICANNs, registered domains for free, have met most of the historical gliteratti; my CTO in my first company put Harvard Law on the Internet in 1986 and created an account for the person who would write the RFC that made the Internet public. I read Neuromancer in the '80s and dreamed of what my daughter does every day today becoming a reality.

For all this and many more ROFLcons, I am just an immigrant. I will always be an immigrant. I was already an adult when I first visited Cyberspace. There is no way of turning that back. I will always speak with an accent. I can speak the language well. I paved the way for future generations. But I am an immigrant.

My daughter grew up in my lap as I typed email. She saw me turn to the web for answers, not World Book Encyclopedia. She has seen things we've done posted instantly online, not the next day in the paper.

What does this mean exactly? I don't know for sure. I will say that to stay on top going forward, it requires watching what those under 15 at least, and probably under 10 are trending toward. They will obviously trend toward what Disney (and others) offer them. (Prediction - they will not grow up as FB addicts, anymore than they are AOL addicts.)Regardless of where they go, they will do it in there own way, and when they can, they will create their own reality online, not what we provide them. Because they will know what they want, they will speak their own language, and they will have the skill to get it.

Do I miss the Old World? Not at all. I love being here, even as an immigrant.
Do I have any illusions over this being my World? No way. I've got my papers. I'm legal. But I'll always have an accent.

Sales is a nuanced mistress. Free to earn, free to fail, free to flee if you can't close a sale.

Weekend Ad Round-up

I only get one day a week to really watch ads. That's Sunday.

Here's my take.

Burger King and 'March to Breakfast'.
Basically my take-away is, if you're an idiot and not sure what to do in the morning, join us at Burger King. Oh BK, how far and how fast you've fallen.

Dodge Challenger attacks the Crown.
Can you say hyperbole? Really? We got Dodge Challenger and Freedom right. And that's about it. Where is that Challenger manufactured btw? And the GW stand in was poorly cast.


Viagra - You're at the age.
Pretty cool ad in many ways. Imagery, music, concept. If you have a lagging peener. Does this really still need advertising?


Direct TV - No respect.

Every one of these ads is killer. Period.


Progressive. All.
Catchy. Fun. Dare I say, almost sexy? But I'll stick with State Farm, thanks.


All promos for coming TV.
Yeah, it's awesome. We get it. I know you have to do what you do, but let's face it, we either like it or we don't. Your promo is not helping, beyond awareness that is.

Fedex. Specifically the 'Exchange Student', let's go global.
Rocking. Great concept and execution. I love you FedEx. Haven't seen a bad one yet.

Sprint 4G Epic

Srsly? Sorry about your FAIL.

Sony 3D with Justin and Peyton.
Sony, you used to dominate. This ad is the first sign of life I've seen in a while. Rock on!

All Pharma Ads
4-10 seconds of info, 10-20 seconds of disclaimer. You need a new plan. End of story. Uncle Sugar is not your enemy. You are.


Capital One - What's in your wallet?
Can you say 'jumped the shark'? My daughter still likes you. WAKE UP!

--Mid-commentary commentary. Brady-Welker, priceless.


Allstate - I'm your ***
This campaign is outstanding. It is BEGGING to go viral. Kudos on concept, poo on execution overall.

--More commentary, strictly Football -- If you are in the booth, you should mostly shut the fuck up.

--Oh yeah. Taunting in the NFL is OK. Are you kidding me? I don't love the taunters, but I love their right/opportunity/ability to do so.

Sprint - All you can eat.
Great campaign. I now have Sprint as a result. HUGE regrets.

That's it for this week. Football is finished and the dishes await.
Cheers, and remember, if you aren't entertained, informed, or prompted to action, someone's advertising budget was a complete waste!

Easy Come, Easy Go

Ahhhh, the Internet.
We love it because of its diversity. So many sources of information. In fact, the only way it can be accurately generalized is when we say “it’s a network of networks, accessed by digital computing devices” or something equally as broad (as a reasonable definition for such an enormous medium ought to be.) Stunningly diverse but not remotely hermetic or specific to a single site.
This is why I always enjoy reading extreme statements about one facet of the Internet or another. I was motivated to start typing today by Mark Cuban's blog “http://blogmaverick.com/2010/04/22/is-facebook-the-new-internet-and-how-soon-before-microsoft-tries-to-buy-it/#comments” that, as the title suggests, considers if Facebook is the new "black." Ahem. The new Internet. It reminded me of a previous article I had read in the Daily Online Examiner from Media Post (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=96264). And especially of this classic: http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554/page/1 about the fact that the Internet would fail. Oops. FAIL.

As a disclaimer, I read nearly everything that comes along, taking in huge amounts of information, understanding very little of it, and just hoping that my subconscious makes sense of it all. I appreciate the efforts of the reporters and the information they produce and definitely appreciate the efforts of all bloggers and talking heads, no matter how misguided.

Moving right along, the first bit is where Mark drags on about FB success culminating in 'FB becoming the biggest threat to Apple and Google.' Ha! Who cares about Akamai, M$ and Cisco or the fact that FB doesn't' have any proprietary hardware/software of their own to speak of. And the second bit quotes NBC’s Jeff Zucker saying "The marketplace has really, really slowed dramatically. It's still a growth area, but I don't think it's what we thought it would be."

For the record, I’m not disputing this as it relates to Mark's love of Facebook or Jeff's sentiments regarding a very specific site or segment on the Internet. But to apply this statement across the Internet or to Internet advertising/success in general might be a bit of a leap (Ok, in term of leaps it dwarfs Evil Kenevil jumping the Snake River). Some areas are growing and no area is so stable or regular that it can be accurately quantified month by month to say 'this is the new Internet' (What?!) or Internet advertising is dead.

To start, let me jump to Zucker's bit in Media Post. Let’s read the example(s) cited by Media Post.
‘Consider, FT.com reported recently that the site took in an estimated $70 million since launching one year ago, and was on track to overtake YouTube in revenue.
What's more, the current economic meltdown could spur huge growth at Web TV sites, if consumers with broadband decide they can no longer justify the cost of paying for cable TV.’

Huh? Call me crazy (many people do) but I see three fairly different statements here.
First, “the marketplace has really slowed.” Yes, but it was probably growing at a rate that was not realistically sustainable, as much as we all wish for unlimited inventory serving unlimited impressions at uncapped CPMs. Three hundred billion impressions at a $50 CPM this week? Why not!!? But that had to be reigned into reality for all sorts of reasons, not the least basic math, fundamental supply and demand and performance. There are 'x' number of people seeing 'y' pages making for 'z' impressions. You can only do so many overlays and companions before you are maxed, at least until population growth or Internet use increases. And this assumes you are showing the right ad at the right time AND that this is the best means of promoting products or more specifically eCommerce. Anyway, all segments will grow, but not as fast as your vested VC would like. Within the available inventory, a combination of performance and “scarcity of scarcity” (read: commodity) ultimately forced a cap. This is not slowing, this is market correction.

Next, FT.com took in a reported $70 million. This is pretty impressive to say the least, but large amounts of traffic, financial traffic to boot, can do this sort of thing. What was the cost of driving it there? And with such success, wouldn’t one expect fifty “me too’s” to show up, slowing the growth of a single site while spreading the wealth? I’d be STUNNED if that didn’t occur. So while statement two seems to support statement one, whatever happens to FT.com is really the result of my above explainer regarding market forces than it is proof that the marketplace has slowed like it had tetanus. In this guy’s humble opinion, the market is correcting and if anything, has picked up, just more prodigiously. But what could I know, working in it every day? In Cuban's brilliant analysis, since everyone he knows spends more time on FB (sad, sad life and friends you have Mark) than surfing the good ol' Internet it's clear that FB is the new Internet, and if M$ buys it, then what?

Whatever. M$ might buy it and see the same decline that Rupert saw with FIM/MySpace. For the record, that decline was coming anyway. It wasn't Rupert's fault. Explicitly.

The last point in Zucker's article, “the current economic meltdown could spur huge growth at Web TV sites, if consumers with broadband decide they can no longer justify the cost of paying for cable” is well…..a dangling non-sequitor, patented misdirections or shear idocy. If anything, it suggests that the market won’t be slowing! This week Hulu deciding to charge which says there is no 'huge growth' and no one is certain how to capitalize. So, a super small marketplace overall is now charging out of necessity. Shocking. For the record, I'll be unleashing my new pay model soon. It will truly change things, not fuck them up to the point of FAIL. But that's for another post.

In sum, a few sites have slowed, a few have picked up, advertising as a whole is in flux, and more money seems to be spent online and FB still only gets about .05c/day from its users (Facebook’s annual revenue per user- approx $1 Billion / 500 million users = $2.00 a year or $0.005 a day from each user.). What a joke.
Now excuse me while I fire up the DVR. I have some TV ads to FFW past.

Yellow Cake (Or the final precipitate formed in the milling of uranium ores).

Remember when this hit the news in 2002? It was part of the story that ultimately took the US to war in Iraq. The only problem was, it was not accurate. True, reputable news sources reported it and discussion surrounded it, and in the end it may as well have been real. But it wasn’t. The whole story was a fabrication repeated over and over until it was taken as common knowledge.

With the greatest of respect to all those involved in the armed conflict and without trivializing a single death or injury – military, civilian, foreign or domestic - there is a similarity between the "Yellow Cake fiasco" and Ad Networks. And it is that at some point, someone (or some few people) made certain statements about Ad Networks. Then others quoted it. And the common reality came to be; not based on absolute truth or large amounts of research, but on one person quoting another until it became ‘truth.’

Now, I’m not going to say that there is no truth in the perception, but there is no absolute veracity either. Ad Networks (at least the major players in the market segment) are frequently pigeon-holed by hearsay and generalizations and it’s time to stop it.
Judging all Ad Networks by what you think you know about them is tantamount to thinking all cars are Model T’s because that’s what we knew of cars at one time. It is simply ridiculous. Things change. Successful companies react and grow to stay relevant. Which is what all the top players have done, CPX perhaps leading the way (though I might be biased) having spent two years and many resources developing their proprietary Ad Serving technology AdROIt.

Besides, not all Ad Networks are the same, and not just due to the competitive landscape and their performance in it. They don’t all have their own inventory. They don’t all buy the same inventory. They don’t use the same inventory in the same way. They have different data partners that they use on or through different Ad Servers. There is research, who has what and the varying qualities therein. And then there is the human element and how all the above is bought, sold and generally utilized.

In short, if you are going to eat Yellow Cake, make sure it is frosted. Don’t swallow everything you are offered. Do some research of your own. Go to the source. Consider real numbers and real results, not the ramblings of some random reporter. The truth is out there!

I have eighty million dollars and I want to brand someone else’s website!
I have a little issue. Truly, it’s an ax I’ve been grinding for several months now. I get social. I really do. I have been involved with social media for years. I understand the allure, and I appreciate brands scrambling to get into the game.

But seriously, if you are a recognized brand with budget and a desire to be relevant in social media, can I recommend that you spend massive outdoor budgets posting your URL as www.mybrand.com/facebook in lieu of www.facebook.com/mybrand?
Do you know why? Because for one, you are the massive brand, not facebook. You can bold ‘facebook’ if you feel you need to make it more evident, but trust me, the crowd you are going after will get it.

Next, you should own the data. You put a simple redirect on the page and gather the data. You may discover when, where and who responded to your outdoor or print efforts. You can pixel and serve elsewhere, specific to that data. You could serve an interstitial during the redirect. You could do many things that you can’t when you send them directly to facebook.

Lastly, though I don’t think fb is going away, who knows what changes could come? Why take any risk at all? If you send them to your site first, spending your money on yourself and gathering data while still providing the cool social media illusion, you can redirect anywhere you want in times of need.

Think people. Think. If you want to spend a ton of dough on someone other than yourself, PM me for my routing and account number.