Marketing

Overheard: Why page views are important for lead generation

A better gauge of a Web entity’s user profile would be to look at the composition of PVs, because heavy users will drive PVs and tend to counteract the diluting impact on the core target that a UV metric can have. In December 2007, for example, Media Metrix reported that 62% of Unique Visitors to aarp.org were age 50+ (eligibility for AARP kicking in at age 50); but 77% of their Page Views were accounted for by persons 50+, and 79% of their total minutes. But there is another important reason to think in terms of pages when assessing a web entity’s audience make-up. Ads are distributed across pages, not UVs. The more pages one consumes, the more ads one is exposed to, and the more likely that consumer is to see your ad. If an advertiser runs a campaign on a site, the audience profile of the exposures to that campaign will tend to mirror the profile of the Page Views, not the Unique Visitors. In the AARP example above, then, let’s restate thusly: 62% of the aarp.com unique audience is comprised of persons 50+, but these persons see almost 80% of the ads. Josh Chasin, Where The Buys Are: Ads Live On Pages

Something else I want to remember that Tris Hussey wrote: Don’t look at a link away from your blog/web site as asking people to leave, think of it as building a larger network of people who will link to you.

Overheard: Top 10 ways to kill your server

Scalent Systems builds software that can take 1 or 1000 machines “From Dead Bare Metal to Live, Connected Servers in 5 Minutes or Less”. But we were sitting around on April Fools’ day thinking about how many ways we’ve heard of hardware dying… and we came up with our own interpretation.

Overheard: Your life is a cartoon

Microsoft is running another viral marketing campaign — this time they’re creating a comic strip about IT pros. The strip will run for six months and they’re inviting readers to send in story ideas. That’s right — you think up the situation and they’ll create the strip for it (if they chose your idea).

The HHH Comic Series is a daily web comic that adapts tech stories from actual IT Professionals and Developers - a web comic that reflects the real lives of IT Hero’s such as you. Every business day we will release a new episode driven from suggestions from the IT community. Make sure you sign up for the RSS feed so you can have it delivered straight to your RSS enabled inbox or favorite RSS client when a new episode has been released. And remember - We want you to help drive the story!

You can submit your story ideas here. I’m going to submit one about computing in the cloud.

Overheard: Forget CPM — the new buzzword is “performance management”

Performance management is the new battleground. And we’ve been saying that for six years, at least. There’s sort of a category collapse going on where CPM and BI, reporting, and analytics are kind of starting to merge. The lines are getting very grey and I think customers are broadly viewing all this stuff now as performance management. Rob Ashe, Working Under the IBM Umbrella

So…IBM buys Cognos, Oracle buys Hyperion and SAP buys Business Objects. Hmmm.

Overheard: Why marketers love virtual trade shows

Online marketers are fans of virtual events because it costs less and often results in more targeted leads. The virtual version of trade shows don’t usually completely replace regular trade shows but are a way to cut costs or add value. Perhaps the biggest advantage of a virtual trade show is that you can track what people at your event do. Janet Meiners, Trade Shows Go Virtual

Overheard: Microsoft is hot on viral marketing

Extreme Makeover–Server Room parody. I just wish it was funnier.

Overheard: Mommy, why does Microsoft want us to buy a server?

This children’s book parody is a viral promotion for the Windows Home Server campaign. The author, Tom O’Connor, and his PhD are bogus. The small print on the title page explains that he’s made up. Whoever did write this deserves credit, IMHO. Very clever. Yes, that’s me reading the book.

The campaign is indicative of unusual creative approaches by big advertisers as they seek to break through in cluttered categories like technology. Among the most popular are so-called viral campaigns, so named because they are intended to be passed from one computer user to another with an endorsement implied by such personal sharing.

Stuart Elliot, What Next, Having the Office Christmas Party at Home?

Overheard: Nano bad. Cleantech good.

The “nano” prefix has fallen out of favor. Names are changing again. And even Lux Research, which started out as a nanotech analyst firm, has rebranded itself with the latest trend: yes, “cleantech.” Nano bad. Cleantech good. Howard Lovy, False claims inform consumers as they ‘talk nano’

Overheard: What IBM thinks about the future of advertising

The next 5 years will hold more change for the advertising industry than the previous 50 did.IBM Institute for Business Value, The end of advertising as we know it

The report says that two-thirds of the advertising experts IBM polled expect 20 percent of their advertising revenue to shift from impression-based to impact-based formats within three years.

Ummm….what does impact-based mean? And how the heck are we going to measure it?

Overhead: Unconferences, like all social media, must be controlled and monetized

“Organizers are afraid that the unconference won’t come together, that it will be boring or unproductive. They lack trust in the attendees to produce a conference that meets their own needs.” Douglas E. Welch, When is an unconference not an unconference?

I’ve always been a fan of Douglas Welch. Today I not only tip my hat, I give him this month’s “But the Emperor Has No Clothes!” award. Douglas writes:

Some of my best experiences this year have been the “unconferences” I have attended. These ad hoc events allow for a sense of spontaneity and serendipity that regular life often denies us. Unfortunately, I am starting to see a disturbing trend that threatens to suck the life out of unconferences — too much control.

Organizers of unconferences need to control where and when the conference will occur, sponsors for meals and other perks, bathrooms, etc., but more frequently now, I see organizers pre-scheduling the events more and more tightly. Instead of the typical “sign up wall” of a more open unconference, I am seeing schedules completely decided long before the event occurs.

Douglas has bravely asked what the rest of us have been thinking, “What’s happening to the unconference?”

I’m afraid the answer is marketing.

It was probably only a matter of time until the unconference, that underground ultra-hip name Dave Winer came up with to describe a “tech happening” where the attendees determine the agenda, would grow up.

And by grow up, I mean sell out.

Literally. Continued »