Interview with Eric: Transcript And Video

Google has posted the transcript here. Thanks Gary!

And the video is here and below, thanks Soren!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:53 PM
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Google Gets Personal

Google Blogoscoped live blogged Google's personalization presentations today. Find it here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:21 PM
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Via SlashDot: Google Shareholder Proposal on Censorship

Via /.:

"I'm an (extremely) small shareholder in Google, and I looked at their proxy statement today. Most of the time, shareholders' meetings don't deal with anything other than rubber-stamping the board of directors, but Google's upcoming meeting has a interesting shareholder proposal dealing with free speech and censorship to be voted on at the May 10 meeting."

The proposal:

The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting. It is the custodian and trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, the New York City Police Pension Fund, and the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, and custodian of the New York City Board of Education Retirement System (the “Funds”), which beneficially own 486,617 shares of Google’s Class A common stock. The proposal, along with the Funds’ supporting statement, is included verbatim below. The Funds’ request was submitted by Patrick Doherty, The City of New York Office of the Comptroller, 1 Centre Street, New York, New York, 1007-2341.

The Funds’ Stockholder Proposal

Internet Censorship

Whereas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”, and

Whereas, the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and

Whereas, political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad, and

Whereas, some authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression,

Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.

2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.

3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures

4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.

5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.

6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

Innaresting. These are the same folks that brought you the Patriot Act resolution.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:50 AM
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Even More Search News: Reuters, Google

The info giant has named Gerry Campbell head of a new search unit and bought a text analysis/search company. PaidContent has more...

And Google is working with four states to expose govt. data. This is a very, very important issue.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:40 AM
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Yahoo Search Exec to Accel

Matt has the story here.

Andrew Braccia quietly quit as Yahoo’s vice president of consumer web search earlier this month, and begins tomorrow (Monday) with Accel Partners, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:31 AM
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Speaking of Ad Platform Competitors

The European press is speculating that FAST will launch AdMomentum today (it was announced back in Feb), a kind of OEM Adsense for publishers. I've seen a demo and it's impressive.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:23 AM
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Google's CCO

That's Chief Culture Officer. Interview at Cnet here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:12 AM
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I Got Me An Ad Exchange Too: Yahoo Buys RightMedia

Yahoo, which late last year made an investment in the ad media exchange company Right Media, last night announced it has bought the rest, and for quite a price: $680 million. Given the Doubleclick news, this is not surprising.

FM uses Right Media and we've started to see traction with the service. From Terry Semel's blog post (I know, that sounds a bit funny doesn't it?):

We hope to revolutionize the way ads are bought and sold on the Internet and, in turn, drive more value for advertisers, publishers, and partners.

As new forms of content continue to increase on the Web, so do the opportunities for advertisers to get their message across. This growing inventory is driving a significant transition in the online ad world, with third-party ad networks and exchanges gaining share of the total online ad dollars....

Terry then takes a non-too-subtle jab at Google:

...We think supply and demand should be regulated by the marketplace, not a closed platform. Right Media provides a democratic model that empowers advertisers with all of these benefits. We think our open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and will provide significant benefits to publishers and advertisers.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:59 AM
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Google Gets Another Competitor For Radio AdSense

The Times covers Targetspot:

AS more people listen to the radio over the Internet, radio stations have been looking to generate new advertising revenue from the medium. A start-up company, TargetSpot, is trying to turn this nascent field into a viable business, and CBS Radio is its first customer.

TargetSpot is planning a service that will let advertisers of any size — from a local restaurant to a national chain — create commercials for their desired audience and buy ads that will be slipped into online radio programming. The service, which CBS Radio in part financed, will debut June 28.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:14 PM
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Yahoo 404

I love Geek humor, and that this is in SF! Oh, by the way, the Giants have won 8 IN A ROW and SWEPT THE HATED DODGERS!

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:11 AM
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Google - NBC: Very Dumb Idea

Some buzz from Wall St: Analysts are saying that there is no "synergy" between NBC, a GE Unit, and the conglomerates' other units. So the analysts suggest selling it. That is nothing new, this kind of stuff is tossed around all the time on Wall St. But what is new is the suggestion that the best buyer might be Google.

Such a move would be a monumental error. Google is not a company that wants to or probably even knows how to own a major media company. Also, it has outlined a strategy that positions the company as a Switzerland of sorts with regard to major media companies. Buying one of them would kill that strategy.

And lastly, I think the coporate cultures would clash so deeply, AOL/Time Warner would look like a love match in comparison.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:29 AM
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Target Acquired

Google is now the #1 brand and the #1 website. Welcome to the top, Google. Lonely yet?

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:25 AM
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Gilgamesh

Those of you who've read my book may recall I go a tear around the epic of Gilgamesh, and it's meaning in a search-driven world. I was thrilled to see this Salon review of a new book that tells the story of the oldest known story. The review itself is a worthy read.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:13 AM
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Congrats, Walt and Kara!

On the launch of the All Things Digital site. These guys are pals of mine, pros for sure, and I can't wait to start reading...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:17 PM
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Search Index Grammars

During the conversation yesterday I mentioned something that I've been meaning to talk to you all about - the idea of different "grammars" for search indexes. Last week I changed my default engine from Google to Yahoo for a while. Now, Yahoo has a very good engine, and I know its results are, by some objective measures, as good if not better than Google's results. But what I did not realize, given how long I've defaulted to Google, how significant an "accent" Yahoo has compared to the idiom I was used to by using Google. In short, I'm very fluent in navigating through the mass of unstructured results that Google offers me after I enter my two or three word keyword phrase. But with Yahoo, I often find myself conversing in a foreign tongue. Not that the language is better or worse, just....different. Interesting....

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:02 AM
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Ask and the Contextual Ad Network

SEW reports on Ask's long awaited contextual ad network:

Advertisers buying search ads in Ask.com's Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) program will soon have the option of buying contextually-targeted ads on IAC-owned sites and third-party publishers.

The program will launch at the end of May on several IAC-owned properties, such as Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch. Ads will also appear on a few trusted publisher sites, most likely starting with some of the 90 publishers that syndicate Ask.com search results and search ads. Mid-sized publishers are able to sign up for the program now, and a self-service platform for smaller publishers is expected later this year.

Ask.com is trying to differentiate its offering from AdSense by offering more control and transparency to both advertisers and publishers.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:27 AM
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Thanks For the Conversation

That was a lot of fun! Many of you had more questions, post em here if you want and I'll get to them once I get off the plane I'm about to jump onto. Thanks to sponsor WebEx!

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:05 PM
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The Data Bill of Rights

I've not really pulled all the stuff I've written about this in one place at one time. I realized this while talking to a researcher last night who is writing a paper on the implications of search and web history. In particular, I've not posted in one place about what I've started to call "The Data Bill of Rights." My first attempt was here.

I recall that the first time I wrote about Stewart Butterfield told me it'd be impossible to do what I was suggesting. Maybe so, but Eric, in the interview last week, said Google was committed to Data Portability, which is the key and most difficult piece of the pie.

So, I submit for your review, editing and clarification, a new draft of what rights we, as consumers, might demand from companies making hay off the data we create as we trip across the web:

- Data Transparency. We can identify and review the data that companies have about us. A sticky issue is whether we can also identify and review data that is made about us based on other data the company might have. (IE, based on your behavior, we at Amazon know you might also like....)
- Data Portability. We can take copies of that data out of the company's coffers and offer it to others or just keep copies for ourselves.
- Data Editing. We can request deletions, editing, clarifications of our data for accuracy and privacy.
- Data Anonymity. We can request that our data not be used, cognizant of the fact that that may mean services are unavailable to us.
- Data Use. We have rights to know how our data is being used inside a company.
- Data Value. The right to sell our data to the highest bidder.
- Data Permissions. The right to set permissions as to who might use/benefit from/have access to our data.

What am I missing?

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:18 AM
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Reminder - Searchblog Live Today

1 PM PST...Register here, more on the fun here...

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:00 AM
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The Lord's Search

Love this.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:10 PM
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Paul, I Agree

I know I give Google it's (fair) ration of crap from day to day, regardless of those of you who feel I'm a Google apologist. Well, you can't win both sides of that argument, all you can do is be honest to what comes to mind. Right?

And when I read this from Paul, I have to say, I quite agree.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:37 AM
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What Do You Want to Talk About?

Our first ever interactive Web chat is happening this week, and in advance I'd like to ask what you guys want to talk about. The format is mostly questions and answers, and even has the ability to ask the audience surveys. A bunch of you have signed up already, but I'd love to hear from more of you. So in comments, tell me what you'd like to talk about. Ideas:

- What's the future interface for search?
- Can Yahoo pull even or ahead of Google?
- Will Microsoft buy its way in?
- The Doubleclick deal - good or bad or indifferent?
- Privacy and data use - discuss!

What do you think? Join the conversation by registering here. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:53 PM
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Updated: Goodness.

Sometimes, sounding arrogant isn't intentional. It's just in the bloodstream, or it's casually tossed off without thinking how it might sound. Read this excerpt from a very interesting Merc story on Google's internal communications regarding stock options:

Google is proud of the innovative products it regularly releases to the public, from the ever-more-targeted Internet search results to an automatic Web-based airport-ride finder.

But the coolest stuff is often reserved for Google employees. And they're about to get access to a killer tool, otherwise known as the "supersecret Google is about to buy Yahoo" alert.

Technically, this is an e-mail that informs all 12,230-plus Googlers that the in-house market for transferable stock options has been shut down.

In reality, it means something really, really big is about to happen to the company that could affect the stock price.

"For example, if Google decides it wants to buy Yahoo, that's a really big deal," said David Sobota, Google's senior corporate counsel. "We wouldn't want to disclose that to the world the first time Eric Schmidt comes to a handshake agreement with Terry Semel about it, because that could disrupt the negotiation process.

Read that last quote again. ""For example, if Google decides it wants to buy Yahoo,"....

I can't imagine how that sounds in the halls over at Yahoo. Youch.

Update: A source at Google set me straight on the context here: the line was delivered in an internal meeting at Google, the transcript of which had to be filed with the SEC. I thought it was a quote from the counsel to the reporter at the Merc, which would have sounded arrogant. In an internal meeting, it came across as a funny joke, a silly example to help employees understand the program described. Still, it wasn't "if Yahoo buys us," now, was it?!

More from Google's Steve Langdon in Communications:

Hey John. I thought I'd share a bit of context about your recent post. The TSO program (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/about-transferable-stock-options.html) we launched is complicated. To help employees understand how it works and how it affects them, we held internal meetings to answer questions. One of the things we wanted to explain in those sessions is why the program might occasionally shut down. To help explain what kinds of things would suspend the program, the attorney offered an imaginary illustration that would be easily understood -- it was intended to be humorous and the audience clearly understood that it was made tongue in cheek. (If the transcript was able to record the laughter in the room prompted by this illustration, this would be clear to anyone.) The audience was internal. These are not public meetings. Because of SEC regulations, however, we are required to file transcripts of these sessions and that's where this comes from. I think you've read far too much into this imaginary illustration that was offered as a way to help explain a complex program.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:40 PM
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Google And Yahoo: Cnet Analysis

Story is here. The author even quotes the publisher of Searchblog. Thanks, Elinor!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:21 AM
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Happy Monday

Last week was a big day for news and posts, with several on Friday. I know how many of you actually read on Friday, so to review:

News Analysis: Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust

IAB to Measurement Agencies: Measure Up!

Lots to Talk About: Sponsored Chat For Searchblog

Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:18 AM
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Next Up for Big G: Web Conferencing

Matt has the news on the acquisition of Marratech's software, from the Google Blog:

As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited about acquiring Marratech's video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located.

Update: To clarify some confusion, we acquired Marratech's software, not the company itself.

I want to believe the implication here, that all Google wants is an internal video conferencing solution. But I can't imagine they'd keep this all to themselves....

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:18 PM
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American Blinds Case Ain't Going Away

I covered this in my book and on this site, and it's an ongoing issue for Google and the whole keyword industry. From CNN:

A judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Google charging that the Web search leader's AdWords program abuses trademarks.

In making his decision that effectively allows the case to move forward, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Vogel ruled that the public has an interest in whether Google (Charts, Fortune 500) AdWords violates U.S. trademark law.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, the top U.S. reseller of window blinds, charged in its lawsuit that Google abuses trademarks by allowing rivals of a company to buy ads that appear when consumers search the Web for information on that business.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:03 AM
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Lots to Talk About: Sponsored Chat For Searchblog

What a great time for Searchblog's first ever live chat. Next week, April 25th at 1 PM PDT, to be exact, Searchblog sponsor WebEx is offering us its platform for a live chat about all the stuff that is going on in search and media. Mark your calendars, I'm looking forward to this new way of continuing the conversation!

We'll be talking about all the hot button issues we discuss here at Searchblog - business models, future search interfaces, privacy, you name it.

All you have to do is register here to attend....hope to talk to you then!

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:55 AM
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WHOPPER ACQUISITION CORP

I love it. Companies often create cute names for corporations they create to facilitate transactions. The one Google came up with for DoubleClick?

"WHOPPER ACQUISITION CORP"

Reviewing the merger agreement now...

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:45 AM
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News Analysis: Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust

I had an interesting call today with Brad Smith, the general counsel of Microsoft. I was eager to understand Microsoft's position on the Google/Doubleclick deal, and to parse the issues swirling around the companies decision to, via the press, declare that the deal should be scrutinized closely by antitrust regulators here in the US.

The conversation started with Smith explaining why Microsoft sees this as worthy of a serious review. At its heart, he contended, this is about how one might define the market in which the combined company will operate. Antitrust law, he explained, takes a dim view of companies who buy their way to market domination using cash alone. It's fine to gain market domination by having better products and service, but not by simply buying your way in. So, does buying Doubleclick mean market domination? That question turns on whether a market is narrowly defined - is the market in this case online display advertising and online contextual advertising, or is it more broadly defined - the entire advertising marketplace?

This is not a minor question. The former is a market in the tens of billions, the latter hovers at a trillion dollars. When I asked Eric Schmidt of Google this question onstage earlier this week, he was very clear in his interpretation. After rolling his eyes at the very idea of Microsoft - star of the antitrust stage in the late 90s - even playing the antitrust card, he very clearly stated that the combo of Google and Doubleclick was a tiny percent of the overall advertising world.

Smith, as one might imagine, doesn't ascribe to that interpretation. The market should be narrowly defined, he stated. He then went into how antitrust regulators actually view markets. "There is a defined methodology," Smith told me, for how antitrust review is done. "You look at who is participating in the market and ask if they will shift behaviors if prices change by five percent." Also, will one company have the ability to control pricing and, also importantly, will it be difficult or impossible for any other company to enter that market? Smith believes that GoogleClick will have such market dominance in online advertising as to be able to force higher prices upon the world - online advertisers will not easily move their budgets to offline media like TV or print, they are too dependent on online channels. Hence, one should not view the market broadly.

This raises a very important question - why didn't Microsoft match Google's $3.1 billion offer. Smith would not comment on this, but I can report from very good sources that in fact the company did offer to match it, and was willing to pay even more to insure that Google did not corner the online ad market. But for whatever reasons, the private equity firm that owned the majority of DoubleClick's shares decided to go with Google. I have more detail on how that deal went back and forth - it involves a no shop deal between Google and Doubleclick, for example, but I have heard strong assertions that the owners of DoubleClick did not get the highest and best price for their asset. But that is now history. In short, it's clear Microsoft has the cash to match or even beat Google at this game, but did not in the end win the asset. Why? That's for another post.

"The bigger question," Smith asserted, "is what is the market share and will it be easy for others to enter this market once this deal is done?" He continues: "There's a fixed cost to developing the technology, but that's not the hard part."

Indeed it is not. The hard part is getting the economies of scale and knowledge that come with having a massively scaled base of advertisers and publishers all using the system. That allows for maximum efficiencies in the market and maximum profits. Google already has this in the contextual advertising space. With DoubleClick, it will have it in the display ad space as well, Smith points out. That means it's very hard for anyone else to enter the market.

That may well be. It's hard to say what the government will do with this case, but under the HSR antitrust act, it has 30 days to decide. It will take one of three approaches, Smith told me. One, it will, after a 30 day review period, simply decline to investigate further and allow the transaction to continue. Two, it might decide early that this is not a material issue, and approve it before the 30 day period. Or three, it will make a "second request" for more data, which can take months for the companies to respond to. Once that response has come in, the government will make its final ruling - block or allow - in another 30 days.

Clearly, Microsoft wants to see a second request. I asked Smith about the irony of Microsoft asking the government to support it on antitrust. His response was interesting. He pointed out that Eric was never shy about asking for the government's help against Microsoft when he was at Sun, Novell, or even Google (remember the browser issues?) . "I think regulators take competitors (in this case, Microsoft's) views with a grain of salt, and they should," Smith said. "I would point out that over the years our competitors have been raising a number of antitrust issues that they want regulators to review, and I don't think it's ironic that we ask for the same thing."

In the end, the matter is in the government's hands. If the deal does go through, it will create an entirely new landscape for Google's competitors, one that will require, in my mind, that Yahoo, Microsoft, and other large players consider moves that previously were unsavory. To my mind, the most obvious of these moves is a strong partnership or even merger between Yahoo and Microsoft (remember Soverture?). To that end, what Yahoo's Jeff Weiner had to say on stage, at the end of our discussion at Web 2 this week, is both timely and very pertinent. I asked him about Yahoo's view of Microsoft, given the state of the chess match as it currently stands. His response was direct: Yahoo would be very open (scroll to bottom) to discussions with Redmond. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Microsoft was running Yahoo search (via Inktomi), and monetizing using Overture.

Wow, I love this business. It's such a great story. Happy Friday.....

Updated: I have not had time to review this, but Gary has the merger docs filed with the SEC. And I have a few more thoughts on this topic. The more I think about it, the more the fact that DBCLK went to Google strikes me as a seminal moment in the history of this industry. Microsoft could not win it, despite the cash it was willing to spend. Why?!

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:41 AM
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IAB to Measurement Agencies: Measure Up!

(Caveat: I am an IAB Board member, and Comscore is an FM partner)

Today the IAB released a strongly worded - for an industry coalition, anyway - letter asking that the twin pillars of measurement in the interactive advertising universe - Neilsen and Comscore - submit to audits of how they measure, and in general work with the IAB to better measure interactive audiences. This marks the first public move by new IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg, and it's sure to get some attention.

I'm both pleased with this move and hopeful that the response will be positive. I am a big fan of the folks at Comscore and we are working together diligently to come up with better measurement of the conversational media arena. But that's just one piece of a larger puzzle. We can and should do better.

From the IAB release:

The goal of the IAB and the entire Interactive industry is simple: to achieve transparency in audience counts and to revise out-of-date methodologies.

For the Interactive industry, one that is committed to delivering accountability, integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity. But, despite a multiplicity of reported discrepancies in audience measurements, comScore and NNR each has resisted numerous requests for audits by the IAB and the Media Ratings Council since 1999.

In order to establish the source of these discrepancies, and to find the potential solutions, the IAB is asking that both comScore and NNR obtain audits of their technologies and processes by the Media Rating Council (MRC).

The discrepancies exist between the audience measurements of comScore and NNR and those of the server logs of the IAB's own members. Further compounding these differences are the disparities between comScore's and NNR's own measurement results. All measurement companies that report audience metrics have a material impact on interactive marketing and decision-making. Therefore, transparency into these methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers' confidence in interactive, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to the platform.

Without these audits, the industry has no way of knowing whether these deviations in measurement result from inconsistent counting or from outdated measurement methodologies, such as the panels developed in the 1930s and still relied on today.

Full text of the letter is in the jump....

April 19, 2007

Magid M. Abraham, President & CEO
comScore, Inc.
11465 Sunset Hills Road
Suite 200
Reston, VA 20190

William Pulver, President & CEO
Nielsen//NetRatings
120 West 45th St., 35th Fl.
New York, NY 10036

Dear Dr. Abraham and Mr. Pulver:

On behalf of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, I would like to invite you to a summit meeting with the IAB's Board of Directors on interactive audience measurement. We haven't scheduled this meeting; we are willing to hold it at any time and any place that is convenient for you both. But we would like to convene it as soon as possible, because the matter is urgent: the ability of digital media – which is to say all media – to achieve our customers' goal of true accountability.

At this summit – if not before -- we are seeking your agreement to a near-term timetable for independent audits and accreditations of your companies' interactive-audience measurement processes. We also hope to open a dialogue with you about assuring the integrity of audience measurement systems and processes as interactive technologies continue to evolve.

In taking leadership of the IAB after seven years at a global management consulting firm, I wasn't surprised to learn that some of the issues I once covered as a media and marketing reporter still are front-and-center for our extended industry. Buyers, sellers, intermediaries and service providers always will debate why people buy, what engages them and how, and the power of brand versus price, among other topics. But I was rather startled to discover that one issue the Internet was built to resolve remains a burning platform, 70 years after marketers and media companies first lit the match. That issue is audience measurement.

The promise of the Internet has always been its ability to tell, to a high degree of certitude, how many people are coming to, perusing, and engaging with a media outlet. After decades of media research methodologies premised on early 20th century innovations in statistical sampling of barley yields, we could at last move beyond projections, and into a census-based universe that would let marketers eliminate waste, media companies realize a fair price, and advertising agencies target audiences and analyze their campaigns more effectively.

To be sure, sample-based research built the media industry as we know it. Our great broadcasters, magazine companies, and newspapers, as well as the giant consumer brands that depended on them to reach audiences, derived from the small panels of Americans who allowed their TV sets to be wired, filled in diaries, or sent prepaid postcards listing their preferences back to the research firms in the Princeton-New York corridor. But an exact count – that was marketing's Holy Grail, and the Internet put it within reach. If you'll forgive me the transgression of quoting myself, I noted the potential in a 1998 Wired magazine article: "The new media technologies, by drastically reducing production and distribution costs and making possible almost continual and instantaneous refinements in message, promise to increase the efficiency of accountable advertising so that its widespread adoption, not as an ancillary medium but as the primary communications choice, becomes inescapable… The spurious distinction between image advertising and retail advertising will erode, then disappear, as each advertisement, every product placement, all editorial can be tied to transactions."

Imagine my surprise when I came to the IAB and discovered that the main audience measurement companies are still relying on panels – a media-measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago – to quantify the Internet.

As the son of a lifelong researcher (a former head of the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association), I am sophisticated enough to know that panel methodologies will remain important. Still, it is incumbent on all of us in the marketing-media value chain to come as close as we can to the ideal of true accountability. To continue to close the gap between sample and census requires dialogue, collaboration, and auditing according to a set of independent, transparent standards.

By reaching for the goal of true accountability, we can help marketers unlock their own growth potential. The era of mass media (and mass-media measurement methodologies) excluded populations that appeared too difficult to reach, or too cost-ineffective for main media to count – hence, the battles that have waged for years between media and research companies over the dilemma of counting college students, men in bars, out-of-home Mom's, ethnic minorities, or adults at work. The glory of interactive media is they make it easy to assemble, count, and assess the marketing value of these and myriad other niche populations – and aggregate these niche populations into effective and efficient media plans. To persist in using panels that undercount or ignore the diverse populations that are the future of consumer marketing is to deny marketers the insights they need to build their businesses. And it certainly appears to us as if they are being undercounted or disregarded, for our members’ server logs continue to diverge starkly from your companies' sample-based assessments, by 2x to 3x magnitudes in some cases – far beyond any legitimate margin of sampling error.

We in the marketing-media ecosystem have spent too many years trying to clean up the residue of flawed media-research methodologies. We simply cannot let the Internet, the most accountable medium ever invented, fall into the same bad customs that have hindered older media and angered advertisers for decades – customs such as inadequate samples, accepted out of begrudging convenience; or phantom metrics, like "pass-along readers," that add shadowy bulk to audiences that cannot be measured directly; or metering technologies and processes that are easy to game.

The media companies that comprise the IAB represent some 86% of all interactive advertising spend in the United States. We are a diverse group – portals and branded publishers, ad-networks and games-networks, mobile specialists and blogs, newspaper-founded companies and television-founded companies – but we have in common a commitment to accountability and transparency. Discrepancies as wide as the ones we are seeing are unacceptable to us, and they should be unacceptable to you and your teams.

The IAB is not asking that you accept our members’ exact counts. Rather, we want your companies to participate in an open process aimed at creating – forgive the mixed metaphor – a solid and transparent foundation for audience measurement in the 21st Century. So committed is the IAB to the establishment of fact-based interactive-media accountability that we have delegated oversight of interactive media metrics to the one independent body chartered by the U.S. Congress to steward media measurement: The Media Rating Council.

As you know, the MRC was established by Congress in the early 1960s to oversee the establishment and administration of minimum standards for rating operations; the accreditation of rating services on the basis of information submitted by such services; and auditing, through independent CPA firms, of the activities of the rating services. With the MRC, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has developed guidelines for counting ad impressions. Together, we also have developed procedures for the auditing of advertising technologies and processes used by interactive media companies, agencies and third parties. Many of the largest marketers in the United States – including BMW, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford Motor Company, HP, ING, Kimberly-Clark, Pepsi and Visa – have said they will require the interactive media companies on which they advertise to provide audited numbers in 2007, and certified numbers in 2008.

The IAB believes this request for trustworthy metrics is good for the entire marketing-media value chain. To this end, we have asked several times for comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings to agree to audits of your audience measurement processes. Both your companies' reports have a material impact on interactive marketing and media decision-making; transparency into your methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers' confidence in interactive media, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to interactive venues. Every major advertising medium receives audited numbers from its key measurement suppliers – but not interactive. Although I understand you have agreed to be audited, I'm not aware that any timetables have been set. The platform is still burning.

You can help us put out that fire. I know from my work at Booz Allen Hamilton, which included three years of research in collaboration with the Association of National Advertisers, that senior marketers are now not just paying deep attention to interactive media, but are poised to allocate significant budgets to interactive marketing campaigns. They are attracted by the deep engagement interactive media provide, and the true accountability we can offer. But these same senior marketers will look with disdain at any effort to subvert that promise. Your own growth, as well as that of our member media companies, our agency partners, and the marketers we serve, will depend on providing fact-based audience measurement.

So please join the IAB's Board, the MRC, and other representatives of the marketing, media and advertising industries whom we might collectively engage, in a summit meeting on audience measurement. All we ask for is a timetable by which your companies and ours can create the audience measurement infrastructure the marketplace is now demanding.

As do you, I revere the researchers who helped create the modern marketing and media industries, many of whom I had the pleasure to meet, and even befriend – people like Frank Stanton and Leo Bogart. Let us honor their memories by building the accountable media measurement system for which they strove.

Sincerely,

Randall Rothenberg
President & CEO

cc: O. Burtch Drake, President & CEO, American Association of Advertising Agencies
George Ivie, Executive Director & CEO, Media Ratings Council
Robert Liodice, President & CEO, Association of National Advertisers

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:37 AM
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Database of Intentions, Round Two

First there was search history. Then a ton of widgets and apps to help you as you, well, stumble around the web. Now Google, as I expected, has launched Web History. In other words, the rest of what you do online. This whole trend needs a name. Wait, OK, my name for it is the Database of Intentions. But the issue, the nub, the rub, the trade off between privacy, data, and benefits - that also needs a catchy name. Google gets better the more data it has about everything. It also gets scarier.

I asked Eric about this in our conversation and he was quite clear - Google will support data portability and transparency. I am thrilled to hear it. It's a non trivial thing to do. But it's essential, as Eric pointed out, to Google's brand that it be trusted.

From Google's Blog post:

Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of Web History, a new feature for Google Account users that makes it easy to view and search across the pages you've visited. If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you've browsed, and search over the full text of pages you've seen. It's your slice of the web, at your fingertips.

How does Web History work? All you need is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled.

Does the idea of Google knowing everywhere you go on the web scare you? Or does it thrill you? It does both for me.

Again, I ask these questions: do we need a data Switzerland? Or at the very least, do we need a data Bill of Rights?

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:22 AM
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Google - Click Privacy Kerfluffle

Cnet has the details:

Three public-interest groups are expected to file a joint complaint on Friday with the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into the potential threat to consumer privacy posed by Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick.

The Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG), are asking the FTC to stop the $3.1 billion merger until the trade commission investigates Google's data collection and storage practices, orders DoubleClick to sweep out its data storehouse and requires the search giant to offer a public plan for safeguarding consumer privacy.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:12 AM
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Google Earnings

Another very good quarter.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:24 PM
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More on My Feed (Non) Experiment

Well, despite several supporting voices, it's clear a large percentage of you, at least those who commented, would be quite unhappy if I turned my feed into excerpts. I hear you.

There were several good points and questions. First, yes, my feed does have ads, from Feedburner, an FM and Searchblog partner. But Feedburner does not approach marketing the way FM does, and while we are great partners, the marketers that FM works with are less interested in feeds and more in site-specific advertising. That's not to say Feedburner's approach is less valuable, not at all. It's just that on the site, brand marketers can do far more, and to be honest, many are more comfortable in that environment in terms of execution and such. FB sells categories and scale, FM sells specific sites, conversational marketing, and integrated programs. Both work, and most marketers do both.

Many of you noted that you'll click through from a full text feed and that drives a lot of site traffic. That's entirely true. The experiment was an attempt to see if excerpts would drive significantly more, while not alienating my readership. From the results of my very unscientific poll, I'd