Watch Me Buy

Hmmm. How do you all feel about targeting?

These days, the only Internet users who aren't aware that some of their activities are being tracked and used for marketing purposes are those who just joined yesterday. In fact, almost three-quarters of those surveyed by TNS Global on behalf of consumer privacy organization TRUSTe said that they are aware that their browsing history "may be collected" for advertising purposes. They're not necessarily happy about it, though, and almost all have indicated that they would like to have more of a say in how their information is used.

As you know, I've got my opinion right here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:05 PM
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Huh. 10% of FBook Folks Are Xooglers

From Justin:

Since there’s been a lot of press lately about Googlers jumping ship for Facebook, I thought I’d search Facebook’s network to see how many folks at the company used to work at Google. As it turns out, over 40, or almost 10% - and mostly engineering or product people.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:27 PM
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Yahoo Marketing: Why Not Take A Page From Intel Inside?

I've heard Yahoo's local radio ads a few times while driving around the Bay area. I'm going to save my detailed thoughts on them to an audio post, but suffice to say, I had mixed feelings when I heard them. Radio ads in general seem to play over on the stupid side of the yard, but what I found interesting was the direct mention of Google - twice - and the use of an associated wolf howl. Webmasterworld thread on the new ads is here. News.com story here.

Regardless, offline marketing of search can, no doubt, boost share. Why? Because honestly, there's not much further down Yahoo's share can go. With Ask all but throwing in the towel, Yahoo is one notch closer to the bottom (yeah, I know, Microsoft is lower, but I sense they could be, as many in the industry have said to me, lying in the weeds for a reason....).

Marketing can work. For a fleeting moment, before its evisceration, Ask proved it. But tactical and experimental marketing -which clearly is what Yahoo's radio play is all about - has to keep brand in mind. The radio ads, well, they may move the sampling needle, but I'm not sure about the overall brand.

Who's watching that for Yahoo right now?

But wait! There's more!

Tonight I saw a Yahoo integration with a Honda television ad (it was a reasonably annoying green ad, but that's a bit besides the point, as the Honda brand overall has a good vibe). The integration struck me as smart, poorly executed, but possibly very important.

At the end, it showed the Yahoo search interface (it looks nice all alone) and said "For special deals (or something like that), search for Shop Honda on Yahoo".

Of course, the first time I tried it, I only put in "Honda". Who remembers to search for "Shop Honda"? Here is the search and the resulting image at the top of the results:

I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired. First, it does not acknowledge the TV tie in. That breaks a cardinal rule of conversational marketing. The call to action, the initiation of the dialog, was on TV. I responded by searching for Honda on Yahoo. Then I got the above result. While clearly different (it's an "enhanced paid listing"), it should at least acknowledge a link to the original conversation starter - hell, an "As Seen on TV" would have been better. The call to action implied I was going to get something cool for my effort of searching on Yahoo. The response did not pay off.

Now, when you search for "Shop Honda", you get something a bit more conversational.

Not there, but better. The landing page is also a bit more customized (you get a shopping interface!), but man, it's a huge dropped ball. I mean, come on. If someone takes the time to respond to a call to action from a television commercial, at least acknowledge it, thank them for it, and offer some value exchange for the initiation of dialog. But no, nothing like that.

Regardless, I see in this the seed of a very, very good idea in this. I am not sure what the business deal was, but I could imagine really blowing it out along the lines of the Intel Inside campaign (in this pioneering partner marketing program, Intel pays its partners to runs Intel Inside branding in the partner ads. It works.) If Yahoo's going to spend marketing dollars to gain share, it has to do it in a major, integrated way. Why not partner with major national brand advertisers, partially underwriting their TV advertising with an final few frames that say "Search for {insert brand here} on Yahoo for special offers" or somesuch? Once the effort proves itself out in conversions, this marketing program could well become a major money maker for Yahoo. Regardless, it'll really build the brand as an option for commercial searching, in a good way, if it's run with quality, transparency, value and engagement in mind.

Tweak the enhanced listings, offers, and landing pages to better reflect the best practices of conversational marketing, and there could really be a there there. But of course, that takes brand understanding, and what with the focus on ad networks....well.

This idea plays off the one thing Yahoo is (or used to be) really good at - understanding brand advertisers. You can't write an algorithm to do this. You have to think like a human being. It scales, but not without applying conversations to all parts of the execution - and that's scaling humans where humans scale best.

Just a thought.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:06 PM
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Seen on Facebook

This house ad. Love the implied jab at Google.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:56 PM
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On My Reading List

Traveling, jet lag, early meetings, not a lot of time to write. But I did draft two big piece on the plane, and hope to polish them on the way home. That said, here are the things that caught my eye as important over the past 36 hours:

Search with privacy via the EFF

Google paid click numbers look anemic via Mashable and Blodget

Yahoo puts its logo in the middle via Philipp (why? I can tell you why...)

More Google to Facebook defections via TC

Add videos to local business profiles at Google via SEL (huh. Is Google asking the web to change behaviors to ... help Google win in local?!)

Google and the demographic fix from TC

Biased, dumbass headline of the day from the WSJ

Branding Coming To Search In A Big Way from SEL

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:34 AM
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Google: Patterns in the Click Fraud Cloud

A short post on the Google blog about how the company uses log files to ferret out click fraud. Worth noting ....

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:51 PM
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Travel Day

Yesterday I had eye an opening day at Yahoo and Google, I plan to write up each in the coming days. But today I am traveling, so posting will be light.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:02 AM
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Reporting Day

I'm driving down to the Valley today to see folks at Google and Yahoo. Light day for writing, but hope to gain some insights.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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Yahoo, Google, MySpace Launch NotFaceBook Coalition

Er...I mean the OpenSocial Foundation. This marks Yahoo's formal joining up. Expect Facebook to join too. Wire coverage.

From a release sent to me by Yahoo:

Yahoo! supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to form non-profit OpenSocial Foundation

Community organization to assure neutrality and longevity of specification for building social applications across the web

SUNNYVALE/LOS ANGELES/MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (March 25, 2008)—Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google today announced they have agreed to form the OpenSocial Foundation to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web. Yahoo!’s support of OpenSocial and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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Outside Lands Announces Lineup - Wow

Outside Lands announced its lineup (it announced its headliners earlier) and ....wow.

They added Beck, Wilco, Broken Social Scene, Ben Harper, Manu Chao, and tons of others to an already amazing list. I'll be there!

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:33 PM
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WiFi On Steriods

Cnet piece on Google's view of the 700Mhz auction.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:18 PM
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ESPN Drops Ad Networks

Interesting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:39 AM
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Lost the Intent?

Perry Evans wonders, as he examines the new site-specific search SERPS (see here for context):

Have we lost the intent?

When a consumer uses search terms like walmart or walmart.com, it’s one thing to “help the user” by giving them sub-site links, it’s an entirely other thing to use the site’s content and perform your own search, while showing competing ads. Shouldn’t this be a retailer opt-in scenario? Is there not an underlying TOS issue on the crawled content?

This feels like the user intent is being hijacked by Google’s intent.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:35 AM
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Crowdsourcing Healthcare

Cool idea, well done article.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:01 AM
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Trust.

And the lack thereof. We're all living in the world of the Database of Intentions, except, apparently, the White House.

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005....

... the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling — taping over existing data — raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable.

Gee. I am sure this was not intentional.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:03 AM
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Cautious Optimism

Hairy times in the overall economy, but in our corner of it, there are a few signs bearing cautious optimism.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:22 AM
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Can't Lose For Winning: Google on Spectrum

Love the spin here from the AP, with which I do agree:

Losing the battle for a prized piece of the airwaves isn't necessarily a setback for Google Inc.1

If anything, Thursday's news that Verizon Wireless had won the government-run auction for a pivotal swath of spectrum may even have been the ideal outcome for Google.

That's because investors no longer have to fret about Google straying from its main business of Internet search to spend more than $10 billion buying and building a wireless network.

Yet Google still positioned itself to profit from the newly available airwaves by ensuring the bids for the so-called "C block" escalated to $4.6 billion. Reaching that price triggered a provision that requires the new wireless network to accommodate all mobile devices, including equipment using a software package called "Android" that is supposed to give Google a better opportunity to sell more advertising.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:01 AM
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Interview With Cnet

If you've been wondering what I do in my day job, here you go.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:34 AM
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Pre-Registration for FM's Second CM Summit, This Time, In NYC! (Searchblog Readers Only)

Last September my company, FM, hosted the first ever Conversational Marketing Summit in San Francisco. I wrote about it here. The event was a hit - sold out, good buzz, great speakers and attendees. I was proud (and very nervous about hosting our first event).

This year it's back, and we're doing it twice. First, in New York, the capital of brand marketing. That will be this June 9-10, as part of New York's Internet Week (official site). Then we'll do it again in SF this Fall - more on that event later.

But first, to our June event. If you read my rant on ad networks a few days ago, you know I've been thinking a lot about brand marketing, the online world, and conversational media. So it should not come as a surprise what the theme is this year. We're calling it "New Brand Way", and in our two days of conversation, we're hoping to move the needle a bit on some sticky issues in marketing and media.

We're selling only 300 or so tickets to this event. We've found that keeping the audience intimate makes for a really valuable use of everyone's time. And those of you who've been to events I've run know we don't waste folks' time.

Readers of Searchblog get a chance to register early, and get a 25% discount. The code to use to get that big discount is JBAT25D. This discount won't last long. We do events right, we spend real money on production, audio visual, and decent food (we're doing it at the Ritz Carlton, after all). So get the discount while it's hot!

Speakers include:

Jeff Berman, EVP – Marketing and Content, MySpace. Curious how MySpace's plans to make money in social media? Me too!

Eileen Naugton, Director of Media Platforms, Google. Eileen is in charge of Google's media monetization strategy, including YouTube. Yep, that's a big job.

Matt Freeman, CEO, Tribal DDB. Matt is a leader in creating new forms of marketing online. See his interview in Ad Age here for more on his kind of thinking.

Michael Hoefflinger, GM - Partner Marketing, Intel. You know Intel Inside? The one with a billion dollars to spend each year? That's Mike's program.

Wenda Millard Harris, President, Media, Martha Stewart. Wenda is also Chair of the IAB and used to run Yahoo's brand advertising sales. She's got tons to say, as you might imagine.

Rich Silverstein, co-chair, Goodby Silverstein. Yep, he makes great 30 second spots. But his agency is also leading in online innovation. So what does he have to say about the future of our medium?

Mark Kantor, CEO, Graffitti Wall. Want to know how to succeed on Facebook? Talk to Mark.

Jonah Bloom, Editor in Chief, Ad Age....

....and many, many more.

Below are some highlights from my write up of the theme. If it reads like a post on Searchblog, well, you should not be surprised. In fact, what I'm pasting below is pretty much the beginning of my second post on ad networks and brands. But I'll get to that later, maybe this weekend...

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CM Summit New York
June 9-10, 2008
The Ritz Carlton Battery Park

“New Brand Way”

Close your eyes and imagine leafing through your favorite magazine – Vogue, perhaps. A two-page spread halts your progress - the image of a beautiful, sophisticated woman standing in the doorway of a crumbling Havana doorway, with an elegant brand – “Lancome” – etched in the lower right corner. Or perhaps it’s a spread in Fortune, an arresting montage of imagery featuring a Jaguar automobile, a model you’ve never seen before.

Now, open your eyes, and imagine the same experience online.

Having a hard time?

As marketers, we love scale, and we demand safety and quality. But somewhere along the online way, we’ve forgotten about engagement.

Brand marketers are experts at using traditional media to build demand for their brands – over the past 50 years, we’ve perfected the art of the engaging spread, the irresistible 30-second spot. But when it comes to online, we have yet to find our footing.

Instead, we’ve funded the first ten-plus years of the commercial Internet with direct response dollars, pouring “branded display” budgets into ad networks and CPC vehicles. We’ve tried just about everything, to be sure, and we do buy display units on our favorite sites. Yet we’re often disappointed with the performance they deliver.

To paraphrase Wenda Harris Millard, Chair of the IAB, we must not trade our brands like pork bellies. Brands are not commodities, so why are we judging our online marketing by the standards of direct response? Is it, perhaps, because we can? Or, perhaps, is it because we don’t know how to measure that magic that occurs between a consumer’s ears when they first see the image of a beautiful woman standing in a crumbling doorway?

To keep building our brands, we have to go where the audience has gone. And every month, more than 600 million people visit conversational media sites – foreign lands when it comes to brand marketing. Or ….are they?

At the second Conversational Marketing Summit, our first in the brand capital of New York City, we’ll tackle this conundrum head on. What kind of marketing works in social media? Which of the lessons learned from marketing in traditional media apply when the audience joins the conversation? Why will we pay an $80 CPM to reach women, 18-34, in Vogue, but just $3 to reach the same audience online? What do we make of the promised new platforms from Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo? Are CPC networks simply harvesting the hard won brand value we’ve built offline? How does one create engagement and build brands in the context of conversational media? What are the online analogs to the executions we so love in magazines and television, and how do we execute them? Who’s already doing it right, and how?

It’s time to reclaim our brands online, and to declare marketers a full and fair participant in the burgeoning conversation that is the online media world. In short, it’s a New Brand Way online, and it starts at the CM Summit, New York. Join us!

----

I hope to see you guys there. And if you have input, thoughts, ideas for making this program better, please let me know. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:18 AM
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Google's Second Click Conflict Dominates SES Panel Today

At SES, while I was on a panel about universal search, Comscore today released some really interesting data. We spent the rest of the hour debating the meaning of if all. It was like getting muffins straight from the oven - no one has seen it, not even the product manager of universal search at Google, whose service the data analyzed.

You can find in the moment coverage of the news here. What I found fascinating about this - not just the data, but the chance to really think about universal search - is the age-old conflict that Google faces between being a pure navigation service - "We get you where you want to go" - and being a media company - "We get you to our properties, where we make more money if you stay."

This conflict is very real, urgent, and present.

To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality of YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Local, the onebox interface, Knol, and everything else Google owns that represent the chance for them to make money the way every other media company in the world makes money - by competing for your attention and monetizing it with advertising. (I've been on about this for some time).

Google's brand promise - to be neutral, to be above monetary interest - is in conflict with, well, the rest of Google's brand promise, to be a superstar stock, to grow faster than any company in the history of the world. And all of that is in conflict with .... Google's brand promise, to get consumers to the best answer, fastest, regardless of who owns the content. Because...sometimes, that content is now owned by Google. But how to prove that those neutral algorithms picked Google above all else, while avoiding the appearance of conflict?

Universal search interfaces break the ten year stranglehold of ten blue links and surface new media types - images, data sets (like stocks, weather, etc.), videos. In doing so, they also break the conformity of SEO - search engine optimization - and lay bare Google's own editorial choices. Why when you search for stocks does Google Finance come first? Let's be honest here. It's not because some neutral algorithm chose Google Finance. It's because Google owns that data. Google's representative admitted as much on our panel today.

And, given that, can one reasonably ask why, according to Comscore's data, the preponderance of results that come up in Google's universal search are YouTube? Might it be because they are they best results? Sure. Might it also be because Google owns YouTube, which is madly trying to monetize the second, third, and fourth click with new models that it hopes to heck are going to pay off?

Sure. Yahoo's been doing this for a long time. But then, Yahoo's a media company, init? As I wrote in 2005:

"With its shortcuts Yahoo makes no pretense of objectivity—it
is clearly steering searchers toward its own editorial services, which
it believes can satisfy the intent of the search. In effect, Yahoo is
saying “You’re looking for stuff on Usher? We got stuff on Usher,
and it’s good stuff. Try what we suggest; we think it’ll be worth
your time.”
Apparent in that sentiment lies a key distinction between
Google and Yahoo. Yahoo is far more willing to have overt editorial
and commercial agendas, and to let humans intervene in search results
so as to create media that supports those agendas. Google, on
the other hand, is repelled by the idea of becoming a content- or editorially
driven company. While both companies can ostensibly lay
claim to the mission of “organizing the world’s information and
making it accessible” (though only Google actually claims that line
as its mission), they approach the task with vastly different stances." (The Search, page 239-240)

At least, that used to be the difference between Google and Yahoo.

Google is in new and uncharted ground here. And mark my words, it won't be easy for the company to navigate. But then, we knew that, right?

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:48 PM
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Yahoo Outlines Why It's Worth More Than MSFT Is Paying

When I saw Sue and Jerry at the IAB last month, I wanted them to declare a plan - show us why Yahoo deserves to be independent, yell it to the rafters, get us excited again. After all, there's an awful lot to crow about at Yahoo. But they didn't. Now, the company has declared its plan, to Wall St. at least.

The plan, which the company claims pre-dates the Microsoft offer, details how the company will grow over the next three years. Presumably, it also shows how the company will grow into a stock price that is higher than Microsoft's offer. Here is a link to that plan.

From the release:

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO - News) today filed an investor presentation that details the Company's three-year financial plan and strategic initiatives which are expected to roughly double operating cash flow over the next three years from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion and generate $8.8 billion in revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (revenue ex-TAC) in 2010.

The financial plan was first presented to Yahoo!’s board of directors in December 2007, before the Company received the unsolicited acquisition proposal by Microsoft Corporation.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:02 AM
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The Great Firewall, Again

This issue is not going away, and the Olympics will only heighten it...from ars:

China has joined the ranks of countries that have instituted either temporary or permanent blocks on YouTube. The decision came as clips of the recent riots in Tibet—a "sensitive" topic in China—have made their way onto the popular video sharing site. As usual, the Chinese government has remained mum on the move to block content from the eyes of Internet users, so it's unclear whether this block will remain in effect for the long term or if it's merely a short-term solution.

YouTube isn't the only site that has reportedly been added to China's Great Firewall since the Tibetan riots started last week. Popular news sites reporting on the riots—such as CNN, The Guardian, the BBC, Google News, and Yahoo!—have allegedly had all or parts of their sites blocked. Some Chinese readers have reported that only specific articles have been blocked, including ones that contain keywords about Tibet, riots, or the Dalai Lama.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:19 AM
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Eric on MicroHoo: It Could Hurt, Doc!

I don't think so. I think the folks at Google are pleased as punch that these two are wrangling and might merge. (story)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:25 AM
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What's This Fascination with Ad Networks? (Or, the Online Media Business Will Be About Brands First, Technology Second)

Back a year ago, I wrote a three part series on the future of the media business. It began as an attempt to think out loud about a topic with which I had become obsessed, and it ended up becoming a manifesto of sorts about conversational media and marketing.

As you may recall, I started that last set of posts with the observation that major media companies - Time Warner, NewsCorp, CBS - had all fired or parted ways with the long time managers of their digital assets, opting instead for insiders or traditional media folks with whom they were more comfortable. Out were pioneers like Larry Kramer, Jon Miller, and Ross Levinsohn. In were people with whom the bosses were more comfortable - folks who, in the main, came from television advertising sales backgrounds, the very medium that built those selfsame major media companies. Not surprising - in fact, it kind of made sense. After all, brand marketers were starting to talk about moving serious dollars to the web (following their customers, who had already moved). Best to have folks in charge who have great relationships with brand advertisers, right?

Well, a sequel of sorts is brewing. And this time, the main characters aren't the major media conglomerates, they're the majors of the online world (minus Google - more on that in a second). They are the RC Colas, the Tabs, and the Pepsis to Google's mighty Coke: AOL, Microsoft/MSN, and Yahoo.

And once again, the folks who are leaving or getting the ax are the folks who either built or saved those companies over the past ten years.

The much respected Wenda Millard Harris left (or was pushed out of) Yahoo last year. This was a head scratcher of sorts, because she was much beloved in the world of brand marketers. (And we all know what happened to Wenda's boss Terry Semel late last year: the Hollywood brand genius, hailed as the savior of Yahoo just two years ago, was pushed out year later for failing to chart the right course for the newly floundering behemoth.)

And just last week over at AOL, the person charged with building the company's entire "Platform A" strategy - Curt Viebranz - was either shown the door, or ran for it. Curt is a strong brand guy - he worked at HBO, for goodness sake.

Finally, Joanne Bradford left MSN last week - again, she was an executive who operated at the highest level of trust with major agencies and brand clients.

That's all three people in charge of revenue at all three Google-chasers, all leaving within a span of half a year.

Huh.

Now, why are folks in charge of advertising sales shown the door? For not delivering sales, of course. But not all these folks were fired. In fact, I'm guessing that most of them left after losing a very clearly delineated strategic battle over one very simple question:

How do we truly create value in the media business?

Do we sell inventory to the highest bidder via algorithms, automated processes, and platforms? Or do partner with marketers and creators of media to build brands - both media brands, and consumer marketing brands?

I know how the folks who no longer work at AOL, Yahoo, or MSN feel about this question. They're all brand people. And it's entirely clear how the Google-chasers have answered that question: They've collectively spent billions of dollars amassing "access to inventory" and "ad platforms" in single-minded competition with Google.

It seems the future, according to AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft, is in ad networks.

It has to be, right? After all, after buying a ton of ad networks, isn't AOL betting its future on "Platform A" - a one stop solution for all your advertising needs? And, after buying a ton of ad networks, isn't Yahoo betting its future on "Apex" - a place where, in Sue Decker's words, "ad operations is sexy" and Yahoo can "eliminate all the friction and complexity that advertisers, publishers, agencies, and exchanges deal with so they can focus on reaching the right audiences and driving greater monetization"? And, after buying a ton of ad networks, isn't Microsoft betting its future on weaving a platform out of aQuantive, AdECN, Rapt, and Yahoo itself? (Not to mention all the chess moves blocking Google out with non-economic deals on Facebook, Viacom, and others - a practice has Yahoo engaged in as well.)

The reason for all these moves, of course, is that Google already had the biggest ad platform of them all - Adsense - and last year, it won Doubleclick to boot. Google is building the biggest, baddest, most futuristic network of them all.

And every single one of their competitors - AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo - are chasing Google's tail.

Straight down a rat hole. (A direct response rathole, I might add - the majority of dollars on the web are still in DR).

Because while it makes perfect sense for a company like Google to build out a killer ad platform, it makes a lot less sense for companies like AOL, MSN, or Yahoo to do so. The reason is simple: AOL, MSN, and Yahoo are in essence media-driven companies. Google is driven by scale and technology. Brands are about media. Ad networks are about scale and technology.

I see the logic in why AOL, MSN and Yahoo are chasing the ad network dream. They have a ton of inventory. Most of it is making money at very low CPMs - as low as 50 cents on average. If they can drive that CPM to 75 cents through an ad network strategy, their margins go way up, and they all come out looking like heroes.

But then what?

The future of marketing isn't going to be built by ad networks, exchanges, or platforms. These scaled technologies are not going to address most pressing issues that marketers now face online. In fact, ad networks have become the problem. Not because they don't have a place, or don't add value- they most certainly do. No, ad networks are the problem for one simple reason: the very companies who just two years ago were best positioned to help major brands move online have turned away from the principles dearest to brand marketing, and instead convinced themselves that if they only build the coolest platform with tons of inventory, scaled pools of market liquidity, and the best algorithms to sew it all together, they too can achieve what Google has done: win in the marketplace.

But they're wrong.

While technology and ad platforms are essential components of digital marketing's future, they fail to address the core needs of brand marketers: engagement. And they fail to address the core needs of digital publishers: the support of marketers that allow them to make a decent living. And while Google is amazing, Google isn't a brand marketing-driven company. It's revolutionized direct response, to be sure. It's the most efficient harvester of brand equity in the world, but it's not built to create that equity. It has pulled the curtain back on many of the foibles and follies of brand marketing. But until someone writes an algorithm for human conversation, Google will not lead the way toward the next step in marketing brands online.

Let me elaborate. I've spent the past three years in a very deep conversation with two types of media players. First, the creators of a new kind of media property. I call this kind of property "conversational media" but you may as well just call it a "publication" - sites on the web that, at their core, are about passionate audiences engaged in the creation and consumption of media that feeds them in some way. Properties that are, in essence, brands. Brands like Dooce, Boing Boing, Protrade, Watercooler, Ask A Ninja, Left Lane News. I am drawn to these brands - I believe they represent the best the Web has to offer. Everywhere you look, new ones are popping up, driven by entrepreneurial creators who, sure, would like to make a buck, but in the end, couldn't really see themselves doing anything else but make media.

I love these folks.

The other type of media player with whom I have been in deep conversation is the brand marketer. From GM to Procter, Intel to Sears, Ogilvy to Carat, McCann to Media Kitchen, I have spent countless hours in extremely engaging conversations with the people who are charged with creating, nurturing, building, and curating consumer brands. And you know what? I love these folks too. These are the folks who truly believe in media. These are the folks who helped us build the magazine industry, the television industry, and the first version of the online industry.

And I have to tell you, neither the publishers nor the brand marketers believe that a magical ad platform will somehow address their needs online. Sure, brand marketers will spend 5-15% of their budget on lower-CPM "pray and spray" DR and awareness campaigns. And sure, publishers are happy - thrilled! - to see algorithms drive up their backfill or remnant inventory CPMs. But none of them believe that ad networks provide the same kind of engagement and brand building opportunities that a simple two-page spread or 30-second spot does in the offline world.

So what *are* their needs? To address that, we need to step back, and think about media brands and marketing brands, and why there's such a symbiotic relationship between the two. Clearly, brands have built what I've called "packaged goods media." And in the past few years, I've come to the same conclusion about online media. In short, I think brands will also build the next batch of great online media companies. And up until recently, I thought Yahoo, AOL, and MSN were best positioned to be those companies. Now, I'm not so sure.

And as much as I'd like to keep going, that will have to come in the second post in this series (and that may be a few days, as I am traveling, again, for at least half of this week). This post is already 1500 words long, and I'm as tired as you all are, I am sure. So thanks for listening, and let me know what you think so far in the comments....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:46 PM
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Web 2 Expo Early Reg Discount

Hey gang, if you plan on being at the Web 2 Expo in SF next month, best sign up asap. My partners reminded me over the weekend that the early registration discount expires at the end of the week. Head here to get the discount. The Expo is a big event, last year there were around 10,000 folks and tons of exhibitors. I interviewed Eric Schmidt onstage, and this year I'm going to be doing the same with Marc Andreessen. Should be fun! More on keynotes and schedules....

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:17 PM
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Right On, House Dems

Immunity for the telcos is taken off the table, for now. It's my guess that the backwards immunity for telcos pushed for by the Bush Administration is far less about protecting the telcos, and far more about making sure that court cases don't end up revealing the really dark shit that our goverment has been doing.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:35 PM
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Google Goes After OpenX and The Publisher Market

Hmm. Why isn't this part of Doubleclick?

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:34 AM
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AOL Acquires Bebo

Anyone else sense, that given two major senior execs in charge of ad strategy have left (and they just "cleaned house" there), that this was not an, er, unanimous decision around AOL Land?

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:46 AM
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Hulu Is Up

One of my favorite parts of Hulu is that it's halfway to the video grammar in which I hope our culture gets to participate. What do I mean by that? Well, imagine the ability to take bits and pieces of video content and mash it up to create new stuff. How cool would that be?

It starts with the ability to share discrete portions of content. With Hulu, we can do that. Check out this bit of The Office. I selected the scene at pretty much random, but it shows how discrete units can be shared:

This is a big step.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:03 AM
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Open to A Deal

It's all happening! Just, a bit late. From my predictions:

1. (a) If Microsoft does not buy AOL, Yahoo will, and failing that, AOL will go public, but the IPO will receive a lukewarm review.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:55 AM
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The Successful Business Owner...

...is a great conversationalist. Part Two of my series over on the Amex site...

We humans are a very social lot. Without getting too academic, a pretty common tenet of psychology states that our greatest satisfaction comes from adding value to the lives of others. I know that in my business, my greatest satisfaction comes from the result of the work we do – providing a key source of revenue for scores of talented publishers. So think about that question again – what gives you the greatest satisfaction in your business?

I know the answer for my friend Mark, who runs a successful family restaurant near where I live. For him, it’s the countless exchanges he has each and every day with his customers. His place is always full of people, always buzzing, and Mark’s at the center of it all. He knows nearly everyone who comes in, and makes a point of getting to know the newcomers. He remembers your children’s names, your favorite wine, or the fact that you’ve been traveling too much lately. And when he comes by your table, nothing seems to please him more than to tell a story about his business – where he got the special cheese in the pizza, for example, or the day last week when a local winemaker came for dinner. In short, Mark’s greatest pleasure seems to be the conversations he has with his clientele.

And his restaurant is, in effect, a platform for those conversations. It’s a truism for nearly every successful local business I’ve seen: The owners are engaged with their clients, they know them well, and moreover, they are seen as leaders and storytellers – masters of their domain, and more than happy to talk about it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:37 PM
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The Cage Fighter

Just took this picture, a poster inside the window of a closed deli on Times Square. Just seemed, I dunno, worth posting...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:11 PM
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No Connection

1. Tim Armstrong, who runs ads at Google, says display will be "very significant" in near future for Google.
2. Google closes its Doubleclick acquisition.

As I said today at Verge, the key here is to define "display." Is this "algorithmic juju masquerading as branding but really a front for more direct response" display, or this the "we are now in the publishing biz, AKA audience value-add, talent management, and human relationship" display?

There's a big, big difference.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:39 PM
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SearchMe

Today I got a personal demo of the new searchme site from one of its backers, Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital. These are the guys who backed Yahoo and Google, so it was interesting to see how stoked Mark was about this new search player.

Mark and I were both speaking at the Ogilvy Verge conference, which is where this snapshot was taken, during a break, when Mark demo'd the new service to me live right before showing it to a few hundred marketers. The fellow next to him is Jean-Philippe Maheum, the Chief Digital Officer of Ogilvy North America.

As I've said many times before, I think there is a lot of innovation to be found in search interfaces, and searchme is clearly looking to lead in that field. To do so, however, they had to reinvent the crawl, as their UI innovation depends on categorization at the level of the crawl.

The interface is pretty much a direct imitation of the iPhone, an elegant Flex execution that's fast and compelling. But does it have staying power? I am not sure. I look forward to using it more and seeing how it lasts. More from TechCrunch, which broke the story this morning....

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:18 PM
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You Can't Judge Social Media by the Standards of Old School Media

Missing the point entirely.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:28 AM
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We Got Our Own Ad Network

Good luck boys.

In an effort to slow Google’s siphoning of advertising dollars away from television, the nation’s six largest cable companies are making plans for a jointly owned company that would allow national advertisers to buy customized ads and interactive ads across the companies’ systems.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:26 AM
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