I met with Ev at Twitter headquarters yesterday, a prelude to our conversation in less than two weeks time at Web 2 (I also spoke with him last year). As usual he was in a thoughtful mood, though an unexpected visit from Biz added some levity to the proceedings.

Williams will be the final speaker at Web 2 this year, a program that begins with Eric Schmidt, continues with Robin Li, Ari Emmanuel, Shantanu Narayen, Jim Balsille, Mark Zuckerberg, Carol Bartz, and so many more.

So by the time we get to Ev’s session, something of a grand narrative should have unfolded, if I’ve done my job right. And it feels right to me to conclude with Twitter, because it is at once the growth story of the year, as well as the enigma – what, exactly, *is* Twitter, now that the service is pushing 200 million users and on the verge of a truly scaleable revenue model?

I found Ev’s thoughts refreshing. He recently handed the CEO title over to Dick Costolo (see my interview of him here), and is focusing on product. As we spoke, however, it strikes me that “product’ is a bit too pedestrian a term for the issues and opportunities that Ev is tackling. They have a tiger by the tail. But what, exactly, is the nature of this tiger?

Twitter is a service, most would say, one that, by its own definition, is “the best way to discover what’s new in your world.” But it’s also a network, one with important social overtones – Twitter has created a public attention and interest graph. And it’s a platform, on which many developers have created applications and services. And of course it’s an emerging standard, of sorts, not unlike email – a set of protocols for short messaging that has become a de facto standard across the web (including mobile, of course). And related: Twitter is beginning to challenge search in terms of driving referral traffic around the web.

But Twitter wants to be more than just a protocol, Ev tells me, and that leads to perhaps the most contentious debate around the company: Should it be centralized, or decentralized? Those who have invested their time or resources in the Twitter “ecosystem” are increasingly complaining that Twitter should stick to a decentralized service model, letting other companies create value at the point of usage – in essence, let the developers determine how best to use Twitter. After all, that was how the service started. But Twitter has made it clear that it has more robust plans. It’s not that the company doesn’t want developers adding value, Williams argues, it’s that the company wants developers to add value beyond what’s possible right now. And to do that, Twitter has work to do on its own platform.

We’ll be talking about this and much more when we convene in ten days. What do you want to hear about from Ev? Here are a few questions to get your thoughts started, please leave yours in comments.

- How is the “new Twitter” doing? What have you learned from how usage patterns have changed? Can you share any data on how Twitter is being used now that might give us new insights?

- Tell us about the transition from CEO to founder with product focus? How is that going?

- The ongoing grumbling over Twitter obviating developers’ businesses by adding new features and services. What is your philosophy there? What do you wish developers would create that they are not creating now? What work does Twitter have to do to help developers create more sustainable, long term value?

- How are the new ad programs going? Tell us about the tests with HootSuite (in stream promoted tweets). When might we expect this to roll out at scale?

- One of the chief complaints about Twitter is finding relevance and signal from all the tweets. Are you working on this and what might we expect in the future? Might we expect to see “relevance” in the timeline?

- What do you make of the whole “open vs. closed” debate – and the “Web is Dead” meme? Can we unpack the decentralized vs. centralized debate?

- There have been rumors of another big financing. Shall we put them to rest?

Let me know your thoughts in comments. And while you are at it, click on over to my posts for Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, RIM’s Jim Balsillie,  DST’s Yuri Milner, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Baidu’s Robin Li, Yahoo’s Carol Bartz and Google’s Eric Schmidt and add your thoughts there as well.

(image) Recently I was watching television with my wife, a baseball game if memory serves, when an advertisement caught my eye. It was for a regional restaurant chain (not a national one like Jack in the Box). The ad was pretty standard fare – a call to action (go now!) and a clear value proposition: the amazing amount of tasty-looking food you could have for a bargain price. I can’t find the ad online, but there’s no dearth of similar spots on television – in fact, their plentitude is why the commercial caught my attention in the first place.

In short, the ad offered pretty much all you could eat pasta, fries, and burgers for something like six bucks. Nearly all the food portrayed was processed, fried, and sourced from factory farms – necessarily so, as it’d simply not be possible to offer such a deal were it not for the economies of scale inherent in the US food economy. It’s simple capitalism at work: The chain is taking advantage of our nation’s subsidization of cheap calories to deliver what amounts to an extraordinary bargain to a consumer – all you can eat for less than an hour’s minimum wage!

It’s entirely predictable that such an offering would be in market. What’s not predictable, until recently, is how marketing such an offer might backfire in the coming age of marketing transparency and political unrest.

Allow me to try to explain.

As I watched the ad, and considered how many similar ones I see on a regular basis, I got to thinking about who the chain was targeting.

Certainly the chain wasn’t targeting me. I’m one of the so-called elites living in a bubble – I try to eat only organic foods, grown locally or sustainably if possible. I do this because I believe these foods are healthier for me and better for the world. I know I am in the extreme minority when it comes to my food – in the main because I can afford the prices they command. (And sure, I love hitting a burger joint every so often as a treat, but I also know that the act of considering fast food chains a “treat” is a privilege – I don’t have to rely on those outlets for my main source of sustenance.)

So no, that television ad was most certainly not targeted to me. I’d actually never even heard of the chain (nor had I seen its restaurants near where I live or travel). In short, that chain was wasting its marketing dollars on me, and most likely on a lot of other folks like me who happen to like watching baseball.

So what audience was that chain trying to reach? Experts in food marketing will tell you that the QSR industry is obsessed with reaching young men (and young men do watch baseball). But as I watched that ad, I started to think about another cohort that would clearly be influenced by the ads.

And that “target?” Intentionally or not (most likely not), it struck me that the advertisement would certainly appeal to our nation’s poor, as well as to those in our country who have eating issues, quite often the same folks, from what I read. One in seven people in the US are officially poor (and that bar is pretty damn low – $22K a year or less for a family of four). Nearly one in three are categorized as “obese.” And these two trends have become a seedbed for what are becoming the most politically sensitive issues of our generation: healthcare, wealth distribution, and energy policy. (The link between energy policy and food is expanded upon here).

Now, what happens when marketers like the all-you-can-eat chain, who like most marketers are not spending their money efficiently on TV, start buying data-driven audiences over highly efficient digital platforms? When and if we get to the nirvana that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Blue Kai, Cadreon, and countless others are pushing at the moment – a perfect world of matching marketers dollars to audience data and increased foot traffic in-store – we’ll be able to discern quite directly who a marketer is influencing.

And while that restaurant chain’s goal might be to influence young men, what happens if the digital advertising ecosystem proves directly that the folks who are responding are deeply effected by what has become a hot potato national issue around food, energy, and health?

And what happens when digital activists reverse engineer that marketing data, and use it as political fodder for issue-based activism? As far as I am concerned, the question isn’t if this is going to happen, the question is when.

Wait a minute, you might protest (if you are a marketer). What about privacy!! Ah, there’s the rub. Today’s privacy conversation is all about the consumer, about protecting the consumer from obtrusive targeting, and informing that consumer how, when, and why he or she is being targeted.

But that same data, which I agree the consumer has a right to access, can be re-aggregated by intelligent services (or industrious journalists using willing consumer sources), and then interpreted in any number of ways. And don’t think it’s just anti-corporate lefties and green freaks who will be making noise, in my research for this article, I found tons of articles on Tea Party sites decrying federal food subsidies. In short, the data genie is out of the bottle, not just for consumers, but for marketers as well.

Get ready, marketers, to be judged in the public square on your previously private marketing practices – because within the ecosystem our industry is rapidly building, the data will out.

I’m not picking on the food industry here, rather I’m simply using it as a narrative example. Increasingly, a company’s marketing practices will become transparent to its customers, partners, competitors, and detractors. And how one practices that marketing will be judged in real time, in a political dialog that defines the value of that brand in the world.

This new reality will force brands to develop a point of view on major issues of the day – and that ain’t an easy thing for brands to do – at least not at present. I’ve written extensively about how brands must become publishers. I’ve now come to the conclusion that they must also become politicians as well. Brands will have to play to their base, cater to interest groups, and answer for their “votes” – how their marketing dollars are spent.

I’d wager that marketers who get in front of this trend and shows leadership on the big issues will be huge winners. What do you think?

Today I was in a meeting with a number of consultants to a very large technology company. Their job: market research, essentially. They called to ask me my thoughts on the media and technology world, in particular as it might play out in the next five or so years. They were responsible for helping the Fortune 50 company navigate an increasingly complicated world.

I love these kind of free association tasks, because while it’s not easy to be right, it’s also pretty easy to not be wrong if the questions are smart. I’ve been a student of technology cycles for a couple of decades, and often times what’s directly in front of you is, in fact, the next big thing.

So when I got this question: “What’s the next big thing after social?” I didn’t lose a beat in answering: “Location.”

Now, many, many folks before me have been saying this for years. I’m in no way first. But I’m an early convert, in particular, as it relates to what I call the conversation economy. And the reason is simple: Once someone can declare where they are, they add extraordinary context to both search and social, and to their expectations of what a search or a social connection might yield. For an example, see The Gap Scenario.

In short, location is a key factor in the future of search, social, commerce, and media, among a lot of other things. And that’s why the news today that Google’s Marissa Mayer, long the VP of Search Products at Google, is taking over responsibilities for the location business, strikes me as a Big Deal.

Some have argued this is a demotion for Mayer, a Google stalwart and press favorite. But if in fact Google is “parking” Mayer in a “non job” due to her status as an early and long standing employee, I can’t imagine a more strategic area for her to park. And given Mayer’s success and wealth, I can’t imagine she’d stay at Google if she weren’t committed to a new role that she believes will be game changing. She has way too many other options, including, well, not working for as long as she’d like.

I for one don’t think that’s what is going on. Local is the most important signal to emerge in the database of intentions since the link. Once a consumer demands that businesses respond to their intent in the context of where they are, right now, well…the first to get that response right, wins.

Today Facebook made several announcements that begin to address key issues I’ve written about many times: With “New Groups” the company is providing a more nuanced instrumentation of your social graph, and with “Download Your Information” Facebook is addressing issues of both lock-in and the “Data Bill of Rights.”

You can read all about the news at other sites, but here are the basics: Through a new groups feature, Facebook is allowing its members to share information with selected subsets of friends. This is an issue that was widely discussed after Google engineer Paul Adams called Facebook out on it back in July.

Facebook also announced a service that lets you download “everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.” As the blog post continues:

If you want a copy of the information you’ve put on Facebook for any reason, you can click a link and easily get a copy of all of it in a single download. To protect your information, this feature is only available after confirming your password and answering appropriate security questions. We’ll begin rolling out this feature to people later today, and you’ll find it under your account settings.

In a related move, Facebook is changing how users interact with applications, and how we all see and can instrument permissions around our data:
..we’re launching a new dashboard to give you visibility into how applications use your data to personalize your experience. As you start having more social and personalized experiences across the web, it’s important that you can verify exactly how other sites are using your information to make your experience better.

Taken together, these changes create a framework for Facebook to further expand its reach and depth into the “non Facebook” web. The major impediment to increased off-site engagement for Facebook have been instrumentation, on the one hand, and trust, on the other. They go together. Give me more instrumentation/control, then I’ll trust you to be part of my non-Facebook interactions across the web.
This has significant implications for the adoption of Facebook Places, for example, which CEO Zuckerberg called out in his presentation today. Expect more from me on these moves in future posts…

(image) Today I landed from a trip to the world of the non-tech obsessed (PA and OH) to find my newsfeed was full of speculation that Google MUST buy Twitter, or be damned to obscurity in a race it’s already losing to Facebook.

Not so fast.

Here’s my simple reasoning for why Google won’t buy Twitter: Twitter won’t sell.

Those who decide whether Twitter goes to Google pretty much come down to a handful of folks: Founders Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone, with COO Dick Costolo and Twitter’s investors and other Board members (Fred Wilson, Peter Fenton, and Bijan Sabet). I know most of these guys well enough to say this with confidence: They don’t want to sell, and even more importantly, they don’t need to.

Now, sure, Google can write a ridiculous check, and perhaps, that might sway the key folks (management). But I doubt it. Why? Because nearly all of them have already sold a company to Google – Blogger (Evan and Biz) or Feeedburner (Dick). And, well, they didn’t stick around, did they?

They’ve got a tiger by the tail, the chance to build an independent, lasting legacy that will cement each one of them forever into the immortal tablets of business history. It’s really, really hard to pass that chance up, especially if you’ve already gotten a score or two under your belt. Why not swing for the fences if you’re already batting over 300?

In short, they’re not in it for the money. They’re in it for the immortality. And that’s a much, much bigger deal.

But there’s another reason Google won’t buy Twitter, and it’s this: Google is learning to be patient. Twitter is a big deal, but if you accept it as part of an emerging landscape, there’s no reason you need to own it. Given Twitter’s natural competitive positioning against Facebook, Google can partner with the emerging service in ways that provide both companies advantage against a shared enemy.

And should Twitter prove to be a world class company, prove its revenue model, and go public, things get a bit easier down the road in terms of M&A. The public market will set a price, and Google can negotiate a merger later, when, perhaps, the speculative bloom is off the budding rose, the founders have proven their point, and Twitter is run to satisfy shareholders who crave a buyout price.

It’s been nearly a month since Demand filed its S1, and I promised you all a longer look after my initial posting. Here are some thoughts now that I’ve had a chance to digest the document. A caveat: I know Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt well, and consider him a friend. And one of his investors, Oak, is an investor in my company, Federated Media. However, neither Oak nor Richard participated in the preparation of this post.

First off, the offering is notable for the number of banks that grace its cover sheet. I count ten, as many as Google had in its IPO back in 2004. That shows the hunger in the financial world for a win – and the company that gets in front of that hunger has a better chance than most to succeed in an offering, as those banks will all be pushing shares to their best clients.

But Demand’s S1 is far more traditional than Google’s. There’s no auction involved, and the company stays far away from the revolutionary prose espoused in Google’s S1 (remember “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one” ? And recall my response: “Yow,” I said to myself (and now to you…). “Do they really want to set themselves up like this?”)

One can debate whether Google has managed to live up to its S1, six years later, but it’s clear that Demand isn’t planning on setting itself up in a similar way. The two lead bankers are stalwarts Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and it looks like Demand is going to play this one straight down the middle.

I find Demand’s IPO interesting for several reasons, but the one that really gets me thinking is the company’s positioning – a new form of media company that leverages technology, algorithms, and scale. It reminds me of Yahoo – which picked up Demand-like Associated Content recently.

Yahoo is currently running an industry campaign titled “Science, Art, and Scale” – arguing that it takes all three to make a great media company. When it comes to Demand, one might argue there’s a distinct lack of “Art,” but young companies always play to their initial strengths. Regardless of whether you believe Demand is the next big thing or a “content farm,” anyone who is paying attention to the world of Internet media should take the time to get smart on Demand’s model. Win or lose, there’s much to learn in how the market judges this offering.

In fact, I believe this IPO could well be a tipping point of sorts, a referendum on not just the financial markets, but on the Era of Google as we know it. More on that in a minute.

The Offering

Demand checks the box as a typical Internet media company – it’s got large reach and scale with owned and operated properties like eHow and Livestrong.com, and it’s got a freshly minted syndication business for its largely service-driven content base. But having large numbers (86 million uniques, in the case of Demand) isn’t enough to get a company public these days (ten years ago was a different story).

Investors now want a company to show them how its can turn those uniques into dollars, ideally via multiple product lines. And Demand has a pretty impressive history of doing just that – not without controversy, to be certain, but still, the scale is impressive.

Demand declares its mission thusly: “To fulfill the world’s demand for commercially valuable content.” As has been outlined well by others, Demand’s core product, at least as far as it is encountered by a consumer, is the daily creation of thousands of text and video articles on mostly service-related topics: How To Choose a Watermelon, for example, or How to Tie A Tie. Demand has also begun to create and aggregate content against celebrity brands in classic media categories – Lance Armstrong in health, or Tyra Banks in women’s interest.

Demand also is one of the world’s largest registrars, where it actively plays the domain game, leveraging “type in traffic” against AdSense for Domains and Yahoo’s competing product, as well as testing that traffic against its own content (which in itself is monetized through both AdSense and site specific brand campaigns). The domain business is extremely lucrative, in that it offers both subscription and advertising revenue, and operating costs are low. As Demand puts it in the S1: “Our Registrar complements our Content & Media service offering by providing us with a recurring base of subscription revenue, a valuable source of data regarding Internet users’ online interests, expanded third-party distribution opportunities and proprietary access to commercially valuable domain names that we selectively add to our owned and operated websites.”

I’m not going to wade into the debate over “content farms” here, mainly because I honestly find it a distraction. Demand has clearly found a strong and scaleable place in the search and content ecosystem. If journalists and publishers find it the model insulting, I suggest they create a better one. Demand’s content studio isn’t ever going to win a Pulitzer, nor, frankly, should it be asked to. But it works for me when I want to tie a tie. And that, times millions of uniques a day, is a real business.

The Financials

As most coverage has pointed out at length, Demand is not making money, at least not on a GAAP accounting basis, which of course is what matters at the bottom line. But the company is quick to point out that it is, in fact, making money on an “adjusted OIBIDA” basis, and a lot of it. From the S1:

“For the year ended December 31, 2009 and the six months ended June 30, 2010, we reported revenue of $198 million and $114 million, respectively. For these same periods, we reported net losses of $22 million and $6 million, respectively, operating loss of $18 million and $4 million, respectively, and adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization, or Adjusted OIBDA, of $37 million and $26 million, respectively. See “Summary Consolidated Financial Information and Other Data—Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for a reconciliation of Adjusted OIBDA to the closest comparable measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.”

On page 12 of the filing, the company gets into this measure, and it’ll be by this measure that the company hopes to be judged in financial circles. Sorry to give you more financial jargon, but it’s important:

“Our non-GAAP Adjusted OIBDA financial measure differs from GAAP in that it excludes certain expenses such as depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation, and certain non-cash purchase accounting adjustments, as well as the financial impact of gains or losses on certain asset sales or dispositions. Our non-GAAP revenue less TAC financial measure differs from GAAP as it reflects our consolidated revenues net of our traffic acquisition costs. Adjusted OIBDA, or its equivalent, and revenue less TAC are frequently used by security analysts, investors and others as a common financial measure of operating performance.”

In short, it’s the OIBDA that’s got ten banks eager to take this company public. As far as I can tell, the OIBDA measure is intended to showcase Demand’s content business (as opposed to the registrar revenue), as the content business is growing far faster, overtaking registrar revenue 58% to 42% this year. By the measure of content OIBDA, the company is minting money, nearly $26 million in the first six months of this year.

However, Demand chose to take all that operating profit, plus some, and reinvest it (mostly) in acquisitions (to the tune of $21mm). And GAAP rules meant the rest of the operating profit was eaten up by non cash items like content amortization, stock option expenses, and depreciation.

In other words, the company could have been GAAP profitable, but – and this is important – it chose not to be. That’s interesting. We’ll see if the market agrees with this strategy.

Regardless, the company has significant revenue, and that revenue is ramping. $114 million in the first half of 2010 is impressive, and that’s before Q4, which for most media companies comprises 40% or more of annual revenue. That puts Demand on track to clear more than a quarter of a billion in revenue this year.

The Google Referendum and the Social Connection

OK, moving on from financials, the next key factor in the Demand offering is how, in a very real sense, it’s a referendum on Google’s current and future business prospects. Google is far and away the largest referrer of traffic to Demand properties, and its largest revenue source as well (this includes revenue from YouTube via eHow and other videos). The S1 acknowledges this, declaring that the company receives 26% of its revenue from Google, but it does not explicitly say what percentage of traffic it receives from Big G. Suffice it to say, it’s got to be huge. (Danny has an estimate here – it’s in the mid thirty percent range).

So the big question is this: If Demand is, in essence, a company that leverages Google as a platform (like Zynga does Facebook, for example), how will the stock market handicap Demand’s – and therefore Google’s – future?

It’s a worthy question. Google as an investment hasn’t done so well lately, in particular compared to rival Apple. Another rival, Facebook, is most likely going to be the hottest IPO after Demand (or Skype). So from Google’s standpoint, Demand is an important event, and I’m going to guess Google executives are rooting for it to be a raging success.

To me, all of this turns not on whether Demand will continue to be a search and content success (it will, to my mind), but whether Demand’s content can in some way become essential in what is increasingly a social content ecosystem. Of course, that is a key question for Google as well – can it add a third dimension of social to its flat content-based model of search?

Put another way, Google owns the web of directed intent – help me find WHAT I need, WHEN I need it. Content like Demand works beautifully in this world, and up till now, the web has been modeled on the search centered world of WHAT. But the web is moving to a web of indirect intent – modeled more on how people communicate with each other, as opposed to how people find answers. That’s a WHO-driven web, a social web – a Facebook web. And the WHAT web, led by Google, hasn’t cracked that nut. The reason? Well, in short, people are not predictable. That’s the charley horse of social. We love to share, but writing algorithms that predict sharing is a tricky business.

Criticisms of Demand’s content declare, rightfully, that “flat” articles about how best to tie a tie or potty train a pet are not the kind of articles that most people want to share. They serve a single purpose: they are consumed and folks move on. It’s a classic search model.

Branded content, however, is far more social, because branded content is written with a human voice and published by a branded entity. Search drives a lot of traffic to branded content, of course, but once there, people tend to share branded content a lot more than “how to tie a tie.” The former is socially shareable (“hey, check this out, it’s interesting”) and the latter is specific (“I need an answer, and I don’t think my friends have the same need right now”).

This was ever so. Voice and point of view are the distinction here. Encyclopedias and Yellow Pages don’t have it, Mashable and the Huffington Post do. People are far more likely to point a friend to a link on HuffPo than a link on eHow.

So whatever Demand’s social strategy is will say a lot about how the company, and by extension Google, might compete in the next few years.

Unfortunately, the S1 doesn’t give us much to go on when it comes to this topic. Demand does, through its purchase of Pluck, provide “enterprise-class social media tools allow websites to add feature-rich applications, such as user profiles, comments, forums, reviews, blogs, photo and video sharing, media galleries, groups and messaging offered through our social media application product suite.”

But Demand does not disclose how much revenue it receives from this offering. I think one can safely assume it’s not very large.

So how can Demand get more social? A few ways. First, it can build “up the pyramid” – create branded sites like Livestrong.com that draw scale from thousands of “how to” articles, then layer more social branded content on top. This is clearly an area the company is getting into, with its recently inked deal with Tyra Banks, for example.

Second, it can figure a way to makes its service content accessible through the new distribution channel of social. As I’ve said many times, social is challenging search as the navigation interface for consumer intent. To put it another way, many of us are just as likely to tweet or post on Facebook something like the following “Help! I forgot how to tie a tie!” as we are to search for that on Google. We then hope one of our pals will post a link to – well, perhaps to eHow’s page on the subject.

What if there were a better way to surface those links as smart responses to such questions, through Facebook’s own advertising platform, for example, or a new app that Demand might create on the Facebook Platform? That’s one way to make service content more social – weave it into the fabric of social services at the root level. When I ask that question on Facebook about tying that tie, perhaps the response comes from a Demand content app.

But how does this help Google? I’m not sure, to be honest. At some point, the company will have to figure a way to play nicely with Facebook. Perhaps if Demand succeeds, both as a public company and in relationship to social, Google will see Demand as a point of entry to solving this problem. I’m not predicting this, as it’d be a stretch for Google to own a company that clearly competes with the rest of the content web – the same content web Google depends on for its value. Then again, Google did buy YouTube….

In Conclusion: The Role of Data

Perhaps the least discussed aspect of Demand’s business, but one that clearly is critical to its long term success, is the amount of data the company has on how people search, what they do once they do search, and what they do once they engage with a piece of content. This includes how they share it, where they go next, and so on. The ability to see those patterns, make products against them, and ultimately profit form them is at the heart of Demand’s model.

Given the size of Demand’s content network, its sophistication in terms of leveraging search data, and its ambition to be a larger brand player, I can see the company starting businesses in the data services field – should it decide to. Or it might, as Google does, keep that data for itself, and leverage it to its own end. Either way, I think it’s worth noting that there’s a hidden data gem in Demand’s business, one that will be a major asset as it negotiates acquisitions, new product developments, and business deals with the major players of the Internet Economy.

Demand’s bid for the public spotlight comes at a fascinating time for the world of content, navigation, and social media. It raises questions about the future models of search and social networks. Watch this one, and watch how leaders Google and Facebook respond to it.

Fortunately for us, Demand Media CEO Rosenblatt agreed to come speak at Web 2 prior to filing for the IPO. That means he can continue to be part of the event. You can register or request an invitation on the site here.

Earlier this week I mused out loud about retargeting, suggesting that perhaps it’s time for marketers to not just chase folks around the web in hopes they might irritate us into submission, but rather offer us the chance to politely say “Not right now, thanks.”

One of Searchblog’s readers turned out to be Josh McFarland, CEO of remarketing startup TellApart. He marshalled his team and within 24 hours had a working prototype integrated into his service. Here’s how it works, in his words:

Hi John –

Clicking on that [X] will disable remarketed ads from that advertiser, reloading the ad with a message that further allows the consumer to opt-out of TellApart targeting altogether (industry best-practice functionality):

This is now live for all TellApart Diapers.com ads, with the exception of 10% of the users which we use as a control baseline (to measure effects on CTR, conversion rates, etc.)

I applaude McFarland’s ability to quickly iterate and act on what he judges to be good input.

And he acknowledges, this is just version 1.0 of the functionality, executed within 24 hours of my original post. McFarland says he plans to add a lot more features. I think that’s needed, for both marketers as well as consumers – conversation is not just yes/no or off/on, and McFarland gets that.

From a follow up email exchange:

Here’s what we’re working on next, and we’re right in line with your thoughts:

1) Option of pausing the ad for the remainder of the time we predicted the user to be in-market for that retailer — instead of a straight, permanent opt-out.

We named our display ads application “Transactional Retargeting” in a nod to the fact that someone is in market for an item (our clients currently are pure-play e-tailers) for a limited window (5-12 days depending on the retailer’s avg consideration cycle), and most people leave a site without buying and never return during that window. Our job is to present those otherwise lost users with compelling ads (and sometimes offers) to get them to click back and transact… Transactional Retargeting drives higher conversion rates and incremental sales. This also means we only show users ads during those same 5-12 days. This modified “pause” functionality will allow users to stop ads for now but gives the merchant the ability to reconnect in the future.

2) Allowing more feedback as to why the user didn’t like the ad (a la Facebook)

3) A link to a much more informative page (about remarketing, TellApart, etc.) – which we are designing now.

One thing we have to balance, however, is the need to have the consumer rapidly choose one of three paths with the display ad: click through, ignore, or decline. Whereas other providers get paid for building overly complex ad widgets (with tabs, text content, tiny scrollbars, even purchase completion within ad), our goal is to definitively drive the user back to the retailer’s full site where they can re-engage with and complete their purchase.

Our business model couldn’t be simpler: we get paid a percentage of revenue for sales that result from a click through on a TellApart ad. That is the only way we make money. No sham view throughs or cost-per-ad-engagement; we drive clicks that convert. As ex-Googlers, it’s our DNA to start with a very hardcore DR approach, because when we can prove our system works under even the most brutal scrutiny (e-retailers managing ROI down to the penny), it will work for everyone (audience buying, brand campaigns, seasonal promotions, etc.)

Impressive. Expect more from TellApart soon, follow the company’s moves here.

…as far as I can tell, they in fact don’t ever meet. You can’t leverage your networks on Facebook and Twitter in Ping. It’s another closed Apple system, another Apple universe in a gilded gift box.

It’s not that Apple hates the web, it’s just that Apple is better than the web. Apple doesn’t need it. It seems Apple has it all figured out.

I am sure Ping will get traction because it’ll be fun, and if it truly helps folks discover more music, so much the better for all (especially iTunes sales). But I’ve a sneaking suspicion that Ping will soon be about more than discovering music – it will also be about discovering Apps and other media like movies and TV. And while paid media is a sanitized and bounded universe, it’s my fervent hope that Apps, over time, will not be – that they will be far more promiscuous. Breathless predictions aside, I simply can’t imagine you will want your Apps to be recommended to you only by your Ping “friends.” Likewise, when you find something cool, you’ll want to share it on Twitter, and post it to Facebook (and maybe even other places too, places that are outside AppleLand.)

You’ve invested in your Facebook and Twitter relationships, why can’t you use those to find and share good stuff inside AppleLand?

I hope Apple agrees, and will open Ping to the rest of the world. But I’m not going to predict it. I can predict this: If Apple doesn’t open it up, Ping will never crack more than 10% of social networking share. But my, will that share be profitable! And for Apple, that’s certainly seems to be enough.

UPDATE: Peter in the comments notes that Ping does have a “very limited” Facebook Connect integration. So good on them, but if it’s just to find friends to feed your Ping network, I’ll stand by my comments above.

The New York Times published a story on the practice of retargeting today, entitled “Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites.” While not nearly as presumptively negative as the WSJ series on marketing and data, it’s telling that the story is slugged with “adstalk” in the URL. Journalists and editors generally dislike and mistrust advertisers – I know, because I am both an editor and a journalist, I’ve worked at places like the Times, and only after studying the business of media for several years (and starting a few companies to boot) have I come around to a more nuanced point of view. We can’t expect every editor to do the same.

But maybe I have an idea that can help.

As the Time piece admits, retargeting is not new. What seems new, the article concludes, is how much the practice has increased, to the point where people feel like they are being “stalked” around the web, often in a fashion that “just feels creepy.”

Well, as I’ve said a million times, marketing is a conversation. And retargeted ads are part of that conversation. I’d like to suggest that retargeted ads acknowledge, with a simple graphic in a consistent place, that they are in fact a retargeted ad, and offer the consumer a chance to tell the advertiser “Thanks, but for now I’m not interested.” Then the ad goes away, and a new one would show up.

The technology and processes required to do such a simple task are already in place. Most third party services which provide retargeting services already use the “i” logo in the creative, which when clicked tells consumers “why am I getting this ad.” Why not extend that to include a “not right now” button, one that allows the consumer to tell the ad he or she is not quite ready for this offer?

Facebook is already training us all toward this end with the “X” in the upper right hand corner of every ad on the site (see image at left). Why not modify this practice to mean “No thanks, not right now.” It’s the equivalent of telling a salesperson at a retail outlet “I don’t need your help right now, thanks.”

I’m far more likely to be open to a marketer who offers me a platform to politely say “no thanks for now” that one who pushes a retargeted ad on me to the point of irritation.

And when a consumer says “no thanks,” as any good salesperson knows, that’s an opportunity to learn. No rarely means no forever. Marketing is a conversation, one with more than one exchange. Just because the first one isn’t a sale, doesn’t mean the next one (or the one after that) can’t be. Especially if you have the good graces to know when to pull back into the wings for a while.

Just a thought.

…that was the subject of an email sent to my by my Apple-loving son when the image above showed up on the family iPad (yes, we have an iPad, my wife insisted. It’s really hers, but that’s another story).

The story goes like this. My son had a question about the new Droid X I got, one I couldn’t answer because I didn’t have the device with me (we were at the beach, if I recall correctly). My wife had brought her iPad, however, so my son Googled the question and, not surprisingly, the Droid site was the first link. He clicked it. This is what we saw.

Classic. While it’s clear that this is due to Flash, it’s natural to read more into it, given the Android/iPhone battle. At least, that’s what my son thought, instantly: Apple is blocking any information about Droid from coming into its sanitized world. My son, who has loved Apple from the moment he could compute, now thinks Apple is “kinda like China, right Dad?”

Yeah, I guess so, kinda. Of course, one could argue that this is Google’s problem, they chose Flash, knowing full well it meant those inside Steve’s firewall would not be able to see into the Droid world.

I don’t like where this is all going.

(Don’t ask me what “Gnar Gnar” means. It’s a 14-year old’s phrase – I get it, but I can’t explain it. UD can.)