We’ve Seen This Movie Before…On Traffic of Good Intent

(image) Back in 2005 I whipped off a post with a title that has recently become relevant again – “Traffic of Good Intent.” That post keyed off  a major issue in the burgeoning search industry – click fraud. In the early days of search, click fraud was a huge problem (that link is from 2002!). Pundits (like me) claimed that because everyone was getting paid from fraud, it was “something of a whistling-past-the-graveyard issue for the entire (industry).” Cnet ran a story in 2004 identifying bad actors who created fake content, then ran robots over AdSense links on those pages. It blamed the open nature of the Web as fueling the fraudsters, and it noted that Google could not comment, because  it was in its quiet period before an IPO.

But once public, Google did respond, suing bad actors and posting extensive explanations of its anti-fraud practices. Conversely, a major fraud-based class action lawsuit was filed against all of the major search engines. Subsequent research suggested that as much as 30% of commercial clicks were fraudulent  – remember, this was after Google had gone public, and after the issue had been well-documented and endlessly discussed in the business and industry press. The major players in search finally banded together to fight the problem – understanding full well that without a united front and open communication, trust would never be established.

Think about that little history lesson – a massive, emerging new industry, one that was upending the entire marketing ecosystem, was operating under a constant cloud of “fraud” which may have been poisoning nearly a third of the revenues in the space. Yet billions in revenue and hundreds of billions in market value was still created. And after several years of lawsuits, negative press, and lord-knows-how-much-fraud, the clickfraud story has pretty much been forgotten.

Read More
3 Comments on We’ve Seen This Movie Before…On Traffic of Good Intent

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

On Coming Back to FMP

Starting a business is a journey, as any founder will tell you. When I started Federated Media Publishing almost eight years ago, I did my best to collect all the lessons learned from Wired, The Industry Standard, and Web 2 Summit, and apply them to my new venture. One of those lessons was that it’s OK to step away when the time is right. Several years ago, I did just that, becoming an “active Chairman” at FMP and handing the operational reigns over to an accomplished executive, Deanna Brown.

Since making that decision, FMP has grown dramatically, but it’s also had its challenges. Last year, for example, we made the difficult but important decision to rethink the company so as to lean into our two most promising lines of business – content marketing (which we lay claim to inventing as “conversational marketing” some seven years ago) and programmatic marketing (which we invested in heavily last year, after acquiring a very fast growing business in Lijit Networks in Fall of 2011). It meant stepping back from something we had been doing for some time – directly selling standard display banners  – but it proved to be the right choice. FMP is having a great first half of 2013, and I couldn’t be more excited about our roadmap and potential for the rest of the year and beyond.

The funny thing is, even as I became “just the Chairman” at FMP over the past two years, I never stopped thinking about the company. It woke me up nearly every night, tugging at my sleeve, asking me questions, demanding my best thinking. Deanna and I would meet every week to talk strategy, review numbers, or just plain chew the fat. Running a company with hundreds of employees, top notch investors, and a big top line revenue number is damn hard, and Deanna not only ran the place, she made it hum. I am in her debt.

Read More
59 Comments on On Coming Back to FMP

What Should the Ads Be Like?

The home page of HotWired at launch in Fall of 1994. The banners were on the interior pages.

(Part two of a series. Part one is here. The post that sparked the series is here).

When I’m asked about my views of where digital marketing is headed, I often tell an anecdote about the past. I may have told it here before (5300 posts and ten years into this blog, I sometimes forget what I’ve written), but it’s worth another spin.

Read More
17 Comments on What Should the Ads Be Like?

Signal:Chicago Is Back, And It’s All About The Data…

I’ve written up an overview of the lineup at FMP’s second annual Signal:Chicago conference over on the FMP site. Highly recommended, it’s a very good event.

Speakers include Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon, Scott Howe, CEO of Acxiom, Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom Mediavest Group, and Carolyn Everson,  VP of Global Advertising for Facebook.

If you’re anywhere near Chicago in September, or even if you’re not, this is one that’ll be worth attending. We’re exploring the role of data in marketing, as well as  my favorite topics of mobile, real time, local, and social, of course. Check it out.

1 Comment on Signal:Chicago Is Back, And It’s All About The Data…