Archive for April, 2008
E-Commerce Will Take Big Hit as States Close “Amazon Loophole”
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008Last Friday, Google’s chief economist pointed to figures suggesting that even a severe recession won’t dent e-commerce (which apparently has grown 22 percent in the past two years). The economist went so far as to claim that a recession helps e-commerce, “because cautious consumers are doing more research and comparison shopping online before making a […]
Apocalypse Yahoo?
Friday, April 25th, 2008I spent some time this week watching Apocalypse Now (Redux), one of my all-time favorite films from the 1970s. I’ve seen this film at least 10 times, and it always has some new lesson to teach me about the state of the world, and this time around, a few scenes reminded me of Yahoo’s current […]
Online Ad Network Bubble Will Soon Burst
Monday, April 21st, 2008Remember, about a million years ago in Web time, when all the pundits were saying that the Net was going to “disintermediate” all of those obnoxious middlemen skimming pennies from every commercial transaction? Well, exactly the opposite’s happened, at least in the world of interactive advertising: today, we’ve got more than 200 ad networks, each […]
Loyalty is Dead; Long Live Marketplace Amorality
Thursday, April 17th, 2008Loyalty, it’s said, is dead. Already buried is the traditional loyalty which corporations used to display towards those working for them and the reciprocal loyalty of workers toward these organizations. Loyalty towards brands is an illusion, especially in a recession, when consumers figure out that they can get the same value from a non-branded good […]
Breaking News: Search Marketing Techniques Devised in 1930’s
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Excellent article by Alan Rimm-Kaufman on the fact that today’s search marketing best practices are inherited directly from traditional Direct Mail techniques devised 80 years ago. Especially relevant is the “List-Offer-Package Rule” holding that Lists (the segment you’re marketing to) are the most important variable, followed by Offer, and then Package (i.e messaging). This basic […]
American Express Slams SEO, SE Spammers React With More Whining
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008One of the most annoying things about the SEO crowd is how thin-skinned they are. They might come off all rough and tough on their Blogs, but this hard shell masks a quivering level of insecurity that’s clearly rooted in their own precarious and highly temporary status in the search economy.
All it took was […]
Toxic Buzzword of the Week: ORM (Online Reputation Management)
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008I don’t have any real quarrel with the article that John Carcutt wrote for SearchEngineJournal.com this week, because he does us all a service by pointing out that most SEOs are, for a variety of reasons, completely unqualified to handle online reputation management. Not only do they not have the proper skillsets, but as he […]
The SEM Agency Crisis Won’t Be Solved Over Coffee and Crumb Cakes
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008This week, DMNews’ Sara Holoubek wrote an article entitled “SEMs are from Mars, clients are from Venus” which alludes to the fact that clients and SEM agencies very seldom have good long term relationships.
In my view, however, Ms. Holoubek’s evident belief that a solution lies in the application of “mutual respect, professionalism, intellectual curiosity […]
Dell + Da Vinci = Doubt and Delay
Friday, April 4th, 2008Back in December 2007, in an article entitled “Has Dell Lost Its Mind?,” I wrote about Dell’s “Da Vinci” project, which promised to rationalize Dell’s ad spending by creating an umbrella agency to replace 800 smaller ones. At that time, I criticized Dell for moving away from the “component” approach and “putting its eggs into […]
Dave to Online Ad Industry: Let’s Abolish The Childish Company Names
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008Azoogle. Vonba. Zango. Vringo. Quigo. PopCap. These are just a few of the childish-sounding appellations adopted by online ad companies. Others sound like the crude speech of some doomed aboriginal tribe. Of course, it’s true that the name “Google” sounds like baby talk, so these companies are in good company, but I wish somebody would […]