Op-ed

Infrequent notes on projects, publishing and platforms

The first two rules of so-called advertising in this world.

"Stop this yelling and screaming about what's your Facebook strategy [...] make absolutely certain that you have a great product or service. Make absolutely certain that you have great customer service. Those are the first two rules of so-called advertising in this world. If you don't have those, don't pay any money to anyone to do anything."

- Rishad Tobaccowala (Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Vivaki), from What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

 

Yahoo acquires Dapper to make online display advertising less annoying

I've noted before that the real excitement in online advertising is about platforms (reminder: the GOOG is an advertising platform). 

Back in 2008 (yeah, I was there before they were cool, etc.) I noted that contextual display wonks Dapper were on to a thing and would be acquired soon. Well it only took two years. Yahoo has picked them up. 

Eran Sher, who founded Dapper with the mission statement "to put the right content, at the right time, in front of the right user", has a great blog post outlining the thinking behind Dapper and the acquisition. Dapper video below summarises.

 

Online advertising: it's a platform game.

An ingenious approach to online advertising over at Solve Media. Instead of having to type out those Captchas, you reproduce a strapline from an ad instead. Ad copywriters rejoice! Ye shall be read, and recalled. Obligatory illustration-based video follows.

Online advertising really is a platform game. By that I mean, the people owning the platforms, like the Solve Media guys, are the ones holding the real value.

The above might prove to be a gimmick. But right now this is looking a lot better than an interruption-model leaderboard ad splattered across article template pages. Oh, and there's the 40% recall rate for people who typed in the ad phrase.

Found via the WSJ.

Some notes on the Wired iPad app video, shown at TED

This is Wired's iPad app, breathlessly showcased at TED. Chris Anderson describes the iPad as "a groundbreaking opportunity for magazines such as ours". Here's what it illustrates to me:

1. Adobe creating a publishing product for iPad: Adobe are all over this presentation (amusing, given the teeth-gnashing over flash support on the platform). Publishers want to use existing teams & skills and Adobe are embedded in this industry. So, an 'export to iPad app' plugin will sound like a 'push button to do job' godsend. Adobe could perform that bridging role ('Adobe Bridge', ha, ho). I detect they may do this (as the Adobe guy says they will create a platform for publishers, right there in the video).

2. Fusion of advertising & content: Creepy chap with tie: "Advertising is as important as the editorial in all of our magazines". True for the big Conde Nast titles (Vogue, GQ etc.), where ads can be legitimately described as valuable content in their own right. Fair enough. For publishers who get this wrong, there is punishment, in the form of a failed iPad app. But I have no problem with a creative, compelling ad which entertains and informs.

3. Pricing model: Only briefly mentioned here; but this is the most exciting & challenging battleground. Let's speculate? Download the app free. View free samples each week/month. Push notifications of new updates. Subscribe through the app store to the full app, at a low rate. Or buy per-edition at a higher rate. The pricing sweet spot will be found.

4. Distribution & development costs: Question: Does no more printing, and no more distribution, mean a tight editorial team can create and release an iPad magazine as simply as creating a downloadable PDF? Answer: Only if Apple sort out their app store approval process and make it easier for these magazines to be discovered, rated and purchased. Otherwise the electronic slush pile will grow rapidly in the coming months.

One last note: I'm not convinced the platform suits the long-format article. But it's clearly going to be simply brilliant for pieces which tackle complexity through use of visualisation and illustration.

#dublinbikesfail: Why government data needs to be publicly available via API

Dublin has a bike rental scheme now, delivered by outdoor ad house JC Decaux, in exchange for outdoor ad real estate on streets.

JC Decaux recently forced Fusio, a 3rd party, to withdraw their mobile app which told people where their nearest bike station was, bikes available, and other good stuff. A few feathers were spat.

Firstly, I'm surprised that people thought JC Decaux would be fine with a 3rd party using their data. They are a private concern; they exist to make money. Fusio were benefiting, by putting an app available for download which piggybacked on it. Yes, I realise that Fusio were not charging for it. But there were clear commercial benefits to them in offering a free app. They are not a bunch of hippies (warning: assumption) and also exist to make money. There are opportunity costs for JC Decaux as well.

The key point is: it looks like Dublin City Council did not understand that this was a public data project, or did not see the inherent value of making this clear in their agreements.

Metadata about the project (i.e. location of bike stations, available cycles, and free spots) should have been the property of Dublin City Council. Instead that information is obviously the property of JC Decaux.

Government bodies and agencies: please care about your data (by that I don't mean care about data protection, that's a given).

Curate, collate and make it available. If you make appropriate public data accessible via an open and well-documented API, the market will do the rest.

If you don't want to listen to me, maybe listen to Tim Berners-Lee instead, via his TED video or article on the topic. Or just have a look at what they are doing in the UK.

I haven't used those bikes yet, but they look nice and people seem to smile a lot on them. So that's good.

2009: web trends to watch

So here's the shorthand version of a piece I wrote for Business & Finance (Ireland). Just shortlisting a few trends for 2009.

  • Cloud computing for personal use will grow more pervasive. Business use is another issue entirely.
  • Open Data needs to be an eGovernment cornerstone. And it will happen. Slowly.
  • The mobile web is here and growing. Massive opportunity here, as long as people focus on context; it's not about fitting everything into small screens.
  • Social data ownership and portability will become bigger issues. But Facebook Connect will probably blow a disconnected Open Social movement away.
  • Data protection & security issues will enter the mainstream. Lose a smartphone and you'll discover it's not the device you care about. It's the data.
  • Advertising and content streams will begin to cross. Usable, useful advertising? Is that possible? Yes.
  • The top-down semantic web is happening and it will continue to grow. There is value to be made here in releasing previously walled-off content & services. People need to be more careful though.
  • Web applications will come forth and multiply: SaaS model is established now, with ad-supported models gaining traction. Some consolidation probably likely.
  • Ireland’s Knowledge economy needs attention. Needs to focus on the next billion people coming online, and how Ireland can be part of it. See an interesting post by Neil Leyden here on creating an International Content Services Centre.
  • Advertising will continue to move online. Budgets will get squeezed, but the percentage afforded to online advertising will continue to grow (disclaimer: I work for ICAN, an online advertising & digital communications agency, but them's just the facts: http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=online+advertising+trends)

The full article is in the 'Digital Connections' supplement, in this month's B&F.

Dapper MashupAds: Contextual relevance in display advertising

Well-known fact: Google makes (most of) its billions by providing relevant advertising. Google has a peerless search product, and places contextual search ads on its own sites and those of affiliate publishers, earning megabucks. This much we know.

Yesterday, Dapper was a cool mashup service. It took different feeds in from websites and spat out cool mashups for wunderkinder to embed. It's smart and useful (we used Dapper in ICAN with Yahoo Pipes, to create a crude proof-of-concept for a recent project for Oracle).

But today all of that just looks like sandboxing. A prototype for something much bigger: Dapper MashupAds.

Simply put: this creates the same relevance for display as search advertising. The videos below hint at the potential shift. If this product develops as it should, ads simply become just good, useful content. Dapper is going to be devoured soon.

(I note that the above has more than a nod to the now famous Web 2.0 'Machine is Us/ing Us' video. It also gives a hat tip to the insufferable Ogilvy, but anything with a soundtrack that reminds me of Alex Kidd in Miracle World is ok).

Update: Can't embed using YouTube or Vimeo. Posterous, WTF.