Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 27 Oct 2005 21:43:00 GMT
I just read the recent blog post of Jen Sense which explains how google pays different amounts to it’s advertisers depending on if you actually purchase goods or not. ie.. if the ad is successful google charges more from the advertiser and rewards the publisher.
Fantastic idea.. I’m all for better measures on how effective ads and publishers are for showing those ads.
But I’m just wondering if it is being used on the flip side? by that I mean if you the viewer click and spend money on digital cameras. Will google show you more camera ads when you surf? or display higher value ads because you actually spend money on the net? or even perhaps google will share the information with the publisher, and allow ‘high-value’ viewers access to premium areas of the site.. it definatly does open some doors not currently available.
What if it determines your a lousy mark^h^h^h not a person prone to actually purchasing goods.
Will it select against you (and the publishers you visit) by showing you low-value ads, meaning your publisher suffers?
I actually think this is a good thing. publishers get more money if they are more effective for their customers (The advertisers are the ones paying.. they are the customers.. not you the viewer)
I just wonder is this data all sitting in some data warehouse somewhere tracking all the purchases I’ve made in the last year? I wonder what the legal rights of them collecting this (or not collecting it) are.. I don’t remember signing a usage agreement when I viewed the ads. (I’m sure the publishers and advertisers have, but not me. the one they are tracking)
Posted in General | Tags google, marketing, privacy | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 11 Oct 2005 13:11:00 GMT
I’d like to welcome Susan Wu (Apache’s CMO ) to the blogosphere.. you can see her thoughts (and others shortly) on The Feather.
Posted in Apache | Tags apache, economics, marketing, opensource | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:43:00 GMT
source: The Friction Free Economy
There are four basic strategies to fight a dominant market leader.
Brute force
Attack the market leader through an aggressive attack on several fronts
- beat price-learning curve
- branding
- tailoring (to the market of one)
- volume manufacturing
- execute Davidow’s law (beat them to the market on the next round, and gain the lead when you obselete their product)
Momentum
Find a weak spot, gain a foothold and build takeover momentum
- joint ventures
- mergers and acquisitions
Anti-Monopoly
Get third parties to help destroy the leadership position through monopoly
- target the weak
- lobby government
- litigate
Pure Play
Consistent execution of a strategy over a period of time
- hit shooting range targets
- introduce chaos into marketplace
From what I can see recently on the net, Google appears to be playing more ‘pure play’ than ‘brute force’ with it’s gmail, gtalk, froogle, and news sites, while murdoch and microsoft are more into ‘momentum’ plays buying established companies with existing market shares.
the other interesting saw in my class yesterday (not from the lecturer, but googling while being bored) was about The New Lanchester Strategy.
Which theorizes about how different market share sizes in the overall market affect the market itself.
So according to the new Lanchaster strategy I would think Technorati (which I would estimate would hold 30-40% market share) should merge with a smaller player of slightly smaller size to control 73% of the overall market, in effect controlling it. Making it much harder/expensive for other players to enter.
you can also look at this in the web-mail (and messenger) area, where hotmail & yahoo have an order of magnitude more subscribers than gmail. I would love to see how the new guy on the block plans on breaking that. Right now all of gmail’s new innovations are being implemented in hotmail and in yahoo.. I don’t think that google is going to have a slam dunk in these areas, unless it can provide another compelling reason to switch over.
(oh.. please don’t take me as anti google or anything, it’s just that they have shaken up several markets and I can apply some of the stuff I learn in the books/classes to them)
Tags marketing, mba, strategy | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:11:00 GMT
Ok lazyweb.. let me try this again..
I’m looking for a catchy phrase to help promote our internal sysadmin, ops & networking group. (for a large website)
stuff like
- “… the people behind the curtain”
-
“…. we keep the pages turning”
or
-
”.. we’re exicted about bits & bytes, even if you’re not.”
so..
any thoughts?
Posted in Lazyweb | Tags admin, marketing | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Sun, 04 Sep 2005 14:37:00 GMT
I just came across this
posting which references a local paper article about how the corporate world 'IT' ranks a smidge above HR in rankings.
How low does Human Resources rank in our organisations?
According to US academic and consultant David Sirota, who has taught at Cornell, Yale, MIT and Wharton, in most places it's right at the bottom, usually sitting somewhere alongside the IT department.
I think half the reason for this is IT is responsible for the massive amount of change we put these poor business people through, they would be much happier without their powerpoints, and back with their overheads.
But seriously, I think we (the IT corporate professional) are being sullyed by the applications and hardware people run in their day to day lives.. I won't tell you how often I have heard 'We are having a technology problem' in a meeting when someone can't figure out how to get their powerpoint running in the corproate boardroom. Of course all IT people being the same we are looked at to fix his problem, further pushing the perception that technology is only understood by other IT folk, and that we are all the same.
What we need to do is split out the 'helpdesk' which deals with the day to day issues about peoples lack of training with common software like powerpoint and projectors, and the inhouse applications we write.
ie.. re-brand IT-Development and IT-helpdesk so that they are not associated with each other, even the management is different. they should report directly to the COO, or building maintenance. not the CIO.. it has more to do with purchaing and contracting then the development we do.
Once the link between development and operations is fully at arms length can we get over this low 'ranking' and start getting valued for the ROI we are responsible for.
Tags it, marketing | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:13:00 GMT
Ok.. this really should be a series of things, as there is a lot of marketing theory out there, and most of it could be applied to how IT builds systems.. but these are the things I think are pressing.
Different people want different things out of your system.
most people know about regular users, power users etc.. but that isn’t the only way to slice your users up.
before you go and design your UI, go and do some research and see if you can ‘segment’ your user base into diffent chunks and then think what they will use your system for.
eg. a monitoring system.
The network manager cares about the health of the network, and doesn’t really give a toss if some application is dead on the machines.. not his problem.
the operations manager needs to make sure the latest deployment worked.. and the general health of the applications.
The operation engineer needs to be able to zoom down to the minute detail and figure out why this stupid system is paging him.
Design 3 different views/UI’s for them. not a single one which doesn’t do what any of them need.
How do you promote it?
The person who designed the better mousetrap died a peniless death.
no one (besides other geeks) cares about all the latest tech wizbang wizard or if you used ruby or spring or SOAP.
They want business value. Talk to them about time saved or efficiences created, or new opportunities available to them thanks to your latest program.
Do your boss a favor, prepare a single slide or two summarizing your project at that level so that he can show it in his status meeting with his peers. prepare another slide of ‘action items’ that his peers would need to do to make your project a reality, or let them gain the benefit of it.
Making your boss look good will never hurt your career.
Make it look pretty
Pretty systems get demoed. So do easy to use systems.
I should know.. I create the ugliest hardest to use systems and they sit there gathering dust.
But seriously, while it might be quite understandable to you, or to people who use your system for hours every day, the person who needs to use once a month will have no idea what to do.
Forget the spec
well, not exactly, but don’t follow it blindly. go and talk to the people who were initally questions (the users) when you have questions, or ideas on how what they really want could be done in a different way and make it much easier for them to do their job. (not because you heard of this latest cool geek thing you want to implement)
Common Infrastructure
The company does not need another user-management system inhouse.
If some other group has done it already then go interface to theirs.. your is special/different. BS. they are the same users, figure out why you think your app is special, and go to the original group and see if you can persude them.
Then go and work on something that will actually add value.
ok..enough ranting.. flame away
Posted in Business Related | Tags customer, marketing, mba, service | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:04:00 GMT
I'm currently studying marketing as part of my MBA course, and one of the first things the lecturer said to us is
'know thy customer' (with a slight irish accent)
so I got to thinking.. how much do open source projects actually know about the people who use their products, and what they like/dislike about them. (If they actually care is another matter, but I'm going to assume that they do)
I've gotten some interesting feedback, ranging from don't ask.. we might not like the answers (as we know what the answers will be, and we won't like them)
to fantastic idea
. To the people who think it will be negative.. see my previous post about webserver usage rates.. we're doing something right.. our market share is GROWING.
I've also got other responses to say my company ran a survey against the Fortune 500 list.. and we know. I don't think the 'Fortune 500' companies are our users to be honest. They use our software, sure, but the software is usually provided to them via a 3rd party with add-ons and support and other cool stuff they are willing to pay for.
So .. that leaves the rest of us.. the unwashed masses so to speak.
Want to find out ?
so do I .. fill in the following survey http://survey.zilbo.com/webserver.survey
and help us get some research, and ideas on what you want out of a webserver.
please feel free to cross-post and publicise the link.
ps.. thanks to Joel Palmius for writing such great software!
Posted in Business Related | Tags marketing, opensource | no trackbacks