Now I'm Worried About This Y2K Bug Thing!
Filed under: Media - December 29, 2005
Does this make you think it is still 1999? If not try reading this story that spreads the fear of cookies and spying. The author must not have done any research at all into what a cookie file is or what it is used for, as the lead paragraph states "The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them."
Fear! Spying! The Government is out to get us all! Adding fuel is the quick line "privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected." Yeah. Do these same people wear foil helmets to keep the government from listening to their thoughts?
Yes, this is a violation of the NSA Privacy policy, which did not state that they uses persistent cookies, and it is also a violation of the government guideline that says that they have to use session based cookies unless there is a compelling need for a longer duration.
Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally."
But, is this a conspiracy to invade our computers and spy on us? It must be according to these fear-mongers. The privacy advocate who blew this out of proportion has a good understanding of how things work, as he has turned this mistake into something far bigger - and somehow illegal. I know it is so because I read it on the Internet - in a few places. Here's proof: NSA Used Illegal Cookies on Website
Well, at least we can be assured that the last five years of education and advancement of what a cookie really is will keep this from spreading. Nah!
What Price Freedom? There are times when technology – and the damage it can potentially inflict – angers and frightens me.It's no secret that governments around the world routinely use all sorts of technological methods in conducting nefarious acts against enemy countries. That I may not agree with, but I can't complain about it. But I can complain about our country using technology to spy on its own residents.
And now, the Associated Press is reporting that the National Security Agency has been placing cookies in NSA Web site visitors' computers that track which other Web sites they visit. And these cookies are of the persistent variety, not set to expire until 2035. Any visitor – average American citizen, Army general or enemy combatant – got the cookie, as the site made no distinctions as to who you were or from where you were logging on.
Set the WABAC machine Mr. Peabody, we're going back to the stone age of the Internet.
Is It Still 1999?
Filed under: Online Publishing - December 22, 2005
Earlier in the month I wrote about an affiliate program that sent out a clueless email, and now I have to say that someone just did them one better. I am a season ticket holder with the LA Kings and this year as a reward for buying season tickets (and sticking with them through the lockout), they are sending us each a signed Luc Robitaille jersey. Well, the company fulfilling the distribution screwed up big time. They sent a notice about the delivery of our jersey in a mass email to a batch of us with all our addresses visible. This was nor from your mother or some newbie just getting used to email, this was from a business that really should have known better.
So now I have the email addresses of 577 other LA Kings season ticket holders - and 577 outsiders have mine. Being all nice folks, I'm sure they will not send unsolicited email to the group, right? Yeah. The email with our addresses was sent at 9:19 AM. By 10:20 I had two emails promoting various hockey related topics sent to all 578 of us (now including the original sender) with all our addresses visible.
To their credit, the Kings actually knew about this before I notified them at 11:06 AM, and by 12:23 PM the original offender sent out a sideways apology (with addresses hidden) to the group. I say sideways, because they did not admit to knowingly sending this out as a mass email, saying that the "reply to all slipped by when I was sending it out to a select group of people from the email" and concluding that he hoped we all would still consider using his site. Oops, I didn't mean to spam you. I never speed. And the check is in the mail.
The Kings sent out their own notice at 2:02 PM:
As you know, (name removed) sent an e-mail to you this morning about the shipping date of your Luc Robitaille jersey. Unfortunately they did not send the e-mail properly and all of the recipients were carbon copied on the e-mail. Although they had the right intentions, this mistake has exposed a portion of our highly valued Season Ticket Holder list.We sincerely apologize for this mistake and ask that you do not send the list unsolicited email.
Thank you for you continued support and have a Happy Holiday!
I do appreciate the quick notice and apology, but I also still have misgivings. Technology has done some great things for communication and business, but this is not the first time that they have been burned by shoddy work from an outsourced company - I was the one to catch an BIG error with an earlier promotion. They really need to have a tighter leash, and I hope that they implement enhanced testing and include penalties in any future contracts they make for outsourced communications on their behalf. It is all ultimately the responsibility of the Kings organization to make sure that their promotions go well and they do not violate the privacy of their lists in the end.
Numbers Don't Lie, But You Can Lie With Numbers
Filed under: Online Advertising - December 15, 2005
I love statistics. I keep lots of them on file for our various sites, and I have an Excel spreadsheet with hits, dollars, ads, and a lot more for EPage going back to 1997. It can be lots of fun to figure out new ways to look at the data and get intelligence into how things are really going. I also keep tabs on numbers released by various outlets that tout the growth of online ad spend, the Top 50 Advertisers, or Impressions served.
All this data gets me excited because I can have so much fun working it a few different ways to see what truths I may be able to pull from them. We have articles that talk about Impressions taking a dip in November, but I have not been able to find the data on spend in November, so my hopes for a great walk-off conclusion will have to wait until a later post. Total impressions have been on a huge growth path this year, in contrast with last year which showed no real growth with January being the top month for the year. Since this report had impressions and spending, you can also look at a more important number, eCPM. Even with fluctuation of impressions, the eCPM based on these numbers was around an impressively high $11 CPM. There was a slight increase over the year, but the slope is pretty gentle. That same eCPM level is supported by comparing the quarterly media spend to the impression levels for the 2nd and 3rd quarters this year, however the slope is negative, with 3rd quarter 2005 having an eCPM of about $9.50.
I am more impressed by the growth of impressions this year, and particularly when compared to the same month last year. April was the worst improved month that could be compared, and it came in with 28% growth. August 2005 was the best, at more than double 2004 impressions. Even with the dip in November 2005 (which can't be compared because I have not been able to get corresponding 2004 data), impressions are up significantly (almost double 2004) in the last half of this year.
Since the media spend includes offbeat things such as home page placements that may run a million dollars per day, I don't see the eCPM numbers as an industry average or expectation for any but the very top sites who can command super-premium pricing. There is also the factor of paid search and contextual advertising that is (as far as I can figure) included in the spend, but not the impressions. If the impressions were included, did they count each contextual ad in an ad unit or on the search results pages? While the article does state that portals and search engines accounted for 12.3 percent of ad impressions, I really don't have confidence that this included all of the contextual ads served by Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, About, and others of the numbers would be even higher.
The last cool thing I looked at was to compare the top 50 advertiser spend with the impression data. I could look at April through October this year. While year over year impressions are way up, the served impression data has only a slight up tick during the months tracked. Combine this with a 20% drop in ad spending by the top 50 advertisers and this implies a dramatic drop and shift in the ad spend. These all factor into an over 40% drop in eCPM when taking top 50 ad spend and total impressions. This is not a completely accurate measure, but I would have expected the eCPM to be more stable if nothing was changing. If overall ad spending is up, but the top 50 advertisers are spending less as a group, then all this extra money has to be coming from many more smaller players. Does this mean that the market is broadening, or that big advertisers are shifting their money from this channel to another (paid search/contextual ads)? Or are the people doing these studies leaving something out as I suspect?
Breaking News: Ad Network Finds Networks' Reach Lures Ad Dollars! Maybe
Filed under: Online Advertising - December 13, 2005
MediaPost reports that a a new study by ValueClick Media/FastClick has found that forty-two percent of media buyers spend more on networks than they did two years ago. Amazing that a study released by a network headlines that the network has value!
Not that I disagree that networks have value and that value is their reach and the simplicity of making a single buy. But when there are numerous articles talking about the huge increases of ad buying overall, how surprising is it that media buyers are buying more ads.
This is where the study surprised me. It says that a whopping 30 percent reported that online ad spending was down compared to two years ago. Since I can find articles telling me that online ad spending is up 33% over 2004 for the 3rd quarter and even more compared to two years ago, then flat ad spending is comparatively a decrease.
They don't report on the amount of increase for the 42% who are spending more, but I have to say that it is telling that in this world of growth in the online ad industry, a majority of advertisers are not increasing their network advertising buy. There are only two conclusions I can draw from this. Either the ad dollars are going to search, or they are going to direct ad buys, or some combination of the two. I'd love to see a more comprehensive survey that is looking for the overall answer.
Pixel Ads Gone Wild!
Filed under: Online Marketing - December 12, 2005
What else is next for pixel advertising? After megapixel blank canvases came ads on top of various images, and then ads connected to a secondary act as I reported yesterday. I just came across yet another pixel based ad idea, Pixel Banner Ads from a company out of the UK For $10 per month, they will put your 20x20 image on banners in their network.
You can get in on the ground floor, as they have 12 publishers serving 4168 banners daily! After checking out their top publishers, I see that they can serve any number of rectangular shapes. It is an interesting idea to sell micro-ads. 400 pixels is a lot better than the 100 pixels from the megapixel sites, but still pretty small to actually brand or sell something.
That said, the current rates are not all that bad from an eCPM standpoint. If they continue at their current rate and sell 50 ad units, sites might end up earning an eCPM of $3 or so. Of course things get complex when you have a lot more sites showing the ads, and a fill rate that is lower. As a publisher, this does establish a maximum you could ever earn unless they raise their $10 rate, as you can only earn $8 per month from each ad unit you show. If the network gets 50 advertisers, and you were the only site you would earn $400 a month. With 12 sites, the average site will earn less than $35 for their virtual real estate.
As an advertiser, you are still paying $10 for more than 100,000 impressions (for now) for you 400 pixel ad. On a cost per pixel basis, this does seem expensive when you realize that you can fit more than 70 of these 20x20 pixel ad units into a standard 468x60 banner. That works out to a value of $700 per month for the old Standard Banner, $1630 for a Leaderboard, and $1870 for a Rectangle!
Only time will tell if this is the first of a string of imitators.
Smash My Viper - for a Million Dollars
Filed under: Online Marketing - December 09, 2005
By now I sure hope you have heard all about the Million Dollar Homepage and the dozens of imitators. It was a clever idea that I think just about everyone scoffed at, until they saw that he has raised (or at least claims to have raised) almost $850,000 in a matter of months. Now there are all sorts of them out there for Women's Business, Booty, cheapskates, and many more. You can even buy a script to host your own for $179. But, other than curiosity to see who would be foolish enough to buy pixels, there has never been a reason to go to any of these pages until now.
An enterprising young man named Jason Gunther, a 23 year old College Grad who happens to own a Viper decided that he would sacrifice his car for the sake of raising money so he can pay off his debts and open a bar. He is selling damage to his car at the same time at his own version of the million pixel page, titled appropriately Smash My Viper. Not only do you get to hope that someone sees you ad, you also get to scratch, dent, break, and otherwise mangle a real Dodge Viper. The idea does have some merit. People are far more likely to stop by his site to see if the Viper really is being abused and to check out pictures and video of the actual damage fest. Oh yeah, being a smart college graduate, he also knows what will bring visitors - girls.
You can check out pictures of "several hot chicks" posing on and around his car. Note that you have to scroll past the million pixels to see the other pictures. Clever. What else are the girls used for? Well, if you can't be there in person and you don't want him to do it for you, these SmashMyViper.com girls will do the damage in your place for only and extra $100.
What all can you do to the car and how much does it cost? For $100 you can make a 6" (6"x6"?) key mark. He says if you are creative you could key your logo into the car. For $500 you get a hole drilled in the car, and as the dollars go up, you can do more and also get decals on the car and posts on his update page with pictures for more exposure. I can see Corvette clubs getting together and buying up blocks of pixels to spell out Vipers Suck in pixels and having fun with the car. They could even raise the money buy auctioning for the privilege of doing the deed yourself. Maybe there would be competition between them and the Porsche owners to see who could do the worst damage. If this happens, all bets are off and each marque will try to out-do the other.
I can't say if this one will work or not. If this was the first of it's kind ever, I think I'd give it a better chance than I ever afforded to the original. After all, who doesn't want to thrash a Viper?
How Can Anyone Still Make This Mistake?
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing - December 07, 2005
I just got an email that shows that some programs don't think about their communications. The email made it through my automated Spam filters, but almost got summarily deleted by my own brain based Spam filter. The subject was OK, but the from name is generic. I was persuaded to open it, and I still thought about deleting it out of hand.
The entire text of the email is as follows:
From: Commission To: noname Subject: Commission For EPage Inc.Today is your specified payout day for your affiliates. Please login to your
EPage Inc. account and click on the Affiliates link to generate your monthly
payout report.
This was a text email, so the only information missing is the actual email addresses used. Reviewing the headers, I found that there was a from address, but I had no idea who they were. This is not meant to publicly embarrass anyone, so I will not give away the domain (you can figure out the company through some sleuthing), but the account was "system@", which still did not give any confidence of this being legitimate.
So, what should they have done? Oh, maybe telling me the actual page to go to instead of telling me to login. Including my account login name would have been a big help. I had to work pretty hard to find them, get to the login page, and then figure out my account information. All to see that I did not have a payment coming to me yet!
I did figure out who it was from, but they obviously need some help...
So, they sent out an email telling me to login to check my commissions when I had not earned any that month, and they failed to tell me where to go to login, and they didn't give me a hint as to my login name. I can't imagine that too many people take the desired action from this email. In fact, I bet I was the only one who did.
Publishers Don't Like Google's New Feature
Filed under: Online Publishing - December 07, 2005
Interesting. After much publicity and fanfare talking about Google's new "Advertise on this site" feature for AdSense, it seems as it perhaps it is not as great an idea as they all thought. Webmasters are getting upset over it, some for perceived issues, and some for real ones. Some of the issues revolve around misconceptions that you cannot opt out of the feature. This is an error, as I have tested the process and have opted out of the feature.
A smaller problem is the landing page itself. It is very limiting and is the only one you get. For those who own multiple sites, this is an issue because they really should have one page per site. With a 100 pixel graphic and 384 characters to describe your site, it is tough for a single site to really sell a placement, let alone five or ten sites.
The real issue, which many sites share, is that Google is not the best source of revenue for site advertising. It works well, but in no way can it match site targeted advertising for your site and your site only. Most sites either sell or want to be able to sell their own advertising. Just look to the right and check out the ADVERTISE link four down in the right navigation. So why would a publisher want to distract advertisers and send them to AdWords where they will "have the opportunity to place ads on your site" and "compete for your inventory". What does this really mean? It means that "advertisers will bid for your inventory on a pay-per-impression basis, and the ads they create will compete against all other Google site- and content-targeted ads relevant to your site"
To illustrate this further, check out these answers:
How do I know if advertisers are bidding on my site?
At this time, we aren't able to provide details about how many advertiser sign-ups are made through your links. However, if advertisers are bidding on your site, you may notice more CPM ads appearing on your site and/or an increase in your earnings.
Can I customize the landing page for each of my sites?
No. At this time, we only offer the ability to customize one landing page for each account. Advertisers will access the same custom landing page from ad units on any of your sites.
For this feature to really work, you need competition for your site or your rates will not rise much, if at all. Meanwhile you will be distracting from your own site advertising efforts. Instead of getting order of magnitude jumps from placements bought for a large number of impressions on your site, you will potentially get incremental increases from advertisers who pay to just beat out your existing rates on AdSense. Any publisher worth advertising on really is better off selling their own advertising or else they will be letting the advertisers set the rates and minimizing their revenue, not maximizing it.
Brad Waller has been involved in online marketing and advertising since 1994. He is responsible for developing one of the first affiliate programs on the Web, co-branded and syndicated content, XML data feeds, Advertising management solutions, and more. Brad is a frequent presenter at Internet related conferences and workshops.
[ View All Entries By Brad ]
