Media Week

My brother said “I love the internet” to me at the weekend. He’s a civil servant, married with three kids, house by the sea and no business experience or interest in marketing whatsoever....

“I love surfing the internet. I love looking around, reading the news, checking up on things. I like getting bargains too. Searching for stuff, reading reviews and finding the best price. With three kids and a mortgage I have to go for the cheapest.”

A pretty normal guy with an average attention span, he just needs to find whatever he’s looking for, and this means getting in and out as quickly as possible. He doesn’t care about advertising, cares little for privacy or how computers or the internet works. For him it’s a wormhole, a window through which he can get Portsmouth football results, research campsites in the South of France and save money on tat so he can buy even more tat!

Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert, has been talking about his annual report showing we’re getting better at closing the gap between what internet users are trying to do, and what they actually succeed in doing on the web.

A report by the BBC on the research, cites users are getting more “ruthless and selfish” when they go online. 75% of tasks are successfully executed these days, compared with just 60% way back in 1999.

Because the internet’s been around for a while, users are more savvy, they know what they want or where they want to go. That’s why we all agree that search is becoming so navigational. We all have our favourite sites, but according to Nielsen, we want them to get straight to the point. Apparently we have little patience for widgets and engagement exercises.

This goes against the grain of the last couple of years, where site owners and marketers have been told it’s all about time on page, getting social and trying to impart messages whilst holding attention for the maximum amount of time.

When he says that businesses “still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them," I guess that’s because so many online marketers are still measuring success in terms of “hits” and “uniques”?

You can have a thousand visitors a day, but if all they do is bounce off your home page it doesn’t matter how many page views you’re reporting, you’re not engaging them properly for what they’re trying to do.

I remember when I was at 24/7 Search some years ago. A colleague sat opposite me couldn’t understand why my client had sold three times the amount of flowers, running up to Mother’s Day, as his. They were both blue-chip, household, high-street names, yet the advertiser whose search campaigns I was managing had by far the higher conversion rate. On analysis, his client sent customers through 3 more pages/steps in the purchase process and would recommend all sorts of weird and random products along the way. This simply served to annoy and alienate their customers, who just wanted to buy some flowers quickly for their mums, and get on with their work.

The fact that search fails a lot of users is nothing new, “when you watch people search we often find that people fail and do not get the results they were looking for.” Search engines know they provide links and not necessarily answers to queries, which are essentially the user asking a question. Technology is getting better at assessing user intent, but we’re some way off.

The report goes a long way to prove that we’ve got better at addressing users needs, but that it depends on what they’re trying to do. Engagement is still a good measure to assess effectiveness, as many sites have “push” or “read me” content which needs to be optimised.

But if my brother wants to buy something like a bathroom tap or a chopping board, there’s a balance to be struck between providing him with all he needs to make an informed decision, and making him sit through a video or suggesting he play some crazy game.

The web has had a huge effect on how we market products and services to the masses. If we put one foot wrong, users will vote with theirs and walk the other way. At least now we have the power to measure where they came from, what they did and where they went, so we can make better decisions about how we tackle them next time.

Hopefully then, they’ll be a little less ruthless!

I'm 36! I don't have a Faceparty account but if I did I would be about to be frog marched off their premises for being too old...

Marketing Week reports that government legislation has forced them into a corner because they can't check addresses against Gordon's sex offender list.

But where do they get the 36 year threshold from? Seems a bit arbitrary?

And who does their PR?

"We understand that only a minority of older users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which."

Wossthatsupposedtomean?

Do you think they'd let me sign up if I said I always get asked for ID in the US?

Seriously though, where does this leave Facebook, Bebo and the rest? I'm sure I've not added my address to either of those....

At a reported £320k for a 30 second slot at half-time during last night’s Champion’s League Final, ITV decided to promote An Audience With Neil Diamond. Now I’m a huge fan of The Jazz Singer. I was brought up on his music, have seen him in concert twice and am going again in June to watch him pour more love over those rocks.....

But wasn’t that a strange decision? Were they figuring on driving the middle-aged demographic to the show and making more money? Is that how it works? Or did they just not sell the slot? Help! I’m an online guy!

While Chelsea fans wept at the result, The BBC 1 Apprentices were tasked to come up with a new brand and TV commercial for a box of anti-bacterial tissues that John Terry could have done with!

Pitching their campaign to “ad men” from Ogilvy, Raef’s team tried an understated approach which back-fired. Picking Sian Lloyd as a “wholesome...motherly” figure was a mistake and a decision trashed by Sian herself when she suggested the boys should have Googled her.

I did.......and she was right!

I thought “I Love My Tissues” was an OK name, but I’m not sure it needs to be spelled out that I’m about to embark on a relationship with a brand.

Sugar asked Raef what he thought of the other team’s “Attishu” campaign which was pretty in your face........or nose in this case!

“It lacked any kind of subtlety – you don’t have to go to extreme measures and treat your audience like idiots”

Really?

In the taxi home having been fired, he came out fighting, “It was vulgar and incredibly patronising but if that’s what advertising is about these days then god help us!”

Mate have you ever heard of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” or seen any Ronseal ads?

Sometimes an ad has to say exactly what it does on the tin!

I had a call last week from an old colleague from BTLooksmart. Five years ago, after we’d all been made redundant, he got a touch of the “Monty Pythons” and decided to leave the online industry for something completely different....

Half a decade on, he was courting the idea of re-entering the digital job market and wanted to know how much it had changed.

My immediate thoughts on this were that it was totally different world. Overture had been bought by Yahoo! Google was getting into the ad serving game having bought DoubleClick. And a lesser-known company in this arena – Microsoft - had turned up and bought up a dozen technology companies and was becoming a serious player in the space.

If you add the huge dimension of social networking and user-generated content to the fray, the landscape has evolved through consolidation, with a few new kids on the block vying for some architectural focus across the emerging digital skyline.

Although things had changed from a brand and technology aspect, the principles that we worked towards back then haven’t. 

Publishers seek to use technology to generate relevant advertising that monetises their pages in a non-intrusive and engaging way whilst yielding as high an income as possible. Search engines seek to improve algorithms that produce relevant search results that enable advertisers to connect with consumers in a direct and cost-effective fashion. And advertisers are still growing their engagement with the channel through increasing numbers and spend, proving that the accountable nature of the digital medium is proving a more and more popular, and successful way promoting products and services.

The principles are the same, it’s just the data and insight we now have has grown more actionable, and the technology has improved many-fold.

I think he was worried that leaving his digital desert island would be fraught with massive change and having to learn a whole new vocabulary.

He needn’t stress though, but I do wonder where we’ll be in another 5 years!

In March I wrote about the BBC's new look news site...

What I find odd from a usability point of view, is that sport doesn't feature on the left-hand navigation rail. It is further down under "related BBC sites."

I have the news site as my homepage and want to flick to the cricket quickly after reading news headlines.

Now they do have a small box for sport headlines on the right, but they need a more prominent link on the left too.

Watching the news this morning, the ticker on the screen mentioned something about the recent test at Lords. As I was online already I found there was no clear way to get to the sport homepage to discover more.

Should Sport not have it's own category link as Business, Entertainment & Technology do?

There are two "summits" going on this week in London that you should consider attending...

The eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit will be kicking off from 20-21st in Russell Square. If you enjoyed my posts from San Francisco then you'll know I've been totally absorbed by this way of looking at business metrics and web analytics.

The other conference is at the British Library and is all about International Search. Andy Atkins-Kruger leads the agenda which includes sessions on advertising in Asia, International content management & geolocalisation.

If you can get time off, do go along - you won't be disappointed!

The BBC has continued to impress with its embracing of new technologies by having the Test Match Special team Twittering from the boundary...

I'm in Seattle at the mo and am listening to the 1st Test commentary over the internet and am now following twitter updates here: https://twitter.com/bbctms

I think it's really cool that they're educating their readers as to all the different platforms and widgets they're using.

Cricket can be seen as a sport for the fuddyduddy traditionalists, but the BBC are doing a great job balancing the sports heritage with keeping pace with how the youth of our times want to keep in touch with events.

Now I'm fully hooked up with the score I'll continue to educate my American colleagues about cricket.

I can't believe they think it's boring........have you ever been to a baseball game?

YouTube/Google has been building an algo which forecast when a video is HOT and about to go viral.....

The press release says: "The algorithm looks at several factors, such as acceleration of views, favorites, and ratings activity, and then allows advertisers to target their ads specifically to these videos on YouTube."

The case study on the statement doesn't give much away but it's a great way of generating a spike in impressions for a campaign if branding is what you're after. You'd obviously have to pay more for the extra exposure which will make budgeting an interesting exercise.

They also say you can associate your "brand with the hottest content of the day, while reaching the most engaged users in our community."

Hottest content doesn't mean the most appropriate. Can anyone elaborate as I couldn't find any more info on the site....

Having had a long weekend in the Olympic National Park to recover and ponder what I learned at the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco, this idea of the online ecosystem is becoming more and more what the future looks like becoming...

Currently we have different search networks (including contextual) and different display networks. But if what was talked about last week is true (that we don’t know enough about what goes on on our websites even though we spend so much time and money getting people there) then surely it’s a matter of time before we’ll be able to combine analytics, or “business success measurement”, with paid advertising models in order to auto-optimise sites and networks.

Mark Simpson was bang on a couple of weeks ago with his letter to Media Week: Buying Market Share Is No Way to Up Conversion Rates – I’m not getting into the Google trademark thing, but what Mark said about sites investing in more sophisticated site optimisation resonated well after 3 days listening to folks talk about analytics and optimisation and KEEP saying they have real trouble getting any serious endorsement and visibility higher up in their companies.

Automation and a more wholesome approach (combining multiple-media from fewer platforms) to web-marketing is not that far off. Business owners could do worse than start trying to understand what has traditionally been seen as a back-room reporting mechanism for “hits” and get ahead of the game.

Bit OTT I grant you, but these analytics fanatics I’m listening to over here in SFO are pretty passionate about what they do.....

The premise behind segmentation with web analytics is around grouping customers based on their behaviour. Once you understand why they behave the way they do you can do something about it.

So if a whole bunch of people are coming from a certain site and bouncing (not going further into your site or buying anything) you can do some analysis, change your strategy for them and then watch their behaviour change over time.

Alternatively ring-fence users who are converting well. They may come from a particular keyword in organic search, so it might be an idea to test variations of that keyword to see how you rank organically. If you don’t rank well, then try those words through PPC and get more sales.

Knowing who your customers are and how they behave is crucial to online success. Your customers are not sheep, they don’t all follow the route through your site you think they should. They don't always come through your homepage either.

By segmenting those behaviours, and understanding why they do what they do, you have the information you need to take action.

eBay presented today at eMetrics on Improving Customer Experience – Some great content if a little poorly delivered...

In 1996 they had 41k users. Today their marketplace has grown to 276m sellers and buys worldwide. They have over one billion photos on their site, generate $2039 of sales per second and process 2 petabytes of data every day.

The premise behind the presentation was how they optimised the site for users through research. eBay is about people so they need to know who they are and what they need to do to find good value in the site afterall, 1.3m people make their living on the site. (Wonder how many of them pay ta!?)

The need to understand what motivates their users, what are their pain points and what are their challenges.

Their research/marketing teams do a lot of segmentation of users in order to drill down into the facts of what is going on on the site. They go much deeper than just buyers and sellers. They look at utility, usability, desirability and lastly the brand experience. They carry out the research in a number of different ways through lab testing, field visits, surveys and eye tracking.

They call it participatory design.

With lab testing, they watch people with different levels of experience. They’re very keen on watching what people do instead of what they SAY they do. Two very different things! The incredible thing is that they actually sketch whatever feature they’re looking at like a story board. Yes they actually draw it on a piece of paper before they do anything else!

The field visit idea was interesting too. They send staff into the homes of their users to watch them in their time and their environment. Talk about thorough! They take photos too. One of them was of a women holding a book standing on some bathroom scales.

For them it’s very much an end to end process of how, what and why. How does eBay fit into their lives? What can eBay do to address users issues?

They teamed up these small samples of research with online analytics in order to validate their assumptions and drive usability. One example of tabbing on the page used three different experiences which you could hardly spot the difference but it was impressive that they went to such lengths to get it just right.

Taking a really thorough approach really does work when it comes to design, usability and ultimately profitability. Too many sites are still being built because they look pretty or have whizz-bang features which have never been tried or tested. Striking a balance between innovation and ease of use is the holy grail.

Research and analytics can help you get there.

Rufus Evison, the new digital guy at dunnhumby spoke today at the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco on Deep Data Diving – Bringing Online & Offline Inline.

In the 45 minute slot he outlined a digital approach to analytics but with some offline examples, really making the audience think about how offline data can be used in the same way as we use it online.

Dunnhumby’s work with Tesco and the ClubCard is obviously a huge part of this. 13m people in the UK are on their list and if there are 26m households in the country, Tesco have an enormous amount of data to slice and dice.

Typically in the US coupon redemption is less than 1% but Tesco manages to convert 30-50% of coupons because they are so well targeted.

At a high level Rufus saw the analytics journey to financial nirvana as being a case of the flow between data, information and insight. The raw data, once we know the context, provides us with information and some robust analysis of the information with good controls, should in turn provide us with actionable insight.

The holy grail is seen as the achievement of three things:

• Linking ad exposure to customer purchase behaviour
• Understanding the effects of ALL advertising
• Know what people are planning to buy

Once cracked, those achievements should be measured in financial return. In fact he went so far as to say that “E-Metrics is dead, it should be called business metrics!”

After all why are we doing all this analysis? To increase sales for the most part...

But we have to be careful which data we take notice of. Not all online campaign research should necessarily result in the thumbs up for digital. He gave a great example of how a $7m TV campaign had created a 13% uplift in sales because it had crossed over to YouTube and gained a bit of viral love. A relatively quiet press campaign for the same product earlier in the year, had cost just $1.7m but only seen a 9% uplift in sales.

When they digged deeper into the data, the TV/online campaign uplift was with existing customers, while the press campaign had generated new buyers, resulting in a much more valuable life-time value number.

Just goes to show that digital is only part of the media mix. It’s proving of great value but should be seen in context. It’s the data analysis that proves its value positively or negatively for any given campaign.

One privacy question sprang to mind so I asked it:

“Are the 13m ClubCard holders in the UK aware that Tesco rifles through their shopping baskets every week, knows an awful lot about them and targets the coupons in order to get them to come back and spend more?”

Rufus was quick to answer that, “Pretty much all of Tesco’s customers know or understand why they are getting sent relevant coupons?”

Really?

Anyway bit of trivia: When people start buying nappies, Tesco sees an uplift in sales of cans of beer too!

Any ideas why?

This'll be the second bank holiday this year I've missed through my dedication to the digital marketing industry....

One of the things that baffles me about Microsoft is the lack of holiday my US counterparts get. Ten or so days a year as official "vacation" is their lot, although they do get 8 more days for things like Thanksgiving and celebrating Columbus (the detective?)!

Anyway I'm out in San Francisco for the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. It's all about Web Analytics and such like and should be interesting.

I'll let you know what I learn...

Got an email from those nice folks at Google today about how to protect yourself from "phishing" attacks by the less fragrant users of internet technology...

In short:

"-  Don't reply to or click on links in emails that ask for personal, financial, or account information.

-  Check the message headers. The From: address and the Return-path should reference the same source.

-  Instead of clicking the links in emails, go to the websites directly by typing the web address into your browser, cut and paste or use bookmarks.

-  If on a secure page, look for "https" at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser

-  Keep your computer's antivirus, spyware, browser, and security patches up to date and regularly run system scans.

-  Review your accounts regularly and check for unauthorised activity.

-  Use a browser that has a phishing filter (Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera)"

In these days of increasing sophistication even those in the web industry can't afford to be complacent. I've now been "done" several times on all credit cards and bank account - How? I don't know....but it's getting more prevalent.

The rest of the jolly helpful post is here!