A Metric Morning for Digital Content Marketers
December 30, 2010
Hard data about the success or failure of online initiatives is tough to locate. I routinely delete news releases from privately-held companies that assert “Record revenues” or “profits double in the last quarter.” If the news is so good, why not provide some facts and figures?
That won’t happen because the numbers are just not that impressive. So data are expressed in art history major metrics. Interesting to some but search baloney to me.
This morning (December 30, 2010) I spotted some allegedly hard numbers. Now I don’t believe that these data are rock solid. Figure plus or minus 25 percent on a good day. Nevertheless, I find the attempt at quantification encouraging.
First, item: “Some iPad Magazines Seeing Steep Sales Declines.” No big surprise to soap and shampoo marketers. “New” and “improved” compete with weird discounts to lure grocery shoppers in Harrod’s Creek. The write up makes clear that some online publications for the trendy iPad gizmo are declining. The juicy part of the write up are the alleged data. Here’s one example:
According to WWD.com, a fashion-oriented news site, reported figures for sales the iPad edition of Wired fell from a stunning 100,000 copies of its debut issue in June to just 22,000 and 23,000 copies in October and November. Other publications reporting numbers to the Audit Bureau of Circulation saw less-dramatic drops, but drops all the same:Vanity Fair held steady at 10,500 iPad editions in August, September, and October then dropped to 8,700 copies in November.Glamour moved 4,300 copies on the iPad in September, but fell steadily to 2,775 in November, and has seen sales drop from a steady 13,000 to 11,000 in November.
My take? Making money online is just as tough with the iPad as it is with more traditional services. What’s easier is that non technology people can get excited about a product or service that is colorful, easy to use, and on the nifty new gadgets. Will these products or services repay their development costs and generate the type of revenue from the good old days of ink on paper publishing? A few will. Most will tank because software is different from making content. Read the original write up for more data.
Second item: “How Much Did Those AOL CDs Cost? A Lot.” The nugget in this post was this metric:
in the early 1990s our target was to spend 10% of lifetime revenue to get a new subscriber. At that time I believe the average subscriber life was about 25 months and revenue was about $350 so we spent about $35 to acquire subscribers. As we were able to lower the cost of disks/trial/etc we were able to ramp up marketing. (Plus, we knew Microsoft was coming and it was never going to be easier or cheaper to get market share.) When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range. …”
For search vendors, calculating revenue per deal is a dark art. In my experience, AOL style marketing spends are the exception, not the rule. And AOL style metrics? Better to hunt for gold nuggets in Harrod’s Creek.
Third item: “Facebook dominates Hitwise list of Top Searches.” The good part is not the top ranking of “Facebook” as a term. Nope. The tasty morsel is the list for 2010 that does not include Google. In 2009, the Google hit number 6. These fuzzy data drop the GOOG out of the Top 10. Good news. YouTube.com pegged number 3 in 2010 searches behind the Facebook log in and Facebook key word. What’s ahead for Google in this list for 2011? Probably more Facebook clicks. Worth watching even if the Hitwise data give me a headache.
Implications for search marketers? iPad apps may disappoint. Spending for marketing is a big deal. The Google’s pulse jet may be sputtering which might open wider the Facebook Web search opportunity.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2010
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Arnold January 2011 For-Fee Columns
December 30, 2010
My for-fee columns due on January 1, 2011, are now written. I had to accelerate the pace this month because I have been on the road, enjoying the snow in France and the UK. I will be heading for warmer climes at the end of the month. Keep in mind that the for-fee work is more serious and fact-rich than the content in my Beyond Search Web log. Due to the agreements I sign for these for-fee writings.
Here’s the run down for my for fee August 2010 columns. These will appear over the next four to 12 weeks. Each for-fee publication has a different editorial cycle.
- Enterprise Technology Management. “Google Enterprise Apps: Forcing Competitors to React”. I am now doing a monthly column for the print and online editions of ETM, which is a publication aimed at global information technology managers. I kick off 2011 by looking at what I think is the real reason Google is pushing its applications for the enterprise so aggressively.
- Information Today, “Search Interfaces: What Will Work in 2011?” The big news in enterprise search is the user experience. I take a look at a surprising change in how one will “find” information in 2011. You may not have to search at all!
- Information World Review (Bizmedia), “SAP: After Admission of Guilt, What’s Next?” SAP admitted guilt in its dust up with Oracle. So, I consider the question, “What’s next for SAP?”
- KMWorld, “EasyAsk: Cut Loose with Semantics and NLP in 2011?” EasyAsk is now a stand-alone company again. With potent natural language processing capability, what new functionality will NLP provide you? I try to answer this question for KMWorld.
- Smart Business Network, “Is 2011 the Year for You to Create a Social Media Policy?” With Facebook becoming a must-have marketing vehicle, should large and small businesses alike whip up a social media rule book? The idea sounds good, but is it necessary.
The full text of these articles is available directly from their respective publishers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2010
Freebie but I get paid to write these for fee thingies.
Adeptol Document Viewer Selected by Openfind
December 25, 2010
Openfind, a leader in business mail messaging products recently announced the integration of the Adeptol Document Viewer technology into their current messaging product line. According to the PR-inside article “Openfind Embeds Adeptol Document Viewer In Enterprise Messaging Products” users will be able to view their documents directly within their Openfind email without any additional software. Openfind’s CEO stated:
“Adeptol’s document viewer offers greater customer value and ability to create new business opportunities while delivering quick document viewing, built-in Digital Rights Management, security and scalability to applications.”
For many people this may come as a surprise but Adeptol is actually one of the most advanced and flexible document viewers on the market today. Adeptol’s document viewing technology can easily be integrated into a variety of WebPages, application and system processes. It works with over 300 different document types and is fully customizable. With options such as these, document viewers such as Adeptol and another notable market player Documill speak for themselves.
April Holmes, December 25, 2010
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Scientific Abbreviations Look Up
December 22, 2010
For some terms abbreviations and acronyms or the long form (LF) Federal Bureau of Investigation and the short form (SF) FBI are immediately recognized.
However, the exact understanding of some abbreviations is not always so cut and paste. According to the Science Base article “Searching For Scientific Abbreviations” there are no clear cut abbreviation rules for the science world. Researchers have sought to lay out specific rules for scientific abbreviations.
One new technique “known as LFXtractor, uses noun chunking together with a distance metric to detect SF- LF pairs regardless of the presence of parenthetical expressions.” However with no exact rules, the verdict is still out on how to use and understand scientific abbreviations.
Google helps when it comes to searching for the abbreviations but surprisingly even the search giant can’t do it all. The specific area or niche must be known because the same abbreviation can mean two different things depending on the subject area. Researchers may have to go back to the drawing board.
April Holmes, December 22, 2010
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Search Analyst Evaluation
December 21, 2010
“Analytics, Schmanalytics! How to Evaluate an Analyst” reminds us that analysts, unlike lawyers or accountants, are not professionally licensed and gives advice on how to know you are getting your money’s worth. The conclusion: “If you need analytics help, make the effort to assure yourself that the analyst is technically competent, understands your business and has the communications skills that you need.” Some things to look for are formal education or experience in the specific area to be analyzed, familiarity with businesses similar to yours, and a communication style that will suit the situation in which the presentation will be made, whether it be to your boss or in court. Then again, if a search consultant promises to get you sales leads or sales, you might want to ignore this advice all together.
Alice Wasielewski, December 21, 2010
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Enterprise Search: Baloney Six Ways, like Herring
December 21, 2010
When my team and I discussed my write up about the shift of some vendors from search to business intelligence, quite a bit of discussion ensued.
The idea that a struggling vendor of search—most often an outfit with older technology—“reinvents” itself as a purveyor of business intelligence systems—is common evoked some strong reactions.
One side of the argument was that an established set of methods for indexing unstructured content could be extended. The words used to describe this digital alchemy were Web services, connectors, widgets, and federated content. Now these are or were useful terms. But what happens is that the synthetic nature of English makes it easy to use familiar sounding words in a way to perform an end run around the casual listener’s mental filters. It is just not polite to ask a vendor to define a phrase like business intelligence. The way people react is to nod in a knowing manner and say “for sure” or “I’ve got it.”
Have you taken steps to see through the baloney passed off as enterprise search, business intelligence, and knowledge management?
The other side of the argument was that companies are no longer will to pay big money for key word retrieval. The information challenge requires a rethink of what information is available within and to an organization. Then a system developed to “unlock the nuggets” in that treasure trove is needed. This side of the argument points to the use of systems developed for certain government agencies. The idea is that a person wanting to know which supplier delivers the components with the fewest defects needs an entirely different type of system. I understand this side of the argument. I am not sure that I agree but I have heard this case so often, the USB with the MP3 of the business intelligence sound file just runs.
As we approach 2011, I think a different way to look at the information access options is needed. To that end, I have created a tabular representation of information access. I call the table and its content “The Baloney Scorecard, 2011.”
Webinar Finder from Peelon
December 20, 2010
We’ve recently stumbled upon a promising new resource at Peelon.com. To put it in their own words, Peelon.com “is a webinar directory and can be used as a webinar search engine” AND it is absolutely free of charge, not to mention free of advertising. Peelon vows to do just two things: help find a webinar, or help promote a webinar. After only having investigated the site for minutes, the straightforward, no frills functionality was easily harnessed.
The querying capability is there, allowing the user to sort all available records by date or time, industry and type of webinar. It wouldn’t be surprising to see these initial option categories expanding with increased traffic. But for now, if those options are not sufficient to pinpoint the e-lecture of choice, there is a search box to enter any relevant words or phrase. The results can be filtered by date, comments or even popularity.
Click on any webinar and one will find all the pertinent details spelled out: date, time, description etc. Curiosity led me to check out the “Add new webinar” link which prompted a page of empty webinar details waiting for user input. By the looks of it, the process to post a webinar can’t take longer than five minutes and even that includes one coffee break.
All in all, this site is free of clutter, hassle and just plain free. You won’t hear any complaining here!
Sarah Rogers, December 20, 2010
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Big Data, CAP, and NoSQL
December 19, 2010
We came across an interesting series of Web write ups about big data. You may know about the CAP theorum. The idea is that is “impossible for a distributed computer system to provide simultaneously” guarantees of “consistency (all nodes see the same data at the same time), availability (node failures do not prevent survivors from continuing to operate), [and] partition Tolerance (the system continues to operate despite arbitrary message loss). For more, read the Wikipedia entry here.
Nati Shalom’s Blog series Part I, II, and III on the CAP theorem postulates that if you are worried about CAP, then maybe you just need to re-define your needs. Shalom’s general thesis is as follows:
One of the core principals behind the CAP theorem is that you must choose two out of the three CAP properties. In many of the transactional systems giving away consistency is either impossible or yields a huge complexity in the design of those systems. In this series of posts, I’ve tried to suggest a different set of tradeoffs in which we could achieve scalability without compromising on consistency. I also argued that rather than choosing only two out of the three CAP properties we could choose various degrees of all three.
Some useful info to tuck away for future reference and consult before talking to a vendor who is pitching scale and the cloud when you need search or content processing.
Alice Wasielewski, December 19, 2010
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How Americans Spend Their Time
December 18, 2010
Slurp, slurp. ”
That is the sound of “real journalists” gobbling the latest Forrester confection. I read “Forrester: Americans Spend Equal time Online and Watching TV.” Great headline, but I am not sure I know what “time” means. Also, the pairing of online and watching TV is ambiguous.
I get the point. Web activity is now as popular as watching the boob tube. Great.
But what happens to the data if a person watches TV when online?
I think I know what the mid tier outfit is trying to accomplish: make sales for its consulting business. The “data” are the bait for the canny Forrester fishermen and fisherwomen.
Here’s the main idea. People are spending as much time watching TV as the people are fiddling with their computers, which I think means devices that are computers just hauled around or tucked in a pocket.
Several observations:
- What’s the sample size? What was the sampling method? Is the n=xxx such a big deal? Omit that from the stats homework in the lousy liberal college I attended as a dull normal and the prof awarded an automatic F. Guess that doesn’t apply to mid tier consulting outfits.
- Online usage is growing. Okay, great to know since devices have been proliferating for several years. It makes sense that if there are more devices, usage would go up.
- TV sucks. Well, the write up did not document that, but the TV crowd, like the newspaper and other publishers, are in a tizzy as people use their laptops and gizmos like the Apple TV to get the programming each user wants. With control, TV sucks less. If you want only shows you love, TV does not suck at all.
- The features used by those online mirror the same Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville “average” that his travels in America documented. The only difference is that the stuff that pleases is pretty well know; for example, email, buying stuff, and socializing.
What’s not in the write up may be in the “real” study available from Forrester? Facebook. My hunch is that the demographics of a statistically-valid sample rigorously surveyed would reveal some nuances not in the article and maybe in the “real” study. Here’s a list:
- In each demographic, which activity is growing more rapidly, which is decreasing more rapidly?
- In the demographic with the heaviest TV usage, what’s the group doing? Using the TV as background, a way to feel loved, or as a primary activity?
- In the demographic with the heaviest online usage, what amount of time is spent on Facebook versus any other social system.
- Across the sample, what is the lean back versus lean forward behavior? How many in each sector use one mode as a primary and the other mode as a secondary?
- Across demographics, who does the most buying? Under what conditions?
Our work in this field suggests some surprising behavioral shifts. The multitasking characteristic is covered in a Forrester blog post. Presumably that activity is documented rigorously in the “real” report.
But what about that sample? What confidence should I have in the oh-so-precise data? Without data about the mechanics of the study, not much I fear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2010
Freebie unlike the full reports from mid tier consulting firms
US Search Share, November 2010
December 17, 2010
Short honk: Fancy dancing with search share is underway. I read “Bing Search Share Edges Up in November.” In theory, the link will work for a few days. Key point: The Google tallies a 66.2 percent share. The combined Microsoft-Yahoo search share is pretty much the rest of the traffic. No margin of error and no details of the method.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2010
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