Disqus - Latest Comments for craigdanuloff

Re: Bob Dylan: ‘The Cutting Edge: Bootleg Series Vol. 12,’ 1965-1966,

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 10:56:03 -0000

That swipe at 'Shadows In The Night' is unnecessary and inaccurate. Some of us are looking forward to the 2nd edition and eventually the bootleg series of outtakes from that.

Re: Dave Mark: Why I’m not done with Apple Music

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 11:44:09 -0000

Warning to anyone with Live Bootleg Music - Apple Music Cloud Sync replaces all of your songs! I turned on Cloud Sync on my laptop, and had it already on for iPhone. Found that Live Bootleg Albums had not only covers but every live version of each song replaced by the original album version of the song with the same name. Awesome - who wants to listen to live music? Holy Sh*t!!!!

Luckily my main music library is on a PC that hasn't been infected by 12.2 and Cloud Sync, and will never be. Deleting user files en-masse without warning is a gigantic screw up that should have Tim Cook holding a press conference on the scale of Antenna-Gate.

Re: Apple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 11:40:26 -0000

It treats Live Bootlegs disastrously too! I turned on Cloud Sync on my laptop, and had it already on for iPhone. Found that Live Bootleg Albums had not only covers but every live version of each song replaced by the original album version of the song with the same name. Awesome - who wants to listen to live music? Holy Sh*t!!!!

Re: Our Digital Mobile Payments Influence Study

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 12:36:32 -0000

Sorry about that Amy, the link should now be working again. The full report is available at http://dj.appinions.com/mob...

Re: Appinions Publishes Questionable Report on Top Influencers in 3D Printing

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 07:41:55 -0000

Michael - Thanks for taking a look at our study. I wanted to respond to some of your comments and questions about what our report contains, and explain a little more about our methodology, which may better explain the players we identified and how and why they earned their scores.

One very important point is the way in which we define and measure 'influence.' Our definition takes what you might call a practical view, and measuring influence by indentifying all of the opinions expressed across news, blogs, and social media for a specific topic (based on a specific definition of that topic). Then, we use a proprietary algorithm to score the influencers that held or reacted to those opinions based on the kind of reaction, volume of reactions, and place where the reactions are taking place.

So all the people and organizations who ranked highly as influencers in our report were able to generate reactions to their opinions in the 4 months before our study. Any people or organizations that weren't out there writing, talking, releasing news, or getting interviewed - and more importantly generating reactions - were not demonstrating influence by our definition.

We'd be the first to acknowledge that there are other ways to define influence and potentially other ways to measure it. The kind of respect and 'gravitas' that people and organizations build up are not measured in our models, and thinking about a market in that way certainly could allow anyone to have very valid different ideas about who is 'influential'.

The interesting thing about our method is that it's objective (at least within the parameters of our algorithms) and so we find and rate/rank every opinion and reaction using the same criteria. It's virtually impossible for a person or company to generate significant activity in news, blogs, or on social within the bounds of any topic definition, and not get picked up and scored with pretty reliable accuracy.

To look at an example, you commented about the place of Amazon on our list ahead of industry players like Stratsys. What we measured that caused these result is that when such a well known retailer makes an announcement like they did, it is heavily reported and more importantly reacted to in news, blogs, and on social. We're measuring the size of the reaction across the communications landscape, and in this time period their reaction was bigger than anything driven by Stratasys or the other manufacturers.

You may not be surprised to hear that Amazon hasn't made any waves since that huge announcement, and if you look at the current scoring (http://dj.appinions.com/3d-... Stratasys is now way up and Amazon is way down.

I think all of the surprises in our results, as compared to your expectations, are based in the details of what we're measuring and how. We don't make value judgements about companies but rather simply report how they're causing impact across the media landscape. I hope this helps put our report in a more clear context.

If you have any more questions, we'd be happy to continue the discussion.

- Craig Danuloff, EVP, Appinions

Re: Rewind.me App Update Includes Coupon Rewards System

Craig Danuloff — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:18:00 -0000

Thanks for this write-up on Rewind.Me! As an update on the two concerns that had been expressed in App Store Reviews: the privacy features were re-enabled in version 1.2 (there was a bug that blocked them in V1.1. Also, version 1.3 offers huge speed improvements over earlier versions. We continue to improve the product and expand the range of available rewards. - Craig Danuloff, CEO Rewind.Me

Re: - Thisisgoingtobebig.com - When it was a game: Hoping Foursquare returns to its roots

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:38:49 -0000

Your idea is one that I played with a lot in early thinking about Rewind.Me - a game based on checking off places on published lists. My idea was to publish what I thought of as 'bingo cards' with places you had to visit - and whomever finished in the allotted time was entered in some contest for a prize. Along the way you could track your progress against friends and the world. I still agree it would be fun and engaging.

Re: Foursquare Adds Another Search Feature: Check-In History

Craig Danuloff — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:13:17 -0000

Foursquare users can get their complete history on their iPhone's - viewable by date, location, or category using Rewind.Me (in app store at http://clck.it/rewindme ) It also enables you to see the detailed history of friends who have chosen to share that data.

Re: Apple 27-inch Thunderbolt Display now available: FaceTime HD camera, 2.1 speaker system, and $999 price tag

Craig Danuloff — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:30:27 -0000

Any word on software KVM if you want two macs hooked to a Thurderbolt Display?

Re: Getting Quality Score Right From The Start

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:11:32 -0000

There are lots of people who work at Google, and they're not all equally well trained or knowledgeable...

There MAY be some bleed due to the keyword's history in the other account (although I don't believe any more than from its history with other advertisers) and there is some impact of the target URL domain history, but that's just one small component. So you have 5 or 10 fresh variables (from the new account) and 1 or 2 bleeding over. I've personally created new accounts and seen keywords that formerly couldn't raise above 4 move instantly to 7.

Re: Getting Quality Score Right From The Start

Craig Danuloff — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:30:03 -0000

We'll look at this in the next post - stay tuned. It's also deeply covered in the book, by the way....

Re: Getting Quality Score Right From The Start

Craig Danuloff — Thu, 19 May 2011 07:46:36 -0000

Yes. Addie Conner did some testing and seemed to prove that their normalization is not perfect. Google admitted as much. Hard to say how much, but it could be a good investment.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:10:50 -0000

I'm very sure/comfortable that I'm getting honest answers. There is endless complexity, and they have declined to answer a few things, but there are a number of issues - i really should count them - where to my knowledge things were cloudy but they have agreed to bring some sunshine. I have no doubt the book is imperfect, but I also know it moves the ball quite a ways down field, and the Google help was/is a big part of that. Anxious to hear what you think when you get to read it. - Craig

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:07:37 -0000

Jeremy - I see what you're saying. Actually, since eligibility is driven by quality score, the % of the time that you'll get the impression - from the broad match or the exact match - depends on how the keyword does against that query. It's likely that the exact match will do better, but not assured. If 'cheap dog food' get a good enough CTR for the 'dog food' keyword, the quality score would likely earn eligibility quite frequently.

The key is that we don't/can't know. Broadly I agree with your point that any good query should be 'promoted' into it's own keyword.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:04:09 -0000

Depends how you mean it, but I don't think so. Visible quality score is based on the total data set for a keyword (even in mutiple match types and/or geo targeted versions). I'm not exactly sure how they different KW-Ad pairs that exist across the different ad groups play in, but let's say it's a weighted average of that.

Actual quality scores (such as the ones used for Ad Rank and CPC, start with that same base of data, but are then tuned/modified based on the real-time query, geo, and other factors.

Is that helpful?

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:35:24 -0000

For better or worse, it's their game, their ball, their field. They make the rules. It can be frustrating - and I think you're right that transparency would go a long way. When i talk to them about these issues, they make sense and seem reasonable. But with no data or dialog it can be very frustrating.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:37:21 -0000

Good questions. There is a great range of data that Google may or may not have available when they calculate quality score - the account may be old or new, the keyword may be old or new, the ad copy may be old or new, etc. So I think of it as a 'best available data' system that hopes for the most detailed but relies on less specific if needed. So a new keyword may have never had a click in your account, but they do know how other advertisers have done with it, how you do as an account, how the display URL has done, and maybe how the ad copy has done - these plus other clues let them set an initial score even for a 'new' keyword.

What you call 'instant qs' is really first quality score for ad rank and then quality score for cpc. Neither has much to do visible quality score, they're fresh real-time calculations which use the whole stack of available data in whatever mix they have to or deem appropriate. I think any % this and % that interpretations are just ideals or guidelines because per the above they have to factor the quality of what they have in any given situation.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:52:06 -0000

Cool. Need to spend more time back in AdWords and not these fancy 3rd party platforms...

Given this, the benefit of splitting them out would be getting to see qualtity score - nor real way to infer that from CTR (although you would get a good idea by comparing to the visible of the current keyword, but that's a lot of work on an ongoing basis.) Thanks for the new info.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:09:55 -0000

I've wrestled a lot with the 'morality' and 'business issues' of what they disclose or don't. And I tackle the issue in the book head-on. I don't think that it's primarily a malicious effort (although they certainly make decisions that benefit themselves) but rather the fact that most of their users only want the simple explanation - a flood of details in the system and long complicated descriptions in the help file, would only confuse the vast majority. In fact their willingness to help on this project was prefaced by their saying they were happy to have a vehicle to put the 'hard core' info out to those who would want it. Of course they could have found a way beside this, but given that they haven't roadblocked very much info with me does suggest it isn't that info is hiding, it's that it hasn't had a forum. I do agree they owe advertisers better, but am glad this project can at least partially serve that function.

Thanks for the comment.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:05:15 -0000

Yes, good summary.

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:01:39 -0000

Ya, but you can't tell the CTR for queries because you don't know the impression count by query - all you have for queries is clicks but there is no way to tell 'out of a possible of X'. Only when you turn the query into a keyword do you get to know - right?

Re: Search Queries & Quality Score – The Truth (Amended)

Craig Danuloff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:06:11 -0000

Hey Brad - No only the CTR history from the 'Dog Food' queries (across all match type versions of the kewyord and any geo-targeted versions) are considered in the calculation of the visible quality score. The fact that the negative or positive influence of the other queries is not in the visible quality score, but is in the ones that drive your results, is the core of what I now understand to be true.

Re: Account Level Quality Score: What about it?

Craig Danuloff — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:25:11 -0000

Having just finished a huge amount of research on Quality Score, including having members of the Ads Quality Team at Google answer questions and review my material, I'd suggest that a better way to talk about this is in reference to what they list as the 'historical CTR performance of the account'.

In other words I don't think there is a 'Account Level Quality Score' but the overall performance of the account - in terms of both CTR and geographic performance, does have an influence on every keyword in the account.

There's a good deal we (still) don't know about how account level CTR is applied in the various quality score calculations (there certainly are multiple quality scores) - and for example they might react to a sudden drop in overall account CTR average caused by some testing of keywords being done in one campaign. There is a long list of best practices to keep your account in top shape, and having multiple managers in at the same time would really require some coordination and agreement to principles and rules of operation.

Anyway, like everything Quality Score, there's more to it than meets the eye, and most of that can't be seen! I'll avoid a commercial link here, but I'm just finishing a book where I hope to sort a lot of this out and clarify some of the confusion. It is amazing how big this one little topic really is...

Re: UX Evolutions: News on iPad

Craig Danuloff — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:37:24 -0000

I do like Flipboard for blogs and sources I control, but also find both News360 (which has a killer UI) and Zite (which customizes based on preferences over time) very compelling for discovering other news sources and for their fluid interfaces.

Re: The Haves and Have-Nots: The True Story of a Reader Suddenly De-Invited from TED

Craig Danuloff — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:06:34 -0000

These pointless editorials sure detract from TechCrunch. Could you guys create WhineCrunch and put them all over there?

You ostensibly want TED to: "admit to being about making the wealthy, famous and powerful feel comfortable–like other high level affairs like Sun Valley or the World Economic Forum". So it's the lack of a disclaimer or tagline that is - what - eating away at your soul? And do you have a link to the 'elite only' disclaimer that so satisfies you about these other events?

The merits of this case and issues are clearly not universal, despite your weak effort to create a class-action uprising. I attended a few TEDs many years ago, enjoy the online materials, and wish you contributed a small fraction of what they do to the world. It seems like you need a good disclaimer yourself.