Disqus - Latest Comments for jonathanmendez

Re: Affiliate Marketing Undervalues The Click

jonathanmendez — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:46:35 -0000

I've just posted some hard data and thoughts I've yet to share publicly in reply
http://bit.ly/53s9eo

Re: Affiliate Marketing Undervalues The Click

jonathanmendez — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:35:46 -0000

all web publishers are getting way under compensated for the value they are providing advertisers and merchants. it is their audience and their content generating the interest & intent. i've made the case here http://bit.ly/Juoph that they are getting only 10-20% of the true media value. we need new systems that remove the performance greed and will make things more equitable. we should look to search advertising for how to do it. without change to our shortsighted approaches not only will the publishers will lose in the long run but the web's advertisers, merchants and audience will too.

Re: Anatomy of a bad search result

jonathanmendez — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:12:54 -0000

Or is it a problem with the query? What (and where) would be a good search for dishwasher reviews? It's easy to pick on results for high funnel terms but the better (more specific) the query the better the results set gets. "24" dishwasher reviews" gets a pretty nice SERP (+ a nice ad from Sears). Also going to Amazon and searching dishwashers by user rating seems to be a better option. I'm not calling "user error" - people search how they search - but often when we don't get helpful results we have our query skills to blame

Re: Why Social Beats Search

jonathanmendez — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:34:35 -0000

Most people's trusted source is a machine. Google is the #1 brand in the world. It continues to get better and more relevant b/c the amount of data it's crunching (cross-platform too) is astonishing. Google is also going to more personalized results sets and this will surely help deliver more relevant SERPs and make Spam less of an issue. Ultimately, content value is a user experience questions that data will answer. Social graphs do not have the data scale and feedback loops associated with them to help get the most relevant piece of content in front of someone the moment they want it or need it.

Re: Open Letter to Ms. Internet

jonathanmendez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:45:52 -0000

Love it DH! But you know that we can't fight against the will of the people and just like you don't mess with Mother Nature we may not want to mess with Ms. Internet. Clearly as an industry we are not advancing in our use of marketing technology at the pace our digital audience is becoming more advanced in their use of the web...and this delta is growing.

Communication technology has always made consumers savvier, more educated & amplified their diversity. Communication has never been an ad supported model, it's a services play. Because the web is a user controlled medium it is at its core a services too (and why it was founded by TBL). Whose to say advertising will work at all? There's much more evidence against it than for it (including the success of Google AdWords that I would argue is really services, not advertising).

So maybe instead of writing that $100M check to create demand for your client Ms. Internet is not going to let you off so easy? Maybe on the web you need to spend that money building something that fulfills the needs of the market...and thus her needs as well?

Re: Creating Interest vs Providing Solutions

jonathanmendez — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:55:14 -0000

Dan,

Great piece! In the past I've echoed much of what you've written here especially about consumer content needing to learn from B2B http://bit.ly/5kPMTx

Glad I found your blog. Looking forward to more.

Jonathan

Re: AdTech Expo Hall – Big Business, Big Spending, Little Innovation

jonathanmendez — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:01:35 -0000

Thanks for the mention Scott and great bumping into you there!

Indeed I think you sum it up when you say that it has become a more a trade show and less a conference. I would say that might have even been a larger dichotomy in that regard at ad:tech SF (which in a strange way doesn't feel that long ago).

For me ad:tech best represents the dark underbelly of the web marketing. But maybe what we've learned this week from the Zynga and Facebook flap is that the dark underbelly may be the only belly where there is fat.

Re: What if online business model innovation is slowing down?

jonathanmendez — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:07:41 -0000

IMO real innovation is about creating digital channels. Email, Affiliate, Display, Search, Mobile, Social. Every advertiser wants new channels. Some channels have built native models and others have borrowed. Of course the native models kick ass and the borrowed models are weak in comparison. I hope that Twitter can take their $50M and build a native model different from anything we've seen.

There's another huge issue here and that's the digital acumen of people holding the bulk of the media dollars. In short they haven't a digital clue and the kind of advertising they do does not lend itself well to a user controlled medium. I'm not sure that gap will be bridged without radical innovation on both ends. A tall order.

Re: Online advertising is all about purchasing intent

jonathanmendez — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:11:31 -0000

you are correct and the comparison does make your point (and of course I agree 100% with the premise here) but I think it's important to note that disambiguating intent gets much more complex - even with the query "cameras" it's likely the smallest intent segment are people that are ready to purchase. For advertisers there is also keyword match types that must be factored.

here's some previous elaboration specifically about targeting recovery v discovery http://bit.ly/XOpxM

Re: Online advertising is all about purchasing intent

jonathanmendez — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:24:30 -0000

important to keep in mind that it's impossible disambiguate intent from most keyword queries. i would say the reason search works is because google is able to blend the SERP with both discovery and recovery (intent) content in a way that delivers user defined relevance - making everyone happy all the time. really it's only after the click that you can truly understand purchasing intent (and thus the failing of most online advertising is after the click).

Re: How to keep visual design consistent while A/B testing like crazy

jonathanmendez — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:06:44 -0000

great topic andrew. thought i'd chime in based on some A/B testing experience.

you can use radical differentiation as an A/B starting point to get the "central design vision" but once you have that vision tested and validated then move to a more iterative elemental approach. this is best served by a wireframe to scale with defined element areas. it doesn't mean elements need to be there nor should it define what or how many elements are present but it lays a visual pixel foundation that can be built upon and tested against. once that is accomplished you can then roadmap out the testing ideas and form a strategy in advance than can be iterated against.

your amazon example brings up an important distinction between the two modes of optimization - presentation of content and delivery of content. having already determined the optimal layout amazon is now testing content delivery and your point is spot on that this needs to come first in the testing cycle because visual cues such as layout are a much stronger factor of influence on performance that the content itself.

i've done a bunch of flow testing and offermatica had (and omniture t&t has) a "steps" progression defined for most every test. usually this is rich in actionable data and follow-on test ideas. for a brief time we had a "hosted flow" offering where we would architect and a/b test multiple flows. we had some amazing results for blockbuster video doing this. it remains a sweet opportunity but there are huge technical hurdles to overcome and it only makes cost sense with high volume/value transactions. still, some vc should fund this pronto.

Re: The NY Startup Scene

jonathanmendez — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:19:27 -0000

NYC is (and will continue to be) the epicenter of advertising & publishing. As these mediums experience sea change it is inevitable that homegrown start-ups will be the ones that help revive the old and create the new.

Re: What We Can Learn From Mess

jonathanmendez — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:57:28 -0000

Thank god Craigslist made it through the 2.0 era without adding a social network on top of it as many would have suggested. What always strikes me about Craigslist is their email proxy - such a simple idea yet who else has leveraged this as well? Never underestimate the value of the underlined text link.

Re: To my first 10,000 blog subscribers: Thank you!

jonathanmendez — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:30:34 -0000

Congrats AC! We started blogging about the same time. I'm not sure people really understand how monumental getting 10k subs is. With a comparative lowly 3k I do. :) Keep it going brother, the web needs your POV for its survival.

Re: Agency Demand Platforms

jonathanmendez — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:50:57 -0000

Thanks Darren. This is a much needed POV.

I would only add that there are incredibly difficult run-time challenges as you begin to patch the platform ecosystem components together and create massively parallel distributed systems. The challenges increase exponentially if your platform is optimizing in realtime (under 250ms).

Re: The Difference Between Total Uses and Active Users

jonathanmendez — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:24:36 -0000

Not sure I agree. I think this sentiment is a shortcoming of analytics based approaches to site optimization. Analytics tell you only what people have done. Often times what's more important is knowing why people haven't done something. This can only be attained through direct observation & communication with your audience (& I don't mean surveys, rather talking and more importantly listening). Inside those answers are frequently unknown issues, missing features & untapped strategies for conversion.

Re: Referrer Processing for Content Sites

jonathanmendez — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:57:31 -0000

Yes, the more modernly managed sites are becoming dominant but they are also more distributed (mobile, third party) which presents a host of other challenges. The opportunity for source based LPO is growing and taken on a whole might even be bigger than keyword. What I do know is that targeting to source has a major positive impact on performance.

I don't disagree with your second "objection" either however my point is that it is not the technology holding back referrer processing for content but skillsets and mindsets.

I'll disagree with your last point. I think the depth of data, types of assets and amount of processing required - at least for larger content sites - full integration with their content (in order to reclassify it) is necessary if a fully dynamic experience is being created. Can you do pieces of it outside the domain (articles, ads)? Certainly you can and that's fine but it's not the level of self-learning, intelligence and relevance delivery that's possible, even now.

Re: Referrer Processing for Content Sites

jonathanmendez — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:10:48 -0000

Ah -- an issue dear to my heart. I'll answer the question. Never.

Dynamic LPO is still not very prevalent in e-commerce and where it is done it's usually some javascript calls that change a few default content boxes. When done effectively it's usually in a hosted environment away from the headaches of IT which means publishers are not moving on this until more dynamic internal CMS solutions are in place (Mark Logic comes to mind). This gets back to the "never" answer b/c I only see this working as a ground up pure CMS play. Semantic solutions offer a glimmer of hope but most are still years away from where they need to be and scalability is a giant issue.

Technical issues aside how many content sites understand how to really optimize for marketing/revenue generation? This is something they've left to third-parties far too long and is now biting them on the ass. Do they even care about the "next click?" 25% of NYT.com traffic exits to Google yet all NYT bitches and moans about is the 25% that arrives from Google.

I'm really disappointed you dropped the kw feature but I beat on the content LPO drum for years and never saw smoke so it's not surprising. Here's a presentation I gave three years ago at OMMA that fell on deaf ears http://bit.ly/27S9e3 . Most content people don't understand the value in delivering great experiences through relevance. At the end of the day that is not what their business is about. Their mindset is a broadcast and the technology that delivers on that promise will never mesh with a web where the real value is being created simultaneously for the audience, publisher and advertiser in realtime.

Re: Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media

jonathanmendez — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:07:20 -0000

thank mark. i just backed your numbers out to eCPM. In any case if you guys can do RPM in the $5-$15 dollar range your clearly on to something big and congrats. As you probably know large pubs like Yahoo have RPM in the pennies and more targeted vertical pubs (say forbes.com) are in the .25-.75 range. Maybe local (and by extension mobile) are the home run.

Re: Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media

jonathanmendez — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:52:42 -0000

Fred- The P&L model assumes $7 eCPM. That's an incredible assumption especially for the types of advertisers that would be relevant to this content. Also local ads are typically "intent" driven services stuff or classifieds, both that lend themselves to a different non impressions based models/opportunities/issues. Have you seen what Patch is doing in this space? Really like their sites.

Re: Directory of Blogs by Entrepreneurs

jonathanmendez — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:12:43 -0000

Hopeful you'll consider my blog for your directory
http://www.optimizeandprophesize.com/

Cheers,

Jonathan

Re: Media Optimization

jonathanmendez — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:58:42 -0000

Great post. As you know I'm 100% invested in this optimization idea. A few thoughts:

Interesting that you frame it around the performance of the sites and not the performance of the creative. Possibly some sites that are being optimized out of the mix could have outperformed if the creative was better targeted to their audience? I wonder about the complexity of systems that strive to do both. This should also be built so it can be optimized based on different metrics and even third party outcomes (your #4) though adding more complexity is tricky since ultimately it means more noise and/or less confidence in the data.

The scenario you describe looks much like search - we should look there for insight and I'm not sure that fits into the idea of having to spend less time on optimization. While there is a ton of value in automated bid management and placement there is a huge human factor still involved in campaign set-up & management. A fully dynamic & realtime market requires a lot of hands on deck to monitor results make adjustments and test, test, test. All this technology is just helping us aim better. In terms FTE more dials might just mean you might need more peeps!

Another somewhat analogous existing space to look is onsite content targeting. There has been a lot of work and investment is collaborative filtering and other algo approaches and very little yield in the way of breakthrough performance results. I'm not sure what this says but there is much that can be gleaned from those involved in that space that could be applied here as far as audience clustering and dynamic, realtime results -- especially in the areas of temporal targeting that should have a huge place in media optimization (probably second only to geo).

My overall thought is that there must be systems in place that are woven into the publishers performance goals and objectives. This can't be stand-alone buy side. Search works because Google can serve ads that are bid at a lower CPC but get a higher CTR. The resulting impact provides mutual benefits for the publisher, the advertiser and most of all, the visitor. Without new systems that can create and optimize this shared value I'm afraid no value will be created at all.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

jonathanmendez — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:10:09 -0000

have to disagree. dashboards don't help marketers. if they did online conversion rates would have increased over the past decade instead of being stagnant and omniture would be the most important company on the web instead of google. we're a few years into critical mass for social and i don't see why dashboards will be any different. we don't need meter readers, we need transformers.

Re: Default Behavior and the Internet Operating System

jonathanmendez — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:22:17 -0000

great point re: google and their "monetization stream." true from the very beginning of amazon (affiliates) and craigslist (marketplace) too.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

jonathanmendez — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:38:17 -0000

in the spirit of giving it would be cool if you, FM & Fedex could share some buy side and sell side performance data on this. ;)