Showing posts with label Internet Advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Advertising. Show all posts

July 3, 2012

I'll Take The Stairs

Woke up this morning to the elevator being out of service--again (and this was the sign that was up)!

Thank G-d our automobiles and airplanes aren't as unreliable (generally).

Anyway, I didn't mind walking a little more, and I got a chuckle out of this sign.

Of course, less funny this morning was news of Microsoft's $6.2 billion! dollar writedown on their Internet division.

For a long time, Microsoft has been waiting for the elevator to pick them up and take them to virtual heaven, but instead everyday they try to buy (e.g. aQuantive for $6.3 billion all cash in 2007) their way there, and they end up in a place a lot hotter and nastier.

Microsoft can still make a comeback, but it's past time for them to unleash their creative juices again.

What type of name is Bing (bing-bong) for a search engine, anyway? ;-)

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November 19, 2007

Internet Advertising and Enterprise Architecture

Does anyone really pay attention to pop-up or banner ads on the internet?

Fortune Magazine, 26 November 2007 reports that “blinking banners across the top of the screen and the like—are irritants most users train themselves to ignore.”

Yet, money has been mass-exiting print and TV advertising and pouring into online advertising, which is now a $21.4 billion business and is expected to double within the next 4 years!

Search ads like those that appear on Google are some of the most effective (click through rates are over 5%) and account for 40% of online advertising. However, the other 60% of online ads have only 0.2% click through rates; that’s 1 out of every 5000, which is not very effective for sure.

Now Facebook, the social networking site, is trying something new. With your permission, every time you purchase something, this “news” is shared with all your friends (for example, with a feed from the sponsor). This leverages the long held belief that word of mouth advertising is the best endorsement for a vendor’s products or services——and “nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.”

However, aggressive ads on social networking sites could backfire and be perceived as “spamming your friends” or privacy could become a concern (especially, as the article states, purchasers hastily click though the checkout process and accidentally share private purchases with their world of online connections).

I don’t know about you, but I just about completely tune out online ads. Nor would I want to share my personal purchases with my online social network — way too materialistic and air-headed. In the Valley, I believe they say, “like, who cares.”

From a User-centric EA perspective, I find it difficult to understand the wasteful spending of advertising dollars, in its current form, to the 60% that involve pop-ups and banners online that are nothing but a nuisance to the very people that vendors are trying to reach and influence. This is use of technology that is not aligned to performance results and not effective to driving mission execution. This is technology for technology sake. Another technology bubble of sorts.


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