June 2006 Entries

Had a chance to catch one day of Jakob Nielsen's Usability Week in San Francisco. Yesterday, I sat in on the eyetracking session and saw the results of the Nielsen Norman's just completed study (numbers are still being crunched as we speak).

It was heartening to see that many of their findings mirrored our own, including F shaped scanning patterns, quick scans of pages and aversion of ads and large graphic blocks. It was in this last category that the asinine comments part comes (that's why you're really reading this, isn't it?).

Jakob was demonstrating interaction with the home page of jcpenney.com. (The picture that I'll be talking about has changed, but the basic page structure is the same). The heat map image showed clearly that the big block graphic, in this case a picture of a bed with a colorful spread, with some promotional text inset in the upper left and the lower right, received virtually no scanning. All the scanning was in the top navigation bar. The large block graphic "fenced in" the scan area, cutting users off from other promotional information that lay below the graphic. We saw the same thing occur with the Bombay Company site in a eyetracking study we did for MarketingSherpa (see below).

Some hot shot designer in the room decided to take exception with the proof in from of him, and called out some of the examples that Jakob has shown of large graphics that had received no scanning. He used words like apex composition and other regurgitated terms from a graphic design university text book to show that all the sites adhered to basic design principles and that the theoretical composition of the JCPenney picture was in fact spot on, drawing the eye from one promotional headline to the next. Jakob patiently pointed out the obvious, that the theory breaks down, because as the heat map clearly showed, no eyes were even being attracted, let alone drawn to any headlines. We settled back in our chairs, silently cheering the adroit handling of the blow hard in the back. Much to our amazement, the guy wouldn't give up, continually going back to the point that the theory is right and works, despite evidence on a screen roughly 40 by 30 feet to the contrary. The mic finally had to be taken away from him.

A couple points here. Theories are theories, not fact. Heat maps are facts, at least for the sample of people in the study. And while you may argue that a sample of a couple hundred (the n of the NN/g study) isn't representative, I would disagree. We've done enough to know that consistent behavior in eyetracking starts to emerge at about 10 people, then defines itself very clearly at 20 to 30 people. So designers, you just may have to forget everything you learned, because the way people interact with information is changing faster than new theories can be created. You have to keep an open mind.

Second of all, this guy was approaching this from a print paradigm, not an online one. His spouting of picture composition and eye flow comes from centuries of guessing about how we look at images. I remember talking to a university arts professor once who was really excited about eye tracking because we could finally find out if all the "crap that's been spouted about how we look at paintings is even true or not". I'm not saying century old principles are wrong, but you have to consider them in the appropriate context. Take our J.C. Penney picture. Mr. Design Dictionary is correct. The flow of the bed spread and the contours of the bed should hypothetically draw the eye from one headline to the other, if the eye entered the picture in the first place. In the print advertising world, photos act as an attractor. They grab the person who is reading adjacent, usually non relevant content, and pull them over to the ad. They are the entry point. If they do their job efficiently, you have altered the intent of the prospect. They have switched from reading a story to looking at your ad. The job of the photo is to channel this new intent to the right place.

With a website, you have the full intent of the user. That's why they came to your site. A large block graphic gets in the way of that intent, and will be thin sliced out of the way. Worse, it could block the user from seeing the content on the site that they're there to see. All the composition theory in the world won't prevent that. Jakob's point wasn't that the picture was composed incorrectly; it was that the picture was a waste of valuable home page real estate.

Probably the most valuable thing I took from yesterday was a comment Jakob made as an aside. Branding online comes from the experience, not the exposure. This was in response to another comment somebody made about large graphics being present for branding purposes, and the seeming contradiction between the need for branding and best practices for usability. Online, a successful brand engagement and a successful user experience are the same thing. If you deliver efficiently on a user's intent and make their online experience a pleasure, you will build more brand equity than you could ever build with gratuitous flash files, streaming media and huge graphics. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but all too often online, the designers win at the user's expense.

 

 

I hate to admit it, but I may have completely missed the next big thing in search.

Yahoo Answers is getting some rave reviews. At first look, I thought Yahoo Answers was nothing more than an interesting experiment, but it seems to be taking off with both analysts and users!

Yahoo! Answers is the convergence of some fairly long toothed online concepts. It combines the community involvement of a wiki or forum with the searchability of an engine, and the organized hierarchy of a directory. None of these things are new, which is maybe why I didn’t think anything of it at first. But let’s face it, sometimes you don’t need to be new to take off virally on the net, you just have to put a new spin on old functionality, and it seems that Yahoo! just may have done it. We like real one-on-one interactions online. We like other people’s opinions. Hundreds of years of social interaction have hardwired that into us. And Yahoo capitalizes on it. Post a question, and get other users to answer it. Or search through the existing questions to see if yours has already been posted. It connects people with people in a most efficient way. And of course, it gives Yahoo! another opportunity to monetize traffic that is growing significantly.

There’s something simple but compelling about the virtual communities that immediately form around topics on something like Yahoo! Answers. The challenge with communities is that there needs to be critical mass, and the reassurance of a number of people having the same opinion. If you post an question and get one answer, you wonder about its reliability. If you get the same answer from 10 people (or, in the case of Answers, one answer that 10 people vote for) you have more faith in it. Yahoo! can bring critical mass and the safety of numbers (the wisdom of crowds) to its online community.

One thing that should be noted. Yahoo! Answers has taken off and announced the posting of their 10 millionth question in May. The service has blown by Google Answers, as shown by this chart courtesy of Hitwise and posted on Searchenginewatch (thanks Danny).

So..what did Yahoo! tap into, that Google didn’t? The interesting thing about this is that it speaks to the difference in culture between the two organizations. Yahoo created a community and enabled the wisdom of the masses. Google, typically, came out with an approach that said "we know best" and asked you to post your questions to be answered by Google researchers. One resonated with the public, and one didn’t.

There have been a few stories coming out lately about numbers and metrics. In our business, we tend to drown in the numbers. Just yesterday, I had a meeting with our team here to talk about the issue. The thing to realize is that not all of us are numbers people. For many of us, myself included, I’m more comfortable with stories than columns and columns of numbers. I love data, but not for the data itself, but rather for the story that’s hidden inside that data. I recently received a presentation from a very well known research company that was presented to a client. Inside the slide deck, there were tons of graphs and charts, all chock full of numbers. But after looking at almost 60 slides, I still couldn’t figure out the story. When we work with numbers day in and day out and get caught up in the micro stories within those numbers, we tend to forget to take a step back and get a look at the big picture. As Bill Wise from Did-It said in a recent column, often in search, it’s the bigger numbers that are more important.

Also, we have to realize that the same numbers can tell different stories to different people. As search marketers reporting to our clients, we have to first know what story each stakeholder wants to hear, and then interpret the numbers to see if that story is true or not. All too often we present reams and reams of numbers, without trying to find the story within them.

That’s my issue with most analytics programs. There’s no shortage of numbers, but there is a distinct lack of meaning. Most analytics programs needs someone skilled to analyze the numbers, distill out the meaning and help us understand it. I’ve talked to John Marshall at Clicktracks about this previously, who takes a refreshingly "big picture" view of analytics. In a recent e-mail summit, John suggested that perhaps marketers are a little too fixated on ROI, and should step back a little to gain a better perspective.

Like all industries, search marketer has a number of metrics that are unique to us. At the practitioner level, each number is important, but only as an indicator of a bigger whole. When you report on the number of links built, or keyword density on a page, or even average bid amounts for a keyword bucket and cost per acquisition, you tend to start focusing on those numbers as the ones being important. But it’s useful to step back and remember that ultimately, you’re going to be reporting on this campaign to someone who doesn’t care about links, or occurrences of keywords on a page, or the fluctuation in bid prices for your number one term. All they’re going to care about is how the campaign added (or detracted) from their bottom line. Ultimately, that’s the story you’re going to have to tell.

At Enquiro, we’re really working hard to keep focused on the story, and not lose sight of it in a maze of numbers. We call it "metrics that matter" Our analytics specialist, Manoj Jasra, has done some writing on the subject. Check out his blog.

The developers of Quintura, the semantic mapping engine that I took a look at last month, apparently took my comments to heart. I got an email from Yakov Sadchikov saying they launched a new service for the Russian market and an English Version should be coming soon. Yakov says, "we will keep on introducing new features to solve this issue of 'longer than a second and more than one click to refine search'". He also pointed me to a good review on Tucows. He says to keep tuned. I will!

Just last week I took a CNN analyst to task for not seeing the importance of MySpace. How quickly things come to pass on the online world. Yesterday came the announcement that News Corp is looking for a search partner to help them monetize the incredible traffic that MySpace is generating. See, create an online community and there will be ways to monetize it. Analysts, look up just a little from the quarterly returns and try to look a little further down the road.

More evidence that Google is very aware of it’s single stream revenue vulnerability, and is looking for ways to broaden it. VP of global online sales, Sheryl Sandberg was cornered by Piper Jaffray’s Safa Rashtchy about their ongoing experimentation for new ad formats, including video, and indicated that while it’s still in testing phase Google will continue to play in this particular sandbox. "I think it’s fair to say we have basically just started," said Sandberg.

Based on my understanding, the testing will be far more aggressive in the AdSense network than it will be on the actual SERP’s, and that’s a good thing. One has to approach further commercialization of a search results page with tremendous trepidation. In fact, my advice would be, don’t even go there.

Jakob Nielsen’s Neilsen Norman Group just released an eyetracking study looking at scan patterns of e-mail newsletters vs RSS feeds. The summary results? People spend more time scanning newsletters, but are ruthless in scanning titles that pop up in their newsreaders. Again, both Jakob’s studies and ours seem to keep coming to the same conclusions, we’re evolving a very advanced form of "thin slicing" when we interact with information online. We have to, as there’s an overload of stimuli. I’m heading down to San Francisco next week to spend some time at Jakob’s usability summit, and hope to chat with him more about this.

The AAAA, ARF and a lot of other acronyms out there are all waxing on eloquently about engagement being the new metric. Over at iMedia, David Smith says it’s not really a metric, but more of a psychographic.

I’ve had bones to pick with the trotting out of engagement as a one size fits all metric myself, and talked a little about this in one of my Search Insider columns. When you look at ARF’s existing media model

Vehicle distribution
• Vehicle exposure
• Advertising exposure
• Advertising attentiveness
• Advertising communication
• Advertising persuasion
• Advertising response
• Sales response

One thing strikes home. This doesn’t really work very well for "pull media". It’s all about push. ARF’s aiming at adding engagement to the mix. Same thing holds true. That’s a brand metric that is relevant when you’re pushing messages at a market, rather than having them request the messages from you, via a search engine, for example. It’s a completely different dynamic, and needs a different set of measurements. Let me guess who’s driving the ARF MI4 agenda: big agencies perhaps?

I'm very excited, and it has nothing to do with anything online. A Prairie Home Companion is now playing. I've always been a huge Garrison Keillor fan, for 3 reasons. First, I grew up in a Norwegian prairie town (Sundre) that seems to be the Canadian equivalent of Lake Wobegon. Secondly, I started my career in radio. And third, he's probably America's greatest living humorist.

So when I heard he and Robert Altman were teaming up on a movie version of a Prairie Home Companion, I couldn't wait. And what a cast! Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones...those are four of my favorites right there. Granted, it also has Lindsey Lohan, but apparently she's pretty good in the role.

Not sure how many share my tastes, but if you do, check out the website.

After almost 2 months of blogging, I’m started to get a system. Usually, when I see items of interest come through my inbox or have interesting conversations, I file them away for a future blog post in a folder called Blog Fodder. Well, the folder is overflowing, and I don’t have time to do full posts, but I did want to pass them along, so I’m cleaning house today.

More Search Research

The Daves (Williams and Berkowitz) and the rest of the gang over at 360i and SearchIgnite released a study looking at the value of multiple clicks on a search ad. This is an interesting indicator of the complexity of the search interaction in a purchase life cycle, something that needs a lot more light shone upon it. I remember Greg Sterling and I talking at one point at a SES session about the messy and twisting nature of a consumer’s online path in a purchase cycle. I’m happy to say that research companies are starting to focus on this Gordian knot (and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t named after me).

ComScore is one of those jumping on board with a recently announced study to look at the influence of online research on offline purchase. The value here is huge, just never quantified that well (or at all) and the ComScore study should be a step in the right direction. I’m hoping to chat with VP James Lamberti more about the study next week. If I’m able, I’ll drop a few tidbits about what they’re looking at.

OMD and Yahoo also released a study looking at this, called the Long and Winding Road. Speaking of Greg Sterling, he’s got a look at the study on his blog, with links to the press release and a few columns. Not sure how publicly available the study is. If you’re interested, perhaps contact your friendly neighborhood Yahoo rep. Fascinating reading!

The Bulls of SEM

Sapna Satagopan from JupiterResearch is bullish on the future of SEM, saying as the number and size of companies moving into search continues to increase, it will drive SEM outsourcing. At first glance, this seems to contradict the findings from the annual SEMPO survey, which indicates that more companies are bringing this in house. Steven Rappaport, a writer who’s currently working on an online advertising field guide for ARF, asked about this in a conversation this week. I explained that the two seeming different viewpoints are two stages in the same cycle. As companies dedicate more attention and budget to search, they do want to gain control in-house, so they are looking for search expertise to bring on board. While these new "directors of search" oversee search activities, they look for experts in specific areas to outsource to. It’s not really efficient for companies to set up an entire search marketing division in-house, and many companies realize this after going down this road for awhile.

Long Tail and other Musings

Cory Treffiletti wrote a column on the Long Tail model of business that has been exploited expertly by Amazon, eMusic, iTunes and the king of long tails, eBay. This is an idea I’ll have to come back to, as it has fascinating implications for retail. But until then, consider, an internet etail model doesn’t have any of the physical limitations of a traditional store. With virtual inventory, provided by direct suppliers, the store, or site, simply acts as the connector. And with expert use of search, the primary connection vehicle, it becomes possible for an online story to carry everything, but with the inventory infinitely segmentable. This brings about the idea of a mega-online shopping site, which is close to what eBay and Amazon have become. Tie this in with smarter shopping search tools and the social networking WOM power of a MySpace, and you’ve got a convergence model that’s mind blowing in its implications.

Tom Hespos takes a stab at a favorite subject of mine, the transference of control over brand messaging from the advertiser to the consumer.

It’s raining and I’m not feeling particularly industrious, so I’ll push back the “To do” pile a little bit farther and catch up on some blog posts.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the search engine’s foray into the world of print advertising, and Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan tries to pinpoint where Google’s attempt to introduce an auction based model to print could have gone wrong.

One point put forth in the column (although not Dave’s) that’s worth considering is that an auction based market is a tremendously efficient one. It has little overhead and it allows prices to find their own sustainable levels, based on the value in the buyer’s mind. This worked well for search because it presented untapped value. There was no place for search to go but up. Which it did.

Print is another matter. It represents an entire food chain with an accompanying industry that subsists on it. That comes with built in inefficiencies and therefore, pricing inflation. Arguably, when introduced to an open, dynamic, buyer controlled pricing market, print had nowhere to go but down. Which it did. And that was the problem.

But Dave points to another issue, and that’s the significant differences between print and search. Search is driven by intent, which means that search interactions generally lead to a purchase event in the not too distant future. And each click is an expression of that intent, which makes it easy for markets to start assessing value to the click. This measurable value provides easy justification for the bid price. In fact, it’s this direct response approach to search that’s introducing many of the challenges we face in trying to quantify value to search touch points as we move further away from the purchase.

Print is a different animal. It’s often used for branding, a much less quantifiable objective, and it’s not clickable. There’s no way to immediately and easily assign value, which makes bidding a guessing game at best, rather than a provable strategy.

In the end, it comes to down to a number of factors, including underestimating the inertia of the print market, the fact that in a price inflated market, an auction based model will find efficiencies, not profit, and, once again, Google thinking that as soon as they enter a new market and affix a Google label, the world will change rotational direction to accommodate them.

And yes, there is a theme emerging in my posts. I’m not a Google basher. I like much of what they do, I like their cocky optimism, I love what they’ve done for search and deep down inside, I do hope they reinvent at least part of the way we do business (nods to John Battelle) but the fact remains that I don’t agree with their strategy of attacking everything at once. It’s not sustainable.

I was in an interesting conversation yesterday with a multi year veteran of the technology wars. He said that Google takes a typical engineer’s view of the universe, and that is in any model, including business models, the more points you have between the producer and the end consumer, the more friction that is introduced. Google’s view is that friction is inefficient and should be eliminated, disintermediated, freeing the flow to go direct. Other companies, through long experience, including Microsoft, have learned differently. Friction is good, friction is valuable, and friction is inevitable in a world populated by people, not machines. Each friction point is an opportunity to add value.

With the two different views of the universe, it’s interesting to note that Microsoft is looking to enter the offline world as well. They announced that their vision of adCenter is a multi channel platform, that will introduce an auction based model and search like accountability to other channels, including television and print. Boy, if you thought print was a tough model to crack, wait til you take on television! Google’s problem, says Microsoft, is that they didn’t understand the print medium. By the way, in this story near the bottom there’s a really interesting line that speaks of many blog posts to come:

Bradford also indicated that Microsoft was gearing up to compete with Google for employees. She said Microsoft hopes to lure staff from Google when the company's stock options begin vesting next year.

But another post, another day.

I don’t disagree with introducing efficiencies in the ad buying market. I believe it’s long, long, long over due. And I love the idea of introducing more accountability. But everyone has to understand going in that this means the tearing apart of an existing and considerable power construct (or several) and reinventing from the ground up. That takes time and resources. It takes patience. It takes adoption. Each of these speaks to a strategy that will take a considerable time for execution and to turn a profit. The fact that everyone is jumping on the Google print experiment (including Google themselves) because it wasn’t profitable out of the gate is a little ridiculous. Did Google really think they were going to change the world that quickly? Did the analysts? Did we learn nothing from the Dotcom bust?

Speaking of Google and TV, there’s an interesting column over at iMedia by Alan Shulman about the Googleization of TV. Check it out.

Okay, the rain is stopping, I thinned a few items out of my “blog fodder” in box, my “To do” pile is inching closer and the hordes are starting to gather at my door. Time to get back to work!

A recent column by Paul La Monica on CNN.com blows holes in the hype surrounding MySpace.

You know, it drives me a little nuts when someone like Mr. La Monica takes a slice of monumental societal change, and tries to apply the rationality of the present to it. If financial analysts were around when the first fish dragged themselves out of the primordial ocean and started crawling on land, they'd downgrade its prospects because it couldn't swim as well as the other fish.

In the big picture, MySpace isn't about revenue. It's about a new generation redefining community. It's about changing the rules of society, and creating a groundswell shift that will in turn realign everything. The author of the column says that MySpace's share of the search market is meager, so it's monetization opportunities are negligible compared to Google. Umm..reality check here...MySpace isn't a search engine. The fact that it has any search share at all is amazing!

Look..search engines didn't figure out how to monetize the model for years. What lead to that eventual success? It was a place people went to online. Now granted, they went with a specific intent, which turned out to be easy for marketers to capitalize on...but they had the eyeballs in the first place. Perhaps the author should remember that Google didn't monetize that traffic til 2000/2001, and it's only been in the last 2 years that it's been the tremendous success that everyone seems to use as a yardstick. But Google has been around since 1998. And at that time, there were analysts like Paul La Monica who were saying don't believe the hype. Google was a walking fish, and it's only in hindsight that we realize how significant it was.

If financial analysts could readjust their sights beyond the next quarter, they might be able to spot another Google before it starts running!

The Google suite of web based apps got a little wider today, with the beta release of a spreadsheet program. This shot is directly at Excel. Greg Sterling is quoted as saying "Google is offering a suite of services that spans your own private data and public information online".

I get the strategy, but again (risking sounding like a broken record..or to update the analogy, skipping mp3) I worry that Google is so focused on matching Microsoft in every product category that they're not paying enough attention to their core business, search. They have a word processing app, a calendar app, email and now a spread sheet. Trust me, there'll be more.

As I said in a previous post, Google is yet to gain market leader status in any of the off shoots they've spun off. I think Google may have drunk a little too much of their own kool aid, believing if something rolls out with the Google label on it, people will use it. In the cases cited, the people have said....mmm...maybe....maybe not.

Google is attacking a behometh here, with incredible market domination in every single category. Sure, the idea of web based apps that can integrate with publically available information is intriguing, but Google is not unique in this regard. That's the same territory that Windows Live is moving into.

Look at conventional wisdom. I know Google eschews convention wisdom, but the fact is it's conventional wisdom because it's been proven to be right over time.

Jack Welch of GE said if you can't be Number 1 or 2 in a business, get out of it. The same strategy has been used effectively by Walgreen's and Kimberly Clark. Google's strategy seems to be get into every business, no matter what, and if you're in enough places, you'll win.

Another dusty nugget. Attack from a position of strength. In fact, Sun Tzu had a lot to say on the subject, including "Generally the one who first occupies the battlefield awaiting the enemy is at ease; the one who comes later and rushes into battle is fatigued."

Google is riding high now, but they have to be careful not to fatigue their resources trying to fight Microsoft where they're strongest. Attack where they aren't.

Look at it this way. Google is trying to fight Microsoft on multiple fronts. In each case, Microsoft is the established and dominant player, generating revenue from the product line, with the tremendous benefit of customer inertia on their side.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has the advantage of marshalling all their resources on one front, search. That's Google's single revenue channel, or, to keep with the battlefield analogy, their single supply line. If Microsoft can choke that off, even a little, Google's stocks plummet, the revenue drops and their resources disappear.

Granted, Microsoft hasn't done a great job of that yet, but when you have an army as huge as Microsoft gathered on your main frontier making noises about attacking, you don't want to be somewhere else.

To further underscore the importance of the "everyman" phenomenon of content creation that I talked about in a previous post, a new study by PEW says 35% of US internet users have created content online.

Almost 10% of us have our own blog or online journal, and 15% have our own webpage. That's 27 million people in the US alone that are actively populating the web with their own content on a regular basis, and 43 million in total that are doing it at all. 43 million people, just in the US, who are sharing their thoughts, interests and opinions for anyone to see, weaving the virtual fabric of our society.

And these numbers don't include those who post comments or feedback on other's blogs. As the previous post states, it's this extended virtual conversation, the interactive creation of content from multiple viewpoints, that makes the Internet unique.

As if you needed more fodder for a brain meltdown, consider that we're still in the early adopter stage. The tornado hasn't even hit yet. The MySpace generation is just beginning to contribute to this crushing onslaught of content.

The times they are a'changin!

Internet advertising revenues are predicted to pass newspaper ad revenues in the UK this year.

No real comment here, except newspapers have been around since the 1500 and 1600's, and I have shirts older than the Internet.

MediaPost's Max Kalehoff had an interesting column that looked at the internet's ability to organically create content, and the key concept that it's this interactive creation of content that holds true value for online content sites. He quotes Jeff Jarvis from buzzmachine.com:

"Some companies are trying to own as much content as they can... but that's silly in a post-scarcity world, where content will be ever-more plentiful (and ever-better as a result). Content is not king. Distribution is not king. Conversation is the kingdom."

This touches on another mind melting paradigm shift for online. With traditional dissemination of content, i.e. news, editorial content, political comment, etc, online gives us all an opportunity to shape, add to and alter the messaging. As society at large wades it, we can all play a part in weaving the fabric of our future society. This is a powerful concept that we haven't felt the impact of yet.

Remember way back when, Microsoft's Longhorn was going to integrate search into everything? Microsoft Labs were working on Implicit Query, which turned search into an always on app that offered queries based on the context of what you were working on. Blinkx also offered this capability.

Well, Longhorn has long since been tamed into Vista, and it now looks like Microsoft's dream of integrated search will be rolled out in bits and pieces on the Windows Live platform. Email will be the first app that will feature search integration, and constant delivery of sponsored search ads based on the context of your emails.

Two things that are worth watching about this.

First of all, deep integration seems to be Microsoft's best bet for increasing market share, so it will be interesting to see how aggressively they pursue this strategy.

Secondly, just how annoying will a search pane be that is constantly showing sponsored search ads based on the content of your emails?

WPP Chair Sir Martin Sorrell recently drew some parallels between big agencies current struggles with "getting" online and the trial and error involved in mastering the new medium in 1955, television. Sorrell's take is that they managed to figure out television, and the same will happen with digital. Eventually, the gap between the expertise of the traditional agencies and the start ups that specialize will narrow, the barriers will come down, and new media will cease to be "new" and will become just another channel in the agency's arsenal.

While Sorrell admits the analogy has it's limits, I believe there are some distinct differences that agencies will have to pay close heed to:

Digital Transfers Control to the Consumer

Television, while a discontinuous innovation over radio, still left control in the hands of the message producer. The consumer was left to passively digest the message. Digital transfers control over to the consumer. The brand message depends on the nature of the interaction and is shaped more by the watcher than the teller. My experience is that agencies are really struggling with this transferrance of control, and it's scaring the hell out of them. Television was a technological advance, but the nature of interaction with the recipient had more to do with new capabilities through that technology (adding sight to sound) than with a fundamental change in the interaction itself. Web and digital turns the entire paradigm on its ear.

Television had a Kinder, Gentler Adoption Curve

Agencies had more time to get up to speed with television. It took longer for television to gain penetration in a critical mass of households, and it wasn't nearly as dynamic a marketing channel as digital. Internet adoption has been tremendously fast, and the technology changes daily. Even for those who live and breathe digital, it's a challenge to keep up to speed with the rapidly changing nature of the many faces of digital. For a stodgy agency that has a tremendous amount of inertia, it's impossible. Consider the fact that most agencies are just now adding search capabilities, and in the meantime an entire industry has grown up and is capturing almost half of every online ad dollar spent. You just can't be that slow to react in the new digital world

Televison Required a Power Construct

Even with television's slower adoption curve, the agencies had the advantage of the fact that television ads are costly to produce. There were few organizations with the resources required to produce television, so the agencies didn't have nearly the degree of competitive infill that is true in the digital world. Democratization of creative development has meant that anyone can produce digital marketing messaging. Television required power constructs, distribution and large budgets, digital doesn't.

I don't believe large agencies can count on the time being available for a slower assimilation of digital expertise. The new world belongs to the fleet of foot, and I haven't seen the traditional agencies winning any foot races lately.

I've been putting aside a number of stories this past week I wanted to comment on, so I'm trying to catch up this weekend.

On Friday, fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman penned a column that's mostly complementary about Google's recent roll outs, but warns about trying to keep too many people happy with too many different business models.

I have a somewhat different view. I've yet to see anything roll out of Google labs that shows signs of propping up their one legged revenue model. While a lot of quantity has been coming out, I haven't seen any gain significant traction to the extent that Google search did. Look at the list that Aaron cites in the column:

"Enter Google News, Froogle, Blogger, Picasa, Google Alerts and Gmail."

Not a market leader amongst that group. Later, Aaron lists more Google spin offs:

"Enter Google Book Search, Google Video, Google Desktop Search, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Base, Google Talk, Google Finance, Google Page Creator, and Google Calendar."

Again, despite tons of hype for some of these, including Video, Google Base, Desktop Search, none have gained significant market traction. Google Base was supposed to be the eBay killer, but it's still sputtering along. At this point Google Earth probably has the best chance of growing virally, as we're starting to see with the proliferation of mash up sites.

Google has yet to follow the admittedly stunning success of search with a worthy follow up. In my mind, they're still suffering from the Sophomore Curse. Yes, they've delivered most times on quarterly expectations, but this is still coming from AdWords, and to a lesser extent, AdSense.

Google's other forays into the world of marketing that had Madison Avenue shaking in their Florsheims have come up short of the bar as well. The experiment with selling print did not meet expectations, Google recently admitted.

Recent stories also have Google taking on television, both through offering an extended range of viewing options through an electronic program guide, and by possibly bring pay per click advertising to television. Bold? Yes. Interesting? Sure. Odds for success? I'm thinking a long shot.

Google knows their current revenue model is singularly vulnerable, and the scramble Aaron refers to is an attempt to broaden out that revenue base. Until Google hits another home run in the revenue department, they remain in a precarious position, especially when you consider the variety of revenue resources their main competitor, Microsoft, can depend on to fund the war chest.

The internet seems to compress time in most things. Why should career expectations be any different?

In the past 24 hours, I’ve had conversations with 3 different people, all between the ages of 30 and 36. Each had pursued an accelerated career path, with one being partner of a successful interactive agency, one just becoming the head of marketing and sales for a new technology start up, and one responsible for presenting information seminars for a large online publisher. They all work in the online space, and they all measure their individual success against what may be an impossible standard.

I’m almost 45, and in most circles, I would be considered successful. But in the elite of the online world, I’m a success “slug”. My progress towards success would be considered glacial. In the hyper-active world of online, if you’re not worth millions by the age of 40, you’re doggin’ it. Success is measured against the likes of Steve Jobs (started Apple by the age of  21, now 51 and worth $4 billion), Bill Gates (founded Microsoft at the age of 20, also now 51 and worth over $100 billion ), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Worth 13 billion at the age of 33). Even if one lowers their sights a little, you’re constantly rubbing shoulders with people like Josh James of Omniture (31 years old, worth a lot ).

There’s this head long rush towards the ultimate exit strategy, the hope that the next career move will bring the right stock options, or the next start up will be the one that catches. There’s an urgent need to keep up with the rest of the pack, and with each tale of astounding success, you can’t help feeling that you’re losing ground.

As I mentioned to one of my success bound acquaintances, we have to realize we live in a hyper reality. We live among the uber-successful elite. Most of us number in our circle of acquaintances at least one phenomenal success story, and we can’t help but measure ourselves against this demanding standard.

Perhaps it’s age, or perhaps it’s accumulated wisdom, but I try to encourage those starved for unqualified success to step outside our world and examine their achievements through the eyes of the other 99.5% of society. Don’t trade balance or the essentials of life for being obsessed with some impossible standard of success. Remember that there’s a reason why only 5% of our population are millionaires. Sometimes the price is too great to pay.

Do what you’re passionate about, do what you consider important, do what you love. Sometimes, that’s reward enough.

With apologies to any readers who aren’t Canadian, this next post probably won’t have much relevance to you. But for a Western Canadian, this past week has served as a personal epiphany.

I grew up in Western Canada. More than that, I grew up in Alberta, in a small town called Sundre. Sundre is unremarkable in most regards, and it is very much typical of the political views common in most of rural Alberta. In fact, one of Sundre’s distinguishing features is that it lies in the first and only riding (Canadian federal political district) to elect a western separatist member of parliament west of Quebec, back in the early eighties. One has to understand the political reasoning behind this footnote in Canadian politics. This was towards the end of Trudeau’s extended reign as prime minister. Many western Canadians were fed up with what they saw as alienation of the west and a never ending series of federal hand outs to Quebec to passify those calling for Quebec’s separation from Canada. In the west, we saw it simply as the whining of a rebellious child who didn’t realize how good they had it. There was no tolerance for Quebec in my town. In fact, there was a strident animosity towards Quebec and their cries for the preservation of their distinct society. And the voters of our region felt the best way to send this message was to elect a member of a party that was threatening to separate the western provinces from Canada, putting an end to what we saw as the constant pandering to Quebec and the Eastern-centric view of Canada. This was about 10 years after the FLQ crisis, and at the time of the separation referendum that publically poised the question of ending Canada as we know it. The referendum was defeated, but Anglo-French relations within Canada were probably at their lowest point.

We are now almost 30 years later. In that time, I had never set foot within the borders of Quebec. While I hope my views towards Quebec have become more tolerant with time (and with ideological distance from the political influences of Sundre) I can’t say that I had substantially changed my mind in any significant way towards Quebec.

For the past two days, I have had the opportunity to gain the briefest of glimpses of Quebec’s distinct culture, and I am awestruck. I admit, this was in Montreal, the most bilingual of Quebec’s cities, but even at this level, it was eye opening.

The distinction of the culture here can not be denied by anyone who sets foot on Quebecois soil. There is no place like Montreal anywhere in North America, and possibly the world. It goes beyond language to a Gallic attitude towards business, pleasure and every possible aspect of life. It resonates deeply in the buildings, the food, art, music, conversations overhead on the street, every single fragment of life here is infused with a different view and a different spirit. Perfect? No. But unique? Undeniably! I can only surmise that the distinction only grows as you travel around the province.

Illogical but oh so Elegant

The Montreal soul is that of the dreamer and the sensualist. It lives for the moment. It strives for the grandiose, for the memorable, for the monumental, and sometimes the price paid is common sense and logic. The result in Montreal is an imperfect but breathtaking mixture of stunning design, palpable culture and some of the world’s biggest boondoggles.

Consider Mirabel Airport. In the early 70’s it was decreed that one of the world’s greatest cities deserved an airport befitting it’s status. But in true Montreal fashion, this was not just to be another airport. This was to be the world’s grandest airport, both in size and design. Projects like this required room and to get enough room, construction began on a site over an hour’s drive from the city’s core. There was nothing within miles, but no matter, Montreal would soon grow into this gargantuan airport and it would become the gateway to Eastern Canada. But today, 30 years after ground was broken, the airport is still a 75 minute drive from the city. Of course, nobody takes that drive, because Montreal hasn’t grown to the extent that was planned. One of the world’s greatest airport sits empty, no passenger flights in, no flights out, because Montreal’s dreams extended too far beyond reality. The last time Mirabel airport saw significant traffic was when it was used for the Spielberg movie The Terminal. Rumours are that it will be made into a waterpark. While one can criticize the practicality, one can’t help but admire the passion behind the dream.

And passion, not practicality, defines the soul of Montreal. There are tangible reminders of that throughout the city, including the new Palais de’ Congres, hundreds of millions over budget, le Stade Olympique, on which the bill was finally paid, 30 years after the event and the remnants of Expo 67, one of the great world fairs, now a 6 Flags amusement park that’s having problems keeping its doors open. Montreal is the dreamer that never stops trying to amaze the world, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but always doing it in spectacular fashion.

This is a distinct society, a cultural gem that far too few North Americans know exists. The preservation of language is integral to the culture, every word of French that’s spoken a vocalization of the uniqueness that is Quebec. For myself, painfully unilingual despite the best attempts of my high school French teacher, it created some challenges but after visiting the city, I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is a delicate balance to Montreal that is far too fragile, and I fear that small changes could forever upset it. Expect a rather dismissive arrogance if you’re not fluent in French, expect a general ennui with the affairs outside the borders of the province, and expect an aggressive preservation of their way of life. It’s the things that most visitors find frustrating that has allowed this culture to remain intact in the midst of an Anglo cultural tsunami for hundreds of years.

Accept Montreal for what it is, in all it’s glorious imperfection, and be ardently thankful that it exists. I just wish everyone from Sundre could make the trip, but I suspect that will never happen. Attitudes can be very difficult things to move.