Focusing on Content, Not Just Ads

For quite a while, the concentration in online analytics and tools to optimize results based on analytics revolved around ad optimization.  It was a world of sellers.  The focus was always on systems which could improve a company’s ability to recommend relevant products, increase conversions, and acquire traffic with increasing efficiency.  The solutions were skewed towards helping the sellers sell their ads, while putting less emphasis on the delivery of primary content.

Predictive Analytics are Ready for Early Adopters: Super Cool Sneaks from the Adobe Summit

Adobe announced their embedded forecasting and predictive models into Adobe Social, Discover and SiteCatalyst at their Annual Summit today.

I blogged about predictive analytics in my annual prediction for marketing trends entry for 2012, where I indicated that this would be the year for the early adopters to begin bringing these capabilities to digital marketing.

It’s here.

There are too many instances to mention, and many more that I expect are coming as the Product Development Teams begin to insert the Efficient Frontier (EF) models underneath the platform as underpinnings to nearly all of the products.  EF, in case you aren’t familiar with them, used Nobel-prize-winning Henry Markowtiz models called the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to apply the models that help financial engineers balance risk and returns on the stock market (which is essentially an auction) to the similar problem of risk (as defined by volatility and conversion metrics) and the price of keywords, which again is essentially an auction.  They’ve been around for over about a decade, and employ seven PhDs in the field.  I attended their workshops, and began to assess how these models will be embedded into the underpinnings of the Online Marketing Platform from Adobe.

So here are three things that impressed me, and keep in mind that since the EF acquisition only happened six weeks ago, none of the models have been incorporated into the platform at this time.

The Adobe SiteCatalyst product will be releasing The Navigator feature, there are new predictive analytics capabilities in the Discover 3.0 product and Abode Social shines the headlights around the corner to predict sentiment and help marketers more carefully use words that will increase engagement. read more

7 Ways to Monetize Pinterest Without Alienating its User Base

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network on the web right now.  Usage has increased almost 4,000% over the past six months.  Visitors are lingering for an average of 88.3 minutes, far longer than most other social networks – in fact, the only places they spend more continuous time are Facebook and Tumblr.  And the site is particularly popular with middle class North American women, who sign up to share recipes, craft ideas, decorating tips, and cute pictures of babies.

In spite – or perhaps because – of its simplicity, Pinterest presents numerous opportunities for forward-thinking marketers.  However, those who seek to monetize Pinterest would be wise to tread carefully. Angry users, particularly early adopters, are already worried that marketers have ruined Pinterest by sponsoring pins, flooding the site with spam, and decreasing the overall content quality.

Fortunately, there are plenty of things marketers can do to engage with Pinterest users in a meaningful way – without violating site etiquette.  Here are just a few: read more

What Can Digital Marketers Learn from Moneyball?

Did you see the movie Moneyball yet?  Billy Beane changes the game of baseball by using data.  And the same trends have been happening in the digital marketing arena for just as long.  

According to leading web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, many large organizations still practice online marketing as a faith-based initiative – that is, they place their trust in intuition, bad data, and inefficient indicators when making strategic decisions.  Unfortunately, the use of weak metrics like clicks and page views often makes web analytics results look more impressive or meaningful than they actually are.  This allows managers to feel comfortable and content with their marketing decisions, without digging deeper to determine if their efforts are actually yielding useful results.  We think those types of metrics are generally ineffective.  We call them “caveman analytics”.  read more