Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Movin' on Up... to the B-List

I'd like to thank the Blogademy, and [insert divine power here], and of course you, dear readers. You can now take pride in reading a certified B-List blog.

Look, I even get an official seal:

Now maybe for the next TechCrunch party I'll get to move from the "wait by the dumpster for half-eaten pigs 'n blankets" list to the "stand outside for three hours so I can get pictures of the A-listers and post them on Flickr" list.

Pretty soon, I'll get to the point where Robert Scoble will pretend to remember my name. Ahh, that'll be the good life.

Multitasking with TV and Web Video

I've wondered quite a bit about the future of web video and how much of it anyone will be able to consume. I've been pretty skeptical about it, namely because it's difficult to multitask when watching online video - you can't really do much else, and multitasking is a huge part of the value proposition of both web browsing and also watching TV programming.

I just met with a company that I can't say a word about, but one that's already making me rethink how things are going to play out. There are a few issues that must be addressed by any game changer here:

• Navigation: Currently, how we search for content online is not the most efficient way to sift through millions of videos.
• Device agnosticism: A real game changer will need to be flexible to allow consumers to access videos from any device.
• Index: Bring down the walled gardens. Consumers won't be happy with a limited menu.

I can't wait to talk more about where this un-named company fits in, which of these issues it addresses, how it does so, and what the impact is. In the meantime, discussions like that offer a better sense of the kind of things to look for when discerning who to watch.

TypePad's new email posts

Let's see how well this works, but this is my first thrilling post from TypePad 's new post-via-email functionality. Third-party services have offered this, so this feature is long overdue.

RightDot or WrongDot?

Would you want your search results to include vetted search listings so you know which sites are official?

That's one of the questions that came up in my chat with James Grossman, the RightDot inventor who has received such a patent. If used by a search engine, results can then be vetted and validated so you know which sites are really legit.

As you might have guessed from the post's title, I have some issues with the patent - the biggest ones being that it addresses a need that doesn't exist, and that it will do more harm than good for both consumers and search engines. I even suggested to Grossman that Google might try to encourage Yahoo or MSN to use it, so Google can make even more gains in market share. There's a danger in setting too much control over the natural search results. It would require an opt-in system, and smaller businesses and publishers might not do so, even when they have the most relevant content. Additionally, say I wrote a scathing book about a legend like Jackie Robinson or Mother Teresa and I wanted the book's official site as a validated result since it would have a ton of relevant content related to the subject; who's to say whether I should get that status? Does it even matter if it's true? And what about Wikipedia articles, for that matter?

The patent covers other things as well, like being able to email a retailer or site owner right from the natural search listings without going to their site (again, not sure the need). There's plenty more that I can't cover in depth at the moment.

I encourage you to read the patent and come to your own conclusions; I plan to share more, perhaps in a column or perhaps informally on the blog. I welcome your take on this. Grossman told me everyone he talked to was a big fan of his patent; I guess I was the first. I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Yahoo Has Lyrics, If You Can Find Them

Hooray, Yahoo Music has partnered with Gracenote to offer a searchable music lyrics library, the first time this has ever been legal online, as reported by TechCrunch. Took long enough.

Searching for old favorites like "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding" by Elvis Costello and "Only the Good Die Young" by Billy Joel didn't bring up anything, and I couldn't easily modify my search.

Maybe I'm missing something and am not searching correctly, but I'd be at least a little insulted if the consumer's to blame here.

Epilogue to "Integrated Asset Digitization"

The previous post, the column on Integrated Asset Digitization, referenced Mark Brookstein, the first ever Integrated Media Buyer (that's just according to Google, for what it's worth).

I wasn't familiar with Mark before I stumbled on him during the column research, but he sent me this note after the column was published: "I thoroughly enjoyed your article today and yes, I am glad I didn’t become a doctor. Advertising is a lot more fun and no one dies if I screw up." I'll have to tell that to my dad, though as a gastroenterologist, he seems to have more fun than I ever will. Case in point: EneMan, who even has a cult listed on one of my favorite social networks (full disclosure: I started that cult).

Integrated Asset Digitization: The One Trend That Explains All Others

What's Integrated Asset Digitization, and why can it illuminate so much of what's going on with media and advertising right now?

I came to the topic in a roundabout way, at first contemplating how media buyers and planners will be affected by companies like Google trying to broker ads across all media from a single starting point. My gut tells me the media buying profession won't go away anytime soon, yet I kept turning back to Eric Schmidt's keynote at Web 2.0 and thinking about his case for technology to do a lot of multi-channel campaign optimization.

Ultimately, the column it spawned was far bigger than media buying, or Google, or any of us.

The column, originally published in MediaPost, starts below and continues in the extended entry.

The One Trend That Explains All Others
By David Berkowitz

What do all of Google’s acquisitions, the proliferation of social media, the long tail of search, and other search engine marketing developments have in common? They all connect to Integrated Asset Digitization, an emerging trend that encompasses several of the most significant issues marketers, publishers, agencies, and consumers will face for years to come.

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted during his conversation with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Expo last week, Google aims to use its technology to optimize advertising across all media. Google’s Book Search, Docs & Spreadsheets, Picasa, Video/YouTube, and Base are just some of the services that empower consumers to either digitize assets or bring existing digital assets online. Media companies play a major role as well, digitizing TV, radio, out-of-home media, and print media -- both the content and the advertising. It’s the digitization coupled with Web-based access that makes integration possible.

In under 1,000 words it’s impossible to fully cover  just how Integrated Asset Digitization affects all of us, but here are five implications of the trend.

A Guide to AdWords Applied

I'm a little late posting it, but last week's visit to the Web 2.0 Expo threw off my schedule in getting this column live (let alone getting it to MediaPost). It continues in the extended entry.

A Guide to AdWords Applied
By David Berkowitz

“IF THE Google model is so successful, it seems reasonable to think that everybody should be in the Google business.” -- Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin

The quote’s taken out of context from an email I received from Norlin last week, and that context will be good fodder for a future column. He allowed me to borrow it to set the stage for what Guidester is doing for online consumer electronics retailing, and explain why Guidester should prove to be a beacon for future innovations in search, online publishing, and ecommerce.

Guidester provides search technology for retailers’ sites, making it a sort of Google Custom Search Engine for ecommerce. That analogy can only be extended so far. I’ll illustrate it with an example Guidester CEO Joe Chin showed me over lunch last week, though I’ll use sample advertisers that aren’t intentionally reflective of Guidester’s clients:

2007: Year of Discovery

Fine, I'm sold on it. I know I'm not the first to say it, but as someone who's been a huge cheerleader for the search space for years now, it feels a bit more like a confession.

A few cases in point:

1. The rumor mill says eBay acquires StumbleUpon. Read Pete Cashmore's 8 Reasons Why at Mashable. I still don't get why this site is so popular. TechCrunch cites comScore numbers that SU's up to 6 million pageviews a month.
2. Google's adding a discovery feature into its new toolbar to send you to recommended sites based on your search history.
3. Two words: Aggregate Knowledge. I met with them when I was out West and they're solving some very real issues with the web. Like, why do I still have such a hard time finding Mother's Day gifts no matter how hard I search? More on that another time. I'm looking forward to hearing what Paul Martino has to say at the Search Insider Summit next month.

Evangelists of the World, Unite

At the Web 2.0 Expo this week, one title kept popping up on business cards: Evangelist. All the evangelists I met are from companies that have quite a few evangelists in their own right: Salesforce, Yahoo, LinkedIn. The best moment was when I took a detour to Google's Mountain View headquarters on Wednesday and met an in-house evangelist there. I had to ask him the first question that crossed my mind: "Doesn't everybody love you? How could Google need an evangelist?"

I've met corporate evangelists before. Most of the best I've met never had that title. eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, my old boss, is the perfect example. He lives the brand. He's so passionate about charts, stats, data - dry stuff, unless you really think about how you use it. Any time I see him present - and I've been to dozens of his speeches by now - I get excited about what he's doing.

As far as I can recall, he's never had evangelist as a title. CEO works pretty well. I've never had the title either, but I like to think that in any organization I've been a part of for at least a year (including businesses as well as others, like the Binghamton University Alumni Association Board, or MediaPost, where I've published columns weekly since June 2004), evangelism has been an important part of the job. Shouldn't everyone see themselves as a chief evangelist?

That's not to downplay the need for dedicated evangelists - those who can look across a massive organization and mine all the great things it's doing and then spread the word about them. Though I haven't talked to many evangelists in depth about their jobs, they should also be empowered to be open about what isn't yet ripe for evangelism and find ways to make that better. I'm curious what happens when they run into those situations, when there's something they find that they wouldn't want to shout from the rooftops - do they have a strong enough voice internally to right the ship?

It's also a funny term linguistically in the sense that calling someone a preacher, imam, proselytizer, or other terms steeped in religious traditions wouldn't quite work. Yet "evangelist" has gone the way of "saint," with its religious undertones stripped from it.

Maybe they shouldn't be though. Working for a company is usually a test of faith, if you're devoted to it. An evangelist is always going to find things that they see as heretical to their corporate gospels. Yet you don't need to live, breathe, and love every page of your gospel - whether it's in a more literal sense, or whether it's a corporate handbook or 10K form - to find truth in it.

If a company does put the title "evangelist" on one person's business card, it better not be placing all the evangelism responsibilities on him or her alone. It takes a full organization of evangelists to succeed - though it never hurts to have one person whose focus day in, day out is to lead the charge.