Overflow

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Throughout my adult life, I have been thinking up various applications for technology.  I can remember sitting in a bar called Peabody’s in Binghamton NY discussing the possibility of inventing vending machines that would be placed in college dorms to dispense soft-serve ice cream cones.

That concept never really took off, but that kind of thought process has remained a constant for me.

Most of the ideas lose some steam and fade away, but some developments actually take root and turn into something functional.  Presently, I’m not considering turning my attention to bringing something else to life, it’s more like I am making a wish list and expecting today’s great innovators to come along and meet my demands.

I am thinking about my IPhone and the amazing applications that are being developed.  There is a great two part series rundown of IPhone applications at Todd Crawford’s blog called Todd Talks.  I recommend looking over his advice and choosing the most appropriate applications for your needs.

The application that I want to see developed for my IPhone corresponds with my growing frustration whenever visiting medical treatment facilities.  There is great debate about letting a company like Google store your personal medical records, prescriptions, allergies and all pertinent information in their vast databases for access via ubiquitous web applications.  This certainly raises serious concerns over patient privacy and many health care industry regulations would have to be amended to prevent unlawful searches.

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This past Saturday night I watched the future of “television” .. at least in the form that I personally believe to be the direction that the format is headed. It all started with a twitter post, and ended up with me staying up late at night watching a live stream of Wilco playing at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.

After a day full of the usual weekend responsiblities, I was kicking back ready to watch a baseball game and reading through current tweets.  The following message from someone with the handle ATTBlueroom (I’m sure it is someone who serves in a Community Manager role) caught my attention, “Broken Social Scene and Wilco are up next on tonight’s Lolla webcast.” I am a huge fan of the band Wilco, so I got very excited to log on and check it out.

What I experienced made me realize that the famed “convergence” of television and internet that has been spoken about since the early dotcom days is upon us.  The stream was flawless on my dsl connection and all I wish was that I had a better sound system on the computer so that the full music quality could have been experienced.

The added feature of communicating with others via Twitter while simultaneously watching the show only added to the excitement.  Actually attending the event in person would be the only better shared experience.

Some observations:

• Apple TV and other web connected television appliances are going to explode on the scene shortly as the next big consumer appliance
• Using Twitter as a way to announce programming is a must for any broadcast channel
• ATTBlueroom actually needs to do a better job of monitoring the conversation to interact with viewers.  I had two people directly state that they were having trouble with the feed and it would have been a perfect opportunity for some direct company involvement (Contact me if you want to talk about my ideas!)
• I suspect that the issues were due to only having the option of Windows Media Player as the format for the stream, and possibly it would serve to have a variety of options based upon the users preferences.
• Television plus Twitter (or another communication platform - gaming consoles allow for actual conversation) for live events is going to be an integrated part of the viewing experience.  It will be important to allow the viewer to directly compartmentalize the communication being received however.  Non-relevant tweets during the broadcast would detract in some cases, which leads to more sorting of conversations into silos along with a search (track) functionality.  This is making me reevaluate the silo interface of TweetDeck, which just needs to become more stable at this point.
• Sporting Events, Concerts, Award Shows, Political Debates … any event that is being broadcast where interaction with others in real time adds to the experience will benefit from this convergence.
• It’s still unclear how the entire monetization strategy will work in these live events.  They could have interjected lower third promotional messages or sponsorship logos without harming the quality, but I believe that branding messages will need to be more subtle to be acceptable.

Wilco demonstrated why I believe they are the best band in the land right now.  The AT&T Blue Room broadcast was very well done in terms of production, while needing some assistance in the community interaction area.

I was extremely glad to have been part of the event, and wanted a big encore from the band as they left the stage.  I know we’ll see more of them and more of these types of events down the road though.

I have been waffling over the effectiveness of pay per click (PPC) Adwords advertising campaigns for some very unique web sites that we manage.  I know that there are some really strong proponents of the practice of bidding on keywords, then massaging the bids and keywords in order to generate sufficient ROI.  I’m completely in agreement that it’s a much better buy than a classic media placement where it’s difficult to measure exact traffic and conversion rates — but it still hasn’t been as effective, for the simple reason that I am not getting the volume of traffic I would like.

There is no question that by increasing the bids on each keyword and upping the total monthly budget, I can generate some more traffic.  I also know to prevent the wrong kind of traffic by adding negative keywords for example, at CoastalBean.com I don’t want to pay for traffic if someone is searching for “estate coffee wholesalers” … so by adding “wholesalers” as a negative keyword I can reduce the incorrect clicking on our ads.

Once the correct traffic starts coming into the site I must also analyze the site data to determine if the traffic is doing what I want it to do . ie. purchasing product, reading posts etc. , and that is a complete topic for another day, including site design, Analytics and calls to action.

Today however, I am more concerned with generating traffic to sites where there just isn’t that many folks out there searching on the keywords. If you are running a site about IPhones you know that you have alot of searchers going to Google to find info about the product.  You are going to pay a ton per click since its such a highly competitive keyword, but you will get some volume, then it’s up to you to convert that traffic.  But since I deal with some “long tail keywords” .. I’m already in a position where the number of searches per day are at a minimum.

So I’ve decided to get behind the latest Adwords feature called Placements. Using the placement option, I can pick and choose the web sites where my ads will appear.  These sites are classified as being within the Google Adwords Network .. which is a fancy way of saying they have Adsense panels on the site to accept advertising.   By using the Placements option, I am no longer relying on someone searching for a long tail keyword like “Ethiopian Coffee” .. rather I can go to where I believe those buyers might be and get my ads there.

A few things to note:

• The cost per click will be less than a search placement simply because the impressions will be directed at a less specific seeker of content (not someone who typed the words Ethiopian Coffee into Google) ..

• The number of impressions will be much higher!  Because I am able to get onto sites that have more pageviews than the number of people searching the keywords during any given period.

• It means I can expect to have a much lower click through rate since the relevancy of the visitor on that page to my exact product is dimished.

• The ROI could be better since the cost per clicks are down, the number of impressions are up .. so potentially it could result in finding a customer who wasn’t even planning on searching for my product.

I believe that taking a product that could be considered a discretionary purchase and putting on a site like the Ethiopian Review, and customizing the content of the ad will stand a better chance of converting more sales than waiting for searchers.

I am monitoring this practice right now and will keep things posted regarding the results.

There are some ad creation and setup practices that can impact results, including combining keywords and placement options.  If you have any questions email me at jmagennis(at)befluid(dot)com