The Adaptive Marketer

There's Peanut Butter In My Chocolate - Social Media Is Polluting Your Web Analytics

So, okay…. We all know Twitter, Google Buzz and myriad other social networks are becoming part of the marketer’s toolbox.  And, with that comes the URL Shorteners.

They’re so popular, in fact, that they’re built into almost all of the client-side applications that both you and your audiences are using for Tweeting out content.  Whether you're using Hootsuite and generating Ow.ly links - or Tweetdeck and Bit.ly links - or just using URL Shorteners to tidy up your Facebook pages, it's a big piece of our new technological tool box.  

But it's good to be mindful that using these URL Shorteners can be a double-edged sword and some thought needs to go into how you’re handling URL Shortening and your Analytics Strategy.

A Disturbance In The "Audience Measurement Force" - Why Jason Calacanis Is Wrong

Usually when we talk about Web traffic and measurement – it’s a pretty dry topic.   But Jason Calacanis – just threw down the gauntlet by calling for a boycott of comScore.  I certainly agree with Jason on many things - but this time he's wrong.

Basically what raised the Mahalo CEO’s hackles was a recent announcement (and update) by comScore that they plan to launch a new measurement methodology to attempt to produce better, more accurate numbers.    The new service will cost $10,000 in the first year (there’s a $5K implementation fee) and then $5K for every six months if the customer wants to continue to receive the hybrid data.

How To Fail At Marketing - Lessons From NBC

Holy smokes folks - what the hell is happening to NBC?   This is the network my family grew up watching no matter what was on.   To this day, even though I can't stand it, I still have The Today Show on in the background over Good Morning America and whatever the heck the CBS show is called because my parents wouldn't have it any other way.

It's certainly no secret that cable and the internet have successfully segmented the broadcast television audience.  But realize just what's happened here.  From the first time that it was "Howdy Doody Time" screamed out in black and white - until Kristin shot JR in full color, the three broadcast networks accounted for 90% of all the prime-time television watched by Americans.  Basically, everybody watched, enjoyed, hated and talked about the same news and entertainment.

What Does Your CEO Need To Know? It's Your PROCESS - Not The PRODUCT (Part 2)

 So, yesterday, I kicked off this series by discussing some of the challenges we all face as digital marketers - and how we communicate to our CEO's.  Today, I'll cover the first idea - which is that we need to start looking at our marketing PROCESS, and not our PRODUCT.

David Meerman Scott - the author and great marketer has a wonderful bit of stagecraft with which he often opens up his talks.   He asks how many of the people in the room think their consumers care about their product.    As a few hands goes up, he corrects them and says "no - no one cares about your product or service.   All your buyers care about are themselves."   He goes on (much more eloquently than I will here) to advise how you can develop a much more conversational tone with a minimum of buzz words and discover how you might help your customers.  These customers will then, in turn, naturally gravitate to what you have to offer.  

What Does Your CEO Need To Know? (A 4 Part Series)

Welcome to the new decade.   Change is in the air.   Seth Godin talked about it a few days ago when he welcomed us to the decade of Frustration and Change.  And, it would seem the rest of the country agrees with him.  According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll 75% of Americans don't like the way things are going - and want things to change.

So, as marketers what does that mean to us. 

Social Media Marketing - A "Fair and Balanced" Look

 So, over the last week, I've been catching up on some reading, and I ran across this article in BusinessWeek called "Beware Social Media Snake Oil". 

The article is worth reading - but overall I think it resembles a familiar network's "fair and balanced" coverage (and yes I mean *that* kind of "fair and balanced") of Social Media and its relationship to marketing.  It is a highly selective set of criticisms - which basically starts by warning (rather breathlessly) that "there are "hordes of marketing 'experts' promoting the value of wikis, social networks and blogs."     But then goes on to basically use the orthodoxy of hucksters to define what Social Media Marketing is.  Therefore, the article concludes - in order to flush out the "snake oil salesmen" marketers must "shift the focus from promises to results".

Um, I have news for BusinessWeek.   Actually two... Yeah, Duh!

CMO? There's An App For That

There's a wonderful scene in Wall-E.  All humans are aboard a ship, where computers and robots take care of every need.  It's made the humans lazy, apathetic and blob-like.  Then, after Wall-e has helped to discover that there is actually plant life growing on Earth, the Captain of the ship decides that it's time to go back.  He argues with the Computerized Ship Autopilot - an unpersonal red "eye" computer.

The Captain: "Nothing. That's all anyone on this blasted ship has ever done. Nothing!"

Autopilot: "on the Axiom.. you will survive."  

Captain: "I don't want to just survive. I want to live." 

Now, don't get me wrong.  I love technology and I love Computer Science engineers. I've worked with them almost my entire career. In another life I wanted to be a developer -  with a focused passion for reducing things down to their most simplistic and most efficient state.  Where everything can be simplified down to an algorithmic state.  There's a "law" for everything.  I actually really do get excited when an engineer shows off how he's accomplished something in one line of code that used to take ten.

But two things struck me last week...

Omniture/comScore The Bigger Deal? Who Needs Accuracy, When You've Got Consistency

I think comScore's partnership with Omniture may actually turn out to be a bigger deal for online marketers than the Adobe acquisition.

No doubt, it's been a big couple of weeks for audience measurement.

First off, Adobe buys Omniture, and not but a few days later, comScore and Omniture announce a partnership to launch a unified audience measurement system.   If you missed it - basically they are combining comScore's method of analyzing data by measuring a panel of users, and Omniture's method of measuring data collected by the browser.  

But why is this a big deal?