Optimize & Prophesize

Category: Analytics

  • Brand Marketing in the Digital Age

    Brand is many things but at its core it is an emotional connection between a user and a product or service. That connection has its greatest impact at the experience level where an interaction between the user and the product or service takes place. So what is interactive marketing then if not branding? And how…

  • The Next Generation of Digital Marketing Agencies

    A few weeks ago I was listening to an interview with the President of a digital marketing agency conglomerate and heard the following: “You think, what do I want the consumers to do, and then you plan your campaign from there.” Here’s how I would rephrase the comment: “You think, what do consumers want to…

  • 5 Lessons From Multivariate Tests on Buttons

    Conventional wisdom from the Information Architecture and User Experience gurus tells us that buttons and calls to action should be the same across the user experience. The thinking is that messaging, shape, size and color are all elements that if consistent will allow users to locate and click buttons and calls-to-action more easily and more…

  • Google Pay Per Action Reaction

    With Google’s announcement that pay-per-action (PPA) ads are launching beta (on AdSense) the world of optimization and analytics may be forever changed, or not. As it works, you get to name your price and it will be Google that is measuring conversion and optimizing the serving of ads based on PPA. This becomes a real…

  • Buy Branded Keywords? A Case Study on Traffic, Conversion and RPV

    Part 3 of 3 This is the last part of my deep dive into a question that is asked quite often. Brand keywords have seemed to be a conundrum for many in the Marketing and Brandings worlds. This series of posts and research has yielded some interesting data. Like any good testing and optimization they…

  • 5 Lessons from Multivariate Tests on Google PPC Ads

    Search ads are the bridge of relevance between the keyword query and the landing page. They are a key factor in your Quality Score, affect the traffic to your site and thus your spend and budgets. They set user expectations for the landing page and influence conversion. At OTTO Digital we’ve been working with clients…

  • Marketing Bout: Data vs. The Gut

    There is a reason that humans will always be better marketers than algorithms. The human mind can process information and data and spit out predictive models based on the tangible and intangible person-to-person experiences that make up life. It is this knowledge that allows our minds to triumph over machines anytime a measure of creativity…

  • Marketing Darwinism: Is Anheuser-Busch’s $40M Gamble on Digital Content Moving Online Marketing Forward or Back?

    This Sunday New York Times Magazine will run a piece titled “Brew Tube” that focuses on Monday’s launch of Bud.tv, an effort of A&B’s marketing team to reach the young and wired demographic with a marketer owned channel of original digital content. I read the article with some skepticism as to the effect that this…

  • ROI Factors of Brand Keywords: Paid vs. Organic

    Part 2 of 3 In part 1 I discussed the thinking and strategy behind running tests on whether it was worth it for our client to have ads running on their brand keywords, especially in light of the recent Google changes to the result presentation. Would these clicks just end up going to the natural…

  • Google’s Use of Conversion Rates for Quality Score

    Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea provides a fascinating look at a recent Google patent application on ROI & Quality Score determination. In the application Google provides information and<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bragadocchio/340096133/”> a flow chart that makes clear the invention titled “Adjusting Ad Costs Using Document Performance or Document Collection Performance” factors quality score determination differently…

  • Marketing Speak

    I’ve been doing plenty of talking the past couple of weeks and I’ve been repeating a number of ideas. Forsaking humility, I thought that sharing what’s on my mind might make an interesting post. In no particular order: Contextual Relevance: Deliver relevance in the context of the user focus Sub-segments: Segmentation…at a whole other level…

  • Measuring and Optimizing Engagement: The Audible.com Case Study

    https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=9259&doc=adtech-ny-next-generation-strategies-for-ecommerce-the-audiblecom-case-study-9259-9996 You can measure engagement. More importantly, engagement can be optimized. Yesterday, at ad:tech New York I delivered the presentation above on work we just completed at OTTO Digital for Audible.com on the panel Next Generation Strategies for eCommerce, moderated by David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. The case study shows how we used multivariate and…

  • Google’s Website Optimizer: Optimization for the Masses

    I’ve been receiving lots of calls the past 24 hours about Google’s “release” of their multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Here are my thoughts: • Since you need to have Google Analytics to use the tool this immediately places the tool as a small to mid-market product. I’ve spoken about analytic platforms with…

  • R.E.M. Reshaping E-Metrics (or Revolutionizing E-Marketing)

    Marshall Sponder’s blog WebMetricsGuru had a post with comments from a recent Eric Peterson’s e-consultancy interview that caught my attention. The conversation is about the present difficulties for analytic vendors and display advertisers in the face of rich-internet applications (RIAs) and feeds as they continue to proliferate on the web. Sorry if I don’t shed…

  • Delivering Contextual Relevance Through Segmentation

    Mass marketing in the digital age means marketing to many segments of the entire mass. In fact, we all know the very idea of “mass marketing” is road kill. Technology allows us as marketers to understand the individual segments of our audience and deliver messages contextually relevant to each segment. In fact, segmentation is the…

  • Rocket Up Your ROI with Contextual Relevance

    Once you figure out how to deliver relevance to one of your key market segments I guarantee you’ll want to try again. And when you try it again you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it sooner. From beyond the universe to the planet OTTO, I present the ASTRO rules for delivering contextual relevance. 1. Analyze-Numbers…

  • Viral Vidiocy: The Agency.com Video

    So I finally watched the agency.com viral debacle. What struck me was that all the smart people that used to work there must have left. Agency.com seems like…well, not the sharpest tool in the shed. While they were spending their time learning how to make sandwiches and use a cash register, a smart agency would…

  • The Quality of Web Analytic Data. Or, why you need to be doing High Impact Segmentation

    Avinash Kaushik of Intuit had a great post recently on the poor quality of web analytic data. A side story to me was how much better the amount and quality of data we have for online marketing is over every other measured medium. As we look more and more towards this data and the quality…

  • Creative License is Dead. Long Live the Customer

    With all the talk about Advertising moving towards a more measurable and quantifiable future one thing that is almost always overlooked is the impact this has on creative design. The design skills and process necessary to execute great ad creative are changing. So too will be the role designers play in the ultimate success of…

  • Google’s Landing Page AdsBot

    Since when has Google become landing page experts? Google is claiming that their artificial intelligence AdsBot will determine what users will think about a landing page. This determination will impact your rank and cost-per-click that until now have only been affected by your own bid settings and searcher interest in your ads. Really they are…