Optimize & Prophesize

Category: Applications

  • Busy Being Born: Creative Technology & Analytics

    Twice in the past week I have had conversations about the creative use of technology. My point was that technology by itself has all the elements necessary for creativity to flourish. Coding is creative. The web has progressed to date only because of those who thought about technology from a creative perspective. It’s something many…

  • Speaking and Clinic at SES New York

    Next week Search Engine Strategies rolls into my home turf and I’ll be involved in a couple of ways. On Tuesday March 24th in the Expo Hall I will running an audience based clinic. 3:00pm Expo Hall: CPA Optimization StationWith advertising dollars more accountable than ever optimizing your Cost Per Acquisition or Cost per Action…

  • Will New OPA Creative Sizes Help Redefine Display?

    I’ve been pretty adamant that new creative sizes were needed to help advertisers so when I woke up this morning to see the OPA has announced three new ad sizes I was thrilled. Clearly my excitement has not been matched by a lot a folks who see this as “shouting louder” and in fact if…

  • Search Becomes the Display Operating System

    I first wrote about the idea of search strategies working in display to deliver more relevant ads two years ago. In the ensuing two years as followers of this blog know I’ve become passionate about the opportunity to build creative technology that makes display ads more relevant. One advantage I have working on these solutions…

  • Advanced Landing Pages – SMX West

    For years, first with javascript testing and content targeting tools and now adding APIs and semantic technology, I have maintained that landing pages are the most advanced forms of digital marketing — the ultimate marriage of technology with creative. So it was great to finally get an “advanced” landing pages session on the schedule this…

  • Up Close with YouTube – SMX West

    I love YouTube and have written about it extensively on this blog so I was really excited to participate and present on this session at SMX. My highlight was hearing from Matt Liu, a pre-GOOG YouTuber about how YT is starting to tackle advertising. I really expect YT as a media and ad channel to…

  • Misguided Notions: A Study of Value Creation in Real-Time Search

    This past week has seen a ton of hype that real-time search is different. That the content creation and behaviors expressed and implied are fundamentally new and exclusive to places like Twitter and mining this data has incredible potential. Having spent a decade in search and the last four years working with dynamic content, APIs and…

  • @jonathanmendez now live on Twitter

    It took a year of observation but I’ve decided that even though I could continue working with and evangelizing APIs & real-time web and not be on Twitter, it was starting to feel weird. I mean c'mon, how would you feel buying a Mercedes then finding out the owner of the dealership drives a Pontiac?…

  • Optimize Randomness to Deliver Relevance

    The web is never ending path of recovery and discovery. This is what we’re optimizing! Yet we are wired for randomness. Radio, mix tapes, DJ’s, Pandora. Music proves our love of randomness. The sense of discovery fulfills a basic human need. We achieve further fulfillment from enlightening others to our discoveries. The question then becomes…how…

  • Favorite Thing: Posts & Presos of 2008

    "I think think, I think think, I think think, once in a while" -Paul Westerberg If you missed my blog this year or just want a quick summary of my favorite posts and presentations see below  - in full fledged chronological order! Presentations: On-Site Targeting: Crawl, Walk, Run Strategy AdMonsters Keynote: Can Display Advertising Survive the Web?…

  • Social & Ad Opportunities in Semantic Technology

    On the heels of my mini debate with Charlene Li over on her great blog about the role of targeting based on personal behavior rules vs. content rules (or the battle for the future of advertising 🙂 this morning the venerable Stephen Arnold’s also great blog alerted me to an interview on Yahoo! Search Blog…

  • Lessons in Digital Content Creation & Technology from Search Advertising

    Virginia Heffernan has an interesting piece in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine. The premise is that the new ways content is distributed and displayed calls for new types of content rather than trying to retrofit traditional content forms into the digital space. Of course this is true. Heffernan focuses her article on…well, article content (specifically magazines).…

  • AdMonsters Keynote: Can Display Advertising Survive the Web?

    This past Thursday in New York I gave the keynote address at the AdMonsters Leadership Council. If you’re not familiar with AdMonsters they are not monsters at all, but a fantastic professional organization for people in ad operations. What is Ad Operations? These are the smart people in the world of display. Ad ops traffic…

  • Metallica Optimizes B(r)and for Digital

    There are great content distribution lessons to be learned by watching the digital music space. Likewise, these content creators can also teach us quite a bit about brand building. A short piece in Brand Republic about Metallica’s new album caught my attention. I was especially interested in the excerpt below. It touches on optimizing the…

  • September Speaking Gigs: OMMA Global and AdMonsters Keynote

    At OMMA Global I’m excited and honored to be moderating and speaking on the first Ad industry conference panel ever on Semantic Advertising. Joining me are the two leaders of this emerging technology. Why Semantic Ads Will Save Display Friday 9/19 4:15pm – 5:00pm Session Description: Semantic technology is quickly redefining display advertising by creating…

  • Can Advertising Survive the Web?

    Reckoning A decade ago it was real easy for media companies, agencies and advertisers to simply transferred their revenue models online and “adify” the web with banners. Now comes word that the businesses that make their money from display ads are facing hard times. The fault of the economy? Nah, display ads do not work…

  • Gary Busey Viral Video Campaign Rawks!

    Congrats to my client GotVMail. The viral video campaign launched yesterday Gary Busey on Business is getting some great reviews and it’s only Day 2: Gawker Adfreak Make the Logo Bigger Here’s one of my personal favs. Rave on!

  • Viral Marketing with Video Widgets

    Since blogging is a key viral driver of Social Media Optimization I wanted to share our latest RAMP project. Working with GotVMail (as well as being a customer 🙂 RAMP helped strategize, build, deploy and optimize a widget and supporting experiences for their Gary Busey on Business viral marketing campaign being launched today. That’s right,…

  • WidgetWebExpo Presentation on Ad Applications

    Speaking at WidgetWebExpo yesterday on advertising applications reminded me of a talk I did three years ago at ad:tech on landing page optimization and multivariate testing. There were a handful of people in the room that day in 2005 and even though I had a case study it was mostly evangelizing to a curious few.…

  • The Sleeping Giant: Ad Factors in Conversion Rates & ROI

    If you’ve done multivariate tests across AdWords to a single landing page in order to optimize the ad you know a little known truth about conversion rate optimization from media that not many realize. The ad creative (alone) can have an enormous factor of influence on conversion rates. I’ve also seen results from multivariate tests…