Optimize & Prophesize

Category: Applications

  • Speaking on Landing Page Optimization & Widget Ads

    I have a couple of upcoming speaking engagements on landing page optimization. If you’re going to be attending shoot me an email and let’s meet-up. MediaPost Search Insider Summit May 18th-21st Captiva Island, Fl SMX Advanced June 3rd,4th Seattle, WA Also, I’m very excited that I was just asked to speak at the WidgetWebExpo. I’ll…

  • Adobe Moves Towards Open Source Flash

    Adobe is removing all licensing restrictions from Flash and creating the “Open Screen Project.” This is huge news and a giant step forward toward truly open source Flash. They can’t be happy over in Redmond. From Adobe’s CEO: “A consistent, more open platform for developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the user experience.” The…

  • RAMP Digital’s First Steps

    The first two months of RAMP have been glorious insanity. Besides continued success with Landing Page Optimization and testing I’m focused on a few core digital marketing areas where RAMP will change the world and define next-gen digital agency services. Most of these changes and leadership will revolve around optimized marketing solutions RAMP is creating…

  • The Power of Brand to Influence Outcomes or Why Brands Will Always Rule Digital

    We all know power has shifted in the marketplace to consumers. Consumers have a more active and faster growing voice than ever before in the ultimate success of products and services. We wield this power through reviews, recommendations, social networks, message boards, blogs and most importantly our digital actions – quantified and delivered to marketers…

  • iTuning Madison Avenue

    Facebook’s hiring of Sheryl Sandberg who helped build Adwords is another big step forward on the path of media buying automation and optimization. In two years everyone will be within reach for every brand and business large or small. It will all be about targeting. Google, MSFT, FIM and Facebook, who between them touch just…

  • RAMP is Born to Run

    Two and a half weeks. That’s all it’s been since I left to start my own company for the third time in the past decade. In that brief period I’ve signed four clients including leaders in Social Media, B2B Services, Politics and Auto. Every day is filled with talking to prospects, potential investors, potential employees,…

  • Moving On from OTTO/Offermatica/Omniture

    In March of 2006 when I met with Matt and Jamie Roche, CEO & President of Offermatica, we agreed that the market was not ready for OTTO Digital. That didn’t stop us – it inspired us. We had an opportunity to create something groundbreaking and we were confident the market would catch-up to us. How…

  • B2B Social Networks – Yes!

    On Tuesday I was interviewed by The Denver Post for an piece on Social Networks in the B2B space. The very next day I saw this poll on where Social Networks have the greatest business opportunity from participants and attendees (mostly VCs & C-level execs) at this week’s AlwaysOn conference. I was pretty shocked at…

  • The Brand Optimization Revolution – The Metrics are Coming! The Metrics are Coming!

    A common trait I find among many “red-coat” marketers is a lack of respect for the collective intelligence of consumers. This expresses itself in many ways. One is the “we know what our users want” mindset. Another is the Boston/NY-SF/LA view that folks in Middle America are unsophisticated and stupid. These attitudes are constantly reflected…

  • Why We Need Many Metrics to Answer the Same Two Questions

    One of the things that has drawn my ire recently is the shouts from agencies, media buyers and advertisers that more ad spend would come into digital if there just weren’t so many metrics and tools for gathering analytics. I have news for them. The spend is coming and nothing will stop it. Digital is…

  • Optimizing Viral Marketing

    On the face of it, viral marketing optimization (VMO) bears little resemblance to more established digital marketing practices. In retail and lead generation the basic principle to optimizing conversion is long established as driving people into the funnel and then pushing them down it. Viral Marketing turns this funnel upside down. The viral marketing end…

  • Creating Intent in Digital Media – Part 2 & 3

    Part 1 focused on three types of digital media and cross-media and looked at what the future may hold for intent creation in each. Part 2 looks strategically at creating intent and Part 3 is a case study. Goals and Intentions For the most part, people are consistently in goal or intent (I use these…

  • iPod Touch Commercial – Democratized Creative Hits Prime Time

    In case you haven’t seen it here is the new iPod Touch commercial that was created by an 18 year old Apple fan Nick Haley from the UK, put on YouTube, discovered by Apple and is now being used for a National Television Campaign. Nick mashuped some video from apple.com, added a soundtrack and edited…

  • Creating Intent in Digital Media

    In Part 1 I will look at three types of digital media and cross-media and see what the future may hold for intent creation. Next week in Part 2 I will focus on using creative and technology in synergy to optimize intent creation. The idea of creating intent is one of the touchstones of marketing…

  • Google vs. Facebook – Who Will Know More About You?

    “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?‘” – Eric Schmidt, Google CEO May, 2007 Never underestimate Google. After driving the price of Microsoft’s investment up with what I believe was little real intention of partnering…

  • Facebook Flyers Pro Taking Off

    Over the past month Facebook launched its Flyers Pro CPC (cost per click) advertising solution. This adds CPC advertising to Facebook’s existing Flyers Basic CPM solution, their Microsoft banner solution and sponsored deals. Whatever deal FB is about to announce tomorrow their valuation is sure to be helped by the very existence of Flyers Pro.…

  • Two Days in the Facebook Gold Rush

    I spent the past two days in Silicon Valley immersed in the world of Facebook Application Developers (I can’t resist the temptation to call them FADs) and Venture Capitalists. This culture shock was courtesy of being invited to speak on Metrics & Targeting at the awesome CommunityNext Platform Conference. Congrats to Noah Kagan and Andrew…

  • A Digital Marketing Lesson from Wall Street’s Woes

    As the New York Times points out in Sunday’s Business section the recent collapse of the stock and bond markets has much to do with the automated black-box systems of hedge funds whose algorithms are seeing behavior that despite all their statistical modeling has no precedent. The automated systems have failed and it’s now people…

  • Testing & Personalization Kill Best Practices

    Back in October of last year I wrote about lazy marketing or deciding to implement creative and design strategies based on so called best practices. Last week MarketingShepa published a case study of work we did with a client on button testing that once again proved that even for buttons, best practices need to give…

  • Behavioral Targeting is Not Just Banners

    Over the last year I’ve become immersed in the world of Behavioral Targeting (or BT as insiders refer to it). Of course, in many respects I’ve been doing BT for a long time. The key components that make up the qualitative and quantitative aspects of BT; segmentation, targeted creative, testing, and analytics are all built…