Optimize & Prophesize

Category: Display

  • API Battle Plans: Fighting for Next

    We have reached maturation point with APIs where the three core components of the web experience – content, utility & data – are becoming readily available via API delivery. The implication of this growth is nothing less than the next web. A smarter web that delivers improved relevance, a better experience and expanded revenue generation…

  • Transcendence: The Power of Publishing is Marketing

    This is getting tired. Recent comments by Jim Spanfeller and remarks at yesterday’s hearing on The Future of Journalism are just the latest show of disregard for the major changes that have taken place in the digital medium over the past five years. As Grove said about technology, only the paranoid survive. Publishers haven’t been…

  • Google Stripping Referring URL Parameters Will Leave Many Naked

    Back in early February Google did a little test. It decided to test an AJAX SERP. This meant Google sent natural search result traffic to sites without any passing identifying parameters except the top-level domain google.com. Message Boards and Blogs lit up immediately. They stopped the test (to 10% of traffic) quickly but in March seemed…

  • 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…

  • SES Presentation: Search Becomes the Display OS

    75% of the audience was agencies and amazingly 80% of those people were running both Search and Display campaigns. As my fellow presenter Scott Rafer has noted on more than one occasion the falling cost of Display can bring back better returns than search. Believe it! I saw it myself three times this week for…

  • Google Will Own Realtime Search by Indexing, Filtering and Ranking Tweets Better than Twitter

    The conventional thinking now is that Twitter’s search will spell trouble for Google. I believe that it will be Google that will be the first to filter tweets and deliver useful, relevant results sets. This seems so obvious yet I have not seen anyone write about it yet. Maybe the Twitterati is high on their…

  • 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…

  • Interviewed by Aaron Wall at SEO Book

    Aaron Wall is a legend in SEO and his site SEO Book gets about 1 million uniques a month so I was really psyched when he asked to interview me. Aaron asked some really thought provoking questions and we covered everything from my career path, to what I’m working on now, to the future of…

  • 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…

  • Why Is Recovery.gov Making Online Access to ARRA Difficult?

    Note: This post has bias to no political party — other than the optimizers of freedom. There has to be a reason that the good folks at recovery.gov want to make it difficult to view the full ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) bill. First, I had to fish around before finding the actual law that…

  • 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?…

  • WTF? IAB Says Performance is a Bad Thing for Online Ads

    I was really interested this morning when I saw that the IAB is making an effort to combat "creative shabbiness" in display. Unfortunately it was not what I expected to read. As someone who has spent a decade building and optimizing creative for the web and has worked with six of the top eleven brands…

  • Ads as Content – Content as Ads

    It is hard to believe but we are ONLY 5 years into search advertising reaching critical mass. In the blink of an eye it has emerged as one of the world’s most disruptive and successful technology initiatives. Google alone made over $20B in revenue from it last year. For me the key takeaway for the…

  • New York Times Landing Pages: All the Irrelevance That Fits the Pixels

    I’ve often used my hometown paper, The New York Times, to exemplify the disconnect between digital publisher content strategy, the goals of visitors and the resultant impact on advertising. The root of this disconnect is the way search, social media and the landing experience fracture content hierarchies. Behavior has changed and so too must the…

  • 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?…