Optimize & Prophesize

Category: User Experience

  • How Semantic Ad Apps Deliver Relevance to Implicit, Explicit & Latent Intent

    Every online endeavor starts with a goal. In search that goals is often explicit. In content that goal becomes much more implicit. What’s important to note is that just because a person is in content it doesn’t mean their goal is lost or not as important as it was in search. People spend much more…

  • Mashing Up the Value of Ads & Content

    What if online ads were so useful and informative that people actually came to content sites to see the ads as much as they did to see the content? Far fetched? Maybe not so far or fetched. We know that ads are a big draw for consumers around events like the Super Bowl and the…

  • 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…

  • The Psychology of Optimization

    I saw this presentation from Tara Hunt on Dave Kellogg’s blog. Dave is CEO of Mark Logic where they are doing some amazing things with XML and content management. In any case, this preso is exceptional. It touches on a number of optimization factors that I feel very strongly about and incorporate whenever possible, namely…

  • The Dawn of Semantic Ads

    Peer39 announced Friday their release of SemanticMatch™ ad technology. A few months ago I had an opportunity to preview SemanticMatch with Peer39’s CMO James Oppenheim. It further validated for me the value that is created using semantic technology to deliver relevant content in a context that will create consumer intent. This announcement follows on the…

  • 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…

  • Using APIs to Mashup Ads & Landing Pages

    After a decade optimizing landing page after landing page and tons of websites there are two things that I can always count on to improve conversion rates. One is giving users more control to refine their intent in contextually relevant ways. The other is bringing the products or services closer to users in their experience.…

  • Intelligent Web: Where Search & Display Advertising Meet

    This past Tuesday at SMX Advanced in Seattle, I presented my ideas and work relating to how the Intelligent Web will fundamentally change and realize the promise of digital marketing. In this post I expand the points and provide my presentation. Since the inception of online display advertising it has been mismatched with the web.…

  • How Semantic & Intelligent Web are Changing Advertising

    Alex Iskold at ReadWriteWeb has a post on Semantic Search: “The Myth and Reality” that for the first time made me able to clearly express the benefits of semantic search succinctly. My comment on his post: The value in semantic search is simply about creating ontologies that allow for results refinement that can deliver a…

  • Macy’s Magical Online Disappearing Act

    In today’s Wall Street Journal Macy’s CMO and Chairman of the Online Division Peter Sachse talks about Search Marketing. It’s rare to hear a CMO of a major retailer discuss search marketing so it was with great interest that I read his comments. WSJ: How do you measure the effectiveness of search marketing? Mr. Sachse:…

  • Expert Guide to Multivariate Testing Success

    I’ve been doing MVT for three years across landing pages and websites with over 40 clients like Citibank, Disney, Esurance, H&R Block, Inuit, Microsoft and T-Mobile. As the Founder & former Chief Strategy Officer of OTTO Digital, the services division of the market-leading MVT tool, Offermatica (now Omniture Test&Target) I’ve authored many case studies on…

  • Setting Up a Great Multivariate Test

    Part 5 in my MVT series will focus on the key considerations and decisions for setting up your multivariate test so that you get the most learning and best results possible. I’m not going to get too technical here since I am not a developer however I want to share what I feel will ensure…

  • 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…

  • On-Site Targeting: Crawl, Walk, Run Strategy

    This is the presentation I gave at the Web Analytics Wednesday last month in Cambridge, MA. I had a great time there and was lucky enough to be in Boston again so I could catch this month’s WAW held at Monster.com. There are some pretty cool things happening in Boston around analytics. One company to…

  • This Landing Page is a Joke

    This experience hurts Toyota’s brand in so many ways and it is a case study in poor landing page optimization. I have no problem with funny ads. Humor can create interest and attention — a very hard thing to do in this day and age. However, if you want to play a joke on consumers…

  • The $130 Billion Dollar Landing Page

    Google is a fully digital company. Everything Google has done and is today revolves around the web. Google is also by every account one of the top 3 brands in the world. Until billboards this past year Google has never spent a dollar on advertising. No TV, no print, no radio, No banners, no search…

  • Chris Anderson on the Two Dimensions of Quality

    There have been a few occasions where clients have taken my page layout and messaging work in powerpoint, skipped the design stage altogether and converted these glorified wireframes to HTML. One time it was spite, another time it was money (isn’t this an Eagles song) and another time it was time. In all three events…

  • Presentation on Branding & Strategy

    SlideShare is a site I’ve used and enjoyed since it was launched. In fact, since SlideShare launched I’ve uploaded every conference presentation I’ve given. It’s also a great way to get a pulse of thoughts and opinions pertaining to many subjects, especially digital. Yesterday I came across this deck below. Take 10 minutes out of…

  • Platforms, Applications and the Future of Digital Marketing

    REST APIs, Rules and Relevance In the user controlled medium that is digital advertising success is predicated on delivering relevance. Nowhere is this exemplified better than the success of search where there is a data input (rule 1) and multiple additional rules (geo and behavioral) that results in the delivery of content believed to be…

  • Can Google Make You Notice Ads?

    128 million unique people a month use Google. 53 million uniques a month use YouTube (an amazing 92% increase since Google’s acquisition a year ago). With millions of page views a day from people across these two properties you work that to your advantage. There has been conjecture about the cross-property strategies that Google may…