Customer World

Accountable Mass Media

Well, don't these words - Accountable & Mass media present an irony of sorts to you? 

Yes, surely this has been the way things have been happening for last 3-4 decades. Mass marketing has never been accountable. It's never been addressable 'one household at a time' too. Either, it was not possible or it was too expensive to do it. Technology is surely breaking down these myths and introducing possibilities like never before. Take a look at how this happening or expected to unfold in the near future:

"Since May, Google has been selling ads on the 125 national satellite channels distributed by EchoStar Communications’ DISH Network. Cable networks routinely provide distributors with a few minutes each hour for local commercials; Google is responsible for a portion of EchoStar’s local time and creates an online auction market for it.

Google then analyzes the data from set-top boxes to determine exactly which ads were watched or skipped, with a second-by-second breakdown. With Nielsen’s help, Google will begin to take that information and overlay sampling-based ratings, adding a rich demographic layer to the raw numbers that EchoStar provides."

The reports from Google can pinpoint the moment when viewers most commonly changed the channel, potentially helping marketers shape the creative work on their commercials. For instance, if viewers are turning the channel after seven seconds, the agency might revisit the opening of the ad.

“We see a future in which, when you sit down in front of your television set, you will see ads that are more relevant for you,” said Mr. Steib of Google. “When we make advertisements more relevant to viewers, inventory becomes more valuable and the return on investment is much higher for advertisers.”

Long tail redefines the role for mass media

At Ad:tech, Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine is his keynote address spoke about this topic:

The major theme of Anderson's speech was the notion mass media was an anomaly and our current world of fragmentation, niche interests and the resulting Long Tail is the norm. Before mass media existed, humans naturally fell into small niches caused partially by geographic separation and partially by natural individual interests. Mass media temporarily pulled together people who, given natural individuality, wouldn't normally find themselves together.

With the rise of the Internet, social media, online retail and the proliferation of every possible niche topic, people have returned to the natural state of things. This doesn't mean mass media is dead. It's not. It still plays an important role but its monopolistic hold on people is fast eroding.

Anderson calls this the "radical redistribution" of consumption or the fragmentation of retail markets. People are buying more but less of the same thing. They are suiting their individuality instead of buying what everyone else buys because it was the only thing marketed or distributed.

And in a nod to the socialization of media and the consumer control of it, Anderson offered up an important piece of wisdom: Your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what Google says it is. Indeed.

Source: Adrants

Making search customer-centric

Alex Iskold has a great post on Read/Write web on how search needs to get a lot more customer-focussed. The key take-out for me from the post is :

• The 'simplicity of thinking' one needs to have when developing products or services.
• It's about analysing 'customer interactions' and customer behaviour' first and then applying them to products or technologies.
• It's the easy usability of the product or service that will determine acceptance and adoption.

Alex writes:

What is perfect search?

It is interesting to ask: What do we expect when we enter a term into a search box? Ideally, we'd like to get the perfect answer right away. Often, we have an idea what that perfect answer should be, and when computer does not get it for us we are disappointed. But are we being reasonable? Can we expect the "perfect" answer all the time?

Consider for example, our interactions with an Information clerk at the mall. When we ask for a location of a store, she may or may not give us the "perfect" answer. She might not know where this store is, she might not understand us or we may not understand what she said. So for many reasons we may not get the "perfect" answer right away.

What is qualitatively different between our experience with the Information clerk vs. a search engine is that with the clerk we have a dialog. When she does not understand what we asked, she has a chance, to say Excuse me, what do you mean?. Google does not do that, it just gives us the results. If we do not like the answer we have to start from scratch.

The problem is that human interactions are fundamentally iterative, while our interactions with computers are mostly stateless. Perhaps we could get to the perfect search results if we could have a dialog with the computer? Clustering technologies, particularly the one offered by Clusty, give computer a chance to clarify: Excuse me, when you searched for Alex Iskold, did you mean to look for Read/Write Web or AdaptiveBlue or perhaps you where looking for static analysis tools that Alex worked on while at IBM?.