Funnel Tip Blog

Last week, I woke up to a very disturbing site.  The blinking, grey ”?” folder of death appeared on my MacBook where I’d normally see a startup screen.  After a couple hours of restarting, rebooting & re-installing attempts, I finally gave in and made an appointment with the Mac service people, aka, the Genius Bar.  I’d say their customer service was adequate, especially considering I left thanking them after I’d been told my hard drive was shot. 

This is not a post to slam Apple’s service, nor their products, as I’m a proponent of both.  What struck me as interesting about this whole exchange was the lack of that horrible feeling you get when you realize you hadn’t backed up your data.  I hadn’t for this computer, but that sinking feeling never came. 

After a couple days, my MacBook was back with a new hard drive.  The thing was as blank as it had been right out of the box.  As I giddily started her up, the importance of Cloud Computing became clear.

All my music was gone!  No matter, I haven’t downloaded a song in months.  Why would I with iMeem, Pandora & Last.fm readily available with free, on-demand, legal music?

All my photos were gone!  Not a problem, I’ve got facebook and flickr keeping my photos alive and well.

All my documents were gone!  Initially thought this one might be a problem, until I remembered that just about all of my personal documents were Google Docs.  (Note: this was a personal computer, for work docs this becomes hairier, but you know you should be saving that stuff to your company’s server anyway).

All my programs were gone!  Slightly annoying, yes, and technically I did have to re-install a few of them, while I’ll be switching to some open source offerings for others.

… and you get the point.  What’s amazing to me is, most of those behaviors I’ve mentioned are very commonplace for today’s internet user, and in sum they represent quite a drastic shift toward the Cloud.  Your computer isn’t important anymore (save for hard-core gamers / graphic designers), it’s the connection to the evolving-in-real-time, growing-at-mind-bending-rates pool of knowledge online that’s critical.  Ever had your internet connection go out?  It leaves your fancy laptop pretty lame doesn’t it?  I’ll bet it won’t be long before the computer goes the way of the cell phone, becoming more or less a commodity while the service takes over as the focal point.  Apple / IBM / Dell / Intel –>  none of these hold the keys to the internet’s future.  That may just belong to… gulp… Comcast.  We can already see this happening as our phones become no less than internet access points on par with my Macbook, and the sales of netbooks (laptops used pretty much exclusively for web functions) skyrocket.

Ultimately, then, the question becomes, what implications will the Cloud have on marketers and advertisers.  It seems unlikely that “interruptive” methods of getting attention will have much traction in this evolving digital landscape.  Instead, marketers will need to become citizens of the Cloud, by providing desired services when sought & by engaging people on their terms.  Really it comes down to empowerment.  Brands who recognize A) that the consumer is in the driver’s seat, and B) that the best way to reach them is to give them the tools needed to fulfill their needs and wants on their schedule… those are the brands that will succeed.

September 2nd, 2009

On July 29th, the search marketing community was abuzz about the newly announced Microsoft-Yahoo search deal where Yahoo’s search results will be powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.  Provided the deal passes legal mustard, this search coalition would today account for 25-35% of the search market share (depending on who you ask), and potentially raise a legitimate no. 2 contender to Google’s head-and-shoulders dominance in search… but that’s all been covered.

Much more interesting, I think, will be the impact of this announcement on the behavior of search advertisers.  Big budget advertisers know that cost efficiencies can be found using Yahoo Search & AdCenter (not to mention tier 2 engines, content nets, and so on), but smaller budget search marketers will often limit themselves to Google’s Adwords product.  There could be any number of factors contributing to this phenomenon, from volume considerations to pure name-recognition, but I’d hypothesize that a big piece to that puzzle is the ease of use within the Adwords user interface.  

Therein lies the brilliance of Adwords.  Google has made it so easy for long-tail advertisers to set up accounts and watch the traffic come cheaply rolling in that there are virtually no pain points to doing so.  Whether this new partnership will result in a smoother interface for prospective advertisers will go a long way toward determining whether that critical long-tail will take the plunge.   For all the hype (and advertising investment) around the Bing launch and all the buzz about the consolidation; please, MicroHoo, keep the long-tail advertiser in mind.  Search share is not everything.

Check out Chris Anderson’s original article on the long-tail for more info on the concept of long-tail.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new feature for their Bing engine allowing searchers to share their results via social networks.  In a nod to the techie crowd (and Dr. Seuss to a certain extent), they have coined this feature “Ping.”  While Bing & Ping is not about to replace the idea of web searching & sharing in my lexicon anytime soon, this announcement seems to place Bing in the lead on socializing search.  

Now, the overall utility on Ping is debatable, but if there was any doubt left that Microsoft is betting on a search/social hybrid emerging as a mainstream platform for navigating the web, it’s pretty much gone.  Check out BingTweets.com for exhibit B.  No one will argue that Google isn’t keeping busy enough these days, but it seems a bit odd that big G has not opted to really attack this whitespace, considering Microsoft really appears to be.

From a marketer’s perspective, the Ping feature has the potential to deliver the social graph-type targeting that companies like media 6 are trying to crack.  Imagine Mike and I are pals, and I know that Mike really loves big, white, Ray-Ban sunglasses.  Really.  Now imagine that I’ve just hopped into my car, having left my pair of somewhat-less-obtrusive sunglasses on the seat, and now find myself in want of shades. 

After “Binging” the phrase “sunglasses special offer” on my iPhone, I’m given a search result informing me about a 25% off downloadable coupon on a new pair.  Nice, so I’m covered, and they’ve even got UV protection.  Sweet!  I notice the Ping feature and pass that result over to Mike, because I’m such a nice guy, and he’s equally overjoyed.  I get social cred for passing on a great deal, Ray-Bay gets a pair of sales out of what would have otherwise been one.  Seems to be win-win.

In truth, however, the biggest winner in this story might just be Bing itself.  Consider what the engine now knows about Mike and I.  Things Bing now knows: we were both at one point interested in sunglasses, we were both receptive to digital incentives, our location.  Perhaps most importantly, Bing knows that Mike had made a purchase or at least purchase consideration because of our social graph.  Privacy considerations set aside, Ping’s potential impact on behavioral targeting online could be game-changing.

Brandon