Vote for marketing memes on the web

von | Apr 29, 2008 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Marketing, Online Advertising, SEO / SEA

I should have known. The chances of having an idea first are really slim. So someone, Alister, to be precise, came up with the idea to block the URL for Marketing Meme first. A URL that could be the meme-tracker of the marketing world, just as techmeme is the meme-tracker of the technology world.

Not sure when he came up with this, of course, it doesn’t say on the site. All it says is: your vote and support is needed here. And the post behind that link was written in December of last year (so I am probably only 5 months too late – which is a decade in internet terms). Now he is asking us from the marketing community to help him to get the guys from techmeme to setup a special service for the marketing industry:

I’d be happy to see some nice ongoing volume of inbound links from SEM Search, but honestly, I’d really like to see Gabe Rivera over at techmeme.com create a “marketingmeme.com“, that removes SEM/SEO/SMO/PR/etc stuff out of techmeme and puts it under its own “engine”, building off, say, Lee Odden’s list, with some fuzzy logic around that, finding other on-topic blogs as well.

So if you’re interested in having such a service (I am, for sure!), go over to this site and put your vote in the comments!

Average user clickfarms

von | Apr 1, 2008 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Marketing, Online Advertising

There is a standard joke around online advertising managers about the fear of those „chinese villages“ taking over one of your ad campaigns so that you receive the clicks you paid for, only all of them come from one and the same family (in China or India, or Eastern Europe or Antigua, etc. it doesn’t really matter).

But you don’t need to go very far away. Your next door neighbor might be part of a „click farm“. Even though he most likely never realised what he got himself into.

Just the other day I took a look at a site called OnlineTVRecorder.com (don’t want to give them any link credit). On that site you can record TV programms of any German TV Channel – most of which I wouldn’t even be able to access in this area of the country. You first record them, and then download and decode them. But you can only decode those that you „recorded“ in advance. This makes it similar to any VCR/DVD recorder and hence (I guess) a legal way of recording shows via the web.

So far so good. However, the system only works for you, when you pay per download with so called „good will points“. If you haven’t got enough points, you can’t download or decode any files.

And how do you get these points? There are two ways. Either you donate money, or you click on some of their ads. Yes, that’s right: you can click on the ads to receive good will points! You get points for clicks that advertisers pay a lot of money for (on aggregate).

I guess most users on this site aren’t fully aware of the fact that each of their clicks contributes to ripping of advertisers. Note: I am not saying „poor advertisers“ here! I am just saying that advertisers don’t get what they pay for when they signed the contract with these mediasites: intentional attention.

Clickworking is an interesting and positive trend, since it uses the minimal individual productivity of large crowds to achieve a large complex goal.

Clickfarming seems to be a dark side equivalent. Utilize the small contributions of a large crowd’s individuals who might not even (want to) realize that their few clicks are contributing to a large system of fraud.

I wonder how many other sites of this kind are out there? How much dubious content is paid for in this way? How many advertising campaigns bought on a pay-per-click basis have been corrupted by clickfarms like these?

If I was an advertiser and I saw one of my banners on one of those sites, I would ask my media agency or the publisher for my money back. And may be sue them.

Web 2.0 user statistics from Germany

von | Okt 24, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing

Some interesting facts for my German readers: There is a new research published by TNS Infratest about about the users of web 2.0 offers. According to this research the senders or creators of content are still amongst the younger audience, while the recipients and content consumers are amongst all age groups:

Während etwa ein Drittel (33 Prozent) der Verfasser von Beiträgen [von Wikipedia] unter 20 Jahren sind, liegt der Anteil der Leser, die 30 Jahre und älter sind, bei 65 Prozent.

Also with blogs we need to differentiate:

Hier sind 41 Prozent der Personen mit einem eigenen Blog unter 20 Jahre alt. Die Blog-Leser hingegen sind deutlich älter, bereits 35 Prozent sind über 40 Jahre alt, nur 20 Prozent sind unter 20 Jahren. „Das heißt, Blogs werden zwar auch von Gleichaltrigen gelesen aber gleichzeitig scheinen sie auch für Personen interessant zu sein, die nicht direkt in der Altersgruppe des Blog-Besitzers zu finden sind. Dennoch sind aber auch Erwachsene unter den Blog-Schreibern: Immerhin ein Viertel aller Blog-Besitzer sind über 40 Jahren“

Notable is also the difference of topics chosen by men and women:

Am häufigsten werden Weblogs als persönliches Tagebuch genutzt (61 Prozent), aber auch konkrete Inhalte wie Reise & Urlaub (30 Prozent) und Wissen & Lernen (24 Prozent) werden von den Bloggern thematisiert. Frauen nutzen ihren Blog häufiger als persönliches Tagebuch (76 Prozent der Blog-Besitzerinnen). Männer behandeln eher konkrete Themen, wie Computer & Software und Nachrichten & Politik. Die Themengebiete Wissen & Lernen und Reise & Urlaub sind bei beiden Geschlechtern in gleichem Maße beliebt (jeweils ca. 30 Prozent der Blog-Besitzer).

Here you can find a PDF with some (very few) Charts.

Very Recommendable: TEDTalks

von | Sep 30, 2006 | Blog, Digital Culture

There is one thing I would like to recommend to anyone interested in ideas & inspiration. TEDTalks is a podium for remarkable people who have done or are doing remarkable things. In the words of TED itself:

Each year, TED hosts some of the world’s most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience.

I found a range of fascinating talks there (and I still ain’t finished watching all of them). Sir Ken Robinson, for example is as inspirational as he is funny. Malcolm Gladwell speaks about things he also published in his book „blink“ (his presentation at TED is from 2004). There are also musicians, philosophers and many other people sharing their thoughts.

From a web perspective, there is Mena Trott, who started the blog-software and service company six apart with the software moveable type. And there is also Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia – a site that I increasingly enjoy nowadays. For researching, but also more and more for browsing.

If you want some inspirational ideas and thougts – don’t miss this.