by Ryan Lane on July 6, 2009
Like my previous post about Social Technologies I wanted to put together a better classification model in place for digital marketing. Often it seems terms are thrown around without much standardization.
Personalization
- Behavioral Targeting
- IP Targeting
- Dynamic Content Delivery
- Research
- Network Based Targeting
- Segmentation
Search
- SEO / Organic Search
- Vertical Search
- Paid Search
- Search Engine Marketing
- Syndicated Search
Site Optimization
- Creative Message Optimization
- Landing Page Optimization
- Site Path Optimization
- Targeted Incentives
- Partner Site Integration
Platform Agnostic Content
- Podcast & Video Casts
- Web Video / VOD
- Syndicated / Embeddable Content
- RSS Feeds
- Mobile Devices
- Home Theater PC / DVR
- Personal Content Stores
- In-game (Xbox)
Online Advertising
- Display
- text links
- rich media
- mobile
by Ryan Lane on July 2, 2009
I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now and what we really need is a Twitter affiliate ad network like service. I often post tweets about products I like or things that I find interesting. In most cases that is valuable to those companies. I’ve done some small tests with my twitter account @futileboy and found that my click through is very high for each post about 7% of my followers click my links. Which is a much higher number then online ads get. Of course that’s because my links are not always trying to sell something. On twitter if you stop being genuine the people see that and stop following you.
Aside from all that, it would be great if there was service for users of twitter to make a little money off of their recommendations. What I would like to see is a service that’s sort of like Google Adsense, but instead of suggested ads, a user would type in the product they are about to promote and then if available receive a URL with their code and the clients in it. along with a short URL version that’s easy to post to Twitter.
Companies could go one step further with this, on demand adverting, and even offer discounts to top influencer’s followers. Which in turn would give the tweeter more street cred. Just imagine a tweet from someone you follow pointing out a product you’re interested in and a discount if you click the link now. This may be just enough to push someone in to purchasing.
Would this service get abused? OF course it will. However the natural filtering process of over advertising will ultimately make authentic influencers stand out.
Sure it’s a little evil, but if someone is willing to pay for it and someone is willing to take that money in the offer then the service should exist.
by Ryan Lane on October 8, 2008
Every Web site has a purpose. Yours may have more than one.
Your Web site is a collection of possible types of content and applications. The purpose of your site can be identified by thinking about your main business objectives and answering a couple of key questions:
- What are you trying to accomplish on the site?
- Why are customers coming to your website?
Let’s walk through a couple of examples. If your main goal is to achieve and maintain customer satisfaction, your site is likely a Support site. If however, your main objective is to enable the direct sale of products and services, then your site is likely a Commerce site.
Web Purposes will help those of you in the web space measure the business value of your activities vis-à-vis your business objectives and facilitate tracking of your site’s success metrics.
Review the following Web Purposes to see which apply to your Web site.
- Ad Revenue
- Commerce
- Community
- Extension of Product
- Marketing Communications
- Public Relations
- Self-Service / Support
- Subscription
[click to continue…]
by Ryan Lane on August 8, 2008
You’ve all seen them before on your mail and packages. They are starting to turn up all over the place. It’s also becoming a much more complicated landscape. There are more and more types of two-dimensional matrix barcode appearing all the time. The majority of them are consisting of black and white square modules arranged in either a square or rectangular pattern, which gives them that television static look. They are however no longer limited to just black & white or square in shape. There are others that look more like crop circles, some that actually have pictures in them and some based on color triangles.
Microsoft has introduced their own version that they call the High Capacity Color Barcode. This version has both a 4 color and 8 color version that offer a much more data storage.
An interesting aspect to the High Capacity Color Barcode is that is supports RSA signatures. With it’s long list of features and data density it’s your best option for actually storing information that needs to be physically printed on a surface. The only challenge with Microsoft’s solution is that there isn’t any easy way to use them yet. As of this time there are no public readers available for cell phones or online.
However with today’s always online technology and readers based in cellphone, I’m personally interested in ShotCode’s solution. They are focusing on mobile tagging that work sort of like a TinyURL in that they only contain a link to a URL. To use a ShotCode you can use generate one for free on their site. To decode you can Download a ShotCode mobile barcode reader from their site or choose from a few option for the iPhone from the App store.
It’s interesting to see how these codes are starting to take off in general use. The site Semapedia is all about creating links between real world objects and Wikipedia. On their site you can enter in the Wikipedia URLs and create a DIY printable sticker sheet, that you can then go and tag objects with. Everyone should go and create some and stick them on stuff.
The QR Codes seem to have become the most used in advertising right now thanks to their success in Japan. It’s the code that I myself have noticed more and more in public spaces and adds.
So which one is the best? For me it’s the one that is easiest and cheapest to create and scan back in. For that I’m leaning on the QR Code at the top of the list followed by DataMatrix and the ShotCode. I’m interested in using the HCCB, but will have to wait.
Here’s a little sample of some of the matrix codes I could find:
