Online to Offline - A Small Lesson

We online marketers track everything. When sending emails we track how many were delivered, how many were opened and then what got clicked on in the actual copy. We even follow that click to it's destination and then determine what happened from there. Did you stay on the site? Did she look at more pages? What else did he click on. And on and on.

Most email advertisements are designed to offer a consumer a special offer of some kind and entice them to buy right there online. The email may advertise a discount on a product, a two for one or something similar. The links in that email will usually take the consumer to a special page (we call it a "landing page") where they can read the details of the offer and from there make a purchase. If that purchase does not take place the consumer is usually put back into rotation to receive a followup email enticing them to reconsider taking advantage of the offer.

Measuring the effectiveness of this campaign is easy if the product can only be purchased online. But what about products that can be purchased online or offline, at a third party retailer let's say? Like a book, for example. This is the most difficult task in online marketing, determining what the user did offline after receiving that email or visiting a site.

Case in point. I subscribe to free email delivered reports on geo-political intelligence from Stratfor. If you are a newshound like me you will find this service quite indispensable to understanding the realities behind world events. Obviously, this service is offered to entice me into purchasing a full subscription. If the insights provided were critical to my business I would sign up in a heartbeat, as the cost is quite reasonable. But for my needs, the free service is great and I pay it back by talking it up in places like my blog.

But is Stratfor making any real money off of me? They do send me emails form time to time promoting owner George Friedman's books like The Next Hundred Years and The Next Decade. The offers come in attractive packages of a free copy of one or the other plus some reports, if I sign up for a year and so on. I haven't taken advantage of these offers for reasons already stated. However, unless Borders or Amazon is sharing my name, Stratfor is actually unaware that I have been effectively monetized to the point that I have purchased George Friedman's The Next One Hundred Years at Borders and just recently The Next Decade at Amazon for my Kindle.

This is an example of how online marketing drives offline purchases. But, unless the retailers are sharing my name, Stratfor has no idea that I own these books and thus no way of knowing if their email marketing is working.

Online to offline tracking is always somewhat of a puzzle. But, there are simple methods like offering coupons and even simply asking customers about their purchases. In Stratfor's case, determining whether or not customers have purchased books at offline retail sites may not be vital to their marketing intelligence. But, if it is and they just haven't gotten around to tracking yet, then I am a lesson to them and others. I may not respond to your direct online offers - but I am buying.

Purchase George Friedman's Books at Amazon.com (I am an Amazon Affiliate so I make a couple bucks on each purchase - just disclosin')

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century


The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going

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Follow Me, But Not To Closely

Attempts to regulate the Internet keep coming from all angles. China regularly blocks web sites and makes certain political searches illegal. Iran blocked Twitterings during election protests. Egypt in the midst of street revolution became the first nation to shut down the Internet entirely. In America we concentrate more on the esoteric (at least to the public) like Net Neutrality and restricting Behavioral Advertising. The reality though, is that the Internet is not the land of the free anymore. And even with that knowledge marketers and entrepreneurs have tried to keep the Web an absolute free market. However, because online marketing is so technology dependent, in it's efforts to bring to the masses the products and services they want in an instantaneous and direct fashion it has also created a Big Brother feel and fear.

What we call Behavioral Advertising has always had a bulls eye on its back. This form of advertising tries to get to know your "surfing" and buying habits to bring you the most relevant advertising it can. Unfortunately, though it is successful to a certain degree, it creeps out the average viewer because a particular advert seems to follow them around or just show up everywhere they happen to be. More realistically though, it only bothers them once they know that it is happening. And as far as advertisers go, it's the only way to make sure they are advertising directly to the people who buy their products the most.

Now, the government is concerned about our privacy and looking to regulate this form of advertising. Regulations are often needed as the unscrupulous will always look for a way to line their pockets and put consumers in danger (look at all the unregulated and dangerous products we get from China). The trouble with laying down laws and regulation on things like Behavioral Advertising though is that those who are enacting these laws have very little understanding of how Internet advertising even works!

 "In practice, privacy remains a broad, thorny problem, however; what one person sees as corporate intrusiveness another can see as a way to offer genuinely relevant ads" quoted in a recent article in CNET.

If privacy is the issue - Americans seem to have given that up with their own free will. Business travelers and families are regularly photographed and catalogued when they get on an airplane and "generation whatevers" regularly broadcast where they are to all their friends - actually the world - at every moment.


Case in point. My wife and I recently took our daughter to the airport to head back to college. We stopped in at a vegan or vegetable something restaurant and said offspring immediately Foursquared that she was at the restaurant. I am glad she is conscious of discounts, because by announcing her eating location she set herself up for some possible savings. Meanwhile, the restaurant was sparsely populated at this hour of the night, but her phone did tell her that there were about four others in the restaurant who had checked into Foursquare, as well.

So what's so wrong about behavioral targeting? It is obvious that many people regularly give their whereabouts (Foursquare) and their thoughts (Twitter) and even pictures of what they are currently doing (Brightkite) freely to the Internet. Shoot - they share their entire lives on Facebook! But it seems they are creeped out by a particular ad following them around from site to site.

For that is what the discussion is about. You go to site A and get shown an ad and maybe you click on it but don't buy anything. Now you go to a different site and (add scary music) that ad shows up again! It's called re targeting. Take it a step further and cookies placed on your computer record the kinds of web sites you like to visit and database companies look at your zip code and estimate your income and on and on all in an attempt to make sure ads are served to you reflecting your preferences.

Some in the industry though are taking to self policing, which is the way it should be. Check out Mozilla's Mozilla offers do-not-track tool to thwart ads | Deep Tech - CNET News. According to  "Mozilla's do-not-track technology, network data packets from the browser would signal to a Web site that a person doesn't wished to be tracked. Then comes the tricky part: getting Web site operators to cooperate."

The Wall St Journal, citing an unnamed source said that " Google is expected to announce a privacy tool called 'Keep My Opt-Outs' that enables users to permanently opt out of ad -targeting from dozens of companies."

The big question will be whether users figure out how to use these tools, whether they will want to use these tools and if they will wish they had more. Most likely the young will not care, since they broadcast their every move to everyone else. The middle age group like myself will probably be very active with these tools.

And that's the way it should be. As users we should have a choice in how we wish to be marketed. As a business owner, I should have the opportunity to self regulate. The government, on the other hand now has a chance to regulate and thus increase the bureaucracy. Can the government resist?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20024332-38.html?tag=mncol;txt Find the link to the FTC Proposal for regulating ads
 http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20029284-264.html#ixzz1CGAD7szS

http://firstpersoncookie.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/more-choice-and-control-over-o

Moving Ahead with Caveats

"Buying increased after consumer confidence climbed in December to the highest level in six months, helped by rising stock prices and a better jobs picture. At the same time, Saks Inc. and other chains limited promotions and discounts, forcing shoppers to pay full price for popular items." Thus begins this post with a quote from a Bloomberg news article citing the 15% increase in 2010 online holiday sales. With hubris, upscale shopping sites even charged full price for their wares.

Having recently returned from the 2011 Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas I can report that the mood was much more upbeat than in the recent past. My compatriots at various ad networks reported good prospects for new affiliates and an overall feeling that their will be big business in the year ahead.

The online advertising world seems to have recovered from the recession and is entering its very own recovery. And this is as it should be. The world is becoming more connected with more and more people getting online everyday. From computers to phones - the Internet keeps becoming more accessible.

I just received a new DVD player equipped with wireless and the ability to put You Tube and, most importantly, Netflix on my TV. Now I go to my queue and pick movies to come in the mail and movies to show up almost instantly on my TV screen. It's what I have always thought about whenever I went to my now defunct neighborhood Hollywood Video - instant whatever movie I want.

Online advertising will continue to grow and more and more companies will increase their ad spend. But in 2011, probably more so than any year to date, advertisers will be faced with an array of new technology allowing them to focus their ads to the perfect consumer, just as our government, made up by many who barely understand the online advertising world, begins to figure out how to regulate and lay down restrictions in the interest of their privacy.

The holiday spending may have been good, but unemployment remains high, which will continue to cause a drag on a real recovery in spending - "it would be a mistake to read much into the unexpected decline in the unemployment rate, which fell to 9.4% from 9.8% – the lowest it has been since May 2009 (when the economy was still technically in recession) and the sharpest one-month decline since April 1998. While some of this ‘decline’ did indeed reflect the rebound in Household employment, it was largely due to the sharp decline in the labor force participation rate, which tumbled to a 27-year low of 64.3% in December from 64.5% in each of the prior two months. The culprit: discouraged workers soared to a new record high of 1.32 million.”*

"More confirmation of a double dip for housing: The Case-Shiller Home Price Index registered a year-over-year drop of 1.6% in November. That’s the biggest 12-month decrease since December 2009, " states the 5 min Forecast.

Rising gasoline and food prices along with a declining dollar will prove to be a challenge for the consumer looking to hold onto his job and his house, especially coming off a year where Americans saw 2.9 million homes foreclosed.

Advertisers will need to be savvy in their buys. With the Post Office looking to cut back the days they work and to raise the cost of mailing, the marriage of online and offline marketing will certainly be rocky.

Thriving online marketers know though that inside every obstacle there are plenty of opportunities. Many of the brightest minds and entrepreneurs are working in the Internet advertising world. This will be a good year for business, but if you are an advertiser you will need to be savvy in your choices. As more and more consumers come online with dollars to spend it is important to realize that they are also consumers facing enormous pressures from diverse places.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-23/online-holiday-sales-climb-15-as-web-shoppers-buy-apparel-electronics.html


*Forecast 2011: Better than Muddle Through - from Thoughts From The Frontline by John Mauldin


The War on Small Business, Continued from The 5 Min. Forecast by Addison Wiggin 1/25/2011

Daisy Spotting – a Modest Proposal | IonicMedia Blog

Daisy Spotting – a Modest Proposal | IonicMedia Blog

Another entry at the IonicMedia blog. They say it is tongue-in-cheek, but I don't know. . . .