Please Press My Button

I think it is about time that the internet got an equivalent of the -1/dislike button.
A button for those with an interest in functionality and user design that says a site is bad.
I call it:

The 'This Site is a Piece of shit' Button

Offenders I have seen this week:

• Facebook apps that force you to like them and then don't work.
• Web pages that link you to someone elses link, which takes you to someone elses link, which might (if you are lucky) take you to the place you actually want to go.
• Pop unders? In 2011??
• Brand sites that make you register before you can engage with them
• "I just spent 5 minutes getting my QR reader to work for this?!"
• Mobile sites that are big enough to strain a home Wi-Fi connection
• This video is not available in your country (even though the content is)
• The Ben Terrett Award for bad typography
• (From Nick) "Let me just resize your browser window for you, as our site is so awesome it has to take up your whole screen!"
• (From Nick) "How about some fancy music? No? Well, I'll play it anyway, and hide the 'mute' button in the top right hand corner for you."
• (From Miss Heather) An intro page. Still? Really?! Do you not see why this is such a bad thing?

Any more?

Freedom

I am sick of people declaring that "everything should be free on the web" or "everything should be paid for on the web".

Free is such a relative term, and the relationship we have with free depends entirely on what the product or service is as well as who provides it.

Apparently free services aren't free because we pay through advertising or sponsors. Well duh. I thought all this time that those TV ad things were part of the programme, and my TV licence was really a licence.

People aren't stupid. They understand that free normally means advertising (google), or limited features (Open Office), or allowing for bias (Wikipedia). When people say things online should be free, they understand that means advertising.

When Rupert Murdoch said about charging for his services, it showed a classic lack of understanding of the online world. Free with ads means no loss to us, as soon as you have to pay for content you have something to lose if it isn't right. The only way this will work for those of us with more sense than cash is if every provider goes paid-for, but then someone will create something for free and we will all flock there. Or is it? If the brand and the content is good enough will people trust in the value inherent and accept the financial hit? After all, it is relative...

I can't wait to see.

Before You Create Your Next Online Video...

Google have finally started to understand how to help keep those You Tube videos appearing: Improved stats and monitoring. Helping not only advertisers on the site, but all the agencies, companies and record labels who add videos.

" YouTube Insight is "a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site," the company said on a team blog. Uploaders will be able to see how frequently videos are viewed in different parts of the world, "as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time."

Tracking Performance

Insight also provides, well, insight into how long it takes a video to achieve popularity and how a video behaves after popularity peaks.

The blog post studiously avoids mention of advertisers, except to point out to YouTube partners that "the more popular a video is, the more advertising revenue it can generate."

The tools "give a lot of context around the performance of video over time, where your audience is coming from, and how your message is connecting to your audience," YouTube Program Manager Tracy Chan said. "Effectively, YouTube has become an ad-effectiveness, or an insight-effectiveness, tool." "

Source: Yahoo

Phoney Calls

"Hi, I'm calling from Google with regards to your adwords account."

'I don't have your name on our contacts list, are you calling from Google?'

"Yes."

Lying little bastard. He was actually cold calling from a bunch of ropey looking lead merchants called Net Leader Ltd. With their stock shots of a skyscraper and flash template animations with badly added individual typography.

My favourite bit was when he said "You spend a lot of money with us on our website w w w . google . co . uk..." Do we?!! Only tens of thousands mate, thanks for reminding me of how to find google, I would be stuck otherwise.

Honestly, and people think advertisers bullshit...

Let's Facebook It.

Watching the Money Programme talking about Facebook and the huge amounts of data they are collecting and able to use for marketing purposes; I was rather puzzled how they seem to completely miss the point of how to make these things work.

People go to Facebook because it doesn't shove ads in your face all the time. Yet all their plans (from what I've read) seem to involve doing just that. The pressure of those sky high valuations appears to be clouding their judgement.

Have they not seen what has happened to Myspace? The decline of Myspace as 'the place to be' is almost directly proportional to the increasing amount of overt advertising and Fox promotional links that have appeared since Rupert Murdoch took it over.

Have they not worked out that THE reason for Google making so much money so quickly was that it found a way to display high-income ads without disrupting the user experience.

The only advertisers that have really worked on Myspace and Facebook are those that embrace the community instead of standing there with Golf Sale signs in front of their way. We can do that in the outside world, but these are places people come to get away from that...

Thoughts anyone?

Also: Though the different gadgets and tools you can get on Facebook massively enhance it, they are also quickly increasing the thing that is now choking myspace. Namely "Forward this or you crush will hate you", "Pass this to twenty friends and something cool will happen", "This picture says I am your friend please pass it on". Argh! People who come up with these things deserve to be rounded up and chucked off a bridge...

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 5

Next were Google and BBH to discuss the joint British Airways and Google Earth advertising.

The ads featured shots using Google earth, with cloud pricing. While the site was designed to let you view the destination, but with a cloud image with the BA price on!

One highly interesting point was on the net ads, Google intentionally asked BA to lower the Google branding and increase the BA branding on overlay ads because Google didn’t want to be associated with ads that get in the way of sites.


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Lastly, was Jon Hamm, the founder of Greenroom digital.

He discussed how this is an exciting time for agencies and clients, a time to take risks, to become even more creative.

He also mentioned how media consumption is becoming more and more chaotic, and how the power of social media is still increasing.

An interesting point he gave was about the nature of ‘viral’ distribution is moving to ‘resonate’ and ‘right place’ distribution. Its not just about putting a funny video up, its about putting it in the right place and making it resonate with the public.

One good point was how measuring views is not the only important metric anymore, it’s about how many people in the core audience viewed it, what did they say, and what sort of response it got.


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After all these interesting people, it was left to Douglas Broadley of Imagination to sum up. Here are his major points.

“Amazing!” – What an insight!

The gloss of Kevin Roberts words was appealing, but things are not always that glossy in real life.

The idea of owning a conversation is ridiculous…

Agencies forgot to make a plan B! Hence all the recent panic!

The continuing difficulty in finding people who can move between disciplines.

Those who are quick on their feet will succeed.

Integration should just happen, but people get in the way. Integration is not a ‘nice to have’, it has to be meaningful.

Meaning will engender greater belief, which will help engage.

We need to define what unites brands and corporate cultures.

Integration is about Integrity.

People talk when you are found not to be true to their meaning, you can no longer be dishonest, people will find out.

I think this guy knows his stuff. A good choice to sum up.

Microogle or Goosoft

Google, are they turning into the new Microsoft?

When I first started using google (I was the first person I know to do so) it had a wonderful brand personality (The Goooooooogle images were one great touch). It was renowned for being a great tool designed by students, which made searching so much easier.

However now I worry that they are simply turning into the next conglomorate. They produce lots of useful consumer tools, but they appear to be fleecing businesses for all they can get.

The google ad words system, whereby businesses pay to appear on search results is the big point here. Their new system has just appeared which pushes the already massive costs of using the system even higher under the guise of improving results for consumers...but it is most effective at raising costs.

Google are literally printing money with ad words, some terms make them over £10 per click; with up to 10 people advertising on that one term. Yet:

Google know a large number of their clicks come from competitors clicking terms to raise other competitors costs. But they tend to ignore it.

They allow dodgy ads on terms. Including those which quite literally steal chunks of other sites to make money. Helping consumers?

For the particular terms we use, we currently find other search engines to be upto a quarter of the cost for the same results!

Google know they have so many visitors they can keep raising costs as much as they like; but in doing so they are seriously risking their brand image. I hope they see sense soon.




[Ironic of course that Blogger is owned by google...]