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University of Michigan Consumer Satisfaction Index Report 2007

The report is out. Greg Sterling has a great write up at Search Engine Land. Congrats to Yahoo! and Ask on their improvements!

However, the numbers are extremely fine and as Greg asked the authors, “Why the disconnect between the satisfaction data and market share?” The other thing that should be pointed out is that these numbers are not that granular in nature. My advice is to take these numbers with a grain of salt as they may of may not result in the market share changes they suggest over the next 12-24 months. Essentially the question is will this report cause people to talk about switching over dinner with family and friends tonight?

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Search Engine Strategies San Jose – Silicon Valley August 19-23

I look forward to seeing all of my wonderful search engine, mobile search and mobile advertising friends next week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose!  While I’ll definitely be in Mountain View for the Google Dance (hopefully they won’t run out of XL t-shirts in 2 minutes like last year), I’m unsure whether I’ll make it to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Monterrey or Santa Cruz to visit and see some other awesome things. I do hope to make it to Barcamp Block.

Who else will be there and what spontaneous events, product launches and parties are you looking most forward to? I’m getting very close to some of my goals! I look forward to seeing you.

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Yahoo! Launches New Applicant Tracking System

Yahoo! recently launched a new applicant tracking system interface over the past few days. It has a much cleaner interface than the previous one. It also has a box titled concept search, where one could enter educational and leadership qualifications, technical and speaking skills, passions, competencies and blogs to get suggestions of potentially appropriate roles. Changes that were immediately apparent to me include shorter career position id numbers and a smaller set of categories that make it easier to navigate clusters of open positions needing to be filled by qualified applicants.

Below is a screen shot, I wish Yahoo! good luck with the new system!

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adtech Chicago: Redefining Search to Realize Its Full Potential

August 1, 2007

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

– The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

– The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

– The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

– The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

– The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
– Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
– To increase brand awareness
– To Sell Products
– To Generate Leads
– To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
– Traffic
– Conversions
– Impressions
– ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
– A Business
– An Industry

Beyond Search
– Media Buying
– Budget Allocation
– PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

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adtech Chicago: Search + Video + Contextual Targeting: Is the Holy Grail Upon Us?

July 31, 2007

Shashi Seth, Head of Monetization, YouTube.com

Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo!

Patrick Moorhead, National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Avenue A | Razorfish

Chris D’Alessandro, Group Director, Customer Insight, Organic, Inc.

Moderator: Curt Hecht, Executive VP, Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group

Rebecca: Video search is not as important to core clients as media that is relevant to the brand. The off network piece is important as well. Reaching your users wherever they are, walking down the street, whatever…

Patrick: It’s almost the Holy Grail. We need to redefine contextual to mean what the user means at that moment.

Chris: If you are looking at an awareness company, it’s not the Holy Grail.

Curt: How does this scale? How are the agencies? Pre-rolls?

Rebecca: The trend to distribute us towards pre-roll. We are far away from dynamic video smart ads. What they search for. Dynamically delivered video is hard to deliver. Dynamic video is a long ways away.

Patrick: I disagree that we are far away from dynamically generated video.

Curt: Who is digging in on this?

Chris: Emerging and bleeding technology is getting there.

Curt: Are you talking about testing and learning?

Chris: Search is always part of everyone’s repertoire.

Rebecca: Shopping and merchandising makes a lot of sense. We have huge testing and learning going on right now.

Curt: Marketers will have to deal with versioning of creative.

Chris: we’ve had to segment sites. What kind of content do we deliver?

Patrick: We have to measure this stuff from an optimization of media dollars. The same investment can service a much broader audience. Campaign management tools will catch up at some point. Look at things holistically; it’s half about people management.

Shashi: Traditional click through and engagement numbers are not sufficient. We need to come up with standard metrics across the board.

Audience question on pre-rolls and potential attrition to smaller sites.

Shashi: When we announce our ad unit, we will take all those things into account.

Rebecca: We only use it for premium inventory. We balance the pre-roll with the length of the content. We’ve done a lot of testing in this area and found it had no adverse impact.

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adtech Chicago: Tactical Search Strategies: Local and Mobile Search

August 1, 2007 session…

MODERATOR:
Chris Bowler, VP, Media Director, Agency.com

PANELISTS:
Warren Kay, Director of Emerging Products, Yahoo! Search Marketing (not present)

Dominic Preuss, Product Manager, Local Advertising, Google

Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com

John du Pre Gauntt, Senior Analyst, eMarketer

The most important thing about this session is that half of the people from the previous session left – it shows that people don’t understand search and understand its’ importance in the eventual mobile domination. This session was presentations and much less dynamic.

Dominic –
Local and mobile are very much the same. Google Maps changes the way that people uses maps. Google Earth has some great partnerships. Google search on the wap browser. Gmail is an important part of our strategy. It is in a single repository. Discussed local business center. Make sure your information is up to date. Coupons for Maps. Regional targeting, country, state, city and radius. Google Local Business Ads. Google Mobile Ads – shorter messaging, link to mobile website, click to call enabled, carrier targeting, markup language targeting.

Janice Rohn – unfortunately had to leave the room for almost all of her talk…

John – Technical scale is not an issue. It’s about answers not links. It’s about all the collateral as well. The pain is very high. The carriers are not supporting a cookie like feature. Cross-carrier targeting it hard. Talked about a number of challenges facing the space and the fragmentation issues. For every $1 you spend on mobile spend $2 on training your staff. If you have the most wonderful mobile experience and a lousy customer experience, it does not matter! I couldn’t agree more.

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Wanted Movie – Mobile Chicago Local Neighborhood Filming

Yesterday I came home and found a note on the door (see below) about the filming of the Universal Pictures film Wanted over the next few days. The movie’s cast includes Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Common, Konstantin Khabensky, Terence Stamp, Chris Pratt and Kristen Hager. Normally, I don’t write about celebrities, then again movies normally aren’t shot right in front of my window in a highly residential neighborhood! I’m hoping they’ll be good neighbors while they are here.

The focus area of the local shoot appears to be two blocks south of Wrigley Field in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood. An antique shop seems to be one of the areas of focus. As of this writing, they are still setting up tons of mobile equipment here locally. The note says traffic will be diverted from 11Pm-5AM tonight, when combined with all the lighting equipment being brought in and it appears that some of the scenes will be shot at night August 12-13th. A local neighborhood map of this Chicago area can be found here.

I’ve never seen so many cops around (also pictured below). I mean the Chicago Cubs could actually win the World Series and there would be less cops! It’s too bad the Chicago Police aren’t out in force like this on game days or on Friday or Saturday nights on Clark Street in Chicago.

If you have any notes on what they are filming or you are going to be in the area, please drop me a note or write your own blog post about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Take care.

UPDATE 8/13 7:30AM: The filming did not take place last night. There is only a few people out there right now.

UPDATE #2 8/13 3:45PM A truck just unloaded 3 older cars in front of my place. No plates on the cars.

UPDATE #3 8/13 5:15PM – Just received this email from Alderman Tunney’s office:

To the residents and businesses in Wrigleyville

The cast and crew of “Wanted” would like to thank you for your cooperation and patience during the filming in your neighborhood. (Commentary – does this mean a free screening?)

While the Studio is Universal Pictures, the crew is made up to a large extent of residents from the Chicago area who are highly professional and respectful of the areas where we film.

Tonight is our last night of main unit filming in your neighborhood. The locations will be mainly in the alley between Sheffield and Clark from Roscoe to School St and in the alley east of Clark between Roscoe and Newport and there will be some simulated gunfire in these areas. As always, Chicago Police will be with us to help with any traffic problems.

We greatly appreciate your patience and look forward to seeing Wrigleyville in the movies.

Thank you.