Newsweek: Facebook unveils ad targeting program

So Facebook finally grows up... and gets a proper business model. Then again.. is it a good business model?

It is ridiculous that both Microsoft and NY hedge firms are valuing Facebook at USD 15 Billion. (yes that is a big "B" and not "M".). I mean I did not blog when I read that, but certainly thought to myself "uh... why? What's the business models?" Up to recently, they were selling banner ads that do not work as well as icons ... I mean "Gifts"... to the same people who buy ringtones online. But that is not worth USD 15 BILLION!

So now they have unveiled an ad targeting program.

According to the Facebook Press Release, "Facebook Ads, an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want." You know what? It sounds like Google Adsense: " With Google's extensive AdWords advertiser base, we have ads for just about all categories of businesses and for practically all types of content, no matter how specialized. Google technology matches the most relevant and highest performing AdWords ads to your website."

I was getting excited when Newsweek started: "Facebook is giving users some control over whether to share information on their buying habits and other online activities with friends."

But the reality according to the press fodder was: "Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about."

Viral marketing is great but is it worth USD 15 BILLION SMACKAROOS?

During the a Google Panel, I actually suggested to Google why don't they let the AdSense site owners decide exactly what ad or product they advertise? This would apply to all social network sites they have and any Adsense customers. So let the market decides what it want to advertise on its pages and split the commission. Not just the product, but even choose the "etailer".

What if Facebook did this: produced a "What's in my purse?" widget/gadget/fadget and let people load up their "purse" with actual branded items. The brand marketers pay for this advertising AND facebook splits the ad dollar with the person. Extend this to "My mobile", "my watch", "my shampoo", "my computers", "my underwear", and even "my wallet" (including what type of Trojans and what flavor.). Imagine the freaking market research!!!

Now that is a business model. Not some silly "ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally". This model is not viral. It is mainstream marketing and branding. And that's where the money is. It is not in viral marketing which is for product launches and market studies.

Besides transactional sites, all other web publishers are like any other media (print, TV, radio): Their main revenue comes from advertising. So get a proper business model to make the most out of that. Google currently gets the lion's share of my online marketing spend, because they perform and because I can track exactly how much money I make from the ads. And until Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace, etc get their collective acts together, they are still going to get left overs... if anything at all.

Peace. Out.

10 Mega-Trends from Google

Google held a "Google Singapore Marketing Brief" a couple of days ago (13th Nov) at my M Hotel (plug and disclosure). The agenda was:

14:30 - 15:15 Southeast Asia Internet Snapshot
by an APAC Senior Analyst from Hitwise.

15:15 - 16:00 A New Approach to Media
By Google's Vice President, Asia Pacific & Latin America

16:00 - 17:30 Panel Discussion with:
- Sukhinder Singh-Cassidy, Google's Presenter above.
- Jeffrey Seah, CEO Mindshare & Maxus Singapore
- Miguel Bernas, Multimedia Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific, Nokia.
- And yours truly, Director - Global eCommerce, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels

The Hitwise presentation had some good data, but the delivery was a bit uninspiring... Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I had just finished a buffet lunch and my blood is working around my belly rather than my head.

Sukhinder's presentation was around "10 Mega-Trends". I will list them here, but most of the examples she used were Google pitches. Fair enough.

1) User Revolution - This is about "consumer generated media", "user generated content", "user driven content", etc. etc. etc. This is a no-brainer trend, but it certainly is MEGA. Note that we do not say "Web 2.0" anymore. That is so passe' or "Expired" per Wired Mag's categorization of "Wired, Tired, or Expired".

2) Consumers are "Always on". So what else is new? They are, or will be, on via PDAs, cellphones, Blackberries, watches, and iPhones (its not a PDA or cell; its in a class of its own.); at home, at work, in the car, on the bus, at the kids' baseball game, while watching TV... and studies have shown that people are airtyping in their sleep. (just kidding).

3) Offline drives online. Straight-forward, but I would say it is a symbiotic relationship that will one day become a single indivisible organism. With augmented-reality displays and googles, you will one day feel naked without it. From a hotel perspective, this industry is going to save so much money on renovation: all we got to do is renovate our augmented universe to a 7-star hotel and the guests won't know that they are sitting on a 20-year old sofa.

4) Local search is growing. May be this is not so apparent to most of the people in the audience, but they better pay attention. Our best PPC "campaign" segment is Google Maps UK where we get return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) between $27 and $30 for every dollar spent. Users are not just looking for "New York hotels" anymore; they are searching for "broadway hotels", "hotels near times square NY", and "bangkok hotels near soi cowboy" (inside joke and SEO inbound link for my new hotel).

5) Video is big - and getting bigger. Youtube, Joost, Veoh. Startup like TVtrip. While Sukhinder meant "getting bigger" as in more popular, I think that "getting bigger" also literally applies to size - full screen and HD in all its glory.

6) Brand connections occur across the web. Consumer are not coming across your brand only on your website. They see it on retailer sites, on social networks, on portals, on search engines... So how do you keep track of that and manage the brand or the reputation?

7) Niche sites have tremendous value. There was a chart that showed that 80% of the ad revenue is going to the Big Four sites (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and whatever), but these sites only get less than 50% of the traffic. There is much potential for reaching a targeted audience by searching out these niche secondary/tertiary sites.

8) Mass personalization. Another a no-brainer. Sukhinder used iGoogle as an example. It's a great example of a personalized DIY portal with your own widgets, gadgets, and feeds. This is from a user's perspective, but from a business perspective, I think the prime example is amazon.com. "You recently searched for....", "People who selected this also bought...". This is pushed personalization based on your behavior. Scary huh? (ooooo.. "pushed personalization" has a nice ring to it. Just Googled it. This phrase has not been used before in this way. I coined it first - right here, OK? So when Tim O'Reilly starts using at his next conference, you know he has read this blog.")

9) Creativity on massive scale. Sounds like crowdsourcing to me. She used the example of Threadless T-Shirt. I blogged about Embassy Suites in September. Sounds great to me: Cheap labor, cheap market research, and cheap customers. WARNING: design is very subjective, especially in a multi-cultural global market. You might want to segment those massive crowdsourcing creatives by region or countries or even cities. Shall we call it "creativity on a massive personalization scale"?

10) Digital is at the center of the world. With 1 billion people online (actually 791 million according to Comscore's September 07 figures), this is becoming the nexus of business, social, and familiar interactions. And the trend will only go up. Another 4 billion to go. But hey do those 4 Billion really count? I mean - we already got most of the G8 wired. G20 is moving along fine. Do we really need to worry about the G21 to G194? Just get China and India up to 50% each and we are already in the 2billion mark.

As I was listening to Sukhinder, I can't help but think, "Where is Analytics as a trend?". I wrote about the Competing on Analytics book and I am totally certain that this is where the world will be heading. I mentioned this when I was on the panel, but now that I have been giving it more thought, I have a different conclusion:

Analytics is a meta-megatrend. (Hahahahaahah....... Googled it.. another term coined by me. Take that all you highly-paid, suited Accenture/IBM/E&Y/McKinsey/BearPoint/CapGem management consultants. Better yet, pay me royalty for the usage.)

Seriously, analytics is a trend of trends. The whole online marketplace, from the perspective of businesses, will be driven by information. None of the above trends will matter unless every single detail can be tracked, categorized, filtered, consolidated and push on some digital dashboards somewhere so that someone can make business decisions. The above trends exists because there is the business world that can support it, or at least some of these start-ups think that they have the right ... what do you call it.... BUSINESS model. And business in the the future is driven by analytics. Capishe?

Book Recommendation: The Afghan (fiction)

So I was off for a long weekend because of Deepavali public holiday. The family and I went to Malaysia (Johor State) for some golf, horse-riding and general R&R. I picked up this book, The Afghan (By Frederick Forsyth) coming back from the UK the week before. I figured I have been reading enough non-fiction that I needed to let my mind have a bit of exercise. The bookshop girl recommended this, so why not?



It was actually a good quick read. Like many books these days, there is a mix of reality and fiction so you feel like you are actually learning a lot while reading. In this case, it is about the terrorist network and how it came about and some historical info as well. I always like these kinds of stories. Just try to keep the the fact from fiction.

Overall, great read, if you are in for a good espionage/action/modern setting storytelling.

Analytics: The End of Intuition?

I read an article above from Newsweek's September issue called "Era of the Super Cruncher". Very interesting read so it is worth a read (after reading this post of course). This is based on the book "Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart" by Ian Ayres. It sounds like the "Competing on Analytics" booked I reviewed here.

Newsweek:- "... a powerful trend that will shape the economy for years to come: the replacement of expertise and intuition by objective, data-based decision making, made possible by a virtually inexhaustible supply of inexpensive information."

So we go from Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" (Jan 2005) to intuition & expertise is being replaced in 2.5 years. I have not read Super Cruncher but I would support the view that they need to both co-exist. Expertise and experience is always necessary, but having the latest and relevant information is definitely better than not having it. And even the more informed novice still would not know which is the best solution in the medium to long term, after all information is about what HAS happened and not what WILL happen.

NW:- "Those who control and manipulate this data will be the masters of the new economic universe."



He-Man and She-Ra - that's what those of us uber-geeks will become.


NW:- "Super-crunchable data can be broadly statistical or profoundly personal. Illustrating the former, Ayres chose the title of his book by running two Google ads that appeared in random order when someone searched for phrases like 'data mining.' The decision was made by the plurality who clicked on the ad for 'Super Crunchers' rather than the competing title, 'The End of Intuition.' "

KEWL!! Though I prefer "The End of Intuition"

NW:- "Increasingly, jobs that used to call for independent judgment, especially about other people, are being routinized and dumbed down. Banks no longer care about a loan officer's assessment of whether a borrower is a good risk; everything they need to know is in the numbers."

Right.. so those loan officers' assessments were good to begin with? If they were good, then they wouldn't have been replaced right? But then, some one.. some person has to come up with the algorithms and program these computers right?

He has a point though in this case though. I am getting pre-approved offers for unsecured loans and credit cards - which must have been initiated after an automated credit check. There is no need for a loan officer now.

I am still not convinced that this is the death of intuition, but then I guess I should read the book... Will check back later after I read this.

TripAdvisor's Users Predict 2008 Trends

A press release from Tripadvisor.com last week starts "Green & Clean Freaks Dominate; Traveler Say No to Cell Phones in the Air".

Germaphobia:
"Eighty percent of respondents are concerned about germs, bacteria and viruses when traveling. Airplanes are the most germy, according to 28 percent of those polled. Public transportation was next, followed by restaurants, hotels, and airports... Forty-five percent of travelers said their worst experience at a hotel was a dirty bathroom or dirty sheets, and 17 percent said their worst experience was the presence of vermin."
JOE> I don't know what the survey actually asked, but I think it is already urban legend that airplanes circulate viruses around. Additionally, Michael Crichton along with discovery channel and National Geographic has done their part post-SARS to increase awareness of how fast diseases can spread because of the ease of international travel. Lastly, if you ask a bunch of people what their "worst experience at a hotel is" and they answer something else besides dirty bathroom or dirty sheets, then you take notice. 45% saying that is a good thing; too bad it is not higher. The 17% presence of vermin - now that is disturbing. I am glad I have not experienced that in one-fifth of my hotel stays; I can't remember if I have had that experience in the last few years actually. Where do these 17% of the people stay anyway? Motel 8?

Go Green:
"Twenty-six percent of respondents said they will be more environmentally conscious in their travel decisions in the coming year. The green trend may be evident in their choice of transportation -- 22 percent said they'll go biking while on vacation this year, compared to 13 percent, last year. Forty-seven percent of travelers plan to go hiking this year, up from 43 percent, last year."
JOE> Wait... how does taking biking or hiking vacation make you any more environmentally friendly? I mean.. you are still taking a plane to get there right? Are you going further on the plane to get to that out of the way destination? That flight to the mountains might be half full rather than the full flight to a major city (fuller flights are more efficients and have lower carbon emission per passenger.).

Mobile Phones:
"Seventy-eight percent of travelers believe that mobile phones should not be allowed on flights."
JOE> So even if they were allowed on flights, the roaming fees would be freaking exorbitant. Look at what happened to Connexion by Boeing for internet access on flights. Crashed and burned because they charged too much. Let's hope some poor startup listens to TripAdvisor and keep their money in their pockets for another day.

Skewed Survey?
"Thirty-two percent of travelers (and 34 percent of Americans) are planning to engage in educational activity on vacation this year, such as a cooking or art class, up from 25 percent (and 28 percent of Americans), last year. Sixty percent of respondents from the U.S. said that the possibility of terrorism is still a consideration when planning where to go on their next vacation. Forty-five percent of Americans said the possibility of natural disasters (such as a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake) is on their mind, and 36 percent said the cost of fuel influences where to go on their next vacation, despite the recent decline in gas prices. Five percent said uncertainty with mortgage rates is affecting the way they plan travel in the next year, and six percent said the volatile stock market is affecting their travel decisions."
JOE: "US", "Americans"... how many of these 2500 surveyed were actually non-Americans? Is the press release skewed towards the US press or is the survey? Enquiring minds want to know.

R-rated to X-rated Vacations
"Twenty-four percent of travelers said they are likely to dress more provocatively while on vacation and 19 percent of travelers have had to impose the "whatever happens in X destination, stays in X destination" rule with their travel partners. Twelve percent of respondents have been to a clothing-optional or adults-only resort."
Joe> Again who is being surveyed? It looks like 12% are Europeans. At least 19% have been to Vegas. And 24% are women (men dress provocatively?).

Top 3 World Destinations:
1) Jerba, Tunisia
2) Makandi Bay, Egypt
3) Phang Nga, Thailand
JOE> So those survey either watched Travel Channel a lot or they watched a lot of E! Wild On with Tara Reid (where she just runs around in exotic destinations getting drunk.). I mean those aren't destination that just immediately come into your mind when you ask people. But then again, if TV is influencing people, then what else is new. It's just that those locations are just too small to support being "Top" destinations. Talk about being anti-ecotourism; just tell the world this tiny little place is the TOP destination. I am not going to those places next year; if I don't make it this year, then I won't bother because it will be trampled by 2009.

Google Analytics For Dummies

So I have been steadily blogging away. In the last month (October), I have been publishing an average of 2 posts per week. Traffic to this site was not steady, but it comes in. I can almost track it to the day that I publish a post as the blog spiders and readers pick it up.

Anyhoo... I noticed a week ago that my traffic dove to ZERO around the last week of October. I track this on Google Analytics which is a very easy to use tool. I did not think much of it. I was too busy and who knows what's going on with the interweb. See the graph of October traffic below:



About thirty minutes ago, I checked in again and see the above. Now I am getting a little worried. I have been pushing things out and nothing? ZERO? My ego was getting hurt, you know. Since launching this blog in mid August, I have had visits from people in 204 cities from 49 countries, who speak 18 languages. 75 % of my visitors were new visits, so I get a 25% returning visitor traffic. Each of these visits resulted in 1.55 pages viewed per visit. 25.9% were on DSL broadband, 21.3% were on cable broadband, 7.1% were on T1 (i.e. office connections), and 4.5% were on dial-up. (the rest 40% were "unknown"). Then suddenly.. NOTHING... NADA... ZILCH...

Then WHAM! SH...ZAMM, it hit me. I changed the template on my blog a few weeks ago to this brownish thing. I went to my blogspot dashboard and just selected a new template. I reviewed it and made sure it looked ok before I published it. All looked OK so "Save my template". But DUH!!!! When I change template, the Google Analytics script that I had put in the last template go wiped. So I have not had any tracking scripts on any of my pages. No wonder. Yikes!!!!!

Well, it is up now. But this is why I leave the tech to techies. Google Analytics is great for amateurs, but if you are using it for your ecommerce website, leave the monkey business to those who know what to do... sigh...

Numbers of Online Travel Customers Are Declining

According to the NY Times, "Travel Sales Still Growing, but Numbers of Customers Are Declining". See here.

It certainly sounds alarming, but maybe because alarming sells newspapers. But let's check out the highlights....

1) According to a recent survey of more than 60,000 Internet users in the United States by Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm, 9 percent fewer people booked travel online this year than in 2005.
JOE> But outside the US, the trend is the other way around. Europe is not yet as mature as the US. The Asian (with 3 billion people) are still getting online and are just beginning their shift from offline to online.

2) PhoCusWright found that among travelers with access to the Internet, the percentage who usually book travel online dropped to 62 percent at the end of last year from 68 percent in 2005, while those who say they usually arrange travel offline increased to 31 percent from 25 percent during the same period.
JOE> Interestingly enough, PhocusWright also published a report showing that between 2005 and 2006, less % of people were Shopping & Buying Travel Online. Increasing were people who Shop& Buy Travel Offline and people who Shop Online & Buy Offline. See below.


3) Industry revenues are still strong, mostly because those consumers who book travel online are doing more of it. According to the Forrester survey, the average online booker said he or she would spend 50 percent more on travel this year than in 2005.
JOE> So what does this mean? People who are online savvy are booking more and people with lesser patience or lower attention span are booking less? Are older people dropping off and younger people staying on and booking more?

4) Online travel executives say part of the reason for the dearth of innovation is that the online travel reservation systems are largely extensions of technology built in the 1960s.
JOE> Are we talking the GDS, PMS and CRS? Some of that is true enough, but the consumers are filtered and do not see a lot of that technology any more with middleware and web applications in the middle. On the contrary, meta search engines, like bezurk.com, and sidestep.com are giving consumers a lot of insight that they never had before.

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But really, the marketplace is overcrowded with OTAs and their affiliates and their spam. Consumers are becoming disenchanted with the intermediaries who are not able to provide the level of customer service that a supplier can. For example, if you book with an OTA and your friend booked directly with the supplier, who do you think has an easier time change or amending a reservation?

It would be very interesting to see if brand direct bookings have increased because consumers find it easier and more reliable to book direct rather than with an online travel agent.

Also, how many of these people who stopped buying online still research online? Looking at the destination and then finding out what is a "good" rate. They may not book online, but it would be pretty stupid not to at least Research online...