On the awful, awful practice of using data for ad targeting

(sung) I'm Against It...

I read a study recently where, news of news, it was discussed that respondents didn't want to share their data in regards to the ads they see. (Here it is, in case you want to see the shocking news for yourself.)

Good thing you were sitting down for that, right?

Rather than point out all of the things that advertising does for the Internet -- i.e., more or less pay for highly attractive and useful chunks of it -- I thought I'd just add this small fact to the list of things that people don't like.

> Getting ads that are not relevant to their interests

> Getting ads that are targeted from their personal data

> Paying for content or apps

> Having content sites with ad formats that might get noticed / i.e., paid for

> Getting older

> Getting fatter

> Having to prepare food before eating it

> Having to clean up, rather than having someone else do it for them

> Spending money, perhaps on people that prepare or clean up after food preparation

Anyway, you get the point. And while I really don't want to come off as a cranky realist or apologist to overly aggressive forms of advertising, the plain and simple fact is that without a reasonable revenue stream, quality in content has only one direction to go. Take a look at all of the solid blogs in every consumer category that are no longer with us. Or how online newspaper sites are continually pivoting from free to paywall access, and also shedding staff. I get that this is a generation raised on the wisdom of crowds and the opinions of their friends, but that doesn't fund quality journalism, new music, books, etc... at least, any of those that don't exist in protected and proprietary distribution methods.

But to all of those who believe that the laws of marketing physics do not apply because the new tech is just so very very different from the old tech... well, do you enjoy getting untargeted ads?

And maybe a very large number of them, since they don't work as well as as the targeted ones?

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You have read this far, so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I also welcome email to davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or you can hit the box at top right for a project. .

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out an RFP.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

Height isn't everything

This isn't going to start as marketing and advertising, but hang with me, we'll get there pretty quick.

Tonight in Cleveland in the NBA Finals, Golden State coach Steve Kerr tried something he hadn't done all year, in nearly 100 games. He benched his starting center (Andrew Bogut), moving his power forward (Draymond Green) over to the center position. With the empty slot, he brought Andre Iguodala, a versatile guard/forward, off the bench to start.This made his team very "small", and put them at a considerable risk for not getting enough rebounds of missed shots. It also meant that more players on the floor were offensive threats, as Iguodala is better than Bogut in that respect.

You probably couldn't get away with this kind of move all season long, because your shorter players would get worn down and injured from having to go against bigger players every game. Kerr did the move because his team was down 2-1 in a best of seven series, and from an odds realism standpoint, in serious jeopardy of losing the championship to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers if they didn't win this game. They had trailed for most of the previous three games of the series, and had lost home-court advantage. And in the first few minutes of the game, as Cleveland used its taller players to control rebounds and race their way to a seemingly instant 7-0 lead, it looked like a disastrous gamble.

Kerr called a timeout. Golden State started playing better, with Iguodala in particular having his best game of the year. The smaller players increased the tempo, and got to more loose balls to mitigate the rebounding problem. Cleveland's tallest player, Timofey Mozgov, had his best game of the series, but the Warriors took the early lead and never let it go. The series is now tied, and Cleveland coach David Blatt is under pressure to somehow adapt to the Warriors' short lineup. (By the way, to real NBA fans, this is an overly simplistic narrative. Please forgive me; as noted before, we're going to a larger point about marketing and advertising.)

Kerr probably didn't want to do this. Bogut has been a great player for him, and Iguodala has been terrific at leading the Warriors bench players in limited minutes. But he felt that, due to the 2-1 disadvantage and how the play had gone for the first few games, that he had no better option. What he was doing wasn't working, and to just keep losing the same way was not an option. He had statistical evidence that his team did well when they went small, and knew that increasing the tempo with faster players would help his team, but he doesn't make this move from a position of strength.

Now, back to the marketing and advertising.

I've worked on campaigns for thousands of clients over the course of my career. Frequently, I've been brought in to "put out fires", as performance has not met expectations, and we needed to increase the actionable rates to retain the business.

You might think this is, well, a bad way to work. Deadlines are short, tempers are frayed, pressure is high, and everyone knows the cost of failure if you can't hit the numbers. Sometimes the client is downright angry on calls when things have gotten to this point, and challenge your expectations or ability to serve. People can also get very defensive about what is working, what isn't, and who needs to step up their game to save the relationship.

Here's something you might not expect: this is frequently the most efficient creative cycle for new projects, and it's been the source of some of my favorite moments in business.

When a campaign is at risk, what you have is a pain point. Something needs to change, and change immediately. So much of the blocking agents for offers, creative practices, copy and more are dramatically scaled back. You also can usually work faster, with fewer revision cycles. Treat the project carefully, with professionalism and proactivity, and you can create your most attached long-term client.

The phenomenon is not limited to sports or creative, of course. In politics, campaigns that lose primaries might switch messaging and try to change the narrative. Financial analysts will change their recommendations or investment mixes. Musicians might try new formats, writers new categories, and so on, and so on. Success, seen in this light, can be something of a trap, and curtail learning and innovation.

So the next time you encounter a crisis, consider it for what it is -- a limited-time opportunity, with a fantastic payout if you turn the situation around. And even if you can't, your chance for learning is higher here than anything else in your workday.

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You have read this far, so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I also welcome email to davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or you can hit the RFP box at the top right of this page.

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out a free quote..

SEO Is Dead! Or, Well, Not.

Ready for a new round of why an online marketing discipline is pushing up the daisies? Sure you are. Soundtrack, please!

So in my professional feed recently, there's been much back and forth about how the job skills based in SEO work are now being transitioned to social media, because that's how Those Wacky Kids find stuff, and we're all about the leads, and those are coming from social now. (Also, How SEO Is Dead, Dead, Dead, because no form of Internet advertising is allowed to just be; it's either on the rise or at death's door.)

But on some level, this speaks to a generational shift that's more than platforms or sites, and will require more nuanced thought. Which leads me to the following bit of theorizing.

The first way to find anything on the Web was to either go to portal pages and be passive, or to take the wheel with search engines and drive as an active user. Users who grew up with closed system software, no "wisdom of crowds", and the relatively sudden wonder of a world-changing utility were used to finding their own information. It may have been time-consuming, or frustrating, but on some level, they took pride in the accomplishment, and were indoctrinated to that way of working.

The active users today are using esoteric search engines, maybe even checking the dark Web, and going far beyond ordinary sites. They are also more at risk for viruses and malfeasance, because black hat coding is a world-wide crime of opportunity. In addition to that chilling, the passive users are outnumbering them, because mobile traffic is outpacing desktop / laptop. So instead of being directed by the portal page, passive traffic comes from content aggregators and social media tastemakers or algorithms. Passive is more prevalent, and for an entire generation used to small screen hardware, "active" surfing is a rare event.

What I suspect will happen from all of this is a separation of traffic worth and levels. In many consumer categories, it's defensible to de-select mobile traffic, the same as you might countries where your product is not supported. It's defensible today, and demographically, it may be defensible for a very long time. Which doesn't really speak to the SEO Death Knells, especially when you take into consideration the following.

Just because search hasn't changed very much in the past 10 to 15 years does not mean that's going to continue. Wearable technology, the Internet of Things, increasingly accurate voice recognition, all have significant power to make SEO grow again. So does data analysis that shows commerce is platform driven, or the profound spend level difference between demographic classes, especially with the rough employment conditions facing Millennials. This can and might all change again, in ways that are very hard to predict.

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You have read this far, so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I also welcome email to davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or you can visit my agency's site.

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out an RFP.