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Home - posts tagged as languages

Who answers pop-up surveys?


I'll have to touch base with people at Platform-A to see how our targeted ad campaign is going. I haven't seen any of the Numerati ads yet. (I guess my Web surfing habits don't match the profile of the typical Numerati buyer. Or maybe the algorithms are so sophisticated that they recognize me as someone who has already read the book...)
In any case, one of the tools they are using(to a limited degree) to test the public are those customer surveys that pop up in little boxes. I was surprised to hear that, because I instinctively shoot those intruders down. And I imagine that most prospective Numerati buyers do too. So I asked the expert at Platform-A about the participation rate in pop-up surveys. Low, she told me, very low. And who participates? According to their analysis, I learned, the most likely to participate are Midwestern women with modest incomes. The challenge, then, is to calculate the statistical correlation between this group and the population at large.
Also, here's a commentary I did on Marketplace last night. I heard from lots of people all over the country who heard it. The idea is that as we deal with more automatic systems, we'll have to hone our personal algorithms, much the way companies have to optimize Web pages to show up on Google searches.
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Who is reading this blog, part II


Here's a graphic from Platform-A, the division of AOL that's running the behavioral targeting ad campaign for the Numerati. By the way, I hear that the plan is now to run significantly more ads than the 8 million I mentioned last week. Have any of you come across any of the ads yet in your Web wanderings? If so, I'd love to hear where you saw it--and if it was one of the scary ads.
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According to Platform-A:
"The Numerati audience is nearly unique in that it consumes arts content highly, such as book and theater reviews, and yet is also reading a significant amount of technology content. The heavy business and finance content indicates a white-collar audience, and the heavy sports usage skews male." (I would also guess that the low gaming and music signal that this blog--for some mysterious reason--may not be connecting with the young. Am I wrong?)
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Who is reading this blog?


The data is in, and I'm beginning to get an idea of who you are.
That's right. For our behavioral targeting campaign, we placed what is called a "pixel" on this Web site. Most media sites have them. They report on which sites you have come from, and then the analysts (or algorithms) use them to put you into different groups, or tribes. This data is based on visitors in the second half of August (before BW ran the excerpt), and the readership was a modest 2,000. (Here's hoping it rises this month.)
No offense, but I've never seen a more boring list of tribes in my life. No sign of race car buffs or dating sites habitues. No porn. It's all just what you'd expect for a mainstream business and technology site. The biggest group, 41%, comes from "general news." Visitors also visit business, politics, and opinion pages. The Olympics. Yawn.
Some 10% of the visitors come from book reviews. I guess they'll make up one of the two major subgroups for our advertising campaign: arts and literature (ie New Yorker readers).
Even though the groups by themselves are a little drab, it'll be interesting to see which ones respond to the ads. Will The New Yorker readers click the scary ones more or less than the core business tribe? Will a small minority tribe (entertainment-nightlife-dining, 5%) click disproportionately on the ads? We'll see.
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Launching Numerati behavioral campaign: Will deliver 8 million targeted ads


Over the next six weeks, you may run across some of these ads
on your net wanderings. If you do, it will be because the patterns of
your browsing, the sites you visit and the articles you read, rank you
as a promising would-be reader of The Numerati.
As I explained a couple of weeks ago,
Houghton Mifflin is doing a behavioral advertising campaign for the
book with Platform-A, a division of AOL. (AOL last year bought Tacoda,
whose work I describe in the introduction to the book) So, the idea is that we're using the tools and methods of the Numerati to promote the book.
Now I have some details. The campaign, by industry standards, is
pretty small. It will deliver some 8 million targeted ads. The first
stage, which starts in the next couple of days, will scatter them to a
general audience, people in every sort of behavioral tribe imaginable.
Some might be romantic movie lovers, others John Deere aficionados.
Some may dwell at length on obituary postings. Platform-A will see if
any of these groups seem especially interested in the book. They will
also note which ads they click on. Some are cheerfully promotional,
others much more scary. (One flashing ad says: Meet The Numerati...
They've Already Met You.)
On Sept. 15, they will have the data to launch the targeted
campaign. They start out with the hypothesis that the two interested
groups will be readers of book reviews (the so-called "arts and
literature" crowd. I think of them as New Yorker readers) and those
interested in "business strategy." Unless the preliminary tests show
that another group merits their attention, they'll divide the ads
between those two. The business readers will get about 20% more, since
they're a larger group.
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A Numerati reader, perhaps?
The person I spoke to at Platform-A told me that the campaign is a
little more fractured than she'd choose. In other words, it's broken
down into more categories than most campaigns of its size, with more
ads and broader targeting. The reason: We're interested in generating
lots of data. This is an experiment for us, a new form of advertising,
and we want to learn from it.
I got more details in my phone call last night. But I think I'll horde a few of them and break them out as separate blog posts.
I should add here, especially since some of the publicity focuses on
the creepy and invasive nature of the Numerati, that neither we nor
Platform-A will know details about the Web surfers we track. No names,
no addresses, no professions. They're anonymous surfers, each defined
only by the pattern of the pages he or she visits.
As I mentioned yesterday, if you have time to take a look at the ads
please leave your thoughts about them. Are some of them offensive?
Exaggerated? Do any make you want to interrupt what you're doing and
buy the book? Of course, if you supplement your views with information
about yourself, that will give us even more data to work with... If the
two things you're buying this week are a Lamborghini and The Numerati,
you might lead us to a rich and hidden vein of potential readers.
(I also posted a version of this on Blogspotting.net)
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We are going to target you with behavorial ads--and blog about it


Here's the idea. The Numerati is about tracking and predicting
people by their data. So why not use a domain of that very
science--behavioral advertising--to spread the word to the most likely
readers?
That's what we're going to do. In the coming weeks, my publisher,
Houghton Mifflin, will be running an advertising campaign for The
Numerati on the vast network of sites affiliated with Platform
A/Tacoda, a division of AOL. We'll be studying the patterns of the
people who click on Numerati ads. Which web sites do they come from?
What types of profiles do they have? Do some profiles click more on one
type of ad than another?
We'll
make adjustments, and I'll describe the process, step by step, on this
blog. I'll also be sounding out readers on
the conclusions we reach and the advertisements we distribute. Maybe
you can steer us along a more reasonable path. Or perhaps the data will
lead us along a path that appears to defy all logic--but still works.
Are
there things I cannot talk about? Only one that I can think of: Money.
I'm not privvy to the details about how much this campaign costs. But
if I can wheedle any numbers out of the process, I'll do my best to
blog them.
Here's how the campaign should work. Our team
starts out by imagining the ideal readers for The Numerati. This
decision is made the old fashioned way, with the gut. For starters,
we'll be looking at two types of people, the datamining types who
resemble The Numerati and the arty-literature type crowd that might
page through an article about The Numerati in a magazine like The New
Yorker. I may have quibbles about those choices. Maybe you do too. But
the process has to start somewhere.
Over the first week, the ads
will be dropped along the Internet pathways of people who meet these
profiles. I'll go into much more detail as this process continues. As
Web surfers begin clicking (and ignoring), the data may show that the
Numerati/New Yorker types we imagined may be less interested in the
book than folks from entirely different tribes. At that point, we'll
start tweaking. All the while, the data will be pouring in, and I'll be
blogging about it.
Is this the new way to find readers? Our
opening premise, based largely on our guts, is that it is. But the data
will tell the story. That's the way of the Numerati. (other post about this on Blogspotting)
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Kirkus Reviews - https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/stephen-baker/the-boost/

LibraryJournal - Library Journal

Booklist Reviews - David Pitt

Locus - Paul di Filippo

read more reviews



Prequel to The Boost: Dark Site
- December 3, 2014

The Boost: an excerpt
- April 15, 2014

My horrible Superbowl weekend, in perspective
- February 3, 2014

My coming novel: Boosting human cognition
- May 30, 2013

Why Nate Silver is never wrong
- November 8, 2012

The psychology behind bankers' hatred for Obama
- September 10, 2012

"Corporations are People": an op-ed
- August 16, 2011

Wall Street Journal excerpt: Final Jeopardy
- February 4, 2011

Why IBM's Watson is Smarter than Google
- January 9, 2011

Rethinking books
- October 3, 2010

The coming privacy boom
- August 17, 2010

The appeal of virtual
- May 18, 2010





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