custom essay writing: I think this stuff is very useful for my research in college. Sep. 2, 2010, 10:20am
ClubPenguin: Love the website but the itty bitty box for submitting comments -- what's that about? Jun. 22, 2010, 9:45pm
Zen: What is even more amazing are the tools available to the mom and pop operations selling on a website. Take Google Analytics. You can get a complete profile on people who come to your site, where they are from, what pages they view, even what keywords they used to find your site - for free! This gives the "little guy" a huge advantage, and can help to tailor the content to their audience. Aug. 26, 2008, 1:10pm
J. A. Ginsburg: I love the idea of a blog tour. The whole behavioral marketing approach is brilliant. Yes, it's a bit creepy that such fine-grained information can be harvested and manipulated, but the distress is probably more about, "Good Golly! Am I really that predictable?" That said, I rarely if every click through on online ads. If there is an impact, it's the awareness gleaned from simply seeing the ad. How is offline behavior that may be influenced by online behavior taken into account with this model? btw, Love the website but the itty bitty box for submitting comments -- what's that about? C'mon designers and programmers: Be kinder to users! Why am I squeezing type into a 2 1/8" x 3/4" box in a pop up that takes up only 1/6 of the screen of my Macbook? cheers.... Aug. 22, 2008, 11:07am
Connie Bennett: Steve, Instead of finding this behavioral advertising for your new book "creepy and invasive" like that twitterer you mentioned on Blogspotting, I find it absolutely fascinating and brilliant. How cool for you that your publisher is giving you this kind of support. : ) Also, as Arthur (the first commenter) suggested, I think you might be able to get a lot of mileage -- perhaps even more (?) than paid advertising -- by using Twitter. Of course, I'm sure you've already thought of this. Likewise, I imagine you're already planning a huge social networking book-launch campaign. I'm so excited for you -- just thinking of the tremendous potential for getting your information and book out into people's hands if you did a blog tour (where you write guest posts for a variety of influential blogs and of course posts for your Blogspotting blog at Business Week); a virtual book tour or two on Blog Talk Radio (where you're interviewed, as are some of these "numerati" you interviewed); blog posts from a number of well-known marketing bloggers (like Seth Godin), who would talk about your book on a particular day or week to trigger interest in your book and, of course, drive up sales; etc. Naturally, given your beae and expertise, you've probably thought of all these ideas. (So please don't be insulted by my giving them!) Anyhow, I'm very excited for you because of the uniqueness of this book-launch campaign! By the way, I'll be calling your publisher tomorrow to find out if you can do an interview with me on my Gab With the Gurus Show on Blog Talk Radio in mid to late September. Also what's the Google New York event? Is this live? Virtual? When I clicked on the link, I couldn't find any more info about it. Anyhow, best of luck with the book! Sounds like it will become a huge bestseller. Break a leg! Connie Aug. 22, 2008, 2:24am
@ahg3 (Arthur Germain): Steve, You mention using ads for tracking -- why not twitter as well? No one checks tiny URLs beforehand and you'll be able to see how that population reacts to 140 character pitches for more info. The links can be part of overall tracking. ahg3 Aug. 21, 2008, 5:25pm
steve baker: Marilyn, one thing I should make clear (probably in the post) is that this information is anonymous. If it tracks me as I go from the Phillies news to BW to this blog and elsewhere, it only recognizes me as an anonymous person with these patterns. That's enough, at least for now. They could conceivably track zip codes from ip addresses, and if they really wanted to, I'm sure they wouldn't have any trouble IDing us. But to avoid the kinds of fears you have (and the heavy hammer of govt regulation), they're keeping it anonymous Aug. 21, 2008, 10:23am
Marilyn: Even the title of this blog post sounds sinister to me. I realize this is how marketing is done now, and maybe your publisher thinks the transparency outlined in this post will make the process fascinating for those being targeted (like watching oneself be a lab rat.) But then I'm the wrong person to ask--I'm not sure I've *ever* clicked an internet ad. Whereas if you tweeted a link to your book on Twitter (like you did to this blog post), I'd click it in a heartbeat. The gist of your marketing campaign is the reason that I don't use Facebook. Aug. 21, 2008, 9:24am
David: I used to work in the advertising department of a huge international retail company that advertises on several high-profile websites, and has an e-mail campaign, and everything you'd expect to go with that. Even though I had nothing to do with internet marketing, I still got to sit in on the related meetings. I have to say, I was fascinated by how useful the generated data is. I'd hear things like, "It turns out that this ad placed on nytimes.com has a 71% higher click-through rate when the person who sees it has already seen the same ad on slate.com; and if that person also receives our e-mail campaign, they are 43% more likely to end up making a purchase. And if they also get our print mailer they tend to spend $450 more over the course of a year." Through use of cookies and customer accounts, they were able to analyze their data and streamline their advertising so it was as effective as possible. I was truly impressed, and frankly it made me realize just how valuable all that information gathered is. Aug. 21, 2008, 8:53am