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How are you enjoying that free Android software that powers your iPhone-competing smart phone?

I hope you like it enough to reimburse Google $10 a year, because that’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt is hoping to get out of each Android user:

“If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?” Schmidt asked rhetorically. All it would take, he said, is $10 per user per year.

Did you just feel a small pain in your wallet?

OK, relax.

Google doesn’t want you to actually hand over ten bucks a year to use Android, but that’s the nominal amount it says it needs to earn from each user, in order to add a nice supplement to its search engine revenue. That could come from any kind of distribution deal or premium apps that you might pay for.

And any amount it can earn from Android would certainly help it to finally cast off that “one trick pony” tag that appears to be relentlessly applied to the search giant. And, based on the number of people that tweet to me about their love of their Android phone, I suspect that Google has a good shot at getting the income from Android it so dearly craves.

Back in 2008, we reported on the atonishing revenue Google was generating per employee: $210,000 per year!

It appears that revenue has turned into a nice little stockpile of cash for the search giant. If you were to divide up all the cash Google has in its coffers, each employee would walk away with $1.4 million!

Frank Capra’s famous movie from 1939 “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is described in IMDb as “A naive man is appointed to fill a vacancy in the US Senate. His plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn’t back down.”

Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went to Washington as well. It appears though that he wasn’t site seeing. Politico reports

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes confirmed Zuckerberg’s visit was his first to Washington in an official capacity.

“He looks forward to sharing our company’s unique perspectives” on a variety of issues related to technology and the economy, Noyes said.

Now, whether you think that Zuckerberg is like Capra’s Mr. Smith or not is up to you but I doubt that naïve is a descriptor used for Zuckerberg these days.

So what was the trip about?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made his first visit to Washington Wednesday, meeting privately with members of Congress about online privacy and other technology issues.

During his short, stealthy visit this week, Zuckerberg met with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and other members of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force. He did not meet with press or attend any public events.

Hatch and others questioned Zuckerberg about social media, the tech industry’s opportunities for economic growth and legislative priorities needed to create more jobs in the tech sector, according to a task force press release.

He was not alone in Washington this week as another Facebook higher up, CTO Bret Taylor was busy doing his own thing to keep Facebook in the fray.

Both the House and Senate are considering legislation that would place sweeping new rules around how Internet companies are allowed to collect, share and store sensitive information for advertising purposes. Bret Taylor, Facebook’s chief technology officer, warned senators Tuesday that imposing vague technological regulations would stifle online innovation

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Isn’t it ironic how the company that set online privacy back to the digital stone age with its bone-headed arrogance is now the protector of all things innovative?

Facebook’s profile in Washington has been expanding and it will be hard for them to keep this kind of activity private no matter what the settings they have on it. Zuckerberg himself is now being ‘exposed’ to more of a celebrity treatment with a movie on tap for the fall and the paparazzi treatment that he got from Gawker over this past weekend.

There is no denying that Facebook has some work to do in the nation’s capital considering the attention it received earlier in the year as grandstanding senators drafted a letter to the FTC calling for policies to ensure privacy for users on social networks like Facebook. Because Facebook has been established as the poster child for online privacy issues they will have no choice but to step up the presence in DC much like Google has in the recent past.

I think we will all need to get used to this kind of news in the Internet world. It is not likely that Washington and the free market are going to play well together without some mediation. How that plays out will impact the rest of us and we’ll just have to sit back and wait to see what happens.

So what do you think will happen? Will Washington be able to keep companies like Google and Facebook in check? Should they? To what degree? So many questions.

Amazon began beta testing a new application this week that claims to be a simple gift suggestion engine for your family and friends. It all begins on the Amazon recommendation page. From there, you give Amazon permission to talk to Facebook and from there you get a page full of people matched with products.

At the top of the page is a list of everyone on your friends list who has a birthday coming up. Good thing I decided to try this because I totally forgot that my sister has a birthday in 4 days. It even tells me “4 days” because simply saying August 1 isn’t urgent sounding enough.

Below that is a list of products that my friends like, so I should own them, too. Under each item is a tiny Facebook icon for the people who like that item. The first item on my list, a Sundance Film Festival DVD was linked to three friends of mine who are indie filmmakers, so the system does seem to work.

Or not.

The choices appear to be based on the items you list in your favorites section of Facebook. My sister doesn’t have any favorites listed, yet Amazon was bold enough to choose a selection of books she might like for her birthday based on. . . I have no idea what.

My sister-in-law has a variety of items on her Facebook profile and it resulted in an interesting recommendation list that included both Terminator and Disney’s Cinderella. I actually own both of those movies, so all I can say is that she has odd, but good taste. Or maybe it’s Amazon’s taste that I’m sampling.

Overall, I found this new application to be both voyeuristic and creepy. I got a certain perverse joy out of peeking into the book, music and video tastes of people on my Facebook whom I hardly know. On the other hand, I didn’t want to see what would show up for my best friend’s teenaged daughter, lest it be too much information.

The saving grace here is that despite what it looks like at first glance, Amazon isn’t revealing purchase history, just a propensity to “like” something based on information left behind on Facebook. It’s no secret that I like the singer Steve Carlson, so it doesn’t matter that my Facebook friends will see my picture under his CDs, but where does it end?

The only thing I find more disturbing than Amazon’s belief that I’ll automatically want what my friends want, is their instance that I should buy presents for every one of my Facebook friends. Go ahead, make me feel bad with those birthday countdowns and “most wished for” suggestions. I’m still not going to spend my money buying a gift for the guy I met once on a movie but haven’t seen in ten years, Facebook friend or not.

I’m going to disconnect from the service because I feel it’s a terrible invasion of privacy. I am. . .but I have no idea what to get my sister for her birthday and it’s only 4 days from now. Those books they’re suggesting do look interesting. . . .but after that, I’m disconnecting. I am.

People ask a lot of questions. It’s natural and it makes sense. It’s the only way we can acquire information that we don’t currently have. The biggest problem with any question is finding the best source to ask. We have friends and family but they can only go so far in many cases. We have search engines but sometimes you need something else, right?

Enter Facebook Questions which was announced yesterday in the Facebook blog and is being slow rolled out to the Facebook community at large.

Today we’re introducing Facebook Questions, a beta product that lets you pose questions like these to the Facebook community. With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.

Since we like to develop products carefully over time with your help, Facebook Questions is available to a limited number of people right now, and we’ll be developing it rapidly based on their feedback. We’re aiming to bring this product to all of you as quickly as we can.

Here is the box you will see when you are included in the effort

It’s an idea that can certainly be of interest if you feel that you can trust someone that you have never met before and have no idea if they are real or not. In other words, there will be value here but how it fits for you will depend on your willingness to trust. Here are some examples given in the blog

Facebook Questions helps you tap into the collective knowledge of the more than 500 million people on Facebook. For example, if you’re vacationing in Costa Rica and want to know the best places to surf, you can use Facebook Questions to get answers from nearby surfing enthusiasts. Because questions will also appear to your friends and their friends, you’ll receive answers that are more personalized to you.

It appears as if the whole privacy thing has certainly impacted everything Facebook does since this is stated in the post as well.

Keep in mind that all questions and answers posted using the Questions application are public and visible to everyone on the Internet. If you only want to ask a question to your friends or a specific group of people, you can still pose it as a status update on your profile targeted to those people.

You will be able to set up polls and post photos of things that you are asking questions of as well.

Sounds interesting but it is something that should be used with caution considering that you are asking the entire community a question thus opening yourself up to everything else that can come along with that kind of exposure.

So my question to you is, do you think that you would use Facebook Questions to find your answers to the things you are curious about? What kinds of questions would you ask to everyone and what others might you not be so public with? For me, I’ll stick to a status update to my friends only for now. However, some people find that even family recommendations need more verification.

In this new world order, it is important to weigh the risks of of jumping into the ‘personal crowdsourcing’ waters. You never know what sharks may be lurking.

Your thoughts?

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Sometimes an ad for a product is so clever that you remember the ad but not the product. Not so with Old Spice’s new “Smell Like a Man, Man,” campaign which went viral earlier this year. According to a Nielsen report which was noted in Brandweek, sales of Old Spice Body Wash have jumped 55% in the past three months and 107% this past month.

“Gary Stibel, CEO and founder of The New England Consulting Group, said his data also shows a lift for Old Spice. “We think that Old Spice is up. We don’t think it’s up in the double digits, but it’s up meaningfully, and we think it’s driven 100 percent by marketing.”

What’s not measurable is how much help the campaign had from the news coverage it received. Type “Old Spice” into Google news and you’ll find more than 2,000 articles have been written by everyone from Business Week to MTV to. . . us. If P&G had bought ad space on all of these publications, the cost would have been astronomical, but now they’re a part of advertising history and that is, to quote another ad genius, priceless.

The “Old Spice Guy”, Isaiah Mustafa, is now on his way to becoming a movie star with a role in Jennifer Aniston’s new movie. Now that’s how you breath new life into an old brand.

I have good news and bad news.

First the bad news: Search Engine Strategies San Jose is no more.

Sucka!

That’s cos the good news is that the event has been renamed SES and the location changed to San Francisco! I so got you with that one, didn’t I?

Well, there’s more. SES is now part of the broader Connected Marketing Week which runs from August 16-20 at the Moscone Center in San Fran. Connected Marketing Week features five full days of themed subjects on search marketing, micro-blogging, social media, international online marketing, ad networks and exchanges, and much more. Each day will include panels, events, and networking opportunities for all involved.

In addition to SES, the week also includes a half day ClickZ BlogworkZ forum featuring discussion panels on the latest trends in blogging and a specific panel on how bloggers are impacting the reputation of multi-million dollar businesses.

You’ll find me hanging out at Connected Marketing Week. On Monday, I’m on a ClickZ panel will Robert Scoble–the first time I believe we’ve been on the same panel together. And, later in the week, you’ll find me at SES–teaching you how to manage your Google reputation.

So, are you coming?

The early bird discount ends on July 30th and Marketing Pilgrim readers can get another 20% discount by using the code SPGSF20

See you there!

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A new survey by Cone says that four-out-of-five consumers will go online for a recommendation when they’re interested in buying something–even after it’s been recommended to them by a friend or family member. Looks like blood isn’t thicker than water these days. Not when it comes to parting with hard earned cash. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of cash, either.

The survey found that cost wasn’t a big factor in the decision to verify product claims. 82% said they would do research online before buying a car, but 72% said they’d check the reviews on movies and restaurants before heading out. Once they find what they’re looking for online, 80% of those polled said that a positive recommendation would reinforce their intent to buy. It’s interesting to note that only 68% said a negative review would stop them from buying a product or service. That may be the result of our tendency to want validation for our own ideas. Dad likes it, the guy online likes it and so do you, equals, you’re a smart decision maker.

The oddest thing about the study is the portion that talks about who you trust. 63% said they trust recommendations from family members, 31% said friends and only 2% said strangers. Yet a huge portion of the 98% who said they didn’t trust strangers admit to going online to look for confirmation of recommendations by family members. So you won’t trust a stranger on the street but you’ll trust one who writes a review at Amazon. Interesting.

If you believe what the Cone study is saying, then a lot marketing agencies are going about this all wrong. Bzzagent, for example, is a program that is built on the concept that word-of-mouth marketing between friends and family members is the best marketing. Bzzagents are given samples of a product along with talking points and coupons designed to spread the buzz. Going with what the Cone study says, there needs to be an additional step, which is pointing the buzz-ee to a website where they can read positive reviews to back up the bzzagent’s claims.

A combined one-two punch, word of mouth followed by online reviews, is a near perfect winner, particularly if you’re going after the 25-34 crowd. According to the study, 91% of those people go online to verify recommendations and 90% said they were likely to buy after finding support for the claims online.

If want to know more about this survey, the best place to visit is Cone Inc but since I know you’re not going to take my word for it, you can check with Glenn Zaccara, Sr. Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility,  T-Mobile USA, he says, “The agency continues to be the rock behind the program we’ve built.”

Good enough for you?

Whenever research is brought forward that merits one of those “Is that right?!” responses it’s worth looking into. I guess it’s the Internet’s equivalent of riding by a car wreck, you know you shouldn’t look but you do anyway.

Well, a study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism shows that despite the immense popularity of Twitter there are 0% of people surveyed who would pay to use the service. Yup, zero percent. It’s certainly the kind of statistic that turns head but can it be true?

The study was brought to my attention by a post on the HubSpot blog so I decided to look a little deeper. Since I am a sports fan, my first reaction was the hope that USC’s journalism school is more reputable than its athletic department but I got past that pretty quickly .

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

“Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users,” said Cole. “Online providers face major challenges to get customers to pay for services they now receive for free.”

Not earth shattering because I think that the vast majority of people would at least have to really think about whether they would pay to be on services like Facebook and Twitter. I doubt this will ever be a real concern hence the push to find revenue under every other rock that can be overturned from premium services to advertising and more.

Another finding of the study, however, should concern Internet marketers and advertisers. It states

The responses about Twitter are reinforced by other findings in the Digital Future Study that explore Internet users’ opinions about online advertising. The current study found that half of Internet users never click on Web advertising, and 70 percent said that Internet advertising is “annoying. ”

Yet 55 percent of users said they would rather see Web advertising than pay for content.

“Internet users can obtain content in three ways: they can steal it, or pay for it, or accept advertising on the Web pages they view,” said Cole. “Users express strong negative views about online advertising, but they still prefer seeing ads as an alternative to paying for content.

Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for — one way or another.”

It looks like Internet users are confused and they are just like the rest of us. They want their cake and they want to eat it too. This is the great divide that the publishing industry has allowed to become so great that it may not be closed – ever. Free only lasts for so long and then there are things like payroll and offices etc which are not, and never will be, free.

The trouble is that those are business problems and consumers don’t want to hear about them. They want their content and since they expect it to be free they will rebel (at least in the short term) if there is any attempt to require payment for something they feel they have a ‘right’ to. It’s the old entitlement mentality that is part of the culture whether we like it or not.

Check out the highlights of the report for more information about the Internet in general including the continued decline or newspapers, the public’s general distrust of online information and other interesting ‘facts’ like this one:

The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.

That’s an interesting ‘trend’ if you really think about it, isn’t it?

So what are you wiling to pay for online? Is there anything that you simply cannot do without that would merit a payment to get it? Where do you draw the line?

Let us know in an informal Pilgrim’s Poll. I bet there are some interesting takes on this out there among our readers.

Do you wear a tin foil hat whenever you browse the web?

Are you worried that Google knows more about you than any fictional “big brother” ever could?

Well, there’s a browser plugin that you will love–and will likely tip you from slightly paranoid to full-blown insane!

Basically, once installed, Google Alarm notifies you–visually and with some annoying horns–whenever you visit a page that has some kind of Google fingerprint on it. Google Analytics, DoubleClick ads, YouTube videos–you name it!

Of course, half the web has been touched by Google in some way, so install at your own peril.

(Via)

Don’t think that just because Facebook has managed to not completely trample people’s privacy as of late that there is not more activity around the subject. In fact, forces in Washington, this time the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), are speaking at ‘hearings’ that are looking into this issue right now with talk of a “do not track” list. This is not the first time the subject has been raised (2007 it got some attention) but in light of recent online privacy ‘dust-ups’, this idea may have a real chance to develop.

MediaPost reports

The Federal Trade Commission is considering proposing a do-not-track mechanism that would allow consumers to easily opt out of all behavioral targeting, chairman Jon Leibowitz told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Testifying at a hearing about online privacy, Leibowitz said the FTC is exploring the feasibility of a browser plug-in that would store users’ targeting preferences. He added that either the FTC or a private group could run the system.

I have to admit that “do not call” list for telemarketers has made life better for me at least, although I am seeing more and more attempts to ‘get around’ that mechanism as of late. I am not sure what would happen as a result of a “do not track” list but many consumers may find it interesting just because of their experience with its offline cousin.

This is not the kind of talk that the advertising industry wants to hear though, so expect a fight especially if the oversight of any kind of list is left up to the FTC. In fact, the advertising industry is starting to show plenty of signs of the need to ‘self-police’ to keep these kinds of talks and options out of the public forum.

The FTC chairman also noted that he was in favor of an opt-in mentality rather than the existing opt-out and that idea has considerable support from others in power.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) both expressed concern that privacy policies weren’t giving Web users enough useful information about online ad practices.

Rockefeller proposed that some companies were burying too much information in lengthy documents that consumers don’t read. “Some would say the fine print is there and it’s not our fault you didn’t read it,” he said, adding, “I say, that’s a 19th-century mentality.”

Kerry added that he didn’t know that consumers understood how companies use data. “I’m not sure that there’s knowledge in the caveat emptor component of this,” he said.

Wow, Sen. Rockefeller just tossed the advertising business so far into the past regarding their practices that the 20th century was ignored. I guess he made his point.

So where do you stand on the possibility of a “do not track” list? Is this something that could hurt the online advertising industry or is it just a way for politicians to say that they are doing something about online privacy?

I’m at the bank depositing money.

That’s a real tweet I saw this week and it was followed by a Foursquare link showing the exact bank. According to new research by Forrester, that tweeter was probably a young adult male with a college degree and he’s one of only 1% of online users who actually do this kind of thing.

From my experience, it seems that half the people I follow on Twitter use location-based tweets, but the data says that only 4% of online adults have even tried geolocation and only 1% uses it on regular basis. Really?

The study also says that 70% of the users are between 19 and 35 and 80% are male. Again, not my experience, so apparently I have unusual friends.

The good news for marketers is that though the group is small, they’re powerful. Melissa Parish of Forrester wrote on her blog:

“Our research shows that these users are typically young, male, well-educated, and influential.  In fact, LBSN users are users are 38% more likely than the average US online adult to say that friends and family ask their opinions before making a purchase decision.”

So the question becomes, how much of your time and money should be spent marketing to this group? Parrish says very little.

“Though many LBSNs are gathering steam, the landscape is fragmented and the programs can’t scale just yet. But with large companies preparing to enter the market (I’m looking at you Facebook and Yahoo!) the time for marketers to get involved is coming.”

That is unless you’re marketing a product of interest to college-educated male trendsetters under 35. In that case, it’s time to start working on that Foursquare Mayor of Marketingville badge.

Ask has always been the red-headed stepchild of the search industry. It’s always lurking in the shadows as the #4 search engine and usually gets a mention in search share only if there was significant up or down movement. Accounting has the Big 4 but search only has the Big 3 which is soon to be the Big 2 ½ or something once bing and Yahoo fully consummate their relationship. Ask is usually not included in those talks but is making changes to differentiate itself and hopefully make more of a splash in that area. The key to that hope: good ol’ fashioned human beings!

The Ask blog reports

Today we’ve officially launched the public beta for the new Ask.com, which combines our proprietary answers technology (specifically tailored to extract questions and answers from the Web) with the human insight of the thriving Ask.com community drawn from our 87 million monthly uniques. Now available on an invite-only basis (you can request your invite here), the capability to pose questions to real people is now possible for those complex, subjective and/or time-sensitive queries that, no matter how advanced, computers simply can’t address.

That means that Ask.com is now uniquely able to offer the most comprehensive and convenient approach to getting answers, combining pages and people to help users find the answers to all questions – even questions for which no answer is published online.

In the search world there may just be a place for this kind of service if it can catch on with people who are ‘blue text link trained’ like myself. In this age of social media and trusting sources that reach far beyond our truly trusted circle of friends (be that a good or bad thing, it still is) there may be more of an acceptance of this approach.

Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove sums up the improvements for you

The beta offering is a product of four new features: a completely overhauled look with a focus on highlighting trending questions from the community, semantic search with answers displayed on the page, a large Q&A database and a user community element that targets members for answering questions based on their areas of expertise. The latter somewhat mirrors Aardvark’s formula for finding answers to user questions, and is initiated when users click the “Ask the Community” button on the right-hand side of the results page.

Even if this Q & A approach seems to be somewhat antiquated it could have some legs if for no other reason than it looks different. Once again, though, Ask needs to drive people to the site and in the past their approach has been mass advertising pushes that come on real strong then disappear. There has been very little attempt to keep the Ask brand in the mind of the searcher in a way to help them possibly convert from Google or somewhere else to the new Ask.

I have always hoped that Ask would put together something that was worthy of challenging bing and Yahoo! to at least push them a bit. Whether this approach is the answer certainly is a big TBD.

If it’s not the answer then the next question has to be, is there a place for Ask at the search table or is it time to move on and look for someone else to challenge the Big 3 (or 2 1/8 or whatever it’s going to be)?

Your thoughts?

Advertising suffers from a reputation problem. Here at Marketing Pilgrim we are very interested in online reputation management but even the best social media monitoring tools can’t help some industries. Of course, when you spend years simply ignoring how poorly you are viewed by the public in general, it doesn’t help. This is how the advertising industry has put together its stellar reputation that it is now trying to control a bit with the help of the oldest journalism school in the country, The University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The Huffington Report says

Industry leaders are teaming up with the nation’s oldest journalism school to launch the Institute for Advertising Ethics. Among the research center’s goals is to improve the public image of a business that spent $125 billion last year but isn’t exactly known for its bedrock principles and unwavering scruples.

Whether it’s the duplicitous exploits of fictional television character Don Draper or the latest penalties levied by the Federal Trade Commission, the ad industry struggles to put its best face forward. A 2007 Gallup survey ranked advertisers among the least trustworthy professionals – barely beating out lobbyists and car salesmen.

It’s funny in some ways but actually quite pathetic in many others that the advertising industry has sunk to this level. I would be interested to see that survey conducted today to see if there has been any movement either up or down. I suspect it’s either about the same or even worse but that’s just a guess.

So why this desire to self-police?

“Because it is persuasion, advertising is viewed in a questionable way by a lot of people,” said Margaret Duffy, a former ad executive who now teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is helping to organize the ethics institute.

But even though the industry’s fundamental purpose is to convince shoppers to buy a product they may not actually need, such persuasion can be done in an “ethical and tasteful” way, she added.

Honestly, if this is the attitude of one of the founders of the institute I can only imagine what’s going to come out of it as it develops. Maybe there will be a guide called “How to Make People Buy Things They Don’t Want but Still Feel Good About Your Profession” or how about “Top Ten Ways to Screw Someone Without Them Feeling It”.

Sorry I seem a bit negative on this one but when an industry built on spin starts to spin ethics then it’s hard to figure out what is spin and what is, well, something else.

This group though is convinced that there is good to be done. The leader of the institute is visiting professor, Wally Snyder, who is a former FTC (Federal Trade Commission) lawyer and American Advertising Federation president. He realizes that he has a tough road ahead with such reputation luminaries as lawyers and members of Congress having higher trust scores than advertisers according to Gallup. That’s pretty impressive, huh?!

But if the industry is thinking any way like this following agency owner then all we can say is “Best of luck, Wally!”

Mark Fleisher, owner of a small advertising agency in central Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, says the industry doesn’t need to be reminded of the importance of ethical behavior. It just needs to increase the honesty quotient.

“The industry has become more ethical because the clients have become smarter,” he said. “Agencies are still going to pull whatever they need to (clinch a deal). And those agencies will run roughshod over the honest ones. That’s been going on for years.”

Increase the honesty quotient? Industry has become more ethical because clients have become smarter? I’m not even sure how to respond to those kinds of assessments. Let’s put it this way, if the institute is generating revenue there looks to be plenty of job security in the future.

Of course, there will be the ‘big boys’ running the show with board members from Procter & Gamble, Omnicom Group, WPP and Ketchum but as Jim Edwards, a former Adweek managing editor puts it

“History does not suggest that these things catch on very well,” he said. “There’s a structural problem in the advertising business. The entire industry is engaged in a race to the bottom. Whoever can do it the cheapest and the fastest wins.”

I realize I have taken the cynical approach to this kind of endeavor. What are your thoughts? Is it possible to self-police the ad industry like this group and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are suggesting?

Let’s hear your take.

Holy smack in the face Batman! Yahoo Japan just signed a 2-year deal with Google!

Yes, with Google! Not, Bing!

Before the word “mutiny” jumps to your prefrontal cortex–your “mind” for the rest of us–you need to know this: Yahoo holds only a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, so the search engine couldn’t put its foot down and insist that Bing be the search engine of choice.

Still, what an embarrassment! I mean, Yahoo Japan basically just told the world that its US sibling has made a terrible mistake and it’s not prepared to make the same one!

Of course, Yahoo is having none of that, releasing its own statement on the deal:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

So, what can stop this black-eye for Yahoo and Bing? Well, Japan’s regulators just might hold that key. Apparently, Google’s 53% market share in Japan and Yahoo’s 38% share will create one heck of a monopoly. So, maybe Yahoo Japan will have to partner with Bing by default.

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No, really! Does anyone actually know what the unveiled Google Punch does?

Apparently Google Operating System spotted Google Punch listed in a Google Documents drop-down–within the video below.

Speculation has already started as to what Google Punch could be, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A few days ago, Glam Media, the number one vertical media company for women, announced that they were going to buy ad technology start-up AdPortal. The idea was that their tech would help bolster Glam Media’s GlamAdapt program which allows publishers to run their own self-service ad portals. The emphasis is on detailed demographics that will allow the advertisers to place ads based on very specific audience and geographic stats over a wide-range of sites all under the Glam Media roof.

AdPortal is a spin off of Sportgenic, a sports ad network. Now, with today’s announcement, it all becomes quite clear.

Glam Media is now going after the male market with the launch of their new vertical “BrashSports.”

The press release states:

“Brash.com, owned by Glam Media, has acquired Sportgenic (www.Sportgenic.com) — one of the leading men’s sports vertical media startups based in San Francisco, and has added leading men’s publishers (including SportsFanLive and Bloguin), professional social media authors, and digital video producers.”

“This acquisition expands Brash.com vertical leadership in Men 18-49 to over 30 million unique visitors in the U.S., making Brash #3 after Yahoo! Sports and ESPN with a massive, passionate, and socially engaged male audience online. Brash has added over 25 new men’s properties — making Brash Media a leader in offering 360 degree “whole life” solutions for brands looking to surround and engage men online.”

In addition to sports, they’re also moving deeper into entertainment and lifestyle for men. They’re using the tagline “Big. Bold. Brave. Blunt.” along with a photo of Steve McQueen which suggests they’re going for an upscale audience that is classy with a bit of the rebel thrown in. But if you take a look at Brash.com you won’t see big, bold, brave or blunt. Right now it’s a bland blog with a flat, purple navigation bar that does nothing to draw in the reader.

Brash has been online since 2008 but only represented 10% of Glam Media’s business. Now it looks like they’re putting the site into high gear in hopes of making it a much larger component. The question is, can a company that’s known for their women’s content, become the preferred homepage for men?

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We like to think of colleges and universities as places where learning trumps all else, but the truth of the matter is that institutions like these are still businesses, which means they need to make money. Says Rob Moore of Lipman Hearne, a marketing company specializing in non-profits:

“Higher ed institutions today are facing a conflation of challenges that can best be met through more effective marketing. Increased competition for students, deep tuition discounting, demographic pressures that put many traditional markets at risk—all have a huge impact on the institution’s bottom line.”

In response to this, colleges and universities are actively adding new marketing tactics to the mix including social media and interactive marketing. Lipman Hearne recently published the results of a study called “Marketing Spending at Colleges and Universities” and here’s what they found:

• Interactive and social media budgets are growing. Between FY2008 and FY2009, 55 percent of institutions surveyed allocated more to interactive; and 52 percent allocated more to social media.
• Institutions that invested more in social media were more likely to report positive outcomes in three important areas: website hits, positioning, and rates of alumni giving.
• Moderate-to-heavy users of social media were actually spending less per student overall on marketing activities. The moderate-to-heavy investors spent $83 per student, and the light-to-non-investors spent $121 per student.
• While interactive and social media budgets were on the rise, traditional advertising budgets were on the wane. The study found that more than one-third of the institutions allocated less to traditional advertising in FY2009 than they did in FY2008 (35 percent). And 42 percent of moderate-to-heavy social media users spent less on traditional advertising compared to the prior year.
• Institutions continue to rely on print publications. Of those surveyed, 55 percent spent the same portion of their budget on print publications in FY2009 as they did in FY2008. In fact, more than one-quarter of marketing budgets went toward print publications, more than any other category.
• Though marketing spending has decreased at some institutions in the short term, marketing spending has increased substantially over the last decade. According to an earlier study, in FY2001, the median marketing spending for a midsized college or university (2,000-5,999 students) was $259,400 (or $321,900, adjusted for inflation). Not even a decade later, that figure rises to $800,000—an increase of more than 100 percent.

One of the most telling points here is the marketing dollar to student ratio. This number indicates that social media marketing is cheaper but just as effective as traditional marketing. Or so it would seem. The trouble with marketing and education is how you define the results. Unlike a retail business where you can see the effect in dollars earned, colleges have to look at a variety of results from number of students enrolling to donations, even the popularity of a faculty member could be seen as an uptick. Donna Van De Water, director of research at Lipman Hearne, and one of the study’s authors says:

“In the last five years there’s been a much greater interest in proof, in validation, and in testing. Marketers need to be able to show that their investments are going to have a payoff, whether it’s in increasing enrollments or generating a higher profile. Having the metrics helps an institution understand where it sits relative to competitors, how to better manage reputation, how to shape messages, and how to maximize resources.”

For more information about the report’s findings, please visit www.lipmanhearne.com.

Although it comes as no surprise to most, the integration of e-mail campaigns and social media outlets is becoming more popular. Leading the charge are Facebook and Twitter which is probably no surprise either. What is a little surprising is just how quickly the numbers dive with regard to other options for social media integration. The following chart from eROI shows results from a survey they recently conducted (hat tip to MarketingProfs).

With Facebook being the most mainstream option of these outlets its appearance at the top of the list is almost expected. Twitter on the other hand is much more dependent on the type of e-mail recipient because it’s mass appeal is much less than Facebook’s at this time. In other words, Twitter likely skews toward a tech-savvy and generally younger crowd while Facebook hits a more widespread demographic target.

What was interesting was the relative ignorance of the mobile market by these very same marketers. There seems to be confusion on subjects ranging from mobile’s usage amongst these companies’ customers to even how the company itself is utilizing the mobile web for their site in general and marketing as a whole. This points to the whole disconnect issue that happens when industry reporting and predictions leave reality in the dust. Why do you think it has been the “Year of Mobile” for about 7 years now?

OK, so let’s step back for a second. If e-mail is very important and it is a pretty well known fact that there is a large group of consumers that get e-mail on mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and more) shouldn’t marketers be a little more ‘in tune’ with mobile? If you pay attention to most industry reports they already are right? Is there a perception vs. reality divide present here? Is it possible that hype is out-pacing implementation? How can that happen on the Internet ?

As we have warned in the past, it is probably a good thing for companies to make sure they are doing the Internet marketing basics like search and e-mail well before they jet ahead into the mobile space. It’s this rush to get to the next best thing without ever really taking full advantage of the LAST next best thing that gets businesses in trouble online.

So where are you with e-mail, social and mobile? Are all three humming on all cylinders or is there work to be done to bring one or more up to speed? Even when the assumption is that everyone does all of this well and is ready to move on, are you going to stick to the basics or go to the next big thing?

Aol. is still around folks. Back in June I heard CEO Tim Armstrong speak at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s content focused Innovation Days event. He was passionate about Aol. as a comeback story and was intent on focusing on how it would be generating a lot of custom content from real journalists. Honestly, I am not sure where that is at some 1 ½ months down the road but I’m sure Aol. will let us know of there is any success.

For now, though, there is a need to get their future search partners in order since the current $700 million a year deal with Google is set to expire in December. It appears as if Armstrong is looking to get creative which could mean more than one search partner for the company.

Fortune reports

“Search is heating up from a multi-partner space—we are not talking to two companies,” said Armstrong while speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference.

As he embarks on a turnaround that has yet to manifest, Armstrong is thinking long into the future. “What you do today is probably going to have a seven-year outcome,” he explained. When a new search deal is announced later in the year, AOL-watchers may not see Google, which currently supplies a large percentage of the company’s revenue, as its only partner.

Wow, Armstrong is certainly breaking the Internet mold by talking about seven-year outcomes. If something isn’t happening in seven weeks there will be more than a few folks getting antsy and wondering if Aol. is going to pull itself out of the Internet ditch or not.

Since Aol. is really banking on advertising that will be placed around their ‘in-house’ content production the conversation seems to always come around to Aol.’s technique in this area. Their SEED methodology which is usually bunched in with Yahoo’s Associated Content and Demand Media is another mass content production process from ‘writers’ that can submit material. It’s the editorial oversight of this material that has people worried that the Internet will be cluttered with keyword triggered ‘stories’ that may have little to do with accuracy or dependability.

It makes sense that if this technique were to drive more traffic to Aol. sites that a strong search partner or partners should be in place. Considering the cost of having Google do this in the past, Aol. is likely looking for some cost savings to try to see if any money will move to the bottom line in the near future.

Regardless of who ends up being Aol.’s search buddy, what are YOUR feelings about Aol. and it’s chances for the future? Is there any gas left in the Aol. tank or will the effort needed to ‘right the ship’ be for naught?

Feel free to give us your Aol. turnaround strategy. Maybe Tim Armstrong is looking for some user generated content in that area too.