First Test Ever of the New Sign-up Feature for Digg
March 29, 2007
This is our first attempt online at the new Digg Sign up feature — So you want to Click Here to sign up for Digg and see if it works.
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Hey Advertising Agency : The Wall Street Journal Publishes Advertorials
March 28, 2007
A nasty growing publishing trend is to make ads not look like ads, or presell the ads value on the trusted content site. What could one expect? When you deal with ink, a reader base that is getting older to the point of not being able to see the mice type “this is an Advertorial” it’s the only way they can make money.
 Here is their ‘special ad section for paid for news’ then it get’s even better.
They got this garbage on the bottom of the Wall Street Journal page:
The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom was not involved in the creation or
production of this special advertising section.
Really? Then why does it look like normal news? It’s hosted on the Wall Street Journal Site, it looks like the Wall Street Journal, so why do I have to scroll now to the bottom of each page to see if I am reading an ad or if I am reading a real story?
Threadwatch has a discussion on it.  The entire concept of ‘selling news for hire’ is unsettling.
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Google to take on Monster.Com - Google Job Search - Screen Shots
March 27, 2007
Looks like Google is going to give monster the fight of their life.
Enjoy the Google Job Search Screenshots
(Click to Enlarge)
And it becomes better
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Andrew Breitbart (Co-Author of the Drudge Report) goes Web 2.0
March 26, 2007
Matt Drudge’s partner, Andrew Breitbart goes Web 2.0 with his new Website redesign using everything from “Term Tracker” to throwing Video Content on the main page.
I guess being #2 on the Drudge Report isn’t good enough.
What are the Chances of Matt Drudge moving to a CMS system? The 1996 version he has running could use some spice, or at least less popups.
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The Sock Puppet
March 26, 2007
Pets.Com - Remember that booming company?
Pets.Com rolled out a advertising campaign using a TV, print, radio. The 5 city advertising campaign expanded to 10 cities by Christmas, 1999. The company succeeded wildly as the Pets.com sock puppet was very well received. Even the Pets.Com Website won several advertising awards. In January 2000, the company aired its first national commercial as a Super Bowl ad which cost the company $1.2 million and had the highest recall of any ad that ran during the Super Bowl.
Their Ad Agency did their job right? Excellent Campaign? The Advertising Agency of Record (our research pointed to TBWA/Chiat/Day should be happy with their success right?
Did the Ad Agency even consider the level of spending and advise them that they simply cannot sell enough dog food to make up for the cost of a 1.2 million dollar superbowl ad?
I feel the failure of Pets.Com was due to multiple levels, The Business model is actually sound, there are several firms out there of decent size that are earning money online. But the business plan, that was the disaster.
First it was VC back, (hence why many of the more modern Internet Firms shy away from it). So the owners got a taste of big budgets well before they were able to actually support it.
Second huge amounts of money were allocated to their Advertising Agency, and their Ad Agency didn’t advise them or if they did Pets.Com didn’t listen (We tend to believe that since the Ad Agency was getting paid, they didn’t mention a peep). So no one even did simple research to provide them with estimated ROI on the campaign on how many 50 lb dog food packages they had to ship to make money on such a huge ad campaign.
We are not saying the blame rests entirely on Advertising Agency, We are saying that the Ad Agency should of done a basic ROI study prior to allocating such huge resources towards a campaign.
We at Yooter do a basic ROI study prior to taking on a client. Basic meaning we can inform the client of what the general traffic level that MIGHT be expected (within some sort of margin of error) and explain to the client that some keywords are just not going after because we don’t see how widgets sold at 1 dollar a pop for an estimated traffic level of 1000 visitors with 1% buying them could justify spending $30,000 dollars “Just because the client wants to see himself #1′.
We try to convince the client that the alternative keyword at 900 visitors at 1% buying them would only cost the client $200 dollars, and has the potential to produce a positive ROI.
It’s when the fixed cost of the campaign exceeds the revenue that could be generated at even the most rosy projections is when we tell the client ‘don’t do it.. please don’t do it’
If the client really wants the campaign, we will do it, after the client confirms via e-mail that they understand this is against our better judgement. We do this not to be jerks, we do it because we feel that we want our clients to have a positive ROI with Yooter, and we want our clients to be viable. Not just some example of a Web 2.0 company that crashed.
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Web 2.0 is a Joke
March 26, 2007
Reading Gapingvoid we had a good laugh over the entire 2.0 Concept. Yooter InterActive had a good plug saying that there needs to be a Web 2.11 because none of the larger Web 2.0 companies have a revenue stream and this won’t make it to Web 2.11 unless someone figures a way to make money other than Google Adsense.
Learfield pointed us to the Gaping void post that started this post.
We deal with plenty of Web 2.0 startups and we also get the feeling that they are still after the 1990′s term ‘eyeballs!! eyeballs!’… they forgot to shout ‘Profit! Profit!’…. note to Web 2.0 entrepreneurs, VC money is not profit.
As for the Ad Agencies that feel that they could ‘make something’ from a Web 2.0 company.
The Sock Puppet was great!! Pets.Com made billions from it… right?
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Print Media faces certian death.
March 26, 2007
A pair of venerable print publications — Life Magazine, and our IDG sister publication, InfoWorld — announced today that they will no longer be buying paper in bulk.
It’s over people, print media is literally dead.
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Breaking News to Newspapers and Advertising Agencies
March 26, 2007
Someone forgot to report the News to the Newspapers,  Comparing Febuary 2006 with Febuary 2007 revenue is down, and down in a big way.
USA Today is down 14 percent
The New York Times is down 7.5 percent
The Wall Street Journal is down 10 percent
Many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening systemic problem.
Huh? The New York Times finds this guy to try to question the obvious stating that he isn’t sure it’s a ‘short term slump’
This slump has been going forward for a decade, it’s just now coming to a head.
Perhaps it’s better said that people go to Digg, Drudge Report , SqlSpace or any of the other websites that display breaking news. There are all sorts of fundamental problems with Newspapers. Mostly that you get yesterday’s news today. The process is messy, something that was developed about 200 years ago with newspaper boys running around saying ‘Extra, Extra read all about what happend Yesterday’ or your newspaper delivery person getting up at 3 am to cart around 200 newspapers of yesterday’s news. as compared to someone in their bunny slippers typing in http://www.digg.com and reading it happening in real time.
The problem we are seeing is literally a technology revolution that will make Newspapers (in their current form) as relevent today as a horse a buggy is to a car.
The worst are those Ad Agencies that spend their clients money to put ads in them. It was great this winter however, kept the house warm in the fireplace.
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Best Buy is shopping for an Ad Agency
March 22, 2007
It appears that Best Buy NYSE: BBY is shopping for an Ad Agency
That is great news for for all the competing firms that want to take a swing at it. I think the first order of business for the new Ad Agency is to get Best Buy actually ranked in Google (well second thing, the first thing is to get all those nasty articles in Digg cleared up with something good the company will do).
As it appears now, the site is not even cached.
Maybe their new Ad Agency will understand that Search Engine Optimization is something that should be allocated towards. Best Buy should be ranking for all the products they sell.
Here is a flat panel TV at best buy (took me 20 steps on their site to find it, but I got there.. good thing I knew their domain). It’s a Flat-Panel LCD
I am going to search for a flat panel LCD, I want to buy it for my wife.
Cool Beans… CompUSA has a good deal on it… …. huh? This is Best Buy we are talking about. But they are not anywhere on the first page.. I forgot they sold it.
Congrats Best Buy, you just lost nearly a $1,000 dollar sale.. I am sure this happens hundreds if not thousands of times a day.
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Ad Agency of Record
March 20, 2007
This is the time when an Ad Agency Executive sticks his chest out, and submits the press release saying ‘We are the Ad Agency of record’
It’s a funny thing, we at the Tribble Ad Agency keep tabs on this stuff for kicks, because normally about 6 months later we see the same names on this search , normally appended with the same Ad Agency Executive saying ‘we will not be defending’.
What we find the most comical is when you digg down alittle bit, you will see that the inital press release was sent out by the Ad Agency, but the second release was sent out by everyone else (company, 10 news stories from the Media, and yea, a few other Ad Agencies trying to get their business).
We are considering a search using Google’s API that lists who is who’s Ad Agency, from start to finish, with a timeframe associated with the start date of the ‘agency of record’Â release, and the end date of the ‘account in review’ search.
If anything we could use it to actually build perhaps the first full national average of how long ad agencies stay ‘agency of record’
Ideas? Thoughts?
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