Arms race outside of the Prado

Sorry for feeling a bit stupid. I just cut my finger while chopping up some veggies. Shit happens and this is not the first time I cut myself since I cook everyday. (As they say, statistically, it is bound to happen.) The stupidity part came from the fact that just a split second before the accident, I was just thinking to myself that how I was holding the stuff was probably a bad idea. Then, Whack!

Be thankful that I am not the type to post images of my mutilated finger...

**

Onto the more pleasant topic of my upcoming Spain trip. All the duckies are beginning to line up. I met up with an art historian buddy, M, to borrow her tome on Prado. No, not the $500 pieces of leather strips pretending to be mules from Prada, Prado is the venerable art museum in Madrid with Goya, El Greco, and other masters.

One question did arise. What is the actual name of Bosch's painting - is it "the Garden of Delights" or "the Garden of Earthly Delights". M swore that it is commonly known as earthly delights. So, my job is to find out.

**

In the realm of Marketing-landia...

What kills me is that Google is getting expensive. I did some quick analysis and noticed that our average costs for the various campaigns have been on an upward trend.

Theoretically, Google employs the dutch auction method and lets you pay just a minimum increment above the next bidder for each click through. On the other hand, if all the competitors, big and small, are determined to get high placement for the Google ad's, this becomes an "arms race" where we attempt to outbid each other while Google is laughing all the way to the bank.

Bastards! That is one brilliant scheme to rule the world.

One possible way to deal with the issue is to switch to targeted site campaign instead of the Content Network. I was initially skeptical of the Targeted site program thinking that it cannot add any more value than the Content network programs that I already employ. However, since the Content network is not performing well, I am always open to experiments

What I found interesting was the process of selecting the targeted sites with this new Google program. Specifically, I entered a list of key words that I want to match with site contents, then, I have to go through each proposed site to see if it is indeed the right fit for the campaign. I must say that about half of them are pretty low quality sites where having the impression made (ad served) is unlikely to have meaningful impact. Then, there is an additional 25% of sites that simply made no sense from my perspective but because some of the key words I used contained generic terms that have multiple meanings I end up with a bunch of washer/dryer sites to choose from!

Of course, the insight is NOT that the targeted site is a bad idea as I am trying it out on a small scale and will likely expand the program once I get more comfortable with it. My insight is how Google's Content network may not be an appropriate vehicle for ad's with the cart blanch approach where Google determines the "right" content for you. Based on the list of available sites from the Targeted site exercise, the Google engine is not to be completely trusted.

On the other hand, Google's ad serving optimization engine does work darn well. The optimization engine will serve the best performing ad's as defined by the higher click-through rate. I turned the engine off for two weeks to force an A/B test and saw our leads flow dropped off. Then, I turned it back on and we saw the number came back up. I am impressed!

This is search engine day. I must confess that I am on the verge of killing our Yahoo/Overture exercise. I have run the program for about four months and I got a paltry two leads from the program. Based on our weblog, we get most of the hits through Google - which makes sense as Google is the preferred engine for most technical people who are our customers. Finally, they upgraded their system last weekend and caused total havoc in their billing system. I had to call twice to get the bills straighten out and get the excess charges reversed.

The funny thing is that I have not found the way to terminate the Yahoo program yet. It will be done. I just thought it is silly to increase the ill will of users in making it unfriendly to terminate a program.

Right. A few personnel update. Mr Whup-ass is still around. He survived the board meeting mostly intact. There were some questions about his intention and allegiance, but we really are not ready to look for a new CEO.

The dragon lady came and went. She declined the offer to join the team. On one hand, it is a shame because we all thought that she is highly capable. On the other, I suspect several sighs of relief was let out as she made an "impression" on a number of us.

The website is still an evolving process. I am in the process of pushing out new Partners pages where people can sign up to become a partner or find an existing partner. I am getting pretty proficient with Contribute and only ask our webmaster in helping me to hook up the navigational stuff and some of the back-end codes.

The new website design is coming along. The designer has given me a few more updated designs to ponder over. This is an interesting process as we try to coordinate and communicate with each to align what we had in our respective minds. One thing is that while the designer works away on the new ideas, I am still chucking along with new content for the existing corporate site. Hope the current site does not outgrow the new site design...

So I went to a marketing seminar hosted by our Big Four accountant. It was a bit of time waster. The speaker is earnest but the example and ideas are pretty well wore. Of course, we all want to delight customers because happy customers means that they will help to spread the good news on the product and the company. The real question for a marketing guy like me is what to do when the customer puts limitations because the legal department mandates it? The question is how does internet fit into the marketing reality. In fairness, I did dot down a few ideas that I want to explore further. But, it sure did not need a four hour session to get these ideas.

Besides, the food and coffee were terrible.

Speaking of time wasters. I have been invited to attend a Google focus group next week. No idea what they plan to do. I hope they have better munchies. For me, I hope to meet a few people in the trenches so we can swap notes on how to deal with click-spam amongst other exciting and well documented on-line marketing problems that nobody seems to have a good solution for.

I am happy that we switched PR firm. Being the second week of the relationship, they are still promising the world and pushing me to give them more information. What a change. Before, I had to prod and cajole the PR team to get things done. Now, I am worries that I do not have time to give timely update to the PR people.

I also like the big picture strategy this firm is proposing. The arc is a series of product announcements which should be planned out on a monthly basis. This arc is supported by a series of related activities such as vertical and geographic pushes. Then, we will also crank up the speaking and whitepaper program to provide the "technical" support. Finally, they are suggesting to put Mr Whup-Ass in places like the Red Herring. Now, that is cool!

**

M is relatively new to the Bay area. And, a typical Bay area obsession is housing prices. So, we were talking about how co-workers deal with the skyrocketing housing market including two-hour one way commutes. Gosh! Can you imagine spending a solid four hours in the car everyday to get to and back from work?

On a lark, M thought of the sky taxi idea. Instead of commuting by car why not take a commuter flight? So, instead of a two hour drive, it can be cut down to 40 minutes. Of course, it won't be too comfortable, but I think there is money there somewhere. I already promised M that I will parcel out some shares for the idea if I ever get around to the idea. Let me know if you are interested in this idea - I always need partners.

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