MySpace or Lamar?

May 19, 2008

With all the discussion about CPMs, which is the only acronym that doesn’t have an alternate porno definition, I figured I’d do what VCs, Media Conglomerates and the Financial/Tech press are to busy to do … research.

To be more specific, a few google searches – oh, and at least three clicks. I s’pose I also added a hair of thought and common sense, but I don’t want to set the bar too high.

CPM predictions have been all over the place for the Internet. With some networking sites claiming up to $35 CPM and others will need at least $700 CPM to make sense, the fact remains that in practice inventory isn’t selling – even at less than $1.00 CPM.

So what will it level out at? What is a realistic prediction? As close as I can figure, putting a banner on MySpace, Facebook, LinkdIn, etc. is the closest equivalent to buying a billboard on a highway. I mean, none of these sites are making any content, the sites themselves are not the reason for people seeing the advertising, rather they are just providing the infrastructure for people to use to do something unrelated to advertising – sorta like a highway – get it.

So what does a billboard cost? It varies by market but in the major metro-areas it’s between $0.75 and $3.00 CPM.

That’s what Display ads on Social Networking websites are worth. I promise. You can stop guessing. Billboards have been around for a very long time, and they’re still selling – that means they work. They work at $0.75 – $3.00 CPM.

Reference

Leave a Comment » | business, internet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Yahoo! advertises with big, obnoxious button; Staples totally pissed.

May 14, 2008

Yahoo! is marketing their search marketing with a direct mail campaign, ensuring that the first thing customers know about Yahoo! Search Marketing is that direct mail is better. Apparently, they also want to emphasize the fact that they have zero-clue when it comes to targeted marketing. After all – they sent one of these things to me- a guy who writes about how useless the Internet is on a daily basis. A guy who also, for comedy’s sake, lists his company under “Mortuary Services and Embalming” in the phone book. A guy who, apparently, writes about himself in the third person. What a dumbass.

The greatest part about Yahoo!’s campaign, which appears to be targeted at advertising agencies and marketing companies and not morticians, is how incredibly expensive it is.
begin

Man, it sure is pretty, with all that purple, but it sure his heavy?! What could be in here?! I bet it’s magic … really heavy, expensive to mail, magic!

A booklet, mirroring the cover of the box … someone at Yahoo! let the designers convince them that they knew more about business than the business people, but the best was yet to come. Tucked under the booklet, was a big, purple button – Batteries Included.

Yes, when you press the button, it says “Yahoo!” … you know the Yahoo, the one from the commercials.

Susan Vobejda, Yahoo’s VP of Marketing, was nice enough to include a short note, which I can only hope will answer the burning questions that this monstrosity has engendered like, WTF?; and Really? Seriously? You thought this was a good idea?

Alas, I would have to be content to wonder.

While Susan does mention “strong ROI,” “Low CPA” and goes a long way to emphasize her grasp of the sentence fragment, the only thing that this campaign really tells me about Yahoo! is that they’re really good at spending a metric ass-ton of cash on freaking the shit out of my dog

But wait… there’s a post script, perhaps it’s all explained …

Oh, never mind, she’s just repeating that again.

I’d also like to know who these clients she keeps talking about are? Yahoo! Has no idea what I do, do they? (and no, I’m not actually a mortician).

1 Comment | business, internet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

The Pharaoh

May 13, 2008

Every year Television networks attempt to sell most of their advertising inventory up front, in what they’ve creatively named, “up fronts.” That’s all going to go down this week. Broadcast networks (cable is still a chaotic demon-orgy without a classy schedule) will roll out their new shows and wrangle the valuable toothpaste and deodorant dollars for the ’08 – ’09 season.

This year, they’re nervous. In addition to the slow economy lowering ad budgets overall; this Internet thing has been getting a lot of hype, and Madison Ave. is starting to pay attention – at least a little. So, as everyone expects some ad dollars to flow into the endless sea of Internet (a drop in the ocean), is this the end of TV?

No, sit back down, silly venture-capitalists and google-maniacs.

The one thing I know, as fact, is that for most advertisers ROI on web advertising is non-existant. I don’t care how many clicks your website gets, your advertisers are losing an average of 10% … go ahead, do a survey. You’ll get a 10% loss on digital advertising.

What I hadn’t been able to put a finger on is why Web-Ads don’t sell. Logically, they should out sell any other type of advertising by the Roker-Load (equivalent to five Al Rokers, denoted R). An ad that targets customers so specifically (search) and they can instantly purchase the item with a click … it’s an advertiser’s dream, I know, I get it. In practice, however, 10% loss. WHY!?

Then I thought of the Pharohs. I like to be the Pharaoh – who doesn’t like to be the Pharaoh?

The Pharaoh does not search for what he wants. The Pharaoh holds court and the best sheep, linens and tasty-Egyptian-skanks are selected and paraded in front of him. With a wave of his deified finger he refuses or accepts his choice.

While watching Network TV, I am the Pharaoh. It costs a lot to buy that 30 second spot on the Office so only the best in the land can afford to be there. I sit back, sip Pabst from my gilded goblet, one hand on my fine hound, and allow these merchants to present me with their goods while I await the next performer (I sure hope it’s another ancient-skank).

Walking down to the market is for peasants. I don’t want to pick through crowded stalls, with merchants yelling at me from every angle, and lepers selling Identity Theft Protection pulling at my pant legs. Even if I go to the tomato district, looking to buy tomatoes, half of them are going to be rotten or have some kind of ancient worm to eat my brain.

TV is for Pharaohs; the Internet is for peasants – and everyone wants to be a Pharaoh.

1 Comment | business, internet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Leftsetz: Actually Insane

May 9, 2008

Today’s Leftsetz Letter made me laugh at first, but then, as I read further, a blanket of sadness fell. Why does this make me feel so strange, I thought.

Then I realized that these are the rantings of a man insane, screaming into the digital void. Leftsetz is standing on top of a dirty, digital trash-can and heckling the passerby with warnings of the apocalypse … digitally.

Essentially, Leftsetz says, as if fact, that no one likes albums, so bands should just make singles.

No, wrong, no one likes shitty albums. Sure, there are plenty of those out there, but the purpose of a single isn’t just to get people to purchase an album, it’s also to get people into your band. If you hook them with a single, you need more tracks to feed them – free or not. To say that a band only needs one song, and that any fan (not just the die-hards, as Leftsetz assumes) would be satisfied with just one song is as crazy as a monkey shitting balloon-monkeys.

He’s finally lost it.

3 Comments | business, internet, music | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

I Told you So TWICE TODAY

May 8, 2008

SAI again supporting my future-telling abilities

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

I Told You So #143 of 666

May 8, 2008

Head over to Silicon Alley Insider and read about News Corps comments on how they can’t make any money on MySpace.

I told you so.

I’m issuing an open offer to any VC or major corporation (Microsoft, I’m looking at you) – pay me 1% of what you were going to spend on the advertising-model website, and I’ll convince you not to.

Leave a Comment » | business, internet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

QTrax to Math: “Suck It, Math”

May 7, 2008

QTrax.com will be launching soon thanks to the recent signing of a deal with Universal Music Group. Seeing as it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the music websites out there, the basic idea is that QTrax will offer free and legal downloads and fund them with advertising.

Right away we can see a few hurdles for QTrax to overcome such as having to download software to use/play Qtrax music, will it transfer to your iPod? (71% of the market), and finally, “another music website, really, seriously?”

Let’s assume, for some reason, that St. Rene Gupil (Patron Saint of Anesthesiologists, and as of right now, Internet Startups) smiles on QTrax and people start downloading by the metric ass-ton of Coldplay (official unit of P2P, denoted MaT/C), that pesky “Math” comes in and spoils the day for QTrax.

Quickly now:

The going rate of impressions on the Internet is all over the place right now (and highly inflated, generally) but for a general interest site like this, let’s say they can get $5 CPM (very generous I think). Assuming that people only use QTrax to download songs (to assume anything else would make me an employee of QTrax), then that means that even at that generous CPM, QTrax is bringing in a whopping $0.005/download.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that Universal isn’t selling their MaT/C for half-of-a-hundredth-of-a-dollar.

So Let’s go crazy. Let’s say that QTrax sacrifices a few thousand virgins to St. Gupil and they bring in $30 CPM, that’s still only $0.03/download. With this model, to get anywhere near what a label makes from iTunes, Amazon, or any other digital retailer QTrax would have to be selling their impressions at $0.70, or $700 CPM – and that’s without taking any profit for themselves.

Since I’m assuming that the dudes behind QTrax know basic multiplication, they must be either after a Bubble-VC-Buyout game (scary) or think their “Reviews and Ratings” are going to get significantly (1000x) more impressions than the number of downloads they issue (wrong).

3 Comments | business, internet, mp3, music, retarded | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Bubbles are for Babies

May 1, 2008

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Silicon Alley Insider, perhaps as a macabre obsession. It’s fun to scroll through the articles, and mark the business models as advertising, advertising or … advertising.

Then, try heading over to Wikipedia’s entry on the first dot-com bubble and read it with those SAI articles in mind. Remember to smile innocently as you slowly back out of the room, as if you’d just walked in on some sort of disgusting Vampire-Orgy.

In the ’90s people saw the Internet and it looked like retail space on Times Square just came available for $0/sq. ft. They thought, “I could sell so many toys/books/bongs … Yoho! I’m going to be richer than the King of England! (in my mind, people are always medieval serfs)”

Well, that didn’t exactly work out.

So some of those people, the survivors, looked at the Internet and thought, “damn, there HAS to be a way to make money with this thing … it’s just sooooo cooool. And it is, I will give them that.

Then the idea came; “if we can’t make money, maybe we can sell advertising to other people who are trying to make money!” So all the dot-coms start selling advertising (keep survey of the companies mentioned on SAI for one week), many of them to other dot-coms who are trying to sell advertising (do you hear the hissing?).

Someone, somewhere, has to actually sell a good or service to a real customer.

1 Comment | business, internet, retarded, the problem | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km