manage well

Yesterday evening, I sat through a technical seminar on online ad optimization. It was a very enlightening talk, reasonably technical, that help me get started on this subject. I learnt how online ad optimization involves so systematic gathering of data, slicing and dicing, analysis based on demographic strata such as age, gender, ethnicity, wage groups, etc. They also collect data on unique visitors, and are doing real cool work like frequency capping (i.e., don’t show the high-priced ad more than a certain number of times to the user who doesn’t click on it in that many number of times – the logic being he is most likely not interested in it), and so on. After the talk, I had a few questions. The answers left much to be desired, and hence I thought of posting those questions in a blog post. So, here we go.

Just a small caveat: I am a die-hard supporter of “no-irritating-online-ads-please” policy. Yes, yes, I understand the economics of how ad revenues help in cross-subsidizing the magazines or newspapers or the websites, but I think there is a fine line between what is done and what is not done, and every customer knows where is that fine line ! So, let’s get going…

1. Why does online ad optimization include ‘unique visitors’ as a data for analysis and not ‘repeat visitors’ ? I read long back that it takes up to 6 times the time, money and effort to attract a new customer as compared to retain an existing one. Why not focus efforts on people who are coming to your site twice, thrice…ten times a month as compared to the unique visitors. A frequent visitor likes the user experience on your site (that’s why he is coming to your site so many times !), and might be more open to what you advertize on it than a vagabond visitor.

Continue reading ‘What is wrong with online ad optimization ?’ »

Those on Gmail have my heartfelt sympathies. Additionally, if you also use LinkedIn, welcome to hell !

Let’s first talk about Gmail. Have you seen what’s happening off-late: gmail is getting painfully slower by the hour, it freezes every now and then,.. I am now seriously thinking of switching over to a ‘simple’ webmail (does anyone know any webmail without any GUI ?)..maybe back to my old Hotmail account or one of those not-so-fancy mails that don’t compromise the basic functions of a webmail over its other commercial interests, howsoever seductive they might be.

When Gmail came, it wanted to create an ‘exclusive club’ of gmail users – if you were a nobody (like I was, and still am, but I was a bigger nobody back then), you just could not sign-up by yourself, unless invited by a kind friend ! The official reason was that they wanted to reduce spam – the logic being: friends will get their friends on gmail, and since friends won’t spam their friends, there won’t ever be any spam on gmail. How naive…rather, how stupid ! Today I have more mails in my  gmail spam than on all my other mails put together ! But then, I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to the story. Gmail created this exclusive club which for a moment seemed to hold itself admirably well against spam. People thought the magic was working. However, nothing could be far from the truth. The spam was not there not because of this friends thingy, but because no one new those new email ids ! Once people came on gmail, they started flaunting their ‘exclusive’ mail ids, registering here and there on the net, and the next thing people woke up to was their inbox full of spam (ok, in gmail world, the ‘inbox’ would probably never be full, but then you do get the point). However, I must compliment gmail guys on the efficiency of their spam filter – it works pretty well.

Continue reading ‘What is wrong with Gmail ? …and why is LinkedIn going down the same path ?’ »