Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

Microsoft Mash Up

by David Holtzman

Microsoft is playing around with next-gen advertising techniques, many based on determining on how the viewer thinks, rather than by figuring out his/her demographics or just serving dumb ads tagged to search keywords. This is clearly the purpose of Microsoft Surface, the prototype tabletop touch screen that they've demoed this year.

The Redmond company has shown technology that can evaluate the relative intelligence of the user, tailoring the the ad accordingly as well as convert the spoken words of the video into text, changing the ads to match whatever was being discussed on the video.

I imagine that we will be seeing a whole new kind of advertising in the next wave of Internet technology. There are three trends

• Convergence of marketing/advertising companies and technology firms
  
• Sophisticated data mining developed in a post 9/11 world
  
• The renewed interest in applying psychological evaluation methods to Internet browsing
  

I can imagine lots of creepy outcomes here. (hint: see Minority Report and Bladerunner)

Posted on February 07, 2008

The mystery of spam

by David Holtzman

Wave after wave of meaty spam drips down my computers screen. I am spending some time this morning tweaking my email filters. For the last ten years, the junk mail problem has plagued power email users, originally a few emails a week, usually from real companies trying to mass-market sell junk and eventually evolving into today's deluge of odd sales pitches. Today's spam is odd-looking, almost Daliesque, with their deliberate misspellings, use of spacing and symbols and what can only be called crazy products.

Who buys these things? Really, someone must be buying these right?

How about this note from "Betsy Fink":

Hello! I am tired tonight. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at wnnllc@TheGlowPuppy.info only, because I am writing not from my personal email. To see my pics

or Rico Sanderson's financial missive:

Look at

Company T ride n Telecom New

T._R_(T)_M_

T./R/(T)[M] (tri.de,n Telecom) just added Permanent Technologies with its
Tine-Lok Fastening Technology for high vibration environments.
This amazing addition should supply a hearty boost to the value of (T).R..T./M/

Succuss for sure

Many of these spammail point to normal looking websites selling slightly off products. Like this one which points to a site called Canadian Pharmacies. They purport to sell Canadian drugs including "Penis Growth Patch" and "Penis Growth Oil"

The FAQ explains the mechanics of the online drug industry and is oddly compelling, like this explanation to the question of "why are your drugs so cheap?"

A: There is a number of reasons for that. We do not spend anything on marketing, there are no taxes to be paid as the product comes into the country unregistered, the manufacturer is located in an offshore zone and the production costs are way lower. No child labor is used.

I understand that the misspellings in the spammail are an attempt to circumvent filtering software. I assume the horrible grammar at the websites is because the people writing the website are Nigerian and speak English as a tenth language. What I don't understand is which idiot consumers ignore the choppy email, click through, get to the equally disturbing drug websites and type in their credit card number. (For a good explanation of the economics of Viagra spam, see here.)

Posted on November 29, 2007

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes

by David Holtzman

May the farce be with you. The NY Times has an article today about the creators of a series of Youtube videos starring Darth Vader's little brother Chad, who has most of Darth's powers, but for some reason works as the day shift manager in a grocery store. Here's the link to the first episode.

I confess that I've been watching these videos since they came out--they're hilarious. Chad using his Jedi mind power to telekinetically pick up fruit and generally making announcements about everyday events in that Darthish, stentorian voice, (Best line: "I command you to bring us baskets of bread!")

Apparently the two guys, Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, are being courted by Hollywoodish types who are offering to fund their future projects. Of course, as you would expect, they started on a shoestring and haven't yet made it to the shoes.

This is a powerful feature of the "new Web 2.0" Internet that is often ignored, although Lord knows, there's plenty of evidence. The starmaking machinery of a huge social networks cannot be ignored. It's interesting to see it develop, not as a funnel for advertising dollars from Hollywood, but still rewarding do-it-yourselfers. For every American Idol, there's a Chad Vader...just a couple of guys with a light saber and after-hours access to a supermarket.

The lesson here, if there is one, is that social networks have to believe in the quality to propagate the buzz. It's like a big mosh pit and big money scams will be dropped if they are discovered (take that lonelygirl15).

Posted on October 15, 2007

Prophylactic browsing

by David Holtzman

The New York Times has a thoughtful piece discussing the pros and cons of using software that blocks out ads on browsers. The application in question, Adblock plus, has been quite controversial of late, mostly because it works. What it does is to "white out" the ads on a given website's page. Some ad-dependent sites have taken to blocking Firefox as a way of stopping Adblock.

Advertisers also hate it. The 'S' word is often invoked by those in the advertising business to describe ad blockers--"stealing". Similar sentiments have been expressed by television networks in regards to Tivo or movie studios to "Pirates."

It's time for content providers to wake up and smell the Java. The effective way to advertise is to make the advertising appealing, not intrusive. For every Doubleclick, there will always be an Adblock.

Posted on September 04, 2007

ads ad infinitum

by David Holtzman

The first time that I've noticed a profession grousing about mandatory advertising is of all things, professional sports photographers. They're balking at new NFL rules requiring the photogs to wear vests that sport logos for Canon and Reebok. They claim that it's against their code of ethics, but I think that they're just embarrassed because it looks stupid.

This trend of companies making a few advertising bucks by advertising in highly inappropriate places is disturbing and needs a couple of pushbacks to establish where the line is going to be. How about police cruisers adorned with corporate endorsements? Or schools with advertisements in gyms pushing caffeinated, sugared soft drinks? Both of these have happened. Maybe military equipment with ads painted on them?

Posted on July 23, 2007

Depantsed for pants

by David Holtzman

There has been a very weird story coming out of DC lately involving a pair of pants. Judge Roy Pearson, a Washington administrative law judge, was on the wrong end of a fellow judge's ruling in regards to a civil suit that Pearson filed against a local dry cleaner. Pearson sued for $54 million because the cleaners had lost his pair of pants and more importantly, had advertised "Satisfaction Guaranteed." His interpretation of this advertising claim was that the Cleaner's owners should pay him several thousand of dollars per day over a four year period of disputation. The judge in the case ruled against him and made him pay a few thousand in expenses.

The news services have been ridiculing Judge Pearson and are holding up this case as a poster child for tort reform The story is silly and Pearson sounds like an arrogant old fool. Having said that, I can begrudgingly understand his frustration. Advertising is used way too loosely these days and people should be held accountable for what they say. These cleaners also said "Same Day Service", which they probably didn't adhere to. Their argument was that same day service was available, not that it would always be guaranteed.

I like the fact that someone struck a blow for truth in advertising.

Judge Pearson is, however, crazy.

Posted on June 26, 2007

Drink Coke, get stalked

by David Holtzman

If America's strength is driven by consumerism than Coca-Cola is the chauffeur. From WWII to NASCAR, the Coke company has innovated using every means at their disposal to wrest back another tenth of a point in market share from their arch-enemy, Pepsi. The latest is their announcement that they will be sponsoring their own social-networking system on mobile phones.

This is challenging because there hasn't been a killer app yet for mobile browsing, mostly because of the connection latency and the limited screen size of cell phones. Coke will also be inheriting the liability that is intrinsically to social networking. Pimping kids is dangerously litigious. I can only assume that Coke will filter, censor and carefully limit communication between members to reduce the risk. Either that or they've come up with a good authentication mechanism to prove that kids are kids and pedophiles are not.

Posted on June 07, 2007

What to do about electronic billboards...

by David Holtzman

The Washington Post has an article about the big electronic billboards that you see in a lot of cities these days. DC, where I live, hasn't been hit that hard yet, but I've seen them elsewhere.

It's a technology problem. LCD screens have gotten cheap enough to use as advertising media. Originally static, these boards are now anything but. With wi-fi hookups, they can be updated from across the country with new ads and they can be time-sliced, increasing the potential revenue for the board owner.

Of course, from the consumer point of view, they're annoying as hell. From a driver's point of view, they're distracting. From an aesthetic point of view, they're troublesome.

I have an idea (and this is just an idea, not a suggestion)--what if people were to, say, I don't know---break the screens? If enough of these LCD panels had to be replaced (you can't repair them), then maybe we'd get our skylines back again without watching flourescent marketing pap.

Posted on May 03, 2007

Sony the streetwalker

by David Holtzman

Sony has been caught waggling it's marketing mojo at it's customers again. Saucy Sony is not shy about showing a bit of sales stocking to push it's product, but lately the company has been guilty of out-and-out marketing whoredom (remember their rootkit fiasco?).

Following on the heels of the FTC's announcement that they would begin looking at shill schemes, Sony fessed up that they were running a fake "amateur" hip-hop site to push PSP games. Their admission is here.

Here's what they say about themselves on their site:

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America

I'm sure lots of people on the Internet are not who or what they seem to be. But shilling for little kids? Come on, Sony. These are our kids that you're trying to con here. Even megacompanies need to have a sense of right and wrong sometime. Besides, I'm sure most savvy cyberpups can see the varicose veins through your fishnets.

Posted on December 14, 2006

A holiday wish for Tivo

by David Holtzman

Tivo sucks.

I used to love Tivo. I use one constantly, but the company has pissed me off more than once over the years and it keeps coming back to the same problem--they don't know what business they're in.

This is a fatal error, as legendary for taking down consumer tech companies as Russia is at stopping European hegemonial expansion.

Tivo is in the time-shifting, time-saving business, enabling customers to watch television shows when it's convenient for them to do so and expending a minimum amount of time in the process. Customers will and do pay Tivo for this service.

Tivo thinks that they're in the advertising facilitation business. Rather than treating a loyal customer base as the longterm bucolic livestock that we are, rewarding the company with eggs and milk; they are slaughtering us as soon as we're warm, serving up our jerking carcasses to advertisers.

The case in point that brought this to mind is a new announcement from Tivo that when a user deletes a show, they will be presented with a choice to watch an advertiser's commercial, completely unrelated to the content that they're expunging. Well, that makes sense--clearly when the user is busily deleting shows,they're really begging to watch more commercials.

We. Don't. Want. To. Watch. Commercials...That's why we bought the Tivo in the first place.

As we begin the holiday season, my fervent wish this year is for Tivo to sicken and die, their consumer-unfriendly policies creating service-oriented competitors that will hound the predatory company, kill it and pick the company's carcass clean, leaving the whitening bones in Silicon Valley as a reminder that what creates can kill and consumers are not dogs, blindly loyal even after being kicked.

Posted on November 29, 2006

No one can hear you scream in namespace

by David Holtzman

An article in the NY Times talks about a specific instance of the problem of domain name squatting--political name speculation. The reporter points out that almost every conceivable pairing of candidates' names postpended with an '08 are gone. ObamaClinton08.com for instance.

Hollywood has dealt with this issue for a decade. Check out the clever use of names for new movies. Sony has given up and sticks the sites two or even three levels down such as: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/casinoroyale/site/. Some change the name as from "borat" to "boratmovie.com". Politicians could easily do the same thing.

I was the CTO of Network Solutions during the late 90s and we had this problem even then. It stems from an artificial scarcity situation stemming from the ubiquitious usage of the dot com top level domain. Even though other TLDs are now available, the dot coms are the premium space and politicians like movies, want to be there.

I'm not sure what the solution is to this naming problem, but someone other than ICANN (the domain name czar organization) needs to solve it. It's time for a clever startup to find a different way to do directory lookups on the Internet and in the process, make a lot of money.

Posted on November 20, 2006

Gold in virtual hills

by David Holtzman

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel says that the potential for advertising on the Internet has been underestimated. According to Semel, previous industry estimates do not take into account video, social media or mobile devices.

Most projections show $16 billion being spent next year in Internet advertising.

I actually think that it's much higher because of the potential for advertising using product placement in video games and virtual worlds like Second Life as well as commericals as quid pro quo for collaborative websites. Since it's become pretty clear that startup companies cannot charge customers for social networking business models, the way to go is through advertising and most consumers appear willing to put up with it.

As some of the dubious profiling technology developed for Homeland Security is repurposed to provide laser-like targeted ads, consumers will eventually come to like a certain kind of respectful, opt-in, customized ad which can be delivered so much easier on the 'Net than elsewhere.

The actual number for ad revenue by the end of the decade could be many times projections.

Posted on November 14, 2006

Sock it to me, puppet

by David Holtzman

I confess that I hadn't heard the terms "sock puppet" and "meat puppet" used to refer to fake Internet identities before I had read about a recent snafu on Facebook, the popular college alumni online watering hole. A local company named "Ruckus Networks" created a fake Facebook account for "Brody Ruckus." Brody, according to his Facebook entry, was trying to get 300,000 fans to sign up to be his friend, because if he did, his girlfriend would have a menage a trois with him and another young lady. True to form, Mr. Ruckus got half a million signups in short order. Unfortunately he wasn't real. He was a "sock puppet", a virtual personna created solely for marketing purposes. Ruckus successfully harvested 500,000 names from this stunt and generated some valuable, fake grassroots buzz (called "Astroturf").

I am not sure that I have a problem with this. It's kind of clever, certainly funny. I guess it depends on what Ruckus does with the names.

Get used to this. I've been anticipating this kind of thing for many years. The line between fake identities and real identities is blurring. This is a brain-dead case because it's a static profile. Imagine a fully interactive personna in a chat session and being unable to tell if it's real or not. Not possible, you say? Check out Eliza. For those who remember, Eliza was one of the earliest AI (Artificial Intelligence) programs that would appear to carry on meaningful conversation by using psycho babble, picking up key words from the user's sentences and throwing them back as questions. Eliza was the mother of early computer games like Adventure and it's commercial follow-on Zork.

Kudos to Ruckus. Today it's amusing. Soon it will be obnoxious. I predict a new kind of "Elizaspam" in which social networking sites are brought to their knees by fake personnas created by advertisers.

Posted on October 09, 2006

Scrambled Marketing

by David Holtzman

Today's New York Times has an article talking about CBS's unusual new advertising media--eggs. They plan on laser-etching slogans and ads for their upcoming fall schedule directly onto the surface of eggshells.

The technology was made possible by a company called EggFusion, who developed the procedure to mark eggs with expiration dates. CBS is so sunny side up on the technology that they've worked out an exclusive period to use the method.

I appreciate the desire of a company to find new and novel ways to catch consumers' eyes, especially in these times of mass mindshare and eye space confusion. It's also creative because it's different.

The problem is that what's creative and topical quickly palls and becomes intrusive. Paris Hilton was interesting once, too. The very nature of a cliche is that of overworked creativity and I suspect that the idea of advertising eggshells will quickly lose its novelty value and become boring, eventually tedious, ultimately annoying.

Where will this end? It should be easy to advertise on almost every imaginable food stuff and notice that I'm not talking about the packaging, but the thing itself. How about logos printed right on apples with edible dyes? Printed bacon. Laser-etched breadcrusts. The list goes on.

I would hate to see legislation stopping this because it would be hard to get it right. Much better would be to see consumer groups pounding advertisers holding them accountable for every stupid stunt and forcing the marketers to keep these commercials fresh, letting them know that we consumers are annoyed before these stunts get boring and possibly boycotting the products as a penalty for over-zealous intrusiveness.

Posted on July 17, 2006

Desperate Television

by David Holtzman

An article in the Washington Post today talked about how Google and other web companies are beginning to sell online video ads, cutting into the television networks' traditional revenue source.

Television networks have outlived their usefulness and that should be apparent by the incredibly bad programming that's considered standard fare. Sure, they have popular shows like Deperate Housewives and occasionally even good shows like Arrested Development, but tune into any network show at random, and it's crap.

It's not the process, though. I've heard people argue that it's because it's hard to put decent TV on all of the time--that there's only so much creativity. But HBO is consistently good. I could name any of 5 shows on HBO that is easily as good, generally better than anything on broadcast TV. As another example, look at BBC. Isn't it interesting how every year for the last 30 years, we've taken a hit comedy in Britain and moved it over to the US airwaves (The Office, most recently)?

I think that institutions, whether they're tv or Congress, get into a rut. They scab over with hangers-ons from related industries, like conventional advertising and they start looking at their customers as marks, completely losing all respect for them as individuals.

It's time for broadcast television to reinvent themselves if they want to survive. As appalling as it often is, I suggest that they cast an eye towards reality programming. It's clearly more than just a fad, it's a trend. What broadcast TV could do well would be to integrate with other forms of media and program genuinely interactive entertainment.

Yeah. Right.

Posted on May 24, 2006

Slipped discs

by David Holtzman

I love watching DVDs. The picture quality is good, the sound is great, they're small, virtually indestructible and are often packed with bizarre extras and commentaries. But there's something about these discs that's really annoying me, in fact driving me right up the wall. The liberal use of the "FBI-warning" lockout feature that makes me watch their commercials.

The culprit? The UOP or User Operation Prohibition flag was originally mandated by the entertainment powers as a way of showing the stupid, yet dismissable FBI warning. While on that part of the DVD, the user's controls are locked up, so if they were in fact, a multi-million dollar DVD thief, they would sit there for 30 seconds, contemplate the message and reform.

In the last two years, it has been badly abused. First there's the 30 second FBI warning. Often followed by the same message in other languages (usually French, hmmm). Now we get an Interpol warning. Then they use the UOP to make us watch the little production house animated logo. Each of them. Then comes the worst offense of all: mandatory commercial watching. Some companies use this "piracy-education" feature to show their commercials.

First off, this abridges my freedom. Second off, it's useless and largely ineffective. Third off, the commercials become stale quickly and you might own the DVD for a decade. Fourth off, it's an abuse.

I've made this point before, but I'll make it again. Any kind of regulatory loophole that commercial companies are granted to "stop piracy" will be exploited by them for their own gain. Piracy is real, but it won't be stopped by these ass clowns and their circus messages.

Just to make things worse, I often use a 5-disk carousel DVD player. I can hit a button from the couch and flip through the discs. Except I have to wait for 5 minutes for each one of them.

This is something that Congress should get involved in. Hear from the other side of the "piracy" issue for once--the consumers.

Posted on April 12, 2006

Branded by the mouse

by David Holtzman

Disney today announced that they will start selling cellphones to teenagers. The noticeable features of the phones are not just the Disney logo, but strong financial control features allowing parents to control spending limits, who the child can talk to, SMS and photos.

This is interesting from a marketing viewpoint because it clearly points out what has been going on for awhile--brands are more important than niche expertise. It makes more sense for Disney to sell a phone to kids than it would for IBM to sell them to adults.

As communications technology becomes more commoditized, then it becomes ever easier for companies with strong brands like Disney to immediately become competitive on pretty much whatever they want to, as long as their brand supports it.

It does not, however, work the other way around. This is bad news for the Yahoos of the world whose brand is amorphous--Disney's is razor-sharp. I would expect to see more of this from any other company who owns a demographic niche.

In the modern age, brands are more important than ever. If I had any brains (which I don't), I'd set up a company to build a brand. We're talking about Disney, Harley-Davidson, Oprah. These are killer brands and they can sell candy bars, phones or timeshares in Florida. The brand is more important than the technology.

Posted on April 05, 2006

Should there be restrictions on ad locations?

by David Holtzman

Is there a limit on where advertising can be displayed? The other day I saw a truck with two LCD panels, one on each side going down a highway. It caught my peripheral vision and I stared as the ad changed...right until I almost ran into the back of the truck in front of me.

They're on cars. They're on subway train walls. They're inside video games. They're placed inside movies. They're in kids' schools They're in sports stadiums.

A guy recently went on Ebay and sold the right for a company to tatoo an ad on his neck.

I expect to see a lot more of the body thing. How about surgical stiches in the shape of the IBM logo?

It's time for a healthy discourse on the subject of ad placement. What about space? Now that we have commercial satellite launches; imagine the possibilities.

I'm not generally for regulation of things, but I'd be in favor of a rule outlying advertising on a human body. That's a good start.

Posted on March 17, 2006

The 10% solution

by David Holtzman

Google announced that it was settling a class-action lawsuit over alleged click-fraud for $90 million. Click fraud is one of the dirty little secrets of advertising model-based online commerce. It is what it sounds like it is--fake clicks. Who would do such a dastardly thing, you ask? Competititors who want to increase ad costs and sometimes the hosting site themselves, because they get paid more for more clicks.

Google got off cheap, in my opinion. Experts say that at least 10% of click-throughs are fake. I suspect that number is closer to 20%. If advertisers understood how random this kind of thing was, they'd rebel against the pricing structure, which would hurt most of the big Internet companies, most of whom derive a substantial part of their revenue from click-throughs (Google's is close to 95%).

I predict that something better will come along and soon. This is a problem begging for a solution. With literally billions of dollars of ad money floating through these companies every quarter, effective ideas will be listened to.

Posted on March 09, 2006

Screaming enough

by David Holtzman

It seems to me that the future of advertising is going to be a paid consumptive model where people somehow get reimbursed for viewing an ad. I think this because there has to be a limit on where people can advertise. It's everywhere, almost every flat surface. Because of cheap LCD displays and wi-fi, it's cost-effective to deploy these movable, dynamically updating billboards anywhere. They will continue to proliferate, along with their cousins, popup ads on web sites and Tivo, product placement in video games and movies, until we all scream enough.

I'm screaming now.

So why not pay people? Come up with some unique technology that will reward people for actually looking at these things. We're already seeing a bifurcated Internet, pay and free, where "free" means having to see ads. Some software is distributed that way already, like Eudora. There's a company that helps people make their car payments in return for putting a magnetic advertisement on the door.

Would you be willing to get free surgery if you let them tattoo an Allstate ad across your stomach? Half-price wedding cakes with a Betty Crocker ad iced on the top? You could apply this anywhere...how about a cut-rate circumsion in return for a lasered Trojans Ad? A free baby delivery if you agreed to name the child "Disposable Pampers."

I have a great big hairy patch of skin reserved for the people who put compulsory commercials on DVDs.

Posted on February 17, 2006

Google: Ad Astra

by David Holtzman

I think that I see the future of Google. They will become a new entity...the intermediary between advertisers and consumers in any form of electronic media. Their recent purchase of dMarc, a radio advertising company, illustrates this.

So what would this mean? I expect acquisitions to continue: technology companies for getting and sorting information, maybe media buy companies and eventually direct marketing and advertising companies. How about Doubleclick?

Thinking this way, the day is coming when they cross the privacy line or at least the consumer friendly line. They'll have to if they wish to continue their growth. As of this month, they are now the 2nd biggest tech company (measured in market cap), after Microsoft.

Posted on January 25, 2006

Ads in movies

by David Holtzman

I can't be the only one tired of the rapidly growing parade of ads at movie theatres.. New York and Connecticut have been looking at passing ordinances fining theatres that don't post actual movie start times. Over the last two years, the actual start times of the films have been creeping to around the 15 minute mark from the published time, subjecting the audience to dozens of commercials.

It's not just movies; ads are encroaching into our personal lives everywhere. It's not like we have that much discretionary time anyway, do we really need to give back another 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there to being an audience for fizzy, bouncy, insipid advertising?

Ads are on the backs of cabs in New York, subway cars in Washington DC, cars in San Francisco. Every square inch of unused space is being sold to someone to use as a tabula rasa for their marketing messages. What's wrong with white space? It's impossible to relax with the bombardment of neon and noise that makes up our daily urban life.

And the best part of all this is movie studios are complaining that box office is down this year. What a surpise. Lousy movies, ten dollar stale popcorn and enough ad stimulation to make you feel like Alex in Clockwork Orange, strapped to the chair, watching ultra violence with his eyes forcibly kept open.

Lucky man. At least he gets Beethoven.

Hollywood doom articles:
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/56019.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/26/news/midcaps/movies/

Posted on November 02, 2005