Given unique page hits prove to be less than accurate creates a motivation to shift to thinking about unique visitors. Since theoretically visitors are a higher order view on website traffic and easier to capture at the session level, we can get at least a better picture of the quality of traffic.

Quantcast
In searching an old project, I noticed quantcast has popped up onto the top search page with an interesting set of results.

What I like is the idea that an openly structured freemium site is going to push demographic information about users with a nice interface. What is concerning is the same old sample/projection problem that exists for all other services. Compete does a good job of getting into the browser for users (the more it is installed on browsers, the closer to an accurate portrait of the web it can report since this isn’t statistical sampling). That said, comScore’s methods probably get to a better, more accurate overall picture: aggregating ISP traffic for a macro view combined with a panel.

Traditional Scale + Sample = Projection v.
Long Tail + Interactive = Market of 1
While I think Quantcast could be an interesting option for traditional marketers where big advertisers can find big sites with hefty traffic to support the demographic boxes with quantifiable answers, it is going to have the 800 lb gorilla to deal with in Google post DoubleClick. DoubleClick’s vision of individually targeted ads based on a user’s profile will be fulfilled when connected to Google’s amassing registered user traffic history.

I think it is Too Early to say game over, but looking a couple steps ahead to an even more fragmented web with ever lower traffic statistics per publisher, services like this are going to have to get ahead of the media consumer as a unique profile for targeted advertising/messaging.

TiVo Effect
The Oscars just aired one of its worst showings and Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times nails the current consumer sentiment on advertising attention:

“The academy should heed his advice. Here’s how we watched the Oscars in my household: We TiVo-ed the broadcast, came back from Little League practice, hopped in bed with some snacks and zapped through the commercials…”

I’m all over DVR’s, too. An hour of broadcast content dialed down to 42 minutes? Yes, please. Netflix for season 1 of Battlestar Galactica is on order, ad free.

Strategically, the TiVo effect notes an even more damaging trend line: people arrange their technology to not watch ads. Like the old high-low pricing strategy, consumers are being trained to think in a certain way which feeds on itself. This trend won’t be fixed by forcing cable companies to end fast forwarding for on-demand, btw.

Return on Marketing Investment
Paid sponsor search advertising should be the best method of getting the right audience at the right time and give them a great message. Is it? Google is still tweaking their search and ad placement for a reason:

[source: comScore blog]

Ad coverage is being managed down, and CTR’s are also declining. Google is likely responding to the backlash of the noise that exists in the paid search world, click farming, which exacts an unexpected toll on a system that was meant to be superior to other venues.

Google’s CTR’s are down over the past year. Is a similar trend of consumer ad avoidance entering paid search like it is with DVR’s? Maybe. Google’s inability to have any other significant revenue sources other than paid search should be a concern because the company has already trained users on many other services from maps to finance to expect any advertising trade off. Of course, they can be seen as Google’s own advertising campaign of sorts.

Relevance Marketing
The next wave of interactive marketing will not be about paid advertising at all. Video and blog publishing cost almost nothing but time to develop it. Leading marketers are realizing that transparency is essentially a requirement nowadays. An aside, how awesome is Trent in building anticipation: “soon” is all today’s post says.

It Should be What it Always Was
User based needs turned into unique solutions then communicated to end users in a way they can learn about the offer to then take action. That’s advertising in a nutshell and it hasn’t changed.

Interactive advertising has a long way to go to meet up with its name. In fact, most of the advertising that Google and Yahoo provide isn’t interactive, it is just a more efficient form of classifieds followed up with almost 1999 web page as product brochure sales sheet. Google, et al, innovated the business model of classified, not the classified ad itself.

There’s a lot more to be explored here and with luck, a bit more on examples of what’s on track.

Many of us seek openness from companies and public facing people relying traditionally on some intermediary press/media function. Times are changing as transparency takes hold, and people have increasingly gotten ahead of media scrutiny… and people around them are ready to consume these options. Soon, we’ll all be intrigued in having direct access to anyone (we may not always take advantage of the option, but like a 3rd row of seats in a SUV, we’ll take it). Company CEO’s and high profile employees are pushing their messages externally via video and blogging. They don’t have to, increasingly they want to.

Backlash can be anticipated for those that want to be black holes within these new information transmission platforms. Identity anonymizer services can allow the opposite option: not being transparent.

What will this lead to? We’ve talked between us BSM guys that we’re our own brands, and maybe having our own domains, our own servers and our own media developer tools that allows us to deliver our own messages for our companies, for our families and with our colleagues.

Transparency has yet to go from early adopter to mass consumption in many of our lives, mostly because the steps to be open takes writing blogs in code and working to get movies and pictures onto platforms to deliver them seamlessly. As those tools move into our work and home lives, more and more people will be asking why you’re not easy to find, approach and see what you’re up to.

OK, so this study says to focus on social interaction, which is a few years in the making (but is less trendy in nomenclature). So, on track and Apple is not only writing a book on this, but has launched a series of products and web services (re: Interoperability Platforming) that are building the portfolio Moto needs to be thinking about to be on solid footing here.

So, Too Early to see where this takes Moto, but very cool to offer such transparency on early direction.

Thanks, Society for Applied Anthropology & the University of North Texas

Whew, a position piece video (the player auto-loads, hence the jump)…

Is Facebook the Trojan horse this video implies? Maybe the answer of “what happens in Facebook, stays in Facebook” isn’t so much to ask for.