February, 2008 Archive

If all goes to plan I should be a crippled, but ecstatic wreck in exactly 60 days!

Having had a month off in January due to colds, coughs and a chest infection, I’ve been back pounding the streets of south-west London and Richmond Park.

Jet-lagged from a recent trip to Redmond, I woke up at 4.34am this morning and was out by 5.30am, covering 6 miles in about an hour around Richmond, Mortlake and Barnes. I had bought a load of posh running gear (no tights!) in Seattle which kept me warm as it was about freezing. The sorry looks on people’s faces as they chip ice from their windscreens are priceless, as are the paper boys and milkmen who glance back startled, wondering what the commotion is coming up (relatively) fast behind them.

I’m doing the Jeff Galloway technique. He advocates running and then walking. Very simply I run for 3 minutes and then walk for 1 minute and then repeat. It’s not cheating either, it’s sensible! By mile 20 I’ll be overtaking those poor b*ggers who’ll take months to recover……legs crossed. I’m aiming to crack 5 hours now, anything to finish!

On March 9th I’m doing the South Coast 1/2 Marathon which should be excellent preparation too!

So far together we’ve raised over £1500 which with Microsoft’s “Match It!” pledge means £3k, which in $$$ is well over $6000 – Not to rub it in about the exchange rate or anything 🙂

I appreciate everyone who’s sponsored me so far. Special thanks to Lee, DaveN, Rob, Jamie and Michelle who have been so generous and cracked the £100 barrier. But thanks to all of you as ev’ry little helps!

I had a check up and blood test today at UCLH and have been told to come back in four months as all is well, although I will have to have a colonoscopy later in the year.

Others are not so lucky and that’s why I’m doing this!

Check out my JustGiving page and please sponsor me whatever you can:

http://www.justgiving.com/melcarson

Sorry I meant “Microsoft Acquires Danger!”

Check out Microsoft’s Mr Mobile who has some info and a video on the T Mobile SideKick device….

The Internet Advertising Bureau have launched a comprehensive, 65 page booklet on advanced search marketing techniques and trends.

Microsoft sits on their search council along with Google, Yahoo! and a host of agencies and industry luminaries.

For this publication I was very kindly asked to write the introduction.

The publication includes tips and tricks on a plethora search related disciplines including:

Combining natural and paid search
Demographics
Geographic and behavioural targeting
Bid management strategies
Advanced analytics
Copywriting for search
Cross media integration
Multi channel search
Global search culture

Download here: IAB Advanced Search Marketing Handbook

 Check out this article I contributed to on Search Engine Land – Shari Thurow asked me and Dixon Jones, among others, to fly the British flag and let US marketers know how they should market to us across the pond.

Got a lot of traction on Sphinn too 🙂

Guy Phillipson from the IAB’s letter in Media Week last week was long overdue or at least put into words my personal feelings towards pop up ads…

By pop up, I don’t mean rich media, whizzy display ads that fly all over the screen when triggered by a user. I mean the 200×200 boxes of gubbins that some publishers STILL think is a good idea for the internet perusing population.

When I’m out and about, and get asked what I do at cocktail parties or cricket matches, when I say I work in online advertising I always, every time, get asked if I’m the guy responsible for those pesky pop ups!

Our entire industry gets tainted by the only negative thing users remember. They forget, or just don’t know, everything they do online is paid for by all the other great advertising platforms and products we peddle.

Sales people are to blame too. I remember getting pressured constantly as a traffic manager at BTLookSmart to take the frequency cap off pop ups so they could hit targets.

Reminds me of a great story of a sales guy who complained that whenever he clicked on one of our house ads he “got a pop up!” He said that it was a negative user-experience because “people hate pop ups!”

I had to waltz over to his desk and explain that he was by far the biggest dealer in the infernal things, and that he wasn’t seeing a pop up when he clicked on a house ad, but that he had screwed his IE settings and that was a new browser he was seeing – albeit shrunk to 200×200!

He stared at his screen, then back at me and barked:

“Well I don’t even know what a browser is Mel!!!”

I rest Guy’s case…

I was at the 4th Annual Demo Fest here in Redmond hosted by the guys from Microsoft adLab.

As I’m writing a series of posts on the adCenter Blog, I had trotted along to see what was new and was not dissapointed!

From today’s press release here’s a selection of the kind of innovative tools they’re working on:

• Air Wave – This technology creates a “fourth screen” experience beyond the TV, PC and mobile phone to enable advertisers to engage consumers outside of the home in public places such as an airport or a shopping mall. By using an interactive, multitouch screen display, consumers can play games or interact with advertisements to receive coupons or product information. With the help of a webcam, they can try on products such as sunglasses virtually. This technology builds on the “large display ads” technology showcased at last year’s Demo Fest.
• Contextual Ads for Video – Through speech recognition, this technology enables ads to be dynamically served based on the content discussed in the video. For example, if the topic of the video was gardening, ads related to gardening or lawn improvement could be served in an adjacent text-based ad as the video played. For advertisers, this provides access to consumers while at the point of consideration.
• Intelligent Bug Ads – This technology balances the interests of advertisers and the target audience by locating nonintrusive frames in a video in which to place ads. By using a computer vision algorithm to calculate the least intrusive spot in the video, it approximates human judgment and places the ad in the video where it is least likely to interfere with the consumer’s viewing experience. 
• Visual Product Browsing – This tool uses computer vision algorithms to browse and categorize images as a human might, without the need for manual data tagging. Online shoppers could use this technology to visually browse categorized images of products such as lamps and narrow their search to find “more like this” options through physical and visual characteristics such as the product’s height, depth and width. This brings efficiency to photo browsing and enhanced targeting capabilities for advertisers who are trying to better understand user intent and preferences. 
• Content Analysis Engine – This technology uses advanced algorithms to automatically extract and categorize information from search queries and Web page contents to better understand user intent and minimize search engine marketing complexity. Search engine marketers can use this technology to discover valuable keywords relevant to their category or to bid on categories, such as digital cameras, instead of managing each individual keyword associated with a category. Categorization also helps publishers more effectively monetize their advertising inventory by opening up additional contextual content opportunities deeper into their content pages.
• Content Detection in Sub-documents –This technology identifies sensitive or unsuitable content such as pornography, weapons or negative sentiments that advertisers would not likely want to be associated with, and automatically blocks contextual ads related to that content. Microsoft is building on “whole-page content detection,” shown at last year’s Demo Fest, to respect users’ sensitivities and advertisers’ brands and images. This year the adCenter Labs team took it one step further by analyzing individual sections of a complex Web page, such as the MSN home page, and only serving contextual ads that relate to nonsensitive content. 
• Ad Research Dashboard – The dashboard builds on the success of the Keyword Services Platform (KSP) introduced at Demo Fest last year. It is a flexible and central place within adCenter that provides marketers with access to analytics and advanced algorithms that are tied to actual data sets from adCenter to help them maximize the effectiveness of their search marketing campaigns. The dashboard builds on Microsoft’s commitment to provide advertisers and agencies with as much data transparency as possible to help them to make more informed decisions about their search marketing campaigns.

How do I know?

Because I got a load of PVs on my Superbowl Commercials post…..

Erm…”Way to go you Giants!!!”

Out of all the commercials we liked:

The Doritos Ad – 2nd Quarter

Will Ferrell in the Bud Light Budweiser commercial – 4th Quarter

Check ’em all out here: http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads

NO! Not me!!!

I’m talking about Mike, a 46 year old father of……………….SEVEN!!!

He pinged me a couple of days ago after he read my marathon post!

“Chronicling one unfit, overweight, middle-aged man’s attempt to run the London Marathon 2008” – My favourite post so far is this one because I know exactly how he feels!

Check out his One Fat Man blog and give him all you support…..after you’ve supported me!

 http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads