With news that Facebook gift sales and revenue are off to a rough start, they are starting to show how desperate they are for people to start buying gifts. Have you noticed their latest offer of desperation (Get $3 off your gift of $5 or more): Maybe they didn’t think people could see that they could buy their friends gifts when you go to wish them a happy birthday from the birthday notifications and below each person they tell you…
When I studied the data and made an intuitive prediction that 80 percent of PPC professionals would be replaced by an algorithm in the next three years, my brother Jeffrey and I expected some resistance. We were extremely surprised at the misunderstandings that arose. We wholeheartedly agree that good marketers add value to the online advertising equation. As fellow ClickZ columnist Andrew Goodman responded: It’s certainly true that many “PPC pros” who work like (much inferior to the real thing) robots…
A couple of weeks ago, I asked readers how they would optimize the following Hulu.com mobile landing page that I saw when I searched for Hulu on my iPhone’s browser. Obviously, there was an issue with the image loading, but that might not be the only problem on this mobile landing page. Techmirth, a former client and good friend suggested how they could deal with this image not loading: Don’t rely on a single image that may fail to load to…
Last week, I explained how 80% of PPC professionals will be replaced by an algorithm. However, deeper in to my article I also mentioned that “many of the “web analysts” who only function as data reporters without adding much business value” will also be replaced by technologies like NarrativeScience and Arria. I first came across NarrativeScience’s technology while coaching my son, Sammy’s little league team. I used an app called GameChanger.io to keep the box scores and stats for every game. At the end…
You’re fired, laid-off, downsized, terminated, made redundant, rightsized, pursuing other opportunities, discharged, dismissed, pink-slipped. Search Engine Marketing professionals are becoming redundant, replaced by technology, so they should prepare themselves to hear those words. In the next 3 years, 80% of PPC professionals will be replaced by an algorithm. Those that won’t, will be the few who already provide high value or find ways to increase their value to clients. There will simply be fewer positions and high value change. If…
My cable contract just ended, so I have been thinking about how little actual cable TV my family watches. I was wondering if we could do with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. I had some time waiting to pickup my kids from school, so while I was parked in the car, I decided I would do a bit of research on Hulu. Every way I navigated (direct url, click in search engine results) to the mobile website from my…
I began writing this column on marketing optimization in 2001; yet this morning, 12 years later, I find myself in LA to train a well-known company that wants to start “crushing it” by developing an optimization culture, rarer than running a few tests a month. This is the third such training I’ve done this year already, and I am willing to bet this client will be one of the most successful of the three. Why is that? “A growth team that ‘crushes…
Last week, an article in TechCrunch offered an opinion on “Why We Need to Kill Big Data.” Perhaps it was inspired by this tweet that was embedded in the article: “I hate the term ‘big data’. Its all just data. Someday we’ll all just call it data – but for now it’s big.” -Arun Jacob of Disney at #BDBN — Dr. Martin Wells (@BigDataInsights) September 13, 2012 Perhaps big data as a buzzword is used too often and inappropriately, but…