DC09 Keywords

A number of keywords came up repeatedly during the course of last week's Data Content09 conference, and they do a good job of identifying what's going on in the booming business of database content. Herewith, in no particular order, are those words:

Embedment. Getting embedded in your customer's workflow has long been a mantra of InfoCommerce Group, and it is now a well understood concept to most data publishers. One of its strongest benefits was exhibited at DC09: an upbeat audience that has weathered this economic downturn remarkably well, with lots of confidence and new ideas coming to market. When you are truly embedded in the business of your customers, you are embedded in their budgets as well, providing a remarkably stable and durable stream of revenues - in good times and bad.

Aggregation. Surprisingly, aggregation is hot again. That's no small statement given that content aggregators seem to be in natural competition with the all-powerful search engines. But this new view of aggregation focuses on well-organized, well-compiled and extremely deep sets of information on a specialized subject. Mix in some high-value, proprietary datasets and you've got something of high value.

Good Enough. As in, "good enough is good enough." We've wrestled with this proposition for the last several years at the conference. Sentiment seems to be turning in favor of this concept again. Yet it remains at odds with the frequent discussions of data quality and accuracy. The reality of both this business and its customers is that perfection is tough. It's tough because we are trying to pin down a moving target. It's also tough because while our customers welcome perfection, they generally won't pay for the cost of producing it.

Curation. The art and science of selecting what you want your audience to see is back with a vengeance, and it's closely related to what's going on in aggregation. The filtering of content is desirable and valuable. Contrast that with trying to simply deliver the most stuff. Information overload is creating a lucrative role for those who can intelligently select and summarize.

Platforms. There was a lot of discussion at DC09 of the power of platforms. At the very least, participate in one, such as SalesForce.com. At the most, develop your own. Allowing others to build applications based on your content, yields enormous benefits in terms of leveraging your own development capabilities (you can't build everything everybody wants, at least not quickly). Leveraged development can in turn spur viral growth.

Humans. It was reassuring to hear regular references to the continuing value of humans in the data compilation and management process. Computers have come a long way in their ability to mix, match, merge and harvest, but speaker after speaker said really good data can't be untouched by human hands.

There are other keywords that came out of DC09, but, surprisingly, one keyword was barely heard at all:

Google. While anything but irrelevant, Google has ceased to be an existential threat to the industry. Data publishers have largely made their peace with Google, and it doesn't dominate their thoughts the way it once did. Google is a tool that can be profitably leveraged, and Google is no longer the enemy. This is likely due in no small part to Google maturing as a business enterprise, and its recent focus on opportunities far less threatening to those of us in the data business.

Summing It Up

A nicely-executed press release from CreditCards.com hit my desk this morning, highlighting trends in credit card interest rates by category. It's interesting, useful and timely information, and it reminded me again that those of us with good data are crazy not to flaunt it. Periodically running even the most basic totals and averages from your data products can yield a powerful PR tool, and possibly a whole lot more.

If your database is relatively comprehensive in its coverage and is updated fairly frequently, odds are you can generate top-line statistics that can generate real news interest when placed inside a press release. Your statistics become even more powerful when you can show changes from prior periods. Statistics inside of press releases are like catnip to reporters and editors, because they are objective and provable facts. And trend data, especially in vertical B2B markets, remains in short supply, even in this day and age. That makes your statistics newsworthy.

As your top-line statistics start to show up in various media outlets, you accomplish a number of valuable objectives. First, you're identifying yourself to potential customers who don't know about you. Second, you're establishing yourself as an expert authority in your market, enhancing the value of your underlying database. Third, a percentage of those who see your top-line statistics will want the underlying detail, which you can sell to them at a premium price.

We bring this concept up with our clients frequently. Most embrace it, but there is also a surprising amount of push-back. The objections? "It's too complicated," "nobody would be interested," and "we're not sure we could trust the data." For those worried about complexity, you can get into this game with no more than totals and averages. Being able to consistently report change over time is where you primarily provide value - you're not trying to model the global economy. For those who think nobody cares, keep in mind that dependable data, particularly in tight niches and narrow verticals is not all that available. If you summarize it, they will come. And for those who don't feel the statistics they could generate would be trustworthy, what this really means is the underlying database can't be trusted either - a bigger issue to be sure, but one that must be confronted and addressed.

And while I don't want to overstate my case here, every so often we do find a data publisher with unique, current and significant content that is so important it can rise to the level of an index - something powerful enough to influence stock prices and that both economists and hedge funds incorporate into their forecasting models. These opportunities don't come along often, but when they do, they're big.

Put it in perspective, and you see that these industry statistics provide even more proof that "all roads lead to data," coincidentally the theme of this year's Data Content Conference, a scant 11 days away. And if you are intrigued about CreditCards.com, you'll certainly want to hear Elisabeth DeMarse, CEO of CreditCards.com, one of the conference's two special guest speakers this year.

Labels: creditcards.com

Fast Forward to the Past

The more I watch the evolution of new (online) media, the more convinced I become that it's simply the rules of old (print) media re-invented by people who never spent any time in the old media business. As just one example of this, consider the current and heated attention being paid to call tracking. Call tracking?

Yes, the "most measurable medium" appears to be coming to grips with the fact that people continue to use the telephone to transact business, so counting click-throughs doesn't tell the whole story in terms of advertising performance. Hence, the sudden interest in what used to be called "key phone" programs. Advertisers are issued dedicated phone numbers to run in their online advertising, allowing them to measure the number of calls generated by their online ads. It's a simple, powerful concept, but it's hardly new.

I got my first look at key phone programs at Thomas Publishing in the early 1980's. At that time, Thomas routinely offered to pay for a dedicated phone number any time a prospective advertiser expressed doubt about the value of advertising with Thomas. It was a powerful sales tool for the Thomas salesperson, effectively saying to prospects "let us put our money where our mouth is." Few prospects turned them down. When renewal time came around and the salesperson heard the all-too-common objection "I didn't get any calls," the Thomas salesperson would pull out the telephone company records for the dedicated phone number. Faced with concrete proof of performance, the advertiser almost always shifted from whether to renew to the size of his renewal program.

Key phone programs were incredibly powerful. With over 1,000 key phones in use at one point, Thomas Publishing even talked Columbia University into doing a study of them. One particularly stunning result: key phone numbers would continue to generate significant numbers of calls, sometimes for years after the advertisements associated with the phone numbers stopped appearing.

So why all the heat around call tracking? It seems that some online pundits are proclaiming it a bad move for advertisers because if advertisers don't consistently use the same phone number, they won't be correctly captured by automated harvesting software, which apparently relies heavily on matching records based on telephone numbers. If true, this sounds like one more place where new media can learn a lot from old media, which has long been successfully matching records even when there are -- gasp -- no phone numbers present at all!

Labels: call tracking, ThomasNet

View-Through and You

In a recently released update to its earlier study called "Natural Born Clickers," the web traffic research firm comScore presents an eye-popping indictment of online display ad click-throughs.

Using click-through rates as an advertising performance metric has frustrated B2B publishers for years. B2B audiences tend to be small by online standards. This, of course, is by design, since B2B publishers present highly specialized content targeted at specific, high-value audiences. Inherently, then, B2B publishers will never look that impressive when measured by click-through rates, but advertisers and their agencies want to see big results from their advertising investment. And why the focus on click-through rates as a performance metric? In the candid words of one agency professional, because "clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure."

Keeping in mind that this comScore study is B2C research, one key finding speaks volumes: only 8% of Internet users account for 85% of all click-throughs. And who are these heavy clickers? It's a generally younger and less affluent crowd, suggesting that the clicks-throughs that advertisers covet may not even represent good prospects.

Most significantly, comScore was able to document that online display advertising provides concrete branding value. Site visitors who see a display ad impression are demonstrably more likely to visit the advertisers' website and search on an advertisers' trademarks within a month of being exposed to an online display ad from the advertiser.
That's why there is a growing movement out there to shift measurement from "click-through" to "view-through." In English, "view-through" roughly translates to "ad impressions." Yes, it's been a long, rough, painful ride, but it does seem we've come full circle: display advertising against a targeted, engaged audience delivers real value to advertisers. Who knew?

Labels: comscore

See and You Shall Find

I've spent some time playing with Microsoft's new visual search feature in Bing. One thing I think everyone agrees with is that it is cool. You can take a look for yourself at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch.

Of course, cool by itself doesn't pay the bills, so what I've been pondering is whether visual search is a step forward in providing access to structured content, or whether it's nothing more than a gimmick. Where do I come out? I'm still not sure.

Visual search is engaging and immersive. It quickly reminds you of the interface for the enormously popular iPhone. In this regard, visual search may be where things are headed, particularly because it is so intuitive. At the same time, I wonder if visual search can add all that much to B2B data products. The vast majority of business databases are focused on some combination of people, products and companies, and visual representation brings little added value. Would pictures of office buildings help you get to information on a particular company more quickly? I doubt it. Would headshots of CEO's help you build a targeted list of prospects? Not really. And while products sound more promising, I'm not sure, for example, that I could sufficiently differentiate different types of industrial lasers from pictures in order to narrow my search. All this said, what amazing pizzazz visual search could add to a user interface and sales presentation!

Of course visual search works powerfully for some categories such as celebrities, animals, politicians and travel. There are probably numerous other applications too. In short, this is new stuff, and everyone (including Microsoft) is still trying to determine what makes sense. The underlying technology, built on Microsoft Silverlight (reportedly already installed on nearly 75% of all Windows machines), is impressive. Watch in particular how the search box changes as you put your mouse over different images. Let your mind wander as you note that search results are geolocation-aware. Note the ability to sort the images in a variety of ways. Let's also note that Microsoft is licensing the underlying content for most of these search sets from third-party data providers.
This is impressive technology, and it's a whole new way to think about and look at search. Take a look for yourself and start thinking outside the (search) box!