Back Up the Rabbit Hole: an Interview with Jeff Einstein

Pete – Welcome, Jeff. What evidence can you cite to support
your assertion that we’ve passed through the looking glass
and plunged down the rabbit hole?

Jeff – We can begin with a litany of online performance
indicators, including the prevalence of sub-$1 CPMs, click-
through rates firmly ensconced at statistical zero, click
fraud estimates of anywhere from 25-85% (depending on your
choice of networks and industry experts), not to mention
the insolvency and failure of thousands of media franchises,
many of them brand names with long, distinguished track
records. In more sober environments with more sober leader-
ship such massive failure and systemic collapse might give
us pause, but as an industry we’ve responded instead by
speeding up, doubli ng down and plunging ourselves even
deeper down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s vision of
madness, a world where up is down and down is up. If any-
thing, we’ve accelerated our commitments to the very same
insanity that got us here in the first place.

Pete – That’s pretty harsh. Aren’t many of our problems
right now simple byproducts of a deep recession?

Jeff – No, I don’t think so. While the recession certainly
hurts like crazy, our problems don’t result from the
recession as much as the recession results from our
problems. Performance across all channels has actually
been in decline for a couple of decades now, regardless
of the economy and in spite of explosive industry growth.

Pete – Then why do you think media performance is so anemic
these days?

Jeff – Mostly because media performance is a myth to begin
with. We’re chasing a great white whale. Media aren’t
supposed to perform. The message should perform, not the
media. The onus to perform should weigh on the advertisers
and the agencies, not on the publishers and content
providers; their only job is to aggregate and somehow
entertain or inform an audience, the same now as it was
fifty years ago.

Only with the digitally-driven ascent of discrete media
agencies as the crown jewels of global media holding
companies did we suddenly discover an excuse to divorce
the medium from the message and shift the onus of
performance from the message to the medium in the process.
But in truth, the media simply can’t perform because they
were never designed to. And that’s why, despite all the lip
service, advertisers and agencies don’t buy performance.
They buy ubiquity, the exact opposite. Rather than assume
responsibility for their own lack of performance,
advertisers and agencies would rather hedge their bets and
buy more and more of something that’s worth less and less
with each passing day. Big advertisers and big agencies
talk performance, but they buy ubiquity because they know
the media can’t perform.

Pete – Lots of industry folks are calling for a complete
online marketing overhaul, including new metrics, more
sophisticated targeting technologies, more research, more
data-based marketing, and more social media. What do you
think?

Jeff – I think new metrics are just another way to shoot
the messenger, another way to rearrange the deck chairs on
a sinking ship. Besides, in marketing applications metrics
never really describe what works as much as they describe
what can be sold. We already know that the continued growth
of online ad budgets will rely increasingly on our ability
to sell more branding, in no small part because we’ve
invested so heavily in ad serving technologies and infra-
structure over the past 15 years. The perceived need to
sell more branding explains why the new metrics being
proposed now all seek to measure the very things the
industry arrogantly dismissed as useless and effete back
in the mid-1990s, all the intangibles that drove the
growth of great branding media like print, radio and TV
for decades. We cut off our noses to spite our faces 15
years ago in a foolish and immature effort to distinguish
digital media from their analog counterparts, and now the
bed we’ve made for ourselves is wrecking everyone’s sleep,
our own not least. Each new metric just adds another rifle
to the circular firing squad.

Pete – What about behavioral targeting?

Jeff – Anyone with any historical perspective will right-
fully conclude that each additional layer of targeting
technology increases costs and reduces performance. As
a result, each additional layer of targeting technology
further burdens publishers and networks alike. The promise
of digital scale starts working against them; the more
traffic they attract and the more advertising they sell,
the faster they go out of business. McLuhan had it right:
any medium pushed to extreme will begin to operate in
reverse.

Sophisticated targeting technologies don’t work because
commercial media are now and always have been on-demand,
and in an on-demand media universe it simply makes far
less sense to target the audience and far more sense to
let the audience target us instead, exactly why search
works so much better than display advertising, and exactly
– despite industry claims to the contrary — why neither
search nor targeted display advertising is scalable at the
end of the day. This much we know with absolute certainty:
no one demands more advertising, relevant or otherwise,
and everyone is equipped to avoid it. That’s the primary
reason why online advertising fails at least 99.9 percent
of the time, and why TV and radio executives are having
nervous breakdowns.

Pete – Should I assume from your aversion to behavioral
targeting that you’re also no fan of data-based marketing?

Read the full interview here…
Back Up the Rabbit Hole: an Interview with Jeff Einstein

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End of MEDIA PERSPECTIVES
Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media All rights reserved.

A campaign [operation] without schwerpunkt is like a man
without character.
- Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg

Ever since Sun Tzu’s Art of War, business schools have
borrowed concepts from great military thinkers. Miyamoto
Musashi’s Book of Five Rings has been used extensively to
direct short and long term strategies. Patton’s brilliant
essay, Secret of Victory has guided my own personal
business philosophy.

One of these concepts, which I contend is more timely and
appropriate than ever, is the principle of schwerpunkt,
first introduced nearly 200 years ago by the German
philosopher, Karl von Clausewitz, in his brilliant
treatise, On War. US military strategist, John Boyd, and
his acolytes helped introduce the concept of schwerpunkt
to the modern US military.

There is no English-language equivalent of schwerpunkt,
and thus, it has been subject to varying interpretations
by its practitioners. “Center of gravity” and “focus of
intent” are common usages. But the phrase that seems best
able to capture its essence is “weight of effort”. Business
is a lot like war in that resources, human as well as
capital, must be deployed properly lest one lose the
battle or even worse, the war.

With this in mind, does it not make sense to ask ourselves:
Has online advertising lost its schwerpunkt?

The answer is a resounding “yes”. And to those of us who
offer a growing critique of the online industry, the
question seems almost rhetorical. When the weight of our
effort eschews creativity for algorithmic reduction, we
have indeed lost our center of gravity; our focus of
intent; our schwerpunkt.

We have fostered an attitude that devalues relationships
by placing technology at the fulcrum of a perverse cause
and effect. John Boyd believed that people came first;
empowered by ideas that were in turn facilitated by
technology. We have juxtaposed this simple recipe with an
inverted order that places technology first and people,
last. But technology does not dream, and without creative
sustenance, relationships starve to death. Creativity
can’t inspire technology, it can only inspire us. Relation-
ships, not technology, must define our schwerpunkt.

This misappropriated weight of effort is revealed in a
recent survey of advertisers who were asked to prioritize
the qualities they seek in an agency. The survey comes on
the heels of an identical one conducted three years ago.
The bottom line: a complete change in schwerpunkt in just
three years! Creativity and strategic thinking and planning
have become subservient to technology under the guise of
analytics.

In 2005, those marketers surveyed listed the order of
qualities they looked for in their agencies:

1. Quality of Creative Content
2. Price/Cost
3. Innovation and Strategic value
4. Traditional print, offline services
5. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
6. Proficiency in emerging/interactive

In 2008 the results of the same survey were quite
different:

1. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
2. Proficiency in emerging/interactive
3. Price/Cost
4. Quality of creative (virtual tie with price/cost)
5. Traditional print, etc.
6. Innovation and Strategic value

The sad truth is, our “focus of intent” or where the
industry is placing its “weight of effort”, our
schwerpunkt, has shifted dramatically away from
creativity, quality and innovation. What now passes
as innovation in online advertising is relegated to
technological innovation.

John Boyd was not against technology. In fact, he
practically designed the F-16. But he preached that
technology should never come ahead of people. This is
true in war as well as business. He spoke of three
components in warfare:

People – Ideas – Hardware

This translates into the modern troika of:

Relationships – Creativity – Technology

It is obvious that online advertising and media have put
its weight of effort into technology. The first two,
“relationships” and “creativity” now carry almost no weight
at all; rendered virtually impotent by a sterile, inanimate
master.

Our technology stands poised to “connect us” but in reality
we have become more alienated than ever before. How deep
can relationships created from Linked In, Facebook or
Twitter possibly be? How often have you found yourself
competing for attention against someone’s Blackberry? Is
it any wonder that our children prefer to text rather than
call each other on the phone? They now purposely avoid
speaking in complete sentences. ROTFLMAO!

We rely more and more on technological solutions to market-
ing problems. We’ve conditioned ourselves to accept a .3%
click-through rate precisely because it’s so precise! As
long as we arrive at such miserable click through rates
via mysterious algorithms that sift through mounds of
data, the .3% holds up well.

Worse yet, there is an unending source of funding from
the VC community that keeps this flawed game plan on its
misguided trajectory. Money has poured into You Tube,
MySpace, Digg, Facebook, and Twitter—relationships measured
by the ton in 140 characters or less. Ad networks push
quantity over quality and defend a 99.7% failure rate with
a straight face.

We have seen the enemy, and he is us. May the best
schwerpunkt win.

————————————————————

Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s largest video
advertising network. With more than 80,000 advertiser-
friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV
studios, the Vidsense network of more than 20,000 safe-
for-work partner websites delivers millions of qualified
visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-
Per-Click (PPC) basis. Vidsense is to Adsense what video
is to print — a far more engaging and compelling environ-
ment for consumers and advertisers alike.

———————————————————–
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The notion that a significant portion of the population is
willing to pay for news online is one born from intense,
myopic self-interest. And as any Philosophy 101 student
can tell you, that’s a long way away from enlightened self-
interest.

Think of this. Rupert Murdoch recently said that the
“fair use doctrine” should be challenged in court and be
eliminated altogether. How idiotic is that statement for
a news mogul to make when his very news organization
utilizes countless hours of copyrighted materials for
their broadcast without paying royalties?

Recognizing the contradiction, he did add (cautiously),
“but we will take that slowly”.

The more intent on charging for their product news organi-
zations become, the less syndicated their news will become
as they hide that information behind a firewall built only
for subscribers willing to pay. So here’s a prediction:

Organizations will spring up that will subscribe to news
feeds and they will rewrite the stories…and these will be
searched by Google, Bing, Ask.com and others. These new
sites offering rewritten “free” news stories will garner
huge traffic from search engines as well as from Twitter
and Facebook.

You cannot copyright facts. Rewriting news stories will
become the new journalism. Heck, it was pioneered by NY
Times reporter Jayson Blair who “covered” stories without
ever leaving his apartment. He simply rewrote what others
said, put his name on it and delivered it to a happy
editor who applauded his work ethic.

Who would have guessed that an admitted fraud would point
the way to beating the pay-for-news folks at their own
game?

And whereas Jayson Blair practiced deception, the proposed
news “re-writers” combating Murdoch et al’s dreams would
make no bones about their wide-open modus operandi. Would
there be law suits alleging copyright violation?

Of course, but news organizations must walk carefully
(see Murdoch’s quote). What is good for the proverbial
goose is good for the gander because every news organi-
zation rewrites materials. Dare to change the rules and
they could suddenly see themselves hoisted on their own
petard!

Also, before they sue for copyright violations, they must
first register the “work” with the copyright office, which
would get rather cumbersome considering all of their
content. They can send cease-and-desist notifications,
but to enforce copyright violations, they must register
the content, which means first proving that it’s theirs
to copyright. They can attempt to copyright how Bill
O’Reilly looks and sounds when he talks, but they can’t
copyright what he talks about.

The more insulated from the free news world paid firewalls
become, the more successful the fledgling re-write news
organizations will become… and the more traffic they will
get. Picture a room filled with just-graduated journalism
majors covering the Middle East from their cubicles,
subscribing to and receiving multiple news feeds from the
“best” news organizations in the world.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Google is already
working on an algorithmic way to rewrite news stories that
greatly reduces if not totally eliminates human interaction
with the process. If not Google, someone will figure it
out.

One thing is certain: News organizations cannot solve their
economic problems by trying to sell a cow when the world
is awash in so much free milk.

————————————————————
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Feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful
government and in an increasingly powerful private sector
will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should
give way to national security, to law and order, to
efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and
the like.
– Justice William O. Douglas

My last article and theme on the immorality of “behavioral
targeting” (BT) drew some interesting comments and
critiques. I must say I was surprised by some of the
comments. Some remarks included personal attacks, some
questioned semantic terminology regarding the difference
between ethics and morality, while others mostly just
wanted to change the topic of discussion.

I obviously must take full responsibility for the short-
comings of my writing. Unfortunately, ideas do not
necessarily end up on the page exactly as intended. Our
own minds flawlessly plug in what we omit, but readers
are left having to fill in the blanks.

Because the topic of the morality/ethics of what we
do for a living is of great importance, I will try to
clarify for whomever cares to read why BT represents a
moral black hole that draws otherwise good people into
its sphere.

BT has many different definitions. For the purpose of
this article, let’s use the FTC definition:

“… the tracking of a consumer’s activities online –
including the searches the consumer has conducted, the
web pages visited, and the content viewed – in order
to deliver advertising targeted to the individual
consumer’s interests.”

Now, most marketing professionals understand that huge
databases are being built comprising what was originally
thought to be anonymous information. In other words,
searches, Web sites visited, content viewed, and even
comments left on blogs were originally considered to be
unconnected to PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

That original intention and assumption has been rendered
inoperative. Even though data may not reside on one server
within one marketer’s control, with very little effort it
is conceded that PII and behavioral data can be matched.

Matched by whom you might ask? Can Google match data to
PII? Can ad networks? Can the government?

Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous
surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date
complete files containing even the most personal
information about the citizen…
– Zbigniew Brzezinski

The government only needs to subpoena behavioral data from
multiple sources to create the fertile grounds for PII
matching. Has Brzezinski’s “soon” already become a reality?
With the collusion between corporations and government
becoming more and more apparent, this is not some fantastic
conspiracy theory. As my previous article noted, we have
witnessed:

1) Amazon complying with subpoenas to release transactional
purchase history

2) Phone companies turning over phone records

3) Billions of search records turned over to government

The above illustrates the already entrenched practice of
the private sector harvesting or collecting information
and the government seamlessly obtaining that information.
It is a mistake to think that surfing behavior, click
stream data, viewed content, etc., will somehow be immune
from government subpoenas. Since we already have behavioral
data (transactions) being turned over to the government,
the die is cast.

BT was not created with nefarious intentions. It was
created to advance efficiency of marketing dollars with
the intention to provide relevant ads based upon one’s
profile. That seems innocuous enough.

But as we’ve seen over and over, the road to Hell is paved
with good intentions. Intentions migrate. There is always
the law of unintended consequences. How many purveyors of
BT actually thought that the collection of data would be
used for government snooping? I bet few thought things
through that far.

As a side note, since my last article, Amazon was caught
deleting digital copies of 1984 without Kindle consumers’
knowledge. It was strangely reminiscent of the “memory
hole” envisioned by Orwell, into which books would simply
disappear. In Orwell’s vision back in 1949 when he wrote
“1984,” books were incinerated by the government. In 2009,
they are deleted with a keystroke by the private sector.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to his credit, was moved to
apologize.

It may be the case that the government no longer needs to
scrutinize our virtual, digital lives. Why? Because our
lust for and pursuit of behavioral targeting does it for
them. Orwell was worried about Big Brother… but to
believe that the scrutiny of every movement, every thought,
every behavior is only a government vice is to take leave
of one’s senses, and turn a blind eye to morality.

Justice Douglas had it right when he saw the twin dangers
of government and the private sector assaulting our
privacy. BT Marketers would like folks to concentrate on
only governmental Big Brother. The subpoena makes this
distinction largely moot.

There is no longer a hard edge between government and
corporate information. As the bailouts demonstrated,
there is barely any such distinction at all. They are
merging in an unholy alliance faster than you can say
9-11. Orwell wrote his morality play in 1949. Today in
2009, we need to examine the morality of the private
sector scrutinizing our digital lives.

BT is a methodology that stalks and threatens our private
lives. And make no mistake, privacy and freedom are
inextricably entwined. As Justice Douglas said, “The right
to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.”

We will leave for another time how it is even conceivable
that our loss of freedom, our slavery, becomes suddenly
ethical if we opt to wear the chains that keep us enslaved.
Until then it is necessary for us to open the debate to
the light of day as to whether the very act of digital
stalking threatens, indeed violates our dignity. As author
Katherine Gerould proclaims: “All violations of essential
privacy are brutalizing.” Will we heed her sage advice, or
will our greatest fears be realized, perhaps without us
even knowing?

———————————————————–

About Jaffer Ali Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, The Video
Snack Network. With more than 100,000 advertiser-friendly
video clips licensed from major film and TV studios, the
Vidsense Video Snack Network of more than 50,000 safe-for-
work websites delivers millions of qualified visitors
directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-Per-Visitor
(PPV) basis.

———————————————————–

We are a nation of snackers in every way, especially when
it comes to video. In fact, video snacking now consumes
more of our time and bandwidth than any other online
activity. So unless you’ve been living in a grass hut the
past couple of years, you know all about this genuine
cultural phenomenon. EVERYBODY is snacking on their
favorite video treats.

But there’s a flaw in the recipe. The economic models that
experts have touted and applied to cash in on this behavior
just don’t work. Advertisers have been tricked… lied
to… and bamboozled. The entire video-snacking ecosystem
has already gone stale. It’s time to put some new
ingredients into the mix. It’s time to elevate video snack-
ing to its rightful place as the Main Course.

The basic ingredients in the online video menu include
content or “video snacks”, distribution (or “snack network”),
audience (”video snacker”) and of course the advertiser who
picks up the tab for the entire meal. Unfortunately, too
many cooks have spoiled the broth, each with his own narrow
view on how to handle a hungry video snacker.

Content owners think and act from their perspective;
publishers from their perspective; advertisers from
their perspective; agencies from their perspective; and
technology providers from theirs. Each step in the online
video food chain pays lip service to the audience, but
in reality few pay attention to – let alone know how to
profit by – the video snacker’s growing appetite. Video
snackers are treated like the kid in the old Life cereal
commercial… “Mikey… he’ll eat anything.”

In the same manner that the original “food pyramid” has
become literally inverted as we learn more about nutrition,
perhaps it makes sense to address what passes for convent-
ional wisdom in the online video ecosystem with a more
discerning palate.

Myth #1 Website demographics play an important role in
video snacking

The main culprits in this idiotic conspiracy are the
agencies. They’re so used to buying site demographics
they can’t see the forest for the trees. They’re too
busy chasing string to THINK. They don’t understand that
the advertiser is better off associating with the video
snack than the website. A Liberace video snack has a
decidedly different audience than a Will Farrell video
snack, yet both can be found on the same website.

Think of the Web as a giant video snack vending machine.
The advertiser should be more concerned with satisfying
the snacker than where the machine is located. Put another
way, the candy company doesn’t care WHERE you buy a
Snickers bar, just as long as you BUY it. Different
audiences consume different video snacks. Yet agencies
insist on buying video the way they buy banners. AND THAT
DOES NOT WORK.

It is mystifying that agencies still don’t realize that
“celebrity halos” from video snacks are far more effective
for advertisers than the rub-off affect any website can
deliver. Tiger Woods playing in a golf tournament is much
more important to the advertiser than which channel is
carrying the tournament.

Myth #2 Pre-Roll Is An Effective Way To Break Through The
Clutter

We have purchased and used hundreds of millions of pre-roll
impressions for our own company and sold hundreds of
millions of pre-rolls to others. The one thing that has
been consistent with buying and selling pre-roll has been
futility. IT DOES NOT WORK.

Ask yourself: Why in the world would anyone welcome a
commercial online that they are willing to pay extra to
avoid offline? They don’t, and the stats bare this out.
With a :30 pre-roll, twenty-two percent abandon immediate-
ly. Imagine if you owned a television station or network,
and each time a commercial aired, 22% of your audience
abandoned you. This is the main motivation behind the push
for fifteen second pre-roll commercials.

But fifteen second commercials offer a double dose of what
doesn’t work. With only :15 to break through the clutter,
it violates all logic and understanding to suggest you can
achieve this in a shorter time frame. Click through rates
of less than 1% for fifteen second pre-roll spots clearly
bear this out. Once again, THIS DOES NOT WORK!

Myth #3 Overlays On Video Snacks Themselves Can Work

In search of an advertising format that will actually work,
technology folks have introduced the overlay. This too
annoys the snacker. We tested this advertising form for
three months and discovered that video views per visit
declined 17% when overlays were used.

And because the predominant payment was per-click, the
miserable click through rates garnered revenue per thousand
that was less than the cost of streaming the video snack.
In other words, OVERLAYS not only repel viewers, they lose
money for those desperate publishers out there.

Myth #4 Video Portals Can Survive

Without an economic model, video portals themselves cannot
survive. Presently pre-roll, banners, and overlays cannot
support their economic infrastructure. Licensing costs
remain unrealistic and oppressive (see Myth #6). User
Generated Content (UGC) is the default video snack only
because it’s royalty free, and with few exceptions will
forever remain a risk unworthy of attracting sufficient ad
dollars regardless of format.

There is a German chess term called Zugswang. Colloquially
it means no good move. Video portals from YouTube to HULU
are in Zugswang but have not yet realized it. They may be
great aggregators or curators of content, but once prevail-
ing mythologies are exposed, they run into one economic
reality after another.

Savvy advertisers like Just For Men, Coke and Lexus are
already disintermediating video portals by playing video
snacks on their sites. “Disintermediation” is quite a
mouthful to describe the simple idea of “getting rid of
the middle man”; a philosophy that has been a staple of
business since commerce first began.

Video portals have done an outstanding job of aggregating
content and audience, but because they have not created
what advertising guru Bill Bernbach referred to as an
“environment to buy”, video portals do not have an economic
model.

That is why they will wither away.

To be continued…

———————————————————–

Jaffer Ali is CEO of the Vidsense Video Snack Network.
With more than 100,000 advertiser-friendly video clips
licensed from major film and TV studios, the Vidsense
Video Snack Network of tens of thousands of safe-for-
work websites delivers millions of qualified visitors
directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-Per-View
(PPV) basis.

———————————————————–

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and
weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came
a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my
chamber door. ‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at
my chamber door – Only this, and nothing more.’
– “The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe

Let’s talk about behavioral targeting (BT), loosely defined
as: an advertising methodology in which an advertiser’s
creative is shown to users based on the sites they visit
and/or what the user does on those sites.

Conventional wisdom (…pondered weak and weary) dictates
that you need to know your target before you can reach it.
This is the same conventional wisdom which, in concert
with the latest BT data, has produced industry-average
CTRs of a whopping .3% (that’s 1-in-333 for anyone who’s
counting).

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But wait just a second…how can that be? How can we know
exactly where our prospects are, where they’ve been and
what they’re thinking, yet still fail to engage them 99.7%
of the time? Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves a more cogent
question about behavioral targeting: Why bother with it at
all? Besides, we already know that video viewing is the
dominant (and still growing) online behavior, and that
video snacking is the dominant form of video viewing. So
do we really want to target consumer behavior in the hopes
of guessing right, or do we simply want to tap the behavior
we know for certain already exists (…and nothing more)?

Allow me to introduce you to Vidsense, the first and only
performance-based video ad network that — like search
marketing — taps consumer behavior instead of targeting
it. Vidsense takes its cue from the early days of radio
and television (…many a quaint and curious volume of
forgotten lore), when advertisers hosted their own branded
content and the audience came to them — by choice, of
course. With video snacking now the dominant online
activity, Vidsense is the only video ad network capable
of tapping this demonstrated behavior and putting it to
work for you.

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Vidsense engages users through a simple process that places
thumbnail links to popular TV and movie clips (from its
archive of more than 80,000 fully licensed, family-friendly
video clips) across an extensive network of more than
50,000 safe-for-work websites. Each time a video-hungry
consumer clicks on one of these virtual treats (…suddenly
there came a tapping), a new window opens (…rapping at my
chamber door), transporting both snacker and snack to a
demographically compatible advertiser’s website where the
clip is then viewed within the exclusive confines of that
advertiser’s branded surroundings. The result is a
satisfied prospect whose random appetite for video snacks
has been fulfilled, courtesy of the host advertiser — a
triumph of human nature over technology (…only this, and
nothing more).

With Vidsense you can forget everything you ever heard
about targeting your audience. Remember, your only
objective is to attract visitors to your site. Once
you see Vidsense in action you’ll understand that success
online has nothing to do with putting your ad in front of
the right people and everything to do with putting the
right people in front of your ad. And what better way to
lure prospects to your site than with the iconic sights,
sounds and personalities that define who we are and what
we feel?

Do yourself a big favor. Throw your BT software in the
recycle bin and cancel the updates. Stop targeting behavior
(…never — nevermore)and start tapping it instead, with
Vidsense.

————————————————————

Mike Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a
creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers
Einstein work with select rapid-growth clients to help
define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic
media environment.

————————————————————

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.”
-Proverbs 23:7

Have you ever watched cats chase string? It’s amazing how
much time and energy they’ll invest chasing a string that
is offered and then withdrawn. Even if they never catch
it, they still love to chase it. But cats aren’t the only
ones who chase string.

I participate in several online discussion groups and do
a fair amount of writing. Add this to my responsibilities
as the CEO of Vidsense and my duties as a husband and
father (three boys ages 20, 18 and 16), and you might ask:
Where do I find the time?

The answer is: I make time because I stopped chasing the
other guy’s string and ceased trying to entice others to
chase mine long ago. You would be surprised at how much
time is saved by living more deliberately. Living
deliberately… how delightfully Waldenesque!

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But living deliberately is not as easy as it sounds at
first. Living deliberately means that we must master our
tools instead of allowing them to enslave us. Living
deliberately in a digital age requires us to DISCONNECT
in a digital sense, in order for us to CONNECT in a
literal sense.

Try this simple exercise: Keep a running tab on the next
ten phone calls you make at random (without an actual
appointment). See how many of the ten actually result in
a connection with your intended party. Want to bet it will
be less than seven out of ten?

We’re using our tools to DISCONNECT. Voice message systems,
email, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and just about all
other digital intermediaries have not streamlined our
lives, they’ve created more stings for us to chase.
Separating the wheat from the chaff has become a virtually
impossible task; a chore instead of a meaningful endeavor.

Here is a second exercise: Keep a running total today of
the people you speak to or communicate with that comment
on how “busy” they are. Being busy is our national pastime,
yet so few of us actually get anything done! I’ve been
writing for Jack Myers for a few months now. Ever notice
how few readers take the time to comment on any of the
articles posted there? Why is that?

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Comments are so Web 2.0. People are simply too busy to
leave them. And most of those who write for Jack are too
busy to answer them anyway, so why bother? We’re all too
busy chasing string. But it sure seems important when
we’re chasing it! We actually fool ourselves into confus-
ing mindless activity with purposeful, deliberate action.

It takes concentration and/or a good nap to determine the
difference. We have a running theory here at Vidsense.
Eighty percent of everything we do is a waste of time.
Every six months we hunt for time wasters. While the rest
of the world is “busy” saving money, we do something much
more important: we save time by making and taking time
for ourselves. If this last line sounds overly profound,
I suggest you take a nice nap to discover what it means!

I had a discussion along these lines with one of my sons
recently. I told him that if he wanted to be taken
seriously, he had to think serious thoughts. If we are
the sum total of our thoughts and deeds, we must become
more deliberate with our time, the only personal asset
we can control. We must connect with those who also
cherish thought, time and connection. In that spirit,
if you’d like to discuss online video or how to become
more deliberate, give me a call. My direct line is
708-478-4500 ext. 105.

————————————————————

About Jaffer Ali Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s
largest video advertising network. With more than 80,000
advertiser-friendly video clips licensed from major film
and TV studios, the Vidsense network of more than 20,000
safe-for-work partner websites delivers millions of
qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a
pure Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis. Vidsense is to Adsense
what video is to print — a far more engaging and
compelling environment for consumers and advertisers
alike.

————————————————————

“It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must
work a revolution in all the offices and relations
of men; in their religion; in their education; in
their pursuits; their modes of living; their
association; in their property; in their speculative
views.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who can deny that the present economic environment presents
challenges? There are many expositions of the problems but
few tangible suggestions on how to get through the current
down times.

Getting here was easy. Nurtured by the fertile soil of
venture-backed dollars, online publishers, ad networks,
agencies and clients all reaped a bountiful harvest. Life
was good, and we grew complacent. We took our good fortune
for granted and let our fields go fallow.

But as cowboy poet, Waddie Mitchell said, “During tough
times, our attitude is often the key to whether we’ll
thrive or merely survive.”

We are all faced with decisions. There is one entire
category of the online industry, the sector I call “quants”
(for those who tout the latest quantitative analysis), that
operates under what mathematician Schoenfeld coined “the
glorious misconception”. For the quants among us, “glorious
misconception” is the entrenched belief that algorithmic
reduction can trump randomness in human affairs.

Unfortunately, their sheer strength in numbers (no pun
intended) allows the quants to dictate how business is done
online. They are so invested in their own mathematical
voodoo, and so disinclined to narrative, that they’ve
effectively shut down any real dialogue toward what could
and/or should be. As a result, marketing alliances are
fragile and shallow by design, doomed to failure at the
hands of a “glorious misconception” that compromises rather
than satisfies.

And the closer we look, the worse it gets. The ensuing
cause and effect propels us straight backwards. As
mathematical models are pushed ever higher, response rates
retreat ever lower. As response rates decline, so does
revenue per thousand impressions. The more we throw at the
equation, the less we know about what works and the further
we stray from the answer. But shhh, don’t say that too
loudly.

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The entire online ecosystem is convulsing under the weight
of this “glorious misconception”. Each day brings a new
announcement of industry layoffs. But there is a way out.
Emerson pointed the way when he said, “The secret of
fortune is joy in our hands.”

Moving from the 19th century philosopher Emerson to the
20th century military historian, John BoydJack Myers MV
Topics, we see the concept of self-reliance rearing its
head. Boyd believed that alliances were inherently unstable
and compromising and that self-reliance was the key to
strong self-defense capabilities.

Think about this for a minute. Alliances are good when
interests are aligned. But when interests diverge, you
have a problem. Saddam HusseinJack Myers MV Topics was
our cherished friend when he was killing Iranians in his
war. But the alliance went south when he wanted to become
the next Saladin of the Middle East. As I said, alliances
are unstable.

What does self reliance mean for media owners?

First of all, you need to recognize the need to take more
control of your own destiny. Once you do, you must focus
your weight of effort, your schwerpunkt, on ways to
manufacture and utilize your OWN AD INVENTORY. This means
developing proprietary databases and exclusive e-commerce
initiatives that leverage the new opportunities you create
from within.

Being more self reliant does not mean that you stop selling
advertising. Quite the contrary, the more control you exert
over your own domain, the more your own inventory will
increase in value. You’ll finally be able to establish
pricing parameters that have a basis in logic instead of
specious algorithm.

That is exactly what we did with Vidsense. We have an
e-commerce division that generates millions of dollars
in sales utilizing only our own media. If we never sell
another ad, we will manage quite nicely, thank you.
Interestingly enough though, we find the more self-reliant
we become, the more strong alliances we engender.

Despite our fierce sense of independence (or perhaps
because of it), we’ve managed to attract numerous blue-
chip advertisers who share our passion for proven
performance. Household names like Conde Nast, Hot Jobs,
Playtex, Just For Men, Monster.com, all have benefitted
by our strict attention to our own needs first and
foremost. And though advertisers may come and go, our
brand equity in our own product is forever. We made the
decision to become self reliant a long time ago. Emerson
said it best again, “Absolve you to yourself, and you
shall have the suffrage of the world.”

But media owners represent only one side of the coin.
How do you become self-reliant if you are a marketer or
advertiser?

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It starts with a genuine commitment to change; one that
requires outright rejection of the “glorious mis-
conception”. To wit yet another aphorism from Emerson:
“Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and
squalid contentment of the times.”

The online explosion has made it possible for virtually
every advertiser and/or marketer to now own their own
media. This is a far cry from merely renting eyeballs on
someone else’s site. It’s a way to control the branding
environment soup to nuts. It’s also the only way to ensure
the quality of your own communication.

Once again, this is not an idle theory. We began as a
strictly e-commerce company. We bought media and lots of
it. But then we resolved to create our own e-zines. We
wanted to own the relationship instead of just renting or
buying a fleeting impression.

Between Vidsense and our e-zines, we now own enough
impressions that we are self reliant from both ends of the
equation. Each side informs and determines what we do with
the other side. Our fate is completely in our own hands.

Yes, self reliance has become our guiding business
principle. Then again, given the alternatives, did we
really have a choice? We rejected the “glorious
misconception” and adopted self reliance long ago when
we realized that all we ever wanted — or needed — was
simple peace of mind. Emerson said it best:

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can
bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

————————————————————