Click Auditing and Email Auditing -- What's Next

I came across this article in the NY Times on click fraud. It isn't surprising that marketeres are wising up about click fraud. It's a problem, people agree, but the size and scope differ.

What is interesting though, is that it is the clients of the marketers, the businesses and business owners themselves, that are asking about click fraud. In conversations I've had about click fraud, seminars I've attended, it has been brought up by marketers who heard about it from marketers who read an article written by...yes, a marketer.

So it is refreshing to see businesses and business owners taking an active interest in the murky area of click fraud. The idea of auditing clicks is interesting, and one I've discussed on more than one occassion. There is a real need for auditing, not only of clicks but of programs and software used to track the information. There are plenty of legal issues surrounding such an audit, one of which is the sharing of proprietary technology. But if credibility stays with click advertising, auditing will be necessary.

Auditing of the Internet at large will be necessary, not just click advertising. There is talk of email audits too, which are increasingly becoming popular. Deliverability, black listing and content analysis are just areas being audited by email marketers.

Deliverability and black listing are especially important. They are indicators of your email marketing reputation. Poor deliverability and black listing more than likely indicates a soiled email marketing reputation, which means your messages, more importantly your client messages, are not getting to customers. Repairing that reputation can be costly and time consuming.

Regardless of your choice for online marketing, auditing is important, so don't wait until you find a problem, or suspect a problem. It might be too late.

Fantasy Congress: Bringing Politics to Life on the Internet

There is an article in the Chicago Tribune today about some college students at Claremont McKenna College who have taken the idea and popularity of fantasy sports and applied it to politics.

The idea is Fantasy Congress, where you can join a league, draft your team and earn points for the actions your team members take in real life. It is a step toward making politics interactive for all of us regular folk who wonder what the heck these politicians are thinking.

For a political novice like me, it is really interesting to browse the website, see the point leaders (most of whom I wouldn't expect) and then read about their actions. I've often found politics to be boring, aggrevating, downright foolish and something mind-numbingly stupid. All about rising to your level of incompetance, and some seem to reach that level rather quickly.

But Fantasy Congress takes out all the useless political noise, positioning and bantering that goes on, and presents me with information that I want to know. Fantasy Congress makes me more of a participate than an observer.

Talk about giving the power back to the people!

It will be interesting to see hwo this website does, especially once Congress is back in session. It is an election year, afterall, and a new crop of tech-savvy voters are about to vote for the first time.

Will Fantasy Congress bring out the voter in all of us?

What's Next for Brand Protection? Google Audio Surveillance?

A rather curions post on the Google blog yesterday about the word "Google" which has become part of the universial lexicon: a verb meaning "to search on the Internet."

Michael Krantz from the Google Blog Team seems to think that we should only use the word "Google" under certain circumstances:

While we're pleased that so many people think of us when they think of searching the web, let's face it, we do have a brand to protect, so we'd like to make clear that you should please only use "Google" when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't search, Internet search, a Google service? Given Google's market share of Internet searches, isn't it safe to say that if we have "Googled" something then we have used Google search to find something on the Internet? Unless otherwise explicitly stated, as the last example in the post shows, which is probably not as common an occurance as they would have you claim.

Maybe I'm off the mark.

So if Google is so adamant about protecting its brand, and who can fault any company for that, should we expect to see a new product offering call Google Audio Surveillance that will keep track of all the uses of the word "Google" and take appropriate action against those who use it improperly?

How else do you propose Google keep its brand from falling deeper into the common lexicon of the world?

Google Compared to the Government

There is an article in the NY Times today talking about Google and its various legal battles. Google isn't shy about proclaiming it wants to "establish a body of legal interpretation that favors the company" and the article makes clear there is little that can be done to stop it. But what is really telling is the lenghts Google will go to stay out of court for fear of the discovery phase could reveal a good deal about Google's propreitary technology, or inner workings.

The most telling quote, however, comes from David A. Milman, the chief executive of Rescuecom who sued Google over trademark infringement and lost. He says:

“People say you can’t fight the government. Google, in this case, is very similar to the government. They’re the government of the Internet.”

Also sounds a bit like Disney: a country unto itself. Has its own rules, its own regulations and even its own currency. People fight and lose, even when people are clearly in the right.

Hackers Find Customers in Brand Names

I was browsing Digg.com, which has become my favorite spot to find news and information, and found this article about a company in Australia that had it's PABX phone system hacked, racking up AU$9,000 in a week. PABX stands for Private Automatic Branch Exchange, which is a fancy way of saying automated switch board.

Within the article is another one about malicious code on the Samsung website that reads keystrokes, attemps to disable anti-virus software and steal online banking codes of the unsuspected. And who are the unsuspected? Frequent visitors to the Samsung website who have trust in the brand name.

Joel Camissar, Australian country manager for Websense, maded an interesting point:

"Why not hack into a site that people are visiting that is a trusted brand? Trust is so important these days. People are being preached to by banks not to trust links [in unsolicited emails] -- that is something people are starting to follow. So if one does go to a site that is trusted, it is certainly a very easy way for hackers to compromise users."

Seems like hackers are taking a page out of the marketing play book. Brand names sell, brand names come with a pre-determined trust package, just like YouTube came with a pre-determined audience.

Wonder if companies will be far more protective of their brand behind the scenes than they are in public, knowing that hackers get it.

Google and YouTube: The Purhcase of an Audience over Technology

I missed this post yesterday, but Google apparently has struck deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. Two more groups to add to Universial and CBS, thanks to the aquisition of YouTube. I find it interesting that, as of this post, there still hasn't been a mention on the GoogleBlog about the YouTube acquisition. I've read about it everywhere else, major and minor publications, but not on the GoogleBlog where they announce just about everything and anything relating to Google.

But anyway. Copyright issues are probably the least of Google's worries, and in an indirect sense you can say they have been given a boost overseas thanks to the UK, whose High Court slackened on its world-famous strict libel laws. But that's a completely seperate issue, and one not discussed much in terms of Internet content, at least not yet.

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Johnson in his column raises the issue of coolness. Rather, will YouTube as part of Google be able to keep its audience happy and keep growing?

Mr. Johnson makes an important point, and one that I am curious to watch as it develops, is that Google didn't purchase technology but rather an audience, much like Rupert Murdoch did when he bought MySpace. Purchasing an audience over technology raises an interesting dynamic. It turns people like you and me into commodities, things to be bought and sold by people whom we have never met, probably never will meet and assume a good of information about us.

How interesting. We've almost become like cattle, herded here or there, bought and sold by others and later taken to the slaughter house to end up on the dinner table. Even after reading books about globalization, it didn't really occur to me that people, human beings, are very much like commodities. Someone will argue it has been that way since advertising was invented, but with advetising you had the choice of where to put your loyalty, you had a choice, the advertisers were catering to you. That seems reversed with Google's purchase of YouTube. An entire farm and all its cattle has been bought.

So how will the new farm owner keep the cattle happy?

iFizzle: Flash, RIA and Interactive Media

I was diggin' on Digg.com and found this post about a website called iFizzle that is pretty darn cool. The caption on Digg.com reads "A virtual Mac written in Flash, even the iTunes works, and has music in it!" That piqued my curiosity so I clicked on it, and sure enough, a Mac monitor appeared with the customary blue background and dock. Turns out the author of this Web application is using it to raise money to purchase a Mac and is offer personal iFizzles for those who donate.

Worthy cause and a nifty Web application. Clicking around on icons you see that they do, in fact, work. You can check out his iPhoto library, his website design portfolio, what's on his Dashboard and his latest blog entry. The iChat icon pops up to show you his contact information

The other cool thing, too, is the ability to switch between different Macs. MacBook Pro, iMac, and Cinema Display. And each time you switch to something, a new song starts on iTunes. You can even browse through his iTunes to find a different song. It was cool to see we have a group in common: BT.

The "conquering the world, one MySpace at a time" phrase suggests this guy is not a big fan of MySpace, and if you go into Flash Project and open the iFizzle folder, you'll learn he isn't a big fan of MySpace at all.

iFizzle is a pretty nifty use of Flash, pretty much a Rich Internet Application/interactive media website that is also a portfolio of work for this guy.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a such a website for an eCommerce company? Make the online purchasing experiencing a lot less frustrating and a lot more fun, entertaining and enjoyable.