Category Archives: General

What is a friend?

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Business, and especially online marketing, is all about trading. Advertisers, publishers, agencies, networks, and exchanges trade ad impressions, clicks, and conversions for money. A deal takes place when supply meets demand. Simple economics. This is why in business you sometimes work with people that you don’t really like. It’s all very rational, mostly about numbers.

In my personal life I want the complete opposite. I don’t want to negotiate deals and I certainly don’t want to spend my time with people that I don’t like. I want to be with good and honest people, not worry about numbers, and simply have a good time.

Still, I feel I’m sometimes surrounded by people that treat personal relationships like business. They have this “what’s in for me” attitude and constantly try to get the most out of you just for themselves. They mostly demand and hardly don’t offer, they usually take and don’t give, they consume and don’t contribute, they talk a lot and act very little.

Even if you think these people are your “friends”, they are really not. They are just acquaintances and will be around only as long as you have something that they want. Once you have nothing to offer to them anymore you will never hear from them again. So don’t waste your time with these bullshitters, life is too short.

What is a friend then? It’s actually quite simple:

A friend is a person who does something for you without expecting anything in return, in the present or in the future. A friend is happy to help you out and will never ask you to return the favor. He will leave it up to you to show your gratitude.

Let me give you an example:

Last week I went to dmexco in Cologne, Germany’s main digital marketing exposition and conference. Originally I was planning to go there on Tuesday, do some meetings on Wednesday and then leave to be back in the office on Thursday. So I didn’t even bother getting a ticket for Wednesday night’s big party (OMClub).

It turned out that I had to stay until Thursday and do all of our meetings. All the people that I knew were planning to go to that party and all the tickets had been gone for days or weeks already. So I just called a friend of mine and asked him whether he thought he could organize an extra ticket for me.

Here is the important part: Without even thinking about it he immediately replied saying that I shouldn’t worry and that he would sort me out. He told me to call him once I get to the venue and he would get me in. And it all went exactly as he promised. I gave him a call and there he was with an extra ticket. He was happy to give it to me and didn’t ask for anything in return.

That is a friend.

An acquaintance would have asked for something in return, trying to get something out of my situation. Maybe not that night, but sooner or later an acquaintance would have brought up the ticket story for his own benefit. Now think about it, of those people that you usually hang out with, who are your real friends?

Thanks Ingo, I owe you one.

Retiring from Twitter

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I’ve decided to give up on Twitter. I haven’t used it in months now and I don’t seem to miss it. I’ll keep my account but I won’t be using it much. I hate to say it, but Facebook rules the world now.

About three years ago Twitter was the greatest thing. It was one of the first products allowing to share short status messages with other people though a website, a desktop application, the mobile web, mobile applications and even SMS. The great idea behind Twitter was to build not just a website but a service which is accessible from many interfaces through an API.

But Facebook, back then just a website, transformed into a service too. These days Facebook has status updates, a location-based check-in feature, apps for various mobile operating systems and APIs. Most of my friends are on Facebook, hardly anyone uses Twitter. For me, Facebook wins over Twitter.

Twitter as a search engine provides limited value too. Over the years It has become a place for spammers and SEOs (which is pretty much the same thing). There are so many fake accounts even advertising networks for paid tweets. Whatever you search for, the results are full of junk.

Nowadays I mainly use Facebook updates to stay on top of my friends’ lives. The only extra value that Twitter provides at this stage is communication during events like conferences and trade shows. It’s a very powerful way to monitor what’s happening where. We will see when that functionality is being adopted by Facebook.

How Not To Translate Landing Pages

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I’ve recently come across a weight-loss offer on AzoogleAds. Colon Cleanse is one of these rebilling offers which pays over 30 dollars per sign-up. The product itself is probably absolute bogus.

The landing page has geo-targeting built in. And when you access it from a German IP address it takes you to a horribly translated version on gut-free.com. If you’re a German speaker, sit back and have a good laugh:

NOKIA Night of the Proms 2009

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Roxette at the NOKIA Night of the Proms 2009

I’ve just returned from the NOKIA Night of the Proms at the O2 World in Berlin. I’m still impressed so I thought of writing a few words about the show.

It’s an almost four-hour concert/show with a mixture of classical music and a number of pop/rock acts. They used to be famous 20-30 years ago and are obviously less expensive these days. So it’s actually possible to get them perform in one tour. Almost all songs are accompanied by a full symphonic orchestra and a choir.

In my opinion the most outstanding musician was John Miles. He started out with an amazing interpretation of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” where he accompanied himself on the piano and threw in a killer guitar solo.

The range of John’s voice is incredible even though he turned 60 this year. When he performed a jazz tune it sounded as if Frank Sinatra was singing. He hit every single note, not a single mistake. This is truly one of the world’s top musicians. He finished his part with his “Music” (was my first love …).

The other highlight was Roxette, the Swedish pop duo of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle that was big in the 80s and 90s. They were big in Europe and became famous in the U.S. with the Pretty Woman soundtrack (with Richard Gere faking on the piano in the music video).

In 2002 Marie was diagnosed with a brain tumor, got treatment and is probably still taking strong medication. She still doesn’t look alright, can’t walk much and couldn’t jump up and down the stage as she used to ten years ago. Her voice is still unique and sounds like her. But it’s lost a lot of range and she had problems hitting the high pitches. However, Per still rocks the house and made up for Marie’s limitations.

Thank you for putting this show together. This was the second time I went. I will certainly come back next year.

“That sale is mine” or The Need To Abolish the Last-Cookie-Counts Principle

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As online marketers we often preach that online and mobile are so much better than traditional/offline marketing because we can track everything and measure all marketing activities correctly. The truth is that most companies base their decisions on invalid data about their online activities. Some of them are aware of it, most of them are not.

Back in the dark ages of online marketing it was alright to associate an online transaction with the last traffic source previous to that purchase. Having some data was better than having nothing. But customer behavior and online marketing techniques have evolved. Also, online marketing budgets are significantly higher these days, so we need to be a lot more acurate now. All this lets the principle of “last cookie wins” look antiquated.

Here are some facts I picked up at the latest a4uexpo affiliate marketing conference in London. During the “Affiliate Apocalypse Panel” Julia Stent of Vodafone UK shared some insightful data with us:

  • In general there is a 20% overlap between affiliate and paid search traffic.
  • In only 21% of all affiliate sales, the affiliate is the only person involved in generating that sale.
  • For 72% of online sales in the travel industry where a user has visited an affiliate site at some point, affiliates were not rewarded due to the last-cookie-principle.

Currently we attribute a transaction (lead or sale) to one traffic source only. But given the previous facts, that actually ignores valuable data and leads us to miss the bigger picture completely. All marketing activities are inter-related. That goes for offline vs. online and also for within the online sphere.

However, today’s world, especially in online marketing, is still driven by the old principle of “that sale is mine.” In numerous companies I’ve seen internal fights about this, display vs. search vs. affiliate managers. Instead of cooperating they often work against each other, accusing each other of stealing sales. It’s usually the affiliate marketing people that have to defend their affiliates and themselves.

“That sale is mine” can no longer be our mindset. Instead we need to find ways to distribute commissions among all parties involved in the decision-making and buying process in a fair manner. We need to measure the true influence of an advertising channel and the parties involved instead of relying on the last-cookie-counts principle.

This would also remove the issue of chasing the last click, something that affiliates have become extremely good at through coupon sites or cookie spamming in the form of layer ads, pop-up windows, adware and other forms of forced clicks.

What we need is cross-channel tracking on the side of merchants and affiliate networks turning more into technical solution providers. We need to be able to split commissions for the same transaction among several traffic sources. Something we probably won’t see anytime soon, but this is where it needs to go.

International Online Marketing Managers Wanted

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I’m looking to hire one or two full-time online marketing managers as soon as possible.

You’re the right candidate if you have exceptional online advertising sales experience, either selling direct to client or preferably to media agencies. You will know instinctively how to pitch to clients and possess the imagination and knowledge to create truly integrated campaigns for key brands.

You will sell across our clients’ portfolio of consumer websites and mobile (WAP) sites. Selling everything from display (banners, skyscrapers, MPUs, eyeblasters and other rich formats) through to online sponsorship, branded content and advertorials, you will be comfortable with metrics of CPM, CPC and CPA.

The jobs are based in central Berlin, Germany. Offices are located within walking distance to Berlin’s coolest bars and clubs. Access to public transportation is nearby too.

We work with many international clients and publishers and can offer great progression with an exciting company. Anyone interested feel free to get in touch.

Going Mobile Full-Time

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Some of you may have have noticed that I’ve kind of reduced my posts on affiliate tracking and related topics. In the near future you will see more posts on mobile advertising and mobile affiliate marketing.A couple of months ago I took over the management of a boutique mobile advertising network. My goal has become to grow this baby.

I’m convinced that the mobile web will experience a great gain in popularity and importance in the next years. To all those of you who still believe the wired internet will rule the world forever, you’re gonna be dead meat in five years.

Well, not quite. But outdated distribution channels like over-the-air television or old-school business models like CPM advertising are slowly but surely going to die out. Mobile internet usage is definitely a new trend and I’ve decided to jump onto that train. So wish me luck.

Mobile web design for multiple screen sizes

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I’ve just returned from Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas and share another link with you. Someone in my session on mobile affiliate marketing asked me about how to design mobile web pages best, considering the different handsets and screen sizes. Here is a great article on designing for multiple screen sizes which covers it pretty much.

Holiday Giveaway 2008

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Get your free Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa present now!

Well, 2008 has been a great year for me. The end of the year is getting close and I’d like to say thank you to my loyal blog readers as well. So I’ve decided to give away some small presents to you out there.

I’m not going to tell you what it is because it’s supposed to be a small surprise. But I can assure you it’s not an online coupon or anything like that. It’ll be a physical item shipped to your house.

All you need to do is send me an email with your name, your postal address and a comment on what you like or dislike about this blog. The deadline is this Friday, December 5th, 2008.