Jun
9

GM Says Facebook Ads Worthless

WGHubris on June 9th, 2012

It was only a month ago, just before the ultimately difficult Facebook IPO, that news GM was abandoning its Facebook ads was reported. The ensuing response cam fast and loud. Bloggers, reporters and researchers all piled on questioning the value of advertising on Facebook. After all, if GM was willing to cancel its $10 million Facebook ad budget, wasn’t that a legitimate sign that Facebook’s ads were not worth the pixels they were printed on.

GM Facebook Advertising Facts

In the few weeks following the announcement that GM would be eliminating its paid Facebook advertising, several very interesting facts have emerged that seem to color the decision differently.

For example, following GM’s announcment that it was pulling its Facebook advertising, Ford said that they are doing no such thing. In fact, they said that it is all in how you use your ad dollars. Further examination shows that Ford has over 1.5 million Likes compared to just 378,000 Likes for GM. Considering neither car company is considered wildly more popular than the other, perhaps Ford is just better at making its advertising work.

Another area of consideration is that while GM is pulling their paid advertising, they did reiterate their commitment to using the free company features available on Facebook. If they can generate enough momentum for such efforts without paid advertising, then that says more about GM’s ability to generate buzz and branding than for the effectiveness of one or more forms of advertising.

Perhaps most telling of all, however, GM made another advertising announcement shortly after the news of the Facebook adjustment came to light. It seems that GM will also be pulling out of advertising during the SuperBowl.

While every company should always do what is best for it, and use its marketing and advertising dollars in the most effective way possible, it can hardly be said that GM’s move is an overall commentary on the value of SuperBowl ads. In other words, just because GM thinks that SuperBowl ads are not effective enough for the cost, hardly suggests that SuperBowl advertising is in trouble.

If so, then how does one company  leaving Facebook suggest the same?

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May
16

Google Knowledge Graph Big Deal or Not?

WGHubris on May 16th, 2012

There are two ways to watch what Google does with its search engines. One is through the eyes of the average user, and the other is through the eyes of an online publisher who is concerned about search engine traffic getting to his or her websites. (By extension, the SEO industry, which purports to help website owners do the right things to get traffic from search, also watches carefully.)

Google Knowledge Graph and Search Rankings

A number one search engine ranking is worth about twice the traffic of a number two search engine ranking and the traffic diminishes quickly from there. This is perhaps a sad commentary on how people use search engines, but be that as it may, it is true.

Anytime there is a Google change or modification, webmasters become concerned that their traffic will drop along with their income or popularity. Often, these concerns are valid. Sometimes, these concerns are selfish and have nothing to do with concern for actual readers.

Consider a low-quality, garbage, ad filled, website. If a Google update figures out how to drop this site out of the rankings, the owner of that site will be negatively impacted. The users doing searches, however, will not. In this case, you can be sure that most people won’t care if the owner complains.

In other scenarios, a Google change actually boosts such content ahead of good content. This is bad for everyone concerned. The owner gets less traffic, users find less helpful information, and Google’s reputation takes a hit.

The latest hubbub is about something called the Google Knowledge Graph. I’ll call it GKG from here on, but I don’t know if that will stick.

Essentially, the GKG actually answers certain kinds of queries rather than pointing you at a website that might do the same. For example, if you search on Albert Einstein, a new area to the left of the traditional search results appears. This is the GKG that everyone is talking about.

Google Knowledge Graph Example

As you can see, the information there is rudimentary, but potentially very helpful for certain kinds of searchers. For example, if you are searching to find Mr. Einstein’s birthday, it is right there for you to see. This kind of GKG is potentially most detrimental to encyclopedia types of websites such as Wikipedia. It may also hurt websites like Huffington Post that routinely crank out any page, any time, that might pull in a few page views.

One common example is people searching for something like SuperBowl start time. In the past, the Huffington Post would publish and article with a dozen questions listed at the top in order to garner as many search matches as possible and then use its high-traffic website as all the link juice needed to push its page near the top of the search results. Assuming GKG answers these questions right on the search page, the some of those type of sites might lose traffic.

Fortunately, for many website owners and writers making money online with websites, this addition won’t have much impact on their traffic. These search results only show up for very specific queries, those where specific factual information is at hand from any number of sources. Incidentally, these types of searchers are generally looking to buy anything, so these are low click through advertising opportunities anyway. (They are valuable to big websites that generate a lot of cost per view types of revenue.)

Anyone writing useful detailed information probably will continue to draw just as much traffic since GKG only supplies basic details even on someone as famous as Albert Einstein. You can bet that not much will show up to siphon away traffic on your Colorado Dads website, for example.

For users making basic informational searches GKG will be a welcome addition. For everyone else, except the big web traffic slurpers, there won’t be much impact.

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Apr
29

Credit Karma vs Quizzle

WGHubris on April 29th, 2012
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via hubllama.hubpages.com

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Apr
18

So Tired

WGHubris on April 18th, 2012

I wanted to update, to write something clever, something intricate, something meaningful.

But…

I am so very, very tired.

Frankly I’m stalling so that I don’t go to bed so early that I can’t actually fall asleep.

Today, we link for no reason to this article about discount premium bonds and then we away for slumber.

 

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Apr
16

Tax Day Cometh?

WGHubris on April 16th, 2012

Here comes tax day. Taxes are not due today, taxes are due on April 17th this year.

How fast can investing make you rich?

There are many things standing in the way of a successful investment strategy. One of the most common is an unrealistic expecatation of how long it should take for investing to make you wealthy.

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Apr
8

How Much Does Hollywood Really Lose to Piracy?

WGHubris on April 8th, 2012

There is an interesting video of a recent TED talk regarding something the speaker calls Copyright Math. In it, he comically destroys the numbers that Hollywood uses to scare Congress into doing its bidding via ill-conceived laws like SOPA. He demonstrates how if the numbers the media industry pedals around as its “losses” due to piracy were even remotely true then we would have to assume that both the film industry and the music industry would have grown exponentially over several year. The very concept is laughable on its face.

Where Does Copyright Math Come From?

Piracy is a real problem, and it does hurt the creative industries. However, the so-called losses are greatly exaggerated.

The problem with the loss numbers that Hollywood and the music industry cite is that they assume that nearly everyone who downloads a pirated copy of something, like a movie or CD, would have bought the item otherwise, at full retail price. That’s right, the same people who illegally download free content, would, of course, simply pony up the full retail price for every DVD they download for free off the internet.

Does this make even the littlest bit of sense?

Of course not.

It is ludicrous to think that someone who might be willing to watch Cowboys vs Aliens for free, would shell out $19.99 for it otherwise. They would never rent it for $1.20 at Redbox. They wouldn’t dream of getting it from Netflix. And, they most certainly would not try and find a discounted or used copy online. They would buy it, except, you know, for piracy.

Pirates who download lots of movies often have hundreds, if not thousands, of movies saved on their disk that they will never watch.

After all, a bittorrent user can easily download 100 movies per month, but it takes a dedicated movie buff to watch that many. And, who in the world would even think about buying that many?

Check out my Quizzle Scam article.

The truth is that most pirated movies result, at best, in a lost rental. The vast majority of them represent a lost discount rental like the ones from Netflix or Redbox. In other words, even if piracy were stomped out tomorrow, DVD sales would not increase.

Indeed, in France, where tough “three-strikes” piracy laws led to radical declines in the amount of piracy did not increase sale of movies or music by a single penny. In fact, sales continued to fall.

Why Don’t People Buy DVDs Anymore?

Wonder why people really don’t buy DVDs anymore?

Because Hollywood got so blinded by pirates that it forgot about its customers. Those of us who do buy a DVD find that we have to sit through several unskippable screens of piracy warnings in both English and French. Then, we have unskippable menu animations and unskipple warnings that the commentary is not the official view of the studio and so on. In other words, it’s a pain to even play a DVD, and that’s after you find it.

I haven’t bought a DVD in years. I have over 100 sitting in boxes that never get played. My favorite movies of all-time come out maybe once per year. The reason is that I have to really want to watch it to dig the disc out, put it in, wait through all of that startup nonsense and then finally  get to see my movie.

What I do instead is watch Zombieland from my DVR. I recorded it off of USA. It’s edited for TV and I have to fast-forward through commercials, but at least if I have 30 minutes to watch some Zombieland, I don’t waste 15 of them setting it up. In fact, I might start buying movies again if I could put them on some sort of digital device like my iPod, but those that exist aren’t any simpler.

Why?

Because, once again, Hollywood cares more about pirates than it does about paying customers.

I might buy an iFilm box and connect it to my TV, load all my movies, and then play Zombieland whenever I want, but by the time I get around all of the DRM and restrictions and storage blocks and inability to backup or play on more than one TV, it isn’t worth it again, and I’m not buying movies.

And, neither is anyone else.

Check out my Credit Check Total review...

Enjoy your continuing losses Hollywood. You’re bringing it on yourself.

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Mar
19

Posterous Bought By Twitter

WGHubris on March 19th, 2012

I had completely forgotten about my Posterous accounts until the company announced it had been acquired by Twitter.

Now, I like Twitter as much as the next tech-savvy guy, but it’s never been as useful for me as it has been for others. I wonder if the integration between Twitter and Posterous will change that?

In the meantime, check out some of the writings from ArcticLlama at FinanceGourmet and elsewhere around the web.

See you soon. I miss my Posterous, now that I remember it is here :)

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