Business Intelligence Needs to Support the Front Lines

James Taylor, Vice President of Product Marketing/Management at Fair Isaac runs an excellent blog called Enterprise Decision Management. Recently, he posted about an article from Informatics about businesses not understanding business intelligence.

Nigel Rayner says:

BI has been around a long time and people do get returns out of it, but it has been technology and infrastructure driven and is not addressing the needs of senior management.

Mr. Taylor expands that comment to say that,

not only does it not address the needs of senior management, it does not support the needs of operational staff either. Not management, not analysts, but people working on the front lines helping customers. It also does not help the software that support customers.

When using business intelligence, it's always important to define the end results and the goals of the endeavors. Data that goes directly to the senior management doesn't necessarily mean that it makes people more efficient, infrastructure more manageable or the company more competitive.

BI (business intelligence) is the process of obtaining data from various sources, but that endeavor must be driven by the goals and real issues that companies face. One of the litmus tests of any BI driven decisions must be: how it helps operations from the bottom up.

This article has intrigued me, I added his blog to my RSS reader and I'm going to do some serious back reading on it. It seems that every article I read from him inspires a few questions.

Defining Search Metrics: Search Engine Fluctuation

LeeAnn Prescott, the research director for the US markets at Hitwise,
revealed that after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld, that the search demand for the iPhone has superceded the search demand for the iPod. It's only a slight coincidence that earlier I defined the concept of "search engine presence" using the example of the iPhone.

That search engine presence measured the top ranking sites, ignoring position, instead focusing on ranking on a variety of terms, that dominate the search engines for a selected sampling of keywords.

Because I was explaining a concept, I chose to use a small sample of keywords that related to a topic that interested me. I used: "iphone, apple iphone, ipod phone". The results were as follows.

	1/10/2007
Domains	SE Presence
www.apple.com	7
www.thinksecret.com	7
www.engadget.com	7
www.gizmodo.com	6
www.appleinsider.com	5
www.mobilewhack.com	5
www.everythingiphone.com	5
gizmodo.com	4
en.wikipedia.org	4
news.bbc.co.uk	4
www.businessweek.com	3

These sites ranked for the preceding terms on 10 Jan. However, for the 4 weeks that ended on 20 Jan, Hitwise compiled the following top sites that had traffic from the term "iPhone".

Apple's sites receive over 50% of the traffic from the iPhone search, however, Engadget, by being one of the most trusted sites on consumer electronics and also having the benefit of ranking well across the board for the searches, received the 4th highest amount of traffic. Hitwise and my search engine presence tool measures two different things, I can only measure presence, Hitwise can measure traffic. While I know that I'm comparing apples to oranges, here's where we see the overlap of traffic and presence.

In the 13 days where I took my first measurements, the search engine marketspace has fluctuated. Supporting the idea that traffic and clickthroughs can influence ranking in the search engines. Notice that Apple and Engadget have a significant upsurge in their presence.

	1/10/2007	1/23/2007
Domains	SE Presence	SE Presence
www.apple.com	7	17
www.engadget.com	7	9
en.wikipedia.org	4	7
www.gizmodo.com	6	6
www.appleinsider.com	5	4
www.mobilewhack.com	5	4
www.thinksecret.com	7	3
news.bbc.co.uk	4	3
www.businessweek.com	3	3
appleiphone.blogspot.com	0	3
www.macworld.com	1	3
www.everythingiphone.com	5	2
gizmodo.com	4	1

We see EverythingiPhone.com, Gizmodo and ThinkSecret.com drop in their presence, we see Wikipedia increase their presence.

As the search for iPhones increase, as they have... that's created the circumstances for the search engines to continually shuffle the results, shuffle the ranks and shuffle the presence. However, what we have strong evidence for here is that ranks change, presence fluctuates and the environment changes. Therefore, it's vital for any company who has a search engine marketing strategy to keep tabs on the environment for their selected keywords and not just on the position or rank of just a few. If you dont notice the change, it's likely that you could be left behind.

While LeeAnn Prescott and I are measuring two different things, traffic vs. presence. The overlapping data as it applies to the search engines often complement each other and provide a larger picture of what's happening.

Thanks LeeAnn, your article was brilliant, informative and I enjoyed reading every bit of it.

In-Game Advertising, What Could Possibly Go Wrong - My Latest Article for Ten Ton Hammer

In Game Advertising Could Be the Next Best Thing to Gaming
By J.P. "Agon Thalia" Sherman

There's no easy way to say this… ingame ads are here and they're only going to get more prevalent. There are racing games that contextually place billboard ads according to the players' web traffic habits, there are plans to make interactive items ingame, like a can of Sprite on a table that a player can "drink". Some ingame art like graffiti can change according to advertisers demands. Even now, Google is courting with companies like AdScape Media to put their own brand of personalized, customized and targeted advertisements inside our games. I have seen the future and it is full of ads.

Read the Entire Article at Ten Ton Hammer...

2000 Blogs/ 55 Million = 3.6x10^-3% of the Blogosphere

Tino Buntic has decided to put up the faces and links to 2000 bloggers. It doesn't matter if they're A-List, D-List or complete unknowns. He's creating a very cool little mosaic blogging meme.

And of course, I had to submit myself.

Shout out to Cord Silverstein of Marketing Hipster for letting me know of this. My pic's a little fuzzy and I look 15 because of the hat.. but what the hell, it's fun!

My Name Is Earl: Drives Traffic Online and Adds Viewers

You know the kind of guy who does nothing but watch TV and analyze it on the net, then wonders why his friends think he's crazy? Well, that was me. Every time I watched something good or bad on TV, something had to be posted on the internet. That’s when I realized I had to change. My name is JP.

I really enjoy the show My Name Is Earl. I started watching it because I would turn on the TiVo early so I could fast-forward the commercials during The Office. The last episode of the show, "Kept a Guy Locked in a Truck" the character Josh gets killed in a tragic murphy bed incident. wait... let me rewind.

Joy, Earl's ex-wife, wanted to get back at a store for refusing her return, so in retribution, she stole one of the store's delivery trucks. She enlisted Earl to help, which he did because he was trying to make up his past sins toward Joy. They hide the truck for a few days. When they open it up, they find that there was an employee "Josh" locked in the truck. Eventually, Joy was booked for kidnapping and Josh was the only witness. Well, in the last episode, Josh dies when his murphy bed snaps back into the wall and crushes him.

As the story progresses, we find that Josh is a regular poster to the TV forum, review and recap site, Television Without Pity under the name "whojackie". During the show, he's shown typing on his computer and saying:

"No, I don’t think shows should do more meta jokes that cater to the online bloggers and I’m sure everyone at Television Without Pity Dot Com agrees with me."

Turns out that whojackie has been an active member for over two years, and on the day the show airs, there's a post from whojackie. Later on in the show, Joy tries to find friends to attend Josh's funeral and posts to the wide wide world of web.

My point is that NBC is brilliantly driving people online, in a round-about way to consume their content. Giving a shout out to Television Without Pity is a great way to create buzz among fans, give interaction between the stars and their fans and create a level of "reality" that's just fun and unique.

Later on in the thread, there are people who hadn't seen the show hear about what happened, and what they've done is watch some of the shows that NBC has on their site and they've been converted into viewers. Another thing that the producers of My Name is Earl does, is set up, through TWoP, a "whojackie Memorial", where all proceeds go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Brilliant move for NBC, Greg Garcia and the entire show. Not only did they create perfect viral buzz among their target market, they did so well, that they're adding new viewers because of the efforts. They deserve every accolade they get, and more.

Freaking Brilliant

PS: Shout-out to Koenig
Edit: Crabman responds
Edit: Josh's death foreshadowed from Dec.

User Generated Video Popular, Yet Hard to Monetize

eMarketer, one of the best sources for marketing information, research and analysis posted an interesting article the other day about user generated online video (UGOV). They referenced a study from London's Screen Digest that found that user generated online video was responsible for 47% of all the video consumed in the US in 2006. They further predict that by 2010, UGOV will account for 55% (44 billion streams) of video consumption on the net.

Like my prior article about monetizing virtual worlds, companies and marketers are looking at the sheer numbers of eyes on the monitor and they're recognizing that this could become a significant source of revenue and branding for them. eMarketer goes on to recognize that while UGOV is a significant source of traffic and media consumption, it only accounts for 15% of revenue from online video sources.

So what's a company to do? How does one create a stable business and profit around UGOV? One answer is to do what Current TV is doing. One of the ways is to create a cable channel like Current TV. I truly enjoy Current TV. They're edgy, they're smart and they create an addictive program watching experience. I like the fact that in the span of an hour, I can be touched, offended, enlightened, frightened and entertained by their submitted videos. Current TV drives traffic to their site and the site drives users to their TV. I enjoy what they do and I think they do it well.

Another option is to monetize the traffic that comes into the site by putting ads and sponsored links on the site. However, this may backfire on the providers when ads start piling up on the videos they want to watch. iFilm and Atom films do a good job with putting short ads on their content, but as more and more providers emerge, it'll be tougher to insure that the users are getting what they want, without sacrificing their credibility. Lastly, if I can watch the same video without ads, what's my motivation to watch the ads?

There are other ways to monetize the streams and traffic: digital sales, subscriptions and licencing technology. The desire to generate revenue has reached a point, where it's becoming like the multimedia "industry" in the early 90's.

Viddling Around blog has an excellent commentary that ties in Esther Dyson's "blasphemous" but accurate comment that there "Was no Multimedia Industry". She maintained that multimedia was a feature and not an industry. The post goes on to note that we may be following the same path now and treating UGOV as an industry and not a feature for relevant sites.

The eMarketer article goes on to say that in 2006, revenues from UGOV sites reached $200 Million in advertising revenue. They predict that in 2010, that revenue will increase to over $900 Million.

I however, remain skeptical of that prediction. I believe it's based on current trending only and the theory that they're treating UGOV as an industry in and of itself... not a feature. Only time will tell at this point.

I think that UGOV has huge potential for relevant and contextual markets, but the rush to profit from it reminds me of a few other internet revolution bubbles. It's exciting, it's exhilarating, it's cool and it's hot... but I agree with Viddling Blog and Esther Dyson, it's a feature, not an industry.

Virtual Worlds Get Their Own Conference

Virtual worlds have been getting a lot of attention lately. It seems that people are realizing that digital property can translate into real world profit. In the past year, we've seen companies like Dell make announcements in Second Life and even some politicians like George Miller and Mark Warner have held events there as well. We've seen ideas about the taxation of virtual property, and even companies that run online worlds help real world police find criminals and victims.
The amazing thing about this, is that all this has started to reach a watershed after World of Warcraft announced that it has over 7 million (with an "M") subscribers. Even recently, they announced that they just reached the 8 million mark. Good for them! They deserve it.

With the attention focused on virtual worlds, it seems as if companies, marketers and even the government are all scrambling into a multi-billion dollar industry because they all smell profit. While I have nothing against the free market, I can almost see the gaming community start smirking and waiting to pounce on the poor bastards who make stupid mistakes while trying to communicate to an educated, creative, intelligent and highly defensive and protective community.

Even Sony, the makers of the PlayStation and some of the best games around were pounded mercilessly for their ill-conceived "All I want for Xmas is a PSP" campaign. If there was any company that had some good will stocked up for all its done for us, Sony would be one of them. Nope. They were humbled and shamed into submission for its miserable and, in my opinion, patronizing campaign.

It's been announced by Digital Media Wire, that there will be a virtual worlds conference, to be held in New York. From the article:

"Fortune 500 companies seeking to understand and maximize marketing, entertainment and business strategies within virtual worlds."

I wholeheartedly support the efforts to embrace and understand virtual worlds and the people that inhabit them. I hope that the conference will educate those Fortune 500 companies that they need to do their homework first. I hope that when those companies enter our digital domains that they do so contextually, appropriately, entertainingly and respectfully.

However, I know that not all of them will. I predict that in the next year, there will be a company that jumps into a virtual world, hoping to connect to the gaming community and will get slammed against a wall with such force, other companies will think twice about entering our domain again.

Games marketing have come up with some real nuggets of pure advertising dren, and the good folks at 1UP were kind enough to share some of the worst with all of us. I would like to think that the worst is behind us, but I seriously doubt it. I would like to say that the conference will educate the people of the Fortune 500 to tread carefully, do their homework and for god's sake... talk to us first.

The topics to be covered in the conference will include:

understanding consumer behavior patterns inside virtual worlds; technology and design issues; and the benefits of standalone immersive corporate worlds versus destinations within "Second Life."

While I think that this would be a fascinating, exhilarating and educational conference. I have a hard time believing that these companies are there to understand a rapidly growing social phenomena. Instead, I think that they might just be there to learn how to profit from our virtual worlds.

We'll see if they gain credibility, I hope they figure out a way to enter the virtual world and not make asses of themselves. But we all know that at least one of them will do exactly that this year. I wonder which one it will be?