Why I Love Pandora
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
I love Pandora. It has added some amazing new features and I’ve discovered some old ones as well. I haven’t written anything in a while, and something I saw on Pandora just got me motivated. For those of you who don’t know Pandora, here’s the Wikipedia: “Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections.”
I use it all the time, when I have a long bought of work to accomplish I get a station going and I take full advantage of the thumbs up, thumbs down. Just now I noticed that when you click the thumbs up button, not only does it remember this and adjust the playlist accordingly, but it leaves a giant thumbs up in the background of the current song tile! So silly, but I loved it and it made me think about the devil in the details pitch I always try to give myself.
Pandora does it, they have all the details and they are loved by their users - over 40,000 new listeners everyday. It is a shame that the music industry is pushing them towards closing their doors soon.. (I can’t imagine that actually happens, its such a great service). I know alot of people are fans of last.fm, but I’ve never been to the site. No reason why not, just fell in love with pandora and stuck.
The devil is in the details and so is the the beauty. Keep goin Pandora, I’m pulling for you!
You can view my profile on pandora here
Shiny Chrome
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
So I was going to write something about how Google is such an insanely awesome company, how their apps are great and gmail blows all other webmail out of the water, etc, etc. Then I read this post from Fred Wilson which sums up Google much better than I could have done.
Android is going to be very exciting and his point that Apple should have learned it cannot close off everything from the Mac is an excellent point. Steve Jobs just needs to loosen up his turtleneck…
In all seriousness, Chrome is a slick browser. I was knocking it earlier today with some of my friends (Dave you love it), but I’ve come around a bit. It has a way to go to steal me away from Firefox, but its engine is nasty and I see where they are going with things. Into the cloud we go..
UPDATE: Found this link about the end of the operating system: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/google-s-brin-operating-systems-are-toast - worth reading
News for Mobile Bulls
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Saturday, August 30th, 2008
Considering this is the end of August, last week was surprisingly full of news in the mobile arena. There were several market studies released in the past month, and they’ve got me excited about mobile again.
Jumptap just announced a very major Series D raise - $26 Million led by AllianceBernstein. They will be using the funds to build out and improve their growing mobile advertising platform, with the plan to capitalize on the growing mobile search and advertising market. In their release Dan Olshwang also points out that mobile devices now outnumber PC’s with over 3.3 billion devices in use worldwide.
“Internet advertising is currently growing at a compound annual rate of 18.3% and will reach $73 billion in 2011. What is really exciting about mobile advertising is its ability to eclipse Internet advertising,” said Dan Olschwang, President and Chief Executive Officer of JumpTap.
Those are some really smart people pouring huge amounts of money into Mobile search. Considering the overwhelmingly tight credit market right now, this is a really astonishing deal. And its really not getting any major press (at least that I’ve found). I had to dig all the way to JumpTap’s “News” page to find the release.
One of the reasons why there seems to be a recent resurgence of mobile is that there is data flowing out of all the major research firms indicating significant growth in mobile use, both the volume and frequency. Gerg Sterling pointed out an interesting report from Nielsen Mobile that shows some intersting data on mobile search (and surpise - domination by Google of the market). According to the report about 89% of searches were in the three categories of “Information,” “Local Listings” “and Websites/Navigation.”
Most relevant to my local interests is that 29% of all mobile searches were for “local listings” and 33% were for “Information” (- thats a pretty broad term). In an August 12th report Neilsen Mobile noted that US and Eurpoean markets were “more mature” and mobile use was focused around email and search, compared to entertainment as the leading segment in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Entertainment doesn’t fall in the top 5 for US and EU - (But city guides/maps do!). This data goes along with a trend that JumpTap is reporting as well:
JumpTap notices a shift away from entertainment-centric searches, such as ring tones and downloads. It reports more navigational searches: Users looking for websites (such as specific social networking sites) and utilities (such as email) on their devices. (From msearchgroove)
This data points out that people are beginning to use their mobile devices for real life tasks, perhaps representing the beginning of the shift from computers to Mobile Devices. One of the frequent arguments against mobile advertising was that mostly people were going online to download wallpapers and ringtones for the phones (which is pretty uselss for any marketer not representing wallpapers or ringtones), but now a widespread adoption of mobile use is changing that argument.
The market is maturing and the huge investment by AB shows that the day when our phones replace our laptops is one day closer. I hadn’t put much thought into mobile until recently, but all this talk of Googles Android and their “Content Market“, iPhone and of course their apps, is hard to ignore. Will marketers begin to listen, or will old school execs continue their slow migration to online media one step at a time?
Head for the Hills!
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Ok, don’t panic. Its just me, I’m heading up to the Adirondacks for a few days to do some unplugging. I can use it and my girlfriend is going to kill me because she thinks I spend too much time on the internet.
There has been a lot of interesting data coming out in the past few weeks that I’d like to touch upon but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. Things have been moving along rather quickly, we’ve launched a new site, two more to come out of beta in the next 6 weeks and there is always more to do. On top of that I’ve been doing some heavy lifting with our business model, restructuring it and building out the formal BP. Its very exciting to go back into the basics of the business; you get to re-imagine your vision for what you wanted the business to be, but then tweak it to adjust to all the things you’ve learned and actually done. 2 years and 300 clients later…
Anyway, if you’re in Saratoga this weekend you’ll probably find me at Travers.
Internet Yellow Pages and Local Search in 2009
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
I was doing some late night number crunching and data research and I came across some interesting points. A few I touched on earlier in the week, but I’ve had some more time to address some of these and I wanted to talk about them. There are huge numbers involved here, and some interesting theories that I haven’t quite finalized in my head. Maybe these thoughts will help clear that up.
Check out this post form Conde Nast in February talking about the Yellow Pages. It is fairly amusing considering how just about anyone you ask in the Northeast will admit that they don’t care much for print advertising. (We hear this all the time) Note the comment:
If Nielsen can’t get TV viewership right after all of these years, how on earth can the Yellow Pages Association know how many times anyone “references” the Yellow Pages?
Thats exactly the point, you can’t track how people use the yellow pages, you can’t see which people read your ad, or how many times people read it and took action, or no action. There is no data to support their continued use.(or even to figure out why people aren’t using them anymore)
However, people still need to find stuff; restaurants, clothes, hotels, doctors, lawyers, whatever… simply now people are turning to the web for a quicker, easier search experience. And search is dominating the web these days. Google is raking it in, Yahoo and Microsoft are scrambling to get a bigger piece, and startups like Cuil and Mahalo are trying to get break into the scene. But however they’re gonna find it, people are going to use search, more specifically local search.
Local search will soon be the king of search, as the economy tightens, people are traveling less and are generally more concerned with whats happening in their community. (and thus more willing to spend their x dollars locally) A particularly powerful quote from A new report by Borrell Associates (which I referenced in an earlier post):
“Local online advertising,” defined as search, “local banners,” and video (classifieds are also in there), would reach $12.6 billion in 2008, with “local search” contributing roughly $5 billion to that total.
Those are big numbers, and there are big players already in and entering the local search market. But there are a lot of nuances in local, people are different, politics matter and most often they have no idea who Marc Andreesen is, they don’t care who backed your startup, they dont care about the fancy rails technology your site runs on. They want results and they want to talk to a person.
There is no concrete answer to the question of who will succeed in local search, there are many verticals and plenty of niches to tackle, but there is certainly going to be a battle over it in 2009. And I didn’t even touch on mobile, which Google’s Eric Schmidt thinks will one day be more profitable than anything else they do. Thats a scary thought.
Will the general population move towards mobile search, are we still two or three years away? Or will local search dominate 2009? I know there are other much hotter topics, but seriously if you are reading this you probably aren’t Joe Cleveland. (Ok, easy)
New Haircut
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Sunday, August 17th, 2008
I got a hair cut a few days ago, so I thought I’d give my blog a new ‘do on this BEAUtiful Sunday.
I know I’ve said before that the design of the site doesn’t matter as much as the content, but I really hated the way it looked - so Vavoom, a few Sunday morning/afternoon hours later and now I’m happy.
What do you think?
Local Online Ad Spending
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
Local is good, and it is a significant part of the entire advertising market. Some estimates say that up to 54% of all adverterising is local, or locally based. In our increasingly localized and connected world, the power of local search, local content, and locally based interaction are unquestionably becoming key components of the advertising arena. Agencies and Local SMB’s are both very increasingly using local based targeting, or local search as an element of their campaigns. According to a new eMarketer Report, In 2008 Internet Yellow Page advertising is expected to reach $1.2 Billion in ad spending. Measurable to say the least.
Local content is largely becoming focused on user generated content; topix.com, outside.in, and others are focusing on creating a platform for people to share their reactions and feelings on locally relevant issues. The number of review sites (the likes of Yelp, BooRah, etc) seem to be doubling by the minute. While it is no question that people are extremely interestedin sharing their content locally, again how are these companies going to monetize this revenue?
Today, I saved $800 on a minor bumper repair to my car because I was researching some competition, checked out Topix, and found a video ad for a bumper repair place promising to save me hundreds. Well they did, and I had a long conversation with the owner of the business. He has totally abondoned anything in print, he created the video himself, and is advertising locally online to spread the word. Only purchasing a few text ads pointing to his website, he has designed his own viral campaign. Here’s the video:
This is how local advertising is going to be monetized. Simply, I was looking for something local, I found it and completely unintentionally I found something that I needed. Video can become a power tool in one’s local arsenal, and is quickly becoming sought after. I am now endeared to topix (they do have a ton of comments from nearly any city you visit), and I literally saved over 800 bucks to fix my rediculously expensive bumper. Local at its finest.
So listen up advertisers, agencies, publishers: here is the lesson - keep it local, keep it relevant and make the relationship meaningful. While there is no question in my mind (and many others’) that print YP’s and newspapers are no longer a useful advertising outlet and that online local search is the place to be, if you can make the ad meaningful, important, relevant - you can make money. This is nothing new, it seems rather simple, but to truly monetize a local site you can’t rely on CPM’s from exchanges or Honda, Verizon and others (a recent Borrell report estimates the relative CPMs for IYP is $3.65 vs. $9.29 for print YP) . It’s gotta be local, because that way I (the user) can convert that page view into a handshake. And isn’t that what local is really all about?
I think so, and I can’t imagine why any business out there will over look the power of a handshake and a friendly smile.
Lets go USA!
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
Did anyone else notice that the Olympics are expected to generate about $100 Million in online Ad Spending!
Thats awesome, a huge event, millions of eyeballs and some advertisers are recognizing that money spent online is more than likely money well spent. Go ahead and see if you can triple that by 2010…
NBCOlympics.com had over 4 million visits on day one and Google has created a special medal count widget for iGoogle.
Now cheer on America and lets see if we can’t take it to China on their home turf.
Fake Internet Money
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Monday, August 4th, 2008
I have tons of fake internet money. And I’m planning to get a bunch more, my question is what is everyone going to do with all their fake internet money. Alot of businesses out there are converting thier giant audiences into real money, but what are the large sites doing to monetize their views and return their investors money. Rounds C and D are exciting and there were alot big numbers thrown around last year and earlier this year, but when is that all going to come around. I’ve got a hunch that it isn’t.
Youtube became so succesful because it was free to its users, no money and no interuption cost of advertising. Facebook continues to be successful with its users because it limits the interuption cost as much as possible, but I would consider Facebook to be the field-leader in monetization. There are alot of competitors in an increasingly crowded space launching new platforms after their second and third rounds of funding all going after the same ad dollars (Zvents, outside.in, and many more). I’m not the only one who warns of seeking the same ad dollars with similar audiences.
I’m just curious who will be funding these companies in 6-8 months, will the economy pick up, or will ad networks save the day. There is some data showing a slowing online advertising atmosphere, however there is much more optimism towards online ad growth. I can’t see all of these local search competitors succeeding down the road, but the ones that do will own large shares of local markets and have a palpable relationship with these local markets. I cringe when I see “People Love Us on Yelp!” stickers - for a reason, they’re there and they are good.
A few days away…
Posted by Jamie Hutson on Monday, August 4th, 2008
Its been a few days since my last post. I’ve been completely buried with work, working 9 of the last 10 days. Last Saturday I played golf and turned my BlackBerry off for almost 12 hrs! Its been a good week, I’ve been all over the place but we’re seeing alot of growth across our sites, both in traffic and in advertising. We are preparing to launch 4 new sites over the next 4 weeks, which is a pretty intense schedule for us. Things are great, I’m just awfully tired and haven’t had much time to put my thoughts down here.
Its getting into the heat of summer, so there really isn’t a heck of alot going on, but there are a few. Look for a post a day from me for this week, I have alot of thoughts I need to get out.
