Sought After

Bizographic Targeting – a new way to reach the right audience

I’m on a flight from SF to Boston to catch a train down to NYC (don’t ask) for ad:tech where ZoomInfo will be announcing our new bizographic targeting platform. Planes, trains and automobiles aside, I couldn’t be more excited about this launch!

As someone who has marketed products to multiple industries, my job has been figuring out how to get the right message in front of the right people – all while delivering positive returns. ZoomInfo’s new bizographic targeting platform would have made this 10x easier, and I believe can significantly increase the effectiveness of online marketing.

In my former role as head of marketing for ZoomInfo, my most effective means of marketing was always through targeted email and direct marketing lists because they were so highly focused on the audience I was trying to target. If, for example, I wanted to reach recruiters, I would pay to send my message to the Electronic Recruiting Exchange, or HR.com; both organizations that provide information to recruiters. My messages and positioning were focused on the audience, and thus my response rates and returns were always much higher than other forms of marketing because the content was highly relevant to the audience.

However, I was never able to figure out how to cost effectively use display or search advertising on the web – primarily because I couldn’t segment the audience effectively and deliver messages that resonated with enough users who were viewing my ads. Today, most successful display advertising is done by companies that have a broad consumer appeal, and thus don’t need to target very deeply, more often using basic demographic targeting: their age, household income, location, sex and often race.

Most advertisers understand demographic targeting concepts because they have been doing it for decades on radio and television, attempting to get messages in front of certain demographics that watch certain programming. Thus for marketers that have a product they want to get in front of the 18-25 demographic, MTV is a good choice because their programming tends to attract the 18-25 demographic. Although expensive, this is simple and fairly effective for targeting broad audiences.

Bizographic targeting is demographic targeting with a twist, and provides marketers the ability to reach out and target people based on their bizographics, or business demographics. A person’s bizographics are a combination of his or her industry, company, title, seniority, education, and functional area, in addition to traditional demographic information such as location and sex.  And importantly, bizographic targeting is able to maintain the same privacy aspects of demographic targeting: maintaining the privacy of individuals unless they decide to identify themselves.

Bizographic targeting simply gives advertisers much deeper targeting.  For example, let’s say American Express wants to put a new “platinum” credit card on the market that is entirely focused on senior executives. With bizographic targeting, they would have the ability to place advertising in front of users that fall within the “senior executive” bizographic, and focus messages based on this targeting – i.e, “CEOs now hear this….” This is a much more efficient allocation of budget, and gives the marketer the ability to test different messaging based on the audience, all with the end goal of increased conversion rates.

As another example, marketers at salesforce.com looking to reach sales professionals in the software industry would be able to segment that audience and place advertising on the web to target those users wherever they traverse. Today, a marketer is forced to guess where sales professionals would hang out based on the content of the site. Bizographic targeting takes the guesswork out of reaching a segment of users.

Finally, as someone that once focused on marketing to recruiters, a bizographic targeting platform would have enabled me to successfully deliver my product messages to recruiters around the web, significantly increasing my reach and effectiveness in advertising spend. Making my marketing (and life) at least 10x easier!

Can’t wait to get this one out there!

Up late

Am up late creating a presentation about successful blogging for my council at Creative Good.  Few problems I'm having with this: 1.) According to Technorati, I don't even qualify for a rank of the top one million bloggers on the planet (Ranked 1,644,723 to be exact) so my qualifications are just a little suspect and 2.) I have been in the middle of a move to California as well as taking on a new roll at ZoomInfo, so I haven't had time to prepare much in advance.

Remember those nights in college when you kicked yourself for not having studied earlier?  I have to admit -- it makes me a little wistful just thinking about it!

Web 3.0, Episode II, The Return of the Sith

In this Episode, Calacanis has replaced Markoff as the Sith, but the debate over the definition of Web 3.0 is still as hot as ever, with the fate of the Ewoks obviously resting on its outcome.  And it makes me wonder, as it did last year: WHO CARES HOW YOU DEFINE WEB 3.0!?

What matters is that huge amounts of data are being amassed on the Web, and if used in compelling ways, disruptive applications can and will be built from all of that information.  Once they're all talking together, you have a party that some would call Web 3.0.

So, for all you Ewoks out there, here you go, the actual official definition: Web 3.0 is the generation of the Web following Web 2.0 and preceding Web 4.0, marked by an explosion of partying applications.

How to beat Google for my searches

Interesting article yesterday in the NYTimes about how Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask are trying to beat Google.  The problem they are all running into is that their natural results are now every bit as good as Google's (Microsoft is the exception, however, rumor has it their next release actually works), but the traffic isn't coming.  In response, according to the article, these "upstarts" are changing the traditional "10 blue links" and incorporating graphics, shortcuts, product guides, and other snappy information to attempt to create a more useful experience for the user. 

Although potentially useful, the major problem with this approach is speed.  It has long been known in the search industry that "speed wins," and that the faster a search engine returns results, the more searches a user will do.  However, all of these graphical approaches slow down the ability to deliver results both on the server-side as well as on the user's machine.   A quick (not scientific) test shows that Yahoo almost keeps up with Google, but Microsoft's Live.com is behind, and Ask is substantially slower.  Maybe that's why only Yahoo lists search times like Google does?  Until bandwidth, processor speed, and other speed-bumps are moot, nobody is going to switch to a slower engine.

So if fancy graphical additions to search results aren't going to cause a mass exodus of Google users, what will?  Well, I'm an expert on myself, so I'll focus there.  I think each company has it's strengths, and if I were them, here's how I would get me to stop using Google:

Microsoft: I'm conditioned to type "GOOGLE" whenever I need to do a search.  I really can't help it anymore.  But what if I didn't need to leave my Microsoft application to search?  Search should be a part of the experience of using their applications.  If I was able to view good search results while doing this post in IE7, I wouldn't leave to use Google's box.  Same goes for Word and other Office applications.  In fact, why should I even need a search box at all?  Serve me results (and ads) next to, below, or around my document -- real-time and based on what I'm typing -- talk about speed!

Yahoo: They don't have the application platform that Microsoft does, but they have a huge and dedicated base of portal users.  Again, don't make me go to a box to get what I want -- anticipate my needs.  They have started to do just that with Y!Q contextual search.  Additionally, I think they have the greatest ability to actually get BETTER than Google with Web results through a hybrid algorithmic/folksonomic approach.  With applications in their stable like Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc, they should be able to use these tags (votes) in conjunction with page-rank (votes) to significantly reduce link spam that plagues Google.  But it's often difficult to notice enough differences in Web search to force a switch in behavior, so they should focus on vertical search results that would allow me to notice the advances (pictures, news, people, etc.).  If they deliver me the best people search results when I'm looking for someone, I'll go back there next time I'm looking for someone.  They are approaching this slowly with some "shortcuts," but it's nothing too impressive so far (although it is fast).

Ask: Some would argue that Ask already has the best Web search results of all four engines, and they are innovating the fastest when it comes to unique and interesting information display.  However, this new-fangled stuff is not going to work on me -- way too hip and takes too long to show results.  Ask should get faster (much faster), or focus on the the kids that are used to MySpace hipness (and slowness), and maybe they'll grow up NOT typing "GOOGLE" when they can't spell something....

What would it take to make you switch?

Bacon Salt

Former tech entrepreneurs doing good for the world.  Everything should taste like bacon!

Amazon Web Services Meetup, aka Friday night in Palo Alto

Went to a "meetup" in Palo Alto last night that a friend was hosting about Amazon Web Services (AWS).  Thought it was going to be at a bar, but turns out was at a startup with beers in a styrofoam cooler; very Nor-Cal.   

Anyway, the AWS concept for Amazon seems similar to a company that buys real estate and then subleases some of it until it grows into the space.  Amazon has a ton of bandwidth, storage, etc. and probably only needs a fraction of it most of the time (other than the Christmas rush??), so they have built a platform to "lease" it out.  The value for the entrepreneur is simple: lease servers at around $0.10 per hour and turn them on or off as you need them.  Bandwidth is cheap also -- around $0.10 per GB.  Any startup that is trying to launch on the cheap needs no cap-ex to get started, and furthermore doesn't need to worry about getting pounded if they're successful.  Beautiful. 

The only big concern I have about it if I'm an entrepreneur is focus.  No way Amazon puts the same kind of effort into this that a company who's entire business is centered around this concept, so not so sure if I would trust it once my business grew past startup phase.  However, seems like a great way to launch a concept, and maybe, just maybe, Amazon will decide that this is their strategy for disrupting Google from disrupting them (since their own search engine A9 hasn't really gone anywhere), but that's another topic.

To be honest, the most interesting part of the night wasn't learning about AWS, but meeting all the entrepreneurs in the room that are psyched to spend a Friday night learning about this stuff.  It's in the water out here -- feels like everyone you meet has a business plan in their glove compartment, ala movie scripts in Hollywood.  Pretty easy to understand how the venture deal-flow is so much greater out here than anywhere else...

Going back to Cali...

That's right -- ZoomInfo is opening a west coast office in the bay area, and I'm getting it started.  If you know any superstars out here in product management with online advertising experience, drop me a line!

ZoomInfo launches new business information search engine

I've written a few posts about how important the semantic web and semantic search will be, and have even sung it's praises in a podcast with John Blossom from Shore Communications and Dana Gardner from Briefings Direct who blogs on ZDNet.  Now for a little proof and self-promotion! Tonight, ZoomInfo is launching the first semantic search engine for business, focused on delivering better information for business users than they can get anywhere else.

Semantic technology is all about making connections through tagging information with standard definitions that allow for deeper understanding.  For example, lets say you are at a party and see a person across the room that you think might be someone you would like to talk to, but aren't sure and so don't approach him.  However, if he were wearing multiple "tags" containing his name (lets say John Smith), title, home-state, company, and the names of his friends, you would have much more context with which to "connect" John to other people, industries, locations, etc.  Without even meeting John, you would have put him in "context," and the more "tags" the better job you would do. Better yet (and much more socially acceptable) those tags would just be universally understood and not actually visible.  This is the promise of semantic technologies.  On the Web, these tags can be used in exactly the same way -- to help define any entity and give computers the context they need to connect them to others and provide automation as well as much richer search results and applications.

ZoomInfo's technology creates these tags at a rate of over 50 documents per second -- and then uses this information to provide highly relevant search results as well as rich profiles about businesses and people.  Basically, it's search and automatic content creation on a huge scale and I think it is a great example of how semantic search technologies have the potential to be very disruptive to all the current business models where content is created manually.

Since 2000, ZoomInfo has had semantic search technology as the underpinnings of what we do, but until now we were unable to freely show the world what our thousands of PowerSearch customers already know -- the technology is capable of pretty incredible things.  Tonight, we're launching the worlds first business information search engine that crawls the web and gathers information about companies, people, industries, products and services, and makes it all available on a single site at ZoomInfo.com.  So now business users can find companies that produce certain products, or people who work in certain industries.  They can research industries and find competitor lists.  All primarily free with paid upgrades to ZoomExec and PowerSearch available for certain types of searches, better workflow and exporting capabilities.  Additionally, we struck a deal with Indeed.com, a phenomenal job search engine, to provide us with a great feed of jobs that we have integrated with our engine to produce some of the best job-search results I've seen.

Go ahead and check it out at zoominfo.com -- would love to hear your feedback -- we have big plans over the next few months and quarters to add significant improvements and we'll be relying on the users to tell us which ones to focus on.

Update: Mashable gets the scoop

The Semantic Web: The coming of empowered machines

I wrote a post or two a few years ago about the semantic web and why it was so important.

Although it never uses the words "semantic web," this video does a great job of describing the technical evolution that's leading to a machine-readable Web.  First there was text, then there was linking, then there was information to describe the text, then pictures and video, now we have individuals describing (tagging) all this information.  Eventually those tags will be created automatically by computers as well as by humans, and machines will be able to use those tags to "mash-up" any set of data or applications to solve a problem.

I think it's time to start talking about this more often.  Its going to change how applications are built and how users interact with information (both online and offline) because it creates efficiency and automation. 

Imagine the following situation: You're driving in a rented car and late for an upcoming flight.  Your Microsoft Outlook communicates with Hertz to talk to your GPS unit in the rental car which has been given a tag to be identified as yours while you've rented it.  It passes a security key to tell the GPS unit that it's allowed to know your position.   The GPS relays back that you're 10 miles from the airport.  Outlook reaches out to SigAlert to see what the traffic conditions look like, and realizes that you are going to average 45 miles per hour, and likely miss your flight.  It then communicates with American Airlines, passing another secure key, asking it to reserve a seat on the following flight.  American uses this information to allow a standby passenger on the current flight, and charges you an automated change-fee using another secure key.  Finally, Outlook communicates with your 10am appointment to tell them that you're scheduled to land 60 minutes later than originally planned, and uses the calendering interface to reschedule the appointment.

In theory the above example is easily possible today IF a developer with the funding and wherewithal was able to take the time to build it and pull all of the pieces together.  With the semantic web, however, the above example could happen automatically because machines will have a common language for communication and thus will be able to talk to each other and exchange permissions to perform automated and efficient actions.

I believe this revolution will start in business because that's where there's huge money to be found in efficiency and automation.  The above example is simple.  Imagine light-bulbs that know they're about to run out and can replace themselves?  Imagine refrigerators that know when the milk is about to expire?  Imagine advertisements that know when your car is in need of an oil-change and can communicate with you as you're driving past a Jiffy-Lube.

If Web 2.0 is all about empowering the people, the Semantic Web is all about empowering the machines.  Its about to get very exciting.

Apple iPhone -- making me blog and changing the world

If you haven't noticed, I have very little time to blog.  However, I had to blog about Apple's new iPhone announcement because I think this one device has the potential to change not only the mobile phone industry, but THE WHOLE GAME AND ALL THE RULES TO THE GAME..... music, video, communications, cable, computing, storage, the Web, information access, even transportation.

...And when I have time, I'll expand.

For now, at least I'll be able to look back and say "I blogged about that the day it was announced, and said then that it had the potential to change THE WHOLE GAME AND ALL THE RULES TO THE GAME!"

Time's Person of the Year -- ME!!!

I won!  I won!  Me -- I'm Time's Person of the Year!  Time's Person of the Year -- a HUGE deal -- probably their best selling and well known brand by far!  And I won!!

OK, I didn't actually win, but I'm part of a very large group -- YOU -- that Time decided were collectively winners this year. 

Seriously.   Time's Person of the Year is You.

Are you kidding me??  A group of ostensibly smart people had to sit down in a conference room and actually make this decision.  I can't imagine something more lame.  If there is anything more lame that has been put on the cover of a major magazine, please send it to me.  I guarantee it's going to be a short list.

In full disclosure, I have to admit that I work for ZoomInfo which is taking every advantage of user-generated content and the ability to aggregate huge amounts of information to provide value.  However, that's not the point.  The internet has always been about this phenomenon -- it was invented for the express purpose of collecting from the collective.  And yet Time decided that it was "time" to make you the Person of the Year, and in effect take a serious and well defined brand and make a total mockery out of it in order to cash in on a trend that itself doesn't really mean much.   

Someone should consider firing or at least yelling forcefully at whomever made this decision.  And then launch a magazine and put a real person, ANYBODY, on the cover for Person of the Year: there's a vacancy.

Manners 2.0

Great piece in the times about email "sign-off" manners.  Seems like anybody who pays this much attention to a sign-off may have some insecurities to begin with, but I've been criticized at times before (unfairly!) when I haven't left a comment in my Evite responses, so maybe there's something to this.  After some review of my Inbox, here's my not-so-scientific analysis:

No Sign off:  All business -- don't have time for words. Emotions are for losers
"Best": The one I use, but re-reading, does seem a little cold at times.  Business-casual
"Best Regards": Even colder, Business Dressy.
"Regards": Ice-cold.  Don't expect to hear back.  Ever.
"Warmest Regards": Letting you down easy, but I still wouldn't expect to hear back.
"Thanks": Universal nicety -- doesn't say much nor create any confusion.  Very safe.
"Thanks!": Kissing up -- trying to get something out of you.
"Ciao": Yuppie Euro.  Thinking hard about their signoff, may have some insecurities.
"Cheers": Poor-man's Ciao.  Thinking pretty hard about it, but more down-to-earth. Probably find Ciao to be uppity.
"Sincerely": From the letter-writing generation -- likely 60+ and may write a bunch of stuff in all CAPS BECAUSE THEY DIDNT KNOW HOW TO UNDO THE CAPSLOCK.
"Warmly": Very nice feeling at first, but.... could be a trap.  Hard to know where they're coming from, so watch your back.

Best!
Russ

 

Update: New piece in the times yesterday about the Evite thing

Web 3.0: a bad word?

Lots of negative buzz in the 'sphere about John Markoff's article in the NYT this weekend about Web 3.0 describing the rise of truly intelligent applications on the Web that can extract meaning from content and use it smartly according to need.  The main points of the nay-sayers?  That he shouldn't have called it Web 3.0 and the occasional it's "not going to happen."  I smell 2.0 rats.

1.0) most of the points made involved the "mis-name," which means that most feel that the concept of a much more intelligent Web is a real phenomenon, they just don't want it encroaching on their Web 2.0 brand.  Well, actually, Tim O'Reilly's brand. 

2.0) there are a lot of people who are heavily invested in nothing upsetting their precious Web 2.0 apple-carts.  They don't have all the applesauce out yet -- after all, there's an already scheduled conference to go to next year.  So Web 3.0 could be an ugly problem for them, because who wants to be Web 2.0 when its yesterday's news?

Frankly, I don't care what you call it: Web 3.0 because it's newer than Web 2.0, SemWeb because it's the "Semantic Web" or Web 007 because it kills; if you are able to extract real meaning from the Web and in doing so build structure and content that makes today's search look like Search 1.0 Beta, you have something hugely significant as I've written about before.  And to be fair, there are definitely others who get it.

If I were to name it?  I would call it Web 3.0.  Why?  Because so many people clearly don't want me to, and that makes me feel good.  Makes me think though -- what does Wikipedia say about Web 3.0?

"This page has been deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation." 

Seriously. Web 3.0 is a bad word.

 

CTOTW: Intel and Microsoft Teaming Up?

Interesting post at ZDNet by Dana about SuiteTwo, Intel's new suite of "Enterprise Web 2.0 applications."  He thinks its a smart and somewhat obvious move by Intel.  I wonder if there is anything below the surface here...  Conspiracy Theory of the Week: Could Intel and Microsoft be quietly ganging up on Google?

Google is Microsoft's big enemy.  They are building a massive infrastructure to take computing off of the PC and move it to the network -- and they're doing it on cheap build-your-own Linux boxes and AMD chips.  There's no room for Microsoft in Google's view of the game, and there's really no room for Intel either.  As computing moves to the network, dollars flow away from Microsoft and Intel (not to mention Sun "the network is the computer" Microsystems). 

Now, if everything is going to be on the network, it has to be fast, ubiquitous, easy-to-use, and comprehensive.  The reason?  There are no switching costs on the web -- given price parity, the best, most universally accessible applications win.

So, Microsoft calls Intel and asks them to begin putting some major resources towards building a product suite that will start gaining steam in the Enterprise, and will eventually run more close to "native" with chips that are designed for distributed computing; all promising better speed and access for a whole set of knowledge and communications products accessible online.  In the meanwhile, Microsoft takes care of the platform, search and server farms.  Voila, an infrastructure and set of applications that will be difficult for Google to compete with using AJAX, bailing wire and bubblegum, and two of the most significant marketing and R&D budgets in the world to execute.

Or, maybe Intel is just trying to figure out how to get around this Moore's Law price dropping thing...

Or both...

Google Her!

Google has decided that they like "Google" "Googled" and "Googling" in the lexicon, but if you are planning to use "Google" as a verb, they ask that you pretty-please only do it only under the following usages.

Nice problem to have, and one that may demonstrate their rapid transformation from a company focused on delivering the best search product to one trying to maintain the lead.  Who cares if someone says "I googled Stephanie Marks" and they used Yahoo to do it? 

Well, Google does -- and for good reason: they realize that the only significant barrier to entry they have is the fact that someone usually types www.google.com into a browser bar to do their search.  There is no true switching cost to search, and any chink in the power of their brand could be very harmful to them in the long run.  As I have written about before, Microsoft is in a position to take signficant market share away from Google almost overnight if they put the right set of products on the web via Windows Live.

In the meanwhile, ZoomInfo has a great solution for the problem.  Don't "Google" her -- "Zoom" her instead!

300 million Americans, which means...

Just heard about this.  Made me curious.  ZoomInfo has just under 30 million Americans and we're currently adding ~6 million per year.  The US is growing at 2.8 million per yer.  So we should have everybody by... uhhh... err...

2094!!  And the US will have ~540 million people.

Hmm.  Glad we're only focused on the business world...

The Demise of Friendster

I made a passing comment about Friendster recently for an article in TechNews, where I mentioned how their demise began (coincidentally?) almost immediately after they released a feature for "voyeurs" to see who had been viewing their profiles.

The New York Times published the full account of the rise and fall of Friendster yesterday, and it's a must read for any entrepreneur in the high-tech industry.  Although the article doesn't mention the specific correlation I referred to (they clearly didn't check all their sources!), it does speak to turning down an early $30mm offer from Google that would be worth $1b today, CEO turnover, and constant concern with new and tangential features that prevented Friendster from focusing on what was important: their core products and user needs.  So many failure modes in here, its hard to keep track -- lots of lessons to be learned about focus, management, greed and arrogance.  This will be a business school case before long.

Also -- some follow-on commentary here from Arrington at TechCrunch.

Is Google the last of the giants?

Interesting column this week from Kevin Maney at USAToday.  He basically argues that we're not going to see any new giants like Google or Yahoo come out of the crop of startups for awhile because the dynamics of the technology industry have changed.  He makes four main points: 1.) The big guys will snap them up long before they can get really big; 2.) the IPO market for tech companies has been terrible since 2001; 3.) the new Sarbanes-Oxley regulations make it much more difficult to go public, i.e, you need to really want it and 4.) VCs push for it because cashing in for the publicly traded stock of a blue-chip is very attractive.

As an entrepreneur who has founded and participated in both public and private tech companies, I can say that he's right on all counts.  However, I don't agree with his conclusion.  Here's the problem: the dynamics that allowed Google to get big as quickly as it did are only getting more significant.  Those forces include cheap bandwidth, cheap processing power, connected users, connected computers, broadband access, cheap storage, open-source code, and I'm sure a few others that I've forgotten.  The reduction in startup and distribution costs to target and reach billions that these forces represent means that companies will break through Moore's "chasm" in ever increasing volumes (I still believe the failure rates will remain the same, there will just be more "at-bats").  These same dynamics are what allowed Skype, MySpace and YouTube to skyrocket, and they're what is going to allow Company X to be the next Google. 

Fundamentally, I believe it is only going to take one additional piece of the puzzle to create the next Google instead of the next YouTube: an entrepreneur who wants to be the next Google instead of the next YouTube.  Remember, Google had the chance to sell to Yahoo for up to $3B in the early days and they decided to hold out.  It's about greed, competition and guts.  And trust me, those are still going strong...

Walmartster dead

It's amazing that Wal-Mart thought this thing had a chance....  Social media is incredibly powerful, as sites like MySpace, and YouTube are proving, but there has to be affinity to drive usage.  What teenager sits around wonking about how great Wal-Mart is?

Wal-Martster

Been a while since I've posted; in fact I had to look up my password because I couldn't remember it.  Sorry goes out to my few dozen loyal and few hundred lucky monthly Google searchers that have been stumbling upon my blog -- I've been swamped with projects at Zoom, and so haven't had the time to post.

However, nothing better to jolt me out of blogging-sabbatical than this little tidbit sent to me by Jamie, one of the product managers working with me.

So Wal-Mart has decided to get into the social networking game. 

Hehe.  Nice to be back on the blog-o-sphere.