Maroon Ventures Blog

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo

Via LifeHacker, I came across this intriguing guess at what life on the Web will be like 10 years from now. Is it just me, or does it seem rather Apple-esque? And that creepy music in the background. It’s just a little too close to the airy-yet-ominous soundtrack on the Epic 2015 video.

But all snarkiness aside, Adaptive Path’s Aurora represents some fascinating thinking. Definitely worth a look.

And while we’re talking about user interface, check out “The Creative Destruction of a Website” post on Innoblog. It looks at the disruptive implications of ad agency Modernista!s new home page design. It takes the disaggregation that’s occurring on the web to the next level, essentially conceding that users will find, gain and access information in their own way. Modernista! just provides navigation and tools that allow its users to learn about the agency in a way that isn’t predicated on everything residing on the agency’s site. It’s almost the navigation equivalent of RSS ..

Update: Part Two of the Aurora video is now online.

Social Networking - you hear about it everywhere. Just about anything that involves communication from one person to another is being branded as “Social Networking” these days. Tired of consultant-speak presentations about how Social Networking will do everything including balancing the budget and curing cancer? Still don’t see the “there” there in terms of revenue? You’re not alone.  I recently ran across a handy weekly digest from Jeremiah Owyang. Reading it won’t make your an expert but it will allow you to call BS when you hear it. Sometimes, that’s even more important….  Just saying.

Greg Sterling discusses Local and the Future of Ad Serving on his Screenwerk blog, and it’s definitely worth a look.

In short, he argues that sophisticated ad serving platforms are moving us much closer to true one-to-one marketing, and the end result will be the ability to mix and match creative on the fly to target specific demographics and behaviors in a very complex — yet easy to execute — process.

“It’s a bit of a “Zen” thing,” Sterling writes. “First there was simplicity, followed by complexity and then there will be simplicity on the other side of complexity.

“In other words, all that the agency and marketer will eventually have to know about digital marketing (including mobile) is that they want to target women, 18-34 who live in New York, San Francisco or Chicago and are interested in certain product categories. They’ll create their ads accordingly. Then they’ll deliver electronic data feeds of their creative and the platform will determine what to show when. They won’t have to figure out much tactically or mechanically. The complexity of the entire system will be in the ‘black box’ of the platform and buried for both the marketer and the end user, who will just see an ad and respond or not respond.”

Via Lost Remote, I stumbled across this Slate piece on how we read online. Fascinating and pretty much on the mark. So much so that as I was reading it, I found myself skimming through the denser paragraphs and gravitating toward the bullets and short graphs.

And I love this quote, comparing people who are reading in a utilitarian, gain-information fashion and those who read for the sheer joy of it:

“I suppose ludic (pleasure) readers would be the little sloths hiding in the jungle while everyone else is out rampaging around for fresh meat.”

Gotta run now. I smell fresh meat out there somewhere …

Since we are talking carnivores… thought I would throw this out there.

What is the absolute most powerful force in marketing in the last 20 years? Oprah! Seriously, whatever Oprah endorses or touches usually turns to gold. Remember when Obama was a 35 point underdog and she went up on stage with him? Remember how they said she couldn’t help him come from behind? How about Oprah’s book club? She could turn Game Theory for Applied Economics into an instant NY Times best seller just by picking it as her club’s book. 

Now, Oprah is going vegan. (more…)

EWeek reported this week that Apple took a commanding lead in the sales of high(er) end PC’s in Q1.  When I say commanding, I’m not exaggerating. Just see for yourself (and then read the rest of the post).

Q1 Retail PC Sales (over $1000) - Apple market share

Desktops - 70%

Notebooks - 64%

Those are heady numbers. Think about that. 7 out of 10 desktops that cost over $1,000 that were sold retail last quarter were Macs. Slightly less for notebooks. At first glance those are truly amazing numbers.  However, let’s look below that a bit - (more…)

Microsoft will begin paying searchers who use Microsoft Live Search and complete a transaction. Think of it as a rebate. This is either:

A) Genius - right up there with the wheel and sliced bread

B) Idiotic - equivalent to the “make your own change night”

C) Meh - feed mayo to the tuna

The more I think about this, the more I think it is a vowel. I know what I am going to do next time I need to buy something big. What will get interesting is if it works and Google decides to counter. This is yet another nail in the coffin for the local retailer.

If you are looking to burn some hours this weekend and don’t have anything to do, head over to Microsoft’s Photosynth. Photosynth isn’t exactly new but if you haven’t seen it before, it is sure to elicit more than a few “hey, that’s cool’s”. Photosynth take a collection of random tourist photos of a given location and stitches them together over a 3D model to create a pretty interesting mosaic. You can essentially walk about the 3D model and view the location from that point (as a photo taken by a tourist at that location). They have several different locations including Piazza San Marco in Venice. 

Buzzkill of the Day: Only Vista and XP users need apply. Photosynth doesn’t work on the Mac OS.

Josh Bernhoff over at Forrester just released some interesting research around a recession’s impact online marketing buying habits. That is to say, they asked over 300 interactive marketers the following:

Assuming the economy is in a recession in the next six months, how would you change your investment in interactive marketing overall?

The results are pretty interesting. The most recession proof marketing channel was Social Networking followed closely by User Generated Content, Email Marketing, Blogging and everyone’s favorite, Search Engine Marketing. The most vulnerable to recession? Display Advertising. What does this mean for companies such as Yahoo! and the newspaper industry who have invested heavily in being a key player in the display advertising space? My take: not much.

The reason lies behind who Forrester asked.  They asked interactive marketers. My belief is that these are interactive marketers who are pushing predominantly online brands and products. Such brands and products lend themselves to non-traditional advertising channels with an emphasis on buzz and measurable conversion (hence SEM). If you put an “channel age” next to each of the channels in the survey, you’d probably find that the newest channels are on top while the oldest are at the bottom (with the exception of Email Marketing - hmmmmm). Simply put, these interactive marketers aren’t your usual display advertising purchasers anyhow. I argue that if you had asked 300+ car dealers the same question, the result would have been very different. 

That being said, we’re not out of the woods yet. The perception behind impression based display advertising persists - been there done that. Newer pricing models such as CPC and CPA need to be leveraged even to the most brick and mortar advertisers. Additionally, target target target! Educate your advertisers. Provide data. Try to measure ROI. That’s how you beat a recession - prove that it is working. 

Why are Mac converts so damn annoying? Have you noticed that? I was once a happy PC user content to never know of or much less use a Mac. However, I had all these Mac friends who would pester me about just how superior their machine was. It was annoying.  One day, due to a slight logistical problem (left the PC on the couch at the start of a 7 day road trip) I decided to go out and try a Mac. Hell, if after 7 days I hated the thing i’d either sell it or just take it back. Six months later, I am one of the most annoying Mac converts you’ll ever met. I freely admit that. I started thinking about this behavior and what I concluded is what we have here is a classic case of Plato’s Cave Allegory. (more…)