Will ViziSense break Google's Monopoly ..

..in determining Real Estate Value of smaller sites?

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Getting accurate traffic data has always been one of the biggest challenges faced by online marketing personnel – both advertisers and market analysts. Though cost per click methods seemed to have solved the Web 1.0 problem of over/under valued rates of real estate, it still does not provide any information on the quality or the relevance of the traffic. Search giants like Google uses an additional parameter called the “Quality Score” to correct ad pricings but smaller sites do not have the resources to do so on their own. Hence their only source of revenue is to use Google Adsense (or similar products). While this appears to be a convenient system of revenue generation, its still does not fetch them the perfect market value. And they also end up sharing precious revenue with a third party. Worse still are the marketers who end up shooting in the dark at places Google Adwords takes them based on text keywords alone!

Now imagine a scenario where traffic data of almost every website in the world is publicly available. A year ago Google Ad Planner was launched, which contained Google Analytics like information for most companies. But unfortunately demographics are still unavailable for websites from many countries, including those from India. This is where ViziSense, an audience measurement offering from the VC backed Komli Media, makes its staggering presence felt. In India, at least! For example, lets take an online newspaper from a small city like Guwahati – 'The Assam Tribune'. Reports from Alexa or Comscore could give advertisers an idea about the traffic to the site. However it was impossible for advertisers to know exactly how qualified this traffic is with relevance to their product and their marketing objectives. But not any more! One small tab in ViziSense and you have all the data you need.

(click figure to enlarge)

Fig: ViziSense data for "AssamTribune.com" (click here to see summary page)

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However, one word of caution, data from Vizisense may not be 100% accurate. ViziSense uses a combination of the panel data it receives from thousands of users and the ViziSense Tag that a publisher can place on their website, to derive conclusions about a site's audience. Which means that the data is just an estimation or at best an extrapolation. This is not a major problem, as it would be solved with time when other companies bring out their own audience measurement tools and there will be a corrective comparison of data from all such tools.

But for now, Vizisense is no less than revolutionary. Not only because it brings out traffic details for even small Indian websites hence empowering them beyond contemporary possibilities but also because it has shown an alternative to keyword based marketing. With a few more tools entering the market, the monopoly of Adsense/Adwords in determining real estate value of any site would most definitely be broken. And needless to say marketers, consumers and publishers alike, will benefit in the process.

Cheers!

ps: also read What is ViziSense? and the ViziSense Methodology.

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In Humor

CONNECT MARKETING

GOOGLE ADWORDS

SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINATIONS

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see "Defining Social Networking Sites " for a better defination.

cheers

SMM as an extension of SEM

Before Social Media Marketing (SMM) created the incumbent buzz, it was Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which was the talk of the buzz town.

Today at almost 12.5 billion USD search engines constitute almost 50% of the total online marketing spending in the US. SEM is widely researched upon at all levels, be it corporate, academic or web 2.0, and has reached a stage where it is structured to a great extent. On the other hand social media is still a black box and it will take some time for it to become the cash cow it promises to be. In the mean time, what is required is a structured approach to the marketing. This is yet to happen. Popular perception is that innovation is the most important criteria when it comes to SMM. While I agree that ingenuity is great especially when it comes to a new (read any) media, I believe that even a conservative approach to SMM might help advertisers do well.

For starters we can try to understand social media marketing from the perspective of structured search engine marketing methods. Though social media and search engine are two completely different platforms, the marketing techniques need not be fundamentally very different. Lets us see why

1. Both mediums need two routes – organic and paid.
2. Organic: While search engine optimization aims at increasing page rankings, the main objective of social media optimization is to increase virality. Yet similar methods need to be adopted for both viz. tagging, bookmarking, mash ups/widgets, inbound links etc.
3. Paid: Paid SEM differs from paid SMM only in its reach (as yet!). Both mediums essentially rely on keywords. In SMM keywords maybe text in the profile information, tags, any part of user generated content etc.
4. Behavioral or historical data (stored in cookies etc.) helps optimize both mediums.
5. Both mediums need relevant content. Better ad has more ‘clicks’ and more relevant content have greater virality.

Unlike most other forms of online marketing, both SEM and SMM are 100% web 2.0 marketing mediums! The purpose of SEM is to provide information one is looking for. The purpose of SMM is to provide information one hasn’t started looking for. One thrives for greater visibility and the other looks for greater virality. But end of the day both mediums need to reach out only to the most qualified consumers available in the online space. And there are limited ways one can do that yet.

Hence SEM and SMM not only have intertwined objectives they also end up using similar tools to meet these objectives. It only makes sense to look at one as an extention of the other.

Cheers!