Find the number that best dictates your success. Measure everything about that number. Determine which factors move that number in a positive direction. Measure everything about those factors. Use the most efficient way possible to influence the main number in the right direction to find success.

It all comes down to the original communications model. Sender -> Message -> Receiver and then all the noise. You want to find the right channel to minimize the noise. At  Christmas the noise is everywhere in all the channels.

It shouldn’t surprise me. I purchase Facebook ads, Google adwords and Yahoo BT banner ads on a regular basis. I know the targeting options and how to maximize clickthroughs to a custom landing page, but I am still surprise by how the ads were useful to me.

It reminds me how my grandmother used to read my hometown newspaper– First she looks through all the sales and any other shopping interests and then she would go back through the stories. She actually found the ads worth reading rather than something that got in the way of the information she was seeking.

It’s amazing how Internet advertising is coming back full circle where the ads are actually useful and make money just like the small-town newspaper. Unfortunately, this fledging form of useful advertising is now under attack with the Commerce Department proposing a new online privacy bill of rights for Internet users and the Federal Trade Commission proposing Do Not Track legislation.

Privacy online and Internet advertising has always been sort of trade off for me. I give up some information about me in return I receive something I want (information, news) from a web site with no direct out of pocket costs. The web site uses that information to target ads to me creating a better web experience and more value for their advertising.

“Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing.”

Yuck!

I completely understand and support the need for front page ads, but front page ads on tabs take up significantly more room than a strip ad on the bottom of a broadsheet. Since the ad is ran as a vertical strip it completely dominates the page. On top of that the Democrat-Gazette recently shaved the width of their press down (like every other newspaper) leaving a tab to be rather square than rectangle making the ad more dominant.

I would think that even the advertiser, Landers, would prefer an ad the works with the content and design of the front page rather than against it.

Make entertaining stuff, give it to people where they already are, let them have fun with it, and mix in brand messaging. And because of the viral nature of the Web, each new consumer is cheaper to win than the last one.

Yes, Ashton really does get it. He continues:

Katalyst (his company) is a merger of three industries. A piece of us is connected to ad agencies. Because we get the complex overlay of the social Web, we know how to engage an audience and how to make entertainment for the social Web. And we know how to gain and activate and retain an audience. So we create social networks for brands.

“For years the ad business has been happy to have a completely ambiguous accounting system they’ve been monetizing off of. Now that the web offers a slightly more granular dollars-and-cents audience-acquisition metric – now they’re going to get completely granular about how they’re getting money?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that Ashton can intelligently discuss this, but I have to say that he apparently really does get it.

• View-through metrics gain traction –For at least five years I’ve said theres got to be more than just clickthrough to sale an advertiser as their primary metric and here it comes.
• Web will be connected to the physical world –geocode, geolocation.
• Online video consumption will continue to grow –preroll, postroll, overlays will become part of every media buyer’s vocabulary.