Forget advertising

Traditional advertising is essentially attention focused content. To work it must divert the user’s attention away from their current course and onto the advertiser’s product. By it’s very mature it must interrupt what they are doing and substitute this with something that promises and hopefully delivers a greater benefit; although the delivery is seldom included with the offer. Since most users don’t like forced interruptions, engagement rates on advertising are typically around 0.5%, which means 99.5% of users have simply ignored this intruder.

Low engagement might be acceptable if each ad visitor resulted in a sale, but let’s face this is never going happen. Given an optimistic 10% conversion rate, actual purchases linked to advertising take place for less than 1 in a 1000 people exposed to the ad. It doesn’t matter if you buy advertising on a pay per view (CPM) or pay per click basis; you’re still wasting anything from 90% to 99.95% of your money on people who won’t be buying your product.

To compensate for these low returns, publishers significantly discount the user interaction and promise to deliver thousands of users to your ad; while users accept they will be exposed to 1000+ product adverts for each one they are likely to buy.

Up till now this has been the commercial model adopted by every publisher and the vast majority of websites - including all the major social networks … Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. However this may be about the change, and it’s all down to the true nature of web2.0 sites which value user action and intentions above content.

Think intention selling

The best way to illustrate this change is to provide examples of what’s being termed ‘intention selling’.

Let’s consider your next holiday - which just happens to a week long self catering activity break in South West Wales (we can but hope).

As with every holiday you progressed through stages to purchase then enjoy this product, before sharing the experiences with your mates.

First off you were influenced by several factors to lead you to choose South West Wales and a self catering activity holiday. Traditional advertising would suggest you saw a TV or classified ad, web banner, or email and this lead to your decision. Intention selling takes a different view. The email you sent to your mates in June suggesting ‘I need a holiday, where shall we go?’ would have flagged you are a potential holiday buyer. Using this flag, your profile and historic data targeted product links are placed beside your email or within your news feed. Unlike traditional ads these are ‘buy now’ products that match your profile and to which you’re most likely to respond.  E.g. We know your own a two year old wetsuit and your last holiday was mountain biking in Spain, so this product could be an activity week that combines kite surfing, sea kayaking and coasteering with easy access to coastal cycle routes.

Having selected the holiday experience the choice is now where to stay. This decision is helped by self catering products (your known preference), linked from your activity holiday profile and once again selected to match your requirements (party size, budget, location, facilities, etc.).

But we don’t stop here … in-fact we’ve only just started. We know where you’re staying and what you’re doing, so the next group of products you’ll see will support these choices. It may be for a new wetsuit, two for one meals in a local restaurant, flights and insurance for an overseas mate who usually joins you, or a contemporary guide book to the local area … the choices are almost limitless. And remember this is not a once off deal, but relates to every transaction you make! In-fact if we look at the figures customer transactions are worth an estimated $60 trillion pa, so there are millions of opportunities to place your product next to related consumer actions and stated intentions.

So what does this mean for advertisers? 

The main feature outlined above is that for each planned purchase a range of products, with buy now links will have been pre-selected and delivered to their activty feed. These products will match both the individual’s own requirements and their profile, using the wealth relationship, profile and activity data that they have provided through social network sites. They will also all include ‘buy now’ links to maximise the conversion rates, while the ‘ads themselves’ will probably be placed of a ‘commission plus’ basis; i.e. the seller only pays the publisher when an actual purchase takes place.

So what does this mean for today’s advertisers and social media publishers like WalesCymru?

Assuming a publisher can gain access to this depth of user data (take this for granted … it will happen through integration with Facebook and other social networks), switched on social advertisers will shortly be offered unrivaled access to quality user activity feeds, where they’ll be able to deliver ‘buy now’ products at the time and place the transaction is most likely to take place. Suppliers who can do this will be selected by the publishers and their business will grow; while those who resist this movement or keep their product to themselves will increasingly be passed over.

Tomorrow I’m attending a workshop on ‘the new approach to digital business for tourism in Wales’. The purpose of this event is to set out the aspirations for Welsh tourism over the next six years IF Wales is successful in securing £24m through a European funding bid. I’ll let you know if these ideas find resonance in this group, or if the people leading the debate in Wales are still thinking digital business 1.0.

According to Darren Devine in today’s Western Mail a ‘typical’ two week holiday in Majorca will cost the Welsh family (mum, dad and two kids) a staggering £6,419.30; while the comparable holiday in Wales costs a mere £1,983.05. Do you think we’re all stupid, or what?

In less than two minutes searching on just one package operator’s site (Thomson), I found a wide range two week self catering Spainish holidays costing from a little as £2324 - including flights from Cardiff, Coach transfers and the Hotel. The holidays were for a family of four, flying from Cardiff, staying in 3 star+ hotels in the first two weeks on August. Spending an extra five minutes I find four BMI flights for the same dates costs just £785 including taxes, charges and 4 bags. Using Google, and a little common sense (something that is clearly lacking in some Western Mail journalists), I’ve quickly found a great range of seafront 2 bedroom apartments and villas (on Owners Direct) costing from a little as £450 a week.

So my two week family holiday in Majorca for my family of four has cost me £1685 for flights and accommodation. Add airport parking, food and a sensible activity budget and we’re talking around £2500 for these two weeks in the Spanish sun. OK this is still dearer than the same two weeks in Saundersfoot, at the Western Mail’s price of £1,983 (alternative products are available), but to me a price difference of around £500 is a lot more realistic.

If you’re going to write a price comparison article, please enlist the help of some local price comparison experts - Wales after-all has an abundance of these today. Better still, why not write a decent article that illustrates the total holiday experiences your typical UK family can have on well planned two week holiday in Wales, with a similarly budgeted Spanish holiday, then ask your readers to judge which holiday provides the best family memories? I know where my money would go.

Lifestreaming is not new. It’s what we do every day and simply involves sharing our experiences of the places we’ve been, films we’ve seen, books we’ve read, games we’ve played, etc. with friends, family, or anyone who cares to listen.

With today’s digital technology we have have the ability to stream our life experiences to this same group as a ‘news feed’ or ‘activity feed’, or as some now call it a ‘life stream’.

If you use Facebook, or any of the social media sites, you’ll be familiar with this concept, but for those two or three readers who don’t, it looks something like this:

The main features of the ‘life’ News Feed are:

1. You select the people you want to follow
2. Actions by these people are published as ‘easy to scan’ headlines to your news feed
3. You spot something that interests you and click through to the actual item, and where you can interact in whatever way you think appropriate

Actions published to News Feeds include: status updates (I’m doing ‘this’ right now), connections established (with new friends, groups you’ve joined, relationships you’ve started / finished, etc.), photos / videos added, comments posted, etc. The feed can also include ‘adverts’, usually selected to be context, location or interest specific, and helps to fund the service.

The questions I’m dealing with today are: Do we really want a digital lifestream? Are we equipped to deal with it? Then, as the follow-up, If yes, who should control this feed?

Is a ‘Lifestream’ a web2.0 step too far, or an essential social media service?

Like most new technologies potential users fall into three camps: those who love it and are rapid adopters (about 5%); those who hate it and will never use it (also about 5%, but probably higher in this case); and those who have little interest, can’t be bothered, or will simply use the facility without giving it a second thought (the majority).

In considering the first question, do we want it, the answer appears that we do, well all users of Social Network sites do and that’s close on 500 million people today. The fact that sites exist simply to provide these feeds (Twitter, with a reported 1.6 million users, is the obvious example), confirms just how highly some of us value this service. For site’s like Facebook, this is arguably the single most important feature or at least it’s the one we most often access, which is why it’s our ‘home page’.

Which then raises the next questions, are we equipped to deal with it and who should control what we see?

In the above illustration, it’s Facebook who selects the actions published on ‘my’ News Feed; although this process ‘learns’ what I like by the ratings I give individual items (did you know you can do this?). However, in reality I have little if any control of which items actually appear in this source. The second disadvantage is that these sites typically only feed activities that take place on the site, which is why services that provide ‘lifestreaming’ feeds drawn from multiple sources have now been established and are growing in popularity. These sites include: Jaiku, iStalkr, and Tumblr - to name just three; although a much longer list can be accessed on LifestreamBlog.com if you’re interested.

Are we ready?

As we each have several hundred friends, family members, and colleagues who will typically publish a few dozen items every day, we should expect to see upwards of 1000 items in a 24 hour life feed, and 10x this number if you have active friends, or follow hundred’s of people’s feeds.

For most people, it seems these numbers are simply too high and we are not yet ready to accept full responsibility for this constant stream of digital noise, and are we happy that someone else is managing this on our behalf.

While the majority are always likely to abdicate responsibility to a trusted group, those who have an interest and knowledge will want to manage these streams themselves. This is not, however, an acceptable long term solution.

Once responsibility to manage a life feed is grated to a third party, the information processed by them is both comprehensive and extensive and can easily be used (abused) for commercial gain.

Ask yourself why some sites are opposing open solutions that takes away their control of this news feed, and you see the game that is now being played out for control of your life stream.

So where I am going with this (he asks rhetorically)?

I suppose it’s this - Should WalesCymru.com be part of this trusted group, or a bystander to the main game?

Only time, and our users, will tell which it is to be.

The theme this year was “Sustainability”, so maybe I should have followed the lead advocated by the keynote speakers and simply stayed at home, watching the presentations on download rather than adding a few extra tons of CO2 to my carbon footprint. This was certainly the cheaper option and in today’s credit squeezed economy may have been the most sensible. But sensibility has never been my strong point and in doing so I would have missed sampling some tasty locally sourced food and the chance to ‘network’ with the trade, not to mention the hospitality I enjoyed at the (coffee) bars and the chance to drive down those great roads.

Let’s recap on what I actually learnt and especially if this was money well spent. Which I suppose comes do to one simple question, namely: Why attend?

I convinced myself that if 1000 people attended the four events this would be 1000 new people who would see WalesCymru in operation. This was a mistake. Firstly 1000 people did not attend, and even if they had the reality is you only speak with a fraction of these at an event. While my goal to was meet 1000, in reality this turned out to be less than 100 and equated to a cost of around £15 per person.

I believed this event would give me some valuable feedback on the site. Again I was wrong. Feedback implies familiarity, and as only one person I spoke to had used the site, this objective was some way off target. Given that I’d produced 1000 ‘feedback’ forms which I’d hoped to distribute, only to find the policy this year was ‘no handouts’ as we’re being green, I really missed the mark on this one. Strike two.

But there’s always networking … Well, when you’re manning your stand during the 2 hours or so allocated to ‘food and exhibition’ breaks do you really get much networking in? I’m not sure about you, but I find splitting myself in two rather difficult, so missed most of the networking opportunities that were going. That said I did chat with some interesting people and also picked up some scary facts (commercial fishing ends in 2048) and a few new ides, which were:

1. Wales needs an integrated public transport system ASAP. This will not be economically viable for some years to come, if ever
2. Buses are greener than trains. Wales should invest in fleets of electric / hybrid buses, recharged by 21st Century Windmills
3. Sustainability is a fashionable policy with a high price tag. Ask your Councilor or AM about ’sustainability’ schemes and they’ll probably talk about land fill and recycling, but say nothing on dedicated city bike routes, zero emission buildings, or supporting a local farmers’ market. Clearly we have to do the thinking for them!
4. Community email services provide great cross promotion opportunities. OK this is more like it - back to emarketing and the Internet; but does it work? Perhaps the answer to this question is that Aberconwy Web Solutions have been named as one of the three finalist winners in this year’s Excellence in e-commerce category in the Western Mail Business Awards and the Info4-u e-CRM system has already delivered around £2m in business to North Wales operators.

So, back to the original question. Was the 2008 Tourism Roadshow worth it? On balance I have to say no. If I was judge the event by the return on investment, I’m certainly in the negative, and that’s not even including my extra Co2 contribution. But then what value do you put on exploring the scenic areas of rural Wales or in meeting new and interesting people?

This got me wondering, what does a ‘friend’, ‘contact’, or ‘connection’ actually mean? And should we add people to our personal address book, when for many the implied relationship is little more than an acknowledgment of “yes, we know each other”.

For my part I view Facebook as a ’social network’. That is one where I am mostly connected with Friends and Family and people I know at a social level; while Xing, LinkedIn, and a few dozen other web2.0 sites I’ve joined, are mainly for ‘business connections’. Clearly the boundaries are blurred and I have business relationships with friends, and friends on these business network sites who are not on Facebook; but I usually try to keep these separate - after-all we don’t want to bore everyone with our web-chatter, even if this is your biggest passion in life.

I realise this distinction is transient and that Facebook once had a ‘how do you know this person’ feature which they have sidelined; but for now I prefer to keep things as black and white as possible.

However, as business connections start to invade our social space and in anticipation of the future problem this will create, I’m thinking about putting my ‘friends’ into some useful and meaningful categories. Why? Well it should allow me to maintain a better relationship with them, and more importantly not spam them with unwanted notifications and updates. So towards this end I have come up with the following categories:

• Friends and family - my real friends
• Suppliers - actual and potential
• Buyers - actual and potential
• Advisers - for information, advice & / or support
• Colleagues - current and ex (school, university, work, etc. We had a shared time based experience, but that’s all)
• Social - everyone else I know and might meet socially
• Others - I can’t recall how we connected, but I’m not deleting you just yet

Although this is still a work in progress, I feel it starts to address one of my concerns with social networks; namely how do I manage my connections in a way that adds real value to my time and network activity.

Putting these categories aside for a second; what I find interesting is what these names say about the nature of connection and in particular the level of implied activity between you and them. Distinctions such as these may not be that important today, but when social networks take over more of our lives, by adding the commercial transactions that will ultimately justify their existence, these categories will become more important. Maybe I should adopt a ‘folksonomy‘ that helps index my contacts and conveys our relationship at the same time. So how about, rather than simply calling someone a ‘friend’, ‘contact’, or ‘connection’; why not call them a: drinking buddy, team mate, lover, soul-mate, co-workers, school mates, etc. or are these too American to be universally acceptable?

Bulgaria

Canada

Channel Islands

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Egypt

France

Greece

Holland

Ireland

Italy

Malta

Mexico

Portugal

Spain

Switzerland

Tunisia

Turkey

United Kingdom

United States

So what is this all about and more importantly what can a £24m ‘Digital Tourism’ project do for Welsh Tourism?

According to the Project’s RFQ the “Digital Tourism Business Project aims to transform both the data infrastructure and strategic landscape of Wales.”

The intention is to “deliver an environment whereby the tourism industry … can use a definitive and accessible information feed as part of a platform for marketing and the development of innovative business networks” and “prepare tourism in Wales for integration into a wider digital business network.”

In order to achieve this it is proposed that the project will:

• Provide innovative opportunities for tourism SME’s to fully embed ICT in business marketing and business processes including environmental best practice.
• Create virtual tourism business networks in order to create wider industry penetration and increase business generated in the online/digital marketplace.
• Establish an innovative digital tourism business framework to encourage additional digital/online business enquiries and ensure that efficient technological structures are in place so that enquiries generated can be easily and quickly converted by SME’s to improve bookabilities at all levels.
• Provide networking opportunities for tourism SME’s to capitalise on business opportunities stimulated by Visit Wales and encourage technological improvements & enhancement to key partner websites to further assist businesses
• Create a new e-CRM approach to working with tourism SME’s and establish support channels for SME’s
• Establish and implement a SME engagement Programme with ICT surgeries, focused tourism ICT advice and signposting to other providers

As a user of VisitWales data WalesCymru.com applauds this initiative. Access to high quality multilingual profiles, feature lists, accessibility details and availability - all updated by their owners in real time - can only help in the digital marketing Wales.

Let’s hope the project can deliver this promise, is inclusive in coverage, and embraces open systems and internationally recognized data formats.

The only concern is likely to be with the investment averaging £20,000 per operator. Some may question if this a good use of public money.

Why is this important?

I speculate that many customer focused businesses are now taking a serious look at Social Networks and the role community sites, such as WalesCymru.com, have in building brand and a deeper customer relationship. As these sites are expensive to develop and take time to build a user base, it makes sense to test the waters before embarking on their own social media offering. I’m not sure this is Brains’ thinking - maybe they’re just helping out a new Welsh start-up - but in making these listings available to WalesCymru.com users, some understanding of a public review site will be gained. This is where we need your help.

Review your favourite Brains’ Pub

In the spirit of pub researchers everywhere, I encourage all our users to check out these new listings and to post reviews for your favourite pub. If your local or personal favourite is not listed, please accept our apologies - it will be added shortly. In the meantime I’m sure, if you like pubs, you’ll find one here you’ve frequented - I know I’ve watched Wales’ games at several of these in recent memory.

• Aubrey Arms, Bonvilston
• Barocco, Cardiff
• Bay Hotel, Aberystwyth
• Black Lion, Lampeter
• Blackweir Tavern, Cardiff
• Churchills Hotel, Cardiff
• Cottage, Cardiff
• Darran, Risca
• Ferry Inn, St. Dogmaels
• Fox & Hounds, St. Mellons
• Fox & Hounds, Whitchurch
• Goat Major, Cardiff
• Grape & Olive, Cardiff
• Grape, Chepstow
• Grove Hotel, St. David’s
• Harbour Inn, Solva
• Hen & Chickens, Abergavenny
• Inncognito, Cardiff
• Lamb & Flag, Abergavenny
• Lord Beeching, Aberystwyth
• Lord Nelson, Milford Haven
• Monachty, Aberaeron
• Old Arcade, Cardiff
• Old Inn, Swanesa
• Old Post, Bonvilston
• Penhelig Arms, Aberdyfi
• Penwig, New Quay
• Pick & Shovel, Pontypridd
• Piercefield, St. Arvans
• Plas Derwen, Abergavenny
• Pump House, Swansea
• Punch House, Monmouth
• Reverend James, Swansea
• S.A. Brain & Company Limited
• Salt @ Aberystwyth
• Salt @ Cardiff Bay
• Salt @ the George, Swansea
• Savoy Country Inn, St. Clears
• Ship Inn, Tresaith
• Star, Dinas Powys
• Tafarn Tanerdy
• Terra Nova, Cardiff Bay
• Thomas Arms, Llanelli
• Three Arches, Cardiff
• Twelve Knights, Margam
• Ty Mawr, Lisvane
• Tynant, Morganstown
• Ty-Risha, Bridgend
• Watermill, Ogmore-By-Sea
• Wellington, Brecon
• Wharf, Cardiff
• Yard Bar & Kitchen, Cardiff

It was with this in mind I wonder how many people still don’t know what site visitors and page impressions actually mean.

Take today’s Western Mail which includes several large ads for their JobsWales site, promoting the fact (audited by ABC Electronic, so it must be right) that 123,000 people log onto their site and produce 1,989,229 page impressions each month.

Personally I think these very impressive figures are correct and reflect the way Wales’ 2m web users now access information; although they may also be misleading depending on how they are produced.

Let’s start with ‘people’ or ‘unique users’ as some sites call them - be careful these are different entities.

Did you know that many sites still count a visit from an automated ‘bot’ as a site visitor (person). Bots are used by Google, and around 60,000 other search engines, to produce their index of the web. Without then you would not appear in their search list, so they provide a very valuable service. As the web changes each second these bots have to revisit sites many times each month if they are keep up to date (as a site owner you can set the frequency of visit to be higher or lower). Why is this important? If you look closely at any servers’ web logs (the record of who actually visited and when), you see ‘bots’ make up between 50% and 90% of site visitors. As these bots trawl the site to index content, they can also make up a large percentage of the ‘page impressions’ (the number of times a ‘page’ is viewed).

Official Site Auditors (and here ABC Electronic are the most widely used) record Unique Users as someone with “a unique and valid identifier” and distinguish ‘actual people’ from ‘bots’ through the use of either: (i) IP+User-Agent, (ii) Cookie, and/or (iii) Registration ID.” (Cookies and Registration ID are the most accutrate as they are harder to automate, although not impossible -see Captcha Code for more details, if you’re interested).

I have no intention of discouraging companies from advertising online - I’d be a fool to do this as this is my business - and for the reasons stated above I am inclinced to believe the JobWales website gets 123,000 real people visiting each month and viewing on average 16.2 pages each. All I’m suggesting is that when you come to advertise online, that you measure results by the number of genuine and useful enquires you get and not by some reported readership, visitor number or impression stats that have limited commercial value.

As an experienced rails developer you’ll be building clean, elegant and (re)usable code and web applications in Ruby on Rails, AJAX, PHP, Java, Javascript, CSS, HTML, XHTML, XML, and SQL.

To see what we expect, simply check out http://www.WalesCymru.com and let us know if you’re interested, and also how you’d develop this live (beta) site.

Hours: Full-Time. Holidays: Generous. Working Style: SCRUM. Rewards: Open ended.

This job is salaried and pays from £24,000 pa, although a senior developer can expect to earn more.

Share options are also a possibility as you’ll be producing some kick ass applications!

Email: rails@WalesCymru.com