photo credit: jamestruepenny photo credit: jamestruepenny

I engaged in a debate with a friend yesterday regarding commercials for “The Big Game”. (sub note: I find it infuriating that “Superbowl” is copyrighted and marketers are not allowed to use it in advertising anymore but instead use “The Big Game”, especially considering “The Big Game” is actually the name of a college game played annually since 1892 as well as also a name of a high stakes poker game played annually). Superbowl Big Game commercials have taken on a whole new life with social media in the past few years.

We’ve seen usage of the #hashtag in the commercial; Facebook pages created specifically for the commercials; and this year will see apps created specifically to be played during the game itself. GoDaddy.com, possibly considered pioneers, even created an entire section of the business website dedicated to the commercials that aired (sometimes for “unrated” content) and were one of the first online companies to advertise during this game in order to drive traffic to their website. Heck, last year even saw Google produce a commercial (which were a rare commodity to begin with prior to the SB commercial).

These commercials create a lot of buzz. For one, this timeslot is gernally the highest watched timeslot of the year and thus their are more eyeballs than most other times. Second, advertising companies have deemed the “Big Game” as the beginning of the year for advertising, and thus typically all new commercials come out during this game. Finally, it is expensive to purchase advertising time for this game, thus there is a general thought that “the best” commercials are put forth during this time.

I for one am a big fan of the commercials aired during the game. Most of the time. I tend to be a bigger critic of these commercials. Further, I remember going home after the game or maybe the day after and “Googling” to try to find a re-run of the commercial because I couldn’t wait until I saw it again. More recently, I became a fan of websites that would compile the commercials and / or rate the commercials and allow users to give their own ratings. In the last 2-3 years though, the new trend is to “leak” the commercial before the day of the game, typically in the 2 weeks leading up to the actual game.

Not all advertisers do this, but plenty do (there are about a dozen commercials available for viewing already). So does this diminish the value of the ad? This is where my argument began (of sorts). Non-sports fans used to turn on the “Big Game” in order to watch the commericals, so will they still do this now that “the best” commercials can be viewed beforehand? I’m guessing that they still will, because “the best” is an opinionated word as well, people always want to see everything, and further, they want to see it live and experience it like everyone else. On top of this, the number of views generated on YouTube and other portals, is already tremendous, which is probably the main reason for leaking these commercials - Quantification.

Last year some of “the best” commercials had tens of millions of views on YouTube AFTER the game ended. So by releasing the commercials earlier, advertisers will want to see if they can beat the numbers from last year (and in theory this should be fairly easy to do). In my opinion, Nielsen Ratings is a “soft” metric. Sure they can say that 13.5 million people “watched’ the game, based on their machine sampling and extrapolation. But there’s no way to really know how many people watched the game, since there are typically more than the average household number watching the game. Further, there’s no guarantee that just because the TV is on that people are actually paying attention. Thus my “beef” with Nielson Ratings as a measurement tool.

YouTube views are a much more concrete metric. You have to click a button in order to view. Sure there’s a small percent who may begin the video but not finish it, but typically when a user clicks something they are engaged with it, at least for a few seconds. Much more so, than standing around with a plate of meatballs anguishing over a missed fieldgoal with a friend. Further, the video will probably include a link to a website and the viewer can more easily navigate to that site. Thus you also get a “visit”, if not more!

A second and almost as equally important reason for “leaking” is the viral marketing that this does. When someone says, “You have to see this”, you watch. It annoys me that, the full commercial has been leaked because I think you can achieve the same or at least similar viral success by just leaking a part of the commercial. But for those who have seen the full length commercial they can give a fully credited review of the commercial and recommend it (or not recommend it).

The purist in me hates all of this. “It’s ruined the game!” Technically, the ads themselves have ruined the game, as the game has become more about the glam and the glitz and less about crowning a champion of the NFL season. But similarly to how websites such as TripAdvisor have taken a lot of the surprise and adventure out of “trying something out” by giving testimonies and personal recommendations, I think leaking the commercials ruins the surprise of what commercial will come out next.

The marketer and analyst in me loves all of the integration and progress that has been made! I look forward to the apps and use of mobile with this year’s commercials. Although I’ve seen several commercials, I look forward to watching them with others. Finally, I get it from an advertising perspective. The buzz and viral marketing that is generated is worth every cent spent.

My only question is, why pay the $3-4 million for the timeslot? Why not just create a commercial and put it up on YouTube, market it through the major media channels and then not actually have a commercial that is aired? Sure they would come out and state that this commercial is not airing but that will just create more buzz for the commercial. Not very ethical, I guess…
photo credit: JohnSeb

Regardless of your role in an e-commerce or non-commerce web company, you rely on data and technology in order for you business to survive. As such, there is always a chance of critical failure for any particular portion of your business.

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Critical failure could be any number of things: server/technology failure; data loss; corrupt test environment; broken coding deployment; hacking; third party issues; act of god; etc. While you’ll never be able to prepare for every possible scenario, it’s advisable that you develop action plans for some of the more common scenarios.

In this post we’ll review some possible technology and data loss issues that you might run into.

Your website probably consists of multiple pieces of technology – data storage server, sequel search engines, motherboard processors and miles of cables, just to name a few pieces of equipment. You should keep multiples of each type of equipment on hand in case the one in use decides to quit working. Further, you may want to keep a backup system with a duplication of all data active and ready to be deployed. You might consider keeping this backup in a separate location – in case this issue is some sort of emergency such as a fire or water damage.

Technology issues can often lead to “site down” time. This will frustrate your customers and could cause you to loose some retention. A good suggestion is to have adequate and clear messaging if possible. The last thing you want is an error500 page to pop up (though with certain technology issues this is unavoidable so do your best to get the issue fixed quickly).

A brief message such as “Our site is currently down” along with an anticipated time of being fixed can go a long way toward easing the pain of your customer. It could also create some positive anxiety if you have customers who need to constantly have access to your site.

Site down time also leads to inconsistencies in your data when comparing vs. another time frame.

If you rely on a 3rd party to collect your data, you should consider keeping a “hard copy” on hand as well. Typically a daily file transfer of the previous days’ activity will be sufficient. If the 3rd party data is unavailable or seems suspicious when viewing it you’ll need to verify several things: a) verify any processing issues with the 3rd party; b) verify tagging code on your site; c) verify any supplemental actions required by your 3rd party; d) verify data is being received by your 3rd party site.

Thorough testing is the best way to avoid data loss due to tagging errors. (Ok, technically using log files might be the best way to avoid, but log files can be cumbersome) Ensure that your test environment matches what will go into production and make sure that you utilize all tools to make sure that code functions properly and indeed gets passed to the 3rd party (if applicable). For most third party analysis tools, the javascript calls themselves are not enough to render data, most vendors also require a library file which helps define the javascript actions.

More often than not though, test environments seem to not have an exact replica of the production environment. Or even more oddly, sometimes your data my render in test, but not in production. So it may be worth your while to “go live” at a low point in the day where you can do a live test to ensure that production data is rendered properly, with the lowest chance of data loss.

Finally, another common reason for a technology/data loss issue is a spike in volume. You will need to prepare your hardware, and/or your 3rd party for any anticipated increases in data volume.

Data loss is a critical pain point for your business users who use the data to make decisions about your site. Having inconsistencies in the data can bring forth questions about legitimacy of the data, or questions about why the data falls outside of an accepted level. Good documentation of dates and times of data loss will help alleviate those questions. Unfortunately, there’s usually nothing you can do about data loss unless you have a back up storage.

Technology issues and data loss can lead to a lot of frustration for many roles within the company. Having an action plan in place, or just simply having the proper backup tools in place can help ease the pain of these types of critical failures.

User Driven Change: Give Them What They Want started almost exactly one year ago today. I decided to write a book on design and testing that was geared for intermediate professionals– people who are skilled but not yet advanced. I didn’t have a clear concept of where I was going to go with it, just that I was going to get it done. After feeling a few people out on the concept I met Jeff Noethen through a mutual friend.

The team clicked immediately. A few weeks later over drinks we hashed out the concept: four extreme tests that could differentiate an existing site in a saturated market. Between June and September of 2008 Jeff and I wrote 132-pages covering these tests, the analytics we would track, and how to interpret the data you get back.

It turns out that writing is the easiest part of publishing a book. We spent six months editing, restructuring, and responding to comments of our pre-readers to finally finish. Officially we will announce the book the last week of February, but you can buy it now from this site or through Lulu and soon through major distributors like Amazon and Barnes & Nobles.

Jeff and I would like to thank everyone that supported the creation and completion of the this book including Rock Bottom Brewery, Mike Tekula, Amanda Matlock, Rick Galan, Sandra Jones-Kaninski, Will Critchlow, and a special thanks to Emily Colangelo (our amazing and patient copy-editor).

Read our review at SEO-Theory.

photo credit: nickwheeleroz

My blogging has slowed recently because I am working on to large content pieces that should be coming out soon.

The first is a collection of filters and analytics concepts in the vein of the Google Analytics web mail filter. I am offering an opportunity for you to get a link and a reference by describing information that you want to get out of your analytics. If I use your concept I’ll mention you here, in the blog, and in the collection.

The second is a book that will cover web-site marketing decisions in a practical way for the intermediate to advanced web-marketer. We (Jeff Noethen and I) will be using four major sites in a very competitive vertical to demonstrate some of the process you should be going through in creating your online marketing campaigns including specifics about how you should track and assess the success of your plan.

Jeff and I feel there isn’t enough content that is right for marketers and analysts that are between beginner and heavy theory. So, we are creating some. Look back for some updates and sneak peeks at book.