End of cryptocoins
Too much energy wasted
Try better fintech
Too much energy wasted
Try better fintech
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Alfidi Capital Attends SMX West 2017
I am a known regular at every major digital marketing event in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Search Marketing Expo 2017 down in San Jose. I attended this year's SMX West Conference to hear what Microsoft Bing and Google had to say about their search capabilities, but there were other goodies on hand.
My free Expo badge got me into the main events from the major sponsors, plus all the free candy I could grab during booth pitches. The badge selfie notes the Landy Awards from Search Engine Land which I was not invited to attend. Someday, these folks will have me hosting their award ceremonies. Mark my words, because my badge selfies are prophetic. The only other photo I took was of some wild equation someone displayed on a pitch slide illustrating online ad spending; it did not come out nearly as well as my badge selfie.
The keynote address pitching Google Assistant was the latest roadshow chapter in Google's plan to take over the world, one household at a time. Google Assistant integrates with Google Home and probably enables other parts of the IoT ecosystem, like Nest. Before you know it, your thermostat will be searching Google for neighborhood microclimate forecasts. I suppose Google's in-home devices and apps will interface with Google's APIs by passing basic data on identity, payments, and geolocations back and forth. Doing this with users' permission requires users to become a lot more cognizant of security. The UI is always the weakest point in security chains. Good luck, Google; you're better off pitching automated security and letting the smartest users post helpful bug fixes online. Actions on Google gives developers hints on how to build for Google Assistant.
The Bing people talked up their ad programs' quality score metrics. I prefer that they raise the quality of their search algorithm if they ever hope to have a shot at taking market share from Google Search. I did like their tip on landing page optimization, where the "root word" of a word with many synonyms avoids a search engine penalty for keyword stuffing.
One big benefit for yours truly was to hear SEO legend Bruce Clay speak at SMX West. The guy has been doing search marketing since the earliest days of the discipline. The FTC has plenty of guidelines impacting search marketing, and everyone advertising in the search sector must comply. I did a Google Search of some combos of "FTC PPC SEO" to see the latest developments. Mr. Clay mentioned WebPagetest as one way to identify fixes that will raise a page's search rank, in addition to Google's long-standing webmaster guidelines. I asked Mr. Clay about how emerging industry guidelines on making Web pages accessible to people with disabilities will affect SEO. He generously answered that ADA Rule 508 (supported by treaty in many countries) enables audible readers for alt-tags of images, and a company can incur huge fines if a US federal government employee uses a website that's not ADA compliant. Lawyers are lining up behind the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) to pursue liabilities for websites whose images do not have matching alt-tags. The FCC is tracking CVAA regulation updates. Thanks again for the heads-up, Mr. Clay, because Web entrepreneurs like me need to stay out of trouble. Mr. Clay's tips were endless, telling us to mitigate referer spam and UTM injection, and cautioning against malware installation into plug-ins that cause negative SEO results.
The Google free talks were the day after the Bing talks. I scored multiple handfuls of free snacks from both sponsors, in addition to some cool marketing insights. There's tons of online commentary for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as an ad performance metric, including calculation methods. Marketers should use ROAS together with CVR, CPA, and CPC in a dashboard format, with conversions traced as "attributions" to each spending metric. I used to hear a lot about remarketing to prospects who fell out of a marketing funnel, and now it's accepted as a given with "dynamic remarketing" as a variant. The ultimate purpose of using data-driven ad buys is to raise CVR while lowering CPA, and the Google people made it clear that this is their ad platform's approach. I don't use Google Merchant Center, because I don't sell any products or run ads, but it's the future for online retailers of any size.
I picked up quite a few other specialized tips from the Expo that probably aren't applicable to my general readership, but they are definitely of interest to me. I have realized lately that sharing too much about my business strategy can be counterproductive. I took a bit longer writing this article about the Expo because I wanted to ensure I had time to update my own SEO techniques. SMX West 2017 was a winner for Alfidi Capital.
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| Alfidi Capital displays Expo badge at SMX West 2017. |
My free Expo badge got me into the main events from the major sponsors, plus all the free candy I could grab during booth pitches. The badge selfie notes the Landy Awards from Search Engine Land which I was not invited to attend. Someday, these folks will have me hosting their award ceremonies. Mark my words, because my badge selfies are prophetic. The only other photo I took was of some wild equation someone displayed on a pitch slide illustrating online ad spending; it did not come out nearly as well as my badge selfie.
The keynote address pitching Google Assistant was the latest roadshow chapter in Google's plan to take over the world, one household at a time. Google Assistant integrates with Google Home and probably enables other parts of the IoT ecosystem, like Nest. Before you know it, your thermostat will be searching Google for neighborhood microclimate forecasts. I suppose Google's in-home devices and apps will interface with Google's APIs by passing basic data on identity, payments, and geolocations back and forth. Doing this with users' permission requires users to become a lot more cognizant of security. The UI is always the weakest point in security chains. Good luck, Google; you're better off pitching automated security and letting the smartest users post helpful bug fixes online. Actions on Google gives developers hints on how to build for Google Assistant.
The Bing people talked up their ad programs' quality score metrics. I prefer that they raise the quality of their search algorithm if they ever hope to have a shot at taking market share from Google Search. I did like their tip on landing page optimization, where the "root word" of a word with many synonyms avoids a search engine penalty for keyword stuffing.
One big benefit for yours truly was to hear SEO legend Bruce Clay speak at SMX West. The guy has been doing search marketing since the earliest days of the discipline. The FTC has plenty of guidelines impacting search marketing, and everyone advertising in the search sector must comply. I did a Google Search of some combos of "FTC PPC SEO" to see the latest developments. Mr. Clay mentioned WebPagetest as one way to identify fixes that will raise a page's search rank, in addition to Google's long-standing webmaster guidelines. I asked Mr. Clay about how emerging industry guidelines on making Web pages accessible to people with disabilities will affect SEO. He generously answered that ADA Rule 508 (supported by treaty in many countries) enables audible readers for alt-tags of images, and a company can incur huge fines if a US federal government employee uses a website that's not ADA compliant. Lawyers are lining up behind the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) to pursue liabilities for websites whose images do not have matching alt-tags. The FCC is tracking CVAA regulation updates. Thanks again for the heads-up, Mr. Clay, because Web entrepreneurs like me need to stay out of trouble. Mr. Clay's tips were endless, telling us to mitigate referer spam and UTM injection, and cautioning against malware installation into plug-ins that cause negative SEO results.
The Google free talks were the day after the Bing talks. I scored multiple handfuls of free snacks from both sponsors, in addition to some cool marketing insights. There's tons of online commentary for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as an ad performance metric, including calculation methods. Marketers should use ROAS together with CVR, CPA, and CPC in a dashboard format, with conversions traced as "attributions" to each spending metric. I used to hear a lot about remarketing to prospects who fell out of a marketing funnel, and now it's accepted as a given with "dynamic remarketing" as a variant. The ultimate purpose of using data-driven ad buys is to raise CVR while lowering CPA, and the Google people made it clear that this is their ad platform's approach. I don't use Google Merchant Center, because I don't sell any products or run ads, but it's the future for online retailers of any size.
I picked up quite a few other specialized tips from the Expo that probably aren't applicable to my general readership, but they are definitely of interest to me. I have realized lately that sharing too much about my business strategy can be counterproductive. I took a bit longer writing this article about the Expo because I wanted to ensure I had time to update my own SEO techniques. SMX West 2017 was a winner for Alfidi Capital.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 02/20/16
It's always a great day at Alfidi Capital. It's even greater when I'm throwing sarcasm at the financial world.
China replaced its stock market regulator with a bank economist. Trading one type of loser for another will not repair foreign investors' lost confidence. The symbolism of a former central bank official watching stock movements is that capital markets must do the state's bidding. They could try putting a panda bear in charge. It would be more fun to watch than a human regulator and just as effective given the system's pervasive corruption.
US law enforcement and Apple are testing each other's legal patience. It looks like so much theater to me. Apple has cooperated with data subpoenas before. It's fairly easy to unlock iPhone data anyway. It's so easy, a caveman could do it. The latest case should not be such a big deal but Apple has to at least go through a few hysterical motions to please Silicon Valley's hard-core libertarians and data geeks. The data privacy crowd simply does not grok the "layer cake" messaging methods that federal regulators often employ with the finance sector, and now with the tech sector. I do not expect the data crowd of Star Wars fans and Bitcoin nut jobs to uncover such subtle public performances.
The heart of Yahoo's operation is going to the highest bidder. The board should fire the CEO for dragging this decision out so long. I would have kept the core business and sold off everything else, but the Yahoo board never asked me to become CEO. It's their loss. I will LOL if Microsoft emerges as the ultimate buyer, getting a bargain for what they should have acquired in 2008. Silicon Valley's smartest people sometimes do some really dumb things. It took a series of geniuses over a decade to destroy Yahoo when it could have been saved under Microsoft.
I still use Yahoo Finance because I like the details. It enhances my net worth. Dumb people in the Valley continue to dump capital into doomed tech startups. Laughing at them all will enhance my well-being.
China replaced its stock market regulator with a bank economist. Trading one type of loser for another will not repair foreign investors' lost confidence. The symbolism of a former central bank official watching stock movements is that capital markets must do the state's bidding. They could try putting a panda bear in charge. It would be more fun to watch than a human regulator and just as effective given the system's pervasive corruption.
US law enforcement and Apple are testing each other's legal patience. It looks like so much theater to me. Apple has cooperated with data subpoenas before. It's fairly easy to unlock iPhone data anyway. It's so easy, a caveman could do it. The latest case should not be such a big deal but Apple has to at least go through a few hysterical motions to please Silicon Valley's hard-core libertarians and data geeks. The data privacy crowd simply does not grok the "layer cake" messaging methods that federal regulators often employ with the finance sector, and now with the tech sector. I do not expect the data crowd of Star Wars fans and Bitcoin nut jobs to uncover such subtle public performances.
The heart of Yahoo's operation is going to the highest bidder. The board should fire the CEO for dragging this decision out so long. I would have kept the core business and sold off everything else, but the Yahoo board never asked me to become CEO. It's their loss. I will LOL if Microsoft emerges as the ultimate buyer, getting a bargain for what they should have acquired in 2008. Silicon Valley's smartest people sometimes do some really dumb things. It took a series of geniuses over a decade to destroy Yahoo when it could have been saved under Microsoft.
I still use Yahoo Finance because I like the details. It enhances my net worth. Dumb people in the Valley continue to dump capital into doomed tech startups. Laughing at them all will enhance my well-being.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
The Limerick of Finance for 12/13/15
Yahoo may have problems with its sale
Tax penalties turn buyers pale
Spinning off the wrong part
Forcing proxy fight start
Core Web assets are all that can scale
Tax penalties turn buyers pale
Spinning off the wrong part
Forcing proxy fight start
Core Web assets are all that can scale
Thursday, December 03, 2015
Modest Proposal To Save Yahoo
Memorandum To: Yahoo's Board of Directors
From: Anthony Alfidi, CEO of Alfidi Capital
Subject: Modest Proposal To Save Yahoo
Hello there, board people. I noticed some recent news articles about how your board is considering some serious pruning at Yahoo. I'll offer a brief outline of what I think you should do before shopping around to some private equity firms. I am available to discuss this plan over lunch at a fine Palo Alto restaurant provided I don't have to pay the bill.
First, sell Yahoo's Alibaba stake to the first taker. No one outside of China's ruling elite knows how to fairly value Alibaba. China's securities rules and Alibaba's own corporate structure are so opaque to Western observers that any continued involvement risks a very bad surprise. I strongly suspect a lot of Chinese-domiciled companies whose shares trade in US markets are not doing nearly as well as they or their Wall Street enablers claim.
Next, spin off every property not directly touching Yahoo's longtime core functions of search and email. Google did something similar recently when it split off its more experimental projects into Alphabet. The Yahoo spinoff will thus be a collection of multimedia projects that probably don't work well with search and email anyway. The spinoff would be an attractive acquisition target for a large media company that wants to leverage its legacy cable broadcasting infrastructure into new digital things.
Finally, offer the remaining rump of Yahoo, based on search and email, to Microsoft as an acquisition. The offer should recapture the intent of Microsoft's 2008 attempted acquisition that would have added Yahoo's search capability and email user base to Microsoft's more successful product lines. Microsoft is already the cloud provider that Yahoo will never become. Unwinding the unneeded parts of Yahoo is best done before integrating with Microsoft, as it reduces inevitable cultural friction.
Please thank Ms. Mayer and her Yahoo team once all three deals are complete. They have tried their best but they are not helping Yahoo remain an independent company. I do not foresee a role for any of them at Microsoft or a media company after they are done with Yahoo. They have not proven their ability to integrate media projects with search or anything else. Maybe they could land at startups after their golden parachutes deploy. They can learn to be hungry and push for growth all over again.
The Alibaba sale and media property spinoffs should add enough cash to Yahoo's treasury to make the rump company palatable for Microsoft to safely digest. I'm not going to run the numbers on this scenario because that's not my job. I'm the "idea guy" here. My big idea restores Yahoo to its best value proposition and ends its odd status as the only 1990s-style Web portal business model still standing in the cloud age. Its legacy projects will survive in other companies whose business models are more coherent. Saving Yahoo means ending its independence. Let's close the books on this original dot-com era story.
Full disclosure: No position in Yahoo, Microsoft, or any media company at this time.
From: Anthony Alfidi, CEO of Alfidi Capital
Subject: Modest Proposal To Save Yahoo
Hello there, board people. I noticed some recent news articles about how your board is considering some serious pruning at Yahoo. I'll offer a brief outline of what I think you should do before shopping around to some private equity firms. I am available to discuss this plan over lunch at a fine Palo Alto restaurant provided I don't have to pay the bill.
First, sell Yahoo's Alibaba stake to the first taker. No one outside of China's ruling elite knows how to fairly value Alibaba. China's securities rules and Alibaba's own corporate structure are so opaque to Western observers that any continued involvement risks a very bad surprise. I strongly suspect a lot of Chinese-domiciled companies whose shares trade in US markets are not doing nearly as well as they or their Wall Street enablers claim.
Next, spin off every property not directly touching Yahoo's longtime core functions of search and email. Google did something similar recently when it split off its more experimental projects into Alphabet. The Yahoo spinoff will thus be a collection of multimedia projects that probably don't work well with search and email anyway. The spinoff would be an attractive acquisition target for a large media company that wants to leverage its legacy cable broadcasting infrastructure into new digital things.
Finally, offer the remaining rump of Yahoo, based on search and email, to Microsoft as an acquisition. The offer should recapture the intent of Microsoft's 2008 attempted acquisition that would have added Yahoo's search capability and email user base to Microsoft's more successful product lines. Microsoft is already the cloud provider that Yahoo will never become. Unwinding the unneeded parts of Yahoo is best done before integrating with Microsoft, as it reduces inevitable cultural friction.
Please thank Ms. Mayer and her Yahoo team once all three deals are complete. They have tried their best but they are not helping Yahoo remain an independent company. I do not foresee a role for any of them at Microsoft or a media company after they are done with Yahoo. They have not proven their ability to integrate media projects with search or anything else. Maybe they could land at startups after their golden parachutes deploy. They can learn to be hungry and push for growth all over again.
The Alibaba sale and media property spinoffs should add enough cash to Yahoo's treasury to make the rump company palatable for Microsoft to safely digest. I'm not going to run the numbers on this scenario because that's not my job. I'm the "idea guy" here. My big idea restores Yahoo to its best value proposition and ends its odd status as the only 1990s-style Web portal business model still standing in the cloud age. Its legacy projects will survive in other companies whose business models are more coherent. Saving Yahoo means ending its independence. Let's close the books on this original dot-com era story.
Full disclosure: No position in Yahoo, Microsoft, or any media company at this time.
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
The Limerick of Finance for 11/29/15
Cyber Monday is looking so good
Shoppers prefer online neighborhood
Retail sales pitches shift
Discount changes are swift
Stores would all sell online if they could
Shoppers prefer online neighborhood
Retail sales pitches shift
Discount changes are swift
Stores would all sell online if they could
Thursday, October 22, 2015
One Pathological Email Spammer
One particular email spammer keeps popping up in my inbox every couple of months. Asking this entity to remove me from their contact database was a waste, even though they promised to do so. Sending a very strongly worded response the next time they spammed me also obviously has not worked. Marking their endless pitches as junk email had better work, or else I need better email filters. Tech isn't the problem here. Human pathology finds end runs around tech barriers.
I have to wonder about the mental stability of spammy marketers. I grok the entrepreneur's desire to strain the limits of social tolerance in getting a message out. I have pushed my own luck with blog comments, link building requests, and social media blasts. The small number of times that my marketing got me banned from a media outlet were instructive. I pulled back where appropriate and changed my approach to channels that remain perpetually open. I am different from pathological spammers because I quickly learn when some channels are closed.
Enough is enough. If shunning, yelling, and banning don't work on this particular spammer then it's time for a complaint to some regulatory body. Maybe the FTC or FCC will care about a greedy, unscrupulous San Francisco area spammer who just won't leave me alone. Hearing this entity's titular head speak in public was bad enough when the misrepresentations just flowed from his mouth like a raging torrent. I need appropriate and effective means to turn that torrent off. The FTC Complaint Assistant is my starting point for fighting the good fight. Yeah, mister non-funder of people's nonsensical dream projects, I'm talking about you. Here comes the wrath of Alfidi Capital.
I have to wonder about the mental stability of spammy marketers. I grok the entrepreneur's desire to strain the limits of social tolerance in getting a message out. I have pushed my own luck with blog comments, link building requests, and social media blasts. The small number of times that my marketing got me banned from a media outlet were instructive. I pulled back where appropriate and changed my approach to channels that remain perpetually open. I am different from pathological spammers because I quickly learn when some channels are closed.
Enough is enough. If shunning, yelling, and banning don't work on this particular spammer then it's time for a complaint to some regulatory body. Maybe the FTC or FCC will care about a greedy, unscrupulous San Francisco area spammer who just won't leave me alone. Hearing this entity's titular head speak in public was bad enough when the misrepresentations just flowed from his mouth like a raging torrent. I need appropriate and effective means to turn that torrent off. The FTC Complaint Assistant is my starting point for fighting the good fight. Yeah, mister non-funder of people's nonsensical dream projects, I'm talking about you. Here comes the wrath of Alfidi Capital.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
The Haiku of Finance for 10/17/15
White paper blizzard
Competing for Web eyeballs
Content for download
Competing for Web eyeballs
Content for download
Interwebs White Paper Bombardment
The Internet's marketing gurus are on white paper production overdrive. I download a few guides every so often to stay current on how content marketers think. A few white papers aren't worth the digits it takes to publish them, but most are okay. The biggest unknown is estimating their shelf lives.
Internet marketing advances at light speed. Tactics that worked last year may be counterproductive today. A white paper describing old best practices may be a waste of time to execute now. Every marketer now rides the content marketing trend. Any think piece that doesn't address how content fills out every layer of the marketing funnel comes up short.
Marketing guidelines that depend too heavily on text are also suspect in an age when Pinterest and Instagram make images central to communication. White papers are fine for deep dives into topics that require step-by-step instructions. Marrying them to infographics that grab attention keeps them relevant.
I have plans for tons more white papers here at Alfidi Capital. The clean look of my main website's new design makes me want to put up a whole bunch more research publications. I challenge myself to write for an audience that I will never personally meet. White paper readers are global. They also exist in the far future. Whatever I write must translate into formats that someone has yet to invent. Publishing grants vicarious immortality.
Internet marketing advances at light speed. Tactics that worked last year may be counterproductive today. A white paper describing old best practices may be a waste of time to execute now. Every marketer now rides the content marketing trend. Any think piece that doesn't address how content fills out every layer of the marketing funnel comes up short.
Marketing guidelines that depend too heavily on text are also suspect in an age when Pinterest and Instagram make images central to communication. White papers are fine for deep dives into topics that require step-by-step instructions. Marrying them to infographics that grab attention keeps them relevant.
I have plans for tons more white papers here at Alfidi Capital. The clean look of my main website's new design makes me want to put up a whole bunch more research publications. I challenge myself to write for an audience that I will never personally meet. White paper readers are global. They also exist in the far future. Whatever I write must translate into formats that someone has yet to invent. Publishing grants vicarious immortality.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
The Limerick of Finance for 08/16/15
Yahoo Finance has tools traders use
Fun to watch headlines breaking the news
Basic stats will suffice
Better than rolling dice
Entertainment with analyst views
Fun to watch headlines breaking the news
Basic stats will suffice
Better than rolling dice
Entertainment with analyst views
Friday, July 24, 2015
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
The Haiku of Finance for 06/02/15
Internet trend lines
Drones and wearables should count
Future data growth
Drones and wearables should count
Future data growth
Checking Out KPCB Internet Trends 2015
I spent some time poring over Mary Meeker's recently released KPCB Internet Trends 2015 report. The data reveals surprising growth potential in countries with low per capita GDP but strong smartphone penetration. Smartphones are not yet a mature, low growth market like desktops but that threshold draws closer by the day. Telecom and computer companies are thus wise to pursue the next big things in smartwatches and IoT. There may be other big surprises ahead. Here come my own guesses.
Drones probably belong in the IoT category. Their affordability and loiter persistence enable operators to maintain daily coverage of some area with a very small fleet. Farmers and miners may need no more than one drone for regular aerial surveys. Anyone with persistent security needs for high-value properties will need no more than two or three for 24/7 coverage. The strongest profits for drones won't be in manufacturing, because a drone's per-unit cost will drop rapidly with adoption just as the cost of PCs dropped in the 1980s. The big bucks will be in cloud storage and data analytics for the millions of hours of video with embedded data that drones will generate.
The KPCB report is largely silent on wearables, another emerging IoT category that many people pretend to understand. Measuring smartwatch usages in instances is only one way to capture their value. Users will ultimately expect their smartwatches to do things their smartphone cannot do on its own. A watch face's form factor limits its display capability to no more than six items: a main icon (i.e., the equivalent of the time function), four very small icons (calendar date, etc.), and the background color representing something else. I remain convinced that successful smartwatch apps will have little to do with games, email, messages, or notifications. The winners will have a lot to do with biofeedback because the smartwatch, unlike the smartphone, is worn touching human skin all day. Real-time health data is an untapped market.
Every analyst chasing perpetual growth from in-app shopping and advertising always forgets the economic cycle. Even the most publicized analysts have trouble learning from experience. Advertising is the first expense businesses typically cut in a recession because it loses its power to drive sales. Campaigns pushing inventory clearances and discounts will continue to work well for high-margin businesses but will only compound the problems for low-margin businesses. The good news for the ad sector is that the less effective channels like desktop ads will see cuts first. If mobile ads are truly more effective at driving frictionless conversions, they will be cut last. I am not aware of any ad channel that escapes cuts completely in a recession.
I will never forget the bullish talk that preceded the first dot-com bust in 2000. Forrester Research led the lemming parade, investment bank equity analysts followed, and retail brokerages brought up the rear as they swept their sucker clients into Internet-themed mutual funds. The impending bust in Web 2.0 companies will be just as much fun to watch from the sidelines. Clearing out the debris will leave capacity for the next round of IoT plays to run.
Drones probably belong in the IoT category. Their affordability and loiter persistence enable operators to maintain daily coverage of some area with a very small fleet. Farmers and miners may need no more than one drone for regular aerial surveys. Anyone with persistent security needs for high-value properties will need no more than two or three for 24/7 coverage. The strongest profits for drones won't be in manufacturing, because a drone's per-unit cost will drop rapidly with adoption just as the cost of PCs dropped in the 1980s. The big bucks will be in cloud storage and data analytics for the millions of hours of video with embedded data that drones will generate.
The KPCB report is largely silent on wearables, another emerging IoT category that many people pretend to understand. Measuring smartwatch usages in instances is only one way to capture their value. Users will ultimately expect their smartwatches to do things their smartphone cannot do on its own. A watch face's form factor limits its display capability to no more than six items: a main icon (i.e., the equivalent of the time function), four very small icons (calendar date, etc.), and the background color representing something else. I remain convinced that successful smartwatch apps will have little to do with games, email, messages, or notifications. The winners will have a lot to do with biofeedback because the smartwatch, unlike the smartphone, is worn touching human skin all day. Real-time health data is an untapped market.
Every analyst chasing perpetual growth from in-app shopping and advertising always forgets the economic cycle. Even the most publicized analysts have trouble learning from experience. Advertising is the first expense businesses typically cut in a recession because it loses its power to drive sales. Campaigns pushing inventory clearances and discounts will continue to work well for high-margin businesses but will only compound the problems for low-margin businesses. The good news for the ad sector is that the less effective channels like desktop ads will see cuts first. If mobile ads are truly more effective at driving frictionless conversions, they will be cut last. I am not aware of any ad channel that escapes cuts completely in a recession.
I will never forget the bullish talk that preceded the first dot-com bust in 2000. Forrester Research led the lemming parade, investment bank equity analysts followed, and retail brokerages brought up the rear as they swept their sucker clients into Internet-themed mutual funds. The impending bust in Web 2.0 companies will be just as much fun to watch from the sidelines. Clearing out the debris will leave capacity for the next round of IoT plays to run.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
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