This morning we were kicking around Superbowl TV advertising and I raised the question: have you ever bought anything based upon a Superbowl ad? I haven’t. I’ve never gotten up from my chair and said: “That’s it, I’m done drinking this brand of beer, it’s time to switch to that brand because of that commercial.” Sure, I enjoy the tradition which has become the Superbowl commercials, but has this tradition, at least in my own case, resulted in any change in buying activity, whatsoever?

Nope.

For advertisers and their agencies, the Super Bowl is the biggest stage, where they vie for the title of most memorable or entertaining commercial. This year, TV network Fox sold 30-second spots for up to $2.4 million each.

2.4 million … that’s a lot of sales needed to recoup the expense. Our own minimum ROI for advertising is 5:1. So that means by spending two million we’d need to generate 10 million in business to be satisfied with the ad. I have to question whether most of (maybe any of these) advertisers are generating 5:1 ROI.

So, the next thing is the ultimate advertiser buzzword: “branding” — does Budweiser really need branding? I don’t think so. If people are already drinking Budweiser, then seeing them on the Superbowl or not, isn’t going to reinforce their confidence in the brand. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one, but I don’t see the value in most TV advertising at this pricing model. Now the ballgame will totally change when TV becomes more interactive. Various attempts have been made – and continue to be made – to better integrate TV with the internet or some other type of — buy it now — option. When that technology comes to fruition and grabs sufficient traction than TV advertising on the scale of the Superbowl will begin to make good business sense again. But until that time, it will continue to be what the game is on the field: the biggest of the biggest penis contests.

Just received an email from Matt Cutts from Google in response to my email and blog posts No Google juice for nofollow… and Treating all commenters like spammers is a slippery slope regarding the rel=”nofollow” inside A HREF tag. With his permission I’m reprinting his response verbatim below:

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying; I wanted to write back myself, and it’s taking me a little while to dig out from the emails we got. I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve been asking folks to move in that direction (untrusted people get nofollow, but anyone who is trusted or authenticated via something like a captcha gets full credit for their links). I think LiveJournal has already implemented this philosophy, and I’d expect many other software makers to do something like this.

Nofollow needs to be on by default for the lazy folks, but there also needs to be as many ways as possible for trusted users to get full credit for links (whitelists, registered users, authentication, etc.).

Best wishes!

Matt Cutts

Perhaps Scoble can get with Mike Torres at MSN Spaces and pass this info along. After Mike thanked me for my comments he never really provided any answer as to whether or not MSN Spaces would make nofollow an option. I’m far and away not the only blog owner with this concern. Oh, and Matt had a nice P.S too:

P.S. I really enjoyed your blog posts. We’re definitely not claiming that this will solve comment spam completely. I do think that this is a good step though, and will eventually give site owners a lot more flexibility when they want to link to a site but abstain from voting for it.

I continue to feel that making this an option in the blog hosted and blog software arena (wake up Typepad, MSN Spaces) is an important move. Down with the bad guys, yes, but let’s be sure not to punish the good guys in the process. It is nice to know that Googles feels the same way.

The more I think about the enforced imposed action by MSN Spaces against the 1.5 million blogs they have the more disappointed I become. I realize they did this to fight the comment spam which all bloggers who have been affected by this are grateful for but at the same time, not giving each individual content provider (blogger) a choice to enforce this at his/her blog IMO is a mistake. A big mistake.

So, I decided to do a little more poking around on this. Let’s take the list of bloggers listed as contact people by the Googleblog. I wonder how these same folks would feel about putting this decision — whether to block the SE juice by commenters – in the hands of the people who produce the blog content: the blog authors.

Has Dave Winer ever allowed comments at scripting.com? I don’t see where he’s been impacted by comment spam one way or the other on his principle blog. Dave is pretty pro-user, so I’d be a bit surprised if he felt that this move should be rammed down all blog author’s throats without any sort of option. I’m sure he’s in favor of software developers and blog hosting sites making this a default option (as I would be too) but not giving the blog authors a way to turn this off seems misguided.

Matt Mullenweg who created Wordpress strikes me as being very pro blog author as well. I can’t see him saying: “let’s make this a built-in feature and force the authors to hack the script to deal with this.” I see someone creating a karma hack that will allow each blog admin in WP to be able to select which users get the SE juice and which do not (by the inclusion or exclusion of the “nofollow” tag).

Six Apart has been a comment spam haven for far too long, so they are probably most likely to do something about this. In their case swiftly implementing this solution as the default in the next version — or an immediate patch version — would be a good idea. Again, however, they should make it an option so that the blog author can easily disable this in the config section and if they can go the extra mile and offer a karma system so that each blog author can choose who they want to exclude the “nofollow” tag, even better for their customers.

If Blogger does what MSN Spaces did, I think that would be a mistake. This needs to be an option. But then again, Blogger embraced Atom as its preferred RSS format which wasn’t the standard really, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they too implemented a change that impacted all the blog authors on their system.

I don’t read or comment on many LiveJournal blogs (not a big fan of the format of them and they seem to host mostly younger people). Still, even younger people should have the right to choose which commenters get SE juice, not LiveJournal.

FlickR is a great picture service, but I don’t look to them for providing this type of “protection” for me either. If they enable this as a default option, then please make it an option for each photo contributor to choose. Again, karma system would be best so each individual blog owner can choose whether and who (a new grouping function) to allow comments that have SE juice.

I really think it’s a slippery slope to force methods of reducing comment spam — without giving the content provider (which is the blog author in this case) — the ability to choose who they want to give the SE juice to. You can tell Google about this by writing commentspam at google.com. I have. I don’t like it when program owners make decisions for me that I cannot change that impact the readers at a site I provide content to. Give us the OPTION or risk losing the content. Here is the content of the email I sent Google:

Hello there,

Reading the Googleblog, I’m inspired by the new “nofollow” tag but I do not like that places like MSN Spaces TypePad made this change without giving any of their 1.5 million blog owners a chance to turn this off. What if we, as blog owners, want to allow legitimate commenters to get SE juice? It seems like those who use blog hosting will have this rammed down their throat unless it’s made an option.

By Google suggesting to go directly to the blog software and blog hosting places, they could be taking away the decision from the blog owner. This is a slippery slope that catches legitimate commenters in the combines of the comment spammers. We own and operate multiple dedicated servers and can modify any blog script running on our servers not to include the link so it’s a non-issue really for us except in the cases of where we have blogs hosted by places like MSN Spaces.We have no control over what options are placed — or are not — placed at our disposal.

I hope that as you are doing in promoting to blog software developers and blog hosting companies that you also try to encourage them to make this an OPTION that each individual blog author can enable or disable. I think making this option a DEFAULT behavior is a good thing, so long as there is an option for the content provider (the blog author) to be able to disable this setting.

Sincerely,

TDavid

UPDATE - others who wonder about the true usefulness of this move (I’ll add more as I come across them):

Restless mind:

This is going to hurt small bloggers, for sure. You do quite a bit of posting and linking legitimately to build your PageRank and build your membership. This is going to whisk a lot of that away.

Clete Blackwell via The Linux Blog:

Really, I don’t think anyone will use it. Good idea, however, and easy to tack on rel=”nofollow” to all blog comments. It also probably will not cut down on spam at all, as other engines still follow the links and if one person clicks the link, it’s worth it to them to keep their bots spamming.

Cigarettes and Beer:

The only thing I’m worried about is legitimate posted links. I certainly don’t feel like having to sift through every comment and remove the “nofollow” attribute from the links that are good.

The Register: “No-Google tab blesses the Balkanized web“
Slowplay:

The intended benefit is to stop comment spam from being as effective at getting PageRank through links in comment sections. The real benefit (consequence?) will be a slick way for webmasters to abuse the tag and control the PageRank of their pages. We really need one more thing directed at PageRank and not page content.

Anne Vankesteren:

Personally I am more in the opinion that spam should not appear on weblogs at all and should be prevented in one way or another. I have seen various proposals that could make a chance in stopping spam. That does not mean that I am against the new value, by the way. It is useful, but I doubt if it will stop spam. Furthermore, the way it is currently implemented in some weblog systems, it harms useful comments.

Chuqui:

I don’t wish to be overly negative about things, but I just can’t convince myself that this is really going to solve the problem. (I will happily settle for ‘make it better’, though)

Adam Lasnik (Bladam):

But that’s not the only reason why I’m not very fond of this no-follow thing. From a selfish perspective, I believe that I’ve contributed quite a few thoughtful comments to many blogs, and frankly, I welcome and appreciate the Google whuffie that I earn for my blog. Forgive my sense of entitlement here, but when I’m contributing to the content of the Web, why shouldn’t my own little corner of the Web gain a bit from my efforts?

Wolf-howl:

So if all of you bloggers out there, still want to celebrate, find some other ostriches and bury your heads in the sand, This is nothing more than a cheesy publicity stunt, and will actually make things much worse. In 6 months linking structures will be so artificallily manipuated and unnatural, it will grow more and more useless by the day.

Update 1/24/2005: Mike Torres from MSN Spaces has rightly pointed out to me that MSN Spaces has not in fact implemented the nofollow tag yet, only that they support its use. I’ve since published a retraction of my comments about them (too numerous here to completely strike out). You can pretty much substitute TypePad for MSN Spaces with most of my comments in this entry (I’ve tried to add that where relative).

Listening to the debut Chris Pirillio show and I agree with Chris: Microsoft bought into one of the best looking, smoothest UI for an anti-spyware app with the recent GIANT acquisition. And starting the day out looking at a clean report like what’s showing in the screencap above almost always brings a smile to my face. Like it!

AOL is planning on facing off against other free email services: Gmail (Google), Yahoo Mail and Hotmail (Microsoft).

Right now, the beta service is available to AOL subscribers only, but it will eventually be offered for free to the public, the company said on Wednesday. The service, dubbed “AOL Mail on the Web,” is expected to officially debut early next year for members, and later in the year for the public.

I don’t have an AOL account at the moment, but I am curious what they are doing with this. Any makeyougohmm readers with AOL checked this out yet? Comments? Trackbacks?

I thought Scoble was already using full text of posts in his link blog (I’ve seen at least some full text of a few of our posts anyway), but it seems that may not be the case from reading his recent entry:

My link blog is back up, but we’re having some troubles with the algorithm that chooses the portion of the post to include there. Kunal’s working on it. It might be a good time to go to full-text. Kunal, on the other hand, wants to go to titles only. Uses a lot less bandwidth.

The issue of whether to use somebody else’s full text is a thorny one legally, which someone already raised in the comments area. I do remember him having a similar conversation before and he said that (paraphrasing) if he couldn’t use the full text then he wouldn’t link up the blog at all. This shut up several of the people who were complaining if my memory serves. Tit for tat.

Since I know he reads this blog: thank you for the linkup yesterday, Scoble and your continued linkups on your link blog! Yesterday, between your links as well as TabletPCBuzz also giving this blog a prime spot, it was a record traffic day here where we picked up a couple new subscribers (bloglines and bloglet [email]) as well as a couple sponsor sales as well. I like it!



So with this in mind do I care in any shape or form if Scoble uses full text posts from this blog? No way! I added Kunal (his link blog) to my hotlink-ok list awhile back when I noticed that the images from here were being blocked (All unauthorized domains are blocked from hotlinking images by default, but we will remove for RSS aggregators or special circumstances, just contact us for details if you’re seeing broken images). Clearly, folks are clicking over even when the full text contents are there and as long as things work that way and there is clear attribution, then Scoble won’t hear any complaints from me.

I do have one complaint, Scoble and it is for your Typepad powered Red Couch blog (also this happens at Shel’s It Seems To Me blog too), it would sure be nice if when I left a comment there it didn’t constantly tell me my entry looks like spam (I can’t leave this blog URL, so it must be tied to the domain).



I have never spammed Shel or Scoble’s blogs so it seems like either somebody threw a switch (accidentally?) with my IP and/or their Typepad comment spam filter is set to be wayyyy too anal. Heck, they just linked to me from the blog itself (well, Robert, not Shel) so I don’t know why they’d block this very same URL from showing up in their comments?

Anyway, I’m thinking it is not a diss (is it?) and just another 6A problem, so maybe one of them could kindly look this over when they get a second? BTW, I can leave comments at other Typepad and MT blogs with no problem. Thank you!

Had to do some Googling to figure out what products GIANT were behind. Answer: Spam Inspector, Giant AntiSpyware products and Popup Inspector. This isn’t condemnation of any kind (because there’s lots and lots of good products/services out there that I haven’t heard of) but I’ve never heard of or know anybody that has used any of these products, anybody else?

REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 16, 2004 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has acquired GIANT Company Software Inc., a provider of top-rated anti-spyware and Internet security products. Microsoft will use intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide Microsoft® Windows® customers with new tools to help protect them from the threat of spyware and other deceptive software. In addition, key personnel from GIANT Company will be joining Microsoft’s security efforts.

Obviously Microsoft saw something giant in value here. Meanwhile, just look at all the Microsoft activity in 2004! It’s been a busy year for the big M, points out Jay Fluegel, Lead PM MSN Spaces:

Music - launch of the download service, a version for Media Center PC, seamless integration with Windows Media Player 10, the PlaysForSure logo program…
Spaces – MSN’s v1 blogging & digital scrapbook offering with a great end-to-end experience with Messenger, Hotmail, Web Messenger, and the Toolbar
Messenger – 2 new versions (6.2 and the recent 7.0 beta), continued to give users fun tools for keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers, and expressing themselves online in interesting ways
Hotmail – free 250 MB inboxes and up to 2 GB, major advancements in spam filtering technology, richer photo attachment experience…
Search beta — our home-grown effort to dramatically improve the relevance of our search results and the overall user experience for finding answers
Toolbar Suite — enough said above

Here’s my quick rundown on these products/changes: Hotmail: last time I looked (and admittedly it’s been a little while) there was wayyyy too much advertising (tone it down, please if you haven’t already done so – less would be more effective). Music: good to see them enter the space and love the exclusive deal with AC DC! Messenger: haven’t worked with this enough yet. Search beta: I’ve give feedback on some of our sites and have been happy to see positive changes; that’s exciting! I spoke to the guy who is fielding questions from MSN search beta last night at the Seattle blogger meetup; it’s really cool to see the accessibility of these folks! Toolbar Suite: jury still out on this one, though I really like the keyword numbering function. Spaces: More customization options needed for more power bloggers and some irritating issues with login/logout but I’m liking what I’m seeing as a beta here.

Bill Gates receiving 4 million spams a day instead of per year sounded better. Thanks to Mike at Techdirt for pointing to Mike Wendland’s article on Steve Balmer and the correction on the Gates spam volume situation via freep.com:

At the top is everyone’s list is spam. That’s true even for Gates, who Ballmer says gets about 4 million pieces of e-mail — most of it junk — every year. (Ballmer said he misspoke a few days back when he was quoted as saying Gates gets 4 million e-mails a day.) Ballmer says only about 10 junk e-mails make it into his e-mail inbox each day because of anti-spam technology the company has developed.

Yup, being off by only, what, 1.4 billion spams is just a minor miscalculation.

In Italy, it can cost you $391 for doing any unwanted SMS text message flirting. :

Italians love their mobile phones and often carry out love affairs over them — but they must beware, flirting with text messages can carry a fine.

Somebody better send this lovestruck man to a chatroom or online dating service.

4 million emails for Bill Gates, that’s what Steve Balmer said Gates receives and most of which, of course are spam. It’s no wonder he’s on a crusade to rid the web of it.

But unlike ordinary users, the software mogul has an entire department to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually get through to his inbox, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said here Thursday.

Wonder what kind of people work in the Bill Gates email department? They must really grow tired of reading spam … talk about going virtually postal. I bet these people don’t even have email addresses themselves! Who would want to look at their own spam after spending all day looking at Gates spam?

As of this writing there’s 440 days left, Mr. Gates, to figure out what to do with this whole spam mess. The countdown is on the leftside of this blog at the very bottom in the Hmm stats section. I remain pessimistically optimistic.