Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 367

The Ugly Truth About Business Models And The Advertising Scapegoat

Here's a thought: when you're developing your business, think about the revenue model as you're developing your product or service.

It's one of the more fascinating phenomena of the new media world: we have these runaway successes with people clamoring to join/use them, but there is no substantial revenue model in sight. You can cry that Search Engine Marketing is loosing its efficacy (I'd still argue that point), but you have to be able to respect what Google did. It took them years of working and nurturing the pay-per-click advertising model to get it to the point where it's at. It wasn't obvious at the beginning, but they kept at it and - regardless of how you feel about it - you have to respect this new form of advertising and their ability to create such a unique revenue model.

New business models are hard... very hard.

It's something that everyone from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Quora and Foursquare continue to grapple with. The business model is not clear. The revenue model is not clear. They're struggling with validation of their valuations and they're struggling with delivering significant revenues against hype and audience size. It's a huge issue when you have millions and millions of people coming through your doors, but you can't seem to figure out where the money is going to come from. When people ask me how companies (like the ones listed above) are going to make money, I half-jokingly reply that they may never look to their users to monetize. In fact, the only way that they will make money is when they are sold to Google.

Looking for more proof?

Today on MoBlog (via MediaPost), there was a Blog post titled, Can Foursquare Find A Business Model?, that looked at the recently upgraded Foursquare platform: "The changes to its app suggest new or expanded avenues for businesses to drive traffic and build loyalty by partnering with Foursquare. But in his blog post, Crowley didn't really get into how the company is going to monetize usage by local businesses, brands or consumers. Perhaps some high-profile new promotions are on the way, or Foursquare plans to unveil a set of new ad options soon, as Twitter did last year after taking a few years to build up its user base. But given the fading allure of check-ins and the bevy of direct and indirect competitors Foursquare faces, this would be a good time for the company to spell out its business strategy more explicitly."

The advertising scapegoat.

There's nothing wrong with advertising (I love advertising), but using it as the revenue model when noting else comes to fruition is a dangerous and slippery slope. We tend to forget that advertising works in the mass media because it was an integral component of its creation. Having a runaway success and then pumping ads all around it (and within it) just because you haven't figured out a business model is a sure way to turn your users/customers/community members off. Advertising works and advertising is great when you have context, relevance and a willing audience. It falls apart when it's stuffed down our collective gullets because a business can't figure out any other way to make money. Advertising in those channels (at that point) also looses much of its context and relevance. In most instances, advertising may be best served as a supplement to the business' income and not the main line of business.

Advertising as a scapegoat business model lacks creativity and credibility. That's my side... what's yours?

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Making Sense Of The Mess

When are we going to learn that millions of followers does not always equal influence?

It's a mass media lie that was perpetuated by the original Marketing and Advertising executives as a way to strong-arm brands into coughing up their dollars to line the pockets of the advertisers and media companies. It's a game (err... business) that worked well until the proper analytics and platforms were put in place (thank you, technology... and yes, thank you, Social Media) for us to see - in living color - a semblance of a truth.

The truth is new. The truth will change.

Today, Mark W. Schaefer over on the Grow Blog has a post titled, On Twitter, No One Can Hear You Scream. Mark (who I frequently debate on the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast) believes that there is little influence happening on Twitter and that, "real influence is taking place in the smaller, stronger groups found in passionate blog communities." I don't disagree with his position, but I don't fully agree with it either (which I'm sure will put a smile on Mark's face as the next topic we can debate). Mark's right, smaller, stronger groups are where influence lies, but there is no correlation between that and a specific media channel.

Howard Stern vs. Charlie Sheen.

Howard Stern has millions of listeners daily to his satellite radio show (and I am one of them). Charlie Sheen has millions of followers on Twitter (and I am one of them). Howard Stern has tremendous influence over his audience. Charlie Sheen does not. Radio is not more influential than Twitter. It's all about the individual, their message and the ability to truly connect it with a caring audience. Nothing more. Nothing less. Howard Stern is not less influential than Charlie Sheen on Twitter just because he has fewer followers (Howard has over 400,000 followers compared to Sheen who has over 2.3 million followers). My guess is that if Stern asked his followers to do something, the conversion rate percentage would trump Sheen's request by a large multiple. Furthermore, someone with a semblance of a following who sends out a tweet with a call-to-action that doesn't convert should not imply that this individual has little influence. It simply means that this message didn't resonate with that audience at this particular moment in time. Remember, for every Egypt there are thousands of movements that never take hold or that fizzle out.

Why brands have trouble with influence.

The brands that are winning "true influence" (and I'm using quote marks here on purpose because there is no agreed upon definition for "true influence" - this is my own/personal interpretation) are winning (as opposed to #winning) because they have people who are having real interactions with other real human beings (and those interactions are truly meaningful). While there are a handful of brands that have influence over and above that (brands like Apple, Starbucks, etc...), it is much more practical/realistic for businesses to think about using these opportunities to connect and have a sincere engagement instead of trying to rack up their numbers.

"Who?" instead of "How Many?"

It's an argument I made in my book, Six Pixels of Separation, and it's an argument I made for years on this Blog prior to publishing the book last September. A brand's ability to have it's message put in front of millions of people begins and ends with that impression. No influence comes from it alone. We (as a public) seem to believe that the influence comes from the sheer volume of impressions and connections that we have in the marketplace (i.e. if we beat a message into people's heads through repetition, that is influence). It doesn't. True influence comes from connecting to the individuals, nurturing those relationships, adding real value to the other person's lives and doing anything and everything to serve them, so that when the time comes for you to make an ask, there is someone there to lend a hand. Worry less about how many people you are connected to and worry a whole lot more about who you are connected to, who they are and what you are doing to value and honor them. It would also serve us well to not confuse an ad campaign with a marketing strategy around building influence and engagement. They are not one and the same.

Perhaps we need to stop using traditional metrics based on the movement of masses and start looking at newer analytics models. Perhaps then we can more clearly define words like "influence" and "engagement." What do you think?

(between us, I'm a little depressed with the fact that I even mentioned Charlie Sheen).

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The Best Marketing Advice You Ever Received

What was the one piece of Marketing advice that you read, were told, heard or saw that has stuck with you?

If you're like me, you've probably been very lucky. Over the years, I've worked with some amazing people, read a ton of business books and - to this day - follow some of the most fascinating and smartest people online (Blogs, Podcasts, Twitter, etc...). With that, there is still one passage I read in the book, The Cluetrain Manifesto (written by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger), in 1999 that not only re-framed everything I thought I knew about Marketing and Business but - to this day - acts as a guiding light and one of the best pieces of Marketing advice I have ever received.

The best piece of Marketing advice I ever received...

"Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do. But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about 'listening to customers.' They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf. While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it."

How far we've come. How far we must go.

As fast as the world changes, not that much has changed. The Cluetrain Manifesto is twelve years old. The ideas are close to fourteen years old. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written long before platforms like Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and almost anything else we all use daily to make more real and human connections happen. The term "Social Media" didn't even exist back then. That gem of knowledge signified that change is here, and that people are smarter than we have, traditionally, given them credit for. Having connectivity makes us more informed and that is a very powerful thing. To this day, I can look back at some of the biggest (and worst) Marketing snafus and think to myself, "had the people who created this mess read that one paragraph from The Cluetrain Manifesto, things may have turned out differently." 

What's the best piece of Marketing advice you ever received?

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In Conversation With Seth Godin

Episode #243 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Seth Godin is a national treasure. He's more than a Marketer's Marketer, he is a business thought-leader and change agent. This past week marked a new chapter in Godin's dynamic career. Rather than take a handsome advance from a major book publisher, the best-selling business book author (each of his 13 published books have been best-sellers and collectively have been translated into more than 30 languages), published his latest effort, Poke The Box, on his own book publishing imprint, The Domino Project (powered by Amazon). Godin is also a professional speaker (he was named one of the top 21 speakers for the 21st century by Successful Meetings Magazine) and entrepreneur (Godin was the founder of interactive marketing company Yoyodyne, which Yahoo acquired in 1998). He currently runs Squidoo.com along with The Domino Project. BusinessWeek magazine called him, "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age," and if you have not read such books as Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, The Dip, Tribes and Linchpin, you are doing a disservice to your professional development and the evolution of your business. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #243.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #37

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

A Declaration of Cyber-War - Vanity Fair . "This long Vanity Fair piece reads like a Tom Clancy novel. It's the most accessible, complete narrative I've found on the Stuxnet virus, from its initial detection through to speculation on who wrote it and why it was discovered at all. Author, Michael Joseph Gross , calls Stuxnet the Hiroshima of digital warfare, and while it may all happen in the murky depths of cyber-space, the things these new weapons can attack -- power plants, currency systems, medical equipment -- may be all too real." (Alistair for Hugh).

These Are The Controversial Satellite Photos That Set Off Protests In Bahrain - Business Insider . "The democratization of information technology means that the average person has access to things undreamed of by the military a few decades ago. Case in point: satellite imagery. These two images from Google Maps showed Bahrain's ruling class living in opulent estates the size of entire slums, contributing to unrest and uprisings. It's not just Twitter and Facebook that makes nations stand up in protest -- it's the great (and uncomfortable) equality of ubiquitous computing." (Alistair for Mitch).

Dyatlov Pass incident - Wikipedia . "Nine mysterious deaths in 1959 of a group of university students on a mountain-climbing expedition in Russia's Ural Mountains. Creepy stuff! Written by masters of the horror genre - the many writers of Wikipedia ." (Hugh for Alistair).

The Apple strategy tax - ars technica . " Apple 's rise in the last decade has been astounding. They went from being an also-company that made artsy alternatives to Microsoft machines, to... well making great and increasingly popular computers, but also completely changing two totally different businesses: music distribution ( iTunes / iPod ) and mobile phones ( iPhone ). Next came the iPad , which for my money was radical in that it brought the innovation of the iPhone to a much less tech savvy crowd, and, I think, has altered our expectation of interaction with computing machines. Apple has done amazing things in the last decade, but they've shown what I think is the first sign of trouble ahead: their new(ish) requirement that all content transactions that happen* on an iPad or iPhone will be subject to a 30% fee. John Siracusa examines this move, and borrowing from Joel Spolsky , calls this move evidence of a 'strategy tax'... where internal competition within a company starts forcing decisions that are bad for long-term health; in effect, when the company starts putting itself before its customers. (*Previously developers could just send transactions through the browser to avoid the 30% fees for in-app purchases; now they must allow in-app purchases)." (Hugh for Mitch).

50 Years of Making Fuzz, the Sound That Defines Rock 'n' Roll - The Atlantic . "Sometimes, I just gotta rock. I know how much Alistair loves the quirkier sides of popular culture, well this may well take the cake (as the saying goes). There would be no history of rock n' roll music without an in-depth history of distortion. There has been a clear evolution of distortion and what that sound effect has done to make guys bang their heads and make woman weak in the knees (and vice-versa). You may be surprised to read how much the wailing distortion of a Jimi Hendrix riff reminds us of our humanity." (Mitch for Alistair).

Hey Jimmy Wales, What Do You Think of Content Farms? - Fast Company . "The conversation around Google , content farms and the success of Demand Media 's IPO is still a hotly contended topic. What's Google to do? If people are looking for specific content and Demand Media is leveraging this information to create targeted and relevant articles, where is the problem? It all boils down to our definition of 'value' and our definition of the words 'relevant' and 'valuable'. In this fascinating piece of web content, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales , talks shop. If you're interested in content and the new media, this will fascinate you." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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vanity fair

wikipedia

year one labs

What Type Of Content Should My Company Produce?

"What type of content should my company be producing?" This seems to be one of the most frequently asked questions.

Prior to answering this question, there are three things need to happen within the organization...

Marketing and Publishing. The company must accept the fact that they are no longer just Marketers. They must accept the fact that in a world where consumers have an expectation of finding content, you must think like those who create the best content. The best content is not created by Marketers. The best content is created by Publishers. Study publishing. Understand what types of content sells. Create a publishing culture within your organization. Understand how these journalist, editors and producers nurture a story, and what codes of conduct they use to build credibility (more on that here: Get More Media Savvy).

Drive it through strategy. Without a strategy, all is lost. I'm not talking about a content strategy at this point (which will also be a critical component for your success) - I'm talking about a corporate strategy. Figure out what your overall business objectives are, and build your marketing and content strategy around it. Don't do something because your competitors are doing it or because it's the latest and greatest shiny bright object. Know the direction of your business and build your strategy around it (hint: that's where the real ROI of Social Media, publishing and Digital Marketing lies). There's no point is doing anything in Marketing or Publishing if it doesn't add to the overall economic value of the company.

Choose your poison. Content strategies within the corporate structure tend to fail when the type of media being produced is not in-line with the passion of either the organization or the people creating it. Your organization has options. As popular as YouTube is, I'm (personally) not a fan of creating and editing video. My background in writing, journalism and some university broadcasting made me a prime candidate for Blogging, tweeting and audio Podcasting. Know your strengths and passions and play to them. You can choose between text, images, audio and/or video. Knowing - at your core - the type of content you have an appetite to create will have a direct correlation to its success. If your strategy dictates a media format that lies outside of the organization's comfort zone, ensure that the people you bring in to work on the content production do have that passion.

So, what type of content really works?

It can be best summed up in two words: value-based content. Too often, the people that run brands will say: "we have to be publishing content," or "we need to get more content out there." Publishing content for the sake of publishing content adds little to no value.

What makes content valuable?

Valuable to me, not to you. It has to be valuable to your consumers (not to you). All too often content produced at the corporate level is self-serving at best and thinly veiled advertising at worse.

Unique perspective. While there is a ton of content that is based on similar content that already exists, no one can bring your perspective to it. It's your perspective that makes the content unique, and it is your challenge to nurture your content and discover your unique voice, so that more and more people find the value in those unique perspectives. As Oscar Wilde once said, "be you because others are already taken."

Shareable. Value content gets shared. It not only has to  impresses the consumer, but it must be of such quality that the person consuming it feels like they should share it with the people they know because it will also be valuable to them. Great content gets shared not because you have a widget that makes it easy to share, but because it's truly valuable.

Findable. Value-based content gets found. In search engines, online social networks and offline. The audience dictates the true value, and the content that is valuable gets linked to, talked about and shared. All of these little actions make the content you are producing that much more findable to those who are looking for it - and for those who will just stumble across it.

Curate the content. Because there is so much content being created, another way to create value-based content is to curate what already exists and focus (like a laser) on what is important to your audience. Nobody will have the ability to read everything that is being published, so any organization that can make sense of the mess is one that is adding tremendous value. I've seen great curation happen on Blogs, in Podcasts and in email newsletters. Becoming a respected curator adds value.

Value that I can count on. In a world where any one individual can publish their thoughts in text, images, audio and video instantly (and for free) to the world, it's hard to tell what is the truth, what is opinion and, ultimately, what has value. Any organization that is creating content must be trustworthy, non-partisan and credible. It's that last word ("credible") where your time and energy should be spent. Before publishing any piece of content, ask yourself: "how credible will my organization be perceived once we hit the publish button?" The organizations that produce credible content are the organizations that are creating value-based content.

What do you think it takes for a company to produce value-based content?

Bonus: I would be remised if I didn't recommend the book, Content Rules , written by my friends, C.C. Chapman ( Digital Dads ) and Ann Handley  ( MarketingProfs ). It is a full-on deep-dive into the world of producing value-based content.

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The Liberation Of Comments And The New Storytelling

People leaving comments on a Blog has changed. If it hasn't changed all that much, it's going to.

The primary reason that people leave a comment on a Blog is to add their perspective. It's a huge value add to the core content and it opens up the piece of content from a one-way diatribe into something that looks like engagement and - with a lot of activity and back-and-forth - a conversation. Many will point to comments as the key differentiator between what is a Blog and what would otherwise be known as an article. It was also an important functionality because there were many individuals with unique perspectives who did not want to commit to having their own Blog, so having a place to publish their thoughts was a critical component for the broad adoption of Social Media.

The question is this: is a Blog post any less valuable if the comments don't take place on the Blog post but happen anywhere and everywhere in the online sphere?

The Cognition Blog has two very interesting calls to action at the end of each Blog post (hat-tip to JF). The first one says, "Tweet Your Thoughts" (when you click on it, a box opens up that allows you to write a tweet and connect it to your Twitter profile), and the second one says, "Respond On Your Blog" (when you click on it, a box opens up that allows you to input the URL of your Blog post). There's no question that they could have pushed this even further by adding a "Comment On Facebook" call to action as well.

It's what happens next that makes this concept interesting...

No matter where you respond (in their own comments, on your Twitter feed or by adding in the URL from own, unique, Blog post), your comment still appears beneath the Blog post that you are discussing. Think about the intrinsic value of this as the evolution of Blogs and commenting happens before our very eyes.

You see the whole conversation. Every comment that is being created in all of these individual spaces and platforms are aggregated beneath the Blog post. It's like a 2-for-1 with a much bigger multiplier effect.

It's easy. By adding in this functionality, the user decides where to take/place the conversation. If they feel like it's something relevant to their social graph, they can tweet it. If not, they can just leave the standard/traditional comment on the Blog post.

It creates more chatter. When someone responds to a Blog post in their own Twitter feed, they are helping the Blogger to make their content more shareable and findable. They're also publishing that one thought in multiple places for more people to see and have access to.

You meet more people. For those following along on the Blog post, they can now click over and add/meet new people by connecting to them on Twitter in a much cleaner and visually appealing way than what we traditionally have on Blogs (a hyperlink on the commenter's name).

It just makes sense. 

As much as we may want people to speak their minds about our content on our own properties, they simply won't bend to our will. The truth is that anyone can say whatever they want about anything in nearly any channel, in text, in audio, in video, in images, instantly (and for free) to the world. We can hope that they'll speak their mind about the content we're creating in our own spaces, or we can open up - liberate the comments - and use our platforms to aggregate and curate the content. In essence, why don't more Blogs (and brands!) enable and empower their consumers to share their thoughts - how and where the consumer wants?

It comes back to control.

Bloggers and brands still want to control the dialogue. They set-up guidelines and rules for commenting in hopes that people will respect the repartee that takes place in that one space. We tend to forget that a hater (or lover) now has a choice. Everyone now has a publishing platform - in one form or another (we can point to Twitter and Facebook for democratizing publishing even more than Blogging, Podcasting and YouTube has). It's simple to publish and most people online have an audience. It's fascinating that one Blog post storyline now becomes multiple stories across multiple platforms as each individual is a media with immersive, narrative and collaborative capabilities.

This marks the end of the linear narrative... and that changes everything (again).

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5 New Business Books That You Should Read (But Probably Never Heard Of)

There is a lot of great business book reading happening right now.

Three of the bigger (and more well-known) business book authors within my tool shed of interest have (or are about to release) brand new books. Seth Godin releases his latest, Poke The Box, today, Guy Kawasaki releases his next book, Enchantment, on March 8th and Gary Vaynerchuk is about to unleash his sophomore effort, The Thank You Economy on March 8th as well. I've had the pleasure of reading all three of these books already, and they do live up to the hype (I'll give my top pick to Godin's Poke The Box). It's probably going to take most Marketing professionals the rest of the year to get through these three popular business book titles, but the truth is that there are five other fascinating books sitting right here that are next up in the cue and deserve some attention. Because I have yet to read these books, I've grabbed their descriptions from their respective websites (so, please mind some of the Marketing blather)...

5 New Business Books That You Should Read (but probably never heard of):

Alone Together - Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle. "Alone Together is the result of MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on interviews with hundreds of children and adults, it describes new, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy and solitude. It is a story of emotional dislocation, of risks taken unknowingly. But it is also a story of hope, for even in the places where digital saturation is greatest,there are people -- especially the young -- who are asking the hard questions about costs, about checks and balances, about returning to what is most sustaining about direct human connection."

The Art of Immersion - How The Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and The Way We All Tell Stories by Frank Rose. "After centuries of linear storytelling, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of narrative that's native to the Internet. Told through many media at once in a nonlinear fashion, these new narratives encourage us not merely to watch but to participate, often engaging us in the same way that games do. This is 'deep media': stories that are not just entertaining but immersive, that take you deeper than an hour-long TV drama or a two-hour movie or a 30-second spot will permit."

Curation Nation - How To Win In A World Where Consumers Are Creators by Steven Rosenbaum. "Being a human aggregator is the key to growing an existing business or starting a new one. In fact... curation is the only way to remain competitive in the future. Overwhelmed by too much content, increasing numbers of people are seeking a 'boutique' online experience. Whether you're a brand, a publisher, or a content entrepreneur, you can provide it. You can create a manageable, inviting online experience. You can extract value from an otherwise useless chaos of digital noise."

Measure What Matters - Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships by Katie Delahaye Paine. "In an online and social media world, measurement is the key to success, If you can measure your key business relationships, you can improve them. Even though relationships are 'fuzzy and intangible,' they can be measured and managed-with powerful results. Measure What Matters explains simple, step-by-step procedures for measuring customers, social media reputation, influence and authority, the media, and other key constituencies."

Unthinking - The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy by Harry Beckwith. "A rumination on the psychology behind our responses to advertisements from marketing expert Beckwith. With our susceptibility determined by our childhoods and culture, much of our response is unconscious. We consistently respond positively to any product that reminds us of play - the iPhone with its bright colors and fun features is a perfect example. We respond to music, to rhyming ads - 'it takes a licking and keeps on ticking!'- and gravitate toward the comfort of the familiar; we like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks precisely because they are popular. Despite our continual penchant for optimism and the quest for beauty and convenience, however, we are a fickle, difficult-to-please bunch."

I know what you're thinking: "I have a lot of reading to do!" The feeling is mutual. Anything new and/or exciting on your business book shelf?

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gary vaynerchuk

guy kawasaki

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the thank you economy

unthinking

Poke, Poke... Who's There? It's Seth Godin

How many difference makers are there in the industry you serve?

When it comes to marketing and communications, Seth Godin is - without question - a true game-changer. He holds many professional titles, including best-selling business book author (each of his 13 published books have been best-sellers and collectively have been translated into more than 30 languages), professional speaker (he was named one of the top 21 speakers for the 21st century by Successful Meetings Magazine) and entrepreneur (Godin was the founder of interactive marketing company Yoyodyne, which Yahoo acquired in 1998). He currently runs Squidoo.com along with his latest business, The Domino Project, a new/disruptive book publishing company powered by Amazon. BusinessWeek magazine called him, "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age," and if you have not read such books as Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, The Dip, Tribes and Linchpin, you are doing a disservice to your professional development and the evolution of your business.

In August of last year, many media pundits and business journalists thought Godin had lost his marbles.

He announced on his blog (one of the most popular business and marketing blogs) that he would no longer be publishing books "traditionally." In a post titled Moving On, he wrote: "The thing is - now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive. ...I honestly can't think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. The question asked by the corporate suits always seems to be: 'How is this change in the marketplace going to hurt our core business?' To be succinct: I'm not sure that I serve my audience (you) by worrying about how a new approach is going to help or hurt Barnes & Noble. My audience does things like buy five or 10 copies at a time and distribute them to friends and co-workers. They (you) forward blog posts and PDFs. They join online discussion forums. None of these things are supported by the core of the current corporate publishing model."

So, that's it? Godin - in his bestselling prime - walked away from multimillion-dollar advances, prime real estate in major bookstores and all of the notoriety and opportunity that went along with having an international bestselling book? Hardly.

"I was aware that I was being a hypocrite," said Godin via Skype chat last Friday. "I think the publishing industry is killing itself. They embrace scarcity instead of abundance. They make it hard to find their product, buy their product and share their product. It costs too much given the alternatives - most of which are free - and it takes too long to reach the marketplace. On top of that, the publishing industry thinks that the customer is the buyer at the big chain retailer and not the reader. I can say all of that, but if I'm sitting around taking advance money and playing games with those folks, I can't be taken seriously. As I was writing my last book, Linchpin, I was saying that I could not see myself going through that process again within the existing system. My latest book, Poke The Box, is a book about what I am now doing. I'm now trying to innovate, initiate and launch something new in the book industry. Hopefully, my friends in the book industry will take notice, copy me and use what works from what we're doing. I'm not trying to take over the publishing industry, I'm trying to shine a light on where I think we're going next."

Godin's Poke The Box (out today) is the first book published under his new imprint, The Domino Project.

The concept of "poke the box" is not about learning . it's about doing. When Godin stopped working at Yahoo (after his company was acquired by them), he made a conscious decision to change the way he works. Godin believes nothing matters unless you "ship" (aka: put stuff into the market) and the reason most people don't ship is because they never push themselves to do new things. Poke The Box is about how to nudge yourself out of the starting blocks.

Start and fail.

"There's a tyranny that's quite prevalent in our society, which is the tyranny of being picked, of waiting to be selected by the boss, by the HR person, by Oprah or by someone who will anoint you as the winner. The Internet is opening the door and allowing people to pick themselves," said Godin about why he chose to publish one of his own books first and why anybody should think differently about the work that they do. "That's what I am doing. I picked myself, and I think that's what people ought to do. People have asked me how they can submit their book ideas for me to publish, and my answer is, 'don't.' Just publish it yourself. Give it away, watch it spread and build a platform. The cost of failing has gone way down. It is far cheaper to fail now than ever before. If you failed when you were designing the plant for General Motors' Saturn car, the cost was a billion dollars. If you failed with a Super Bowl ad 10 years ago, the cost was $2 million. If you fail with a blog post, it costs nothing, and yet bosses say, 'yes, go innovate . but don't fail.' You can't have success without failure. So, what I'm really trying to sell people on is that it's now okay to fail. Here's what I know: I have failed more often than anyone reading this, and if you fail more than me, you'll be doing just fine."

The entire 40-minute audio conversation between Seth Godin and me will be made available this coming Sunday, March 6th 2011 as episode #243 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. Make sure to listen to it.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - Why Godin Snubs Best-seller List .

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo.

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The Future Of Display Advertising (It's Bigger Than You Think)

Banner advertising (or display advertising) has a bad rap with consumers, but it's a driving force in the advertising community.

For every person that claims to hate display advertising and for the millions of ad-blocking software downloads that happen annually, there's still a major and brisk business being done in the selling and placement of banner ads. Online advertising networks continue to grow, and many of the more premium sites (be they brand name portals or highly trafficked niche sites) command decent CPMs that are making brands happy and publishers wealthy.

Will we move away from display advertising to another/better form of online advertising?

It's not only the golden question when it comes to advertising, but something that both brands and publishers continue to grapple with. Leave it to Google to provide one of the more provocative statements about the potential future of online advertising. Yesterday, AdWeek reported that outgoing Google CEO, Eric Schmidt presented a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual leadership meeting in California. Here is Schmidt's message:

"The online display market could quickly become a $200 billion ad business -- if it gets its act together... It's happening faster than all of our predictions... It's still too complicated to get a campaign up. It's just too hard. It's really a problem."

With the opportunity comes the hurdles. While organizations like the IAB have continually offered up standards and guidelines, it's still the wild west when it comes to online advertising.

What's truly missing for display advertising to be more successful?

Better technology. Because people go to websites for the content and because brands demand that their ads load prior to the content (to ensure that they are being seen), most ads must be super light and simple. This makes the creative more challenging because of the file size limitation. While companies like Say Media are doing interesting workarounds, the truth is that Marketers need better technology. Superior compression or the ability to manipulate the ad server in a way to speed up the delivery of bigger file sizes would go a long way.

Better creative. Because of the technology limitation, there is only so much that a creative can do in terms of content, but the size of the display ad's physical space is an issue as well. No matter how big a display ad is, it's still a fairly limited physical space. This makes it a lot less interesting for the majority of advertising creative-types to get excited about. Something has to give. If not, the industry will always be faced with a lack of desire for creative directors to really focus (and care) about display advertising.

Better ad serving. It's not just about speed. It's also about formats. If brands, publishers and media companies constantly have to worry about every technical aspect and varying ad sizes and versions coupled with different types of ad serving technologies, it becomes an even more challenging world. Organizing a large online display advertising campaign across multiple ad serving technologies makes the job increasingly difficult. People are looking to launch a campaign and not get stuck in the same minutia and detail as an air traffic controller at LaGuardia.

Better automation. If we can get the creative, technology and ad serving to dance and sing in unison, then I'll agree with Schmidt that automating some of the more technical components will be critical to lowering the bar, so that more brands will get engaged with display advertising.

Better education. Ultimately, we need to train Marketers better. We need to do a better job of extolling the value of display advertising. Along with that, we need to be training many more Marketing professionals in all of the areas mentioned above. Making display advertising really work is still (somewhat of) a dark art. Better case studies, better professionals to train everyone else and an ongoing dialogue would help to create a much better marketplace.

What do you think needs to happen for this to turn into a $200 billion piece of advertising business?

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