Sounds rather like a Jesus teaching, but it has been and continues to be the winning strategy on the web.

Publishing 2.0’s Scott Karp makes some good points about how this new,  open world can lose you money.

Yup, the companies that I suggest should open up stand to lose a lot by doing so.

However, losing a lot and staying alive is better than losing it slower and eventually dying.

As has been pointed out before, the only way these companies can win is to put themselves out of business before someone else does.

The way to do so is to give up control and force and monetize relationships and permission.

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On a recent Backwards Gang episode of the Gillmor Gang (hard to tell which one eh?), Jason argues about AdSense being more like Direct Marketing and that it will be the incumbent form of marketing for next few decades. He also touches upon the YouTube/AdSense relationship at his blog
Well, he’s partially right but he’s missing one important part of the recipe.

I agree that AdSense is more like Direct Marketing than advertising and  it’s way more efficient than prior forms af advertising given that it’s pay-per-click.
The important piece of the puzzle that Jason is missing is the quality list, something of a cornerstone for Direct Mail or Email advertising.
A better list is a better open-rate, and a bigger ROI.

The fact that AdSense is only contextual is a shortcoming, and for both Google and the advertisers, making it more efficient will make more money for each respectively.

Despite it being pay-per-click, more click-throughs mean more revenue for both Google and the advertiser.

Where is the quality list in AdSense?

You could argue that it’s in the context of the web page, but this is only superficially true.

To rev things up, or “press on the gas,” as Jason would say, a bit of behavioral targeting needs to be added to the mix.

Get more of these ads in front of people who really want them, or are at a particular point of the buying cycle and your CTRs will go up, and revenue will follow.

This can all work in conjunction with contextual data, but will enhance contextual delivery immensely.

So while I agree with Jason’s prediction that AdSense will dominate for years to come, I think Google must improve upon it, or else risk losing marketshare to a behaviorally enhanced version of adsense that may provide a similar ROI, but in a condensed amount of time, which equates to money.

If Jason thinks that Google will rise to Microsoft levels of dominance in this space, they are going to have to address the quality list or lead, in this case, by the use of behavioral targeting.

I think they will. In fact, I think  it will be an integral part of their Cost-Per-Action experimentation that began when the rumblings about click-fraud were at a peak.

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Steve Gillmor and meta-meta-data. It reminds me of the recent report on Powerset, a new search engine that uses natural speech.

While Google counts books “for” children, books “by” children, and books “about” children similarly, Powerset does not.

And just like facial and tonal gestures which change the meaning of something we say, so will the meta-meta gestures change the information we receive when we ask for it, or simply imply the need for it.

But Steve is still talking aboutexplicit gestures, recorded from a keyboard and mouse.

I refer to a point I made some time back about passive, negative gestures.

And the best examle I came up with was geo-location. By virtue of the fact that I am in Texas, I provide a passive, negative gesture to my local saloon that I am not interested in a happy hour special which is happening in twenty minutes.

Despite the fact that thus far, every explicit gesture I’ve ever recorded indicates that I should be.

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I just had a great moment.

Over 500 unread items in my newsreader and I just clicked “Mark All As Read”

Ahhhh. I’ve come a long way to be able to do that. I know I missed some goodies, but I don’t care.

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It’s amazing how much we talk about using Attention data and other sophisticated practices to bring us more relevant information and marketing.

Meanwhile all the text ads on a particular page about Cost-Per-Action (CPA) advertising are about Certified Public Accountants.

We have a ways to go, I’d say.

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Jeneane Sessum with some thought-proking ideas about Attention.

. . .anyone concerned with what you’re paying attention to is out to make money off of you. Trying to paint attention monitoring or tracking or trust or what have you as anything other than that is dishonest.

Hmmm. . .

I think there are exceptions, though rare.

But there are also differences in the way people make money off of their customers.

Providing a valuable service is a lot different than war-profiteering, no?

Thanks to Kent Newsome for the link.

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Einstein asked in 1954, “Can we visualize a 3D universe which is finite yet unbounded?”

Steve Gillmor answers a resounding yes, unleashing a Big Bang that may mark the moment in history when the uncleansed masses bought their liberation from the “man who sold the world”, Nick Carr.
Did he pull a rabbit from his hat? Or has the rabbit died, signifying the conception of a new web.

One where gestures rule over links, where metadata outshines data.

Nothing left here boys, but an empty silk hat.

“Now Frosty, being made of snow, was the fastest bellywhopper in the world.”

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I’m glad Jeff Jarvis pointed to this report again. Here’s an idea.

None of the newspapers include ads in their RSS feeds. That’s a good thing, as I’m a firm believer that the RSS item is the ad.

But many people do read ads in Newspapers. Some look for grocery coupons or department store sales.

I’d like to see how many Newspapers are providing RSS feeds of print ads. They key is to tag them well; fashion, restaurants etc.

A lot of Tribune’s ( I work for them ) print ads go into ShopLocal.com, along with ads from Gannett and McClatchy the other part-owners of the service.

I don’t see any RSS feeds there. If that’s true, it’s a shame.

Instead, they try to stuff them into mini-sites or worse, mock-print flipbooks .

A long time ago, I suggested personal RSS feeds using SSE in a creative way that could create customized, two-way marketing conversations (I’ll post more later), but I backed off because for editorial content, I agreed it added little value to the user and meant registering.

But for people explicitly looking for commercial content targeted at their wants, they seem to be perfect.

Until we have decent attention filters, this seems to be the best option we can offer the users, and I think they would recognize that and participate.

Then it wouldn’t be long before the local merchants realize they don’t need big graphic print ads and should just converse directly with the users.

But the newspapers would still be adding value by having an aggregated and targeted audience. Like they did in the old days but in a way that makes sense online.

I have yet to even see an email program of this nature from the Newspapers, but RSS works much better anyway, for obvious reasons.

Conclusion: Forget about your old model of interuption and embrace permission marketing. Build an audience and connect buyers and sellers in the most efficient way for the users, not the advertisers. They will appreciate it and you will profit from it.

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Kent, Kent, Kent!! I love ya buddy but slow down here , I think.

And Tom Morris concurs, I think.

I suppose by linking to them , I can’t also support the idea of gestures, but I don’t think that’s the case.

I’ll just put one half-baked thought out there for now. The discussion really needs a podcast, and I’m trying to get motivated on that one OPML gang. I’m just busy.

Links are dead. Long live Links.

Right, now links are the king of how we get information. Google PageRank, Technorati rank, etc.

Okay we agree.

But wait. We filter out Spam Blogs and SEO sharks so that we get better results.

But wait. We add context and history and dare I say “Attention” data to get better results.

But wait. We add the wisdom of the crowd to get better results.

There is so much additional metadata that is, could be, and will be added to the tools we use to get and give information, that you must at least agree the link is overrated.

As I’ve said before. If I write a good post reviewing a new cell phone and engadget writes nonsense and mentions that same phone, who do you think will show up higher in a Google search.

That indicates a system that is broken. But it doesn’t yet want to fix itself, because links are the basis of it’s economy.

Now, you may have heard about Google’s talk about pay-per-action as opposed to pay-per-click.

In that case, the point isn’t to get as many click-throughs as possible, but to entice the right person through the door. One who has the right intentions.

The way you do that is by examining what they have been paying attention to and what gestures they have implied.

I agree all of this can be rather silly sounding, but I have one real example that I gave to Steve Gillmor. and maybe you think this is as ridiculous as Scoble’s example (I’m not linking).

It’s happy hour and a local pub wants to draw a crowd in with a beer special.

You’ve been a patron there before and payed with your GoogleWallet. They know you like Guiness.
Fine, send out a text message to all who bought Guiness in the last year during the hours of 5 to 8, offering a free cascading treat.

But wait. The web service polls for my geocode and realizes my cell phone is in Austin, Texas.

I have just made a implicit negative gesture that I don’t want that message.

Damn, and I was thirsty.

A link is one of the most useful tools we have in the bag right now., but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Me, I’m counting on the teleport to be the winner.

“Kosso had 500 people teleport to the RSS platform. Must be a an authority Flissl!” ; )

Don’t bother filing a patent on Pay-Per-Teleport. I already did.

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Around six or seven years ago the subject of free site vs. subscriber-based was a big one. Big surprise that I have never waivered from free.

But I just realized how ahead of the game I was back then when I said to one editor, “we may want to charge different rates, because some of the site-users will be causing a drain on us, but others will be contributing. ya know what I mean?”

“No,” she said, which was understandable since we didn’t have forums of any kind at the time.

On a side note, at that time I was pushing for the company to adopt the Arsdigita Community System (see OpenACS ), and I admit that my notion of “paying contributors” was heavily influenced by Philip Greenspun.

Scott Karp seems to be thinking that the time has come to pay the users.

What a great way to promote Citizen Journalism (or whatever you want to call hyper-local-non-journalist-majors-traditional-media-aggregated-content)

For less than one yearly salary (I hope!) a news company could pay for ten local blog posts a day at ten bucks a piece.

10 X 10 X 365 = $36,500

Fifteen bucks if a photo, audio or video is included, of course. ; )
But really, we should just let the bloggers keep all the Google ad money, even though we might be driving traffic, and figure we’ll make it up at a higher level of long term relationship marketing.

In other words, they get the nickle and dimes and we get the gesture and attention data for the big payoff.

Sounds perfectly fair to me.

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