Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly: using Google Ad Planner
Google Ad Planner provides much more in-depth information on a monthly basis (the figures for unique visitors and pageviews are on a 30-day basis). The reach is for the United States. As discussed on the previous post, Photobucket appears to continue to have the upper-hand over Flickr.
What I found really interesting is that if I was to theoretically put ads on these 5 sites trying to reach everybody in the United States, I would reach 31 million or have a country reach of 13% or have 660 million pageviews.
Do you think that is a lot? Wrong! Take a look what would happen if I just select Facebook and Myspace:
That’s 90 million unique visitors or a country reach of 39% or 20 billion pageviews!
Does that mean that advertising on Facebook and Myspace is better than advertising on the top 5 of online digital photo sharing?
If your objective is to monetize on printing services, I would dare to say no.
Why?
Take a look at the age and income distribution of the audience at Myspace using Google Ad Planner:
Compare it with the demographics of the audience at Shutterfly:
Obviously Shutterfly has a more mature audience with more spendable income, so they would be more prone to spend on printing services than a younger audience with a tigther budget.
Of course, you could argue against this hypothesis.
An important part of my job is to understand the trends in the online photo sharing industry and I wanted to provide a couple of insights to my readers using Google Trends.
Daily Unique Visitors of 5 key players in the online photo sharing industry.
For the period May 2007 – September 2008, Flickr and Photobucket compete for the highest number of daily unique visitors worldwide out of the five selected online photo sharing: Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Photobucket and Slide.
What caused that there were more daily unique visitors at Photobucket than at Flickr?
Photobucket is capturing more daily unique visitors than Flickr in the top photo sharing market: U.S.
However, Photobucket should not rest in its laurels, because Flickr is ahead in the second most important photo sharing market: India.
What about Slide? Slide enjoyed an important spike in the last quarter of 2007, but its number of daily unique visitors is coming back to previous levels. What caused this?
Worlwide, people who search for the the term “slide”, also search for:
As you can see, hi5 appears several times and it different languages!
This is relevant because hi5‘s daily unique visitors worldwide dwarfs that of the top 5 players in the photo sharing business (note: I drop Snapfish, because Google Trends only accepts 5 websites at a time).
Plus, Slide did pretty good during that period in England!
People who search for “snapfish” also search for “shutterfly”.
And people who search for “shutterfly also search for “snapfish”.
In conclusion:
Markets outside of the United States DO matter! Increased demand in important markets (e.g. Slide in England, Flickr in India) can generate a lot of views, which potentially means increased ad revenue. Just ask Dave McClure, web analytics guru and blogger at Master of 500 Hats.
Despite all the hype about international markets, the leader must keep its focus on the top market, the U.S.
Keep a close eye on the SEO tactics of your rivals and copy what seems to work (Shutterfly and Snapfish).
As you may have read in the About the author section, I am enrolled in the Master of Business Administration at the Shidler College of Business at Honolulu, HI. A very common question that I get all the time is: “so…what do you do?” Well, one of the most common assignments that we get is to solve business problems given a specific context. This context is usally found within Harvard Business School cases.
According to the Harvard Business School, this is the scenario:
The CEO of a two-year-old start-up must now decide whether to become a technology provider or a service agency. In a time of enormous uncertainty about the viability of various business models for Internet-delivered services and products, Collabrys has survived the burst Internet bubble by partnering with brand-name large companies and by responding to market feedback. This case traces the company from its earliest days and its original value proposition to a point at which the two very different future strategies appear feasible. Originally funded by venture capital, the company has changed key personnel, experimented with different distribution and partnering schemes, developed some sophisticated intellectual property, and raised a second round of funding.
Here is my take on the Collabrys, Inc. case:
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I. Situation Analysis
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Collabrys, Inc.’s situation is a textbook example straight out of the pages of Steven Gary Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany because of the company initial focus on the product development process rather than on the customer development process. During the dot-com era, and some still today, Internet startups fail to understand that the most common source of failure for startups is a lack of customers and not a lack of product development. Collabrys was good at managing its product development, but terrible at managing its customer development. Let’s review what is wrong with the product development process as a business model:
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Steven G. Blank , 2003, The Customer Development Model: Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in a Startup. Power Point Presentation. Retrieved on 09/18/08 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
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The flowchart above indicates the main problem with using the product development process as the cornerstone for an Internet startup is that it does neither generate customer demand nor sales until after a considerable amount of cash has been spent on building capacity and marketing campaigns. Even Collabrys’s MVP manager, Villapando-Ibalio, found it difficult to explain the potential for BrandPrint to potential clients and Collabrys always encountered the question: “What can I do with BrandPrint tomorrow that is different from what I do today?” Obviously the company failed to solve an existing problem because it was still using the same outrageous sales projections from its written business plan from the financing rounds and it failed to understand that what it needed to do is to provide customers a solution for a problem that was critical for them and eating away their profits. Collabrys’ sales deteriorated over time because it was not able to answer the following questions:
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What are their customer’s top problems?
Does Collabrys’ services concept solve these customer’s problems?
If Collabrys was to offer its services for free to its clients, will they still acquire them?
If Collabrys was to charge for these services, does it have a repeatable sales model?
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II. Problem Definition
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Collabrys does not have a repeatable sales model because it failed to address its potential customers’ top problems, its customers did not agree that its current service offering added value, and its customers were not willing to pay for a service that did not offer a solution to their problems. Collabrys did not have a proven sales roadmap previous to product concept development, did not understand the sales cycle of its customers, and did not have a set of orders that validated its sales roadmap. In conclusion, Collabrys had a financial model that did not make sense.
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III. Analysis of Alternatives
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Collabrys alternatives all aim to the customer development process:
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Steven G. Blank , 2003, The Customer Development Model: Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in a Startup. Power Point Presentation. Retrieved on 09/18/08 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
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Unfortunately for Collabrys, the company had already burnt a considerable amount of its funding to realize that it needed to validate a repeatable sales model before it could build a whole company around it. The two alternatives were either for Collabrys:
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1. to become an analytics software company
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or
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2. to use the technology in-house, but as part of a service provision.
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Either of these solutions would have to provide a repeatable sales model to essential clients with these characteristics:
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• Has a problem
• Know they have a problem
• Has been actively looking for a solution
• Has put together a solution out of piece parts
• Has or can acquire a budget
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Given the previous communications with clients, it was clear that Collabrys needed to establish a clear difference from other CRM applications in the mind of clients and that Collabrys should not spend time focusing on groups that did not have a clear idea of their problem, did not actively look for a solution (as opposed to explore options), and did not have access to a purchasing budget at all.
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a IV. Recommendations
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The second alternative, to use the technology in-house, but as part of a service provision. provides the right approach through the search of specific answers for the critical questions: What are we selling? What are its benefits? Who do we sell to? At what price? The creation of the Tiger Team should have been the starting point for Collabrys and the cornerstone of its business model, because it focuses on the prescribed customer development process of Blank. The process of contacting all existing partners and 35 potential clients to determine the budget of clients, necessary client interaction (e.g. sales cycle), existing competitors, and price ceiling of clients, would provide Collabrys with a clear idea whether clients are serious enough to buy a service that still needed some tweaking. The Tiger Team process clearly addresses the customer discovery and customer validation sections of the customer development process, which in turn would allow the company to set realistic year-one objectives according to its market type, position the company and service, and create repeatable, sustainable demand.
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By focusing on being an agency that provides managed solutions for companies during their product launch an introduction and targeting the sales process to brand managers (instead of interactive marketing managers, market research people, or advertising agencies) the company will be able to make more efficient use of its resources and channel management and sales personnel to profitable activities.
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This option is less likely to lead to either an IPO or sale of the company, but it provides a clear spending plan, establishes that the current team is right for this stage of the company and provides a clear sales growth plan. The company would now have the right mindset and tools to establish the goals for the next twelve months. A main concern of this recommendation is whether or not existing competitors can replicate Collabrys service provision, because there is not enough information on the case to establish a valid conclusion.
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What do you think? : )
Note: If you are a current MBA student and are planning to use this as a reference, go ahead! But please include me in your references section.
• Given the higher failure rate of products and the saturation of marketing channels, it is necessary to improve the understanding of the innovation process in order to better meet the customer’s needs and to launch to market ahead of the competition.
• I agree that innovation requires a different approach that goes beyond the category where the idea originated and that there are special kinds of people needed for this process. Kotler and Trias de Bes (2003, p. 104) indicate that “the logic of creativity consitsts of taking an element, displacing laterally one aspect of it, and connecting the gap that has been provoked. The logic of creativity follows a process similar to that of humor”. Below are three pictures of an innovative sculpture that combines the work of two my favorite artists, Salvador Dali and Albrecht Dürer. This sculpture is located at a hotel nearby the Nagoya airport in Japan, notice that Salvador Dali sculpted this based on Dürer’s Rhinocero’s woodcut.
Photo Credit: MePhoto Credit: MePhoto Credit: Me
•Lateral marketing uses the power of context and the stickiness factor concepts of Gladwell to create “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132). The case of “Big Brother” TV Contest in the United States and the Sony Walkman in Japan are good examples of well-executed lateral marketing.
• The three steps of lateral marketing are (Kotler and Trias de Bes, 2003, p. 104):
o Choose a focus where we want to generate a lateral displacement.
o Provoke a lateral displacement for generating a gap.
o Think about ways to connect the gap.
• Kotler, author of the 4Ps, wouldn’t pass the opportunity to include them in the process described above and defines the three main levels of lateral marketing as 1) the market definition level, 2) the product level, and 3) the rest of the marketing mix level.
• I found the example of the creation process for the artificial flower was great. In this series of talking points, I have discussed the similarities and differences between “Lateral Marketing” and “The Tipping Point”. However, I think that another work is more appropriate for chapter six of Lateral Marketing. “The Tipping Point” was concerned with grand themes, with figuring out the rules by which social change happens. “Blink” is quite different. It is concerned with the smallest components of our everyday lives–with the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that bubble up whenever we meet a new person, or confront a complex situation, or have to make a decision under conditions of stress.
Photo taken from the author bio section at his website by Wiley Chin, http://www.ximnet.com.my/thelab/comments/comments.asp?id=80.
• “Blink” is a good read, especially for the second step of the lateral marketing process, making a lateral displacement on one of the three main marketing levels through substitution, inversion, combination, exaggeration, elimination, and reordering. This process is more like brainstorming. “Blink” is a “book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions”.
• The hardest part about the process of lateral marketing is the last step, that is solving the gap of the lateral displacement with a value proposition that will result in either: 1) same product, new utility; 2) new product, new utility; or 3) new product, same utility. The further reprocessing of the marketing mix is about dealing with small details that make a big difference. This is the same objective of “The Tipping Point”: “how a number of relatively minor changes in our external environment can have a dramatic effect on how we behave and who we are” (Gladwell, 2002).
According to Gladwell, the Power of context infers that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur . This is a main idea within lateral marketing, because it involves an important transformation of a product or service: there must be the radical addition of a use, situation, need or target that had not existed ever before (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/guide/chapter4.html).
Malcolm Gladwell. Photo Credit: Brooke Williams.
While vertical marketing consists of modulations within a given market, lateral marketing restructures markets by creating a new category through new uses, situations, or targets with the appropriate changes in a product (Lateral Marketing, 2003, Kotler and Trias de Bes, p. 75). I found it really interesting that Kotler and Trias de Bes state that lateral marketing is a complement of vertical marketing, because lateral marketing works in the areas where vertical marketing does not. Throughout the first four chapters of Lateral Marketing, one gets the idea that lateral marketing should completely replace vertical marketing. In chapter 5, the authors make it very clear that both types of marketing are complementary and necessary.
Philip Kotler. Photo Credit: www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
Fernando Trias de Bes. Photo Credit: Ana Jimenez.
One generally accepted assumption for Gladwell, Kotler, Trias de Bes is that all kinds of high-tech products fail, never making it beyond the Early Adopters, because companies fail to transform an idea that makes perfect sense to an Early Adopter to one that makes perfect sense to a member of the Early Majority (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/guide/chapter6.html). Most high-tech products fall under the lateral marketing area and require a greater effort on consumer education. Consumers can assimilate and adopt more readily vertical marketing innovations because they fall within their comfort zones.
The last statement ties in directly with the “Stickiness Factor”. There are small but critical adjustments in how we need to present ideas to the average individual, so that we can overcome the weaknesses from these ideas and make what we have to say memorable.
An example: Both Investopedia.com and Fool.com seek to educate all investors, from novice to advanced, because they believe that the key to success in investment banking is the access to information and that is why, online investing education sites offer a variety of glossaries, investing tutorials, articles, tools to calculate return on investments and investment simulators. The main objective is to have a better understanding of how the financial market operates so that individuals can maximize their potential profit and minimize their risks by becoming aware of potential hazards in investing. This is all nice and fine, but it completely misses the other two rules to start an epidemic, “the stickiness factor” and “the power of context”. Both educational sites miss “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132).
Screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
Throughout many years these two websites failed to become “epidemic” because they failed to: identify the level of expertise of the investor; create as many hyperlinks as possible; recognize that most users on online education websites already hold some education about investments; put everything into the context of the investment industry (because the goal of online investing education is authentic learning); and provide training material for the certificates, licenses and other forms of legitimization that the investment industry requires.
Another screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
A great area of opportunity for the investing education sector was the gap between what takes place in educational practices and what takes place in current work practices, and this creates an educational gap. Gladwell (2002) refers to this as the “Power of context”. Both Fool.com and Investopedia.com realized that even though it was necessary to expose the novice learner to the industry vocabulary, the two main goals of an online investing education website should be (1) putting vocabulary in context and (2) reinforcing the trust of the community in its non-material elements. This is called authentic learning and it specifies performance standards in a profession. Therefore, it was necessary to develop more articles and tutorials about industry practices and specific industry skills like due diligence, portfolio management and professional certification.
Partial screenshot of Investopedia.com in October 2008.
So, did these sites follow this advice?
Daily unique visitors of Fool.com (blue) and Investopedia.com (red) according to Google Trends.
For many years, Fool.com had a clear advantage over Investopedia.com. However, the graph above clearly shows that Fool.com has lost visitors, while Investopedia.com has a steady upwards trend of daily unique visitors. To minimize the asymmetry of information in the areas of Finance and Investing, there should an increase in the teaching-learning practices that use the concept of a community of practice to diminish that asymmetry. The investing sector is a community of practice that uses authentic learning to develop learning activities that are similar to those that take place in the current practice of finance and investing, which it is assumed that he or she wants to take part of later in the future. There have been important advances in the field on online investing education but there is yet much to be done.
Throughout the fourth chapter of Lateral Marketing, Kotler and Trias de Bes discuss how “new market or category creation is the most efficient way to compete in mature markets where microsegmentation and an excess of brands do not leave room for new opportunities” (2003, p. 72).
The cited examples of Lateral Marketing by Kotler and Trias de Bes tie in with The Tipping Point in that they take into account the “power of context” and the “stickiness factor”. The power of context states that one must accept that the immediate context of behavior is the one that guides one’s actions. The stickiness factor deals with the small but critical adjustments in that an idea is presented to the average individual, so that it can overcome previous weaknesses and become memorable.
Lateral marketing uses the power of context and the stickiness factor concepts of Gladwell to create “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132). The case of “Big Brother” TV Contest in the United States and the Sony Walkman in Japan are good examples of well executed lateral marketing.
Unfortunately, the abuse of segmentation and positioning has created an aversion for the introduction of new brands. The information age and excessive amount of choice has proved a bit counter-productive for consumerism. The stickiness problem is even more problematic for marketers in the United States.
It would seem plausible that both Gladwell and Kotler and Trias de Bes would agree in that the use of shock tactics by advertisers, publicists and celebrities grab public attention runs the risk of desensitizing us as culture and making us immune to the eyebrow-raising, attention-grabbing ploys of marketers.
On this post, I will discuss the first two chapters of The Tipping Point by Gladwell and the third chapter of Lateral Marketing by Kotler and Trias de Bes because I found a lot of similar points on both books.
Malcolm Gladwell. Photo Credit: Brooke Williams.
Kotler and Trias de Bes discuss the most common way of creating innovations by working from the market definition downward, which results in new products that are just variations of existing products and services. Similarly, Gladwell argues that things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference. Gladwell defines as social epidemics the way that change often happens in the rest of the world. Both Kotler and Trias de Bes, and Gladwell agree that little variations or changes can have a big impact.
Philip Kotler. Photo Credit: www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
At the same time, these authors warn that even though this innovation process is productive, it will reach a point of saturation. Kotler and Trias de Bes claim that segmentation and positioning (the most basic marketing strategies) are in crisis, and that a new innovation process is needed. Kotler and Trias de Bes call it lateral marketing. Gladwell would argue that it is just a variation of a social epidemic (or word of mouth epidemic).
Fernando Trias de Bes. Photo Credit: Ana Jimenez.
In chapter two of The Tipping Point, Gladwell talks about about the central role that three personality types, defined as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, play in social epidemics.
Since the first time that I read the work of Gladwell, I liked the definition of mavens: “Mavens have the knowledge and the social skills to start word-of-mouth epidemics. What sets Mavens apart, though is not so much what they know but how they pass it along. The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 67).
The definition of a connector is not bad either: “Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connector” (taken from http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_excerpt2.html).
I have always believed myself to be a maven but most of my friends believe that I am a connector. They might have a point because a quick review of my social networks reveals so. At Facebook, I have 687 contacts; at MySpace, 519: at LinkedIn, 95 contacts, and so on. They might have a point because I enjoying spreading a good message and I am pretty good at figuring out what person would be interested in something or would be a good contact to find about something.
In conclusion, I agree that innovation requires a different approach that goes beyond the category where the idea originated and that there are special kinds of people needed for this process. Among those people are appropriate connectors (people able to spread a message) and salesmen (people with the skill to persuade those unconvinced by the message).
March 2004 @ Hippie Market - Rio de Janeiro. Photo Credit: me.
Last week visits to my blog, idaconcpts.com, were 7 times the weekly average! A big thank you to StumbleUpon and to the person who referred to me on this great service. To this date, StumpleUpon has provided a total of 354 visits (and counting!), that is about 46% of total visits! Mahalo!
Classes started again at the Shidler College of Business, where I am attending my second year at the MBA program. Currently I am attending Marketing 656: Creativity in Marketing and Marketing 690: US Marketing in the Information Age. I highly recommend the latter course and you can check out our curriculum at the provided link.
On a personal note, I am back at surfing! : )
Life is good here in Hawaii! Photo Credit: Jen Toba.
Let’s talk about the title of this post: goals, not reports! I have been reviewing Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and the clear message from the first 192 pages (out of the 420 of relevant content!) is that any monkey can read web metrics and that the real job of the web analyzer is to provide the neccesary feedback to achieve the prescribed goals and desired outcomes of the website.
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This might not sound like an epiphany of any kind, but it is a critical starting point for the web analyzer. Chasing metrics for the sake of chasing metrics is not the way to meet and exceed conversion goals, it involves much more. Web analyzers are obsessed with statistics but the trick is to provide management actionable items. My reporting strategy, for now, is to provide a statistic and an actionable item.
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For example:
Statistic: out of XXX visits to ilovephotos.com, XXX% come from USA, XXX% come from Germany, XXX% come from France.
Actionable item: from the XXX visits from Germany, XXX% came from this discussion thread: http://www.macnews.de/news/110985.html, I will make a couple of posts in German to answer their questions.
Actionable item: there is no such thing as bad publicity, but it would be a good idea to capitalize on the nice things that Scoble said about us.
The approach is to provide my team at Blue Lava Technologies ACTIONABLE ITEMS. Please note, that these two examples are just day-to-day action items, rather than long-term strategies. Sorry, but I cannot give away the special sauce recipe! : ) However, I am more than happy to share strategies via e-mail at damian@bluelavatech.com.
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In other news, this is the summary of the top posts at idaconcpts.com:
All-time top posts at idaconcpts.com. Source: WordPress Blog Stats
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Definitely, the hottest topic around is the analysis of Flickr.com using Google Trends.
Note: This section follows the format set by Avinash Kaushik on his blog Occam’s Razor.
Disclaimers:
This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my company or colleagues. Bears repeating: This weblog does NOT represent the thoughts, intentions, plans, actual data or strategies of my company or colleagues.
In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time…I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various memes running around my brain.
Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment if they are abusive, profane, rude, or off topic – so keep it on topic and polite, please. I love a healthy debate so fire away.
Disclosures:
I am a Marketing and Public Relations intern, currently at Blue Lava Technologies. In my role I work with Google analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Google Trends and other Google reporting interfaces (such as AdWords). In the future, I will add more analytics tools from different companies.
I am not in the board of directors of any company and I do not hold stock of any companies that I discuss about in this blog. In the future, I plan to join the Web Analytics Association.
On this blog for tracking I primarily use WordPress Blog Stats. I am not compensated or incented in any way for using these tools.
