Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I attended an AAF-Raleigh Durham event last week featuring Google TV with speaker  Dan Gertsacov, Team Manager with Google TV Ads.  The presentation was on the  insights from Google's introduction into the TV industry via Google TV Ads.  Earlier this year Google introduced a TV buying platform, similar to Google Adwords.  They have created a space that virtually anyone with web access and a credit card can play in. Google has built a ‘self-serve platform’ to allow advertisers to bid on specific cable shows, rather than buy on the basis of time slots and demographics.  This allows for a different kind of targeting at lower costs. They can even outsource creative, should you need it.  

This bidding system may be uncharted territory for traditional buyers, but for online buyers it’s common knowledge.   The idea of this ‘easy as 1-2-3’  technology can be threatening to a traditional media buyer who takes a lot of pride in the process of doing a precise buy from start to finish.  After listening through the presentation however, I realized that this is just another tool to make us do our jobs better.  Yes - a client could log in and create their campaign and have it running the next day, though I  wouldn’t recommend it.  Defined parameters and thorough strategy remain a crucial component to any buy, before you go bidding on spots and dots.

I think it’s funny how this way of buying media is easily adaptable to how online buyers purchase space.   Traditional buying is very archaic, and when you stop to think about it, it’s quite ridiculous.   It’s a routine process of requesting information, hours of data entry, and sending information back and forth via email or fax.  Yes, reps still fax avails to buyers!  In my 5 or 6 years of buying, almost nothing has changed in the overall process in which we buy TV.  How we buy media in general, well that’s a different story.  

So is Google TV going to transform the way in which we buy media?  Time will only tell.  I will remain open to change if it allows me to do my job more efficient, targeted and smarter.   A future of buying with no data entry?  Bring it on!

Anyone notice what happened to Google's stock price while the rest of the market got knocked out? It went up. And up. Then down a little and then way up again. 

Why? Because smart companies need to market. And when the economy tanks, smart companies move their marketing budgets to where they are certain they are getting returns.

Yesterday I rashly commented that the Google Chrome browser was going to be like medicine's Central Line stuck into all of us feeding us, keeping us alive.

I was being overly dramatic. It was really fun. I still believe it is worth thinking about. 

Today, is about the OS being replaced. Yep, Google Chrome is tacitly poking at Windows by siloing processes through the browser, somewhat akin to how your OS processes mail, spreadsheets, FireFox and your IM thingy all at the same time. However, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It will take a lot more to replace the OS. "Don't I need an OS to run Chrome?" Until Chrome is able to boot up my MacBook Pro or Lenovo ThinkPad, I will still need OSX or Windows. 

So, when is Chrome going to boot up my machine and run my FTP client? It begs the question, how far along are they?

After a(n accidental) leak, earlier in thh day Chrome was unveiled to the world yesterday. I, for one, sat geekily at my desk waiting for the 2 p.m. launch, which then turned into somewhere around 2:16. But in the end, I have my Chrome.

Boys and girls, I think I like it. The tabbing is excellent and feels so natural. The bookmarking has a me a little confused, and I ran into a few issues on Facebook last night. But I am in love with the Incognito mode - perfect for secret Christmas shopping adventures on a shared computer!

I did read the explanatory comic and most of that tech stuff was over my head, but it seems that Chrome is a shining example of where the browser world should be heading.

What do you think? Is it shiny or in need of polish?

(If this is all new news to you, go to http://www.google.com/chrome and download it!)

Google launched its own browser called Chrome yesterday.

Think of yourself as a patient lying on a hospital bed surrounded by dozens of plugs, masks, bags of liquid and so on. 

Chrome, is the "Central Line" they stick either down your throat or into your inner arm and use to rapidly deliver liquids (IV's), pain killers, and sometimes nourishment. 

The Central Line is a great advancement in medicine. It saves a lot of time and lives.

Here it comes!

Both scary and interesting, isn't it?

Question: Does posting some in-site duplicate content help, hurt, or have no impact on SEO?

Example:
This post by Todd Coats titled “Trippin’ on Acid Park”:
http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/trippin-on-acid-park/
Also appears on all these URLS:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/acid/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/creative/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/legend/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/park/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/reflector/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/simpson/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/vollis/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/whirligig/
http://blog.capstrat.com/authors/todd-coats/

All but 4 of those pages are exactly the same as the original page. Some pages are different from the original page in that they contain the other posts that share the same tag.

My questions are:

1. Does it hurt us to have duplicate in-site content?
2. Are we diluting our link value for any given post by posting the same content to multiple URLs?
3. Or, are we getting a good bump because we have 3 to 4 times as many “pages” that are loaded with key words (albeit on pages with identical copy)?
   

Interesting Note:
A Google search for “acid park” reveals that Google only indexed 3 of the above links with a reference to those key words:

Another interesting note:
This page:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
Was indexed by Google, but a search for acid park does not return this page. Why?

Numbers
Our 1300+ page Web site has only a fraction of that number of actual posts. Posts often  appear at 5 or 6 different URLs.

A little looking around revealed a couple of opinions:

Search Engine Guide says “Such duplication also leaves you open to splitting link value between multiple URLs. If someone links to a (page), they may link to any of the multiple versions, instead of a single primary version/URL. This can cause the search engines to give weight to the "wrong" URLs.”

SEO Book says  “Interesting tactic by Google. If too many pages on the same site trip a duplicate content filter Google does not just filter through to find the best result, sometimes they filter out ALL the pages from that site.”

Thoughts from the experts?

I'd like to share something we learned last week in our "Say Hello to HTML" class taught by the web wizard himself, John Romano. Naming HTML files appropriately is just a little something that can help out in a big way. So when you're naming your files and your folders, remember these key things.

• No spaces, punctuation or special characters.
• No periods. This helps prevent broken links.
• No underscores, use hyphens instead. Google will identify separate keywords between hyphens.
• Use all lower case, people are less likely to make typos.
• No fancy naming conventions, use direct labels that reflect the content. This will help everyone identify a file's content before even opening it. Also, Google likes having a file name that is related to the content.
• Remember: save your files as close to the root directory/index as is feasible. The farther away your files live, the less visibility they get.

If you do all of this, not only are you making our developer's lives a little easier, you'll get a little Google love to boot.

Google recently unveiled the Street View functionality of Google Maps for 12 more U.S. cities - Raleigh/Durham is among them. Go ahead and give it a try! It's suuuuuper simple to use. Just click the 'Street View' button in the map, then click the camera icon on the city of your choosing.

I tried to keep an eye out for one of the Google vans, but my vigilance must have faltered. Speculation abounds that they were here last August. An additional 1,000 points and a cyber high 5 for anyone fast enough to get a camera phone opportunity with a Google camera car.

Here's our building!

I'm on vacation this week. I'm sipping a cup of coffee and looking out on the slopes of Squaw Valley through the living room window of my posh [I'm worth it] condo, home for a week. I told myself I would not think about work. But I'm reading the Saturday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, and I feel compelled to address the news of the day. Microsoft is beating kids up on the playground again, and taking lunch money.

Seeking to gain a competitive edge in the world of online advertising, Microsoft yesterday made public its intention to acquire Yahoo, Inc. The goal is to position the software giant to more directly compete with Google in the online arena. At nearly 45 billion dollars, the offer, if accepted, would represent the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history. I can only imagine that tensions are high in Silicon Valley today, with the campuses of all three players within just a few miles of one another. Kudos to business strategists at Microsoft; making their intentions public is a strike while the proverbial iron is hot. Amid dismal earnings reports and a slumping share price, Microsoft hopes to play on the fears of Yahoo shareholders and investors to gain support from within. Savvy.

My knee-jerk reaction is to hate on Microsoft relentlessly. Historically unapologetic in its road-blocking of the open source movement, Microsoft's shrewd business tactics and generally crappy products are a detriment to the user-centered vision of the internet that we at Capstrat are so passionate about. I've made it no secret that I would not mourn the death of The Worst Browser Ever Made. And I would rather scrawl on a rock with a sharpened cinder than open Microsoft Word. But in all fairness, the competitive advantage that Microsoft hopes to gain with this acquisition is in the realm of online advertising - all those little banner ads in the margins of web pages that no one ever clicks on. This doesn't really seem to have any negative implications on the average user's online experience. Google currently has this space on lock-down. Yahoo has been unable to provide any sort of competition to the darling giant of the industry, and its overall feebleness in the market has had investors popping antacids for some time now. In time, Google would surely deal the death-blow to Yahoo, right? So why, then, am I so uneasy about this deal?

Microsoft's protracted antitrust battle of the '90s still seems fresh in my mind. Acquiring a competitor of the size of Yahoo is sure to catch the attention of both federal and international watchdogs. Google's impressive market share (well over 50%) will probably work to Microsoft's advantage in any sort of antitrust litigation. But then again, Microsoft's force-feeding of Windows to the global marketplace isn't winning any popularity contests, either. Much like the Superbowl and the presidential primaries, I predict lots of yelling at the television at my house as this saga unfolds.

No matter how you try to balance it, this equation is bad news.

And if it's happened to you, most likely it is now happening to you every day. And if you're like me, it's really, really starting to work your nerves.*

A good while ago I saw the big red banner and heeded the warning from Google to disable firebug for gmail. In all the smoke and confusion after Google's gmail upgrade I can't remember if I saw a performance spike of any persuasion. But I do remember that shortly thereafter Firefox started to bail out on me every time I browsed away from my gmail. I can open a new tab and move on from there without a hitch. The problem seems to arise with any navigation away from gmail to anywhere else. I've killed every plugin I have save firebug, to no effect. They just will not play nice.

So why don't I just check my gmail in Safari, you ask? Hmmm. Good point.

But no! if you've cared enough to pore over dry, dusty fields of dead-end forum threads for what seems like eons in the browser/plugin paradigm, then you know that this is just not an acceptable solution. In fact, it's no solution at all - it's a farce!

Of COURSE I'm checking my gmail in safari now. But I don't feel good about it. I'm a problem solver by trade. By genetic make-up, even. This just doesn't sit well with me. Yet the intertron offers nothing. I'm willing to go with the open-new-tab-and-close-gmail-tab option, which is also merely a sidestep. I just want to know the cause, and I want to see a solution.

I hesitate to even bring this up, because I know I'll just be called a hater. The reason I fell in love with firebug in the first place was because it offered me x-ray vision, with which to peer inside the jacked-up mess that is CSS support for Internet Explorer. Of course, now I am a power user and find it difficult to remember how I was even remotely competent at my [web dev] job without it. Give firebug lite a try - I'm going to throw it on my red-headed stepchild IE 6 machine as soon as I get back to work tomorrow. 

Beyond that, I don't really see a solution for the moment. If you've googled any number of the same keywords I have, you have no doubt traveled down some of the same dead-end roads. To maybe ease your burden a bit, here are a few of the highlights:

this google groups thread offered a hodge-podge of solutions that fell short  

http://groups.google.com/group/firebug/web/faq-about-firebug

http://groups.google.it/group/Gmail-Problem-solving/msg/b45d82b372db8585  

Now, don't get me wrong. It's frustrating, sure. But I want you to know, Google, that I'm not mad at you. And I'm not going anywhere. And Firefox, you know I'm on your side. You're my browser Obama. We - and by we I mean you two - are just going to have to work it out. It's no good, living with all these windows open. I pose the question to the rest of the class:

Who's problem is it? Gmail? Firefox? Firebug? ...Ajax??

Finger-pointing and wild speculation abound, but I can't find a clear answer anywhere. Insights and links are welcome... 

 

 

*Really.