Vista Headaches

My notebook is well overdue for a reformat -> reinstall operation, as Windows PCs typically are after a year or so.  Right around the time I decided to get cracking, we received our Microsoft Action Pack subscription with Office 2007 and Vista, so the planets seemed to align just fine. My approach this time around was to buy two new hard drives for my notebook, such that I could copy all my data from my WinXP drives over to my home FreeNAS server, install the new drives, install applications and then copy everything over.  This would allow me to go back if necessary and avoid having to commit to Vista if there were significant problems.

For the past couple weekends, I've been copying data and taking an inventory of applications that I need on my machine.  All my data is fine, but I've been having trouble finding the time to install applications and troubleshoot problems.

For instance, I can't get Vista to cooperate with my BlackBerry, and I've resigned myself to not having calendar-synching capabilities until someone gets around to making the BlackBerry desktop compatible with Vista and Office 2007.  I've also had problems getting Office 2007 under Vista to import my e-mail from Office 2007 Beta under WinXP Pro.  I'm very nervous about whether or not Vista will cooperate with iTunes and my iPod as well.

Meanwhile, there are a number of helper applications that are tough for me to live without.  I haven't tried installing Cloudmark on the new install of Outlook 2007 yet, which is something I absolutely have to have if I want to keep spam from dominating my inbox.  Photoshop seems to run fine.  The Swiff Point Player, which I've used for a while to embed Flash content in PowerPoint presentations seems to not be compatible with PowerPoint 2007.  Firefox runs fine.  I've got my fingers crossed on Norton.

I thought that after I spent some time yesterday, I could leave my XP drives at home and bring Vista to the office.  Unfortunately, I've still got e-mail problems and I'm not yet 100% comfortable with Vista yet.  So I'm here with my old, slow installation of XP Pro until I can get things working the way I want.

Here's another annoying thing.  Vista has a great gadget that scrolls RSS feeds on the desktop, which is something I'd want to give me the latest marketing news.  Can I import feeds directly from my Sage plugin for Firefox?  No. It seems the only way to get feeds displaying within this gadget is to mosey on over to whatever website publishes the feed I like with IE and add the feed to my favorites.  From there, I can select the feeds to display within the gadget.  That's highly annoying, considering I use Firefox for just about everything.  Notable exceptions to that rule include accessing the Atlas suite (which doesn't work with Firefox) and getting to certain FTP sites (because I'm too lazy to download a real FTP client).  It would be nice if Microsoft gave us an easy way to import feeds from other applications, even if it was as simple as copying and pasting the feed addresses into a web interface or something like that.

One thing's for certain, when I have the Vista drives installed and I'm downloading/installing applications, things are lightning quick.  I can't wait to get everything set up the way I like it, if for no other reason than I'd like to get some speed back.

Anti-Transparency Horseshit

Mollie Spilman from Advertising.com argues in a piece on today's iMediaConnection that insisting on network transparency hurts advertisers.  Thus, I fisk...

The fact is, there's nothing nefarious about non-disclosure. Some of the best and most reputable networks don't offer full transparency-- but it's not because they have something to hide.

The fact is, there IS something nefarious about non-disclosure.  Networks have abused non-disclosure by buying out of network when inventory is tight and running advertisers in unexpected spots.  They've also abused it by running ads in areas that are risky or detrimental to brands.  How can someone say with a straight face that there's nothing nefarious about non-disclosure?  We know that not to be the case with many networks.

Premium publishers are willing to sell ads via a network, but they don't want them to compete with their own salespeople. (It's the same reason designer fashions at deep-discount retailers often have their labels removed.)

This is almost certainly true in many cases.  However, it's also true that crummy publishers and sites that are inappropriate for many brands hide behind non-disclosure and receive ads from advertisers that they wouldn't have a prayer of getting from a direct sales effort.  How is an advertiser or agency supposed to make an accurate value judgment if they don't know whether they're getting premium or junk?

The truth is, full transparency can actually be a sign of lesser quality. It could be that sites willing to disclose through a network may not be able to get advertisers any other way and have nothing to lose by throwing their names around.

That's a shaky argument if I've ever seen one.  So there are sites that can't get advertisers, so they solve this problem by letting a network throw their sullied name around instead?  This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

If a network has 30,000 websites but 50 percent online reach, it likely contains smaller sites with fewer visitors vs. a network with 3,000 sites and 80 percent reach. Even a network that discloses a huge list of sites may not cover much of the web, because those sites may be small or fail to attract many visitors. On the other hand, a network with a smaller number of sites or one that does not disclose a site list may in fact reach a greater number of unique visitors because the site quality is higher.

I see where she's going with this.  But it's impossible to make an accurate judgment of reach if you don't know where your ads are running.  Supposed a non-disclosure network serves ads into AOL properties (as Advertising.com has done) and I have an existing deal with AOL.  How am I supposed to accurately gauge duplication?

The good news is that even without a site list, you don't have to take a leap of faith. Carefully examine the network's reported reach, its technological and targeting capabilities, and the results it can quantify. These factors can tell you all you really need to know.

When I read this, I couldn't help but think of Obi-Wan Kenobi pulling the Jedi Mind Trick on stormtroopers at Mos Eisley.  Without a site list, a brand takes a leap of faith.  Period.  The "Trust us.  There's nothing to see here." argument doesn't hold water anymore after years of network abuse of non-disclosure.

Fortunately, there's a solution to all of this, and the technology to implement the solution has existed for at least 10 years.  Networks should submit their network affiliates to agency-side ad servers.  Planners and buyers should then un-check any network affiliates they don't want to run with (for whatever reason, including inappropriate environments and duplicative reach, etc.).  Networks then get a special tag from the ad server, which shuts off automatically if the tag runs outside the agreed-upon list of affiliates.  The ad server deactivates tags by watching HTTP referrers to see if they match the affiliate list.  If too many clicks or ad requests come from unapproved affiliates, the tag shuts off and an e-mail is generated to the planner or buyer working the account.

Simple and easy to execute.  We should have this already.  It would cut down on the number of horror stories every online planner and buyer has regarding networks that have abused their trust.

I don't mean to single out Advertising.com with this critique.  Just the opposite.  We've had great successes with selected clients by advertising with Ad.com.  But I don't buy this "trust us" mentality.  The trust has already been abused (not necessarily by Ad.com, but by others in the space) and advertisers can't afford to trust all non-disclosure networks with their brands.

Thanks to Accuquote's Sean Cheyney for bringing this piece to my attention.

Fighting Over The Page View

This is infuriating. All over the web, the pundits are talking about the death of the page view as a significant metric in the online advertising business.  Yet, the article I just linked is all about how site publishers and media sellers are whining about discrepancies in page view totals between their server logs and what Nielsen and ComScore pick up.  So, predictably, the IAB and the MRC are stepping in to audit the process of both firms.

What do we hope to get out of this review process?  Do we want to bring the numbers closer together?  I'd argue that's the exact opposite of what we want.  I think it's important to have an independent third party with its own methodology measuring website traffic.  And screw the differences between page views in the server log and page views as projected from a web panel...

After all, who do you trust more?  The publisher of a website who can count every internal pop-up ad as a separate visit?  Or the independent third party with the methodology that might not be perfect, but is at least uniformly applied?

Panel measurement may never be as accurate a measure of page views or unique visitors as server logs CAN be.  But we can't trust unaudited server logs, either.  If we do, we end up with publishers who try to game the system.

I think we need some independence from publisher pressure for ComScore and Nielsen. And we need to stop trying to get them to consensus.  They're two companies with differing methodologies.  We don't need to make them look like one another.  Let the market decide.

More Garbage from the FCC

According to FCC Chair Kevin Martin, FCC rules wouldn't allow a merger between XM and Sirius. I can understand exercising jurisdiction over terrestrial radio, but where does the FCC get off thinking has jurisdiction over satellite radio, a subscription service that operates under a different concept of "public airwaves" than terrestrial radio does?