Scott Brinker, Author at Chief Marketing Technologist

Web 3.0 conference focuses on advertising and marketing

December 10, 2009 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I think 2010 is going to be a good year for the semantic web — now better known as the linked data movement — especially as marketers become increasingly aware of its potential in their mission for online branding and relationship building. It certainly seems that January will be off to a good start. Media Bistro is holding their next Web 3.0 Conference in Santa Clara on January 26-27, and a good number of the …

Web 3.0 conference focuses on advertising and marketing Continue Reading »

Google bets HUGE on advertising everywhere

November 9, 2009 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

These past few weeks, I’ve repeatedly remarked that social media marketing — while a glorious and wonderful phenomenon in its own right — is unlikely to be the death of online advertising. This has not been a popular position. In fact, I was feeling a little lonely out on that limb. But today, I had some company join me. And not just any company. Google, the great masters of the Internet universe, happily crawled out …

Google bets HUGE on advertising everywhere Continue Reading »

How finance hobbles marketing innovation

November 6, 2009 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

When it comes to innovation and new market opportunity — why some companies harness those forces to catapult to riches and glory, while otherwise good and strong leaders stumble and fall — the smartest guy I’ve ever met is Clay Christensen. The chart above is from an article Clay wrote a year or so ago, Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things. You might be saying, “I’m in marketing, not …

How finance hobbles marketing innovation Continue Reading »

Study reveals issues with search ads — trust and usefulness

November 2, 2009 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, I launched an informal survey to ask people what they thought of PPC search advertising, hoping to peel back a bit more of the curtain of their sentiments and beliefs. As promised, I’m happy to share the results with you. Well, maybe “happy” isn’t the right word. As you’ll see, the feedback about search advertising is not particularly positive — although on the bright side, it does leave considerable room for …

Study reveals issues with search ads — trust and usefulness Continue Reading »

Risk in PPC vs. social media marketing

October 26, 2009 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

There’s an argument that’s been circulating in social media marketing circles about how “dangerous” it can be for marketers to rely on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, as compared to more organic ways of building traffic. You know, social media doesn’t have to be positioned as the destructor of advertising to justify its existence. The gist of the argument: a deep-pocketed competitor can come along anytime, say flush with VC cash, and outspend you. One day you …

Risk in PPC vs. social media marketing Continue Reading »

What if advertising were dead? Really?

October 21, 2009 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Here’s a brain teaser for you: 1. Most people claim to dislike advertising on the web. I know, display advertising is probably despised more than less flamboyant search ads. But in my recent survey, 71.4% of the respondents who don’t work in marketing claim that they never or rarely look at the sponsored search ads on Google or Bing. (Interestingly enough, even 31.6% of the people who do work in marketing made the same claim.) …

What if advertising were dead? Really? Continue Reading »

Marketing operations and the Predator — lessons for marketing technologists

October 18, 2009 / Other / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

How is marketing software like the military’s UAV (unmanned ariel vehicle) attack planes, such as the Predator? That’s what I was wondering when I attended a seminar last week by Professor Mary “Missy” Cummings, the director of the MIT Humans and Automation Lab. Previously, Missy was one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots for 11 years, and then she went on to earn a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering. Her lab now studies challenges with …

Marketing operations and the Predator — lessons for marketing technologists Continue Reading »

Social media marketing stole my woman and ravaged my cattle

October 10, 2009 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Forgive me, I was going to title this post something more subtle like, “Social media’s sin of omission,” but as a blogger shamelessly vying for your attention, I find myself succumbing to the very social media marketing arms race of “say what?!” that I want to push back on. I know, as a marketer, it’s politically incorrect to be anything less than doe-eyed ga-ga about the Wonder Bread that is social media. And to a …

Social media marketing stole my woman and ravaged my cattle Continue Reading »

Survey: what do you think of search advertising?

October 8, 2009 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

I have two favors to ask of you. (Is that a bad way to start a blog post?) I’m doing a small research project on what people think of search advertising — both marketers and non-marketers — as part of a graduate seminar at Harvard on intelligent interactive systems. There are some intriguing hypotheses I have around search advertising, which I promise to share soon… but I don’t want to influence your answers for a …

Survey: what do you think of search advertising? Continue Reading »

23 strategic factors in search marketing bids

September 26, 2009 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / 5 Comments

As part of my adventure in academia at Harvard to explore new ideas in marketing technology, I’ve been taking a class on the intersection of economics and computer science. It’s an incredibly vibrant research area these days, particularly because online advertising auctions such as Google AdWords have provided a fruitful real-world application for software-driven market mechanism design. One of the topics that comes up a lot is the objective of making a system “incentive compatible,” …

23 strategic factors in search marketing bids Continue Reading »

Scott Brinker