Scott Brinker

Semantic advertising: 4 different kinds

September 13, 2008 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 14 Comments

What is "semantic advertising"? (Or, advertising encounters of a semantic kind.) The short answer: advertising that uses semantic web technology, of course. But as it turns out, that definition is highly dependent on how you define "advertising" and "semantic web". With a flurry of innovation happening in both these areas — and their intersection — there are now several different meanings for semantic advertising, depending on who you ask. Here are 4 distinct kinds of semantic advertising: #1: Contextual …

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Semantic branding and gender politics

August 7, 2008 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Just read a fascinating article on ReadWriteWeb, Will the Semantic Web Have a Gender?, that perfectly illustrates the challenges of semantic branding. The article summarizes arguments made by Corinna Bath, a researcher who studies gender and technology, in a recent interview. She makes a case that the semantic web may develop a gender bias because the categories of relationships that are becoming standardized — e.g., the Dublin Core ontology — subconsciously reflect the worldview of …

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Marketer-technologists for agencies

July 8, 2008 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, Adweek published An Open Letter to the CEO of WPP that I wrote as a guest columnist. WPP is one of the top advertising holding companies in the world — up there with Omnicom, Publicis, and Interpublic. Its more well-known subsidiaries include Ogilvy, Young & Rubicam, and J. Walter Thompson. The reason for my letter was to dissuade WPP from fighting Google and Microsoft directly to get a piece of the current …

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Debate on The Long Tail

July 4, 2008 / Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Chris Anderson’s theory of The Long Tail in Internet commerce and marketing has been one of the more influential concepts in online strategy and business models. Amazon, Google, eBay, iTunes, NetFlix — these are all major Long Tail success stories. I’d contend that many of the current best strategies in search engine optimization are essentially derived from Long Tail theory. These ideas will therefore be naturally extended into semantic marketing and SEO++ accordingly. Even MySpace, …

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Exponentials in marketing: watch out!

June 29, 2008 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Exponential growth in marketing is not just a colloquial way of saying, “wow, there’s an awful lot going on in marketing these days”. That’s true, of course, but I’m specifically fascinated by — and concerned about — actual mathematical exponential growth, where something doubles, doubles again, doubles again, and so on. Let me start with the legend of the chessboard, as adapted from Wikipedia: When the creator of the game of chess showed his invention …

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BrandTags.Net — A Great Experiment

May 12, 2008 / Other / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Noah Brier put together a fantastic little web application, BrandTags.net. The site shows you brand logos and invites you to respond with a one-word or one-phrase “tag” that pops into your mind when you see it. After you submit your tag, you can then see how other people have responded by viewing a “tag cloud” that shows all the words and phrases that other people have submitted, where the size is larger the more people …

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Marketing in the cloud

April 14, 2008 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 8 Comments

Marketers should have their heads in the cloud. If you haven’t read The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr yet, you need to add it to your list. Cloud computing — that is, computing infrastructure that is based somewhere out on the Internet, rather than installed on hardware locked in your company’s IT center — is becoming real. Fast. Combined with the maturity of web-based software-as-a-service offerings, the strong gravitational pull of social media sites where …

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A new S curve for search engine ads?

April 6, 2008 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Are we on the verge of a new S curve for search engine advertising? S curves are a phenomenon of technology adoption. They begin where a particular technology — in this case, ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) — arrive on the scene with chaotic, slow growth while early adopters figure it out. Then a dominant model emerges — e.g., Google AdWords text ads — where the winning approach and the benefits to the …

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Marketing as a science, but science is a creative endeavor

March 30, 2008 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

Let me state right up front: I am an advocate of scientific marketing. Just in case there’s any doubt as you read on. Marketing ideas should be tested and one should apply the scientific method to those tests. Most of marketing is now measurable, directly or indirectly. With digitally produced and distributed marketing — particularly channels such as search engine marketing, online advertising, email marketing, post-click marketing, and web site optimization — it’s often practical …

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Semantic Marketing, SEO++ Feedback

March 27, 2008 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Thanks to everyone who’s shared or responded to semantic marketing and the SEO++ idea. It’s been great to connect with other people who are also intrigued by the possibilities that are starting to appear at the intersection of marketing and the semantic web. Jennifer Zaino at SemanticWeb.com interviewed me and published an article To Market, To Market, The Semantic Way. Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb awarded me Comment of the Day: Semantic Marketing for my remarks …

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