GigaOM was quick to point out 5 Problems With Gartner’s Tablet Forecast, among them:

Apple’s iPad is poised to continue its overwhelming lead in tablet sales until 2015, holding 47.1 percent of the market according to research firm Gartner. Google’s Android tablets will slowly catch up to nab 38.6 percent of sales by then, while media slates built upon platforms such as MeeGo, QNX and webOS will barely be a blip on the radar, accounting for just a combined 14 percent of tablet sales four years from now. On the surface, these predictions may sound logical, but upon closer inspection, there’s more wrong than right here.

1) 2015 is at least two (or more) product cycles away. [...] While the iPad may not see monumental design changes each year, Apple is sure to evolve the device several times in the next four years. The same holds true for other tablet makers using different platforms. Simply put: It’s too early to predict what the tablet market will look like several device iterations from now due to powerful new processors on the way, faster mobile broadband in wider coverage areas and improvements in mobile software and apps.

While I agree that the Gartner study is making way too many assumptions overall, some of the rosier projections for Android (including Gartner’s own forecast of near 40% share by 2015) are probably having the same issue:

1) The only thing that we know with relative certainty is that Apple has put up a huge lead, and has become the uncontested category leader. If past experience is any guide (study your Ries & Trout on Positioning), that should put it on track to retain 50% share at a minimum, but quite possibly more (60-70%).

2) Especially since Apple went all out on pricing the entry-level $499 iPad so competitively, that the first few would-be competitors couldn’t even begin to catch up with Apple in that regard. Only now are e.g. Samsung rolling out an Android 2.2 tablet in a Wi-Fi model for $349 (April 10), which is priced below the $499 “price anchor” Wifi iPad/iPad 2.

But this is hardly a direct price beat, given that we are talking about a 7″ screen size tablet, not running the latest Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS optimized for tablet use (and it may not ever get the upgrade to it), and not fully up to snuff to the iPad’s build quality. So that consumers may well view this price in line with expectations for the different form factors.

3) That’s how strong Apple’s lessons learned from their iPod mass-market device manufacturing have been. Which brings up the legitimate question of whether the tablet market will turn out more like the MP3 player market than the smartphone one:

It all hinges on the question of how much Apple bungled things by staying with AT&T exclusivity for too long. What if there had been a Verizon iPhone (and Sprint and T-mobile as well) by the X-mas shopping season 2008? Would Android have even stood a chance? Would it have surpassed iPhone share as it did by now?

Since the carrier lock-in factor is almost a non-issue for tablets (the trend has been toward the Wifi-only versions anyway), Android has no such help in tablets.

4) Another thing missing: The ingenious “Droid” counter-branding to the iPhone’s own deep Archetype Branding that lifted the sale of all Android smartphones, whether intended or not, doesn’t appear to be crossing over into the Android tablet market.

Motorola created a brand with the Droid that was smartly capturing the few remaining archetypes that Apple had not employed:  Mainly “The Outlaw” (unrepentant, dangerous, bad) and “The Titan” (greatest strength, number, expanse) archetypes inherent in the allusion to the Terminator robotic eye, and to robots in general.

Symbols of “bad boy, take-no-prisoners machine”, combining within itself “the greatest strength”. To quote the original ads: “In a world that doesn’t, Droid does…”.

It appears that Motorola, Samsung, Acer, et al. are starting nearly from scratch in this regard in terms of the tablet market (which may be their biggest mistake yet, because they could have easily pushed the Droid branding into the tablet realm as well, it’s not too far of a brand extension), and so far I have not seen a break-out branding concept from any of them.

5) Much has already been written about the retail display advantage that the iPad currently has vs. the Xoom and other would-be competitors, another area that is quite different from the mobile carrier retail situation with smartphones:

Of course they are the only tablets on display at the Apple Stores, but they also visually dominate at non-exclusive retail outlets such as Best Buy, where the iPads sit on display with the rest of Apple’s shiny “tech-marvel” products, while the Xoom sits somewhere off to the side crammed in with a variety of netbooks and other cheaper fare…

All in all, those are a lot of advantages for the iPad. And any would-be competitors clearly have their work cut out for them if they are hoping to get even close to the 40% share predicted by Gartner for Android. Not to speak of the smaller challengers like HP’s TouchPad with its own WebOS (from the acquisition of Palm), or Blackberry/RIM’s Playbook, who’s only hope appears to be to make a play through entrenched enterprise computing relationships.

For more on my early predictions on iPad’s category leadership due to competitors missing the boat on getting their offerings out quickly enough, see: Is the iPad a fine young cannibal?

Why? Because the iPad, barely 6 months old, has already sold around 7-8 Million units, and is on track to break through 10M units for the year. That makes it the fastest electronic gadget sales ramp-up in history!

Still think that Apple’s deep Archetype Branding to create aspirational products is meaningless? Keep in mind that this record is being set as the wider economy is still largely suffering the after-effects of The Great Recession, and is at best in a tepid recovery.

And as Business Insider reports,

Apple is gearing up to sell 45 million (!) of them next year, says Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White who just chatted with supply-chain vendors in China and Taiwan (via Elizabeth Woyke at Forbes).

Sales are rising so quickly that according to BestBuy and other retail outlets, the iPad is beginning to truly “cannibalize” netbook and even laptop sales (by as much as 50%!). I had predicted the former in my Deeper iPad Intel post, but the sheer speed of the impact is surprising even to me.

How did this happen so quickly? First off, it turns out that the majority of people really didn’t need/want major creation powers with their computing devices, making the issue of “no physical keyboard”, etc. a moot point.

Sure, Bloggers and other writers are still going to need more powerful text input, image/video artists/designers/editors more finely grained image manipulation via a mouse, asf. But this “creative class” is only a fraction of everybody, and even they might enjoy some simple social media, video, reading, etc. consumption every so often.

And keep in mind that people are now able to edit photos/videos on their i- or Android Phones. Not super sophisticated, but I’ve seen some pretty impressive photo alteration results in recent months.

And people love the direct touch interaction, very long battery life (when compared to most laptops), and quiet/cool running with “rapid-ON” startup of the device.

Also as I predicted in that same post, Amazon appears to have successfully positioned the Kindle as the cheaper, and more task specific eReader. There even is a TV commercial out with a lady tanning/reading poolside, that makes fun of iPad’s outdoor glare problem. Smart positioning move by Bezos & Co.

And of course there are signs that the iPad will be sold at Amazon, Target & Walmart just in time for the Holiday shopping season. Somewhat related, Amazon is also coming out with its own App Store for Android smart phone apps. What it means is this: All mobile/tablets, all the time, everywhere…

Which brings me to another prediction of mine and a very important point about category leadership. As I said in the Deeper iPad Intel post, the longer that potential iPad competitors wait to get their products (hopefully actually competitive ones) out the door, the more Apple gains a head start that makes it the de facto owner of the entire category.

By default! Because the competition was asleep at the switch…as Nokia, RIM (Blackberry maker), et al. already were with the iPhone.

We are reaching an important threshold in the next few weeks. Whatever tablet competitors come out in time for the holidays (like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which is launching at all four major wireless carriers according to their own launch schedules, but which may end up being priced too high, possibly $399 WITH contract), will have a chance at competing with iPad.

Especially on price, as is being proven by Kindle. But the window is clearly closing, so it must be disconcerting to Microsoft that there are still no particularly good/credible Windows 7 based tablets on the market. Part of the problem is that Windows 7 isn’t really optimized for touch-based computing, even though it sort of works right now.

But the much bigger issue will be the build quality and power/CPU needs of the devices that try to run with Windows 7. A current entrant into the field shows the main problem: The CPU needs a fan and creates heat/noise, same as in a laptop, while having less battery life for more weight.

So it may be well into 2011 until Microsoft is geared up to compete on par, by which time Apple could control HALF the tablet market for the long haul (as predicted by Category Leadership).

Writes PC Magazine(!) in “Windows Tablets Can’t Match the iPad’s Magic“:

“The iPad has No Competition…Sure the Samsung Galaxy Tab looks cool. Dell has Streak in the wings. God knows, at some point HP will release the Slate that it has been teasing for the last six months. And Microsoft will almost certainly…well, I am sure they will do something… Nonetheless, right now, there isn’t a single tablet that can go head-to-head with the iPad. The product has been on the market for six months and no rival… By the time The BlackBerry PlayBook comes out next year, Apple will be releasing the iPad 2.”

BTW, that 2nd generation of iPads could easily include the 7″ screen form factor I’ve been clamoring for.

Will Apple be running away with it? And if so, how much will it ultimately cannibalize Windows, and how fast? Certainly Wall Street has been in the mood to punish Microsoft’s stock of late.

Opines Goldman Sachs, heretofore forever bullish on the company who’s IPO it once underwrote:

…investor sentiment on Microsoft’s core Windows and Office franchises is unlikely to improve until the company gains a firmer foothold in the growing migration to mobile devices – both smartphones and tablets. We don’t see this happening this year as Apple’s iPad and iPhone plus Google’s Android operating system are well established; a Windows-based mobile device could certainly begin to garner momentum in 2011, but the stock remains in show-me mode until at least then…

The bet seems to be that iPad and possibly Android-based iPad clones will be “fine young cannibals”…

When clicked, it takes you to the same Twitter Search (internal) view for that keyword phrase as any other Trending Topic would, only now the top tweet is the “Sponsored Tweet”, which presumably also comes up if you were to type in the search yourself.

So far, so good, as this set-up folds in the ad as unobtrusively as possible into the user experience, a feat that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore called ingenious in a CNN.com post he wrote about the new system.

I’d point out that while it may be necessary to do things this way, there is likely a reduction in response, i.e. the click-through on the actual ad, which represents the second click already. As a rule of thumb, assume 50% drop in response for any additional step in your Web efforts).

And Twitter will likely play things close to the vest as far as additional click results from the Retweets that can happen around the Sponsored Tweet, so we won’t know whether that alone can make the considerable cost of the promoted trends/sponsored tweets worthwhile.

But the real problem is this. Look at what can show up right below the promoted tweet, based on Twitter’s own Retweet-count-based popularity surfacing:

Probably NOT the brand experience that Pixar was aiming for. The tweet by movie critic Roger Ebert might only cost some 3D revenue, but the 4th tweet is slightly reminiscent of the PR disaster (around larbor/fair trade) for Nestle on Facebook some weeks back.

As you can see, that tweet may very well have gone nearly as viral as the promoted one! Definitely food for thought as brands shift more and more advertising online and into social media.

One bonus oddity I recorded from Twitter yesterday: Due to the instability of the platform during the massive World Cup server and internal data center network loads, Twitter has shut down the Profile Cards, and Geo-Location pop-up functionality to lighten that load. As well as intermittently, the Trending Topics…so that only the “promoted trend” was left in the sidebar:

Harmless for now, but user annoyance might grow if this were to continue. Either way, we can say that Twitter’s Status Blog has been busy again…

Stop Whining About How Elitist And Expensive TED Is [Just Because] You Didn’t Get Invited
Feb. 15, 2010, 9:17 AM

>> Too bad you missed it! Larry Page gave everyone a free Nexus One.

.

via Silicon Alley Insider.

(Minor edit for colorful language.)

What is amazing about this (the subhead sentence after the headline), is not what it says about TED, but what it says about the future of content creation, and the question of charging for it.

Yes, Larry Page is a multi-billionaire who gave away free Nexus Ones created by his Fortune 500 (currently ranked #150) company, Google, to other well-to-do folks who were able to afford to pay $6,000 for the exclusive TED Talks experience. In doing so, he is following word of mouth (WOM) marketing model 101, of getting your product into the hands of key influencers, and hopefully winning them over, and getting them to evangelize your product.

But aside from all of that, he is showing what the future really holds: With ever cheaper reading & communication devices such as the Nexus One, it will become increasingly common to give those away to users, JUST to have SOME influence over what content (and thereby advertisements) they consume.

In essence, such a give-away represents A PAYMENT of the consumer for consuming content on the “gifters” platform. That is how important it is to get some, any slice of the attention pie. The getting of some of which implies that you will have opportunities down the road to do business with the “giftee” in the form of offers (ads or otherwise) that can be embedded with the content.

Note that it is taking for granted that a lot of content itself cannot be charged for. Why? …

…Because just like the devices it is shown on, much of that content is becoming commoditized.

There is an over-abundance of it, and certainly no scarcity at all. If the supply is going to infinity, and the demand is finite due to people’s limited amounts of attention, then the price is by necessity going toward Zero.

Now contrast this with the way that Old Media publishers have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and start charging for their content again, with so-called Pay Walls and other ill-conceived schemes.

Contrast it with Microsoft, which, when announcing the finally updated version of its mobile OS, made it clear that it intends to charge a licensing fee to handset makers, even though its market share in mobile has been languishing around 10%, and Google is giving away its Android mobile OS for free. All while Apple has built up a huge lead with its iPhone in the smart phone segment.

Silicon Alley Insider correctly points out that Microsoft’s stubbornness on this point is illogical, because even under the most optimistic scenarios, Windows Phone 7 won’t hardly be noticeable on their bottom line. It is however setting it up for failure in the race for market share and resulting mind share.

Microsoft’s question should be: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our mobile OS ecosystem? How can we catch, or better yet outflank, the iPhone?

Similarly, Old Media companies should be asking: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our news, opinion, and other content ecosystem?

Anything else is folly at this point. Once you have the attention, there WILL be opportunities to monetize, simply by virtue of people being in your ecosystem. Compare how street vendors benefit from people simply being at an event.

But you cannot choke off the oxygen and lifeblood of your ecosystem with Pay Walls, and other walls and barriers of any kind at the ENTRY point. If next to no one lives in your ecosystem, you won’t be selling very much to anyone.

And remember: The first sale is always the hardest. Why not make it much easier, and make the first sale…well…FREE. Someone taking your free offer still constitutes a sale, because they paid you with their valuable attention (time and energy).

Even better, PAY THEM to “buy” from you in the first transaction, as Larry Page has demonstrated with the Nexus One give-aways. Those cost real money, and yet it is still in Googles interest to be giving many more away.

Notice what Google has been doing all along, they have been giving away free copies of a lot more than just digital content (actually Google doesn’t create content at all): Google applications of all stripes and colors, including Gmail, Google “office” apps, Google Maps, Google RSS Reader, etc. etc.

Why? Because it keeps you on Google’s platform for a little longer, so that they might have SOME influence over what you are shown in terms of advertisements, and other offers that go along with the ecosystem.

Notice the deep misunderstanding by the parade of other companies, especially news and other Old Media companies, that have recently been trying to crucify Google over spreading their content through their search engine without reimbursement, not understanding that that content is typically lowest on the totem pole of usefulness:

The New York Times for example is still dreaming about charging for their news content, when it has about a 6 hour half-life (that’s why it’s called “old news”). Compare that to Google giving away productivity apps that can be useful to you for months and years.

What’s  your take away: Massively Move The Freeline, so that you may even have an ecosystem in which to sell anything.

As I laid out a few weeks ago, it seems pretty likely that it was Apple that leaked much of the information to The Wall Street Journal about the tablet device prior to its launch — including the bogus $1,000 price from “analysts.” Later, a former Apple employee corroborated this.

Why would they do this? It’s simple. As I said at the time, if they plant the idea in peoples’ minds that a product will be $1,000, then release it for significantly cheaper, it’s a huge win for Apple. So when Jobs announced the entry-level iPad would be $499 yesterday, it was an absolute home run.

I have said for a good while that Apple is purposefully leaking "information" (mixed with misinformation) in just the right doses and intervals to keep the launch mania pot stewing, ending in a rolling boil crescendo right at launch.

(See: The Apple Tablet And Planned Insanity and as early as 8/08: Apple’s "Magician" Archetype Branding Revisited: Good News – Bad News .)

Now when it comes to seeding these price point speculations, they added yet another twist I’ve previously reported on: Decoy Offers or Decoy Pricing.

What it boils down to is that since all price perceptions are relative to a given context (ALL meaning arises in context by the way), if you can create a context where the price point at which you eventually offer something appears low, you will sell a lot more.

To quote my prior post:

Dan Ariely’s excellent "Predictably Irrational" talks about such contextual "decoy offers" that can boost sales for the item the seller really wants people to buy. As an example he uses a past offer by british business magazine The Economist:

It had listed $59 for on-line access only, $125 for print-only, and $125 for print & Web combo subscriptions, and had thereby significantly boosted the number of the expensive combo subscriptions sold (vs. test offers that omitted the seemingly non-sensical $125 print-only option)!

Obviously Apple just took things a step further: Since the Decoy Offer is not expected to be taken by anyone, it really doesn’t matter if you ever really formally write it up anywhere. Just introduce a high price point via a leak and nurture it (by not disputing the rumors) for a while, then triumphantly announce that the thing is actually going to cost HALF that.

If there had been no context of the prior (seeded) expectations, then the announcement of the entry-level iPad costing $499 would have been only referenced against other things in the consumer’s/prospect’s (that includes you!) mind:

Prices for other electronics items, other computers, other Apple products, asf. And the comparison may not have been favorable, or, a wash (no signal one way or the other).

Instead it was compared to a price point that for many months had already been talked about by all and sundry as reasonable, maybe high, yes, but definitely in the realm of the possible.

The expectation that the iPad was going to be a rather expensive and substantive device became more and more firmly established in people’s minds everyday this way. Now if you announce it at HALF, everybody’s knee-jerk reaction becomes: "This is a bargain!"

One more thing that Apple pulled off here is to establish the low $499 entry-level price as an ANCHOR price to pull this stunt off. Even though most people will spend substantially more for the iPad they really want, with 3G wireless and not just Wifi, and with more memory storage.

I doubt apple expects to ship too many of the $499 iPads. In essence, they created yet another decoy offer!

Writes TheNextWeb in I Call It The iLetdown – Why The iPad Missed The Mark And Blew Its Big Day:

Getting right into it, the lowest price for the iPad point is a mirage. A non-expandable device that has a total of 16 gigabytes of storage? Assuming a usable 15 gigabytes of space, I can fit less than a third of my music onto the device. Excellent. And zero percent of my photos. And videos. And apps, of course. So to say that Apple has created a mass market tablet for $500 is a little disingenuous.

So really what we have here is a Double Decoy, so to speak…

iPad/iSlate/iTablet/etc., heir to the iPhone, destroyer of lesser technology gadgets?!

The name is not the only thing that has been a closely, and purposefully guarded secret:

The blogosphere and assorted Old Media outlets have over the last few months progressively worked themselves into a tizzy over the key questions surrounding Steve Job’s next mysterious, almost Grail-like product.

Like, how big will it be? How much will it cost? How many men died during its construction?

Kidding on that last one, though not by much…

All of this is of course utterly predictable in light of Apple’s tightly constructed Archetype Branding strategy that I’ve been writing about since the iPhone wave. Secrecy is such that the Tablet so far as only appeared indirectly, as a quasi digital ghost.

Pairing Steve Job’s “Wizard of Oz” character (The Wizard archetype, coming out from behind the curtains – i.e. secrecy – with the newest technological marvel), with The Enigma archetype inherent in this elaborate charade, is creating a launch atmosphere unlike just about anything else in current business, or show business for that matter.

Of Wizards, Grails, And Zeigarnik Effects?!

Not only does mystery draw on this powerful archetype, but, just in case you prefer more scientific approaches, the so-called Zeigarnik Effect also explains the draw of an unresolved, “open” loop that has entered your consciousness. Somewhat dependent upon personality, you are likely to feel a strong urge of just having to know.

This explains why even many months ago, bloggers and journalists alike could seemingly not help themselves but to write about the mystical Tablet. And of course from the very beginning, that is just how Apple wanted it.

Even now, well after midnight in the U.S., there are thousands of tweets on Twitter every few minutes expounding one rumored aspect or the next:

Some have even argued that Apple will deliberately sprinkle out little bits of information mixed with misinformation to stoke the fire.

Whatever Jobs will be presenting on Wednesday, and by whatever name it will be called, all eyes will be simultaneously oriented toward “The Great Unveiling”. Compare this natural feeding frenzy to the rather humdrum affairs that Google or Microsoft had given us of late.

Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone launch a few weeks ago was hardly the stuff of legend with its persistent minimalism. And by the time Windows 7 was finally officially launched, so many public Alpha, Beta, and minor tech celebrity testers had already rummaged through every nook and cranny of the operating system AND written about their findings, that it was hardly news anymore.

Now, a sheer endless parade of blog posts and articles has already been written about the Apple Tablet. But those have all been speculation, rumor, and innuendo! (“Will it be a Kindle killer?” “Will it be a Play Station Portable (PSP) killer?” etc. etc.)

The open loop was NEVER closed!

As if any more titillation were necessary, the issue of Jobs’ ongoing illness/recovery and speculation that this may well be his last new product launch as Master of Ceremonies… I mean CEO. And that he therefore will have brought all of his human and, some would speculate, super-human powers of invention, design obsession, and stage craft to bear in this his final Magnum Opus.

Even now we hear whispers: Did he really say that this Tablet “will Be The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Done.” Did he? Would he? Can the poor computer thing possibly live up to this level of hype?

Robert Scoble indeed asks if the event can even still be covered in ways that news media, journalists, and bloggers have become accustomed to over the years. Or if we need an entirely new, “curated”, meta-experience to fully appreciate the unfolding of this new reality.

And therein lies the only drawback and potential danger of such a tightly choreographed affair:

All of the pieces have to be in place (when Jobs got sick and was absent from one of these launches, the magic was clearly lacking). And when they are, a deep connection and expectation is formed in people’s psyches that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to live up to.

Beware the pitfalls of this form of powerful Archetype Branding!

There are many readers who believe that they are paying for content when they sign up with an internet service provider, presuming that they have bought a ticket to a content buffet. That misconception thrived on the silence of inarticulate institutions which were unable to challenge the fallacies and humbug of the e-establishment.

The value of content has been volatile in the past decade but we are entering another decisive phase in which device makers are again courting the creators of content. I have sensed that shift in recent days during my travels in Japan and South Korea where I met some of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers. These companies don’t want their customers to be served a diet of digital dross, and yet that will be the inevitable consequence if the worth of content and creativity are not appreciated.

The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.

I believe that Murdoch couldn’t be more wrong in his assessment that he (and the rest of the Old Media guard like CNN, etc.) really can take large portions of the Web back to a for-pay basis.

There are so many things he doesn’t get about the current reality that I’ll likely miss a ton. But a few of the highlights should suffice to make my point:

1) He doesn’t get that 90% plus of the content his minions are producing is so fungible that the half-life is less than 24 hours. That’s why it’s called “old news”. The aggregators et al. are giving that content a few extra days’ or even weeks’ worth of an additional lease on life.

Add to that that he doesn’t understand the SEO (search engine optimization) benefits his content receives via “the copiers” (as long as they link back appropriately), which in turn gives more visibility and findability to his content. No links, no “Google juice”. Sorry.

(Rupert’s Wall Street Journal is tacitly acknowledging this too by the way, as it is secretly still placing all of its “for pay” articles into Google FOR FREE!)

“…will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content.” You can hear how proud good old Rupert is of “his” content, too bad that most of the rest of the world doesn’t really care anymore. There is so much content, there is NO scarcity of it. Zero. None.

If anything, there is far too much content, and lack of intelligent ways to filter it, or to connect the most relevant dots. Oh, and by the way, recent traffic stats show that Twitter, the epicenter of open, no-walls, rapid-fire, “self-liquidating” communication is beginning to move past CNN.com!

2) The internet has created vast ARMIES of people with sufficient expertise that they can write with depth about any topic or news event imaginable. And they are perfectly willing to do so FOR FREE, simply for the chance at recognition, for directing a slice of the attention pie back towards their own personas/personal brands, businesses, products, or services.

If we again take the example of the Journal, there is now a sufficient number of financial news blogs serving up their own news, analysis, and key (linked) excerpts from the in-depth reports of various industry analysts and researchers, etc. (yet more people willing to put their stuff out there for free), that there really is very little need for anything the WSJ may report or opine on. It’s already all taken care of by someone else.

(Examples include: Clusterstock.com 247WallSt.com Minyanville.com SeekingAlpha.com etc. etc. Notice how you won’t hear these blogs crying about how they would like a Pay-Wall…)

The only reason why the Journal has any value left is the strong brand that has been built up over many decades. The brand that has engraved “WSJ = Serious Business News” on the minds of millions of people.

But that doesn’t mean that there is much “there” there. Just go over to WSJ.com and look at each front page article headline for a moment. Spot the ones that are currently denoted as “paid subscribers only” via the little grey key symbol, and ask yourself if you feel compelled to purchase a subscription for any of these. (Recent consumer surveys show that the answer is pretty universally “No” for nearly all basic, yet for-pay content.)

3) The real issue remains that Murdoch and the rest of the Old Media moguls have yet to figure out how to properly monetize the attention they are already getting for their various content ventures in order to cover their staggering overheads and still turn a profit.

I have written previously about how they could turn the attention into profit more intelligently:

“Is Advertising Failing On The Internet?”

which you should by all means read if you haven’t yet. (In a nutshell, the answer is more intelligent ad targeting and/or sales funnels.)

But apparently they steadfastly want to cling to the past. Newsflash: the “good old days” of near complete Old Media control are NEVER coming back. Everyone with either an internet connection or an internet enabled cell phone is now a potential content producer. In some cases even an on-the-scene reporter…

The protection of the Pay-Wall is a complete pipe dream, and not a particularly good one, because, as we can see from Murdoch’s statements above, he is still way too proud of his content, and the only ones on board with his ill-conceived schemes to take back more control are OTHER (similarly misguided) companies. But the power now lies with the consumer.

In an Attention Economy you first have to convince people why anyone should give a dear about what you have to say. And a Pay-Wall will only assure that your content is likely never seen by millions who might have otherwise paid attention to you.

Only AFTER you have garnered the attention can you then proceed to make additional offers for more. More of the same kind or LOGICALLY related content, with more depth, more value, more exclusivity, that you might then convince someone to pay for. It’s called the back-end.

Don’t try to do it by putting your FRONT-END, lower value news stories and so-so quality op-eds behind a barrier where they will not do the lead generation job that your front-end is supposed to do!

For all of his biblical and otherwise ornery bluster, good old Rupert just cannot tell his front-end from his back-end.

[In this he could get together with fellow mogul Sumner Redstone of Viacom:

YouTube vs. Viacom: Should YouTube be torn apart by piranhas?

Oddly enough, back when this post was written, Murdoch still seemed to take a somewhat more enlightened view - see quote.]

If you erect an ill-conceived Pay-Wall, there will always be dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of enterprising companies willing to bet that their method of monetizing a free front-end can win. And they will end up with what previously used to be your piece of the attention pie.

Always remember what John Gilmore of GPL/Open-source fame once observed: “The Internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it.” A Pay-Wall is not all that far removed from censorship, especially when it comes to the news side of the equation. But even in a more economic sense, the Internet will likely rout around it.

Semantic advertising. [...] Since conversations on [Google Wave] waves have to go through the server each time, a semantic engine could parse them on the fly and serve up relevant text ads. With enough data and training, a semantic engine could decipher intent, i.e. whether you’re talking about your trip [...] last summer, in which case ads would be useless, or whether you’re setting up a wave to plan a trip [...] with your friends, in which case ads for cheap flights and hotels are relevant.

Intent is the reason why nobody clicks on ads in social networks but they do in search engines. A semantic engine would know that 99% of the times you’re waving an ad would be irrelevant at best. So 99% of the time people wouldn’t see ads at all. Wave, Inc. might set this up on their own servers and allow others to set it up on theirs under a rev[enue]-share agreement.

Over the long term, Wave, Inc might also open an ad network [...]. This would be good for consumers since they would get few ads, and only relevant ones, good for advertisers since they’d get high clickthrough, and good for Wave, Inc, since they’d have a high quality, expensive inventory. This might be the thing that makes online ads something other than punishment for using stuff for free, but actually something useful and exciting.

Problem: semantic technology is still inchoate and execution would have to be flawless for people not to find it annoying and/or creepy.

Read that 2nd to last sentence in bold again. Therein lies the crux of the failure of online advertisement in most areas other than search ads.

For more proof of how badly current ad models are failing, witness the stats that MediaPost Publications just posted in ComScore: Most Clicks Come From ‘Natural Born Clickers’ 10/02/2009:

Indeed, the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen, from 32% of Web users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009. Worse still, an even smaller core of consumers — representing just 8% of the Internet user base — accounts for the vast majority, or 85%, of all clicks.

Now while the strong "few users generate most clicks" imbalance is predicted by the 80/20 Principle, the reduction BY HALF in less than two years is indeed stunning, and cannot likely  be explained away with the recessionary economic background alone.

It is far more likely that users have systematically trained themselves to mistrust and hence to simply ignore online ads altogether (other than MAYBE search ads).

The situation of internet users ignoring internet ads is apparently becoming so dire, that comScore et al. are beginning to sound like TV advertising execs in their pitch to ignore the bad news (from the same post):

"Marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad," said Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the "Natural Born Clickers" study. "That’s precisely the wrong thing to do."

Rather, as comScore research has shown, marketers need to embrace the fact that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact on consumers.

Basically, the argument goes: Ignore the fact that no one is clicking your ads anymore, those ads are still somehow reaching consumers on a subconscious level, and will (magically) continue to build your brand (and ultimately sell your stuff) that way.

When the Internet guys are telling you to forget "measurable" and instead extol the virtues of Madison Avenue-style image advertising, you know something is afoot.

Now it is fair to point out that people do in fact retain contents that they saw even if the "seeing" never reached the level of top level consciousness. As such, in a recession, one might argue that there could be value in a company advertising simply to "ping" the consumer in a "we’re still here" sense? (Especially if the collapsing ad rates make it cheaper than ever to do so…)

But now remember the phrase from the first quote: "…the thing that makes online ads something other than punishment for using stuff for free". Then think about how sure anyone could be that their mere ad presence actually engenders much love from anyone at this point.

Rather than ask themselves the hard question on how to finally make online ads work, online ad stake-holders give you evasive platitudes. That’s simply not enough.

And while he’s been around for years, lately his ad, centering on a "How to Sell on eBay" course CD that he wants to send you, for FREE no less, has been particularly obnoxious, I mean, persistent…

So what could you possibly have to gain from taking a closer look at it?

Actually, a number of extremely valuable marketing tactics:

1) To start with, the mere fact that the guy has been around for as long as he has, and that his latest offering has been running for something like 9 months straight in a down economy, should tell you something: It should tell you that the ad is profitable. No one can afford to run a paid TV ad for long if the math doesn’t add up.

Lesson: Study ads (in any medium) that repeat unchanged week after week, month after month, year after year. They must be getting "it" right (product, offer, sales copy, etc.).

2) Now point 1) is doubly important because he is, as we already said, giving the eBay course away for free (plus "a small shipping & handling"). He is "Moving The Freeline" as StomperNet’s Brad Fallon would call it. Which must mean that the ad is effective by way of THE BACKEND sales, just as he actually states in the ad:

Enough people take him up on the free offer, and then later buy additional courses from him ("you’ll be SO satisfied, that you’ll come back for all your computer learning needs…"), that the ads are then profitable.

This is called "Lifetime Value of Customer". As long as it is higher than the cost of the TV advertisements (or your medium of choice) plus product, fulfillment, and overhead costs, you can make a profit. Bingo.

Lesson: "Move The Freeline" on the front end offer to get many more prospects into your sales funnel, then focus on the backend for your profit. It is MUCH easier to sell to an existing customer (even if all they have ever paid you is a "small shipping & handling"), than to convince someone from scratch.

3) The Video Professor’s forthright explanation for why he can afford to give the "lesson on eBay" away is the perfect execution of a so-called "reason why". You have to give people a good reason why you would either discount or give something away, lest they become suspicious, of either your motives, or of the quality of the product, etc.

His simple, colloquial "backend profits" explanation satisfies the viewer’s need for a reason why. And it’s actually quite elegant this way, though other reasons might have worked as well to some degree.

Lesson: ALWAYS give a "reason why". ANY reason is better than no reason. It’s simply how our brains are wired.

(In experiments, researchers have found that even a circular formulation such as "I need to make a copy because I need to make a copy" got better response/compliance from test subjects asked to let someone skip ahead of them in a copier line, than when there was no "reason why" clause in the request at all!)

4) Given that the eBay course is free…

… (plus S&H, which by the way likely covers his full shipping AND production cost), and given that the guy says he would even refund the S&H in case you weren’t satisfied, full "risk reversal" is achieved. He even appeals to you outright: "What have you got to lose?".

The only thing you put at risk is your time, plus the fact that he (and most other marketers) know and bank on the fact that most people never bother to return something, even if they are unsatisfied. It’s just not worth it to them to jump through a few hoops to get their $7.95 back.

In fact, it’s been shown that the longer a money back guarantee is set for, the lower the return/refund rate gets. People just put it off, and then forget completely. Counter-intuitive, but true nonetheless.

Lesson: Always use risk reversal, and offer the most generous guarantee terms you can conceive of.

5) Last but not least, there is a very clever copy-writing device built into the ad. The Video Professor says something like: "Now I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to make you the next MILLIONAIRE, selling an attic full of baseball cards…".

This is what I call a reverse income claim. Look what happened here: An actual income claim is illegal to make in just about all circumstances. But no one says anything if you put the little word "not" in front of it.

However it so happens that your Unconscious Mind, the ultimate seat of your emotions and motivational energies, does not deal in what could be considered higher-order logical functions such as a "not" – negation.

Try it out. See what happens if I say to you: "Don’t think of a blue tree."

In all likelihood you just pictured a blue tree in your mind’s eye, and then said to yourself "not". The Unconscious interprets everything directly first, and the Conscious Mind may then perform some of its more adult logic on it after the fact.

So in essence the guy just put the idea of "making you a millionaire" into your head in this subtle way. And while you may consciously dismiss this, it is however likely to unconsciously increase your desire to try/buy the product. (Your Conscious Mind may actually create a set of more logical reasons to rationalize your decision to buy that was made at the unconscious level.)

Lesson: Be aware of reverse income claims when marketed to. If you decide to use them for your own marketing, be careful, as you may be treading on thin ice ethics-wise. Keep it reasonable.

So let’s stitch this post up: "Now I’m not going to tell you that you’re going to be the next marketing genius by applying these 5 tricks… but I can promise that if you do, your marketing will very likely be more profitable. Results not typical. Some restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited…" :)

Comment below if you enjoyed these tricks, or if you’ve noticed any other marketing elements in the Video Professor ads.

Best wishes and happy marketing

- Alex Schleber

I wrote a while ago that the attempt at humor had fallen flat precisely because Microsoft’s “The Powerbroker” archetype had been so deeply entrenched, almost literally burned into the mind of the consumer for decades. Did things get any easier from there?

The next salvo a few months ago featured the “I’m a PC” ads which cast Microsoft (by way of its supposed users) as a strange mixture of proud/aggressive and defiant/sulking. It was pointed out then that “Microsoft as Victim” just doesn’t really work. And again, the archetype branding explains why: You cannot be “The Powerbroker” and still garner much sympathy for supposedly having been wronged.

This same theme was picked up once more recently with the “not cool enough for a Mac” ad featuring a girl named Lauren, which really was meant to focus on price as an angle to attack the notoriously premium-priced “Mac” products. In theory the idea of highlighting one of your competitor’s weaknesses (price) is workable, especially during a severe recession. But you cannot do it while violating your core archetypes.

If Microsoft had said something like, “we are the largest software company on the planet, and because of that we can create economies of scale in the production of PCs and their loading with software that much smaller competitors like Apple just cannot match, thus saving you money”, it would have made some sense.

But not with this passive-aggressive jabbing built in. It confuses people. Instinctively, no one takes it seriously when the 800 pound gorilla complains about having “unfairly” been called “not cool enough”.

And then Microsoft recently launched another ad in the series that went all wrong yet again. Silicon Alley Insider explains why:

Jackson [the kid] mentions offhand he wants “a good gaming computer.” This is a fantastic line of attack for Microsoft: The Mac has a tiny library of professionally produced games compared to what’s on PCs [...] But Microsoft fumbles the ball, and doesn’t follow through with what’s arguably their best anti-Mac selling point after “PCs are cheaper.”

Instead, Jackson’s mom makes an incredibly off-target anti-Apple smear: Checking out the Macs, she says “they’re kind of popular with this age.” Umm, no. Kids can’t afford Mac prices or appreciate Mac build quality. Far better for Microsoft to stick with [...] Macs are kind of popular with hip adults, but expensive.

So the theme of hurt feelings clouding Microsoft’s positioning and marketing continues. In truth, as the incumbent and still near monopolist (85-90% share despite Apple’s recent inroads) in the personal computer market, Microsoft would do better not to mention “Mac” at all.

“The Powerbroker” archetype by definition can choose to ignore the much smaller competitor. Reacting to any perceived slight only makes people wonder what is going on.

But the branding confusion gets even more pronounced with the recent launch of a new series of Microsoft ads featuring a strange mixture of low key scrap-booking and CEO interview voice-overs, punctuated by a slogan of “Microsoft – The People Ready Business”:

First, scrap-booking is not exactly associated with CEOs. And the overall informal tone of the ads only heightens the confusion. While we can understand in principle where they were trying to go with this, softening up the image, making CEOs cool somehow as they are buying into the “people ready business” message, it just doesn’t work.

Why? Again because it violates “The Powerbroker” archetype attributions of which our mental image of a CEO is a prime example. It will never really fit with “The Loyalist” archetype (buddy/friendship/etc.) that is being angled for here. Your CEO will never quite be your buddy, unless you are on the board of directors or something like that (or maybe work at Zappos).

What’s the end result? Ads that don’t work, that don’t “stick” in your or anyone else’s mind, because they are just too confusing. Microsoft has tried a number of times in the past to bring “The Loyalist” archetype into its marketing (MS Office as your buddy brand at work, etc.), and it never really worked too well then either.

So what’s the solution? 1) Figure out who you are first, what archetypes make sense for you, what you truly want to stand for. 2) Communicate that consistently, without fail. If you did your homework in step 1), it should in fact be HARD to get step 2) wrong.

In Microsoft’s case, it should simply embrace that which it already is, “The Powerbroker”. It has served it exceedingly well in the B2B (Business-To-Business) realm, because “The Powerbroker” is something virtually every business person understands and intuitively respects.

Notice that most of its software has been sold to other BUSINESSES first, even if it ends up on the consumer’s home PC, or their computer at work. Why mess with that out of a sense of hurt corporate ego?

While the competition is fun to follow, especially if your favorite team or alma mater is still in the running, I’d like to draw your attention to some factors in play, hidden in plain sight if you will, that add to the excitement:

While there are countless multi-round tournaments in any number of sports, only the NCAA has evolved a truly outstanding "portfolio" of brand names surrounding the tournamant and its stages, each of which make use of the principles of good brand names (first discussed here), foremost of the principle of "rhythm, rhyme, and speakability" including by way of alliteration:

First there is the already mentioned "March Madness" to describe the entire procedure. Then there are the named tournament rounds, the "Sweet Sixteen" (what is sometimes called a 1/8 final), the "Elite Eight" quarter-final, and the lastly the "Final Four" semi-final.

Note that in large part due to the alliterations, the NCAA terms roll of the tongue much more so than the traditional, generic terms.

Now you may be saying, "why does this matter so much, I don’t even care about basketball…"

It matters because enjoyment derived from saying a brand name is a strong predictor of the both the viral success as well as the depth of imprint in the consumer’s mental real estate of that name. Making it enjoyable to repeat, to say or think more often, will accelerate the spread of a meme through a population, and embed it more thoroughly in the individual.

Rhythm and rhyme, including alliteration (which you could see as a form of front-loaded rhyme), are pleasant and also more memorable to our unconscious minds (that is the reason why you still remember most advertising jingles to this day).

It doesn’t hurt that each NCAA "brand name" is reasonably short, while also still being sufficiently descriptive/evocative of the things they are referring to.

In fact, they even take out some of the complexity of having to think of the somewhat confusing traditional "quarter-final", asf. terminology (number of teams left devided by 2), in favor of simply counting the number of teams still in the tournament. Simplicity is typically good. Simplicity wins.

Yet none of the names are too generic to hurt differentiation in your mental real estate. And they all are easily understood, requiring no spelling out (unlike this massive brand name failure). But the alliterations providing a certain rhythm and rhyme are ultimately the most important drivers in this case.

The end result is, more people talk about March Madness and its rounds, more often.

It is very likely that you were already familiar with these NCAA Tournament "brand names" EVEN IF you’re not particularly following basketball. Now that’s strong branding. You would do well to apply these powerful principles to your own brand naming.

If you can’t get all of them lined up for a given name, apply as many as you can. One thing we do know is, "March Madness" is a winner…

In the lengthy post he argues his "basic premise [...] that the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it", which due to its sweeping nature definitely warrants further examination. The post as of right now has generated well over 200 comments, on a Sunday, so it obviously hit a nerve.

Among other things, Professor Clemons makes the following points about advertising both online or via traditional broadcast media:

Consumers do not trust advertising. Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest.

Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible.  Why?  If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot channel surf to avoid the ads.

And mostly consumers do not need advertising. My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through independent professional rating sites like dpreview.com or community content rating services like Ratebeer.com or TripAdvisor.

While I would agree with all three points made, and would count them among important caveats for anyone choosing to advertise for anything in this day and age, I disagree with Professor Clemons’ basic premise. Here’s why:

I would argue that none of the major "Old Media" players online (or for that matter none of the "New Media" either) are anywhere close to having efficiently monetized their page views. Everyone is still clumsily fumbling around when it comes to intelligent targeting of ads, both as to offer theme, as well as to offer pricing.

(Or rather mostly lack thereof, as when trying to employ Madison Avenue "image advertising" without any clear offer being made. Which, if it ever worked on TV, etc., certainly isn’t working online. In fact, online it may increasingly create a negative image of a company/brand/product as "someone" who just doesn’t get it).

This is astonishing, when all it really takes is some common sense about selling people stuff that makes sense in the CONTEXT of what they were already doing.

First, let’s get clear on the fact that an article or opinion piece in e.g. the New York Times provides a lot more pointers as to readers’ state of mind/interest than most Google queries ever could (as do Web videos posted on such sites), so the failure to target properly is in part simply a form of laziness.

While it is true that a news reader does come with, on average, less intent to buy anything compared to the problem/solution mindset of many search engine users, the data we can glean from the readers of an article, especially the LONGER they stay on that page reading, is much richer.

They must be interested in the subject matter of the article, and will tend to approve of the author and likely his general area of expertise. They will also be in a news or opinion mode depending on the piece. So what you should offer them in this case is more news or opinions RELEVANT to the topic at hand. Make the information offered exclusive and/or in-depth, and make the offer cheap enough to ideally keep it in the range of an impulse purchase (offer a Paypal option to keep things simple and secure in the reader’s mind).

For example, German Newsmag DER SPIEGEL was selling in depth dossiers from their archives (including PRE internet!) for a few bucks at one point, not sure if they still are.

Sell books (more INFORMATION) related to the topic at hand, in fact, some newspapers ought to be able to do OK just as an Amazon super-affiliate (earning 4% or more on the referral to book or similar pages on Amazon). Especially when compared to the poorly/non-targeted ads they are now showing, e.g. I saw a comparative car insurance ad placed against a financial opinion column. That connection can only be called tenuous at best.

For another example, just earlier today I viewed a video excerpt from the Today Show on MSNBC.com about micro-blogging service Twitter going mainstream, and they served up an ad for KRAFT dressing or something like that as a pre-roll ad. Completely pointless and a waste of my time and theirs, but in reality this kind of thing is still totally common, on MSNBC.com, Hulu.com, etc. Everywhere.

Basically on all Web properties of Old Media companies (and most New Media companies for that matter). It is still the standard handed down from pre-internet TV advertising days. It’s as if content awareness and keyword-based targeting had never been invented yet…

What if they had served a super short pre-roll ad that said: "Stay tuned after the end of the video, we’ve got a major surprise relating to Twitter for you", and then in a post-roll ad try to sell me something related to Twitter, social media, smart phones (to post to social media from my phone), etc. etc.

That would make at least some marginal sense. Getting me to opt in to a list by offering a free useful/in-depth report e.g. on how Social Media is changing the world, and then try to sell me off of there would be even smarter. Remember, it’s difficult to go "from Zero to Sale" in one step, especially if the price point is outside of "impulse purchase" range.

Or better yet the ad could attempt to hand me off to the account/profile for KRAFT foods on Twitter in order for me to connect there, maybe offering a special gift/incentive for doing so. You get the point, the only limit here is your imagination guided by basic common sense and direct-response principles.

By the way, if you’re not capturing prospects’ email addresses and then marketing to that list, you are making the biggest mistake of all. Back to the opinion piece/columnist example, they should all have big, fat lists ranging in the 100’s of thousands if not millions of subscribers (and the NYT in this example could retain an "ever-green backend" commission from the columnist on any follow-up sales via such a list being built for the columnist).

Also, there should ALWAYS be a big bright ad for the columnist’s current book placed for crying out loud, and if you’re really smart you’d switch that ad out every 20 seconds or so (motion drives attention) to an offer for… the audio-book version, earlier books, "Columnist XYZ sayz…" quote mugs, T-shirts, etc. etc.

Anything will be better than what they are doing now. It bears repeating: All it takes is some common sense about selling people stuff that makes sense in the CONTEXT of what they were already doing.

The bottom line is, any online content property like the NYT simply needs to do a lot more with all of the attention that it already has. In an information economy, attention is the only scarce resource. And they happen to already have plenty of that very resource. It is a CRIME to fail to monetize it efficiently.

To bring it all the way back to Professor Clemons’ post, while I will agree that advertising may currently be largely failing online, in my view this is due not to some basic law of the internet (because there is a good number of people successfully marketing online), but to the fact that it mostly hasn’t even been TRIED, in any intelligent reading of that word, by the usual suspects of major media.