Mark's Applied Revenue

Be Distinctive & Trustworthy

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:52:35 -0500

Not everybody is distinctive, but everyone should be. Not everyone is trustworthy, but again, everyone should be.

This doesn’t mean shock and awe or open kimono. It just means be remembered for something and tell the truth. Find your position and let people know what it is, directly or subtly. Find your unique selling point and drill it a bit deeper each day.

The benefits from this are pretty myriad, but at a basic level it helps you stay at the top of the attention people, or at least right below the surface. It lets you win over the long haul. No quick fixes. No easy wins. Just a strategy that sends a pervasive and truthful message to your audience, whomever they may be.

When the time comes and it makes sense to be remembered, you will be remembered.

It’s a golden principle.

Ad:Tech & AppLovin

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:00:24 -0500

Just 1 month ago, if you’d have told me I’ll be doing 15 scheduled meetings at Ad:Tech NY, I’d have told you that you were crazy.

But everyone has come out of the woodwork and I can most probably have 10 more meetings if there was enough time.

I’d like to think that it means there’s a lot of business out there now. That I’ve been around long enough where there’s enough mutual respect so that people actually want to spend some time.

I’ll be around today and tomorrow. If you haven’t pinged me yet, please do!

The Carpetbomb Strategy

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:26:25 -0500

It’s used in politics really well. Wherever you are, you can’t get away from the presidential campaign.

Not attending a rally? We’ll get you on TV.

No TV? We’ll get you on Facebook.

No Facebook? We’ll get you on Google.

No Google? We’ll get you on Twitter.

Nothing digital? Don’t worry. Newspapers and magazines.

And for good effect, we’ll get free press from every journalist who covers this stuff.

Wherever you go, it’s politics all the time. Obama and Romney. And that’s what they want. When you think President, you think of them. The money was backing what I call the carpetbomb strategy.

And it can be used to great effect. In politics and, yes, in tech. So when you hear about some solution, just remember that it’s possible you’ve been carpetbombed. And influenced.

Was there something unique there? Maybe.

Appreciate it for what it is.

When someone tells me their idea for a new app

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:14:12 -0400

whatshouldwecallme:

When I’m drunk:

When I’m not:

Compassion & The Marathon

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:40:00 -0400

Yesterday I spoke about charity. I was going to write about the shades of 9/11 inherent in the aftermath. But decided that today should be all about compassion.

The government is doing its job. But where’s the compassion?

The city is moving forward with the NY Marathon. But why?

Maybe the number guys say that it won’t have any affect on the cleanup and re-building effort, but that’s complete nonsense. I’ve tried to drive around before in a marathon or two and it was never easy.

And even if you believe that it will have zero impact on people’s lives in the city, just watch this short video on the situation in parts of Staten Island. It’s heartbreaking. And read this piece from a marathon runner himself. He believes the cold calculation, yet is still calling for it to be pushed.

I don’t doubt Mayor Bloomberg’s compassion and empathy with the people who’ve been devastated. He’s just not doing a great job at showing it. One thing that could be said for the last massive crisis in this city, 9/11, was that the mayor showed the compassion on his sleeve and was one with the people.

It’s time for Mayor Bloomberg to be that man.

Charity Begins At Home

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:24:00 -0400

An old expression. Sure. But true. The news cycle is global and the constant negativity and devastation can be dulling. However, what happened to the Northeast coastline communities with Hurricane Sandy is anything but.

It’s easy to gloss over if you weren’t present, but when you see the devastation and can individualize that to a person or family that lost their home, glossing over is not an option.

There are hundreds of thousands of peoples with flooded homes.
8mm people with no electricity at the peak. 6mm now.
Subway systems and tunnels flooded in NY and NJ.
Communities literally wiped off the map via the pounding ocean and wind.

Government is definitely doing its job and I think well. City, State, and Federal. Thank You.

I’ve also seen two national/international charitable responses so far.

We need more of that. Lots more.

And on a local level, it’s nice to see that people are opening up their homes and offices to their friends and family and sometimes even complete strangers. We should all do it. I know I am.

The Art of Brevity

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 09:24:18 -0400

Politicians don’t really know what this means. Nor do many long-winded speakers. You know the type.

It’s not about being short, but about being to the point. It’s not about elaborating on points, but on making sure that they are understood. It’s not about obfuscating a fact, but on identifying the figure.

Our world increasingly values this and yet some people just can’t figure it out.

But it’s been forced upon us via Texting, Twitter, and the persistent digital onslaught.

Texting because typing is just too arduous.
Twitter because of the hard character cap.
Everywhere else because of the near zero incremental cost to digital communication/creation.

Ultimately, this is not about limitations, but about competitive advantage and artistic achievement.

TinyCo Makes Some Affiliate Moves

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 09:21:13 -0400

TinyCo recently launched a pretty unique affiliate program and it was a very smart move on its part. It’s symptomatic of where user acquisition has gone on mobile apps and makes sense for some very large partners that have bandwidth to handle this sort of personal interaction with a single user acquisition partner.

Let me take a step back. User acquisition is relatively easy to track when it comes to mobile apps (some would disagree). It can get tracked to an install. It can get tracked to a particular action inside an app. Bottom line, the tracking methodologies are pretty standardized.

And the networks manage that process because they have scale, reach, targeting capabilities, optimization, developers, and everything else you need to make sure this process runs smoothly AND efficiently.

But they also take a cut.

TinyCo says. Hey, why are we giving up this cut? We’ll go direct and share actual revenues with you the developer. It’s done two things.

It can now work directly with larger partners (who can handle this type of interaction), as well as the really long tail partners who will find the time to handle this.
It has also shifted the payment risk (and cash flow) from an up front per dollar UA fee to a back-end rev share.

Now whether it turns out to be massively successful over the long-term is questionable and that’s because most developers just won’t want to tie their software to a single partner with a single product.

But I still like the move! It should certainly be an ROI positive one.

Android Update Frequency

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 08:51:59 -0400

I’m an Android user (gasp!) and I love many things about the platform.

The flexibility and variety of what you can accomplish.
The intuitiveness and seamless integration of Google products.
The notification system.
The device diversity of choice.
And frankly, the freedom to do what I wish.

But one of the things that bothers me is the update frequency on the apps. It’s never ending. Sure I can set it to auto-update, but I’m not sure that would work for me either.

Why all the updates? Now, I know the average user may not mind, but with hundreds of apps, I see a never ending stream of update requests and it gets tiring.

Maybe there’s a middle ground between Android and iOS here?

The Carriers Are Banking It

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:14:00 -0400

The carriers are laughing all the way to the bank. We sit here twiddling our thumbs, pontificating on:

iOS vs. Android.
Feature phones vs. Smartphones.
SMS Charges vs. App Workarounds.
Carrier Billing vs. Credit Card.
Unlimited Data vs. Data Caps.

Yet, what do must of us do about it? We just pay higher bills. But maybe it’s time to shop around.

If not, the carriers will just keep on banking it.

Social Cues are Damn Important

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:38:00 -0400

Popular opinion says that we shouldn’t really care about social cues.

But maybe we should.

First impressions are very often misleading. They’re based on pattern recognition. And pattern recognition is right until it’s wrong. It may be right in 99% of the cases. But you’re going to miss the outliers. And the outliers help create opportunity/difficulty. They say “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Yet we all do.

So if you’re in Silicon Valley, showing up to a meeting in flip-flops is dressed up. In NYC, not so much. Partially due to the weather, but also due to NYC culture.

And you want to be my latex salesman! Some of you will get that quote.

If you’re still using some old email identifier like Hotmail/Yahoo, switch it.
If you don’t have some authority in the digital space, create it.
If you have a BB, you just clearly have given up. See here :)

Don’t do all this because you have to, but because social cues are damn important.

Communication is About Perception

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 08:54:51 -0400

It’s not about the message you’re trying to get across to your audience. It’s about how it’s received. I was thinking about this last week as I watched the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden & Paul Ryan. Or more accurately, was thinking about it after I watched the debate.

Frankly, Twitter has made debate watching just too much fun. Rather than listen to the debate, you now have the opportunity to listen to the real time sounding board. And that sounding board was funny.

No doubt Joe Biden stole the show by 1) acting his usual self, 2) throwing out off-putting vocabulary, 3) monopolizing the conversation, and 4) interrupting quite often.

Where Republicans saw a bully, Democrats saw a Voice. And so, the communicated message was all about the perception of the audience. Sure, Joe Biden did his job well because he controlled the tenor of the debate.

But what about the perceived bullying? Who cares! It’s a Republican perception. Not a Democratic one.

People Prefer to Make Mistakes Passively

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:46:18 -0400

This is a whopper and most people just don’t realize it. If someone is going to make a mistake, the human brain would prefer that it be done passively.

I could speculate as to why that is, but it’s not necessary for purposes of understanding this message.

Think about it.

It’s why people prefer to stick with their first choice.
It’s why people don’t want to sell a stock. Or buy one.
It’s why people stay at their job, even if they’re unhappy.
It’s why people won’t sign a new BD deal.

Ultimately, it’s why we all prefer to be lazy. It’s not for laziness’ sake, but because passive mistakes are just much easier to deal with.

“Well what was I supposed to do?”

Algorithms & The Short-Tail World

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:53:00 -0400

I’ve noticed something interesting over the last few years. Everyone talks about the long-tail world on the web, but we’re seemingly headed towards a short-tail world.

Wherever I go, I see ads based on what I’ve searched for in the distant past (i.e. calling cards and sunny vacations) or maybe what I’ve downloaded (i.e. everything under the sun). On content sites, I see stuff targeted towards my profile. But there needs to be a fine balance with this type of stuff. Just because it works better in the aggregate and for the majority of times, doesn’t mean it works all the time.

Sometimes, I’d like to experience random discoverability. I want to be able to explore areas of interest and so where I can do that (on manually driven sites) algorithmic targeting is more than OK. If I don’t like what’s being offered, I can go a level deeper. Like Pandora.

But if it’s advertising or something else with a one way communication channel that I can’t control, algorithmic activity needs to be counterbalanced with random discovery.

Call it the Short-Tail vs. the Long-Tail.

Research Your Target Really Well

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:03:00 -0400

It’s not enough to just make contact and pitch. You need to connect. And in order to really be able to do that, you need to research.

In an optimal world, you’d like to actually know more about your target than they might even know about themselves. Not because you need to but because you want to.

How’s it possible to know your target better than they know themselves?

Because you know the landscape, you’ve spoken with 100 other companies in the same category, or you’ve been in the industry for a while.

Either way, go in with a plan of action and if that turns out not to work, help them somewhere else. Make an introduction. Connect them with someone who can help them now.

Do this and the next time around, it’ll be significantly easier.

Competition from Incumbents

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:20:49 -0400

Sometimes competition comes from lean and small startups. But often it comes from large incumbents. I actually anticipated this a while back in May and something like a year or two prior, but now it’s official: Facebook has entered the mobile ad network fray.

Other than re-reading my third person reference at the end (hate it) or my slant towards a web ad network, this is something that was pretty highly anticipated. Like the iPad Mini.

But here’s another interesting one.

Amazon, one of those companies I love for its bold and brash long-term success, is entering the mobile ad space as well. Both anecdotally (I’ve come across developers/mediation layers who have cut deals directly with them), as well as in the press, it seems like they’re moving into ad sales in a big way, web AND mobile. And they have lots of data to target against. Just like Facebook actually but perhaps even better.

These are two large incumbents. I’ll let them battle it out with Google, outmaneuver them, and pick up the remains. That’ll still be billions, give or take.

Get In The Weeds

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:07:03 -0400

I most probably interact with between 10 and 20 app developers each week. Maybe more. I’ve noticed many differences between the ones that are really successful and the ones that are moderately so.

But there’s one difference that I’d put above all the rest. The ability to get in the weeds and make the tough decisions. To have the experience to know what’s going to work and the ability to iterate when it doesn’t.

It’s the down-in-the-weeds mentality and why I like keeping my hands dirty so to speak by actively engaging, discussing, and learning about the state of the mobile union. No man should be a fortress onto himself and neither should an app developer.

I’ve found that the leaders of some of the largest apps have the ability to move in and out of this role with ease. Those are the type of app shops that are ultimately successful. Not because they have a large audience to leverage, but because they have a deep bench of internal expertise to summon.

Google is Spot On

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:50:00 -0400

So I was taking a break this August from posting here but there was just too much happening in the Google Android space to stay quiet. If you’re an Android developer, you’ve noticed the changes afoot. You most probably read the email you received in your Google Developer account about the updated policies.

These are serious changes and good for Google Play. In fact, really good for a mobile and open world where Kaspersky talks about viruses 3x what they were just a short period ago.

Google needed to do something and this was their initial salvo. Basically what it comes down to is don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want done to yourself.

So:

Don’t run false and deceptive messages or advertising.
Don’t send notifications that weren’t asked for.
Don’t perform settings adjustments that weren’t approved.
Don’t do anything illegal or even marginally subversive.

And this is not even a comprehensive list. So in plain English, don’t be overly aggressive. Do it and you’ll be banned.

And there have been lots of developers that are being banned for violating these policies, with Google cracking down more than they’ve ever before.

Overall, this has been a long time coming from the user perspective and something that developers need to quickly transition on.

Transition now.

Taking a Break

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:28:46 -0400

I know what you’re thinking. Summer’s here.

So what.

Well, it’s important to take some time off. It’s good for the soul.

So I’m off for the summer and will be back come fall.

Lots more to say.

If you come back, that is.

Stay tuned :)

Twitter is an Echo Chamber

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:54:28 -0400

The thing that’s so great about Twitter is what makes it so poor. It’s the echo chamber. The retweets. The @mentions. The constant reiteration.

Twitter is awesome at disseminating breaking news really quickly. I saw Microsoft had released some news about a software update yesterday. This was immediately drowned out by the news of Marissa Mayer leaving Google to helm Yahoo. Pretty surprising news and the Twitterati definitely treated it as so.

I didn’t even post anything on it. No retweets. Nothing. Didn’t feel like I had to. After all, I had seen tons of comments/musings/mentions in the span of a few minutes. I couldn’t imagine that anyone who cared about it didn’t actually see it.

And that’s sort of the problem. I care about this type of news so I see it. But if I don’t care about it, I don’t necessarily see it. As such, I’ve been trying to expand who I follow. I follow President Obama. I follow Mitt Romney. I follow some random people just to get a glimpse of what people outside tech have to say for themselves.

You should try it. The Echo Chamber expands a bit and becomes just a bit more powerful.