Regan Cunliffe

So our MySKY HDi was installed yesterday.  As the included HDMI cable is only 1m long I had to go on a hunt for a 10m HMDI to DVI cable so I can connect it to the projector.  The one I wanted was an end of line item and was going for $39.95 at Dick Smith Electronics.  One of 5 stores that had one in stock was in Henderson so I rang them to get them to hold it.  Unfortunately, they knew it was listed as being in stock but no one had been able to find it in store during a recent stock take so they suggested I call Harvey Norman.

So I call the Henderson branch of the retail chain and finally get through to an Indian gentleman who seems to understand what I’m looking for.  After 5 minutes of searching I come off hold to his voice saying they do have the cable I want in stock.  My next question is how much?  He goes away for another minute or so and comes back to say Five, Eight, Nine in his thick Indian accent.  Now, was that $5.89?  $58.90 or something else?  I couldn’t quite make it out so I asked again.

He replied “$589.  This is our retail price but if you come down to the store then I can give you a 50% discount”.  I was somewhat in shock.  $589?!!  It’s a top-of-the-line cable he told me.  It would have to be, I replied.  He then tried to tell me he could knock it down to $200.

I told him he was dreaming and that I could pick one up off ebay for $40.  He then sounded shocked and basically told me I was lying as that was far too cheap.  He then got served with a dial tone.

Some other happy Australian retailer has now shipped me the cable I wanted at a far more reasonable price.  Here’s hoping it arrives in time for me to watch the Australian Rugby Team demolish the All Blacks on Saturday night in HD glory!

On the 26th of May I attended the Interactive Marketing Summit.  About the only thing I can remember from the day was the complete disrespect for web publishers that one of the speakers had.  While their job is to help advertisers get more bang for their buck, their methodology left a number of us publishers who use[d] their service gobsmacked.

By understanding how difficult it is for publishers to make any amount of reasonable coin advertising networks can pretty much offer next to nothing as incentives to publishers because they know that there is very few other alternatives.  Where a fully booked campaign can cost an advertiser around $25 per thousand impressions, various ad networks can serve the same campaign with significantly lower revenue for the publisher.

I’ve started to notice this more and more.  On Throng recently I’ve seen our 728×90, 160×600 and 300×250 ad blocks all filled by a Vodafone campaign served by Google Adsense.  I’ve had some people asking me how stoked we must be to have Vodafone advertising on the site but have had to tell them that while that  block out could have cost them $75 per thousand for the three zones, in reality it was returning less than a dollar.

This got me to thinking.  As an advertiser, if I can book a campaign through Google Adwords and experience the same results I would for a fraction of the cost then really, you’d be stupid not to.  However, as a publisher your traffic is incredibly valuable and by allowing campaigns such as the Vodafone one to display, we actually devalue what we have to sell.

One of the things that I’m noticing more and more is advertisers using services like First Rate’s The Performance Network for branding while disguising them as Cost Per Click or Cost Per Action campaigns.  There is currently a campaign for Prime Television for one of their shows and is a CPC campaign.  Now you’d think that having a TV show related ad on a site like Throng would work really well.  Here is the ad and the numbers:

19,344 impressions served resulting in $33  in revenue at $1 per click.

Looking at the ad, it’s obvious that the information the advertiser is wanting to get across is there and clicking is therefore pointless.  Even more so if you do click and discover that all you’re directed to is Prime’s listings page.

Any advertising using a CPC or CPA campaign for blatant branding should not be accepted by publishers and as such I have systematically begun to remove such campaigns via Adsense’s Competitive Ad Filter and stopped serving anything from The Performance Network.

Bye Bye Vodafone.  Bye Bye McDonalds.   Bye Bye Yahoo!Xtra.  And goodbye to anyone else who thinks they can get away with using any of my online properties for branding with banners listed as CPC without any incentive to click.

It’s been an incredibly busy year so far.  So much has happened.  So much is still happening.  And there is a lot more to come yet.  I keep coming back to this blog and thinking “I really should post something” but time just keeps getting the better of me.  However, let’s see if we can do something about that now.

What a year 2008 is going to be. It started off with my brother Nathan getting married on the 3rd of January followed by a day of recovery before Rachel and I took off to the South Island to introduce my other brother Aaron (or Aze as he is more affectionately known) to a large part of the country he’s only ever seen on TV or in books. It was great! Finally those long hot summer days that I remember as a child returned, albeit 20 years later. Living in New Zealand had almost bought us to expect the usual rain and cyclones that seem to gather when the holidays start and depart when it’s time to return to work.

It was a good chance to get down to the better parts of New Zealand and spend some time with Aaron who is intending on moving to Melbourne at the end of the year. I don’t get to see enough of him, or Nathan for that matter, so it was good to be able to hang out for some extended time.

The rest of this year holds a lot of promise. Another season of American Idol is underway. We’re launching Throng into Japan shortly - making it our first foreign language site - along with some pretty cool new initiatives that are likely to revolutionise online advertising as it is known in New Zealand.

There are the Beijing Olympics in August which I am totally looking forward to. Having been there and seen everything first hand at the end of 2007 I’m pretty excited about seeing what the Chinese can do.

There are two big elections this year. The US one: Obama will win because he’s all about unifying the country. Unfortunately, someone wont like that idea and he’ll probably end up getting himself assasinated. And then there is the New Zealand election. There are too many things that could be said. Too many people doing more than enough talking for everyone. I think there will change. But I just want to be inspired.

One last thing, fatherhood. And what a whole other world of challenges, journeys and fun that will be.

Yes!  So enough things have finally bugged me that I’m going to do it.  Bought the domain.  Set up the hosting.  Installed WordPress.  Found a theme and modified the header.  Now to install some plugins and then the ranting will begin!