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The Ad-Blocking Battle Has Begun

Yesterday, Apple released iOS 9, which adds the ability to do “content blocking” to Safari and most other apps that show web content. Not coincidentally, dozens of content blocking apps were also launched, most focused on eliminating web ads. Then the Internet exploded as ad-supported content creators squared off against hordes of angry users who saw the beauty of an ad-free mobile web experience.

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At the center of this skirmish was Marco Arment and his ad-blocking iOS app, Peace. Marco created a simple and highly-effective app that leveraged the Ghostery database of web ads, trackers, and other cruft. The availability and efficacy of Peace was touted by influential folks and it quickly rose to be one of the top-selling apps in the iOS app store. I bought it, I loved it, and I shared it.

Then a funny thing happened: The pundits realized that ad-blocking software might threaten their ad-supported livelihood. And they turned against ad-blocking generally (and Marco specifically) in droves. Suddenly Apple and Marco were going to kill the web, sending the children of good and noble content creators into the streets, penniless, shoeless, and hopeless.

Marco caved. Others didn’t.

The Cesspool of Ads

There are a few elements of this tale that should cause alarm:

  1. Web advertising was always a faustian bargain – No one would agree to be party to today’s ad-supported web, but they’re opted in by publishers who want the money. The annoying and misleading images are only the visible face of a privacy-invading machine that tracks everything we do online.
  2. Web ads are awful – Users hate ads and have trained their brains to ignore them, so advertisers resort to ever-more intrusive and obnoxious ways to collect clicks. Too many web sites are simply honeypots to collect as many “impressions” as possible, and even the “good” sites are littered with trackers.
  3. It’s a bottomless barrel – The intermediaries who place ads on the web sell unfilled “inventory” to others, further down the stack. Even if a publisher wants to avoid the bottom of the barrel and place only good, relevant ads on their site, they have no control over the secondary and tertiary market for their space. The dregs will surface, and they’re pretty horrible.
  4. The ad-supported web is untenable – Ad revenue has declined so dramatically that it’s almost impossible to build a sustainable business based on web site display advertising. A publisher has to be lean or mean to make it work, but how long will it last?

Everyone who lives in this ad-supported world understands these things but they live with them because the lure of money is too tempting. A few have broken out of the mold, trusting good ad networks like The Deck, making a living off feed sponsorships like John Gruber, or selling value-added services like Ben Thompson.

The Question for Enterprise IT Bloggers

In our niche of enterprise IT, there has been almost a decade of head scratching by bloggers and would-be advertisers alike. How should a storage or networking company advertise? Should a niche blog have ads?

Enterprise IT companies can try to go through the big, conventional display ad machine, buying impressions from the big guys. They’re hoping that the vaunted targeting capabilities work, and aren’t just corporate spam like a billboard at an airport or logo on a Formula One car. They can also buy ads on individual sites, but it can be tedious to work with dozens of individuals and the results can be hard to measure.

Many bloggers just threw up their hands and removed the ads from their sites. The income just wasn’t worth the effort. Some also faced the backlash from readers who were exposed to poor or misleading ads washing up from the bottomless barrel. And then there was the criticism they faced when readers assumed that an ad would tilt the balance of their editorial independence.

When bloggers ask me about web advertising, I like to share my own experiences, which have mostly been negative. I removed all of the ads from my sites and focused instead on value-added services. But curated ads and relevant blog sponsorship isn’t a bad idea, as long as everyone strikes a realistic balance between revenue and outcome. Regardless, I’m not at all worried about the rise of web content blocking generally or ad blocking in particular. It’s just not my battle.

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Creating Web-Friendly Collateral For Product Launches

Does your press kit include useful content for bloggers?

These days, every company wants blogs to cover their product announcements. After all, most customers rely on a Google search as their primary source of product research and increasingly trust blogs more than traditional media outlets. Guy Chapman’s excellent “how-to” for corporate content on Wikipedia (trust me, it’s a must-read!) brought to mind one key area where many corporate marketers still fall short: Product launch collateral. Even as they increasingly turn to bloggers for coverage, marketers still rely on the same stale “press kit” components from yesteryear. This new media world needs a new kind of collateral!

Blog-Friendly Messaging

One way to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to news sources is their reliance on press releases. Sites that routinely copy and paste whole paragraphs from press releases (or even the entire release) are cutting corners and losing relevance. Readers know it, and marketers should, too. These sites aren’t really blogs; they’re platforms for banner ads. Consider what this says about the content of press releases. If they’re providing content for sites to use verbatim, then they’re targeting the wrong ones.

Instead of the same old list of executive quotes, product announcements should provide the information writers need to cover an announcement:

  1. The basic facts: Product and company name along with version number or identifier
  2. What is it? What does it do?
  3. What’s new or different from previous products?
  4. How does it compare with competing products or otherwise fit into the market?
  5. Pricing: How much does it cost? Give ball-park figures at least, and don’t low-ball it with unrealistic configurations

Like conventional reporters, bloggers are looking for a “lede” – a concise statement they can build on when they write. Tell them what they need to get thinking and working rather than trying to feed them fully-formed thoughts and quotes.

Must-Haves For Web Coverage

Press releases aren’t dead and can be a useful summary for modern writers, but it’s amazing how many lack the basics. How can we properly cover a product without a URL? How can readers engage with a company without Twitter, Facebook, or other web links?

Every press release should include these web-friendly features:

  1. A unique, short, and consistent URL for this release. Readers want to click through to the product they’ve been reading about, and marketers want to lead them right to it. So why do so many press releases lack a product URL or lack a web address entirely?
  2. Tell us where readers can interact with the company itself. Many corporations now have official Twitter accounts, a topic to be covered later, and these should be included in every announcement. The same goes for corporate blogs or Facebook pages.
  3. Media content should be covered by an open license. Like Guy Chapman, I prefer the CC-by-SA license since it allows me to legally use and adapt your photos for my blog. Non-commercial or non-derivative licenses are right out. I won’t use content covered by these!
  4. We can’t use “confidential” material! Corporations are so used to tagging everything “confidential” that everyone seems to have forgotten what that really means. If that is included in every slide, we can’t use them to illustrate our coverage.

Sure, not everyone pays attention to licenses and confidentiality. But not everyone abides by embargoes or writes original content, either. Corporations can cater to the hacks or instead focus on the best and brightest. We all know who has the best audience!

Blog-Friendly Collateral: Photos and More

"Environmental" shots like this one by Iomega shot give readers a real-world feel for products

The web is a visual medium, and video is rapidly gaining value as well. Plain-text product announcements just don’t cut it anymore! Every company should post “media kits” online complete with photos, diagrams, and videos. As mentioned above, they should also make sure their license allows reuse and modification by writers

Companies should include a number of high-quality images with product announcements. The best press kits include a number of “hero” shots showing just the product as well as a few “environmental” shots to give us an idea of its place in the world. Check out the excellent shots provided by Iomega, for example. Photographers: Make sure the product doesn’t blend into the background: Black boxes in coal bins aren’t that attractive!

Product materials should also illustrate unique capabilities with useful diagrams. Many high-tech products are difficult to comprehend, and a clear illustration goes a long way. Don’t include too much text on these, either: A writer will likely have their own angle on the technology and won’t want to compete with canned text. For example, Cisco does a great job of illustrating complex networking concepts.

As video becomes more popular, many vendors are including these as well. It’s best to post videos to public sites like Vimeo or YouTube so writers can embed it without having to host it on their own servers. And a few short videos about different concepts beats a single all-encompassing video any day. Apple does a great job of producing these short videos, though they host them at their own site.

A New Kind Of Press Kit

Rather than the same old press release, why not try something different? Include web-friendly features, from URLs to videos, and roll everything in a license that allows reuse and the quality of coverage will improve!

Image credit: Photos inside by tanakawho

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Our New Thing Is Awesome (‘Cause Our Old Thing Sucked)

New product releases always expose dirty laundry

Isn’t it funny how marketers feel the need to promote their new products by degrading their old ones. It’s inevitable, really, that improvements highlight shortcomings, but it just becomes so glaring sometimes. Is there a right and wrong way to go about messaging an upgrade?

It Goes Without Saying

Product upgrades ought to improve on the shortcomings of the past, or you have a serious case of “the update treadmill” on your hands. In fact, if there’s no dirty laundry aired in the new version’s unveiling, you ought to consider whether an upgrade is really required!

Many bugs and shortcomings are widely publicized. Microsoft didn’t need to worry about devaluing Windows Vista when they talked about Windows 7 because the damage had already been done. It’s safe to air this laundry because everyone has already seen it!

Was It Really That Bad?

But what happens when you introduce a new product (or version) that addresses issues that weren’t widely known? Let’s consider a few tactics to introduce improved products.

Tactic: We have always been at war with Eurasia

This is the typical Apple/Steve Jobs tactic. Announce the new product and totally ignore the negatives of the old product. When the fifth-generation iPod Nano gained a camera, Steve Jobs lauded this as a major upgrade and tech sites heralded the demise of Cisco’s Flip video camera. But when the sixth-generation iPod Nano was introduced the very next year, Jobs glossed over the fact that the camera was AWOL. It’s like it never existed.

The “war with Eurasia” tactic requires extreme discipline and control, and getting users to believe it requires a reality-distortion field that few can pull off. If successful, it puts a shine on the brand, showing progress without exposing weakness.

Tactic: Even Better!

What do you do if you need to continue selling and maintaining the old product even while you’re introducing the new one? Head to “even better” land!

This is commonly seen in “durable goods” sales pitches, since it’s perilous to alienate users of your previous product. Jet airliner manufacturers have perfected this pitch, focusing on the positives of the old while building on them for the new. Examine Boeing’s press releases regarding the 787 Dreamliner and you’ll see lots of comparative adjectives like “higher, wider, and larger” and talk of “improvements“. You’ll also see careful comparisons with past products, building on them without tearing them down.

It takes care and work to massage a message like this, but it is critical if you want to continue sales and confidence in your old product.

Tactic: Parade of Progress

Many marketers try to focus on the positives while putting the old product in the rear-view mirror. Knock it down while at the same time pointing out the qualities you’re building on.

The General Motors “Parade of Progress” was typical of this approach, and automakers continue with this tactic even today. Since so much of their revenue depends on selling “all-new” products, car companies routinely exaggerate the newness of their wares. This hit a pinnacle in the planned obsolescence tactics that became widespread in the mid-20th century. Vendors are more careful today, but echoes can be seen in many durable but replaceable product sales.

Tactic: Out with the old, in with the new!

Disposable products benefit from a completely different sales approach. Examples are numerous, from household products to electronics, but obsolescence is one thing they all have in common: The “new and improved” sale requires ditching the “old and faulty” product post haste. Why would anyone want to buy it when the shiny new model is here? Who cares if a new soap formula makes the old one unsaleable?

But this approach is perilous for more-durable products. Pointing out the flaws in systems that will continue to be sold and used for years devalues more than the products themselves: It raises questions about the people and processes that selected them in the first place!

Startup companies often try to blow away the status quo, but this approach rarely succeeds. New products have to coexist, and swaying buyers by attacking their choices is a good way to be shown the door.

What’s Your Plan?

Selecting the appropriate marketing strategy requires consideration of many things. What kind of market are you entering? Are products durable or disposable? Do you have the attention of the world or are you trying to get noticed?

Enterprise technology companies should be especially careful about tearing down the status quo, and should caution their “public faces” against this. It’s all well and good to trumpet your new features, but listing the shortcomings of yesterday’s widely-used products just leads to ill-will.

Image credit: Laundry by tashalutek