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Re: [projectvrm] Signalling Intent


Chronological Thread 
  • From: James Pasquale < >
  • To: Peter Cranstone < >
  • Cc: Doc Searls < >, Kevin Cox < >, ProjectVRM list < >
  • Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Signalling Intent
  • Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2013 10:45:40 -0500
Peter,

This is one of the best insightful post in a longtime from the business modeling side of the equation. Picking up on Johannes recent comment “There no such thing as free” I’ve been pounding that home to our children all their lives.  Everything is a trade.

Great post Sir.

/jp 
On Dec 14, 2013, at 10:32 AM, Peter Cranstone < "> > wrote:

Doc,

Some food for thought…

Lets first stipulate that the adtech business is clueless, but they are a clueless business that generates billions in revenue a year and employees 100’s of thousands of people. For VRM to have an meaningful impact it must effect that ecosystem in a positive fashion e.g. More money and more jobs. 

Now lets look at the current signaling ecosystem and who controls the money.
  1. Apple & Microsoft control the desktop operating systems
  2. Apple & Google & Microsoft control the mobile operating systems
  3. Apple & Google & Microsoft control the ad revenue from search
  4. Microsoft & Google &  Apache control the web servers
  5. Apple & Google & Microsoft control the browsers
(See a theme here?)

Now lets look at mobile…
  1. Apple, Google & Microsoft control the operating systems and you have to use their ad engines. You cannot plugin to their browsers to divert revenue away from them
  2. Apple, Google & Microsoft control the mobile browsers and also the apps that go on their PLATFORMS
What devices do consumers currently use to signal intent?
  1. Mobile followed by desktop
    • On mobile ads are primarily delivered by apps and on the desktop by the browser
Summary…
  • Google, Microsoft and Apple control the entire ecosystem that creates the conduit for advertisers to make MONEY. It’s a symbiotic relationship where one hand washes the other. The consumer is addicted to this ecosystem via FREE services. Think of this as financial engineering at it’s finest (well except for Wall Street which runs at a whole other level)

Now lets examine VRM’s challenge…

You have to provide the consumer with a new signaling method. The only way that the consumer will switch to this new method is if it does something for them which is better than the current approach. There’s ONLY ONE place that you can insert that signaling method and that’s the browser. Why? Because on mobile you cannot get into the app which is tied to the ad servers directly via either Google, Apple or Microsoft.The whole notion of plugins on a mobile browser is destabilizing is BS.

Don’t believe me? Then fire up your smartphone and tell me how you’re going to send a new signal to an advertiser? The current method is that you’ll build an app - great idea, but that costs money to scale across multiple platforms and just from the FUSE example you can see these apps are more about a single feature versus a complete solution. Bottom line - lots of costs, and no way to capture revenue because you have to go through the Big 3’s ad engines. Also there’s no way for the current 100’s of millions of ‘Long Tail’ content providers who ad share revenue with the big three to participate in your scheme.

So how do you change a consumer who is addicted to FREE and a Ad revenue ecosystem that is addicted to MONEY? 

And the answer - build a better signaling method that makes MORE MONEY for advertisers because that’s the only person who is ‘vested financially’ in this play. (The consumer is already getting everything for free). VRM is a great vision - but until it focuses on how to make money it will go nowhere. The second you come up with a new signaling intent mechanism that consumers can be incentivized to use (by better ads) then it takes off.

And there’s ONLY one place that you put that signaling solution and that’s INSIDE the protocol that runs the entire ecosystem that CONNECTS ALL of the players (billions of them).  Good old fashioned HTTP. The ONE thing that nobody controls.

Can you build a new protocol like XDI to layer in on top of HTTP to do this? YES. But like any new protocol you have to A) give it away for free and B) get the ecosystem to use it (means all browsers, all apps and all web servers). That’s bloody hard work when the current ecosystem untouched already produces HUGE amounts of money.

So what do you do to get the VRM vision rolling on your way to a new protocol like XDI? 

Build a solution that supports BOTH protocols and then VALIDATE that with XDI support, VRM is better than with just plain HTTP i.e. You want GOOD then use HTTP, you want BEST then use XDI - but allow the ecosystem to chose the solution they want.

Whether you like or not you have to show the ecosystem more money. Otherwise you remain in the "adtech is drunk holding pattern” and they could care less what you say because they’re laughing all the way to the bank.




Peter


On Dec 13, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Kevin Cox < "> > wrote:

Peter,

I want to know how people can "say" it - not the mechanism.  Giving keywords is one way.  What ways are there for me to express my intentions?  Phil has given another way in his post http://www.windley.com/archives/2013/12/intention_generation_fuse_and_vrm.shtml

I am looking for ways for people to express their intentions.  They may not even know their intentions.  We want ways that a person can express themselves to save advertisers having to guess.

Kevin

We can start with intentions we know. There are lots of those. This is the example I give in The Customer as a God, in The Wall Street Journal. It's behind a paywall now, so I've attached a .pdf reprint.

Note that I did not sell that piece to the Journal. They asked for it. Specifically, the Editor-in-Chief read The Intention Economy, liked its premises, and wanted Journal readers — who are mostly on the selling side of the marketplace — to get the message.

We have to stop framing our thinking in terms of what-sellers-need-before-anything-can-happen and advertising — especially advertising of the personalized sort. The adtech business is drunk on the belief that they can infer what we want better than we can communicate it ourselves, because they have Big Data and Big Analytics. That they flunk the Turing Test 99+% of the time means nothing to them. Nor that the misses waste time, space and bandwidth.

There are some things only we — as individuals — can do, and say. We shouldn't work only on that, but it's the best place to start.

Doc

Easiest way is to have your app send a header that expresses the intent of the user.

User Interface for the App:
  • Checkbox on a custom field that the user can edit
What the Vendor sees as part of the users request:
  1. HTTP_X_MY_INTENT=BUYER
  2. HTTP_X_MY_AD_INTEREST=CARS
All the Vendor has to do is read the incoming headers (any web server script is capable of doing that) and then sending that data to the ad guys. 

User can control the content of the header/signal and whether or not to send it all.



Peter


(Note I have included Doc in the list to help him while he gets his emails sorted out)

I am looking for good ways for people to signal intent.  Here is the problem.

Assume you visit a website that earns its keep by providing a place for advertisers to put their ads.  When I go to the website I want to see ads that are relevant to me.  What are good ways for me to do this?  Google do it by looking at the words I have used in searches and the websites I have visited as a result of that search.  That is, easy for me and seems to work well in many cases.  However, what I have been searching for is often unrelated to my purchasing needs and often I have not searched.

Before I visit websites I could have a way of putting in keywords that express my interest in purchasing and would tell the website what ads, from their inventory of ads, are most relevant. 

What other methods are there to make it easy for me to signal intent to transact when I am doing unrelated activities like looking up the weather for the next week?

Kevin 


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