Mary,
I like this. You correctly conclude that the chaff :: wheat ratio
is insanely high.
Chris S.
On 2/18/2013 1:39 PM, Mary Hodder
wrote:
"
type="cite">
Hi,
Taking a cue from calculating the options for places for humans to
live outside earth:
The Drake equation states
where:
- N = the
number of civilizations in
our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e.
which are on our current past light cone);
BUT calculated for the
number of planets that can support life as we know it:
- N* = the number of stars
in the milky way
- fp = the fraction
of those stars that have planets
- ne = the average
number of planets that can potentially support life per
star that has planets
- fℓ = the fraction of the
above that actually go on to develop life at some point
- fi = the fraction
of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
- fc = the fraction
of civilizations that develop a technology that releases
detectable signs of their existence into space
- L =
the length of time for which such civilizations release
detectable signals into space.
Then N = 100x109 × 100% x 4% x 13% x 10%
x 10% x 1% = 52,000 space bearing civilizations (a scientific
guess)
SOOOO What does this have to do with
Ads?
Change the equation to calculate Ad Relevance to the average
person (not factoring for class or choices):
N = the times a
person might find a relevant ad that could possibly affect their
decision in the "now"
N* =
the pools of available "nows" per day per person
fp =
the fraction of those "nows" that a person can give attention
= ((3.2 attention hours / 16) x X/100) = 20%
ne =
the average number of ads that can be shown online at any
given moment (per my discussion with an Ad person last week
who said they have a pool of 1000 ads they can show)
fℓ =
the fraction of the above that actually go on to be shown at
any given "now" moment
fi =
the fraction of the above that are likely to be intelligently
targeted based upon behavioral information from the site an
individual is on
(per the ad person I talked with who said
behavioral data from their own site and app use gives a 2%
lift)
fc =
the fraction of the above that are likely to be intelligently
targeted based upon personal information from other sites
(per the ad person I talked with who said
personal data gives a 2% lift)
L = the length of time for
which behavioral and personal data information is relevant
to the individual (my guess).
N = 19,200 × 20% x 1000 x .001 x
2% x 2% x 1% = .01536 ads per now that could possibly be
relevant or every 68th ad they come across.
If 20% of
ads are Brand Ads.. then .0098304 ads per now could possibly
be relevant, or every 105th ad.
Ok.. this is
a joke.. and I made up numbers (or plugged in stats based upon
meetings recently with Ad people who told me the amounts of
times people click through -- like with personal data targets
or behavioral targets.. that 2% of the time there is "lift,")
so yes, I'm basically making this whole calculation number up,
but it doesn't seem too far off.... feel free to refine this.
However, I
could be persuaded that every 105th ad has a chance of being
relevant or providing something useful, outside of Brand Ads.
So that's a lot of waste for everyone involved.. and annoying
to individuals who have to wade through all that noise or
ignore much of their experience.
What if VRM
turned the whole thing around and got sellers connected to
seekers, researchers and buyers, every time instead of every
105th time?
:)
mary
On Feb 18, 2013, at 8:04 AM, Doc Searls wrote:
One additional
point: most of the time we aren't buying anything, or even
considering it. That also narrows the windows of "now."
But there are times we are shopping or buying — or
dealing with issues of ownership. Then what? Well, VRM
should be there to help with that.
Doc
On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:01 PM, Chris Savage <
">
>
wrote:
Well, a
couple of things that build on this.
1. I read of a psychological study that found
that the subjective experience of "now" lasts
about 3 seconds. That is, if you ask people about
whether some stimulus or whatever the researchers
were looking at was happening "now," the general
response was "yes" as long as the thing occurred
plus or minus 1.5 seconds or so of the time of the
asking.
2. This actually can be converted to a measure of
how much attention people have in a day. If at
each quantum of "now"-ness a person can only
effectively be attending to one thing, then in a
24-hour day, if we assume 16 are conscious and
available, that's roughly 19,200 "moments" of
"now" a person has each day.
3. Advertisers well know how to command
(literally, as in, what we are hard-wired for) our
attention: loud noises, quick movements, flashes
of light, attractive women (to get male attention)
etc. So, on the "tragedy of the attention
commons" I was postulating earlier, what we have
is a large but non-infinite number of
opportunities for folks who want our attention, to
grab it. By going from traditional print to the
Internet, we have created a lot more opportunities
for that. There are 19,200 "nows" per day per
person, that can input either signal or noise.
Increasing ads (including directed ads) means more
noise and less signal, net. Key point: The
pool of available attention is very limited.
(Note: if it's really 3.2 hours per week, that's
only about 3,840 moments-of-attention available.)
That very limited pool is what more and more
advertisers are trying to colonize. So it's no
wonder, it seems to me, that people are both
building taller defenses and getting more
exhausted in maintaining them.
4. There are some behavioral economic studies
being done by a guy at MIT that analogies the
lives of people in poverty that indicates that
their choices are harder to make than
non-poor folks, in an analogy to what is called
the "suitcase problem." Suppose you are packing
for a weekend trip, and you have a very large
suitcase. Packing is easy: you put in stuff you
know you'll need and stuff you might need. Very
little mental effort. Now imagine going on a
one-week trip and all you are allowed is one
carry-on-size bag. Now you have a hard problem:
you have to decide what is essential and what
isn't, what has to go in first in order to make
sure everything will fit, etc. It's a harder
mental task (which various studies have shown
truly use up biological energy). The MIT guy
points out that the entire task of facing the
economy is, for a poor person, like trying to pack
for a week-long trip with too small a suitcase:
the suitcase is their money, and the clothes,
etc., to go in, are their needs. Every day is
mentally exhausting for poor people, because poor
people actually have to do a lot more mental work
to get through a day than does a middle-class or
rich person.
5. A similar phenomenon occurs with the issue of
allocating our attention. Figuring out what is
signal and what is noise takes work, and it takes
more and more work the more noise there is -- like
listening to your favorite radio station as you
drive further and further away on the
long-distance highway. It gets scratchier and
fuller with static, but if you keep listening
harder (interesting idiom there...)
you can still hear what they are saying. With
more and more informational static being thrown at
us for our 19,200 "nows" per day, it takes lots of
mental work just to try to keep focused on what
actually matters in a life (kids ... job ...
spouse ... spiritual practice ...
hobbies/interests). Fitting all of that into the
mental time suitcase can be really hard. Adding
all the noise makes it harder.
Do advertisers ever think in terms of their
effects on a limited, shared resource, aka, my
brain cycles?
Chris S.
2/17/2013 5:07 PM,
Iain Henderson wrote:
"
type="cite">
Thanks Katherine, your point re number of hours
in the day reminded me of a key quote sent to
the list a few months back (by Richard Bates,
Consumer Focus, UK).
“Consumers are however pressed for time
and spend on average only 3.2 hours a week
on all consumer tasks. To ensure that
consumers remain empowered in the face of
the growing information overload and
increasing lack of time for shopping, new
shortcuts and comparison tools need to be
found.”
That quote came from a research study
across more than 55,000 individuals, so pretty
robust. European Commission Staff Working
Paper (2011): Consumer Empowerment in the EU
(SEC [2011] 469 final), Brussels: European
Commission – http://bit.ly/J45aRl
Add to that, one of the main effects of The
Internet on the individual being that they
typically have an awful lot more supplier/
service provider relationships to manage than
they did before, and you therefore have a huge
volume of 'permissioned' advertising being
squeezed into what amounts to a very small
amount of time.
In that respect, our job is to build tools
that help get a better return out of those 28
minutes, and maybe even one day increasing the
time spent because the return on it is much
improved.
Iain
3.2 hours a week is 192 minutes, or almost
28 mins per day.
On 17 Feb 2013, at 15:28, Katherine
Warman Kern <
">
>
wrote: Sylvan and
Chris,
As a practicing planner who takes
pride in being a trusted advisor, I'd
like to share some insights from the
perspective of my clients.
The reality the consumer has an
overabundance of choices and a
marketer has an overabundance of tools
to choose from.
But the number of hours in a day to
make those choices has remained
exactly the same.
As the number of choices have
increased, the odds that bad choices
are made increases.
Share of Voice, as many measuring
sticks, is flawed from the start
because there is no truly accurate way
to measure or project it. One
marketer can spend the same amount of
dollars much more effectively than
another. And since few marketers
publish their mistakes, no one really
knows what really happened. In fact
most published accounts of marketing
case studies have very little
resemblance to what really happened.
I continue to be shocked that no new
entry capitalizes on digital
technology and social media to offer
an improvement over Nielsen to monitor
integrated marketing in real time.
K-
Katherine Warman Kern
www.comradity.com
@comradity
203-918-2617
On Feb 17, 2013, at 9:37 AM, sylvain
willart
"><
>
wrote:
This "tragedy
of the commons" made me think when
you first posted about it.
The sheep example you mention is
well-studied in economic game
theory,
and there are some writings as well
in Public Economics sudies dealing
with scarce resources,
But I very rarely read this kind of
thinking in advertising/marketing.
Only perhaps in "Store Wars"
(Corstjens & Corstjens , 90's).
Actually,
the hypothesis of the consumer brain
being a scarce resource is
sometimes discussed, but never
measured. And media planning relying
heavily on measures and metrics,
this hypothesis does not well fit in
traditional approaches.
Moreover, you can expect people to
protect scarce natural resources
(even if they loose direct
advantage) for the sake of a "bigger
cause"
involving altruism (a long studied
effect in game theory); but who
really cares about the exhaustion of
conusmer brain? there is nothing
here a good night of sleep can't
fix... (the consumer himself may be
the only one to care, hence the
importance of VRM tools IMHO).
Media planning is also competitive
by nature, and while planning you
have to care more about your
competitors' expenses than your
consumers' ability to process all
those ads. An important metric in
media planning is for example the
"share of voice" (your expenses
divided by the market expenses),
perhaps the dumbest metric ever
invented, as it is known from long
it is not robust at all (meaning it
can lead you to make stupid planning
choices)
The entropy hypothesis however may
be quite appealing, and this metric
is often used in other field of
marketing (for measuring variety of
assortments for example). I'll try
to dig into it to see wether it has
been used in
advertising/intrusiveness research.
Sylvain
2013/2/17 Chris Savage
"><
>:
Sylvain,
Thank you, this is very helpful.
I will ponder a bit more.
I have mentioned, perhaps on this
list, my sense that there is a
"tragedy of
the commons" effect going on among
those who would sell me stuff.
Just like
in the Garrett Hardin story where
each shepherd looks at the common
field
and thinks, "Oh, letting one or
two extra sheep from my flock
graze won't
e-mail:
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blog: www.iainhenderson.info
twitter: @iainh1
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