I saw the future of retail banking last week and it looked like nothing I had ever seen. Just as Starbucks transformed the coffee drinking experience by providing the notion of a third place, Capital One is transforming the notion of a bank branch and human interaction. It’s not about Banking Capital One took the […]
Continue Reading...Mobile Apps Decimate Video Pre-Roll
The spiraling drop in ad rates is only one part of the overall erosion of the monetization of short form video. The user experience of mobile apps run contrary to the goal of the pre-roll business. The other shoe to drop is that mobile apps decimate video pre-roll frequencies. Pre/Post-roll = Butter for the Video […]
Continue Reading...Squash and Startups
There are a number of similarities between the game of squash (softball) and running a startup. Great squash players often make great startup ceo’s because of the kind of issues that face both activities. Squash’s background Squash was invented in Harrow School out of the older game racquets around 1830 before the game spread to other schools, […]
Continue Reading...Mobile ROI 2014
I had the privilege to moderate a first class Mobile ROI 2014 panel of mobile startups in Manhattan and came away with a number of key perspectives that will influence the mobile wave going forward. The panelists included executives from: Action X — mobile customer acquisition and mobile retargeting Medialets – next generation mobile and tablet advertising platform […]
Continue Reading...Yelp Reviews Inaccurate at Best — Disservice to the Internet at Worst
Yelp is one of the properties that online businesses need to manage. But be afraid. Yelp reviews are inaccurate at best and a disservice to the Internet because it presents itself as open, transparent and accurate. What magnifies this problem is that Google has not figured this out and ranks Yelp pretty high in Google […]
Continue Reading...Series A Crunch, 38 Studios and Investors: When the Going Gets Tough
The Series A crunch and the 38 studios debacle have lots of parallels even though the money raised by 38 was huge. Because it barely got a first product out, it parallels many of the challenges that seed companies currently face. I have had this post in my drafts folder for quite a long time and […]
Continue Reading...QR Codes Fail: Online Customer Contract Flawed
“When 29-year-old manufacturing worker Michael Hellesen sees a Quick Response code around his hometown of Racine, Wis., he sometimes scans it using an application he downloaded to his Google (GOOG)Android smartphone. More often than not, it takes Hellesen to a brand’s website. “About 80 percent of the time, I’m disappointed that I scanned it,” Hellesen says. “Mostly […]
Continue Reading...Mobile Measurement Failure: Comscore, Moody’s and the Tyranny of Standards
The news release that Comscore now includes mobile measurement is plain and simply embarrassing. Mobile usage has been around since 2008 and growing exponentially since then. Mobile measurement has been in Google Analytics since Oct 2009.. Many of the sites at Alloy have been witnessing 30% mobile penetration since early last year. How was Comscore allowed to […]
Continue Reading...Toyota: Great Product Versus Discounting
Product Greatness Not Category Determines Customer Sensitivity to Price The car industry has been rife with discounting for years. We consumers have been conditioned to expect discounts on cars. Whole businesses have developed to exploit this conditioning behavior. But… Toyota posts amazing sales growth in April 2012 without any discount programs. How is this possible? Circumstances […]
Continue Reading...Crowdsourcing Style In-Store, by Customers
We all know about the impact that online user interfaces are having on style curation. Instead of relying on a bunch of stylists to decide what and how we wear our clothes, the internet is crowdsourcing style by customers and users. Numerous fashion sites like Polyvore and Modcloth have done showing how powerful this engagement […]
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