Multi Channel Attribution

So, in this blog I try to make sure I only say things that Adobe cant do me for. In many cases its about Intellectual Property (i.e. things I've created whilst under their tenure).

Fortunately, most of what I come across is something that has been addressed elsewhere so whilst I may worry about a legal suit from SPSS their focus is elsewhere. Talking about Multi Channel attribution does not leave me worried about the legal giants at Adobe.

So here's the lowdown.

1) Have you got a multi-channel (online) problem. e.g. does PPC clash with SEO and affliates. Find out and size it. You really may not have a problem at all. No, really. Do this before you buy something you regret.

2) Be all means try a bit of time series. Have a look at consumption of channels over time and see if that correlates with anything that happens on your website. From that think of something that you can actively change as a result. Good luck with that.

3) Dont even think about some crazy weighting system that allots some figure based on time or the number of interactions between it and something else like a purchase. Its really naff. BTW how are you going to pick your weights?

4) Very simply, work out for a given time frame, what is the likelihood of any channel/campaign whatever to lead to a conversion if its the only thing a customer sees/clicks on. You then look at how this compares to the figures when an customer clicks on another campaign/channel etc. Now you've got to spot/calculate whether any stand out, i.e. the likelihood to convert increases if certain things occur together rather than if they were alone.

And that aint Adobe IP. We did that at SPSS across "true" multichannel.

Oh, and once you've done all that and found a relationship, think about what that actually means in terms of "action". What can you actually influence in terms acquisition for customers that you know something about? Some things are possible but not as easy as you think...

When people pay you to tell them they are wrong

Being a consultant can be tricky, particularly when you work in areas like analytics, rather than in a strict technical capacity.

Customers want you to come in and tell them how to improve their business, how to make those incremental uplifts in their business to make them look good to the boss.

What they don't like is when you point out a glaring issue that has been overlooked or perhaps misunderstood.

I'm talking about those people who believe high correlations between key KPIs mean they should break out the champers. (people should look at how things are correlated and what the connection means)

I'm talking about online marketers doing a great job spending loads of money on online marketing only to find 98% of purchases are from customers dropping directly on the site or who perhaps are existing customers that would have come to the site regardless of the "lookup" in the google phonebook.

I'm talking about the person who hasn't noticed the big errors firing all over the site when a customer tries to make a purchase.

I'm talking about the designer who seems to actively want you to start the purchase process every single time the customer enters something wrong in the application form.

I'm talking about the people who for the past 10 years have read the wrong number on a chart.

I get paid to explain where they might be going wrong.

I'm not always asked back.

My current questions

Why put content on your website for free if you can make customers pay for it via apps?

Is online marketing popular because its "trackable", not because its actually any good?

Are most online marketing plans really reflective of a good "strategy" or a series of ill connected activities that ensure this years budget gets spent?

How do you measure whether a campaign has been executed well?

If a campaign is connected a purchase it wasn't supposed to, is that a bad thing?

Do some countries have more billboards because the advertising works in those countries or because of lax planning laws combined with the annoying attitude that everything should be regarded as an opportunity?

How do you measure the difference between a link that was clicked because it reflected user intention vs. clicking just because it was there?

If you've got dull/nasty terms and conditions/prerequisites to a purchase, when is best to present this to a customer in their purchase "funnel"?

When should a product define its market or a market define a product?

Is google going to make a lot more money through its new Instant search by showing PPC ads whilst a user formulates their search terms?

Comscore to buy Nedstat

So the consolidation is happening.

Nedstat offers a EU presence to the US company Comscore = EU market & Key customers, less about the specific technology.

Recent success would suggest a resurgent Nedstat. Regardless of the price of their offering, in my mind they will have to invest heavily into the product and services department to make it truly appealing to a wide number of customers (a couple of big deals will leave their current services swamped and unable to provide adequate service).

Webtrends still to go - wh'os it going to be?

What next? I don't think its just the analytics vendors, what about the providers of other services? email? video? etc. I wonder what will be next...

Mobile Apps, haven't we been here before?

Ack, how annoying.

The phrase post little and often is a good one. I've had an idea brewing in my head for a bit and then someone goes and publishes something similar in a manner that far exceeds anything I could do.

So I will come back to this once I gather my thoughts on the matter. In the meantime I'll share an curious thought that I was having recently.

I've been pulled into some mobile app tracking and have found the similarities between the issues facing mobile tracking and the early attempts at web tracking.

Web: Early days were log files, and these were determined by the servers - there was no "JavaScript" tagging - i.e. a free method of tracking that would work on almost any site with any browser. There was a big struggle to define "pages" as server requests would record everything. Users accessed these servers through proxies and caches. People didn't really know what they should / shouldn't be measuring.

New Mobile Apps: No JavaScript. Activities performed offline require a log to store activity. There is no consistent method of logging this information or indeed what to log. Pages aren't clear, many apps have clicks and actions, some apps allow content to be downloaded fully and viewed at leisure. Mobile devices operate behind content caches and mobile gateways. People really don't know what they should / shouldn't be measuring.

Seems to me like we're going to have the same old questions when tracking mobile applications.

"What's the definition of significant action?"
"Is there a common method/technology for logging content that does so accurately maintaining sequential and time information?"
"How do we know when some key piece of information is being viewed?"
"What do customers want?"

And all these go towards the bigger questions of "How will having an app improve my business?"

I would say that the good thing about apps at the moment are their limited scope. Because they arent like modern a "website", all singing all dancing, and because they have limited resources in which to work (bandwidth and memory) what they are trying to do with a customer is usually pretty direct and something that reflects key goals a customer is trying to achieve.

However this does mean we have the situation where each app probably has its own "significant actions", designed to work on a number of operating systems and devices, each with its own nuances. Each with its own "key metrics" that will make a difference to the business - so "cross-app cross-business" reporting will be difficult.

To me, this all feels like old school web analytics but with a newer technology.

Fast forward five years and our phones will all have stupid amounts of resource and similarly the applications will have become multi-faceted and probably as useless as many websites are today.

I just wish I was the new google/app aggregator of this world, the company that allows you to find the application your customers want and that you have to pay for the privilege of just being on the list, now that would be cool.

IBM to buy Unica

Well that's interesting.

We know IBM has been purchasing a lot in business intelligence, predictive analytics and campaigns making them a serious player (as if they ever weren't) across a lot of those areas.

The fact this deal comes hot on the heals of the Coremetrics purchase is interesting as I would have to assume they are buying Unica more for the campaign side of the business than the analytics side. Who knows...?

Either way, it means IBM really are becoming the main enterprise competitors for the Omniture business unit in Adobe.

And of course, who's going to buy Webtrends?

IBM bought Coremetrics

1) How soon before Webtrends get bought and by who - noone seemed to want to buy them a while back (SAP/Oracle/Autonomy/Microsoft?)

2) IBM should have a good end to end marketing message - realistically are there going combine Core with their other products (other than websphere) in any short time, I think not.

3) It doesn't change the current Core message. Coremetrics always traded on their close partnership with IBM. Unless IBM pump money into Core (which they wont) the offering will remain relatively the same - i.e. a relatively underfunded and underdeveloped solution that makes sense only due to its ties with other products.

4) I do hope that IBM's process, acumen and money does bring some good fortunes for Core, they've seemed to be in a mess for a while.

I'm a fan of diversification. I hope this is good for the industry.

My concern is that a significant vendors strides forwards in this space will actually be hampered as IBM take their eye of the ball.

I predict Webtrends will get purchased in the next 6 months and then within the space of 3 years there will be a new diversification of analytics companies hanging their hat on something slightly different, my guess is it will be the social media / mobile phone apps trendy bunch who will go through that "lets build a company, lets get data, what do we do with it now? lets sell the company" cycle, maybe IBM will buy them too.

Phone Apps of interest

I don't have a fancy mobile phone.

If I did would it change my life?

I think in some ways it could. The potential is huge.

The potential is a wide as it was for the internet in the mid nineties.

But the web is full of a lot of shit and I'm guessing apps will be too. I would probably spend a lot of time doing relatively useless crap.

I was trying to think what apps would change the way I'd do things, what would actually change my behaviour rather than some flash in the pan gimic.

What would combine data collection, photography, GPS and data available from the internet that would keep me interested?

I hate filling in forms. I really do.

I was wondering what industries use a lot of forms that really put me off.

I didn't think of anything glamorous.

I thought of insurance.

I wondered how hard would it be to photo a receipt or item that you buy and upload it to you home contents insurance? I know I've got stuff not covered simply because I haven't got round to filling the form in stating I've purchase it. I'd be willing to pay that little extra to my premium or app just to know I've got everything covered.

I wondered how hard would it be to upload details at the time of a car crash/ incident. You could show impact and GPS location whilst swapping details with the other person via bluetooth. Now I don't think this would be a big seller, but it could have a great impact (no pun intended) as there are accidents everyday and people get stressed and forget what to do, an app could take them through the steps. Think of it as customer service.

I wondered about local government (after being inspired by this website) there must be so many different applications that could make a difference.

I will get a smart phone, honest. I just might wait for another 5 years before the less glamorous industries catch up so that I can then start using apps that would really make a difference to my life.

What would be my perfect advert for a Web company?

So here am I thinking

1) Most companies are trying to get people to their websites
2) Online advertising is supposed to attract some of the most creative people in agencies
3) TV advertising is supposed to be dead

And yet...

What television advertising do we get in the UK for online businesses and what format does it take? Surely a web business doesn't need the TV.

But lets see.

1) Fat opera singer - gocompare.com
2) Moonpig.com - moonpig.com
3) Alexander the meerkat - comparethemarket.com
4) We buy any car.com -webuyanycar.com

Non of these are sophisticated.

They rely on catchy sight and sound to create a meme that gets stuck in your head (and I feel they have worked very well much to my disgust).

Now, I expect this is because the best way to get brand awareness for something new, a jingle, a bit of alliteration and a wacky character. The message / service delivered by the advert is less important than getting the catchy tag line that someone will recognise in another occasion.

Is this any different to other TV ads? Well the established brands seem to think they don't need the catchiness to help (honda advert, mcdonalds, cadburys).

Whilst the brand kings have their own approach, I think the newer web advertising represents a renaissance in advertising that works and sticks in the memory - I'm thinking of the following:

Hello Tosh got a toshiba?
For mash get smash
Allwhites lemonade, I'm a secret lemonade drinker
Do the shake and vac...

These were catchy.
We still remember these.
I think that's what the web companies are doing - they are the new pinnacle of advertising and we'll be thinking about them 20 years from now.

If you asked me to advertise for a web company I would do the following

a) create a short jingle
b) create a wacky character
c) use alliteration in a catchphrase that refers to the website
d) Quite a lot (saturation) of advertising on telly (the dead medium)

Basically, a 20 second musical equivalent of "Little Britain" - That is the unfortunate, but effective, pinnacle of advertising for any new brand.

p.s. my actual personal preference for adverts are using those with an intriguing visual with a good soundtrack. Dunlop introduced me to the velvet underground, for which I'm extremely grateful, Cadburys (already mentioned), Most of Levi's in the 80's and 90's and a good proportion of the VW adverts from the same period.

Moneyball - not read it, just blogs about it.

Recently, 3 of the bloggers I read have all referenced Moneyball.

Dave Trott
TAC
ITIABTWC
Ben Gaines

What struck me is
a) Herd mentality is everywhere, not just baseball, not just advertising - just look at the causes of the recent financial problems
b) Getting the "right" numbers to measure your key activity is hard, but that should not stop you thinking about it. The important thing is to make your the mechanisms/numbers you pick are better than everyone elses over the period you're interested in.

Dave Trott suggested its easier to analyse baseball than advertising as 'you win the game".

I'd go further. I'd say for all regular purposes, something like advertising & marketing are the outcome of a zero-sum game.

You may persuade better.

You may influence more.

But you cant "win" at advertising (but you can lose).

The same is true of marketing, running companies, buying stocks and shares, relationships, whatever.

You have three states you can be in:
1) better than previous
2) worse than previous
3) unable to take part

but you can never "win".

Teams clearly went for "big money" players - that was a strategy, the teams weighed up how much they could afford vs. what they thought the return would be.

What I assume "Moneyball" explains is a way a given team applied a strategy to beat their competition who were largely following the "big money" strategy for that period of time.

As a reference, "Moneyball" can now be used by everyone else to define their own version of that strategy.

Now in order to beat Moneyball, teams need another strategy.

But what is that? You can take "Moneyball" and derive some new metrics, you can apply some new calculations, you can try and squeeze the last drop of insight out of those numbers but I think these increases will have diminishing returns. At some point, someone else will have a different idea and it will be as revolutionary to "Moneyball" as it was to "big money".

I'm more interested in finding what this next big idea is.

I dont think its the "Big money" of facebook or social media, I don't think its the variations of "Moneyball" that the web analytics vendors are pushing with their various tools with their various numbers.

I dont think its about finding a new number to measure stuff by.

I think the next big thing will be working out how to combine "numbers" with information about the environment or competition and coming up with heuristics that will lead to being in a better position than you were previously based on combinations of factors of customers, environment and time.

There will be no set heuristics, but a library to pick from as environment will dictate which approach will may be better at any one time. Just like chess, there will be no single approach but there will be recognised approaches that a business "grand master" can skill fully wield.

I think it is defining these business "heuristics" that will be the next big thing for me and if it isn't then it will be something else and I aim to find it and write my own "Moneyball" and find myself "better than previous".

Trying not to complicate advertising and its analytics...

Got a great list of "breifs" from the ad aged blog

I like its simplicity.

I was looking at the list and wondering where analytics really fits into this process. I note that in some situations the best you can hope do is "Qualitative" research, which in many commercial situations really equates to saying "we're not sure what this all means but here's some numbers that might indirectly guide you a better understanding of your customer base".


Problem 1: Nobody knows who we are.
Brief: Create advertising that tells people who we are.
Analytics: Decide how to reach the most people. Measure "reach".

Problem 2: Nobody knows what we sell.
Brief: Create advertising that explains what we sell and how it helps.
Analytics: Survey target audience before and after (Qualitative)

Problem 3: We are being vastly outspent by much larger competitors.
Brief: Create advertising that gets at least as much attention as said much larger competitors.
Analytics: Identify and target audience with campaigns

Problem 4: We sell, essentially, a parity product. A product with no point of difference.
Brief: Create advertising that differentiates the company as superior.
Analytics: Target audience better than competitors

Problem 5: We are in a low-interest category.
Brief: Do something interesting.
Analytics: Nothing. Analytics wont tell you what's interesting. I'm sure you got try a survey or two (Qualitative)

Problem 6: Nobody knows how to use what we make or what it's for.
Brief: Create advertising that demonstrates the products.
Analytics: Survey (Qualitative)

Problem 7: My product is hard to get, so people don't try it.
Brief: Create advertising that makes the product easier to get.
Analytics: Survey (Qualitative)

With all of these I could have said "Analytics: measure if market share goes up" or "Analytics: measure if sales goes up". That's not analytics in my mind, that's just accounting and hoping that you can somehow connect any ups-and-downs with what you've been doing and not casually tying activity with success.

For me, this list suggests only half advertising can be directly influenced by good analytics. Often I find people sitting in one of the two camps, there's those that believe creativity & ideas drive everything and those that blindly believe only in the power of numbers.

I say its always ideas that drive things, numbers that optimise them and that we should use optimisation for inspiration, not for control.

Videos!

Find something you love and do it, dont waste time.

and here I am writing an blog on analytics...



And then look at this! the channels are merging - TV is not dead and it wont be for a long time yet but look at this practical example of merging the TV and online channel together!

This came from here but obviously somewhere else originally

And here's another, the great Douglas Adams giving a wonderful talk on conservationism from TED

Someone actually complimenting the Midlands...

Great blog post from Rory Sutherland about the new book from John Kay, both of who produce blogs I regularly read.

Being a west midland-er, I can only take this as a complement even if its not really based in any kind of facts.

Much better than the usual "brummies are boring" approach.

ps. the wolves were very unlucky not to beat the Villa this weekend but if you're not a midlander, you probably dont care either way...

Since when does RollingStone magazine do such good political journalism?

Take a look at these articles.

If these dont make you rant nothing will.

Wall Street is a mess
No really, its a BIG mess
Oh yeah, did no one explain? Its our mess
And who's sorting it out?

I know the stock market crash was "ages" ago and many books and articles have been written but these are pretty brutal and well written.

I think they ignore that through the ups and downs of the economy there are bound to be some winners and losers and given its the financial services industry we shouldn't really be shocked they have ties with upper government. Any bank coming out of this recent mess in any great shape could easily be painted as an evil monster, but still, the articles hardly suggest the game is fair does it?

Rebranding this blog

I'm rebranding.

I decided to change the name of this blog.

With the blog I initially wanted to get all my experiences down on electronic paper, so as new analytics and business software came out, I'd be able to say "been doing that for years" and that that would somehow grant me respect in the community and put me in a better position when job seeking in some future time. It was full of positivity with the hope of passing on some of the data mining experience I've had across many business, verticals and channels to other people.

Thing is I can write a lot about analytics, particular on the online channel but I really dont think anyones particularly interested in my take on things (which is mildly anti-establishment), and even if they were I dont do it often enough to maintain an audience.

Ok so I dont have an audience and am not actively marketing this blog, but seriously, the average person is not interested in how or why high end analytics or number crunching might help them in the online channel. The high end industry guru's are usually pretty useless and everything other than self promotion (IMO) and probably wouldn't like someone like myself contradicting the lovely little niches they've carved for themselves that provide them a living (and everyone's got to make a living, right?).

Basically, nothing I say is really about building a network or gathering an inane set of followers.

So this is it, the "Analytic Rant".

Because that it what it usually is.

I'll leave "Analytic" in the title but its really about any use of numbers in amazing or cretinous way. I'd like to make the blog bigger than "Analytics", talking more about how I see business as a whole and how analytics fits in. What I find I'm strong in is positioning how analytics can really work (or not as the case may be) in a business world where the vogue is to capture more and more data and numbers just becuase business media and software companies convince companies they ought to.

I've got to include "Rant" is in there becuase that's what I do. I rant. I write to rant. I rant to blow off some steam and thats about it. Even when I'm passionate about something I rant, usually becuase I'm amazed that the thing I like isn't more widespread that it is already - but on the whole, its the pretentious dumbasses out there than get me down and lead me to writing the very occasional post.

So thats it. A change in name, rebranding if you will.

I dont think thats going to be a problem.

The Big Idea - is it dead? No its just like Fraggle Rock

Inspired by another post I decided to make my own.


What I'm seeing a lot of is that the big ideas are often lost. The tactical roll out of smaller ideas performed in incremental measurable steps is commendable for being more scientific, but often they lose sight of the overall objective/customer segment they are trying to reach and only offer similar small incremental gains. Even when added together the gains are not enough to signify "game changing" activities. These incremental steps also often gain a life of there own and suddenly start driving the marketing activity they were supposed to serve in unwanted directions.

Technically, what happens is that these incremental changes reach a local minima, a place were few significant gains can be made in the direction you need and them begin to meander completely off track.

That being said, getting a person who believes in "big ideas" to appreciate that their wonderful idea has to be disseminated across multiple channels and that within those channels there are opportunities to optimise the overall tactics is not an easy task - but then again, they are the fraggles, colourful bright and inventive problem solvers, not the doozers who make things happen.

The critical thing for me is to have a big idea tied directly into the properties of a product that connects it with the key target audience and a plan for dissemination.

The big idea is not dead, we need our fraggles to keep being inventive and work with our bean counting doozers. Come on guys, lets find a way to let the music play down at Fraggle Rock!

We can do it (!/?)

In this article Dave Trott talks about the famous US "can do" attitude and compares it unfavourably to the UK attitude.

In New York, everything I got in trouble for in the UK was just what they wanted me to do.
Also, because America is a younger country it has a clean slate.
This gives it a ‘can do’ attitude.
If it’s a great idea let’s go for it.
As an older country, the UK has a ‘can’t do’ attitude.
This idea’s never been done before.
There must be a reason why no one’s done it.
So we’d better not take a chance.
Also I loved the anti-elitism of America.

I present the case for the defence...

Mobile usage is increasing, haven't you heard?

Another article from Omniture relating to the success of mobile.

Lets consider a few things:

1) Mobile usage is increasing, we all know it. Showing revenue increasing is comforting but not much in the way of news, its what we'd expect as the industry matures and stores provide more mobile commerce facilities.
2) Regarding the % of revenue derived from mobile devices. They mention 0.4% (wooo) - what I'd like to know is if there are any common factors where the increase has been highest - is it dependent on the product/vertical or technology (i.e. these retailers had improved their mobile facilities)?
3) Revenue growth outpacing page view growth, is that surprising? We don't want to be downloading loads of pages on our mobiles, perhaps the revenue growth out gunning page view growth can be explained alone by site improvements i.e. less pages in the purchase process. Although that is possible, I anticipate it is simply more people buying via mobile. Whereas before it was something new and people were browsing around the sites rather than buying, they are now purchasing. We are seeing increasing growth on an activity that was probably not very common in the first place.
4) The Iphone stat. I'd love to know what the % split of revenue is from Iphone apps to site browsing, that's surely one of the more interesting figures.

To find that the increased market share of smart phones in the population relates to increases in one of the activities they were aimed at (ecommerce) is not really much insight.

Its good that we're showing mobile is maturing and becoming an increasingly relevant player as an ecommerce channel, but I could have told you that just from asking my friends about their mobile usage - I don't really need the stats.

What I want is to know more about how to take the greatest advantage of this channel which I think is something missing within the blog post and an opportunity missed to demonstrate Omniture's value of tracking mobile devices - it really is a good idea!

So why should I post about something that isn't news? I just hope that the increase in mobile usage comforts you in this season of goodwill - it confirms what all those expensive trendy market analysts have been telling you would happen.

And lets face it, if you haven't got your site geared up for mobile its probably a bit too late to worry about how to gain that extra 0.3% in christmas revenue.

Happy mobile christmas!

Cool new blog: Rory Sutherland

Here's a chap who I like the sound of.

Rory Sutherland

Decribed by himself on twitter as the "Fat bloke at Ogilvy". That alone makes some interested but he does have some interesting viewpoints, wonderful turn of phrase and great presentation skills.

Take a look for yourself.



Thanks to Grumpy Brit for introducing me.

Death of Search?

So the ex CEO of Omniture has produced a blog post.

Its very interesting that it aims to deflate the search bubble, and lets face it, when we say search bubble, what we really mean is Google. To me its like a shot across the bows, a message of intent if you will.

I have for a long time believed that search is over emphasised as a mechanism for sales and I'd like to focus on this "retail" side of search for this blog. There's been a great number of experts encouraging customers to throw money at search - it is after all very "measurable". This "measurability" has made it easy for customers to present to their board and show how "effective" their campaigns have been. The conversion rates often aren't spectacular but when the CEOs compare this to the woeful effectiveness of banner advertising, its seems attractive. For CEOs, search conversion rates are accepted as being the cost of doing business online - an essential, just like your electricity bills.

However I dont think the competition from the new holy trinity of facebook, twitter and iphone that has convinced me of this.

I've consistently said is that search doesn't "sell" - search "finds".

If I'm looking for a company and cant find it through search this will definitely have impact my likelihood to buy from that company. If I've bought a commodity from a company before and had a good service and price, I will return to them for similar items - but that's not down to their search ranking.

If I'm looking for a commodity, a holiday, a new blu-ray player anything like that, seeing a company at the top of paid search will have some impact but it will be minimal. I'll respect them for having money and some targeting, but this alone will not make me want to buy from them.

What I'll want is a mixture of human advice and product information on that commodity. I'll be looking for information from other people (reviews, ratings etc) and price comparison sites that tell me where would be a good place to get it from.

So the next question I would ask of the trinity is can they provide me with that information?

Lets look at them.

Facebook contains communities. Does Facebook have the potential to become this place that I would go to find reviews? Yes. But its still not yet a place I'd go to for reviews, I'd seek out user forums or independent (or supposedly independent) sites that house reviews from industry experts. User forums / sites / applications are invariably more sophisticated and in depth than anything on facebook, although of course this could change if facebook opens up more.

Twitter. Communities? Yes. Reviews? well not really, how much can you fit into the twitter text box that tells you anything other that "its great lol" and "it sux". Twitter is very much about immediate impact and news (hence why it gets so much media attention). I think it could be good for generating excitement of a new product or company, but this would be short lived as the twitterverse moves on. Twitter can of course link to other sites and this is also of great value. If you can get your reviews on twitter quickly then someone will find them when they search in a week or a months time.

IPhone apps? Communities? Yes, you could create that app. Reviews? Yes you could create that app. But how do you get that app on a users phone? That's the tricky part. You've got to create a compelling reason, and that has less to do with the iphone and more to do with what you offer.

So for me, yes there are alternatives to search that google should be worried about, but nothing that immediately threatens it dominance in the online space. I'd recommend reading the Ad contrarian for more interesting articles around the other "dead" channels that seem to be ignored.

I think there is still space for someone to achieve dominance in independent advice.

I think the "old guys" at amazon and ebay offer more interesting and threatening alternatives than the holy trinity.

I think companies like Yellow Pages and Which? in UK are probably missing this opportunity as well, the ability to build these communities and user reviews whilst maintaining a relative air of independence could be done easily given their branding & audience reach.

And finally, I'm also wondering what happened online to all those governing bodies, organisations and charities that certify and review companies offline in the UK. I imagine they could make quite a name for themselves if they had a larger web presence, the likes of Tripadvisor performs the role for me that actually I'd like to come from ABTA. This bodies could be more than just a record of who agrees to their codes of practice and actually contain direct customer feedback.

Anyway, I digress. Is search dead? No. Will the holy trinity replace it? No, but it will divert some of a companies online resources towards it because the next generation are now churning out social media gurus rather than search guru's because for todays kids its the new way to make a fast buck at their elders expense.

So to finish with an example:

Does anyone really need to "search" for "Apple" or "Iphone" in order to buy it, no. But I bet they would search for "cheap Iphone tariff" or "Iphone review". Do apple need to have a big facebook or Twitter strategy? Probably not, because they've got the product and market share.

And what about everyone else? Everyone with a product that less revolutionary, less loved, less well known and more mediocre? Is Facebook and twitter going to make the difference in their marketing and sales over and above any search activity?

The channel is the mechanism of the message. You have to get that message right and deliver it to your audience in order for it to work. Unless a channel defines your audience you should concentrate on the message first, mechanism later.