This was true of small towns but also metropolises as people traveled less even within cities. Sure there were people who traveled the country selling snake oil, but while some made a fortune others were literally strung up.

I see 2010 as the year consumers reclaim their rights. We just need major banks to pull out of processing rebilling offers, such as get a free diet pill or sign up now and we will charge you what we like forever. This was a nice little earner for lots of affiliates and lots of networks but no matter how you look at it, for consumers it was a bad deal.

There was a huge debate on Wickedfire with some affiliates who have being making a good living selling them in tears. Not only were these products shady, the billing was sketchy and the marketing methods deployed by some were even more “interesting.” Fortunately, some networks like Clickbooth are trying to help clean up the image of affiliate marketing.

President Obama and the Federal Trade Commission seem intent on cracking down on business practices that are obviously against consumers interests. But we should look at why this is: Consumers are becoming increasingly vocal.

Consumers are finding their voices and mobilizing using social media to put their “rights” on the agenda of the Obama administration, the FTC and the banks. Business will no longer be able to get away with practices that they once did. Consumers can set up a Facebook group or Twitter account and gather support for their grievance in ways that they never could before.

On the flip side there are opportunities to utilize consumers passions about company’s products and services to refer their friends to brands they like. Motivating consumers who like your company can give you a competitive advantage.

There are opportunities for affiliates and service companies to focus on that, such as using email marketing to target your consumers and motivating them to tweet about your product. Companies are searching for ways forward and experts who can show them the path, hence the success of industry figures like Chris Brogan.

Will you look for a site that sells freezers and allows you to compare shopping prices or will you look for reviews? As prices and features become increasingly homogenized and the richer consumers find prices differently and comparably irrelevant with their increased incomes, having goods that work because of more important recommendations count. Products that do not work will see poor reviews and fail.

Companies will be expected to have conversation with consumers not tell them what to think. The FTC will see that those reviews are not incentivized.

President Obama to seize the Internet under ‘cyberthreat’?

Okpulot Taha:
“This bill is idiocy. I cannot wrap my mind around such a display of stupidity.

I day trade stocks. I have a live stock market feed. This is how I earn extra money for our family during retirement. This Obama takeover would shut down my stock market feed, would shut down my financial efforts.

Mine is one example of zillions. Shutting down the internet would cut off banking, cut off many emergency services, cut off a lot of critical medical services and would cut off ability to communicate across America during a time communication is critical.

Obama and his boys are so very stupid. Best security for critical “national security interest” systems is “air gap” security. This is simply unplugging sensitive systems from our public internet. Such stupidity on the part of our government! This stupidity is reflected in this bill.

Our government, our energy infrastructure, our military systems, all and more have an ability to establish private secure intranet systems through cable, microwave and satellite services. Many of our sensitive services are already on private intranet systems. Our nation is already crisscrossed with private secured data transmission methods.

Ability to shut down our public internet is simply stupid. Not only stupid, this is reactive rather than proactive. A need to shut down our internet is direct evidence of our internet already being compromised; much too late. Once compromised, upon turning our internet “back on” those problems still exist and will spread. This turning off our internet does nothing to cure “infection” in the system.

A proactive method is to create private and secured intranet systems for sensitive services, an intranet “unplugged” from the public internet. A secured unique system, strengthening security, this is the right approach.

This bill is not only idiotic, this bill is dangerous; creates complacency and a false sense of security.

Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Puma Politics”

Deb Russell:
“I’ve got to agree. A seperate system is the only sensible solution. Too many complicated expensive solutions are being proposed this year where simple cheap/free solutions would work better.”

Will Oprah lawsuit straighten out online advertorial?

pj:
“ha ha, you guys are f*cked!”

Dana Todd:
“I object to you slapping the word “advertorial” on flogs, as if the two are interchangeable concepts.

I agree that flogs are not a desirable component of online content, but there’s a world of difference between a crappy blog posting hawking weight loss products and a well crafted story by an advertiser that’s paid to be visible to a site’s visitors.

Advertisers have long valued advertorial in a thought leadership campaign, a brand awareness campaign and other communication strategies – and most high-end brands take the time to tell their stories well by working in partnership with the publishers.

If you want to call them splogs, or flogs, or pay-for-post or whatever, that’s fine — just don’t blame the term advertorial for what really amounts to just bad/misleading writing on the part of a writer or publisher.

Sincerely,
Dana Todd, CMO
Newsforce Network”

Search Engine Ranking Is A Measure of Market Leadership

Brandt Dainow:
“I am afraid Daniel is just plain wrong here. Ad position is not important to click-through rate or conversions, the text on the ad is what counts. He has researched only 1 site over a short period of time, whereas I researched this over a 5-year period across a range of sites, covering multiple sectors. This eliminates biases specific to individual sites or sectors, a problem Daniel had in his research above. My conclusions are detailed in my article on this in iMedia at http://www.imediaconnection.com//content//12991.asp.
Position mattered in the early days when web users were naive. They wised up years ago. Ad design is what matters, not position.”

Steve Baldwin:
“Your study accords with what we know from heat maps. Positions matter — a lot — because being #1 delivers far more volume than lower positions. Whether one can afford to be #1 is another matter, of course, and this is where all the hard work of optimizing the conversion chain comes into play.”

Debashish Shaw:
“@ Brandt I think you may have misread the article – Daniel agrees that conversion rates remain relatively static across ad positions. If anything, he also agrees that position #2 having a higher conversion rate is most likely an anomaly.

@ Steve Agreed completely. The key question is are you optimized enough to be #1?”

So it’s not surprising that Congress has worked hard on a worst-case scenario and what would need to be done. The surprise is that a newly revised bill appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency, according to CNET.

The bill, worked on by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, says that the President “in the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastrucure information system or network – may declare a cybersecurity emergency; and may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in coordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network.”

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, told CNET. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

On it’s face, the bill doesn’t seem that scary. But as in all things government, it’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t. What role does the government have when it comes to private networks? How will these powers when implemented by bureaucrats be used? I don’t think anything particularly nefarious is going on, but shouldn’t we act like it just in case?

Ballmer Says Tax Would Move Microsoft Jobs Offshore. (Bloomberg)

Ex-Googler’s New White House Job Rankles Some. (WSJ) – [link fixed]

The Palm Pre Will Bomb. (SIA)

Digg Testing New Social Ad Units. (MediaPost)

China continues to take down social networks. (Danwei)

Courtesy of the Reuters Group.
Caren Bohan is a reporter for Reuters.com.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., may be chief of staff for Obama, and Dick O’Brien, the executive vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, told AdAge that the administration may put advertising and marketing in its crosshairs.

“He predicted that the first order of business in the new Congress will be shoring up the economy and bringing the deficit under control,” O’Brien told the publication. “Then, out of the blue, he volunteered that this would cause our industry some pain. When pressed to elaborate, he said that, in their quest for new revenue, one likely possibility would be to go to pharma and tell them they could keep the write-off for R&D or DTC, but not both.”

Other potential issues per AdAge sources:

• Congress will crack down on drug ads, possibly even issuing a moratorium on advertising for new drugs.
• Targeting of all stripes will go under the microscope.
• Expansion of FTC’s duties, allowing them to issue fines and speed up rulemaking.
• Potential backtracking on Bush’s relaxation of rules regarding media ownership.
• No more privileges for favored content providers (making it easier for the little guys to grow).
• The Justice Department is likely to take a harder look at all marketing/media deals.

The app, dubbed “Call Friends” organizes the user’s phonebook by state and gives each contact a status (called or not called).

The total number of calls you’ve made is uploaded anonymously, allowing users to compare notes. The app also provides information on Obama’s stance on a variety of political issues and enables them to donate to the campaign, watch promos and receive updates.

The key takeaway from the study however, is that campaign finance laws do not restrict how much a committee or individual can spend on buying search terms, providing a unique opportunity for one or both candidates to flood Google, Yahoo and Microsoft with ads.

“With no restrictions on how much an individual or political action committee can spend buying search terms, and no record of who is buying the ads, the candidate with the most sound search strategy could end up swaying the remaining undecided voters and winning the 2008 election,” said Kevin Lee, CEO and co-founder of Didit.

“As we near election day with a remarkably even presidential race, an enthusiastic and interested population will turn to search engines for as much information as possible,” said David Pasternack, Didit’s President. “The battle to influence these people has already begun, and is likely to intensify markedly in the next 60 days.”
Didit’s survey revealed that search is a highly effective way of targeting the coveted 7% of potential swing voters, and that a measurable correlation exists between the links selected after entering a search and the probability of a change of opinion about a candidate. People most likely to change their opinions are those who select links that favor the opposition. A 40% increase in the likelihood of an opinion change was the result of this action.
The survey was completed by 1,447 participants. Over 95% of participants are already registered to vote in the upcoming election.

Many domain names lead to support or hate sites, but a significant number lead to click farms – featuring Google-style pay-per-click advertisements where the cybersquatters sit back and cash in while users search in vain for official information on the candidates. Such is their value in advertising terms that one canny ‘cybersquatter’ from California is trying to sell www.ihatebarackobama.com and www.ihatehilaryclinton.com for $1,299 immediately after registering them, requesting payment simply via his paypal account.

So who’s getting the most attention from cybercriminals? The report indicates that Hillary Clinton is the most popular candidate online with 1,080 domain names having been registered in her name by fans and foes with highlights including sites such as www.clintonsucks.org. Barack Obama trails with 635 registered domain names, including www.thebarackobamasong.com written and performed by supporter Alan Burrell.

Republican candidate John McCain lags well behind with just 269 dedicated domain names registered in his name, and largely unflattering ones such as www.stopjohnmccain2008.com and www.mccainsucks.com.

Consequently, the presidential election of 2008 seems likely to be an election that will be strongly characterised by the political blogosphere. We may look back at the 2008 election in a similar way current political strategist look at the Kennedy Vs. Nixon election of 1960. This was the first ever televised debate. Kennedy appeared tan and relaxed during the debate while Nixon seemed a bit worn down. Radio listeners proclaimed Nixon the better debater, while those who watched on television made Kennedy their choice.

Flash forward nearly a half a century later and new medium has matured and is playing an essential role.

The campaigns of McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Clinton, Obama and Edwards are all using the Internet in a variety of ways. They are not only employing it to promote fundraising, but to update supporters while on the campaign trail, target opponents, promote events, and push paraphernalia.

According to information gathered from e-mail tracking firm Email Data Source, the top Democratic and Republican candidates kept in touch with supporters and campaign watchers by sending from 3 to 17 e-mail newsletters each in May and early June.

The ability for pundits and voters to exchange ideas and words via the Internet seems to be a healthy dose of much needed open communication in modern day American politics.

But which candidate will appear “tan and relaxed” over the Internet. If televised debates showed how impressionable voters are to physical appearance, maybe the Internet will be a medium known for effecting the depth and breadth of thought, commuincation skills, and administrative vision held by the candidates. It is transparency that the information age demands. This holds true in the arena of political debate just as well as e-commerce.