Craig's Lemonade

TiVo needs attention, not searchable ads

TiVo is going to allow you to search for ads, and even allow you to enter keywords. Huh? Who is going to do that? Magazines have that advertiser index somewhere in back, and I think I’ve used it once or twice in my life…is that the same thing? This is TV, and unless the ad is really funny (or its of two women scantily clad wrestling in a fountain over whether or not a beer tastes great or is less filling) I doubt this will matter to anyone. Besides everyone emails the good/funny/sexy ads anyway…

Doing smart things with attention data is the way to better target folks with relevant ads. It’s not what we are doing at Attensa, we are not looking at PVRs just yet, but philosophically this is the way to make ads more relevant to folks. The story in the WSJ I read this a.m. explained how users would be able to manually keyword “BMW” or "cruises" as examples, and then users might see relevant ads later. You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t get it. So TiVo needs a keyboard now for THIS?! (BTW their remote already has too many buttons, maybe it will require the 12 key "texting" method to type.) IMHO, these new developments are not a real benefit to users, this is a way to attempt to appease advertisers to not run for the hills as PVR wrecks the decades old broadcast TV advertising model. I could be wrong but I think people want to only see the shows listed they want to watch and in the order of “favorites first, mediocre next, and delete the crap so I don’t have to – oh, and do it as it relates to me PERSONALLY." Right? Oh and incidentally, why did I buy this thing in the first place? To SKIP THE ADS!

At Attensa we are presently focused on this same value proposition for users, only as it relates to RSS items. We are all going to drown in RSS items just as many drown in the abundance of TV channels – and it is going to be a lot worse as you get a few thousand items a day delivered to your aggregator of choice. The difference in the long run though is it will be IMPORTANT STUFF you receive via RSS, not just entertainment on TV. It won’t be just blog updates or news, it will be flight confirmations, business analytics, database updates, secure ecommerce transactions, etc. etc. etc. RSS is touching every business process and up and down the supply chain.

We probably should look at how our attention stream technology could apply to TiVo or other PVR technologies. Once you have a TiVo you can’t imagine watching TV without one. I’ve never longed for the ability to search for an ad while using it, but I would like to tuen it on and the first 5 things listed are things I REALLY want to watch. Attention can deliver. Will be fun to see what they come up with to benefit the users (those who pay for the service) that has nothing to do with advertising. Just a better user experience.

Attention has arrived

Attention has arrived!

What a difference a week makes! I spent most of last week in NYC and at Ad-Tech, the premier internet advertising conference, and was reminded of more exuberant times in 1999 before the bubble burst. The sold out conference in my opinion emanated an enthusiasm not experienced since those times, but for many of us the exciting part was not just the expansion of F1000 marketers’ dormant budgets but the willingness of these major brands in exploring RSS as an advertising vehicle ahead of the curve. It appears that nobody wants to be left out, and questions were rampant about the emerging RSS medium. Of course most of the interest was surrounding blogs, but by the next event all will surely be aware of the pervasive nature of RSS and how much more it is than just a means to get blog updates.

That said, and selfishly speaking on behalf of Attensa, you can’t get very far contemplating RSS as an advertising medium without running into the obvious benefits of attention metadata. Yes, it’s a mouthful to the uninitiated, but it seems this week a lot more folks are paying attention to attention.

Yes, attention has arrived…

• Steve Gillmor eats sleeps and breathes attention (as he sees it) as President of AttentionTrust.org. And he pokes fun at OPML champion Dave Winer.
• AttentionTech is focused on it exclusively in their podcasts
• Seth Goldstein’s RootMarkets just launched their beta and their business depends on it. I met Seth at his office a few weeks ago and their project looks really interesting. Check it out.
• Joshua Porter’s Bokardo, author of a web 2.0 focused blog I recently encountered, covers several interesting subject but a lot on attention data lately. Here is a great post entitled “why should I trust Microsoft with my attention data?” and another about AttentionTrust and its philosophy about why you should own your attention data. I just subscribed.
• Scoble has commented more frequently recently...you are probably already subscrtibed to his blog, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
• While “attention” was not used in the press releases or in commentary by its executives, Microsoft’s adCenter will certainly use attention in ways we have not yet seen by the ad networks. Here's a blurb on marketing vox about it if you hadn't heard.
• Though they are being their traditional sneaky selves about it, Google’s Personalized Search is essentially about attention data gathering and leveraging it to improve search!
• The Attention.xml spec over at Technorati is waking up (improved radically by Attensa’s own Eric Hayes incidentally) and if we have anything to do with it there is more to come as Eric was invited as a co-author earlier this year.
• Last but not least, RSS infrastructure company Attensa closed its Series B financing last weekto expand development and roll out its attention network (more on this any day now!) and our blog will include more frequent postings as well. By the way, we are hiring!

The team here at Attensa has been working on sophisticated attention metadata infrastructure since early 2001 (only then we just called it personalized transient metadata because we hadn’t heard of the term “attention” yet.) At Attensa, our first step is to release our RSS reader for Microsoft Outlook, and we believe it to be best of class in terms of performance and ease of use. But the real sea change will occur for users of our technology when our "attention streams" automatically improve the gathering and use of RSS delivered information to the point where you will wonder how you ever got along with plain old “raw” RSS articles derived via standard RSS subscriptions.

Viva Attention!

AdTech NYC and little RSS

It is only day one here at AdTech and my delayed jetblue redeye delivered me midtown by 1 PM, but i did manage to get a feel for the place. There is a blog for the event but not much commentary yet. As i estimated, there is a lot of chatter about RSS in the hallways and with those paying attention, but the big players are still "waiting." Nobody denies the crazy growth and importance of blogs, but RSS not front and center yet for the ad types. Why does this tragically hip crowd always seem to be late to the party? RSS is so obviously useful and exciting for advertisers and users alike yet "rich media" advertising still seems to get the lion's share of attention. RSS will be "it" by the next ad-tech, no doubt about it....but it's not this week.

RSS in Japan, Ad data from Pheedo

I just ran across a post from Pheedo's weblog. Apparently adoption of RSS is growing even faster in Japan than the US. Also on Pheedo's blog is some data they have pulled from their own network. Exciting stuff. More data confirming that well targeted ads "pulled" via RSS feeds vs. "pushed" via spam have much higher CTRs. Obvious i suppose but exciting nonetheless. Check out Pheedo's blog for more interesting data on the rapid growth and interest in RSS advertising.

At Attensa what is really exciting to us is how much more accepted and useful advertising will be for USERS once attention streams are leveraged to deliver newfound relevance in internet advertising. In the meantime, just simple Google AdSense and Pheedo insertions are an exciting development. I think Jupiter is wrong about the impact on e-mail, i think it will be considerable as consumers and marketers use RSS to build a one-to-one, secure communications channel....at the expense of e-mail.

(Anonymous) Attention Data

It looks like we have a lot of missionary work on our hands communicating the importance of attention data. While Steve Gillmor has been championing attention.xml for well over a year now, and our own co-founder Eric Hayes has joined the Technorati guys as an author of the spec – most folks (even the blogworld digerati) have no clue as to how useful and important attention data will become. Even Microsoft was dissing it at Gnomedex. Some think there might be privacy concerns, and there probably will be, as we have been talking about this a lot lately at Attensa.

Whether attention data, attention.xml, or “attention streams” as we call them here at Attensa, I think we may need to insert “anonymous” more aggressively into the positioning. The attention.xml wiki Q&A covers this but perhaps it should be moved up into the actual overall positioning/messaging for attention.xml. “Anonymous Attention Data” may sound redundant to those in the know, but it will likely be important to help communicate to the inevitable voices of privacy concern. The truth is that plain simple cookies are ultimately probably more "invasive" (and less useful) to unsuspecting users than well executed use of attention streams will be…at least by what you will see coming from Attensa anyway!

Lastly, the "All Things RSS" blog by Scott Sharp introducing some interesting opportunities a la VersiSign's business model that could be enabled nicely with attention data. The post "Beyond Attention.XML: A Contract to Ensure Privacy" begins an interesting discussion surrounding privacy concerns and business opportunity...