Always love your posts…

I have been thinking about this for a while too and haven’t come to any conclusions yet. Being able to track, manage and optimize marketing/advertising is great. It allows for rapid adjustments to focus on effective tactics that drive performance. However, I do agree with Greg that the value of the endorsements could become polluted and have a negative effect.

Online social networks, as it stands, are loosely tied and trust is easily lost. The ability to manipulate and optimize the message without decreasing the value proposition will be the key to long term gain. Fundamentally, there still needs to be some intrinsic value to what you’re selling and there needs to be a clear message to the consumers.

Well articulated. I also like the concept of, as the well as the word “spread”.

If everyone uses the appropriate mechanisms to spread the message, this will be easy to track and attribute spread to each tactic. What percentage of users abandon the given tools and just post shit to their blog, email, and twitter stuff without a measurable connection to the placement that inspired it? I assume its significant. Is that ever going to be measureable?

On a second note, I’m all for “pay for spread” payment models but advertisers should still try and pay for placement and optimize their own spread as part of the mix (only part, I still want you sell me CPI stuff). If spread becomes a business model, you know some publishers will figure out a way to game it and maximize margin at the expense of the true marketing value of the endorsed impression.