Four Click Freedom

The debate is on whether unique users are coming to your site.  Right now cookies are the only way to see how many visitors you are getting and this could be overrated by almost three times because of the deletion of cookies.  And you know this means advertisers will pay more but are now becoming cautious because they want their money’s worth.

So if a site is using their own measuring tools like Google AdSense or their host providers numbers, and these all vary based on the tools used to measure, then where are you going to get numbers that are actually relevant to your product and people’s response.

Clickboards.net acts a second party seller.  Although you do not buy anything on the site, you can acquire information and promotions used to buy the products as well as package deals and rebates for products.  Then when you decide to buy, either directed to the advertisers site, or by going to the brick and mortar store, that is when the first interaction between buyer and seller takes place.  So really the advertiser takes themselves completely out of the picture except for the sale, which is really the way it is supposed to be.

What more can an advertiser demand than performance driven measures from online advertising.  Even if it is just click through, that is still incredible power over the placement of the ads.  Many sites draw in millions of viewers, yet the sites performance ratio for their ads is incredibly low.  In my opinion, very few people will click on a banner or pop-up even if it is targeted at them.  This leads to opting out of advertising, and this creates a serious dilemma between providing worthy readable content with the exclusion of advertising versus sites geared towards enhancing the advertising overall exposure.

This is really where the Clickboard comes in.  The first criteria remains the same, click through.  However, a Clickboard is not clicked on once, actually maybe three of four times.  The sales message is broken down into segments, each displayed after each click.  This puts the ball back on the hands of the advertiser, demonstrating their ineffectiveness or effectiveness of the ads they create.  By taking away the fear of opening a new window, tab, or replacing the window you are in, the Clickboard allows you to remain idle on the page you are viewing.  But the message from the ad is strengthened after each click.  So now an ad can be measured by how far the viewer followed the ad through the three or four clicks.

A Clickboard registered with Clickboards.net will also not take them to the advertisers site in the end.  Clickboards not registered can take them to any desired site on the final click.  Since this is not of concern to me, I will only discuss the effectiveness of those Clickboards that are registered.

The final click on the Clickboard will not take you to the advertisers site and promotion, rather it will take you to Clickboards.net.  Once there, in relation to the ad that brought you there, more details of the promotion and other ways to save on this or similar products will be displayed.  Again, the effectiveness is measured by how far the user follows this and similar promotions.  But it doesn’t stop there…

Even without going to Clickboards.net, the savings from the promotion displayed on the Clickboard are automatically added to the users profile.  So next time they use the Clickcard, these promotions can be obtained upon checkout.  With the use of mobile Clickboards and Clickboards.net Kiosks, users can be reminded of their collection of coupons.  A click there, a click here, these all add up and can be used to show the advertiser that there ads are being seen.

Upon check out, coupons stored will be automatically deducted.  On the receipt will show the discounts received next to the product purchased.  These deductions are further reinforcement to use the Clickcard and to continue using Clickboards.net and to continue clicking on Clickboards.

This three tier level of measuring performance is really the next step to bringing back an industry that has set its sites on hyper-inflation and non-concrete performance criteria.

Advertisers should not be responsible for their own ads.  If someone was to really learn from this, they would see that their performance should be outsourced.  This would allow them more flexibility, and with results as positive as those that can be constructed through the use of Clickboards, advertisers would more than welcome the positive impact.

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When you see all the worry warts and their efforts to make the internet privacy part of the experience and warn everyone about how they are being targeted, you can really see where I might start to worry.  I too would like to help facilitate marketers in targeting an audience on the Internet.

I believe what I am doing is much different than what is on the market, especially what is hyped up to be the next big thing like Feeva.  Targeting based on bla is still bla, I don’t care how big of a computer you have.  If people aren’t going to actually give you information and you are only going to take the scraps that they leave you or the bits and pieces that the Internet commissioner says you can legally use without having Internet users getting their hair standing on in, then how can you say you are the best behavioral targeting genius that is on this side of the hill?  Well you can’t, and that is what I have been discovering.  This not so new term called behavioral targeting is really a bunch of hoopla and it’s making a lot of people worried just because of the terminology.

I do agree with the part that you have to let people know what you are doing and saying how the information is used.  But if you actually create a platform where people get to tell you how they want the information used, haven’t you saved the people from going into tale-spins worrying about who sees what and what they know?

By giving the user options and control over their information is the real key.  Instead of people running in circles wondering how you are you going to use the information from late last night when they were searching for a honey on the Internet to target them, you should actually give them a choice about how they want to be profiled.  Ask them a question!  Say hey I saw you man, what are you up to, I know this isn’t your market and it doesn’t have anything to do with who you are, but even though you are here, what kind of information can you provide, your age, how many friends you have on Facebook, you like to party, you really keep to yourself and are pretty simple, what would be the one thing you would tell me if I knew you looked here?  I’m going to use it to get rid of all the crappola that surrounds your surfing habits now and give you something that might make a little more sense to your life.

Maybe this is th only way to get information out of people.  But the main purpose is say I will not give you more crap based on your habits, I will give you something you want me to, but to do so you have to reveal who you are in one little bit.   Much like twitter, would you be afraid to twitter as to what you are doing late this one night?  Maybe you won’t tell me exactly but that little tweet would be enough to change your experience and what is then given to you in return.  Something much more in line with who you are.

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Facebook and Google are scary.  In this time of economic downturn it is no time for hustlers. When information is at stake, security is a key component to peoples trust and when you abuse this, we could start fighting a long uphill battle in the months to come.

My example here is with advertising. People are still going to have to spend money to get back on top and get their businesses back up and running. The first cuts in budgetary plans are usually at the advertising budgets. But these are also the first to be replaced.

Many people these days are wondering where to put their ad dollars. Print media is said to be dying. Everything is apparently going online, and why not, you really get more specific information that way. But what about the targeting of these ad dollars and the amount you pay. This is starting to create real concern. Google is running a monopoly and adjusting prices based on ‘falsification’ of Adwords’ performance. And sites that have over a million visitors a month are getting the rod because they have to put ads on their sites that only pay them when they get clicked on, greatly devaluing their site.

The real scare comes in when Google and Facebook hide certain critical points that concern your rights in their ‘terms of use.’ By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. Facebook recently said the same thing.

This selling of personal information for any use under the sun is not what I intended when I signed up for these programs. With Facebook I get to choose my friends and who sees my photos and stories. Now that Mr. Matt Zuckerberg says any advertiser can buy anything on my profile, it doesn’t feel quite as private. That is pretty scary to one day run across myself in some book about people in Tianjin.

I for one am not using Facebook anymore. I have had about enough of it anyway and only get on 30 seconds a day to read the feed. Google I am attached to still though. I am even thinking to get the new Google phone. But there is a difference.

Google is an ad agency and they use the information themselves. There is no need for them to sell off their inventory; it does more good in their own hands. As for them being a monopoly, that is probably true, but at least I can still get my mail.

So what about Clickboards.net?….

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