Category: english

Online ad platforms’ leeching logic

We had a great discussion with Mr. Lauri Pitkänen about unfair advantage in business – e.g., a gift card company’s business model relying on people not redeeming gift cards, investment banker’s relying on monopoly to take 7% of each new IPO, doctor’s controlling how many new doctor’s are educated, taxi driver’s keeping the supply low […]

The Basics of Dilemmas

Introduction By definition, a dilemma is a trade-off situation in which there are two choices, each leading to a negative outcome. General solution A general solution, then, is to weigh the outcomes and compare them against one another. For example: choice A: -1 choice B: -2 In this example, choice A has smaller negative effect, […]

Organic reach and the choice of social media platform

(This is work in progress.) Introduction It is a well-established fact that the organic reach in a dominant platform decreases over time, as the competition over users’ attention increases. There is thus an inverse relation: The more competition (by users and firms) in a user’s news feed, the less organic visibility for a firm. The problem How […]

About moral hazard and banking crises

Introduction The struggle against moral hazard in banking is constant and real. There’s no turn-key solution for eliminating it, but it must be kept in mind at all times by policy makers. Consider the following citation from Wikipedia: “The role of the lender of last resort, and the existence of deposit insurance, both create moral […]

Big data is not enough data

There is a big data fallacy My argument here is simple – even though it’s a common argument that “everything is tracked”, marketers face a big data fallacy when assessing their ability to predict consumer behavior. The reason is explicated here [1]: “On any given occasion, everything from personal factors such as how well a person […]

How to measure offline marketing with online metrics?

Introduction The issue with offline marketing is tracking. For many offline marketing efforts, such as exhibitions and networking events, it’s hard to track results. Participation in these events is often expensive, and the results are evaluated on a qualitative basis. Although qualitative evaluation is better than nothing, quantitative data is obviously better. And in many cases, […]

A Few Interesting Digital Analytics Problems… (And Their Solutions)

Introduction Here’s a list of analytics problems I’ve devised for a class I was teaching a digital analytics course (Web & Mobile Analytics, Information Technology Program) at Aalto University in Helsinki. Some solutions to them are also considered. The problems Last click fallacy = taking only the last interaction into account when analayzing channel or campaign performance (a […]

Digital Marketing Laws (work in progress…)

Hi, this is work in progress – I’ll keep updating this list as new moments of “heureka” hit me. Digital marketing laws The higher the position in a SERP, the higher the CTR The more a mixed platform gains demand-side popularity, the more it restricts the organic reach of supply-side Search-engine traffic consistently outperforms social media […]

Using the VRIN model to evaluate web platforms

Introduction In this article, I discuss how the classic VRIN model can be used to evaluate modern web platforms. What is the VRIN model? It’s one of the most cited models of the resource-based view of the firm. Essentially, it describes how a firm can achieve sustainable competitive advantage through resources that fulfill certain criteria. These […]