“In this age, in past ages, in any age… Napoleon.” (The Duke of Wellington) This is a short post reflecting upon Napoleon’s writing on war and efficient management. I think many of his principles are universal and apply to communication — my special consideration here is writing of emails, which is a vital skill because 1) […]
Example of Google’s Moral Hazard: Pooling in Ad Auctions
Google has an incentive to group advertisers in ad auction even when this conflicts with the goals of an individual advertiser. For example, you’d like to bid on ‘term x‘ and would not like be included in auctions ‘term x+n‘ due to e.g. lower relevance, your ad might still participate in the auction. This relates […]
Problem/Solution Space: A Startup Perspective
I was inspired to write this post by the following pictures that I’d included in my lecture material a few years. Writing it in a bit of a hurry since the class starts soon! (but it’ll good enough to make the point) (You can find the original source for the pictures by googling.) Okay, a couple […]
Modern Market Research Methods: A Startup Perspective
EDIT: Updated by adding competitive analysis, very important to benchmark competitors. EDIT2: Updated by adding experimentation (14th April, 2016) Introduction Somebody on Quora was asking about ‘tools’ for validating viability and demand for a startup’s products. I replied it’s not a question of tools, but plain old market research (which seems to be all too […]
Dynamic Pricing and Incomplete People Information
One of the main problems in analytics is the lack of people information (e.g., demographics, interests). It is controlled by superplatforms like Google and Facebook, but as soon as you have transition from the channel to the website, you lose this information. So, I was thinking this in context of dynamic pricing. There’s no problem […]
Viisi mainostoimistojen virhettä digitaalisessa markkinoinnissa
Niin sanotut perinteiset markkinoijat tekevät kokemukseni perusteella useita perustavanlaatuisia virheitä siirtyessään vanhoista ajattelumalleista digitaaliseen markkinointiin. Nämä virheet näkyvät etenkin monien mainostoimistojen kohdalla. Viisi virhettä ovat: 1. Tuloksia ei mitata Nähdään ettei mittaaminen ole mahdollista tai järkevää esim. “brändäykseen” keskittyvien offline-kampanjoiden kohdalla. Ajatus on virheellinen, koska a) myös offline-kampanjoita voidaan mitata (esim. kuponkeja käyttämällä) ja b) myös […]
The Psychological Cost of Answering an Email
You’re not getting as many replies to your messages as you’d like. Why is that? Well, there may be many reasons, but I’m discussing one of them here. It’s the psychological cost of processing an email and acting upon it. My hypothesis is simple: The higher the psychological cost of answering an email, the lower […]
A Quick Note on Bidding Theory of Online Ad Auctions
Introduction This is a simple post about some commonly known features of online ad auctions. Generalized second-price auction (GSP) is a mechanism in which the advertiser pays a marginally higher bid than the advertiser losing to him. It encourages the bidder to place a truthful bid, i.e. one where the price level is such that […]
Google and the Prospect of Programmatic
Introduction This is a short post taking a stance on programmatic ad platforms. It’s based on one single premise: Digital convergence will lead into a situation where all ad spend, not only digital, will be managed through self-service, open ad platforms that operate based on auction principles There are several reasons as to why this […]
The Vishnu Effect of Startups (creators/destroyers of jobs)
Background In the Hindi scripture there is a famous passage in which the god Vishnu describes himself as death; to Westerners this is mostly known through Oppenheimer’s citation: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” But, there is another god in Hinduism, Brahma, that is the creator of the universe. How does this relate […]