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Tag: marketing

Argument: Personas lose to ‘audience of one’

Published by Joni on June 26, 2017

Introduction. In this post, I’m exploring the usefulness of personas in digital analytics. At Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), we have developed a system for automatic persona generation (APG) – see the demo. Under the leadership of Professor Jim Jansen, we’re constantly working to position this system toward the intersection of customer profiles, personas, and analytics. Imagine three levels of…

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First experiences with startup user studies (ca. 2010)

First experiences with startup user studies (ca. 2010)

Published by Joni on May 28, 2017

I was reading through old emails while backing up my Gmail inbox with Gmvault, an open source command-line tool. Among other interesting trips to memory lane, one message was about the first startup user study I was involved with. It was for a life-coaching startup that eventually failed. In retrospect, it’s interesting to reflect on what went wrong and how…

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Social media marketing for researchers: How to promote your publications and reach the right people

Social media marketing for researchers: How to promote your publications and reach the right people

Published by Joni on April 16, 2017

Today the Social Computing group at Qatar Computing Research Institute had the pleasure of listening to the presentation of Luis Fernandez Luque about social media marketing for researchers. Luis talked about how to promote your publications and personal brand, as well as how to reach the right people on social media with your research. Luis is one of the most…

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Affinity analysis in political social media marketing – the missing link

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction. Hm… I’ve figured out how to execute successful political marketing campaign on social media [1], but one link is missing still. Namely, applying affinity analysis (cf. market basket analysis). Discounting conversions. Now, you are supposed to measure “conversions” by some proxy – e.g., time spent on site, number of pages visited, email subscription. Determining which measurable action is the…

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In 2016, Facebook bypassed Google in ads. Here’s why.

In 2016, Facebook bypassed Google in ads. Here’s why.

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction The gone 2016 was the first year I thought Facebook ends up beating Google in the ad race, despite the fact Google still dominates in revenue ($67Bn vs. $17Bn in 2015). I’ll explain why. First, consider that Google’s growth is restricted by three things: natural demand keyword volumes, and approach of perfect market. More demand than supply First, at…

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Defining SMQs: Strategic Marketing Questions

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction Too often, marketing is thought of being advertising and nothing more. However, already Levitt (1960) and Kotler (1970) established that marketing is a strategic priority. Many organizations, perhaps due to lack of marketers in their executive boards, have since forgotten this imperative. Another reason for decreased importance of marketing is due to marketing scholars pushing the idea that “everything…

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Meaningless marketing

Meaningless marketing

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

I’d say 70% of marketing campaigns have little to no real effect. Most certainly they don’t have a positive return in hard currency. Yet, most marketers spend their time running around, planning all sorts of campaigns and competitions people couldn’t care less of. They are professional producers of spam, where in fact they should be focusing on core of the…

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Customers as a source of information: 4 risks

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction This post is based on Dr. Elina Jaakkola’s presentation “What is co-creation?” on 19th August, 2014. I will elaborate on some of the points she made in that presentation. Customer research, a sub-form of market research, serves the purpose of acquiring customer insight. Often, when pursuing information from consumers companies use surveys. Surveys, and usage of customers as a source of information,…

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Online ads: Forget tech, invest in creativity

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Technology is not a long-lasting competitive advantage in SEM or other digital marketing – creativity is. This brief post is inspired by an article I read about different bid management platforms: “We combine data science to SEM, so you can target based on device, hour of day and NASDAQ development.” Yeah… but why would you do that? Spend your time thinking of…

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Controlling ad quality in programmatic buying

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Highway to ad quality. Ad quality is an issue in programmatic buying where ad exchange takes place via computer systems. In traditional ad exchange, there’s a human supervising the quality of advertising, but in a programmatic system it’s possible to receive spammy, illegal, or otherwise undesirable advertising without publishers (ad sellers) being aware of it. Likewise, the quality of performance…

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