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Modern Market Research Methods: A Startup Perspective

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

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 often ignored by startup founders).…

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Dynamic Pricing and Incomplete People Information

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

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 for determining an average solution,…

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A Quick Note on Bidding Theory of Online Ad Auctions

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

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 marginal returns equal marginal cost.…

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The Vishnu Effect of Startups (creators/destroyers of jobs)

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

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 to startups? Just like these…

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A major change in AdWords – How to react?

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

Introduction Google has made a major change in AdWords. Ads are now shown only in the main column, no longer in the right column. Previously, there were generally speaking eight ads per SERP. For some queries, Google didn’t show ads at all, and additionally they’ve been constantly testing the limit, e.g. running up to 16 product listing ads per results page. But…

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How to prevent disruption from happening to you? AKA avoiding the “Vanjoki fallacy”

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

Introduction A major issue of corporations is how they can avoid being disrupted. This is a commonly established issue, e.g. Christensen discusses it in his book “Innovator’s dilemma”. But I’m going to present here a simple solution for it. Here it is. Rule Number 1: Don’t look at absolute market shares, look at growth rates I call this the “Vanjoki…

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European financial crisis – the next steps?

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

Introduction With this post, I’m anticipating the next phase of debate on European financial crisis, as the problem of asynchronous economies isn’t going away. The continent is currently riddled with the refugee crisis, but sooner or later the attention will return to this topic which hasn’t been properly dealt with. The problem In brief, there are two countries: Country A –…

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The correct way to calculate ROI for online marketing

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

Introduction This is a short post explaining the correct way to calculate ROI for online marketing. I got the idea earlier today while renewing my Google AdWords certificate and seeing this question in the exam: Now, here’s the trap – I’m arguing most advertisers would choose the option C, although the correct one is option A. Let me elaborate on this.…

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