Just got home from Affiliate Summit 2006 in Las Vegas.  Great event put on by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward.  Congratulations to them for their success in hosting a growing conference.  (Unlike many of the declining conferences I’ve attended that past few years)

The networking allowed me to catch up with many old friends and business acquaintances, and to make some new friends.  In addition, there were some great educational sessions as well.  I was particularly interested in this part of the conference, as I’m in the process of launching my own educational services company, Conference Call University

Some things that came out of the conference:

Fredrick Marckini from iProspect gave a very enlightening presentation on the presence of search in our lives.  Not just on the Internet, but on our mobile phones, cable programming guides and more.  If you missed this one, I highly recommend you download the PDF HERE

Anne Holland from MarketingSherpa was also great (as usual).  She discussed “Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Opportunities for 2006” You can check out her PDF HERE.  Pay close attention to the part about landing pages.  Simple idea, a lot of power.  And yes, it’s something most of us KNOW, it’s just that most of us don’t DO IT!

One of the most valuable nuggets of information came from Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist for Amazon.  He was talking about all of the many developer tools and API’s that are offered by Amazon Web Services.  Many were tools that only the most tech-savvy in the audience could relate to, and the audience was getting glassy-eyed.  Then he got to the final bullet of his presentation, Mechanical Turk.  The audience suddenly came to life, including me!  This is an AMAZING tool! 

You can check out the complete story of the original original Mechanical Turk here, but essentially, Amazon took the name because it combines what humans do best, with what machines do best, making the sum greater than the parts.  Using the Web as central repository for tasks, and humans as the intelligent nodes in the background, Mechanical Turk creates a most impressive distributed network that can achieve complex tasks fast and cheap. Some uses Mr. Barr cited for the Amazon Mechanical Turk:

*Internally, Amazon is using Mechanical Turk in their book scanning project to identify the orientation of Japanese text.  Japanese text can be written vertically or horizontally, and Amazon needed to figure out how to write software that could recognize which orientation the text was so it could be scanned properly.  They figured it would take a couple million dollars in programming time to create a system to do this.  Enter Mechanical Turk.  By utilizing the distributed human network, scanned pages are sent to human editors, who can simply glance at it and determine the orientation.  For a cost of only pennies, the editors provide Amazon with the vertical vs. horizontal answer. 

*A9 is using it for their Maps project, which seeks to create a directory where you put in an address, and it will pull up the GPS coordinates of a location, as well as an actual picture of the location.  So if you are going to look for a particular office building in an unfamiliar city, by using A9 Maps, you could pull up a picture of the building before you travel there so you know what it looks like.  A9 is using Amazon Turk to manage the distributed network of thousands of people who are driving around, taking pictures of buildings, and entering them in a database.

*A web site called CastingWords set up a podcasting transcription services using Mechanical Turk.  Simply upload your podcast, and Castingwords carves it up into 30 second chunks, and sends it to hundreds of people for transcription.  Once it is transcribed, the text is sent back through the system, compiled in order, and sent back to you.  The whole process can actually be done in as little as a half-hour, and costs $0.42 per audio minute.  About one-third the price of traditional transcription!

Mechanical Turk is in Beta right now, but is available to be customized with any use you can think of.  I can think of about ten great ideas right now, so I’ve got to go....

Busy executives get paid to move the needle leaving very little time for experimentation… yet researching new innovations (new tools that can help us innovate) is required in order to compete.  Often, e-commerce and e-marketing teams make large investments in essential tools such as e-mail delivery systems yet only use 1/3 of their total functionality.  Why? 

Jeanniey Mullen reveals that perception is at the core… in that busy professionals choose (I suggest) to see but a handful of a tool’s total options.  These are the functions that, they believe, are essential in moving the needle (generating consideration, sales, leads); the rest are “bells and whistles.”

Is this a dangerous practice?  I suggest it may be considering the rapid pace of innovation and young, “e-savvy” entrepreneurs.

In February, the CMO Council published a joint study with the Promotional Marketing Association that proclaimed a majority of marketers admit that they, themselves, do not have a “very good” level of understanding when it comes to e-marketing.  Combine this with the CMO Council’s new report suggesting that a majority of those surveyed are not “well regarded and respected.” In fact, only 10% report being viewed by executive peers as “highly influential and strategic.”

“This study confirms marketers need to move from a tactical orientation to a more analytic and strategic approach that will enable them to realign marketing initiatives with the overall corporate mission,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

MarketingVOX reports two-thirds of CEOs (polled in a separate survey by Chief Executive magazine) said their marketing groups are “mission critical” for creating top-line growth.  Duh!  Outside of sales and marketing who’s left?

What has the power to change such perceptions and why do technology marketers care to know so little about tech-based marketing?  What will shame them into action or will the “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em” attitude CEO’s possess simply provide them with an insurance policy on remaining employed?

I’ve been a long-time proponent of web analytics, requiring all of my clients to implement analytics, writing articles in trade magazines, and staying abreast of changes in the industry.  But yesterday’s announcement by Google of providing the Urchin services for FREE really blew me away. 

I’ve looked over their offering, and it seems quite robust.  It appears to offer about 95% of the features offered by competitors costing $1,000 per month or more. 

On the down side, I’m reading in several places (DM News, Web Analytics Forum, etc.) that there should be some concern about privacy issues, and Google using the data collected “against you.” From what I’ve seen of Google, these concerns may not be entirely off-base.  You can be sure that Google will use the collective and individual intelligence they glean from the web data gathered from this “free” program.  Yes, they will probably use it to set and negotiate pricing for current and future advertising mechanisms.  That may be bad.  However, they may also use it to find new ways to maximize the collective advertising dollars of everyone that plays.  Let’s face it, Google is a significant source of revenue for many companies.  If Google uses the collected data to continue to improve their offerings, and thus improve the revenues and profits of thousands of businesses, is that really a bad exchange for letting them peek at your data?

Sound off with your views…

The National Retail Federation’s Shop.org is increasing its offerings at the regional level thanks to volunteer members who are organizing successful events for e-retailers.  Known for offering outstanding networking and programming at the national level throughout the year, the e-retailing association is giving members the opportunity to engage each other more frequently at the local level.  The afternoon and early-evening events… featuring cocktails and a well-prepared yet casual dinner… are being organized in Dallas, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. 

“Shop.org regional events give our members an opportunity to gather with local fellow retailers in between national events, thus increasing the frequency of information sharing opportunities and without the travel costs,” Scott Silverman recently told me.

Members are coming together to network and gain insights on important industry issues and practices such as search, affiliate marketing, click fraud/PPC advertising and emerging technologies like RSS.  As usual, Shop.org’s popular (read: successful) retailer-only roundtables are back and feature open and honest dialogue between members.  Essentially, it’s “retailers helping retailers” and from what I have experienced it’s not surprising that members enjoy this feature. 

As an example, the San Francisco event focused one of its roundtables on eHoliday merchandising and marketing.  Here in Chicago, Crate & Barrel provided our group with fantastic facilities (including a tour).  Thanks go out to C&B’s fearless e-commerce leader, John Seebeck and Gordon Segal, CEO and Co-Founder of the company.

Internet Retailer reports “Several major multi-channel retailers, including eBay Inc., Shop NBC and the Home Shopping Network, have formed an alliance to develop strategies for dealing with legislative and technological issues facing web merchants.” FULL ARTICLE

I spoke with Barbara Tulipane, ERA President and CEO about this alliance while at the ERA annual conference in Las Vegas last month.  According to her, the “big boys” of the internet are tired of fighting, and seeking to work together to advance the cause of internet businesses in Washington, and in the eyes of consumers. 

I know what you’re thinking… “an infomercial association to spearhead the cause of internet companies?”

Perhaps it does make sense.  Let’s face it, when it comes to consumer trust, both the internet and the DRTV business could use a lift.  The bad apples in both arenas are making it tough for everyone.  In DRTV, we have hucksters and false advertisers.  Online, we have spammers, phishers, malware.  And on Capital Hill, pending and proposed legislation on everything from taxes to privacy could affect ALL of our businesses for years to come. 

Imagine the lobbying power of an association that had Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, and more all pulling for one cause. 

The Electronic Retailing Association could find itself as powerful as the NRA!

Your thoughts?