Marketing Pilgrim

Ok, that headline was completely unfair because this post is about WiFi access on Virgin America flights that is being provided by Google. Got your attention though didn’t it? For a moment maybe you thought that Google had really taken this ‘providing service to everyone and type of person on the planet’ to a disturbing level. Maybe you just think I’m an idiot for using the headline. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much in the end does it?

Now for the news. On Google’s blog they have announced how they are providing this service on every Virgin America flight for the holiday season.

We know the holiday season seems to come earlier every year (sorry, Halloween), but before you make your final travel plans, we’re excited to let you know that we’re partnering with Virgin America to provide free WiFi on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010

A company that earns its living by optimizing web sites for mobile browsers just issued a report that suggests most of us need our web sites optimized for mobile browsers!

Shocking, huh?

OK, if we get over the potential bias in Gomez’s Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-Users, we find some interesting stats.

Like this one: 82% of mobile phone users would use their phone to access the web more often, if only your site would load faster and provided a reliable experience:

Or this one: if a mobile phone user can’t complete a transaction within a minute, they’re going to bail on your web site.

And: if your mobile site doesn’t even load within the first 10 seconds, you can forget it!

There’s a problem brewing that involves Google and election mud-slinging.

Ooh, I just heard a collective “I knew it” from political conspiracy theorists around the country, but it’s not quite what you think. The problem involves the mandated disclaimer often needed for any kind of political ad.

You know the kind: “This ad was paid for by the party to elect Michael Scott mayor of Scranton.”

The issue under discussion is, how do you fit such a long disclaimer on a Google AdWords ad? In his recent campaign for mayor of St. Petersburg, Fla., Scott Wagman bought such an ad and was fined for lack of disclaimer.

This year, we’ve seen a lot of pessimistic estimates of YouTube’s operating losses. While the site does bring in some advertising revenue, they haven’t quite covered that $1.65B price tag yet. And based on bandwidth costs, various analysts have estimated annual operating losses of anywhere from $470M to $175M.

Note that the more conservative estimate here still includes a bandwidth bill of nearly $50M. But new reports are estimating that cost as even lower. After Arbor Networks’ recent analysis of 256 exabytes of Internet traffic, it seems YouTube may be paying nothing for their bandwidth.

As we mentioned before, Arbor Networks found that 6% of all Internet traffic worldwide was going to Google. With that much traffic (we’re talking almost 17 quadrillion megabytes), it seems Google would have to have some serious pipage to support their popularity.

In case you’ve forgotten, Google Wave is that cool new email-is-so-last-century communication method. Currently in invitation-only beta, some have hailed Google Wave and its instant, integrated communication as a huge timewaster, while others like it.

Google Wave continues to roll, too, with new clients announced for both Macs and iPhones. Called Waveboard, the client will be a desktop version of the online client.

Participating iPhone users can access the web version, of course, but Mashable says that the web version yields mixed results (with some in the comments saying that the iPhone consistently crashes in the interface). The client version would (hopefully) make Wave operate much more smoothly. Naturally, there might be some concerns about speed in the real-time platform—but a deeper look at the software changes shows that shouldn’t be a problem.

Despite most firms indicating their involvement in customer intelligence efforts, the lack of sophistication of said efforts–and the siloing of the data–is holding back many businesses, according to a new report from Forrester.

The Intelligent Approach To Customer Intelligence report reveals more than 80% of companies say they use market research, direct marketing, and web analytics, as part of their customer intelligence. Yet, despite this, only 25% of companies have any idea just how beneficial that data is to their business. Forrester submits that there are three levels of sophistication–when it comes to customer intelligence–and most organizations are barely scratching the surface:

So what gets your firm from one siloing to sharing? Apparently, it’s the people you hire. Marketing "technologists", "scientists", "practitioners" and "customer strategists" are all job functions of the future–all reporting into a CMO that places a high priority on customer intelligence.