Marketing Pilgrim

Its rare that I will use the words “innovative” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence. But today I am breaking that habit to talk a moment about Pivot. Pivot is an innovative piece of software from Microsoft that makes it possible to visualize large sets of data in very interesting ways. Gary Flake demoed Pivot at TED back in March.

I have been playing with Pivot for about a week now, and can honestly say that its the first Microsoft product that I have been excited about in years! All I can think about is what it would be like if Microsoft combined Pivot with Bing’s search index. I mean can you imagine what that would be like? It would be the closest thing to a Google killer ever.

Apple’s mobile ad platform iAds are beginning to appear in apps with the ad for the Nissan Leaf leading the way. This is the same ad that was showcased by Steve Jobs during the iAd demo during the Worldwide Developers Conference last month.

MacRumors.com reports

Last week, we noted that developers had begin incorporating support for Apple’s iAd mobile advertisements into updates for their applications, with a few applications starting to show placeholder banners and test ads ahead of the program’s official launch on July 1st. Right on time, iAd advertisements have begun to go live, although their presence appears to be very spotty on iAd-compatible applications at the moment with banners appearing only occasionally while at other times the apps simply show blank space in the banner location.

We all know it goes on. Sometimes it’s disclosed, other times not. Sometimes it’s black and white, other times it’s more of a gray area.

What am I talking about? Paid blog posts.

According to Fleishman-Hillard’s 2010 Digital Influence Index (pdf), consumers are wising up to paid/sponsored blogs posts–and they don’t like them!

If you’re given a free sample, only 24% of your readers will trust you to be unbiased. Paid to write a review, that trust drops to 19%.

Still, in both cases, there’s this big area of indecision (61% and 54% respectively).

Of course, it’s one thing to say that you wouldn’t trust a sponsored blog post, but what about in reality? Factors that need to be considered in the real world include:

OK, this is just plain unfair!

I stopped using Blogger back in 2005, because, well, it hadn’t received any decent new features in a couple of years. Since then, Google has done a better job of keeping up with WordPress and today Blogger uses are getting something that really makes me jealous.

Real-time web analytics!

I mean, c’mon Google! Blogger is a free platform and you’re giving them free real-time web stats? What about us Google Analytics users? What did we ever do to deserve being shunned? <sniff>

I suspect that Blogger is getting this first because a) it’s a small set of sites to test it with, and b) Google knows the code of these sites inside and out, so can anticipate the strain on its analytics servers.

I use Skype for all my incoming and outgoing business calls. I have ever since 2006.

While I love Skype, what I really love is my Google Voice number. In fact, when you call my office number, you are calling my Google Voice number, which is then routed to my Skype-In number. Why don’t I just dump Skype and exclusively use Google Voice? Well, because there is no desktop app for Google Voice, so no easy way to dial-out using  it.

Until now.

TechCrunch has gotten their hands on a prototype Google Desktop app–still fresh in the Gizmo5 wrapper (the company is acquired in 2009). Here’s a video demo:

A lot more basic than Skype, but I only use the basic features of Skype anyway. I hope Google brings this to the public soon!

We live in an app crazy world. Whether it is something developed for the most popular iPhone or the up and coming Android market, apps are the talk of the marketing town. While there is plenty of talk about apps, there is actually precious little hard evidence of their impact for brands.

Why is that? There are plenty of possible reasons.

1. Companies want to keep that data to themselves
2. The apps are not performing as well as anticipated
3. There are no real KPI’s in place to provide accurate analysis of the app’s bottom line impact
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
6. Some of the above
7. Something other than the above