Just saw this post from the NCTA Cable Show apparently Comcast is demoing a new “wideband” service promising 120 Mbps Internet access! 120 MB! I now have some serious bandwidth envy now. Seriously sign me up! Now that’s a fat pipe.
Monthly Archives: May 2007
yahoo still doesn’t get it even with panama
Posted by Todd Sawicki on May 8, 2007
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I am fairly experienced with SEM having managed grown an SEM budget from $100 a day a few years ago to hundreds of thousands dollars a month across every conceivable search engine and contextual platform from Google to Kanoodle and everything in between.
Because of the size of their traffic – the two most important SEM platforms are Google and Yahoo. And historically Google’s adwords system blew the doors off of Yahoo’s old, out-dated overture based system. Google offered an easy to use but sophisticated platform that would allow me to get a new campaign up and running in minutes (and earning money for Google), while Yahoo’s out-dated overture platform was clunky, slow and required HUMAN approval which could literally take 2-3 weeks to get a new campaign or ad approved. This created 2 huge issues – Yahoo was leaving huge amounts of money (likely hundreds and millions of dollars – how do you like them apples yahoo shareholders?) by not running ads while google was running the same ad because yahoo was too damn slow in approving ads and second optimization of ads was next to impossible on yahoo because it making changes was too painful in terms of time to make it worthwhile. And in fairness – the new panama platform was built to addresss both issues which from my playing around seems to have solved.
BUT and there’s a HUGE but here… Yahoo still doesn’t get it. Yahoo unfortunately still charges a minimum cpc of 10 cents. Whereas up in Mountain View, Google charges as little as a 1 cent for a cpc. I am sure some of you are saying – yahoo’s smart for charging a higher price because that means more money. Wrong. What it does is that it limits the words that someone can advertise on yahoo around – goodbye long tail of keyword’s (kw’s). The more kw’s you use in a search campaign the lower value those outlying kw’s have to you. And unless your making more money then the kw is costing you, then you won’t use it. And so Yahoo artificially limits the amount of kw’s an advertiser will be willing to bid on if they had no minimum bid. So until Yahoo truly embraces the lessons of Google’s advertising system, it is pretty easy to say Yahoo just doesn’t get it yet.
could buying an hdtv be any more complex?
Posted by Todd Sawicki on May 6, 2007
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Seriously between the 3 types of types of tv’s – rear projection, lcd and plasma, the resolution options – 720p vs. 1080p, the varying price points and features, I can’t believe how difficult it is to pick one. And what’s scary is I am a gadget freak so I actually understand most of the arcane chatter being thrown around. Given the complexity of the purchase options (makes car buying look easy in comparison to me) I can’t believe that hdtv’s have gone mainstream. In my view, it reminds me of what it was like to buy a PC 10-15 years ago (ram vs. hd size vs. cpu vs. graphics vs. motherboard, etc.) when you needed a CS degree to really understand what you were supposed to buy.
Thankfully waiting for me in this case is going to pay off with 1080p price points coming into the realm of reason. We’re reaching the natural end of our old fashioned standard definition CRT (it’s almost 10 years old and started to fade). But a better price is about the only bargain as it’s still painfully complex based upon my reading over at avsforums. Here’s what I’ve learned:
- LCD’s might be up and comers but they suffer from jagged motion, dead pixels, color banding (where vertical bands show instead of smooth gradients in solid colors) and limited depth of colors and blackness. Sony, Samsung and Sharp seem to be leaders here.
- Plasma’s – traditionally a price premium over LCD’s and now just starting to roll out 1080p, deeper richer colors but might not work best in a bright room. Panasonic or Pioneer seem to be the way to go here.
- Rear projections – best bang for your buck in terms of size but not as bright as LCD or as smooth as plasma. Samsung or Sony seem to be the way to go here.
I’ve probably already spent 8 hours researching this. Any feedback on the journey is more then welcome.
lies, damned lies and statistics
Posted by Todd Sawicki on May 6, 2007
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Fred Wilson’s post about the age of entrepreneurs in his portfolio was interesting amid his concern of a potential bias in the age of entreprenuers. But more importantly is Paul Kedrosky’s rebuttal showing a survey of the age of entrepreneurs which shows a distribution that is pretty consistent with the age distribution of the workforce. The moral of the story – giving a stat without a context is the easiest way in the world to misrepresent the point of the statistic. In this case, Fred wasn’t trying to mislead anyone, but his concerns about whether he was hitting a mid-life crisis might have been assuaged he had been looking at the distribution the way Paul did. Context is everything when it comes to stats.
Of course I just gave away the oldest marketing trick in the book when it comes to stats when trying to paint a favorable picture to an audience 
toddler parteting tip of the day
Posted by Todd Sawicki on May 6, 2007
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