Exploring Marketing Technology

Author: Jeff Larche

  • What the Netflix prize teaches us about digital teamwork

    A few days ago a team crossed the finish line in a race to develop the best algorithm for the Netflix recommendation engine. It wasn’t easy. It turns out that the type of business logic once carried exclusively between the ears of a good video rental clerk is hard  to automate. Netflix decided they needed help. They placed a price on improving suggestion results: One million dollars for a 10% or better improvement.

    Teams around the world got to work. It took them three years to reach the 10% milestone. And 30 days after one team did, the best results over that threshold took the prize. Here’s the leaderboad.

    We can learn from these teams’ struggles. The leaders who were interviewed all agree they couldn’t have done it without an interdisciplinary approach, tight collaboration and a willingness to be wildly creative. According to a piece in the New York Times, “the formula for success was to bring together people with complementary skills and combine different methods of problem-solving.”

    In the physical world, we know that the more hands you have to lift something, the heavier an object you can lift. But most of us in our digital, information age careers, have a difficult time imagining that this synergy is possible when the heavy lifting is computational. We need to think again.

    Quoted in the Times piece, David Weiss, a member of one of the teams competing, said, “The surprise was that the collaborative approach works so well, that trying all the algorithms, coding them up and putting them together far exceeded our expectations.”

    We’ve seen it work with open source software and multi-player online games. Now we have a very public example that in the digital world as well, many hands make light work.

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  • Bokodes talk to you through your smart-phone camera

    According to an estimate on this video, the world is teeming with a billion people who are armed with a “reasonably high quality” digital camera. Most of these cameras are in cell phones. The Camera Culture, of the prestigious MIT Media Lab, wishes to exploit this opportunity with a new type of barcode, called the Bokode. The video below shows the science behind this breathtaking new technology.

    Geek Alert: Unless you’re an optical physicist, you’ll likely start zoning out by the third minute of this five-minute video. Hang in there. The more apparent business applications are discussed starting in the last minute of this thing.

    If you simply cannot endure the details about how this system conveys tons of product information, and senses where your camera is positioned and communicates that position to your camera, here’s a link to a more benefits-oriented video, from BBC’s outstanding technology bureau.

    Assuming you’re like me, a marketing professional who cares about technology, I urge you to educate yourself on this advancement in cell-camera-enabled barcoding. It’s the beginning of a more robust way for us to gather information about the products and businesses we encounter.

    Unless I’m mistaken, that is. I’d love to know what you think.

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  • It’s time we deliver great mobile web experiences

    moonForty years after putting a human on the moon, we’re faced with the same question we had that day: Now what? My vote is not moon colonization, or sending people to Mars. No, let’s do something really challenging — but arguably far more beneficial. Let’s finally deliver stellar mobile web experience.

    I’m proposing this in light of the new study that finds typical mobile web experiences excruciating. The user experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group reports today in their usability studies that the typical success rate for users completing tasks on the mobile Internet was just shy of 60 percent, compared to an average PC-based browser success rate of 80 percent.

    Jakob Nielsen says of these findings: “The phrase ‘mobile usability’ is pretty much an oxymoron … [watching users] suffer during our user sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994.”

    Improving mobile web experiences won’t be easy. But the returns in customer productivity and brand loyalty for businesses that hit the mark are huge.

  • Netflix understands the strong ROI of improved customer satisfaction

    After three years, the Netflix Prize competition is coming to a triumphant close. This is where the online DVD rental company offered a $1 million reward to anyone who could improve its flawed Cinematch recommendation engine by at least 10 percent. Back when it started, I suggested one novel way that a competing team might improve results (hire a philosopher). We may never know all of the tricks employed by the likely winners.

    And who might these winners be? A little over a week ago, the team called “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” delivered a 10.05% improvement. The Netflix Prize competition has now declared “last call.” The other teams have thirty days to improve on the winning algorithm.

    Two things strike me about this competition. The first is how difficult it is to predict our tastes in films. I’m frankly amazed that anyone is taking the prize. (Remember, teams have been trying for three solid years!)

    The second and more important take-away is this: You can never be content with your present efforts to satisfy customers. They can always be improved — and they should be improved. Even when the cost is surprisingly steep.

  • Online communities also follow Newton’s Third Law

    Newton’s Third Law of Motion contends that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I’ve been observing for some time this paradox: The more networked we become, the more we rebel against impersonality. We yearn for ways to connect in the physical space. The latest example is from the shrewd publicity efforts behind Moby’s latest album. New York Magazine reports the following:

    He promoted his latest, Wait for Me, by booking a spa so that journalists [including some extremely tech-savvy writers], could listen while getting massages.

    How ironic that the way to these journalists’ hearts should be through unkinked necks and loosened shoulders. Not that such novel — and decidedly low-tech — promotions of new albums are particularly new. You may recall the impact that Trent Reznor (a.k.a., Nine Inch Nails) had when he leaked new songs to a pre-release albums through MP3s loaded on USB sticks left in the restrooms of nightclubs. That was more than two years ago. (Here’s an account of that promotion, on MediaPost. Registration is required.)

    My take on Moby’s high tech / high touch ploy is simple: If you’re trying to break through the drone of network buzz and isolating keyboarding, look to its extreme opposite.