Podcasts about Omniture

Season 7 Episode 12: In this episode, Pete Codella, managing director of business services at the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, talks with Jacob Baadsgaard, founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising.  Baadsgaard discusses his journey from working at Omniture to founding his data-driven marketing agency. He highlights the importance of connecting marketing data with business data and how his agency helps small to medium-sized businesses act on that data. Baadsgaard emphasizes the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship, stressing the need for authenticity and a willingness to learn from successes and failures.  He also discusses Disruptive University, an initiative he founded to help marketers and entrepreneurs find clarity and authenticity in their work and personal lives. He explains how the program addresses the challenges of balancing business success with personal fulfillment. The university offers online courses and in-person summits, focusing on aligning personal values with professional goals. Baadsgaard praises Utah's supportive environment for entrepreneurs, citing the state's driven population, strong university connections, and pro-business government. He expresses enthusiasm for the future of his ventures — particularly his goal of encouraging widespread authenticity — and his thoughts on how AI will impact the advertising industry.

In this episode, Mikel Certudi, CEO and co-founder of Warranty Hive, shares insights from his diverse career, including his time at Omniture and Adobe, where he helped scale the company's revenue from $3 billion to $10 billion. Mikel discusses his entrepreneurship journey, founding companies like Strala, which organized big data for better business insights, and now leading Warranty Hive and Peak, two AI-driven businesses focused on reducing operational costs and enhancing customer and employee experiences. He also talks about the importance of mental health, grounding habits, and serving in your community.

Jonathan Mendez has been a founder and leader in Adtech and Martech for two decades, with a focus on building first-party data products to optimize media performance.  He is the founder and CEO at Neuralift AI, having prior to that been Chief Digital Officer at a major cruise line, and having also spent five years building composable CDPs (Customer Data Platform) for global retail brands and telcos. He was also the Founder and CEO of Yieldbot, which in 2016 was the fourth largest Digital Advertising Network. He was also the CSO at Offermatica, eventually acquired by Omniture, now part of Adobe.  Jonathan's blog has been active for 17 years and is a recognized source of insights into AdTech, MarTech or Media. References: Jonathan Mendez (blog): Optimize & Prophesize Neuralift AI Jonathan Mendez on X Jonathan Mendez on LinkedIn Tejas Manohar (Hightouch): data activation and composable CDPs in a privacy-first world (Masters of Privacy) Nicola Newitt (Infosum): the legal case for Data Clean Rooms (Masters of Privacy) Matthias Eigenmann (Decentriq): Confidential Computing, contractual relationships and legal bases for Data Clean Rooms (Masters of Privacy)  

In Ep. 137 of Earned, Conor sits down with Chris Harrington, the newly appointed CEO of CreatorIQ, for an in-depth conversation about his remarkable journey and strategic vision for the influencer marketing industry. Chris opens up about his rigorous evaluation process, CreatorIQ's growth potential and alignment with his strategic vision. Drawing on personal experiences, including his wife Angie's successful influencer career and his daughter Jessa's creation of a $15M clothing brand through social media, Chris underscores the critical role of authenticity in creator marketing. He shares valuable insights on personal branding, emphasizing the importance of a unique voice and trustworthy engagement for influencers. We also explore his professional background, including pivotal strategic decisions made during his tenure at Omniture, where real-time analytics and creative competitive strategies were key to success. Chris further delves into the complexities and triumphs of unifying corporate data at Domo, shedding light on the challenges of raising funds and engaging industry giants. Read our Q&A with Chris here!  In this episode, you'll learn:  1. The significance of strategic vision, resilience, and collaboration among brands, agencies, social networks in the creator economy  2. Why personal branding and maintaining a unique voice in influencer marketing is critical to success  3. How Chris meticulously evaluated over 22 companies before choosing CreatorIQ for its robust industry potential and alignment with his vision.   Resources: CreatorIQ - https://www.creatoriq.com/   Connect with the Guest: Chris's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cch360/   Connect with Conor Begley & CreatorIQ: Conor's LinkedIn - @conormbegley CreatorIQ LinkedIn - @creatoriq   Follow us on social: CreatorIQ YouTube - @TribeDynamics CreatorIQ Instagram - @creatoriq CreatorIQ TikTok - @creator.iq CreatorIQ Twitter - @CreatorIQ  

Episode 183 As a Disclaimer, note that there's no sponsor or affiliate relationship with the vendor interviewed here. They're simply on the show to give their perspective on our topic. As trite as it sounds, the way that we look at the world affects our understanding of it. Let me tell you about a time I noticed this. When I was a kid, I would go to school, walk into my classroom, and see my teacher there. She was such a constant there, I imagined that she never left the classroom, she was a fixture of the room, part of the furniture. It's like the teacher didn't persist as a person who had a life outside of the classroom. So when I was out at the grocery store with my parents and I saw my teacher, not dressed in their teacher clothes, not ensconced in their teacher setting, my brain just melted.  While this might be laughable, those of us using marketing analytics tools could be guilty of falling into the same trap. Credit for making this concept clear in not 1 but 2 great books must go to Avinash Kaushik. Think about it. According to Classic web analytics, visitors who hit our website had started  an imaginary timer that we called a web session. We imagined in this race against the clock, they were viewing a sequence of pages which ferried them to forms we used as gates. We told ourselves that the gate-crossers had completed a successful session, converting from visitors into leads or customers. Stepping back, there are a few things wrong with this picture. Users don't only exist inside of a session, just like the teacher didn't only exist in the classroom—they roam about as they please.  Today's users aren't confined to marketing content. The experience they have straddles our marketing sites, to sites  and apps where their identity persists through being logged-in, where the interactions even span multiple devices - as we see on Slack and Discord for messages we've already read. The user's state changes - sometimes they complete a purchase, or become a paid subscriber, but at other times they may opt for a free plan or abandon their cart.  We need analytics for all of these actions. We need to step back and view the entire experience that people have with us over time. This is something that classic web analytics just can't measure. This is why the new generation of tools allows us to analyze complex trends and behavior of our users. They are collectively known as event-based analytics tools, and they excel in portraying the way that users experience a product. The foremost product-oriented analytics tool out there is called Amplitude, and today, we are speaking with its product evangelist. Since 2021, Adam Greco has been Amplitude's  Product Evangelist, guiding clients in understanding their tool through workshops, blogs, and videos.  He got into this field in 2005 when he joined analytics platform Omniture where he was a customer advocate for four years until Adobe acquired them and rechristened them Adobe Analytics. He then worked at consultancies for 15 years, showing people how to get the most out of Adobe's tool,  authoring over 200 blog posts along the way.  Lately Adam's speaking and advising on analytics has had him splitting his time between Chicago and Amsterdam (where he was when this was recorded). When he's in the states and not working, he enjoys restoring and going for drives in his 62 convertible corvette.  Timestamps/Chapters 0:00 - Intro 5:00 - Meet Adam; why event-based method works better than session-based method 24:00 - PSA 24:45 - how to get value out of recent analytics tools, including warehouse-native apps 56:20 - Adam's coordinates and free resources Links to all people and products mentioned are available in Ep 183's shownotes page on the Funnel Reboot site.   

On this episode of the Silicon Slopes Show, Clint meets with John Pestana who is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of ObservePoint and prior to that, he co-founded Omniture. They discuss John's background as an entrepreneur and how he built everything from scratch in the early days of his business ventures, whereas entrepreneurs today have access to a multitude of pre-built tools at their disposal. John talks about being one of the first big internet-age business acquisitions and how that transition impacted his life and business. They go through ObservePoint's origin story and John talks about his involvement in Utah politics and education. If you're an entrepreneur or simply want to learn more about Utah's tech and political arena, this episode is for you! "Just start. Just go. Stop talking about it, just do it. And then, have integrity and grit. Follow up on your commitments."

John Pestana is the CEO and co-founder of ObservePoint, a company that specializes in developing software solutions to assist businesses in guaranteeing the accuracy and usefulness of their web analytics and mobile analytics data. The primary goal of ObservePoint is to scan websites and applications, verifying the presence of analytics tags and ensuring that data collection is functioning as intended. In addition to his role at ObservePoint, John has contributed his expertise as a board member of DOMO.INC and has previously served as the co-founder and director of Omniture.In the realm of business, career, and life, it is crucial to adopt a focused mindset that centers around one thing at a time. All too often, individuals struggle with maintaining focus as distractions arise and their attention scatters. This lack of focus can hinder their ability to succeed, as their attention drifts towards negative outcomes or becomes fixated on their competition.However, the truth is that most of the time, the opportunity for success is right within reach, waiting to be seized. It is essential to recognize these opportunities, grab them firmly, and fully embrace them without hesitation. Rather than spending excessive time discussing and contemplating these chances, it is far more effective to take immediate action. Dive right onto the opportunity, leveraging your skills and resources to make the most of it.Ultimately, it is vital to question yourself honestly: Is this truly what you desire? By assessing your motives and aspirations, you can align your focus with your genuine passions and goals. This self-reflection allows you to make informed decisions and pursue endeavors that genuinely resonate with you.In summary, success in business, career, and life demands unwavering focus. Avoid being distracted by negativity or the actions of others. Instead, recognize the opportunities that lie before you, seize them with enthusiasm, and take decisive action. And above all, continually evaluate your desires and motivations to ensure you are on the right path towards fulfilling your true aspirations.Where to find John Pestana:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpestana/Website: https://www.observepoint.com/ Sirva SoundbitesExplores the latest trends and topics on global talent mobility and the future of work.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify-Where to find Tyler Hall: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerchall/ Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-tyler-hall-archives-7018241874482122753/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/sirTHALL Work with Tyler: https://www.tylerchristianhall.com/

On episode 36 of the Cashing Out podcast, Todd Sullivan speaks with Tyler Hall, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Drivably, a resource inventory platform for car dealers.  Tyler sold his business to a highly strategic public company, ACV, which was the leading digital automotive marketplace for car dealers. This exit was a home run for Tyler and his team, but his stories and advice about getting this deal done are priceless. In our conversation, Tyler and Todd not only talk about how he learned about building and selling companies from some of the top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of our time, but Tyler also shares very private and painful moments along the way that changed his personal and professional life forever.Episode Sponsor:Thanks to DoerenMayhew for sponsoring this episode of the Cashing Out podcast!  DoerenMayhew is one of Forbes best tax and accounting firms in the United States. Check out their Quality of Earnings (QofE) offerings, and everything else they can help you with at doeren.com. Episode Highlights: (3:44)  Tyler's beginnings as an entrepreneur... "I was broke as a joke and newly engaged..." (4:42)  Selling cars and a Class B Misdemeanor   (6:45)  Joining Josh James and Domo as an early employee (9:06)  An unpopular insight on venture-backed startups (13:45)  The sacrifices typically required by a founder-led business (15:15)  The creation of Drivably, and Tyler's first seed round (17:19)  Running out of money, and the realities of having to lay off teammates (19:11)  Finding product market fit, and a huge success at NADA (National Automotive Dealer Association) 2020 (22:27)  The COVID pandemic, and the business goes to zero overnight (24:10)  Fighting back to the top of the mountain (26:09)  Inbound interest, and thinking about selling Drivably (30:02)  M&A negotiations with a competitor - how Tyler managed the situation? (32:31)  Due diligence uncovers something that nearly kills the deal (34:44)  Tyler's wife, and her unemotional advice around M&A - never too high, never too low (41:52)  NASDAQ, and a tragedy that changed everything for Tyler and his family (49:37)  Final advice from Tyler Hall, and what he's doing now to help his fellow founders and entrepreneurs Where To Find Todd Sullivan (Host): LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddfsullivan/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Todd_Sullivan Where To Find Tyler Hall (Guest):LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerchall/ Episode 36 Required Reading: Ten years after Adobe bought Omniture, the deal comes into clearer focus HireVue Announces Close of Transaction with The Carlyle Group Porsche Ventures Invests in Drivably's Breakthrough Inventory Technology Acquisition of Drivably broadens ACV's products to enable dealers to successfully compete for consumer vehicles Tyler Hall Consulting The ROLLER COASTER PODCAST The Tyler Hall Archives Doeren Mayhew  Thanks so much for joining us this week.  Want to subscribe to the CASHING OUT PODCAST?  Have some feedback you'd like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

The Mogollon culture was an indigenous culture in the Western United States and Mexico that ranged from New Mexico and Arizona to Sonora, Mexico and out to Texas. They flourished from around 200 CE until the Spanish showed up and claimed their lands. The cultures that pre-existed them date back thousands more years, although archaeology has yet to pinpoint exactly how those evolved. Like many early cultures, they farmed and foraged. As they farmed more, their homes become more permanent and around 800 CE they began to create more durable homes that helped protect them from wild swings in the climate. We call those homes adobes today and the people who lived in those peublos and irrigated water, often moving higher into mountains, we call the Peubloans - or Pueblo Peoples. Adobe homes are similar to those found in ancient cultures in what we call Turkey today. It's an independent evolution. Adobe Creek was once called Arroyo de las Yeguas by the monks from Mission Santa Clara and then renamed to San Antonio Creek by a soldier Juan Prado Mesa when the land around it was given to him by the governor of Alto California at the time, Juan Bautista Alvarado. That's the same Alvarado as the street if you live in the area. The creek runs for over 14 miles north from the Black Mountain and through Palo Alto, California. The ranchers built their adobes close to the creeks. American settlers led the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, and took over the garrison of Sonoma, establishing the California Republic - which covered much of the lands of the Peubloans. There were only 33 of them at first, but after John Fremont (yes, he of whom that street is named after as well) encouraged the Americans, they raised an army of over 100 men and Fremont helped them march on Sutter's fort, now with the flag of the United States, thanks to Joseph Revere of the US Navy (yes, another street in San Francisco bears his name).  James Polk had pushed to expand the United States. Manfiest Destiny. Remember The Alamo. Etc. The fort at Monterey fell, the army marched south. Admiral Sloat got involved. They named a street after him. General Castro surrendered - he got a district named after him. Commodore Stockton announced the US had taken all of Calfironia soon after that. Manifest destiny was nearly complete. He's now basically the patron saint of a city, even if few there know who he was. The forts along the El Camino Real that linked the 21 Spanish Missions, a 600-mile road once walked by their proverbial father, Junípero Serra following the Portolá expedition of 1769, fell. Stockton took each, moving into Los Angeles, then San Diego. Practically all of Alto California fell with few shots. This was nothing like the battles for the independence of Texas, like when Santa Anna reclaimed the Alamo Mission.  Meanwhile, the waters of Adobe Creek continued to flow. The creek was renamed in the 1850s after Mesa built an adobe on the site. Adobe Creek it was. Over the next 100 years, the area evolved into a paradise with groves of trees and then groves of technology companies. The story of one begins a little beyond the borders of California.  Utah was initialy explored by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540 and settled by Europeans in search of furs and others who colonized the desert, including those who established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons - who settled there in 1847, just after the Bear Flag Revolt. The United States officially settled for the territory in 1848 and Utah became a territory and after a number of map changes wher ethe territory got smaller, was finally made a state in 1896. The University of Utah had been founded all the way back in 1850, though - and re-established in the 1860s.  100 years later, the University of Utah was a hotbed of engineers who pioneered a number of graphical advancements in computing. John Warnock went to grad school there and then went on to co-found Adobe and help bring us PostScript. Historically, PS, or Postscript was a message to be placed at the end of a letter, following the signature of the author. The PostScript language was a language to describe a page of text computationally. It was created by Adobe when Warnock, Doug Brotz, Charles Geschke, Bill Paxton (who worked on the Mother of All Demos with Doug Englebart during the development of Online System, or NLS in the late 70s and then at Xerox PARC), and Ed Taft. Warnock invented the Warnock algorithm while working on his PhD and went to work at Evans & Sutherland with Ivan Sutherland who effectively created the field of computer graphics. Geschke got his PhD at Carnegie Melon in the early 1970s and then went of to Xerox PARC. They worked with Paxton at PARC and before long, these PhDs and mathematicians had worked out the algorithms and then the languages to display images on computers while working on InterPress graphics at Xerox and Gerschke left Xerox and started Adobe. Warnock joined them and they went to market with Interpress as PostScript, which became a foundation for the Apple LaswerWriter to print graphics.  Not only that, PostScript could be used to define typefaces programmatically and later to display any old image.    Those technologies became the foundation for the desktop publishing industry. Apple released the 1984 Mac and other vendors brought in PostScript to describe graphics in their proprietary fashion and by 1991 they released PostScript Level 2 and then PostScript 3 in 1997. Other vendors made their own or furthered standards in their own ways and Adobe could have faded off into the history books of computing. But Adobe didn't create one product, they created an industry and the company they created to support that young industry created more products in that mission.  Steve Jobs tried to buy Adobe before that first Mac as released, for $5,000,000. But Warnock and Geschke had a vision for an industry in mind. They had a lot of ideas but development was fairly capital intensive, as were go to market strategies. So they went public on the NASDAQ in 1986. They expanded their PostScript distribution and sold it to companies like Texas Instruments for their laser printer, and other companies who made IBM-compatible companies. They got up to $16 million in sales that year. Warnock's wife was a graphic designer. This is where we see a diversity of ideas help us think about more than math. He saw how she worked and could see a world where Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad was much more given how far CPUs had come since the TX-0 days at MIT. So Adobe built and released Illustrator in 1987. By 1988 they broke even on sales and it raked in $19 million in revenue. Sales were strong in the universities but PostScript was still the hot product, selling to printer companies, typesetters, and other places were Adobe signed license agreements.  At this point, we see where the math, cartesian coordinates, drawn by geometric algorithms put pixels where they should be. But while this was far more efficient than just drawing a dot in a coordinate for larger images, drawing a dot in a pixel location was still the easier technology to understand.  They created Adobe Screenline in 1989 and Collectors Edition to create patterns. They listened to graphic designers and built what they heard humans wanted. Photoshop Nearly every graphic designer raves about Adobe Photoshop. That's because Photoshop is the best selling graphics editorial tool that has matured far beyond most other traditional solutions and now has thousands of features that allow users to manipulate images in practically any way they want.  Adobe Illustrator was created in 1987 and quickly became the de facto standard in vector-based graphics. Photoshop began life in 1987 as well, when Thomas and John Knoll, wanted to build a simpler tool to create graphics on a computer. Rather than vector graphics they created a raster graphical editor.  They made a deal with Barneyscan, a well-known scanner company that managed to distribute over two hundred copies of Photoshop with their scanners and Photoshop became a hit as it was the first editing software people heard about. Vector images are typically generated with Cartesian coordinates based on geometric formulas and so scale out more easily. Raster images are comprised of a grid of dots, or pixels, and can be more realistic.  Great products are rewarded with competitions. CorelDRAW was created in 1989 when Michael Bouillon and Pat Beirne built a tool to create vector illustrations. The sales got slim after other competitors entered the market and the Knoll brothers got in touch with Adobe and licensed the product through them. The software was then launched as Adobe Photoshop 1 in 1990. They released Photoshop 2 in 1991. By now they had support for paths, and given that Adobe also made Illustrator, EPS and CMYK rasterization, still a feature in Photoshop.  They launched Adobe Photoshop 2.5 in 1993, the first version that could be installed on Windows. This version came with a toolbar for filters and 16-bit channel support. Photoshop 3 came in 1994 and Thomas Knoll created what was probably one of the most important features added, and one that's become a standard in graphical applications since, layers. Now a designer could create a few layers that each had their own elements and hide layers or make layers more transparent. These could separate the subject from the background and led to entire new capabilities, like an almost faux 3 dimensional appearance of graphics..  Then version four in 1996 and this was one of the more widely distributed versions and very stable. They added automation and this was later considered part of becoming a platform - open up a scripting language or subset of a language so others built tools that integrated with or sat on top of those of a product, thus locking people into using products once they automated tasks to increase human efficiency.  Adobe Photoshop 5.0 added editable type, or rasterized text. Keep in mind that Adobe owned technology like PostScript and so could bring technology from Illustrator to Photoshop or vice versa, and integrate with other products - like export to PDF by then. They also added a number of undo options, a magnetic lasso, improved color management and it was now a great tool for more advanced designers. Then in 5.5 they added a save for web feature in a sign of the times. They could created vector shapes and continued to improve the user interface. Adobe 5 was also a big jump in complexity. Layers were easy enough to understand, but Photoshop was meant to be a subset of Illustrator features and had become far more than that. So in 2001 they released Photoshop Elements. By now they had a large portfolio of products and Elements was meant to appeal to the original customer base - the ones who were beginners and maybe not professional designers. By now, some people spent 40 or more hours a day in tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.  Adobe Today Adobe had released PostScript, Illustrator, and Photoshop. But they have one of the most substantial portfolios of products of any company. They also released Premiere in 1991 to get into video editing. They acquired Aldus Corporation to get into more publishing workflows with PageMaker. They used that acquisition to get into motion graphics with After Effects. They acquired dozens of companies and released their products as well. Adobe also released the PDF format do describe full pages of information (or files that spread across multiple pages) in 1993 and Adobe Acrobat to use those. Acrobat became the de facto standard for page distribution so people didn't have to download fonts to render pages properly. They dabbled in audio editing when they acquired Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium Software and so now sell Adobe Audition.  Adobe's biggest acquisition was Macromedia in 2005. Here, they added a dozen new products to the portfolio, which included Flash, Fireworks, WYSYWIG web editor Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flex, and Breeze, which is now called Adobe Connect. By now, they'd also created what we call Creative Suite, which are packages of applications that could be used for given tasks. Creative Suite also signaled a transition into a software as a service, or SaaS mindset. Now customers could pay a monthly fee for a user license rather than buy large software packages each time a new version was released. Adobe had always been a company who made products to create graphics. They expanded into online marketing and web analytics when they bought Omniture in 2009 for $1.8 billion. These products are now normalized into the naming convention used for the rest as Adobe Marketing Cloud. Flash fell by the wayside and so the next wave of acquisitions were for more mobile-oriented products. This began with Day Software and then Nitobi in 2011. And they furthered their Marketing Cloud support with an acquisition of one of the larger competitors when they acquired Marketo in 2018 and acquiring Workfront in 2020.  Given how many people started working from home, they also extended their offerings into pure-cloud video tooling with an acquisition of Frame.io in 2021. And here we see a company started by a bunch of true computer sciencists from academia in the early days of the personal computer that has become far more. They could have been rolled into Apple but had a vision of a creative suite of products that could be used to make the world a prettier place. Creative Suite then Creative Cloud shows a move of the same tools into a more online delivery model. Other companies come along to do similar tasks, like infinite digital whiteboard Miro - so they have to innovate to stay marketable. They have to continue to increase sales so they expand into other markets like the most adjacent Marketing Cloud.  At 22,500+ employees and with well over $12 billion in revenues, they have a lot of families dependent on maintaining that growth rate. And so the company becomes more than the culmination of their software. They become more than graphic design, web design, video editing, animation, and visual effects. Because in software, if revenues don't grow at a rate greater than 10 percent per year, the company simply isn't outgrowing the size of the market and likely won't be able to justify stock prices at an inflated earnings to price ratio that shows explosive growth. And yet once a company saturates sales in a given market they have shareholders to justify their existence to. Adobe has survived many an economic downturn and boom time with smart, measured growth and is likely to continue doing so for a long time to come.

Medha Parlikar is the Co-Founder and CTO of CasperLabs. Medha started working with technology in the early 80s. For the past two decades, she has been delivering production software at Adobe, Omniture, Avalara, MP3.com, and DivX. She strives to deliver high-quality production software while inspiring technical teams to solve tough problems and do their best work. She fell down the blockchain rabbit hole in 2017 and has been an avid fan of the promise of decentralization and open-source software. This led her to co-found CasperLabs in 2018.In this conversation, we discuss:- Enterprise blockchain solutions being the catalyst for mass adoption- Creating a server service- Iterating quickly and releasing to production- NFTs as patents, a huge use-case for NFTs- World Economic Forum- How Casper started, how and why the protocol was built- How blockchain needs to be future proof- Blockchain tech providing a trust layer for enterprise- Blockchain infrastructure compatibility with Rust / WASM and existing programming languages as a driver for adoption- Casper Labs adding Google Cloud adds to its growing portfolio of Web3 partnerships- IPwe Inc & Casper Labs announcing the largest enterprise blockchain deployment in history at Davos, Switzerland, during the week of the World Economic ForumCasperLabsWebsite: www.casperlabs.ioTwitter: @Casper_NetworkDiscord: discord.gg/Q38s3VhMedha ParlikarTwitter: @MParlikarLinkedIn: Medha Parlikar   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.  PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance. Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers.  PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions.  Code: CRYPTONEWS50  This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below:  PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50 

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Data about cookies Browser fingerprinting Audience segmentation 1st party vs 3rd party cookies How Apple's ITP treats cookies Server side tracking with Google Ads Website demographics episode Sites the LAN shows up on NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.   Show Transcript Are you prepared for the cookiepocalypse? We're going full prepper on this episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show. Come step down into our homemade bunker. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics! If you haven't been living under a rock, then you've likely heard about the impending doom of the browser cookie. Well, a lot of what we do as digital marketers is dependent on cookies. So you may have asked yourself, how much of your work will be affected. The subject is highly technical, so we wanted to simplify it as much as possible for you, just in case you're not a JavaScript developer. I'm going to run you through the basics of what cookies actually are, and what's happening to them. Then we'll get to jump into the cookiepocalypse and how it's affecting LinkedIn Ads specifically. As a bit of a disclaimer here, I did do a lot of research for this episode. But as a favor to those of you who are highly technical, if I got anything wrong here or overlooked anything, please do reach out and I'd love the correction and insights. Credit where credit is due, this is an episode that was requested again by Mark Bissoni like the last one. So thanks, Mark for the great ideass. I think we have one more from you here in the can. First in the news, my apologies for missing last week's episode. Our company went on a retreat, and we went down to beautiful St. George Utah. It was like a four hour drive for us. We rented a really cool mansion that had its own arcade and theater and pool. And we even spent a day at the sand dunes in side by sides and on dirt bikes. All of that was way cool, but my favorite part about it was that because we're a remote team, and we talk a lot over zoom, we discovered that no amount of zoom calls can take the place of the effectiveness of an in person conversation. As an example, a group of us were just sitting at a table working, and a conversation naturally started up. The result of the conversation was after an hour, we got way more movement on our own sales and marketing strategy than we've made the whole past year on it. Our company meetings went very much the same way. We found opportunities that we never would have found over zoom. We set company team and individual goals. And the excitement from that was palpable. Between you and I, I didn't know if the investment in the retreat was going to be a worthwhile expense. But boy, now after having done it, I'm a huge believer in company retreats. If you listen to episode 67, that was all about the organic side of LinkedIn. I have some sad news, our guest Mark Williams, his dad just passed away. I heard from his podcast. So those of you who aren't following that, if you're connected to him reaching out and just passing your condolences could probably go a long way. There have been a couple of LinkedIn features that have been rolled out or are in the process of rolling out some good, some bad. Let's talk about the audience insights tool. We talked about this one in the news section of episode 57. It's a really cool feature where you can go in and look at any given matched audience. And LinkedIn will tell you in great detail about the audiences and what they like and what they're into and what makes them up. And this is a feature we've been really excited about. We got to play around with it a little bit in its alpha or its beta. And now it's fun to see it out in everyone's accounts. If you want to access it go to plan in your navigation instead of campaign manager, and then audiences and then you can click the checkbox next to any of those audiences and click insights, then it will take you to the Insights page. If it hasn't been rolled out to you yet. It should very shortly we've seen it in the vast majority of our accounts. A new update that we were not fans of, LinkedIn made some changes to how they calculate reach. One of our loyal listeners, Tom Tigwell from the UK, he reached out to me about it and said, "Hey, did you see what LinkedIn is doing with reach? Looks like they're sunsetting it." We posted about this on LinkedIn, and Jay Rathell, another one of our loyal listeners, he talked to his rep and clarified a few things. And LinkedIn's response here is actually really applicable to today's topic. He said, as a result of identity changes, we're making updates to reach and frequency metrics in the campaign manager tool. The current reach frequency, and cost per 1000 members reached metrics will be replaced with a one day, seven day, and 30 day averages for each. The key result for brand awareness campaigns will be updated to a seven day average reach. Honestly, because LinkedIn is talking about these being a result of identity changes. I don't see how that's the case. These were already metrics that were done behind the scenes in Lincoln's back end. None of that was actually exposed to us except for general like reach and frequency numbers. So I don't see how that has anything to do with it, but I would love to be corrected there. I will say the reach and frequency numbers really never made sense to me the way they were reported. So it's possible that they're correcting something that never really worked anyway. But even if they were working as planned, I'm not a fan of this change with these metrics being bucketed together into 30 day, seven day, and one day averages. Because I wonder if I set my time range to overlap two of those different buckets, does that mean that my numbers are going to be horribly misreported because it's just taking a chunk of averages. I don't know, this is something we're going to be still exploring quite a bit. But thanks to Tom and Jay for helping us discuss these topics. We also had some interesting occurrences happen in the last few weeks, where some of our campaigns would overspend their budget. So we had two different of our reps reach out to their LinkedIn reps to get an answer of why this happened. And the reps responded in a way that was really mind blowing. So here's what they said, what we ended up doing was in these campaigns, we would lower the budget mid day. And then they went ahead and spent the entire allotted budget from before. So when we asked these reps about what was happening, they said, daily budget changes are not updated in real time, because that could create a loophole in which advertisers could take advantage of the system. For example, an advertiser could set a daily budget of $1,000 at the campaign activation, and then get a massive amount of impressions and clicks, then a few hours later, the same advertiser would lower down the budget to $10, and only pay a fraction of what the ad has been served. In terms, this is by design. And you'd have to wait till the next day to see the new daily budget reflected in the back end. And that answer didn't seem correct to me. Because at any point, if you lowered your budget down, LinkedIn can see on the back end what your budget was, and what changed. So no one would be able to pull the wool over LinkedIn's eyes here, and claim that they should only be spending $10 a day for that campaign. But definitely we expect that when we make a bidding or a budget change, it should be reflected in real time. We asked that same rep for clarification. And they responded, "Let's remember that if an advertiser sets a high budget and or high bids, they are increasing subsequent delivery, and thus chances to receive clicks, conversely, preventing other advertisers who can't compete with that budget to win the auction and push their ads on the platform. This is why even if the first advertiser decides at the end of the day to decrease the budget to minimal cost, our system will still honor the initial budget set for that day." That answer didn't seem very correct either. Then another one of our account managers that this happened to one of their accounts, they launched new campaigns with a daily budget of $100, just as a placeholder. And then after they'd spent about $85, we knocked him down to a $33 daily budget, but then the campaign's just kept spending. So we lowered him down to $20, trying to slam those brakes on. And then by the end of the day, they'd spent $150, which is the original budget plus 50%, which LinkedIn is allowed to spend. But the fact that we had lowered that budget down during the day before that spent happened, that was a little bit crazy. We sent that to the account rep. And this is a different rep altogether, we got a similar response back, but it wasn't word for word. So we know this wasn't just a copy paste from LinkedIn. If this actually is the case, how the auction system works, this is a big deal for us. I would have expected LinkedIn to have some sort of a formal announcement about it. Because the way that it is right now, if you make any changes to your bids, or budgets during the day, they wouldn't actually kick in until midnight, UTC time that day, which could be many hours, if not, most of the day. As we were posting about this, a LinkedIn employee actually commented and said, this isn't how it's supposed to work. I'm gonna reach out to you, let's get those campaign IDs and we can investigate a little bit. So we are working with LinkedIn to figure this out. I hope this isn't the case. I hope our bids and budgets are actually done in real time, and that this was just a one off aberration. But I'm curious if any of you have experienced the same kind of thing too. It sounds like it might not be expected behavior, but we'll see. I want to highlight one review the user on Apple podcasts, Nosremetnarg, I hope I pronounced that right. I have no idea what that is. They said, "Such a great resource, the episode on AV testing." And then they had two minds blown emojis. Thanks so much for leaving that review. And for everyone else. If you haven't already, please do leave us a review. We put a whole lot of work and effort into releasing these podcast episodes. They're totally free. We don't get anything out of it. And so we hope that your fee in a way you can pay us back would be to go and leave a review. It would be sincerely appreciate it. And as a bonus, when you leave a review, I'm going to shout you out and feature you. 9:32 Okay, let's hop into our topic here, the cookie pocalypse. So to understand what's happening with the cookie pocalypse, we need to understand what a cookie is. And it's not very hard to understand. A cookie is just a little text file that a website will stick into your browser through JavaScript when you visit. Okay, so it's a little text file. But what does that text file potentially contain? Well, it contains a randomly generated and unique number that is used to recognize your computer and because As of that, since the website knows who it is that's communicating with, it makes things like online shopping and online banking totally possible. If you didn't have a cookie, if you added something to your shopping cart on an Ecommerce site, and then navigated to a new page, it wouldn't know it was still you and you'd lose whatever was in your cart. I think we can all agree that would be a really annoying user experience. 10:22 The cookie also contains the domain name of the website that actually created it. And a website can actually generate several cookies. It can also store things like user settings, such as your language preference, or special preferences, like how many items show up in a list when the page loads. For user experience, you definitely wouldn't want someone to have to come back and adjust that and change it every time they visit your website. So the cookie is going to help remember those things. The cookie file also is going to hold things like the time spent on the website, or individual sub pages, any data that you enter into forms, they can store as a cookie as well. So your email address, your name, your telephone number, maybe even the terms that you searched for on the site. And then quite a few other pieces of just normal metadata. Things like the expiration date of the cookie, and that kind of thing. So cookies were originally intended to be really helpful in just remembering you so that your user experience on websites was going to be better. And then analytics packages, like Omniture, which is now Adobe Analytics, and Google Analytics found that they could use the cookies to stitch activity together and follow the user journey. For instance, the analytics package can place a cookie on your browser when you arrive on the site. And then when you come back, it can report that you are a returning visitor, and then stitch both this session and the previous session together, since it now knows that these were the same person. So you're really building a profile about who someone is when they're visiting your website, even if you don't have them personally identified. And these were super helpful in stitching user behavior together over multiple sessions for things like your marketing automation system. So how this could work, let's say, and I'm a big fan of Les Miserables. So let's say we have user 24601. That's their unique identifier. They go to your website, and they look at an article. And then three months later, they come back and they look at another article. Well, your marketing automation system would know that this is the same person, because the first time that they came, you gave them a cookie. And then three months later, that cookie is still in their browser. And they can see oh, this is that same user. Then let's say two months later, they come back, they look at something else, and they fill out a form. Before that we only had users who for 601, we know that they visited two different pages. But now after they filled out a form, we've stitched that user together, we now know which two pages they've visited, as well as their name and email address that we collected from the forum. So now we're building this whole profile of which users on the website are more engaged than others. And if your sales team is looking for people to reach out to the engaged users are probably high on that list. And of course, ad platforms realize that they could retarget users based on their interactions with a website. So for instance, if I visit B to link.com, the LinkedIn pixel or the Insight tag it fires, and it's going to check to see if I have a cookie from LinkedIn.com. If it does, it's going to identify me as a LinkedIn member, which they know because they know which member that identifier represents. So then if be two links retargeting audience was set up within campaign manager to say anyone who visits the website, stick them into a retargeting audience, then it would add me. So then the next time I go to visit Linkedin.com, LinkedIn looks at the cookie, and it sees that I had visited B2Linked.com and understands that that should be in a retargeting audience, and then it can start serving me retargeting ads byB2Linked. And this is all really cool. I think the vast majority of people out there, even those who are really concerned with privacy, don't really have an issue with how this is all done. As it doesn't really feel like an invasion of privacy to me. It's more like just being able to cater a marketing experience to someone. But then you have cases where some really bad actors decided to exploit cookies in a way that took way too much data about users, and they even used it for invasive or unethical practices. And of course, when unethical behaviors happening, it's right for everyone to be up in arms and start creating legislation to shut it down. And I think it's important to understand that cookies were never meant to be the solution that they've become. They were created for things like remembering who someone is, but then they were co-opted later by marketing and other purposes, to try to do statistics and analysis that they were never really intended to do. So cookies have always been a little bit imprecise, a little bit problematic, but we've made do and there are two kinds of cookies. There's a first party cookie and a third party cookie. 14:52 So let's talk about the differences between those. First party cookies are highly trusted. When you're visiting a site that seit places a cookie in your browser. So for instance, if I go to LinkedIn.com, in my fresh browser, brand new installation, LinkedIn is going to put a cookie on my computer after I've logged in identifying me as AJ Wilcox, and associating that with my unique LinkedIn ID. That way, if I open up a different browser tab, it still knows it's me. Now this war on cookies is not directly targeting first party cookies. Although I believe that there are some casualties with this one that we'll go over. First party cookies only work on the website, which created them and they are considered essential cookies by data privacy laws. So this is great, because those of us who really appreciate the user experience that cookies provide, those are most often done with first party cookies. And we're likely not going to see anything changed there. But third party cookies are totally different. They're not nearly as trusted. This would be like if you visited B2Linked.com and then Linkedin.com placed a cookie in your browser. Which it can do because B2Linked has the LinkedIn insight tag installed. So technically, LinkedIn could do that they could place a third party cookie on your computer, when you're visiting our website. It's my understanding that third party cookies were mainly created for marketing and analytics. And so they started out innocent enough things like being able to just retarget you with certain ads, because you'd landed on a certain page before, I think most people would be okay with that kind of behavior. But then some really unethical marketers took it to the point of tracking users without their consent across the whole web, they can personally identify you, they can sell that information to data aggregators, and use it however they wish. And then really bad actors have even used third party cookies, to steal your identity to hijack your browser fill your newsfeed with propaganda, and all those things that maybe many of us remember spyware, adware that would infect your browser. So the war against cookies is really a war against third party cookies. You've always been able to go and clear your cookies, which is something I would do, if I were ever inundated by a certain kind of ad that I just didn't want to see anymore, I would jump into my browser and delete that cookie or just delete all my cookies. You can also serve in incognito mode, because that's not going to store the cookie past when you close that session. And the vast majority of browsers now have a mode called Do Not Track that you can turn on and it's just going to throw the cookies away. 17:22 All right, so then we have the cookiepocalypse. And this all originated from Apple. Because obviously, there's no reason for Google or Facebook to enforce privacy around cookies, because both of them own ad platforms that rely heavily on cookies. Also, Google owns Chrome, which means it can technically gather any behavioral data it wants, although Google claims to keep it very sparse on the collection of personally identifiable information in the browser. So those two brands highly invested in cookies. But then you have Apple who has no dog in this fight whatsoever, because it doesn't have an ad platform or a retargeting solution. So they took the angle of deciding to step up and become the consumer watchdog, your privacy guardian, and it's definitely good branding. If I were on Apple's team, I definitely would have been proud of this idea, too. But it definitely stepped on a lot of toes. Google, Facebook, and all pretty much digital marketing platforms around the world were all negatively affected here, the technology that they run on was under attack. So the way this worked is when Apple released the iOS 14 update the Safari browser, which is the main browser that all Apple devices use, it used something called ITP, or intelligent tracking prevention, to basically stop storing third party cookies. And in my opinion, this wasn't a huge deal, because so many people on Apple devices actually don't use Safari, they use the Chrome browser. So I didn't expect to see a ton of data loss. But then when Apple released the update for iOS 14.5, when it did was at the operating system level, it stopped storing third party cookies. So no matter which browser you are using, whether it's Safari, or Chrome or anything else, it would just block the third party cookies from being stored, regardless of the settings that you had in your browser. They were all overruled. So now any Apple device that's an iPhone and iPad, your MacBook Pro, would essentially stop providing accurate reporting data inside of analytics. And this is crazy because at least in the US, Apple traffic represents about half of all the traffic. So it's absolutely huge the effect that it has. And that's the reason that we're calling it the cookie pocalypse. That put a lot of pressure on all the other tech companies because they don't want to be seen as trying to take advantage of someone's privacy. So they all felt the need to follow suit. Mozilla Firefox was right behind positioning itself as the privacy first browser. And I'm fairly certain that this was the first browser to set up the ability to change it to a Do Not Track setting that told websites not to track the user. That eventually became the default. So then we lost tracking for Firefox users as well, regardless of which device they were using, if they were on a Windows or Android or whatever. Then Google Chrome stepped forward and did something that I was not expecting, back in January of 2020, it announced that it would block third party cookies by 2022. But then, in June of 2021, they delayed it until mid 2023, which is good because it's 2022 right now at the time of recording, and we still have a little while. And if you had asked me a couple years ago, I predicted that because Microsoft has become such an advocate for user privacy, that Microsoft Edge would have beaten Google to the announcement. But I never saw an announcement like that. And I think I figured out why I'm fairly certain that the Microsoft Edge browser runs off of the architecture called chromium, which as you guess it is the architecture of Google Chrome. So basically, Microsoft Edge, as soon as Google Chrome makes this change, Edge would follow suit automatically. And I'm obviously overgeneralizing what's happening here, because with Apple's logic of intelligent tracking prevention, it can decide whether to block a cookie or to accept it just based off of their own intelligence. So my understanding is that no cookie is really safe. ITP inside of Apple, or the logic within any browser can decide whether to block a first party cookie, or it could even on rare occasions, decide to keep a third party cookie. So if you run a website, one of the things that you can do to make your cookie more likely to persist is have a login on your site, since a user who logs into your site and gets a first party cookie to remember that. So the next time they come back, they don't have to enter their username and password for the 30th time is really helpful to users. And so Apple and all the browsers are going to be a lot more likely to keep that cookie because it represents being behind a login, which is already showing a lot of trust. I have an article down in the show notes that has a great breakdown of the logic that Apple's ITP takes with cookies, and you can go and compare that it's from a site called cookie saver.io. So here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive into what this means for us as digital marketers. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. 22:19 If you're a B2B company and care about getting more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, then chances are LinkedIn Ads are for you. But the platform isn't easy to use, and can be painfully expensive on the front end. At B2Linked, we've cracked the code to maximizing return on investment while minimizing your costs. Our methodology includes building and executing LinkedIn Ads strategies, customized to your unique needs, and tailored to the way that B2B customers buy today. Over the last 11 years, we've worked with many of LinkedIn's largest spending advertisers. We've spent over $150 million on the platform, and we're official LinkedIn partners. If you want to generate more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, book a discovery call at B2Linkedin.com/apply. We'd absolutely love to get to work with you. 23:08 Alright, let's jump into how this all applies to LinkedIn advertisers. There are a whole bunch of different marketing solutions that are affected by this. First off, I think we need to talk about analytics. You may have noticed that Google Analytics came out with GA 4 in pretty peculiar timing. It would have been really easy for Google to say because of what Apple's doing, we blame them. We're now trying to find a way around it with a new analytics platform. But Google took the high road, they don't blame Apple publicly. They just shared that they're building from the ground up because the old one had become a Frankenstein's monster. My guess is though, that GA 4 is very much connected to analytics and user tracking through a cookieless kind of world. What about conversion tracking, probably every ad platform you use has a conversion tracking element to it. The way this works with LinkedIn is that when you have the insight tag installed on every page of your website, when the visitor comes after clicking on an ad, it places a cookie in that user's browser. And that cookie identifies you as the same person who just clicked an ad on Linkedin.com. And now you're on another site. So when that user now visits a page of your website that is set up to fire a conversion, LinkedIn sees that user journey that this is the same person who recently clicked on an a, LinkedIn knows which ad, and then registers a conversion for that ad and that campaign, all within campaign manager. My understanding is that LinkedIn has converted all of its cookies from a third party cookie to a first party cookie, meaning it should persist and be respected a lot more. I don't know the technicality of how this works or why it works, but it sure sounds great. So it seems to me that if this is now a first party cookie, and even Apple devices have a cookie duration of seven days, that conversion tracking shouldn't be too badly affected. Even inside of a Safari browser. or someone can still click from ad to landing page to a thank you page and still have that all reported back to LinkedIn. That being said, we have seen a significant variation in click conversions reported in campaign manager versus the actual form fills that we find within the CRM. I love to hear if you guys are seeing the same thing with conversions in campaign manager being under reported, I know that LinkedIn is working on solutions behind the scenes trying to bridge that gap. But if what we're seeing right now is all Apple devices and we're seeing in effect, when Chrome stops accepting third party cookies in 2023, looks like midyear, we'll probably end up seeing twice the impact. So I can't overstate the importance of making sure that your form data is all flowing into your CRM because really, who cares about what the conversions number is inside the ad platform, if you have an actual record in your CRM with a name and an email. That's the only way as far as I'm concerned to make sure that you have 100% accurate way of tracking conversions. 26:02 Then we have retargeting solutions. LinkedIn is web retargeting is 100% reliant on cookies in your browser. So once third party cookies are gone without further development, I just don't see the technology even still working. I haven't heard anything from LinkedIn on this. And I do hope they're working on a variant that will live past 2023. But it's a little scary to me right now looking at the future of LinkedIn is website retargeting solution. So even if the LinkedIn insight tag places a first party cookie for retargeting purposes, I'm still not sure it can be reliably recognized for retargeting when they come back to LinkedIn, especially if it's outside of Apple's seven day cookie persistence window. What about the LinkedIn Audience Network? Well, the LinkedIn Audience Network or LAN, as they refer to it internally at LinkedIn, it's the ability to show your sponsored content ads to very specific users, even when they're not on Linkedin.com. So LinkedIn has a network of over 1000 really high quality sites and apps that it can show members ads on, it's great, and I highly recommend it. And if you remember from Episode 22, we talked about which sites and apps that LinkedIn Audience Network actually can reach. While I don't recommend the Audience Network on either Google or Facebook, I love it on LinkedIn. So the way that the LinkedIn Audience Network works from my understanding is that when you're logged in to linkedin.com, so obviously LinkedIn knows who you are, it places an identifier cookie in your browser. And then when you visit one of those partner sites, LinkedIn has a script on that page to check the LinkedIn cookie and see if there are any advertisers who are specifically wanting to target you. And then your inventory enters the auction for advertisers to target you. My thought is that this is negatively going to be impacted by the cookie pocalypse. But I'm just not sure how much it's being affected by it. I'm guessing that the LinkedIn cookie, even if it is first party, probably won't be able to reliably be read by those partner sites. Or if they can read that cookie, the first party cookie would be gone after seven days, if this isn't an active LinkedIn user who's logging in at least every seven days. So if that stops working, that would truly be sad. 28:10 Another one is that website demographics. We talked all about this one on episode 54. But one of the little appreciated features of LinkedIn is the free website demographics that you get just by putting the Insight tag on your website and letting it run. I actually call it LinkedIn analytics, because it's so similar to that of like Google Analytics, or Facebook analytics. What it does is it shows the professional makeup of those who are visiting your website. From my understanding, this works by the LinkedIn member having their Linkedin.com cookie in the browser, which is identifying who they are. And then your insight tag on your website, inspects that cookie, and then reports it back to LinkedIn, who you are. And because of privacy, obviously, they're not going to expose that to you, but they will aggregate that behind the scenes to show you general information about the different job titles who are interacting with your website, or which companies are coming the most often are the levels of seniority, etc. There's like nine different reports in there. And similar to LinkedIn, Audience Network and retargeting and any other products that relies on the LinkedIn insight tag and browser cookies, I don't know what the effect will be, but I'm guessing it's going to be significantly adversely affecting each of those products. And they may not be useful after like mid 2023. Since I love this product, I really do hope that LinkedIn finds a way to make it continue past the cookiepocalypse. 29:35 So now that I've totally scared you. Let's talk about the different actions that you can take in preparation for the cookiepocalypse. Remember I told you we were going to be full prepper on this episode. Get that tinfoil hat ready. Jump on down in the bunker. My first recommendation is around LinkedIn website retargeting. I'm predicting that after 2023 LinkedIn's website retargeting feature won't be nearly as reliable, but what that means If you want to take advantage of it now while we have it. I haven't been very bullish on LinkedIn's website retargeting in the past, just because it's weaker than other solutions. But boy, it's really capable of producing lower cost traffic on LinkedIn, and continuing to tell a segmented story. So I'm definitely a fan of it. Use it while you've got it. But in addition to that, LinkedIn has all of these event based retargeting features that happens just for those who are on the platform. And these have nothing to do with cookies, every action that someone takes on Linkedin.com. LinkedIn knows who they are and what action they took. So it's just keeping track on the backend. So I would highly recommend take advantage of things like single image ad interaction retargeting, or 25% video viewers, or form retargeting company page visits. If they're interested in a LinkedIn event, really anything you can take advantage of there. In the past, I've always recommended using Google and Facebook's retargeting features. And that certainly isn't changing here. Google and Facebook are by far the most advanced ad platforms on the planet. So I'm not sure how their tech is going to keep working. But if anyone is going to have a retargeting solution that works, it's going to be theirs. So definitely set up LinkedIn website retargeting, but also have Facebook and Google's as well. And then all your platforms can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya around the fire. You may notice that this is going to shrink the size of your audiences on LinkedIn from your retargeting campaigns. So you may find that you have to combine retargeting audiences just to get large enough list sizes. This obviously isn't great. But combining multiple lists is much better than just having retargeting audiences that won't run. If you've never paid attention to it, go check out website demographics now. If you have the LinkedIn insight tag installed, you've already got this make use of it. Now while the sun is shining. Because after cookiepocalypse is over, we don't know if this is still going to work. Similarly, use LinkedIn Audience Network in your sponsored content campaigns as much as possible before it may go away. Like I mentioned before, CRM tracking from your LinkedIn Ads is critical. If you don't have form fields coming from your LinkedIn ads being passed into your CRM with UTM parameters or other tracking parameters, informing you where those leads came from which ad they clicked, etc, you need to stop the presses right now and go get that set up. That is table stakes. There's another awesome feature on LinkedIn that isn't going to be affected by cookies going away. And that is the list uploads feature. You can always upload lists of individuals or company names for targeting or for exclusion back into LinkedIn. So make sure you are building your lists. When you own someone's email address, you can then do a lot with it, you can upload it into so many different ad platforms, as well as email them through your marketing automation solution. So build those lists, own that data. Because if you're just using LinkedIn targeting, you'll pay dearly, and you're just building on rented land. But there's so much more you can do if you actually own that data. 33:07 So let's get really technical. Here again, let's talk about the different alternatives to cookies that people are figuring out. One that I'm hearing a lot of advanced Facebook and Google advertisers doing is called server side tracking. There's a cool article all about this that we've linked to in the show notes by a site called Magic X. Sometimes it's called server to server or S to S, it works by cutting the user's browser completely out of the picture. Instead, the ad platform either Facebook or Google, in this case, it's going to cooperate right with your website's web server. It's capturing info about the user session directly from the server. So the ad platform, it's going to assign a unique identifier, because Facebook obviously knows exactly who you are. So they can link your identifier and your identity on their side. And then your website's server is going to receive that identifier and send information back to Facebook about the pages that it loaded during that session. And then when a conversion occurs, Facebook receives it right through its API. So there's no need to check the user's cookies in their browser or anything like that. This is the solution that the largest advertisers are using now. And there's a marketer by the name of Simo Ahava that I have great respect for. If you're running Google ads, there's an awesome article by him all about how to set up serverside tagging and tracking with Google ads inside of Google Tag Manager. So that's down in the show notes below at simoahava.com. Simo, if you're listening, huge fan. There's also another technology called fingerprinting. And again, really cool article about fingerprinting down in the show notes below. This one is by pixelprivacy.com, but fingerprinting works by the website creating a profile around each browser that's accessing this profile. It's a combination of your browser type, your browser version, your operating system, which plugins you have enabled, your timezone, language, screen resolution, and potentially a bunch of other active settings. And you might think that packaging this up is all pretty generic. But when you realize that any specific combination of all these browser elements is only going to occur about one in every 286,000 browsers, you can see how you might be able to consider it reliable as a marketer. And that's just the information about the browser to identify a user. So you can imagine a business could combine the browser fingerprint with its own data about you. So let's say that you fill out a form, they can then combine that data with now your name and email address, and then they can place you into some sort of a behavioral segment that they could follow up with. I don't hear a whole lot about fingerprinting. So it's possible that fingerprinting is even one of the things that server side tracking is using. But I don't know, that's a little past my paygrade. I do know that under GDPR, browser fingerprinting isn't illegal, at least not yet. So this is something that people are doing. I think server side tracking is so cool. I really wish we could do it on LinkedIn. So I hope LinkedIn releases a version of server side tracking that us LinkedIn advertisers can use. Bonus points if it makes the audience Network website demographics and retargeting more accurate. All right, I've got the episode resources party coming right up. So stick around. 36:25 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. 36:36 All right, like we talked about here in the episode, there's an article by ionos.com all about what cookies are. There's the pixelprivacy.com article all about browser fingerprinting. There's a termly.io article all about first party versus third party cookies. There's the cookiesaver.io article all about how Apple's intelligent tracking prevention treats cookies. So if you're a site owner who deals with cookies, that's a great one to read. There's of course, the Simo Ahava article all about server side tracking with Google ads. And then we mentioned a few episodes, there's the website demographics episode, Episode 54, that you'll definitely want to check out if you haven't already. And then episode 22, we talk about all the different sites and apps that LinkedIn Audience Network can show up on. If you or anyone you know, is looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, point them towards the course that I did with LinkedIn Learning. It's of course linked to here in the show notes below and it's by far the least expensive and the most in depth course out there. If you're not already, subscribe to this podcast, if this was great info and you want to hear more geekiness about LinkedIn Ads in the future, hit that subscribe button. And then like I talked about before, please do rate and review the podcast. It makes a huge difference to me and I would be personally very grateful. If you have any corrections for us or suggestions for other episodes, or even feedback about the show, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Meta Talkz is Powered by IBH Media - If you are a tech company that is getting funded and you need media coverage go to ibhmedia.co Medha Parlikar is co-founder and CTO of CasperLabs. Medha has more than 30 years of tech experience and is considered one of the top women in blockchain. She started working with technology in the early 1980's, building computers in the basement. For the past two decades, she has been delivering production SaaS software for large companies including Adobe, Omniture, and Avalara. Medha excels in building high-functioning technical teams and inspiring them to deliver solutions that solve customer problems. Medha holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems and Programming from Coleman College. About CasperLabs CasperLabs, a leading blockchain software company for the enterprise market, is re-imagining blockchain for enterprise with a future-proof solution. The company also provides development, support, and advisory services for organizations building on the Casper network. Guided by open-source principles, CasperLabs is committed to supporting the next wave of blockchain adoption among businesses and providing developers with a reliable and secure framework to build private, public, and hybrid blockchain applications. Its team possesses deep enterprise technology experience with a cumulative 100 years of enterprise experience, hailing from organizations including Google, Adobe, AWS, Dropbox, and Microsoft. To learn more, visit www.casperlabs.io.   Also, check out Meta Talkz for future and past guests.     

Meet Brent Dykes, Chief Data Storyteller at AnalyticsHero, LLC. Brent has spent more than 15 years consulting in the analytics industry. As a former analyst, manager, and technology evangelist at companies such as Omniture, Adobe, and Domo, Brent has witnessed first-hand the challenges of communicating data effectively. In this episode, hear Brent and Jesse connect before they discuss comic book superheros and explore the art and science of data storytelling. More about our host, Jesse Anderson Read the transcript of this episode Connect with us on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Find book recommendations and more resources for data professionals at https://dreamteam.soda.io From Soda, the provider of data reliability tools and observability platform to enable data teams to find, analyze, and resolve data issues.

Konrad Probst is a serial digital entrepreneur and angel investor from Germany.  He is the co-founder and CEO of Property's Digital Ventures and the co-founder and CTO of Pioneers Labs.His company Property's offers consultancy and implementation services to large international brands that want to take the leap into NFTs, the metaverse and other Web 3.0 products. Konrad Probst on TwitterHolly Shannon's WebsiteZero To Podcast on AmazonHolly Shannon, LinkedinHolly Shannon, InstagramHolly Shannon, TwitterWatch Culture Factor and VaynerNFT#brands , #metaverse , #web , #people , #community , #individuals , #houses , #create , #collaboration , #properties , #synergies , #offer , #decentralization , #collaborate , #market , #projects , #space #nfts #nft #nftart #cryptocurrency #blockchain #metaverse #culturefactor #web3 #smartcontracts #bitcoin #nftartist #nftcollectors #eth #ethereum #youtubers #tiktok #instagram #reels #branding  #entrepreneur #coach #consulting #zerotopodcast #podcast #jobsearching #thoughtleader #thoughtleadership #startapodcasttoday #startapodcastalready   #experiences #experientialmarketing #companyculture #employeeengagment #community #peertopeer #decentralizedeconomy

Medha Parlikar is co-founder and CTO of CasperLabs. She has more than 30 years of tech experience and is considered one of the top women in blockchain. She started working with technology in the early 1980's, building computers in the basement. For the past two decades, she has been delivering production SaaS software for large companies including Adobe, Omniture and Avalara. Medha excels in building high-functioning technical teams, and inspiring them to deliver solutions that solve customer problems. Medha holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems and Programming from Coleman College.CasperLabs is committed to supporting the next wave of blockchain adoption among businesses and providing developers with a reliable and secure framework to build private, public and hybrid blockchain applications all guided by open-source principlesWhat was the impetus for designing this? Was it missing for enterprise and smaller businesses? And did you build it yourself?How do you de-mystify and de-stigmatise blockchain for businesses? What are the nuances that work so well with SaaS that make it uniquely perfect for companies moving from Web2 to Web3?And the recent downturn in the market, how did that affect conversations with your clients?Medha Parlikar, TwitterCasper Labs, Twitter Medha Parlikar, LinkedinHolly Shannon's WebsiteZero To Podcast on AmazonHolly Shannon, LinkedinHolly Shannon, InstagramHolly Shannon, TwitterWatch Culture Factor and VaynerNFT#casper #protocol #software #enterprise #disintermediate #brands #ecosystem #business #governance #offer #deliver #infrastructure #CasperLabs #Adobe #omniture #avalara #opensource #DAO #caspernodesoftware #publicnetwork #DEVxDAO #ConsenSys #dotto #governance #datasovereignty #mp3.com #riaa #BLOCKv #smartmedia #nfts #nft #nftart #cryptocurrency #blockchain #metaverse #culturefactor #web3 #smartcontracts #bitcoin #nftartist #nftcollectors #eth #ethereum #youtubers #tiktok #instagram #reels #branding  #entrepreneur #coach #consulting #zerotopodcast #podcast #jobsearching #thoughtleader #thoughtleadership #startapodcasttoday #startapodcastalready   #experiences #experientialmarketing #companyculture #employeeengagment #community #peertopeer #decentralizedeconomy

Thanks for joining us, today we welcome Clint Brauer, CEO and Founder of Greenfield Robotics. Clint has a great story. He grew up farming in south-central Kansas and went to K State where he got into technology. After graduating from college and spending a decade plus in media and technology, in Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and New York, Clint decided to return to his roots in Kansas, launching MG Honor Farms on the family farmstead. Clint began adopting regenerative ag principles but was frustrated with the limitations of current tools and technology for regenerative farming and the dream of organic no-till, so he decided to launch a company where he could use his technology experience to solve the scaling issues of regenerative broadacre systems. Clint and his team are doing some exciting work and he and Monte explore that today. Clint grew up in Kansas and learned as a child how to train dairy cattle, grow vegetables and farm broadacre crops. After college, he began his career with W3-Design, an early web design agency in Los Angeles, where he managed their top clients. Clint then worked for Universal Music where he helped with the data asset management project for digital distribution of music. In 2003, Clint joined Sony and his role quickly expanded to VP of Marketing, CRM and Operations of Sony Connect, an early cutting-edge video service which blazed a path for mainstream services like Netflix and Hulu. Clint's team created one of the first true 360 degree views of customers across ecommerce, email, offline and online campaigns and the call centers. This involved integration of early stage SaaS companies Omniture, RightNow, PostFuture, Pivotlink and an internal ecommerce system. Clint also drove the division toward SEO as a customer acquisition strategy over traditional media deals. His team then successfully launched the Sony eReader and software across North America, both online and at retail, and also worked with book publishers to substantially decrease the cost of ebook conversion. After a decade-plus in media and technology, Clint returned to his roots in Kansas, launching MG Honor Farms on the family farmstead. Clint has grown and marketed over 100+ crops without chemicals outdoors, in traditional greenhouses as well as hydroponic greenhouses. Clint has also advised over 10 farms with their marketing, helping them secure distribution into 35+ grocery stores such as all Kansas City-area Whole Foods and Hy-Vee's as well as 25+ restaurants and 4 school systems. In 2015 Clint started Canidae Farms, a regenerative farm network for Canidae Pet Foods (canidae.com/farms), which he continues to operate. In this role he is working with farms to adopt regenerative agriculture practices in return for higher margins. Canidae was acquired by L Catterton in 2018 and the program is now expanding again in 2020 with partner farms in Kansas and Nebraska. Frustrated with the limitations of current tools and technology for regenerative farming, Clint decided to launch a company to solve the scaling issues of regenerative broadacre systems. He recruited Carl Sutter and Steven Gentner, two talented engineers he met decades ago at W3-design, to co-found Greenfield Robotics. The company has been working for several years on its small, autonomous robots for weed control, and is currently in customer pilots. https://www.greenfieldrobotics.com/ https://www.facebook.com/greenfieldrobotics/ https://twitter.com/GreenfieldBots https://www.instagram.com/greenfieldrobotics/ linkedin.com/company/greenfield-robotics/ Got questions you want answered? Send them our way and we'll do our best to research and find answers. Know someone you think would be great on the AgEmerge stage or podcast? Send your questions or suggestions to kim@asn.farm we'd love to hear from you.

What does it mean to be doing analytics right? It doesn't mean only that a company's analysts are being accurate, it has to do with how our company makes decisions. The data guiding those decisions doesn't just spring up out of nowhere, there's got to be a functional team analyzing it. What's the composition of that team? What kind of process do they follow? Do outsourced partners get involved? What technology is used? Leaders that don't put enough thought into this can burn through both people and budgets, and their organizations never become data-driven like they'd hoped. To borrow a term from environmentalists, their analytics function was unsustainable. Jason Thompson thought he'd grow up to be a geologist. By college though, he chose to go into Information Systems and came out of college to work at the once-mighty Novell. Over the course of several years, Novell shrank and then laid off his group. He switched to implementing Omniture web analytics for various companies; which showed him both the highs and lows of the consulting firm model. He then went to a brand with a popular web-based business, which caused him to question the value analytics really offered an organization. While there he met coworker Hila Dehan. They started imagining what analytics done right would look like and in March 2013 they started their own analytics shop 33 Sticks.  There's more to the story of them working together, such as how they came up with their company's name, but I'll let him tell you that.  People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show 5 Analytics sub-disciplines Architecture & Implementation Tag Management & Data Layer Reporting Analysis & Insights Optimization Jason's LinkedIn profile and Twitter profile For more details, please visit https://funnelreboot.com/episode-89-sustainable-analytics-with-jason-thompson/

Varl Allen, CEO of Claravine, has been helping businesses transform digitally for over 20 years, and he's also helped accelerate the growth of SaaS applications at companies like Ancestry, Omniture, and Adobe. At Claravine, he works with leading global brands to address high data integrity issues through the data standards cloud. Today he's here to tell One Big Tip listeners about an important tool they may not even realize they have - their data.Verl Allen, CEO of Claravine, has been helping companies manage their data on a global scale.  With over 20 years of digital marketing experience, Verl evaluated companies that built platforms on data collection. As he moved along in his career, he noticed that the critical integration was on the application side and not the data side, as it is challenging to focus on data.  Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of data and cloud storage. Verl recognized a need - companies needed to pull the data from different applications and collection points to integrate it to optimize the information in their business. Claravine accelerates businesses by stopping the breaks in the data pipelines and teaching them how to use the data to their advantage.Merging primary data and the third-party data companies collect the objective that Claravine has with every client, so they can expand and increase ROI.  Brands need to manage their first-party data, and they need to extend it to third-party data. This needs to be balanced with the push for privacy in the current culture. Claravine is trying to provide the ability to set the context that you need to integrate both sources. Claravine attempts to create standards for data collected from third-party data so you can get measurable results. Sales and campaign data are assets that companies don't always realize or utilize correctly. Claravine isn't trying to replace analytic applications or third-party applications. They are trying to help businesses increase ROI from the applications they are already using. They want to use the assets you already have but don't see the value of. Claravine creates value in the metadata and data you already have. Once a company integrates the third-party data with their current data, they typically see increased ROI. Data is collected, processed, and organized, and you end up with a catch-all bucket. Claravine sifts through the data and puts it together to create new data that can help improve business decisions. Join us today as Verl Allen shares his One Big Tip and the importance of using your current data. When appropriately utilized alongside other data points, it can make all the difference in improving your business outcomes. Listen along as we discuss the relationship between primary and third-party data and how they can be combined to make a difference in your business. In this episode[1:22] Verl takes us through his background and shares how he worked with data. [6:45] Verl explains the relationship between primary and third-party data and how weaving the two together can make a huge difference in your business.[11:40] Verl says you may not even realize that you already have valuable data. He explains the importance of utilizing that data properly.[15:52] How does connecting all of your data points improve your business? Verl shares real-life examples of the net result.Support the show (https://jeffmendelson.com/onebigtip)

On today's show and as part of our special 10 Episode CRO Series we will be discussing topics like: Cx, GTM, Functional Alignment, Metrics that Matter, Pipeline / Forecasting, Digital Strategies, Digital Transformation, RevOps and today it's all about Org Structure, Alignment and Metrics that Matter. Again, we promise to give you actionable insights from our guests who are tenured and experienced CRO's who come from high growth SaaS companies. Today we welcome Jary Carter, he has had an interesting career in Novell, Omniture, Alfresco, Magento, Oro and now is the CRO at Wordpress VIP. We kick off by asking Jary, what is it like to be CRO, we ask him to share his career journey and what has led him to where he is today? Mom asked him at 12 years old, what is he going to do for work Started as a Business Development Representative Field sales Account Executive at Omniture Running sales at Magento Founded ORO Since early 2019 We ask Jary, how he feels about the passion for technology as a sales guy, how important is it? One of the top 3 things The business user Understanding where the market is going Talking to analysts and customers Publishing out, everything we seeing in the market Contextualize the market We touch on the CRO role and ask Jary what excited him about it? A place of maturity Building an ecosystem Commercial leader Sees the bigger picture of where the organization is going Capture the market opportunity Hand off points Customer success Good transition Then we ask Jary, at Wordpress, what is his typical customer and how are you servicing them? One in two websites are built on Wordpress 43% market share Mid to large size customers $100M companies Fortune 100 Companies Offering very approachable technology for a marketer or a business user We ask Jary, what is a typical day for him and how does he spend his time at Wordpress VIP? Spend a lot of time with those who report to me Collaboration Head of Partnerships Head of Sales Then we ask Jary, what are the metrics that he looks at? Try not to get buried in it Close ratios Areas that need to improve Customer conversations Last but not least, we ask Jary what he feels is his super power? Ability to recognise high performing individuals and show them a career path that gets them to where they want to be --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gloabl-tech-leaders/message

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wa67iUnOXgM Today we welcome Verl Allen, the CEO of Claravine, a company that helps leading brands take greater ownership and control of their data from the start, for better decisions, stickier consumer experiences, and increased ROI. We have an interesting discussion around data quality challenges facing organizations today. Save 20% on your first order at the DATAVERSITY Training Center with promo code “AlgminDL” – https://training.dataversity.net/?utm_source=algmindl_res Connect with Anthony J. Algmin on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyjalgmin Data Leadership Lessons Home – https://DataLeadershipLessons.com About Our Guest: Verl Allen brings 20+ years of experience helping brands transform digitally while at Ancestry, Omniture and Adobe. During this time he helped accelerate the emergence and growth of SaaS applications within the enterprise while leading strategy and corp dev at Omniture and Adobe Experience Cloud. In 2018, he joined Claravine to address the emerging opportunity to support these same brands to address the growing challenge of data quality that was inhibiting their ability to derive the promised returns from their software and other digital investments. Today, Verl serves as CEO at Claravine which is working with hundreds of the leading global brands to address data integrity issues through the use of The Data Standards Cloud. https://www.claravine.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/verl-allen-b83175/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/claravine/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClzbPpij2LMOHuzhgQWo4VQ https://twitter.com/claravinesocial

Stephen W. Gibson has created or funded more than a dozen entrepreneurial businesses, including being the first investor in 1-800-Contacts, Omniture, and Ancestry.com. He also co-founded the Utah Angels, the first Angel investment group in Utah. In 1999, he and Bette moved to the Philippines on their own for 19 months and created a non-profit educational system, The Academy for Creating Enterprise, for Filipino returned missionaries. The Academy now has more than 671 alumni chapters in the Philippines, Mexico, Peru and expanded to Brazil in 2019. The chapters are led by more than 1,900 volunteers who are learning leadership skills that they apply in business, church, family and their communities. Gibson also taught as Entrepreneur in Residence and later as full-time faculty for the Marriott school for a total of 15 years having retired in 2011. He continues to enjoy writing, investing and mentoring and traveling with his wife, Bette. They have been married for 56 years.

Medha Parlikar is on a mission to make block chain the platform for doing business in the future.  Future proofing and de risking how businesses use public block chain is a fundamental goal of the company C-Suite to adopt. The CasperLab platform Highway is designed for businesses to customize and tokenize block chain content including patents, stock, human resources, supply chain and more.According to Medha, “It's not a scary technology.  We are de-risking the Block chain for the enterprise. The time is now for businesses to adopt and not be left behind.”By 2023, Gartner Research states blockchain will be poised for mainstream adoption en route to generating $3.1 trillion in new business value by 2030, according to Gartner. By 2023, blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of more than 2 trillion dollars in goods and services.Medha is paving the way for an entire new generation of C suite to change how they do business.The future of block chain is now.  Businesses need to make the shift quickly for a competitive advantage.Medha Parlikar, co-founder and CTO of CasperLabs on the importance of blockchain.  Medha has more than 30 years of tech experience and is considered one of the top women in blockchain. She started working with technology in the early 1980's, building computers in the basement. For the past two decades, she has been delivering production SaaS software for large companies including Adobe, Omniture and Avalara. Medha excels in building high-functioning technical teams, and inspiring them to deliver solutions that solve customer problems. Medha holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Information Systems and Programming from Coleman College.https://casperlabs.io/

Back in July of 2019, Brad Rencher joined Scott Dorsey for a fireside chat to discuss his career at Adobe, how to get on the radar of a big company for acquisition, prioritizing change agents, and the future of enterprise software. Brad has since become the CEO of BambooHR, the industry's leading software provider dedicated to powering human resources. Prior to joining BambooHR, Brad was responsible for Adobe's $3B+ digital experience business, leading P&L responsibility for one of the largest SaaS businesses in the world. Adobe entered the digital marketing space in 2009 via the $1.8B acquisition of Omniture. Digital experience is now the fastest growing business at Adobe and one of the fastest-growing businesses in the software market. In this episode, we revisit Brad's Speaker Series where you'll learn: What it takes to be acquired by a BigCo How to lead without ego and build a company that lasts Lessons from growing Adobe from $300M to $3B in revenue Creating a go-to-market strategy through product-led growth

What are your biggest data issues? Verl is betting it's organization and standardization. This week on the If You Market podcast we talk with Verl Allen about the importance and impact of having data standards. We discuss the need for a common language in Marketing data, how companies are letting less and less data out to 3rd parties, data privacy, and much more. Verl brings 20+ years of experience helping brands transform digitally while at Ancestry, Omniture and Adobe. During this time he helped accelerate the emergence and growth of SaaS applications within the enterprise while leading strategy and corp dev at Omniture and Adobe Experience Cloud. In 2018, he joined Claravine to address the emerging opportunity to support these same brands to address the growing challenge of data quality that was inhibiting their ability to derive the promised returns from their software and other digital investments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Verl brings 20+ years of experience helping brands transform digitally while at Ancestry, Omniture and Adobe. During this time, he helped accelerate the emergence and growth of SaaS applications within the enterprise while leading strategy and corp dev at Omniture and Adobe Experience Cloud. In 2018, he joined Claravine to address the emerging opportunity to support these same brands to address the growing challenge of data quality that limits their ability to realize the promised returns from their software and other digital investments. Today he serves as CEO at Claravine, working with hundreds of the leading global brands using Claravine's Data Standards Cloud to address enterprise data integrity. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verl-allen-b83175/ Learn more about his business and company links here: https://claravine.com https://www.claravine.com/claravine-under-armour-customer-story/

In this special live episode of Mindshare Matters, Bassam welcomes Aseem Chandra to talk about his early years in India, how Lincoln, Nebraska was his first introduction to the United States, and his eventual move to California that launched his career with Oracle, Omniture, Adobe, and how choosing education over skiing for his children led to some major life changes.

Today's amazing guest on Ability Beast Talk Dan Roden. Dan is the Founder and CEO of Nickel, a donor experience managementsoftware for college athletics programs. Before starting his own company, Dan has spent nearly two decades in the marketing analytics and business intelligence space, with experience at companies like Omniture (now Adobe Marketing Cloud), Domo and Major League Baseball. He's been happily married to his spouse Bonnie for 21 years and has 4 children. He lives in Utah and enjoys activities all the seasonal activities Utah offers, skiing, golf, fly fishing and time in the mountains. Dan and I discuss a multitude of topics from college sports athletics, to family, I get Dan‘s opinion on the athletes college sports athletes getting paid. Also we discussed disability awareness within society and moving the needle forward for people with disabilities, within Society as far as jobs and evening Plainfield some more opportunities would be available for people with disabilities. It was a wonderful conversation a very positive and powerful conversation it was an amazing podcast it was an absolute honor to have Dan on the show.

In this special live edition of Mindshare Matters, Bassam welcomes Omniture and ObservePoint co-founder John Pestana. Early on in his time at Brigham Young University, John joined the computer club and launched his first venture, JP Graphics. Soon, JP Graphics became JP Interactive, and eventually Omniture. In 2009, Adobe Systems announced the purchase of Omniture for $1.8 billion, and in that same year John went on to co-found ObservePoint with Rob Seolas. John speaks about his dream of becoming a rock star and his musical career, living his authentic self, and making hard business decisions in order to maintain the friendships he cherishes so much.

Medha Parlikar joins us to discuss how Casper Labs is accelerating enterprise and developer adoption of blockchain technology. Medha is the CTO and one of the co-founders of CasperLabs. She started working with technology in the early 80’s, building computers in the basement.  For the past 2 decades, she has been delivering  production SaaS software for large companies like  Adobe, Omniture and Avalara. Her strengths are building high functioning technical teams, and inspiring them to deliver solutions that solve customer problems. Links Website: http://casperlabs.io/ (http://casperlabs.io/) LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mparlikar/ ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/mparlikar/)

My guests today are Medha Parlikar, CTO of CasperLabs, and Cliff Sarkin, COO of CaperLabs. Medha is a product and engineering leader with a wealth of experience delivering leading software projects at marquee companies including Adobe, Omniture, Avalara, MP3.com, and DivX. Her first formal involvement with Blockchain came in 2017 with the RChain project where she served as the tech manager before co-founding CasperLabs in the fall of 2018. Before joining CasperLabs in January 2019, he was VP of Business Development at DNA, a leading early-stage blockchain venture fund. Prior to blockchain, Clifford help grow and scale three successful technology companies, highlights include: helping scale Duda.co from 12 employees to 70+ from 2012 - 2015 and leading VideoSurf’s $80M acquisition by Microsoft in 2011. In this conversation, Medha and Cliff take us through the world of enterprise focused blockchains and we dive deep into how enterprise companies build and deploy software. We also cover Casper's innovative tech, the future of corporate governance and product management, how to get involved in the crypto space, and much more. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Medha Parlikar and Clifford Sarkin. ---- Bitcasino This episode was brought to you by Bitcasino. The worlds leading Bitcoin-led online casino and crypto-gaming destination. Wager your way into a world of opportunity, with the ultimate Fun, Fast and Fair crypto-casino experience. Deposit, wager, and withdraw in real-time with a host of top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP), and more! Choose from over 2000+ games, developed by the best in the business and curated into one seamless platform.  Bitcasino. A world of epic gaming awaits.  ---- NEXO Crypto banking just got real with Nexo. Get cryptо credit from just 5.9% APR, earn up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat, swap assets on their brand new integrated exchange, and much more all conveniently wrapped in a single wallet interface. Sign up for free at nexo.io. Download the Nexo Wallet App on Google Play or the App Store . ––– This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co

My guests today are Medha Parlikar, CTO of CasperLabs, and Cliff Sarkin, COO of CaperLabs. Medha is a product and engineering leader with a wealth of experience delivering leading software projects at marquee companies including Adobe, Omniture, Avalara, MP3.com, and DivX. Her first formal involvement with Blockchain came in 2017 with the RChain project where she served as the tech manager before co-founding CasperLabs in the fall of 2018. Before joining CasperLabs in January 2019, he was VP of Business Development at DNA, a leading early-stage blockchain venture fund. Prior to blockchain, Clifford help grow and scale three successful technology companies, highlights include: helping scale Duda.co from 12 employees to 70+ from 2012 - 2015 and leading VideoSurf’s $80M acquisition by Microsoft in 2011. In this conversation, Medha and Cliff take us through the world of enterprise focused blockchains and we dive deep into how enterprise companies build and deploy software. We also cover Casper's innovative tech, the future of corporate governance and product management, how to get involved in the crypto space, and much more. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Medha Parlikar and Clifford Sarkin. ---- Bitcasino This episode was brought to you by Bitcasino. The worlds leading Bitcoin-led online casino and crypto-gaming destination. Wager your way into a world of opportunity, with the ultimate Fun, Fast and Fair crypto-casino experience. Deposit, wager, and withdraw in real-time with a host of top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP), and more! Choose from over 2000+ games, developed by the best in the business and curated into one seamless platform.  Bitcasino. A world of epic gaming awaits.  ---- NEXO Crypto banking just got real with Nexo. Get cryptо credit from just 5.9% APR, earn up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat, swap assets on their brand new integrated exchange, and much more all conveniently wrapped in a single wallet interface. Sign up for free at nexo.io. Download the Nexo Wallet App on Google Play or the App Store . ––– This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co

Rory O'Driscoll has been investing in startups since founding Scale Venture Partners 27 years ago. He and his team have invested in transcendent companies like Box, DocuSign, Omniture, Bill.com, HubSpot, and others. Listen to this one multiple times. You'll learn something new each one.Hear Rory's insights on AI and venture investing..."The venture business is more a decision business and less an action business.""The purpose of AI is to make better, more cost-effective decisions.""It’s extraordinarily hard to replace people with AI.""It’s hard to regulate what you don’t understand."How software is eating into traditional spending on telco and banking.Why successful startups must pick one of three strategies: "fight, focus, or fly" Previous episodes and companies mentioned on the podcast:Bill Davidow on AI and the Future of WorkDave Kellogg on AI and the Future of WorkForterDialpadZoom

This week, we are talking with Brent Dykes, author of Effective Data Storytelling. With over 15 years in analytics consulting at companies such as Omniture, Adobe, and Domo, Brent has worked with some of the most well-known brands in the world, and he is now leading Insights & Data Storytelling efforts at Blast Analytics. He tells us about the three pillars of data storytelling: when data story is/isn't necessary, how to build a narrative with your data, and more.

Medha is the CTO and one of the co-founders of Casper Labs.. She started working with technology in the early 80's, building computers in the basement. For the past 2 decades, she has been delivering  production SaaS software for large companies like Adobe, Omniture and Avalara. Her strengths are building high functioning technical teams, and inspiring them to deliver solutions that solve customer problems.

I recently interviewed John Pestana and he told me an amazing story of how a game of paper, scissors, rock helped grow his business which sold to Adobe for more than $1.8 billion. John was in a class with me during my junior year in college. Since then, John has been a phenomenally successful entrepreneur. He was a co-founder of MyComputer.com, which he sold as his first exit. He then co-founded Omniture, an enterprise analytics company, which he sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion. He is currently the founder and CEO of ObservePoint, a data analytics company. Here are a few of the monetization secrets from my interview with John.  Creating “Wow” Engagement  While John was working at Omniture, they sponsored a lunch at a large software conference. Normally whoever sponsors the lunch has a chance during the meal to stand in front of everyone and speak about their company. John and his team noticed that nobody ever seemed to pay attention during these little speeches, and they wanted to find a way to change that.  Instead of standing up and speaking about their company, they decided to hold a paper, scissors, rock competition for the attendees. The winner would receive a hummer. As you can imagine, attendees were absolutely thrilled to participate. Participants collected business cards from everyone who participated and had them chant “Om-Ni-Ture” instead of “paper, scissors, rock.”  This “wow” moment was unforgettable and created amazing brand awareness and lead generation for Omniture. As we try to engage with potential customers, we should try to think outside the box and create “wow” engagement. Some ideas may fall flat, but when we succeed we have a chance to become legendary. Agility and Grit "The people who become really successful have agility and grit. They just keep going no matter what. When you fall flat on your face, you just pick yourself up and keep moving.”  - John Pestana Embracing Data, Good or Bad "I'm not afraid of data. I actually want to know if something is bad. There are so many people who don't want to know the bad things. I want to know the bad things because the only way I can fix the bad things is if I know about them.” - John Pestana Connecting With Every Employee 1-on-1 Within 3 days of becoming the new CEO of ObservePoint, John had done 1-on-1 interviews with every employee. Now, every 6 months John does an interview with every employee (100 people), even the part-time interns. These interviews build John's credibility with his team and show that he cares about them and their thoughts and opinions. If there is anyone a CEO should be talking to, it is the front-line customer service reps who are working with the customers. Obsess About Customer Happiness We should obsess about customer happiness. Live and breathe it and instill it throughout our company.  To be credible, we must know our industry well enough that we are a credible source of information. We also must know our customers well enough that we know what is going to help them or not.  When we do a good job helping solve problems for our customers, they start coming to us and asking us to help them solve other problems in their business. It is tempting to want to take that additional work, but we have to ask ourselves if that is a business we want to be in. We don't want to destroy our credibility in the things where we are experts because we took on additional projects where we were not experts and performed poorly. Most salespeople just spew out information when they are trying to make a sale. That doesn't work well. We should never start off that way. The first thing we do is ask potential customers about themselves and their problems. Then, we know how we can make them happy. We can then focus on solving their problem instead of selling our product. When we listen first, we are more credible because we are giving people what they need. The Power of Saying “No” and Setting Good Expectations There is a power in saying “no.” By saying yes too much, we can destroy our credibility. We don't have to be everything to everybody. We need to understand what we are. Credibility is doing what we say we are going to do. That is a two-sided stick. We obviously need to do what we say we are going to do, but just as importantly, we need to set proper expectations upfront about what we are going to do.  The Results Pyramid When we want to see new results in our companies, we tend to focus on giving out many new orders and action items. However, in order to receive the results we truly want, we need our team members to understand why there are new actions and to believe that we can achieve the results we're reaching after. So the first thing we need to do is create experiences that can change beliefs. Those changed beliefs will lead to changed actions, which will ultimately reward us with the results we're seeking.  When John started as CEO at ObservePoint, customer retention was only in the high 70's. He told his employees that the company goal was to bring it up to 95% retention. When his employees heard this, they rolled their eyes. They needed to have experiences that would help change their beliefs that it was possible to achieve that result.  So John started giving them those experiences. One example he shares is that in the past when they needed to have a team meeting to solve a service problem, the team would look at their calendars and schedule something 2 weeks in the future. Under John's leadership, he stated that they needed to have an emergency meeting at 5 p.m. that day to solve the problem. After six months of having experiences like that, John asked his team who believed him when he first said that they would have a 95% retention rate. Only two members raised their hands. He then asked who now believed that they could achieve a 95% retention rate and every employee raised their hand.  Leveraging Associations & Tradeshows When we serve in industry associations it is a way for us to give back, and it is also a way to give credibility to our companies.  We should carefully track the return on investment from every trade show so we know which ones convert and which ones do not. Trade shows aren't just about finding new customers. They are also about being in touch with our current customers. Trade shows can be effective ways to meet everyone in person, as opposed to having to fly out and meet everyone individually. It's important to know the metrics that we will use to measure the success of a trade show before the trade show. Otherwise, it's too easy to come up with statistics to justify an ineffective decision after the fact. Using Zoom Effectively Meeting someone in person helps build credibility. During COVID, we need to figure out ways to do that virtually. We must treat Zoom professionally so it helps to build and not detract from our credibility. When we are using Zoom, we need to have a professional Zoom photo, get ready for the day, and have good lighting. If you don't have professional lighting, at least face a window instead of having a window behind you. When we are using Zoom, we should try to create as close to an in-person experience as we can. For example, when John does company meetings over Zoom, he calls out people who are not sharing their videos, because it is important that we see each other, even if we are not the ones presenting. As John is presenting, he will engage people and make it feel more human and not too produced or fake. The Power of Extending Trust First One of the most important things about trust and credibility is not being afraid to extend it. If in every interaction we force people to gain our trust, we are never going to gain the trust of anybody. We should give our full trust in every relationship upfront and take the risk that we might be hurt. When we put full trust in others first, they will generally extend trust much faster to us. Then, we need to do everything we can to be sure we don't break that trust.  As we work hard for others, give to others, and strive to help and make others happy, we will see it come back to us tenfold.  Connect with John and His Company If you want to learn more about John Pestana and his company: John Pestana's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpestana/ ObservePoint - https://www.observepoint.com/ Monetization Secrets Thank you John for sharing those stories and secrets. Here are some of the top monetization secrets that stood out to me from today's episode:  We should try to create “wow” engagement moments with potential customers to be unforgettable and maybe even legendary like Omniture did with their paper, scissors rock competition. We should embrace data, whether it's good or bad, and make data-driven decisions. We're all going to stumble and fall. We will be defined by the moments we have picked ourselves up and kept going.  We should obsess about customer happiness and use the power of “no” to set great expectations. We must extend trust first if we want to gain credibility. Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher.  Connect with Nathan on Linkedin.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram.  Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter. Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today's episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals. Share Your Story  When have you observed businesses create “wow” moments of engagement with their potential customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers. Reat at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/12-how-a-game-of-paper-scissors-rock-helped-build-a-company-that-sold-for-1-8-billion/

In my 9th episode I speak to Brent Dykes Sr. Director, Insights & Data Storytelling at Blast Analytics, and author of the book Effective Data Storytelling. We talk about: 1) The definition of Data Storytelling 2) The three Star Trek characters 3) The difference between data literacy and data storytelling 4) The data storytelling arc 5) Education and how data storytelling needs to be introduced into schools About Brent: Brent Dykes is the Senior Director of Insights and Data Storytelling at Blast Analytics. He is also the author of Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative, and Visuals. Brent has more than 15 years of enterprise analytics experience at Omniture, Adobe, and Domo. His passion for data strategy and data storytelling comes from consulting with many industry leaders including Nike, Microsoft, Sony, and Comcast. He is a regular Forbes contributor and has written more than 35 articles on different data-related topics. In 2016, Brent received the Most Influential Industry Contributor Award from the Digital Analytics Association (DAA). He is a popular speaker at conferences such as Strata, Web Summit, Shop.org, Adtech, Pubcon, RISE, Crunch, and Adobe Summit. Brent holds an MBA from Brigham Young University and a BBA in marketing from Simon Fraser University. About Samir: Samir is a data strategy and analytics leader, CEO and Founder of datazuum. He has a history of helping data executives and leaders craft and execute their data strategies. His passion for data strategy led him to launch the Data Accelerator Workshop, and host the Data Strategy Show. After a career in both private and public sectors Samir launched the datazuum brand in 2012, with a view to working with executives to deliver data strategy at a time when data was not seen as a business asset. Today datazuum delivers projects across both private and public sectors including: Charities, Financial Services (Banking & Insurance), Government, Housing & Construction, Law Enforcement, Logistics, Media & Publishing, Outsourcing, Postal, Retail, Telecoms, Transport and Utilities. Samir has 20 years of international experience across Europe, North America, and Africa. Is a regular speaker at international conferences, coach / mentor, a charity fundraiser, and youth champion for Working Knowledge - supporting young people to achieve their personal and career goals in life. Samir lives in London with his wife and daughter. Contact details for Samir LinkedIn: Samir Sharma Email: samir@datazuum.com website: www.datazuum.com

John explains why his role as educator and mentor is what he most cherishes; Why do entrepreneurs decide to become mentors? What are the requirements for effective mentoring? John relates the sacrifices of entrepreneurship on individuals and families; How do entrepreneurs and their significant others get aligned? How long should the entrepreneurship journey last? Is entrepreneurship for everyone? John shares the worst advice entrepreneurs get; The shame of bad ideas unidentified; How does a great idea become a great business? John suggests down economies are the time to ramp a company up; The phases of startup; John bemoans the ROI of higher education; Why campuses are the ideal place to experience a collision of ideas; John explains the service found for fledgling entrepreneurs at Startup Ignition; The imperative of sales and developing relevant skills; How sales and a great salesperson lifted Omniture to become a billion-dollar company.

Today I had the opportunity to interview Catherine Wong. Catherine leads software engineering and product design at Domo. With Domo, businesses get BI leverage at cloud scale in record time. Prior to Domo, Catherine led global engineering teams at Adobe and Omniture, where she started more than 15 years ago as a software engineer. Catherine holds patents in data segmentation and visualization, and has served on the advisory board for the Women Tech Council, as well as industry advisory boards at the University of Utah and Utah State University. She recently married, and instantly became mother to 4 children whom she adores. Catherine credits much of her sanity to a very supportive husband and an amazing tribe of boss women friends who support and inspire her every day. Inside this interview Catherine shares how she uses calendering to help achieve work life balance. She also talks about how it's important to do things that bring you joy and recharge your battery. Follow Catherine on Instagram here https://instagram.com/catrinawong?igshid=1bfvn4gq97f35Save your seat for my Free Live Instagram Masterclass here http://igboss.jennyleepeterson.comJoin the Instagram Boss Camp Founding Members Club here http://boss.jennyleepeterson.comGet on my Instagram Boss Camp Waitlist here http://waitlist.jennyleepeterson.comFollow me on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/jenny_peterson/Follow me on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/jennypetersonstyle

En el programa de esta semana vamos a profundizar en uno de los CMS históricos para eCommerce. Magento. Vamos a entrevistar a Santiago Goicoechea, Ejecutivo de ventas para España y Portugal de Magento Commerce, que ya esto nos va a ayudar a entender cómo va ese ecosistema: el Magento Opensource, el gratuito, vs el Magento Commerce, el premium, para entendernos. Y así aprovecharemos para ver cómo funciona la integración de Magento en el entorno Adobe y qué otros servicios están integrando con Magento para competir con Salesforce. No hay que olvidar que Adobe compró Omniture, Marketo… lo que hay en la Experience Cloud es cosa fina. Si aún no has visto la convocatoria de los Ecommerce Awards... no te lo pienses: https://marketing4ecommerce.net/ecommerce-awards/

TRANSKRIPTION DIESER FOLGE DES PODCASTS Hallo! Mein Name ist Jörg Dennis Krüger und wie mein Wurst-Kabel-Trommel-Wickler am Empfang gerade gesagt hat: Ja ich bin der Conversion-Hacker. Und in dieser Conversion-Hacking Podcast Folge soll es einmal um das Thema A/B-Testing gehen. Wer mich kennt, der mich schon ein wenig länger kennt der weiß ja, dass A/B-Testing eines meiner absoluten Basis-Themen ist. Ich habe 2008 mit dem Thema, 2006 sogar schon ein Thema A/B-Testing gestartet damals für Omniture. Mittlerweile ist es Adobe-Test und Adobe-Target, das sind alte Produkte, die wir damals bei großen Firmen wie DKV, Allianz oder ähnlichem genutzt und eingeführt haben. Und das heißt, seit dem A/B-Testing und mein Buch was 2011 erschienen ist, ist Conversion-Boosting mit Website Testing heißt auch nicht ohne Grund ganz genau so. Mein Buch zu A/B-Testing Conversion-Boosting mit Website Testing, weil der Fokus des Buches doch schon sehr stark das Thema A/B-Testing ist. Ich stelle dort das Conversion-Boosting Modell vor, wie man überhaupt an das Thema Website Optimierung und Testing herangeht und ich zeige wie man testet, wie man Zeiträume auswertet. La la la la. Ich muss aber sagen, dass ich mittlerweile ein wenig weiter gelernt habe, denn es geht gar nichts bei der Optimierung so ums testen. Ich meine das Testen ist ja groß geworden durch Barack Obama, denn in seinem Wahlkampf hat er durch A/B-Testing extrem viel mehr Spenden gesammelt. Und aus dieser Spenden-Sammelaktion ist dann auch der heutiger A/B-Testing Anbieter Optimizely entstanden. Das ist im Prinzip das, was am Anfang mal irgendwie für die Obama-Kampagne gebaut worden ist. Klar hat sich mittlerweile viel verändert, Optimizely meisten hat irgendwie 80, 90 Millionen Venture-Capital bekommen, um das Tool weiterzuentwickeln und so weiter. A/B-Testing-Tools: Optimizely, Google Website Optimize & Co. So sophisticated die Software mittlerweile auch ist - der Einstiegspreis mittlerweile sehr hoch ist. Warum ich nicht mal so häufig empfehle - aber cooles Tool. So also wollten alle A/B-Testing machen, was für Obama funktioniert hat, das funktioniert ja wohl auch für mich und so weiter. Das große Problem ist, die meisten Shops oder Websites, aber bei mir geht es ja meistens um Shops, sind einfach nicht Test bar. Warum? Man hat nicht genug Traffic, denn so ein Test ist eben einfach eine ganz normale Doppelblindstudie wie wir sie aus der Medizin oder aus der generellen Wissenschaft kennen. Statistisch signifikante Ergebnisse Und damit ich in so einer Studie genug Ergebnisse habe und statistisch signifikante Ergebnisse habe, brauche ich eben genug Daten und diese Daten sind natürlich immer Besucher auf der Seite auf der anderen Seite Conversion, das sind so die beiden Hauptfaktoren die damit spielen. Und wenn ich zu wenig Besucher auf der Seite habe oder eine derzeit einfach zu geringe Konversionsrate und meistens beides. Dann komme ich auf keine statistisch signifikanten Ergebnisse, dann habe ich immer das Problem, dass ich irgendwie Daten habe, aber wenn ich das ein wenig ausrechne, sind das eigentlich alles Zufalls Daten. In den Testing Tools wird sowas dann auch als Konfidenz oder Signifikanz angezeigt. Und wenn die dann eben irgendwie nicht über 60, 70 Prozent kommt - Naja also 50 Prozent ist ein Münzwurf - 60, 70 Prozent ist nicht sehr viel besser und, wenn man dann genauer darüber nachdenkt, dann merkt man nun dass, man wirklich viele Daten braucht um wirklich verlässliche Ergebnisse zu bekommen und die auch über einen gewissen Zeitraum denn man muss mindestens 7, wahrscheinlich sogar 14 Tage testen, um jeden Wochentag mindestens einmal eigentlich mindestens zweimal zu haben. Optimaler Testzeitraum für A/B-Tests Man darf aber nicht zu lange testen um sich nicht zu viele externe Einflüsse zu viel Rauschen rein zu holen und darum sind so 2 bis 6 Wochen der optimale Test Zeitraum. Und ja, wenn man da dann nicht genug Conversions hat und genug Besuch...

We're taking a break this week for Memorial Day Weekend.  We'll be back with new episodes next week, May 29, 2020.  This episode originally debuted on January 11, 2019   This week Jim and Jason sit down and have a conversation with Ben Gaines who is a Group Product Manager with Adobe.  Ben shares his insights and learnings from what it was like when he started with Omniture to what his day to day looks like today.  Ben discusses what it means to be a product manager with Adobe, what he sees as the current trends in Analytics, and how he stays focused on the strategic view of the product.   WHAT YOU’LL HEAR… 

John Mellor is Chief Strategy Officer @ Domo, the company that allows you to leverage BI at scale to empower your team with data. Prior to their IPO, Domo raised funding from the likes of Benchmark, Founders Fund, a16, Greylock and IVP to name a few. As for John, prior to Domo he served as vice president for strategy and business operations for Adobe’s Digital Experience business, driving more than $3 billion in annual revenue. John joined Adobe through the company’s acquisition of Omniture in 2009, where he served as executive vice president of marketing, driving all marketing efforts to strategically advance the industry’s largest standalone web analytics business.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How did John make his way into the world of SaaS over 2 decades ago and how did that lead to his running a $3Bn ARR business line at Adobe and lead to his joining Domo? What were John’s biggest takeaways from his decade at Adobe? Why does John believe that COVID will be a bigger accelerant than any other C-level led initiative? For vendors going through that digital transformation with their customers, what is the right tone to adopt that is both empathetic and achieves business objectives? Is digital transformation a technology challenge or a behavioural challenge? How will a 100% virtual event environment impact physical events when and if they do come back? What were John’s biggest takeaways from running Domo’s annual event virtually? What worked? What did not work? On a conversion basis, how did it compare to in-person events? How should we structure content for these virtual events? How does John think about the role of leadership in a crisis such as this? What is the right tone for the leader to adopt? Where does John believe many leadership teams go wrong in times such as this? How can leadership teams ensure that a crisis is not self-fulfilling and how can one prevent that mindset?       John’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does John know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of SaaS? What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and Chief Strategy Officer? What would John most like to change about the world of SaaS  If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr John Mellor

Warren Osborn is a serial entrepreneur, advisor, philanthropist, investor, and an expert in developing manufacturing and marketing consumer products. He has invested in over 65 companies including Stance, Omniture, Skull Candy, Workfront, Fusion-io, Jamba Juice, and more. Warren is a recipient of the American Red Cross Family Award for aiding an injured parachutist trapped on a dangerous cliff. He is also one of the founding members of the Utah Angels, an investment team of experienced serial entrepreneurs. In this episode… Starting and managing 11 successful businesses is not easy for most entrepreneurs. In fact, very few people can boast of such an accomplishment. However, for Warren Osborn, having the right strategies can push you to great heights and make you very successful. He uses a couple of winning principles that he shares with other entrepreneurs looking to grow their business. Warren also strongly believes that entrepreneurs can learn a lot by allowing themselves to go through tons of failure. It teaches them great lessons and how to pivot themselves out of such situations the next time they happen. His biggest attributes for starting & successfully managing 11 businesses are speed, passion, and a great desire for solving people's problems. In this episode of Buy Box Experts, Warren Osborn joins host Eric Stopper to share his great insights and advice for starting profitable businesses. He talks about how his inventions have seen him grow his businesses to millions of dollars, how he helped a company save $30 million, and how he is constantly looking for a cure for his Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis. Stay tuned.

Those looking outside of Silicon Valley as a potential hub for their startup might want to take a gander at Utah — at least that's the kind of trend the new Silicon Slopes Venture Fund hopes to create. The newly formed fund, put together by Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith, Omniture and Domo founder Josh James and Stance co-founder turned Pelion Venture Partners' Jeff Kearl, pledges to invest solely in Utah-based startups.

With over 15 years of enterprise analytics experience at monster platforms like Domo, Omniture, and Adobe, Brent Dykes knows a thing or eight about leveraging thoughtfully presented insights to effect organizational change and success. Brent stopped by the show to discuss his new book, Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative and Visuals. It’s one of the most comprehensive reads on the subject I’ve found to date, and dives deepest into the role of narrative arc structure in data presentation (often the most vital, missing ingredient!)In This Episode, You’ll Learn…Who should read his latest data storytelling book and what they’ll be able to do afterHow to avoid the communication and ethical pitfalls of common “data forgeries”A deep dive into narrative arc structure, a vital missing ingredient from many presentationsHow to use analogies and metaphors to explain complex and technical conceptsSuccessful strategies for effecting change in an organization’s data democratization processPeople, Blogs, and Resources Mentioned:Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice by Brent DykesStorytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals by Brent DykesBrent’s original PowerPoint Ninja blogMy blog post on slope graphsCatherine Madden, IllustratorResonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy DuarteSteve WexlerHow to Keep Up with Brent:TwitterLinkedInTo view the show notes & resources for this episode, visit LeaPica.com/053.

Den eigenen Shop mit Conversion-Hacking erfolgreicher machen? Jetzt kostenlosen Termin mit Jörg Dennis Krüger vereinbaren: https://jdk.de/termin/ Es geht los! Der Conversion-Hacking-Podcast ist da. Conversion-Hacker und Growth-Marketing-Experte Jörg Dennis Krüger hat sich hinter das Mikrofon gesetzt und erzählt in dieser Folge, was Conversion-Hacking für ihn ist und wie er dazu gekommen ist. Links und Infos aus diese Episode: Am 5.11. ist “thinkCONVERSIONS” in Berlin. Jetzt Ticket sichern! https://thinkconversion.deWireframing-Tools: https://pidoco.com, https://moqups.com Den eigenen Shop mit Conversion-Hacking erfolgreicher machen? Jetzt kostenlosen Termin mit Jörg Dennis Krüger vereinbaren: https://jdk.de/termin/ TRANSKRIPTION DIESER FOLGE DES PODCASTS So, herzlich Willkommen zur ersten Folge des Conversion-Hacking Podcast! Mein Name ist Jörg Dennis Krüger und wie meine wunderschöne, neue Stimme am Empfang schon gesagt hat: Ja, ich bin der Conversion-Hacker. Ich entschuldige mich jetzt schon für diese erste Folge des Podcasts, denn ich bin mir sicher, dass ich noch vieles falsch mache und vieles irgendwie nicht so sein wird wie es perfekt sein soll, aber ich verspreche jetzt schon, ich arbeite daran! Und dieser Podcast wird zu einer ganz wichtigen Komponente Ihrer Online Marketing Strategie; denn ich möchte Einblick geben, ich möchte Gedanken liefern, ich möchte einfach dafür sorgen dass E-Commerce Teams, dass Onlineshop Betreiber, dass Online-Marketing-Manager und so weiter ihre Denke verändern. Weg von dieser klassischen, tja, irgendwie bürokratischen Marketing Denke, die auch immer noch im Online Marketing sehr, sehr stark vorherrscht: wir machen Pläne über vier Wochen und was weiß ich und wir planen, dass etwas viral geht - Bullshit. Ah, ich weiß warum ich den Podcast auf explicit gestellt habe.  Naja, hin zu einer ganz anderen Denkweise: Nämlich hin zu dem, was ich Conversion-Hacking nenne.  Conversion-Hacking ist für mich so ein bisschen die Mischung aus Growth-Hacking und Conversion-Optimierung, denn was ich eigentlich gemacht habe seit vielen, vielen Jahren ist Conversion Optimierung. Ich war 2006 der erste Mitarbeiter von Omniture, oder einer der ersten Consultens von Omniture in Deutschland, der wirklich das Thema Adobe Test-and-Target, damals noch Omniture Test-and-Target - Omniture wurde ja von Adobe gekauft - eingeführt hat in Unternehmen in Deutschland und der Schweiz und seit dem mache ich Conversion-Optimierung, seit 2006. Vorher habe ich mich mit dem Bereich Content-Management beschäftigt, hab da ein Buch geschrieben, das "Web-Content managen" und habe mich mit dem ganzen Content-Management hoch und runter beschäftigt. Aber irgendwann - das war so 2006 - war der Punkt, dass ich gesagt habe: Na Mensch, irgendwie geht's nicht mehr darum Inhalte zu verwalten - Content-Management-Systeme gibt's mittlerweile, läuft ganz ordentlich - jetzt geht es darum die richtigen Inhalte, dem richtigen Nutzer, zum richtigen Zeitpunkt anzuzeigen und das halt und wie Conversion-Optimierung.  Also habe ich dann gesagt: Okay, ich gehe zu Omniture. Das hat nicht ganz so gut geklappt bei Omniture - komischer Laden, habe ich nicht lange gearbeitet, egal - aber nach Omniture bin ich zu Trakken gegangen - Trakken, der größte Omniture Agenturpartner in Deutschland, glaube ich immer noch. Und die haben einfach dann einfach richtig schön und mir zusammen das Thema aufgebaut für viele Unternehmen. Für die Unister Gruppe z.B. damals wie es sie so noch gab und ähnliche Dinge. Da haben wir richtig Conversion-Optimierung gemacht, aber da war Conversion-Optimierung insbesondere noch AB-Testing. Was ich aber auch lernen musste ist AB-Testing ist jetzt gar nicht so die geilste Sache, denn ich brauche viel Traffic dafür - bei Unister lief das super - ich brauch viel Traffic dafür und ich muss auf so viele andere Sachen achten,

Dave Blake is customer success pioneer. He's been a Silicon Slopes (Lehi Valley, Utah) fixture since his early days leading customer success teams at Omniture and Adobe. He's now the CEO of Client Success, a customer-centric platform for B2B SaaS and software companies. -- Big shout out to Dave and Client Success https://www.clientsuccess.com/ Dave Blake: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecblake/ -- This can be found on our website: https://customerimperative.com/dave-blake/ -- This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/ Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/ Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach/

Dave Blake is customer success pioneer. He's been a Silicon Slopes (Lehi Valley, Utah) fixture since his early days leading customer success teams at Omniture and Adobe. He's now the CEO of Client Success, a customer-centric platform for B2B SaaS and software companies. -- Big shout out to Dave and Client Success https://www.clientsuccess.com/Dave Blake: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecblake/--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach/

Todo el mundo conoce Google Analytics, el gratuito. Pero hay una Champions de la analítica web, en la que en sus tiempos ganaba siempre Omniture. Omniture fue comprado por Adobe y ahora es Adobe Analytics. En paralelo, Google sacó Google Analytics 360, su versión premium para competir con aquella. Para ver cómo funcionan, en qué se diferencian, para quién son y si tienen competencia... hablamos con @analisisweb, nickname del especialista en analítica web Carlos Lebrón.

Tech Stacks are seldom built from the ground up with an intentional purpose.  Most are cobbled together from parts (software) that exist and is being used and new parts are added.  When this happens the original intent of the stack is lost and seldom revisited much less new goals created for the whole stack.   Jim Gearhart has an abundance of knowledge, insight and strong opinions about how to build a tech stack that will actually improve ROI and the data you need to fuel it.  Mark Godley puts Jim Gearhart, Senior Director, Enterprise Business Applications & Development at Zendesk, in the hot seat to discuss all things Martech.  They discuss: Why data is like weight What is shelfware? Why all organizations struggle with data Why data is ingested but never used Taco Bell and the Cheese Cake Factory? Why fat, salt and sugar is an unhealthy situation in data Say what?  Data Bloat? Gearhart will also share his experience as a buyer, handling endless pitches from a dizzying array of vendors claiming nirvana just a PO away. Join September’s Data Dump podcast to get the inside scoop on the future of data and Martech tools. About our guest: Jim Gearhart, Senior Director, Enterprise Business Applications & Development @ Zendesk With two decades of experience building and leading technology teams, Gearhart has worked in a technical and strategic leadership capacity for a number of notable tech companies including HP, Agilent Technologies, Unify, Turn, Omniture,  & Adobe. Currently serving as Sr. Director of Enterprise Business Applications & Development for Zendesk, Gearhart provides executive leadership and vision to ensure Zendesk’s objectives are realized through a modern, cloud-first technology stack.  Gearhart is at the intersection of pricing & packaging decisions for Zendesk’s SaaS products, enterprise platform & process governance, and represents Zendesk in MGI's Monetization Leadership Council, a Silicon Valley group dedicated to identifying and sharing market trends and best practices for SaaS companies.  Outside of his day to day executive functions, Jim’s interests include family, world travel, science, winter sports, and scuba-diving.

Brent Dykes has over 12 years of enterprise analytics experience at Domo, Adobe and Omniture. He's had the great opportunity to work with some of the world's biggest brands, including Microsoft, Sony, Dell, Comcast and Nike, among others. Brent is also a published author, including his first book Web Analytics Action Hero and follow-up eBook, Web Analytics Kick Start Guide. He's enjoyed speaking on multiple data-related topics at many events such as Shop.org, Adtech, Pubcon, and Adobe Summits in the US and Europe. Support the show (https://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/assoc_subscribe.asp?utm_source=buzzfeed)

Mark Godley puts Jim Gearhart, Senior Director, Enterprise Business Applications & Development at Zendesk, in the hot seat to discuss all things Martech.  Jim has an abundance of knowledge, insight and strong opinions about how to build a tech stack that will actually improve ROI and the data you need to fuel it.  Jim will also share his experience as a buyer, handling endless pitches from a dizzying array of vendors claiming nirvana just a PO away. Join September’s Data Dump podcast to get the inside scoop on the future of data and Martech tools. About our guest: Jim Gearhart, Senior Director, Enterprise Business Applications & Development @ Zendesk With two decades of experience building and leading technology teams, Gearhart has worked in a technical and strategic leadership capacity for a number of notable tech companies including HP, Agilent Technologies, Unify, Turn, Omniture,  & Adobe. Currently serving as Sr. Director of Enterprise Business Applications & Development for Zendesk, Gearhart provides executive leadership and vision to ensure Zendesk’s objectives are realized through a modern, cloud-first technology stack.  Gearhart is at the intersection of pricing & packaging decisions for Zendesk’s SaaS products, enterprise platform & process governance, and represents Zendesk in MGI's Monetization Leadership Council, a Silicon Valley group dedicated to identifying and sharing market trends and best practices for SaaS companies.  Outside of his day to day executive functions, Jim’s interests include family, world travel, science, winter sports, and scuba-diving.

There's a lot of hype about what it means to build a personal brand, but in reality there are a few simple things that anyone can do to establish themselves as an expert in their space. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, BlitzMetrics CEO Dennis Yu shares the simple process he says anyone - from successful CEOs to younger professionals just getting started in their careers - build a strong personal brand. Dennis is a master at building easy-to-follow, repeatable processes, and his approach to personal branding is no different. In our conversation, he breaks it down in a way that anyone, regardless of their marketing or technical skills, can follow. Some highlights from my conversation with Dennis include: Personal branding is really just a sum of stories that you collect that you sequence together. Four or five years from now, personal branding won't be a thing because it's just what we do as part of communicating, as part of marketing, as part of growing, as part of operating. Dennis's approach to building personal brand involves the creation of a series of one-minute videos that are lightly edited in tools like Apple Clips and sometimes in Premier or Lightweight Aftereffects or other tools so that they can be distributed then on LinkedIn, on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter. Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner is a great example of someone with a strong personal brand because he obsesses about creating content to answer peoples' questions and solve their problems - but he's also an influencer because doing this has built a very large audience.  The secret to creating effective one-minute videos is to share stories that are empathetic, that are educational, and that bring people along in a sequence towards an overall mission that anchors your personal brand. When Dennis works with clients to create a personal branding strategy, he starts by building what he calls a "Topic Wheel." Then, he identifies experts in those topics and does one-minute videos with them. The videos aren't about him - they are about the people he is interviewing, who are all recognized experts. The Topic Wheel has three rings - why, how and what. Why is your mission, how is how you do things (educational content), and what is your offers. This is very much like a circular sales funnel. The outside layer of the Topic Wheel - the why - is personal branding. There are many tools that you can use to create one-minute videos, from Apple Clips to the Adobe Suite, regardless of your skill level with video. Once you've created your video, think about all the different ways you can reuse or repurpose your video, and distribute it out across a variety of platforms. Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Visit the BlitzMetrics website Visit Dennis's personal website Connect with Dennis on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn more about the exact formula Dennis uses to help his clients build their personal brands. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast, my name is Kathleen Booth and I am your host. This week, my guest is Dennis Yu, who is the Chief Executive Officer of BlitzMetrics and the author of Facebook Nation and, and, and I could list so many other things. Conference keynote speaker, expert on personal branding, Facebook, et cetera. Dennis Yu (Guest): Kathleen, you're too kind. Dennis and Kathleen having a blast recording this episode Kathleen: I was so impressed reading everything that you've done, when I saw your bio. I was really excited that I got to meet you in person a few weeks ago at DigitalMarketer, so thank you for joining me for the podcast. Dennis: Thank you. Kathleen: Before we start, I have a really important question. I was reading your bio and I saw that you have run 20 marathons, but you have run a 70 mile Ultra. What were you thinking? Dennis: I know, what was I thinking? It's my first one and my last one. I said to myself after running all these marathons because you know the thing is, it's a slippery slope because you run one and then you do more and then people are like, "Oh, you should run this Ultra marathon because you're gonna have this spiritual experience." I thought, all right I'm up for that and I ran a 70 mile race. It took me 12 hours. I set the course record. It was just outside of Microsoft's headquarters and when I finished, it was so bad that I had to be put in a wheelchair and wheeled to my gate at SeaTac airport because my legs were so stiff. Kathleen: Oh my God, I was gonna say, when people talk about spiritual experiences, all I can think about is when you're dying and you see the light. Dennis: Yeah. I didn't get a spiritual experience, I got a lot of pain. Maybe I didn't see past the pain, who knows? Maybe I needed to run 100 miles. Maybe that's what it needs to be. Kathleen: Oh my God, I am so impressed because you talk about how people run marathons and then they wanna run more. I ran one and only marathon the year I turned 40. Dennis: That's smart. Kathleen: I was like, I better do it now or it's never gonna happen. It's a good thing I did it because after that, I was like, no way, I'm too old for this. I'm glad I did it and I checked the box. That's awesome that you did that. Building A Personal Brand One of the reasons I was excited to have you on the podcast is that as part of the presentation you gave at DigitalMarketer's Agency Training Day, you touched on some of the work that you do building personal brands. You actually have a really cool process behind this. I think a lot of people talk about personal branding, but I've never heard anybody actually express it almost as a definable process. So I just want to dig into that and learn more about it and hopefully come away with an idea for people who are listening who might be interested in building their own personal brand, what goes into that? Dennis: Yeah, a lot of people think personal branding is this Tony Robbins, keynote speaking, motivational figure head who's doing the private jet and mansion lifestyle. I think personal branding is really just a sum of stories that you collect that you sequence together. If you're an agency, if you're an entrepreneur, it's not that you're showing only these highlight moments of the figurehead. It's the sum of what your people are doing, of your customers, of anyone that you engage with, someone you just had lunch with and they said something that's interesting and you pull out your cell phone, you say, "Kathleen, wow. That was so awesome. Can you just repeat that again? I want to share that on social." So you need a process to do that. So we're here in Miami and the last couple of days, we've been capturing one-minute videos for a fintech company that provides loans to small businesses. The kind of marketing they were doing is the kind of stuff that you'd expect that they would do. We go the CEO on camera. Literally, I was holding an iPhone and I was recording the CEO, asking him, "What's your favorite restaurant here in Miami? Tell me about your parents and the kind of business that they started and how that influenced you to run this particular kind of company. Tell me about what kinds of things stress you out at night." Then we drove to different small businesses, one is a pet store, another one is a food truck, another one is a computer repair place in the strip mall, and we interviewed these people, asking them about their why, how, what. Then I would put all of that in the bucket of personal branding. In fact, you know how a lot of people are talking about influencer marketing, content marketing, social media marketing? Now, those things have expanded to be so big that they mean nothing. It's just like digital marketing has expanded to be so big that you really can't define it anymore. Just like the phone was 50 or 60 years ago, or the internet was 20 years ago. It started off as this niche thing that people were specialists in and once it becomes so big, you can't really define it. I think personal branding is in that teenager stage where now everyone wants to do personal brand until the stage where, four or five years from now, personal branding won't be a thing because it's just what we do as part of communicating, as part of marketing, as part of growing, as part of operating. Because we see that's where things are going. We have everything we do, from a client standpoint or from our own internal operations or how we train people, encapsulated as one-minute videos. Everything's a one-minute video. For example, one of our guys this morning recorded a one-minute video on how to quickly see all of your tasks inside of Basecamp. In one minute, he said "Literally, did you know if you press control K plus whatever, it immediately shows you this screen with all of your tasks of the day and your schedule?" I'm like, "Pssh, I didn't know that." Or a one-minute video about this restaurant that's two blocks around the corner and how awesome it is. That's cool, that's very specific. Personal branding isn't this, I aspire to climb Mount Everest or I want to live a life of riches and make six figures every month. It's individual stories of other people, and thus our approach, which I think you find interesting and other people do too, is that we have a particular process on how we collect one-minute videos. It has to be particular because all of our work is being done by young adults. So these are 22, 23-year-old kids, if you will. I'm over 40, so I know younger than 40 is a kid. They go through our training. Maybe they served four years in the military and now they need a job and they wanna be able to make 35 thousand dollars a year, whatever they were making before, right, because they have a kid now or whatever it might be. We have everything check listed out, it's not that it's about personal branding, it's that the collection of one-minute videos. So instead of saying personal branding, I'll say the collection of one-minute videos are lightly edited in tools like Apple Clips and sometimes in Premier or Lightweight Aftereffects or other tools so that we can distribute then on LinkedIn, on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter. Then amplify them for a dollar a day to be able to drive views, leads, and sales. That is mechanically what we do. It's not about me trying to motivate other people. We have a number of high profile personal brands like entrepreneurs that are billionaires. We have some of these guys as clients and boy, it's very shiny. But that is not what personal branding will be in five years from now. It'll be so defacto that anyone who's doing any kind of marketing, by definition will be doing personal branding and social media and SEO and all of that, not as separate functions, but they're all now the same thing actually. Personal Branding v. Influencer Marketing Kathleen: Yeah, it's very interesting. I have so many questions for you from what you just said. The first thing that comes to my mind is it's fascinating to me to have this conversation at this time because you use the word influencer earlier. There is this really interesting evolution of what it means to be an influencer now, especially with people from younger generations who grew up with Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook. They're very comfortable being in front of an audience and being very personal. Their definition of privacy, I think, is different than other generations. So I guess my first question is really, how do you draw the line between influencer and personal brand? Dennis: I don't like the word influencer because it's got that taint, look at me, I'm an influencer. You might as well replace that word for thinker. Oh I'm a thinker. I guess you're not allowed to think, Kathleen, because I'm a thinker. I'm an influencer and you're not. I even wrote an article on Influencive, which is the site for people to talk about being an influencer. The title of the article was Why I Am Not an Influencer. I think it got 23 thousand shares. Kathleen: It's like a dirty word now, especially after the Fyre Festival. Dennis: I tagged Michael Stelzner, who is one of my mentors. He is the guy in social media marketing. He runs social media marketing world, he's the founder of Social Media Examiner, he's got the biggest blog, biggest conference, makes the most money, has the biggest audience of anybody in the world of social media marketing. He told me how he was not an influencer and really he was a servant leader and how he does everything to take care of his team. I thought, wow, he is the exact opposite of all these people that are beating their chest. Look at me, look at me, look at me, it's all about me. Yeah, I would define him as an influencer because he influences the behavior of other people. He has the biggest audience, so by definition he's an influencer because he has the best education. His approach has been to be an influencer in the world of social media marketing to actively do research and find out every day, what are the things that people are searching for? What do they care about? He is so scientifically in tune with the data of what an audience wants that that's how he was able to grow Social Media Examiner to getting millions of visits per month on the site. There are a lot of people that are social media consultants, there are a lot of people that have a blog, lot of people with podcasts. We had an episode on his podcast, I think it was ... what was it called? He even chose the title because he knows what people want, so he came up with the title, What Marketers Really Need to Know About the Facebook Algorithm. The thing got 50 thousand downloads in the first month. I thought, holy moly. Mike and I chatted for half an hour and he got 50 thousand downloads. People are wondering, wow this guy is so big, will he interview me? I hope I'm next. Oh, will he let me speak in the Social Media Marketing World? That's what all of the moths are doing when they come to the flame. I ask him, because we spent the day together after Social Media Marketing World? After all that kind of stuff, he and I just hung out. I said, what question do people not ask you? He said, "They don't ask me how I was able to grow Social Media Examiner from nothing to the largest property in this space. The answer is because I use the data and I create content that satisfies that because I look at what the search engine queries are." 2% of his traffic comes to the homepage for Social Media Examiner. Kathleen: Yeah. Dennis: The other 98% is on every little micro-topic like why is my Facebook ad disapproved or how do I make a video or how do I use my Google Analytics and what's a good bounce rate? Those micro, micro moments. I define him as an influencer because it's not the tip of the iceberg of him speaking on stage in front of seven thousand people. It's his conference, so he can do that. It's the stuff beneath the water in the iceberg of lots and lots and lots of little stories and his process. Where he and I have massive alignment is we have deep process. The way he runs that conference that has seven thousand people, the way he organizes volunteers, how he trains them, how they come in a few days before, how they line up and they wear name tags and they know exactly what to do. Every single part of the process. You guys run and event, so you know what I'm talking about. The level of detail that's required. Can you imagine being a conference organizer? If you were to approach influencer marketing or personal branding the same way that you run a hospital where there's lots of processes and there's lots of detail. I think personal branding and this influencer marketing thing will have to evolve from witchcraft and Ouija boards and voodoo dolls to actual established processes for how you become a doctor, anything that requires an actual process like running a factory. I believe that's where we'll be in five years, but right now, people can get away with nonsense because there's not a lot of accountability. So it's easy to say, oh personal branding, well what the hell does that mean, right? You can't say hell, that's not good. What the heck does that mean? Kathleen: You can say hell on this podcast. Dennis: All right. Kathleen: Yeah, there's a lot of throw it at the wall and see what sticks. This is the sense that I get, then there's also a lot of copycat like oh, I see so and so doing this and it seems to be working, so I'm just gonna do that because that must be what works, because it worked for them, right? Dennis: Yep. Kathleen: I think in some cases that can work. Somebody might have stumbled upon a good tactic, but I think the thing that I've at least observed with people who talk about wanting to build their personal brand but then they don't really do it is they don't have a plan. Therefore, they're not consistent with what they do, so there's a lack of follow through. There's a lot of one off, here and there things, and ultimately that prevents them from getting traction which is why I thought your approach was so interesting to create the process because when you have the plan, you at least have something to follow. Then you know if you're on track or off track. Dennis: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kathleen: I was gonna say, you mentioned in the beginning, meeting with the CEO of the fintech company and getting him to do one-minute videos. I'm really curious to know if you find any sort of, again going back to the idea of a generational divide, is there any kind of reticence, especially amongst the more established business leaders you work with, to get as personal as you're looking for them to get? One Minute Videos Dennis: Yes and no, because if you broad brush with the stereotype and you say, "Oh, those people under 30, they were born with a phone glued to their hand and Snapchat and all that." Actually they're digital nomads or whatever you want to call them. I don't think that's necessarily true. At the 40 thousand foot level, yes. Three days ago I was in Denver and I was with the CEO of a new company, it's my buddy Mark Karloff, he does MNA and buys himself billion dollar companies. I wanna say he's 56 or something like that. I said, "Mark, for your company, we're gonna have to make these one-minute videos to help explain what it does." It's the Hoover for law firms to be able to serve, it's called Proof Serve, you have to serve people documents, right? That's what happens in the world of the lawsuits, right? A lot of law firms have to do the serving in different states. He wanted to get more law firms to enroll and I said, "Well, you need to collect one-minute videos of the paralegals and what they do day to day because they're the ones who are choosing who's serving. You need to talk to the different people that are doing the serving so that you know that they are legit and not these crazy people that just signed up. You're trusting them to deliver your documents for you. It's an important case, you can't afford these documents to get lost." Collect one-minute videos so that people can see how real it is, so they can see that there are other personal injury attorneys that are doing the exact same thing, that they trust in their neighborhood, to collect at it's scale across all of the hundreds of customers that he has. Because other than that, what would you do? You'd create a glossy commercial or you're do a website. You'd sign up for InfusionSoft or there's all these marketing technology, but those are all ways that I believe people who, whether they're old or young, they try to hide behind the technology instead of connecting with people directly. I don't think that's an old or a young thing. Are people willing to connect at a human level to show empathy because they really care about their employees, because they really care about their customer? I think that you have a spectrum where the people who are 40 plus are actually more likely to really care because they're more likely to be more mature, they have more business experience, but maybe they don't understand exactly the mechanics of having to press record. The young people, maybe they make more video, but they are less likely to make video that is uplifting other people, that is sharing deep knowledge based on experience. If you're over 40, like you and me, you're gonna have a lot of stories. We have a lot of experiences to share and it's not just take a look at this food that I'm having, that I'm at the beach. Two days ago I stayed in this penthouse in Miami downtown on the 50th floor. I made some videos from the top. If I was a 20-year-old, I would more likely make videos showing how amazing this penthouse is. But instead, I made videos showing how this looks glamorous, doesn't it? Look at this view, all the way out to the ocean, there's South Beach, and there's downtown. Do you know this is an Airbnb that I paid $200.00 a night for and it's paid for by the client? Did you know that I flew here on Southwest airlines and I sat in the middle seat for four and a half hours all the way from Phoenix? I didn't tell you that, did I? Do you wanna know what it's really like? Do you wanna know some of the things that I struggle with in growing my company? That's exactly the opposite of what you'd expect of someone who's out on a balcony and overlooking the ocean in a penthouse at the 50th floor, right? Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that's so much more real. Dennis: [crosstalk] between older versus younger, it's not that the younger people are more willing to make video. It's who can share stories that are empathetic, that are educational, and that bring people along in a sequence towards an overall mission that anchors your personal brand. So anyone who's going into personal branding and I have to ask them, "Do you have a mission that's bigger than you, that's authentic? Not just because you want to help the world in some vague way, but you want to help small businesses save on their tax bill. You want to help local university students overcome crack addictions because their parents left them." It doesn't have to be some Mother Theresa kind of thing. We all have some kind of bigger thing that we're doing, like us, we're training up young adults. A lot of them that maybe they didn't go to college, where they just graduated from high school or that they came out of the military and they just had a kid that popped out and now they have to work. They're not trying to be a CEO, they're just trying to pay the bills, right? When you tie your mission to that, it's a lot easier to then build a sequence. If the personal brand is just look at me and my food, it's pretty shallow because you can't build a whole story around it, you can't get all these other people around it, you can't build the infrastructure that's necessary, what we call the topic wheel. What you saw when we were DM in Austin, we explained the structure of the topic wheel, about what anchors your brand are all the different topics and the topics move out to the individual stories of all the people you're connected to. Start With Your Mission (and Build a Topic Wheel) Kathleen: That's fascinating. So I love the idea of starting, if somebody's thinking they want to build their personal brand, of starting with figuring out what your mission is. Once someone has been able to successfully identify that, you talk about the topic wheel, the question I think people listening probably have is then, are all my videos about this mission or is it just a certain percentage? How does that fit in to this topic wheel? Dennis: The topic wheel allows us to all be humans, because there's something that you might do to make money, but you also might like to boogie board at the beach, you might also like Italian food, you might also have a parent who is disabled, you might also have a particular hobby, right? We start the topic wheel with six topics, we call this why, how, and what. So on the outside, we have different people that are telling stories around six particular topics. One of my topics is education, so Doctor Karen [Freeburg] is one of the people in my topic wheel because she is authoritative on education and we have lots of stories around that, we made one-minute videos around that. There's other people in education that are part of that particular topic. Another topic of mine is digital marketing and I'll put in people like Ryan Deiss because he's authoritative in the world of digital marketing and I've got plenty of interviews with him, where we've made one-minute videos where I'm not trying to get him to talk with things about me, although he has, but I'm interviewing him like a journalist. It's not about me, but it's about his knowledge and his experience, and I'm making it about him. Maybe I'm interviewing Tony Robbins or maybe I'm on CNN talking about the Facebook controversy or whatever it might be. Those are all different topics that are not to show that I am an awesome person or famous, but to precede the authority because I am spending time with people that other people recognize are legit in that space. When I make one-minute videos with these people and I boost it out there on Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and all this, that allows me to re-market for my topic, all the way into my product which is when I can sell courses on digital marketing, I can sell packages on implementing the things we talk about. The idea of why, how, and what is, why is your story, it's your passion, it's a particular moment in time. It could be when I was 18, I dropped out of high school and I wanted to be a professional athlete working for Nike. True story and I have a one-minute story talking about that and how eventually, they didn't except me, but then we got Nike later as a client to do digital advertising for them and how I learned that what the 18-year-old Dennis thought Nike would be like versus the 40-year-old Dennis was completely different. That Nike was this big corporate and it wouldn't have worked out for me as an athlete because it's long travel on the road. I guess I do a lot of travel on the road, but if your career only lasts a couple years as a pro athlete versus a 20 year career as a digital marketer. So those stories, the why stories are the outside ring of the topic wheel. Then move to the middle ring, which is how. Expertise, tips, how to do stuff, checklists, right? Remember, Kathleen, you saw all these checklists that we were showing, like how do you [crosstalk] manager? How do you get a drive in golf down the middle of the fairway or how do you tie your shoes with one hand or how do you juggle the ball? How do you do all the things that you know how to do, especially when you interview these other people who are experts. They've got tons of how do you do a very specific thing, right? So you're marketing from the outside of very specific stories. Not just, oh I was once really sad and now I'm successful, but specific things that had happened, specific moments in time where you point the camera, you can follow the scene of what happened, right? The beauty of the Pixar is that they focus on specific scenes. So the why we market to the specific scenes of the how, which are specific, let me show you how to do something very useful, like a recipe. Let me show you how to make my brand of chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts. I really like macadamia nuts. Kathleen: That sounds so good. Dennis: I know a lot, for example, about how to make a perfect batch of popcorn. I have a movie theater popcorn maker in my kitchen. Kathleen: That is so cool! Dennis: Do you ever walk to the movie theater and you're like, "Mm." You're almost willing to watch a bad movie just to eat the popcorn, or no? Kathleen: I, 100%, think that popcorn is the highlight of the movie. Then, so I have to ask you one important question then, this is a slight digression, but are you an add the butter oil to your popcorn person or are you a eat it as it comes out of the maker person? Dennis: Yes. Whenever people ask an either or question like do you want to eat the fish or do you wanna eat the burger? Yes. Kathleen: Yeah, I like adding the extra butter, myself. Dennis: Yeah, I add the extra butter to the popper, then when it comes out, I actually have the movie theater quality bags, right? I wanna simulate the whole experience. I've got a butter pump and I'll pump the butter in there too, on top of that. Kathleen: Dennis, you're a man after my own heart. I'm all about the extra butter. Gotta do it. Dennis: See? So then when we get together, maybe just outside of Baltimore, we can make some popcorn together. I'll ship you a popcorn maker, you'll see what I'm talking about. I'll show you how to do popcorn the way Dennis likes to do popcorn. Kathleen: I love it. I love it. Send me that one-minute video. Dennis: I'm gonna make a one-minute video, yeah. Yeah, and then we're sharing expertise on how is this different than microwave popcorn, which is garbage. Kathleen: Yes. 100%. Dennis: Yes, very different, and how movie theater popcorn tastes so good because it has coconut oil, did you know that? Kathleen: I did not know that. That's interesting. Dennis: If you try to use olive oil or butter, the flashpoint is so low that you burn it and that's why movie theater popcorn can go so high because coconut oil has a really high flashpoint. Kathleen: Oh, interesting. Dennis: We could make several one-minute videos about microwave popcorn and then you'd come away from that thinking, wow, that's really cool, I didn't know that. So I'm sharing how. Then I get specific again, into the very center of the onion tootsie roll, multi-layer thing, into the what, which is how you sell. See, conversion is about ... We all understand conversion, buy my stuff, it's on sale. The thing ends on Friday, it's got these many features, it's better than the competitor, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There's only a limited quantity, but all these different ways of trying to get people to buy, right? All the things that you say, features versus benefits. That is the what. Everyone understands what. The trouble is when they get to marketing, they're so eager they can't help themselves. When they're supposed to be making why content, they somehow end up selling it again and they pollute the whole thing. It's like mixing chocolate milk and Coke together. I like both of them, but I'm not going to drink them in the same can. It's nasty, right? Or we ask them to, let's make a series of how videos. So around your product or service, maybe you're an agency, you wanna get more clients, you do additional marketing. Okay, talk about how you set up PBC Canvas. Talk about how you optimize, talk about how, but do not ... Resist the urge to start selling because that's the what. So if you keep these things separate from the why to the how to the what, then you actually have a funnel, which is a circular funnel. That's the topic wheel, it's every day content meaning you don't have to keep replacing it. It doesn't go stale. I believe if you do it right, from the very outside are all these people that you're interviewing. That's personal branding. The outside layer of your topic wheel is personal branding. Personal branding is not some separate thing about ... I was thinking, it would be fun Kathleen, we could rent a Lamborghini, how about? You and I, we could rent a Lamborghini for one day and just make all kinds of silly videos and drive around real slow. Kathleen: That's like Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians and Cars Drinking Coffee. That's what he does. He does a different car each time and they just drive around and talk. He has a whole show that is just that. I love it. Dennis: Yeah, this is my garage. There's many ways of doing it. Kathleen: Yeah. Dennis: But that's the superficial kind of personal branding. That's look at me and look at my lifestyle. If you have actual depth, if you have a structure, you have a process, then you're gonna build the topic wheel because it's the personalities that are the outside that are sharing knowledge, that are organized by topic. The topics then go to the very center, which is your company, your figurehead, the product you sell, whatever it is that you're trying to monetize. When you link why to how to what, you use the what to fund all the why and the how, so it's a self-funding funnel. Because all the people that do personal branding, guess what? It costs money, just like SEO costs money. It costs money to produce video, it costs money to edit, it costs money to put traffic against it, right? So what's gonna pay for that? Kathleen: Right. Dennis: Are you just gonna spend money for the heck of it? Kathleen: Yeah, exactly. Dennis: I don't see ROI off of this. I ask any of these people to do personal branding and they can't answer this question. I say, "What's the ROI of your personal branding?" They can't answer the question. Why not? Kathleen: That's a great point. Now, that was a really fantastic explanation of the topic wheel. I think that gives everybody a very clear framework, at least, within which to begin to break down what are they gonna talk about on video. How To Create Your Videos Kathleen: So I feel like there's, what am I gonna talk about? Then there's making the video, and then there's distributing the video. So let's talk for a second about making it. Earlier, you mentioned a couple of different tools and my ears perked up because I started to experiment with making videos and I'm gonna just say, I am the least technically competent individual on the planet when it comes to video, but I discovered one of the tools you mentioned, which is Apple Clips. I think it is the best thing since ... I was gonna say since sliced bread, but I don't actually like sliced bread, so I think it might be better than sliced bread. It is the greatest thing ever. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the types of tools that the average person out there can use to do this and produce a decent looking video. Dennis: So, there are 30 different tools that we use. Kathleen: Wow. Dennis: But that's a mix. We organize them into people that are just everyday people like you and me. Intermediate folks that are specialists that have maybe a year or two of training. Then we have our pro level, the full Adobe Suite, where you're doing things in Premier and Aftereffects. That's pro. I don't think any of us, unless that's what we do for a living, we have 10 people full-time as pro video editors. They are doing things according to standards that we have. But should you and I be learning how to do that? No. Kathleen: No. Dennis: You and I should be learning how to use Apple Clips and Otter.ai and the different video tools built into Facebook ads manager, through transcription. We should be pushing things out to fancy hands and Fiver for lightweight editing. Some of the editing that you can do, for example, Apple Clips allows you to transcribe live and it's pretty accurate. Kathleen: I did that last week and it blew my mind. Then I didn't realize you could also go in and edit it's live transcription so that if it messes something up, you can correct it. It was so easy. Dennis: There are apps that are built into Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook has 10 different tools that are part of Facebook Mobile Data Studio that allow for editing for free. Adobe has Adobe Express. There's lot of these tools and every day, I get three or four more tools that people say, "Hey, try this editing tool. On your app, it'll add these really cool filters." I even bought a ton of apps on my phone that will add motion, that will add just super cool effects, that you can lose hours of your day downloading dozens of these different apps that do different kinds of things. I would say just use Apple Clips and one or two other ones, and not- Kathleen: I think that's great advice. I may or may not have spent six hours last week downloading apps and doing exactly what you just described. Then I discovered Apple Clips and that rabbit hole ended. Dennis: A lot of folks, I know will say, well I'm not a video person. They're secretly afraid of all these tools, like I don't really have time to learn all these different tools. You know what? You have something called an iPhone in your pocket, okay? When you hit video and you hit the red circle to record video, that camera is so smart. The way it does multi point filtering and focusing and light, that if you literally do that and you have decent sound and you don't point it directly into the sun, then you will get good enough video that you can pay $5.00 or $10.00 that someone who's a pro can do the editing for you. I've learned this the hard way because I've probably spent 100 hours, 200 hours of my time playing with all these different apps and figuring out exactly which effects I like from which app. That's a waste of your time. With that said, Apple Clips, Otter.ai, the native tools inside Instagram and inside Facebook Ads Manager, that's all you need to know. The pro stuff, for example, at TNC, I flew in one of my friends from Facebook to speak. Same thing at Social Media Marketing World, I brought three other people to speak at the conference. I had professional videographers that I flew in that recorded on expensive equipment, everything miced up properly, everything sent off to our VAs in the Philippines, that do the video editing. So we do understand the pro side, but you gotta know when you're doing a lightweight video that's just walking along do a cell phone style video at the beach reflecting on some thought that you had, versus on stage, speaker reel, high authority, in front of 10 thousand people giving a keynote address. You're not always using one tool. Sometimes you need a butter knife and sometimes you need a chainsaw. Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. I love that you just mentioned all those specific tools because I'm totally gonna go out right after this and check them out. Dennis: We have a guide, I'll give it to you. Kathleen: That's great. Oh yeah, a link to it in the show notes. Dennis: All the cool videos and then how they fit into our process. Just because you can use a tool, doesn't mean it's worth anything because you've gotta figure out how it fits into a process with all the other tools and who does what because it's unlikely that one person knows how to do everything. So then take the finished video and turn it into an ad and write copy against it in a headline and to be able to look at the performance of it and to be able to go back and re-shoot. Usually whoever is the one recording the video is not the one who's editing the video. So that requires a process step. Anytime something's gotta move between different people, it requires a process step, right? How to Promote and Distribute Your Videos Kathleen: Yeah. Now assuming people figure out a way to get these videos made, whether they make them themselves or they get help, they're gonna wind up with all of these one-minute videos. How do you then ... What is your process then for getting them in front of an audience because obviously that's the objective? If the tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, it doesn't matter. So can you talk a little bit about that? Dennis: So once we've gone through video production, which could be as simple as me doing a video on my iPhone and automatically saves to my Google Drive. By the way, that's my little secret, everything goes to my Google Drive. I also have Dropbox and I have the Apple, whatever that's called, the iCloud. I have everything saved multiple places because I'm paranoid about losing it. Whether it's as simple as that or whether it goes through complex editing because it's speaker footage from multiple cameras, like a professional interview. We then distribute that in multiple formats. We take the long format, so it could be a 40 minute interview, and we'll put that in landscape format on YouTube on a channel. Our buddy, Matthew Januszek, who is the CEO of Escape Fitness, he's interviewed all the top names in the world of fitness. It could be Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lee Haney, the CEOs of 24 Hour Fitness and Lifetime Fitness. All the people because he's the guy. He does professional interviews. So the full length episodes, we'll show on YouTube. Then, we take one-minute snippets that are square, just the highlights, think of it as like movie trailer compared to the movie. The trailer's only a minute, it shows you all the big explosions, all the big scenes, but you don't really get the whole story, just enough to tease you, right? You know, movie trailers. Kathleen: Yeah. Dennis: Then we put the movie trailer on Facebook and we boost those through video views to build re-marketing audiences, to then sequence them to other pieces within the topic wheel. We take vertical, 15 second commercials, and we put those on Instagram as stories. We take the same one-minute videos that I mentioned on Facebook and we post those to Twitter and we can promote those posts. We have an annual bid at three cents of engagement, we never select Twitter's automatic thing because they'll bid it to $2.00 and spend all your money. We also will post it organically to LinkedIn, to our profiles. That way, you can create one piece of content, chop it up into 30 or 40 other little pieces of content and be able to use it across all your different channels and obtain multiple, multiple value. Gary Vaynerchuk posted something on LinkedIn a week ago, showing how he does that in his content pyramid. It's the same thing that a lot of us that are prolific agencies do on behalf of our clients because often you can't get the client to do this everyday. If you put it as part of their process and teach their support people, every time they repair that HVAC and get the customer right there, saying, "Oh, how is it?" That's obviously the best time. Wedding photographers, get them right then when they're happy, when they just got married, don't try to get the feedback two weeks later and get their review later. Try to get it right then. If you can't build it into the process, then you have to collect it every three months or every six months and you try to collect it all at once, with multiple people and you can chop it up. The odds are, it may be, Kathleen, you and I were expert interviewers but we're not going to be able to get 60 minutes of quality content because it takes 15 minutes to warm up. In the middle, they'll say some things that are good, but are you gonna force someone to sit through a 60 minute video to be able to catch those pieces in the middle? No, you pull those out and use those as carrots. Kathleen: Yeah. Now, how often should somebody be posting these videos? Dennis: As often as you have good content. So I think of Facebook, you can get away with once per day, maybe twice per day. If you're in news and media, sports media, you can do maybe six, seven times per day. The Washington Post and some of these other local news guys will do 40 times per day, local sites, 20, 30 times per day. But most brands, once per day. But don't feel like you have to post once per day. What we'll do is, maybe we'll be at Social Media Marketing World and wander around in the hallways and interview a lot of people, just for one-minute interviews, not some scheduled thing, but just by walking around in the hallway, we'll run into people that we know. We'll collect a bunch of one-minute videos, all in one day, and then sprinkle them out over the course of several months. So I was on CNN in Atlanta, talking about the whole Facebook controversy and Russian interference and senator we run ads, the whole congress thing. I was in front of three and a half million people, live, where they were, in the studio, asking me questions about all this Facebook nonsense. I made the most of that because I got that four and a half minute clip and chopped it up into a few different pieces. I'm now able to recirculate that as different pieces of content, and I've taken some of those highlight components and I've sprinkled them in to my speaker reel, to our company mission reel, to other reels where we're teaching about personal branding. If I can mix and match from all different kinds of videos that we have an reassemble that. Do you know the analogy of Mexican food, Kathleen? Kathleen: No, tell me. Dennis: You can take meat, cheese, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and rearrange it into a chalupa or a tostada or an enchilada or a taco or a chimichanga or whatever it is, but it's the same ingredients, but just in a slightly different format, right? Kathleen: That's so funny and very true. Dennis: So that's what we're doing with our ingredients. So the wrong materials come in, meaning like the 30 minute interview with the client, right? Or you're doing it on behalf of a client and you're interviewing the customer and you have a continuous shot of 30 minutes where you're asking them a series of questions and saying, "Hey, don't worry about what you're saying because we're going to edit out the good pieces or whatever it is. If you stumble, just pause for two second and restart, and then we'll chop up different pieces and we can reuse those pieces into whatever combination that we want." So we think about the Mexican menu or the Chinese menu, you now have the ability to produce any kind of marketing material that you want. So a sales piece about a new product that you have, maybe you could reuse stuff that you already have. 80, 90% of what you have is what you can reuse and then the 10% is the stuff specifically about that new product. Then you don't have to create all this stuff from scratch again. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, but when we do this, it's like I don't want to have to keep redoing things about who we are and what we've done and who our best customers are. For example, when we first got Nike as a client, I thought that was incredible and making videos out there at the Nike campus, interviewing the executives at Nike is stuff that makes us look highly authoritative, but it also looks good because I can quote them. I can bring them to speak on stage like at the Adobe Summit where Nike says, "Hey, yeah, we use Blitz for social analytics." Well, how awesome is that? In front of the other people who are using Omniture, saying oh, yeah, Omniture doesn't do that. It's Adobe Analytics now, but oh yeah, we use Blitz for social analytics. I can reuse that, I guess we could call it a testimonial, but I can use that snippet in so many different places. Think about things that have been said to you, that have been said about you, that have been said about IMPACT, about your business partners, about the people that you have met. Think about all those amazing situations, imagine if you could wave a wand and you could reuse them anytime, anywhere, how powerful would that be? Kathleen: Well, and it certainly sounds like, from what you're saying, that it's making me realize, there are probably a lot of businesses that have a ton of gold nuggets in their B roll and in their video archives and it's like, half the battle is keeping it organized and knowing what you've got in there so you know when to pull those pieces back out and incorporate them. The other half, really what this is telling me, is that if you're gonna be serious about this, especially if you're gonna do it as a business, it probably makes sense to invest in in-house video expertise because you really just need to incorporate this into the fabric of your everyday life within your company. Outsourcing Your Video Process Dennis: Amen. You don't have to be a big agency, big budget, big team, or a big marketing group. We literally started with hiring VAs from the Philippines as $3.00 an hour. So you hire one person full-time. Do you know what that costs you for a year? Kathleen: No. Dennis: $500.00. Kathleen: Wow. Dennis: So $500.00 a month, Kathleen, for someone who's working for you full-time, 40 hours a week, college educated, a real human, they care about you deeply, they're better than Americans in the standpoint that they are loyal, they will stay with you, and they're happy, they're joyful, and we will send them stuff at the end of the day, say 5:00 PM, you know it's the other side of the world, so their time zone's upside down. When we wake up in the morning, it's ready. Kathleen: That's so crazy. That's the part that I think is actually kind of cool about working with folks in Asia is that if you're organized and you can get stuff to them at the end of the day, it's freaky how fast you can move. Dennis: Let me tell you my secret which is not so much of a secret anymore. There are one million Philippino's that do digital marketing at onlinejobs.ph. When I found this site 10 years ago, I could not believe my eyes. I said, "Wow, I can hire this guy at $1.50 per hour? Why don't I just hire this guy for fun, just to see. It's only $1.50 per hour. I'll buy him for like 50 hours, just see what happens," right? Kathleen: Right, can't hurt. That's a good tip. Side note, I absolutely love the people from the Philippines. I spent a lot of time there. Before I went into marketing, I did international development consulting and my last year that I did it, it was right before I had my son, I went to the Philippines, I think six times. That is such a cool place and the people are some of the best people. Dennis: We go there twice a year and it's just incredible. They love us and I love taking them out because I feel like I'm a big shot. We'll take them out to eat to the nicest places in Manila, send them off on a full day massage. I'll look at the bill, like we'll go to the nicest restaurants, right? Even Makati, which is the most expensive business area. Kathleen: That's where I used to stay. That's beautiful, yeah. Dennis: We're doing the penthouse thing and they think we're ballers. At the end of the meal or at the end of whatever it is, we'll go take them out karaoke. We have seventy in the Philippines. I'll look at the bill and I'll work it out, that's like four bucks a person. All right. Kathleen: Let's do it again tomorrow. Dennis: Yeah, maybe it's five bucks or whatever it is. I'm thinking, wow, you could live like a king for nothing. You could have an entourage, if you wanted to, I'm not saying do this. But you know this Kathleen, for $200.00 you could have six guys with machine guns follow you around the entire day as bodyguards. Kathleen: Yeah. Dennis: I've wanted to do that just for fun because I go there twice a year with our people. I was thinking, it would be cool if I had six guys with machine guns, all dressed up, walking with me as I'm walking downtown. Then have a couple people that follow me around with video cameras, just to see what would happen in the mall. This people think this guy walking in the middle here must be a celebrity. Kathleen: Yeah, this brings us full circle in our conversation because it goes right back to the very beginning where you talked about if you were in the penthouse standing on the balcony and if you were an influencer, you'd take a picture of yourself with a glass of champagne living the life. Instead, you were very real about, I flew Southwest. Your Philippines example's great because that's where you could be like, "This is just how I roll." Dennis: Yeah. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: I love it. I could literally sit here and talk to you all day, but I'm sure you have things that you need to be doing and I want to be respectful of your time. The last two questions I have for you are questions that I ask every guest that comes on this podcast and I'm really curious to hear your response because you do know so many people in the world of digital marketing. Today, when you think about the concept of inbound marketing, company or individual, who do you think is really killing it and doing it well? Dennis: Nathan Latka. Kathleen: Ooh, there's a name I haven't heard before. Dennis: Oh, you need to look him up. I think he's number one or number two in business podcasts on iTunes. Kathleen: How do you spell his last name? Dennis: L-A-T-K-A. Kathleen: Okay. Dennis: I first met this kid because he signed up for one of my podcasts or webinar like 10 years ago. He's just some 17-year-old and I'm like, "Who is this punk?" He kept hitting me up. I saw that he had started a company that did Facebook ads and Facebook apps, and he grew it to millions of dollars and he sold it. Then he started to take his money, invest it in other companies. He would go to a taco truck, for example, and say, "Hey, I'm willing to write a check right now to buy your business. Let's make a deal." Then he started turning the camera on, then he wrote his book that became an actual best seller. Then he started interviewing all the people that were entrepreneurs and running SaaS companies and asking them about their revenue and their conversion rater and their cost per conversion and their lifetime value and all their stats. How much revenue, how many employees they had, what's their turnover, and turned it into the dominant podcast for SaaS entrepreneurs. Now he's on TV all over the place. I think we had lunch, I think it was three years ago, we were in Austin. He was living in downtown Austin, one of the high rises. We were remarking about Donald Trump and how Donald Trump, whatever you say about Donald Trump, who cares what your politics are, he knows how to get your attention. Kathleen: Yeah, he sure does. Dennis: Gary Vaynerchuk knows how to get your attention. I consider them the same person. Dennis, what if I became the Donald Trump of digital marketing? I'm like, "You know dude? You're exactly the kind of guy with the personality and the shine and the intelligence and the speed to be able to do it, but just like with Donald Trump or Gary, you're gonna have a lot of haters." If you're willing to deal with the haters, you will kill it. You are so good. That's what he did. The next day, I saw on Facebook, all this commotion and it was Michael Stelsner and the other folks saying, "Who does this Nathan Latka kid think he is?" He sent out this email to his mailing list of all his customers saying, "You know what? If you don't engage on my emails, I'm gonna delete you from my list." All these influential social media people are saying how dare he do that? He can't do that. He can't be saying things like that to his customers. He can't be saying that to Michael Stelsner. He did. He's like, "You know what, Michael? You don't like my stuff, you can leave." I'm like, Nathan, dude, I know we talked about that, but I didn't think he'd actually do it and he did. Look at how successful he is. Kathleen: That's cool. I can't wait to check that example out because I get a lot of interesting answers when I ask this question and it's always really fun to discover somebody completely new. Dennis: Look at his videos. It'll just be a minute, you're in line at Whole Foods and you open up and do a search on Facebook or Google or YouTube, and you're like, "Okay, I'll just watch a little bit of this video." Then before you know it, you've lost two hours watching his videos. Kathleen: Oh dangerous. So in other words, don't watch them when I'm under a deadline on something, I guess. Dennis: I'm warning you. He's so good. Full disclosure, he's a client. Kathleen: Well, thank you for alerting me to him. That's gonna be an interesting one to check out. Now, the other question I'm interested to hear about from you is digital marketing is obviously changing so quickly. Technology is fueling a lot of it. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself on the cutting edge? Dennis: I don't. I know it's kind of a flippant answer because you could say, "Oh yeah, but I know your network and you know these people and these people and these people." Here's my little trick. When I was a younger man, I thought that I could work harder than everybody and keep up with the news and read harder and work harder and I've since discovered, since I turned 40, that I can't do that. So all I do is I associate with the smartest people out there. So the reason I go to conferences is not because I want to be on stage or because I'm trying to get more clients or because I wanna be famous, it's because I want to hang out with the people that have that knowledge so that if I have a question, I know who I can chat up and they will answer my question. So I don't at all pretend like I'm somehow the most knowledgeable person about everything going on in digital. You and I know there's so many different thing and so many different niches, it's just, even if you had 500 hours in a day, you couldn't keep up with all the things that are going on. All the different tools for video editing, no way I could keep up with that. But I do know that if I have a question about anything, I can literally pick up the phone and I know who to call and I know I can get the answer. Kathleen: Yeah. Dennis: So that's my secret. It's not what I need to know, it's who I need to know and that list of who is my topic wheel. So the people that pay us money, the people that we've worked with to be able to create influence is also who I count on for my expertise. So the way I make money is also the way that I'm able to educate. Even if I didn't make money off of these people, I would even pay money to hang out with the people like Michael Stelsner and Nathan Latka and David Burg and Ryan Dice, but we're being paid by these people. Isn't that incredible? Kathleen: That's a pretty great gig if you can get it, I'll say. Dennis: Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah, for me it's my podcast. That's why I do this. People who listen, know I am always saying I would keep doing the podcast, even if nobody listened. Thank God, people do, but I learn so much and today is a great example of that. I feel like I've learned so much from you, so thank you. You Know What To Do Next Kathleen: If somebody is listening and wants to learn more about you or Blitzmetrics or has a question about personal branding, what's the best way for them to find you online? Dennis: They can go to blitzmetrics.com, of course, and they can also look me up on LinkedIn, but please do not friend me on Facebook. I've been at the five thousand friend limit for the last eight years. Don't ask me for a blue check mark, don't ask me if your ads were disapproved, but absolutely, if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn or go to my website, happy to chat with you there. Kathleen: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Dennis. If you are listening and you learned something new or you liked what you heard, of course I'd love it if you'd give the podcast a review on iTunes or the platform of your choice. If you know somebody who's down kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because they could be my next guest. Thanks so much Dennis. It was great chatting with you. Dennis: Thanks Kathleen.

Adam Greco is widely known for his ability to help companies maximize their use of web analytics technologies by conducting business requirements definition, mapping technology to requirements and designing the ideal solution to achieve business goals. In 2012, he published The Adobe SiteCatalyst Handbook, the first ever book on Adobe SiteCatalyst through Adobe press. Greco's background includes expertise in the fields of online marketing, web design and CRM integration with web analytics.Support the show (https://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/assoc_subscribe.asp?utm_source=buzzfeed)

This week Jim and Jason sit down and have a conversation with Ben Gaines who is a Group Product Manager with Adobe.  Ben shares his insights and learnings from what it was like when he started with Omniture to what his day to day looks like today.  Ben discusses what it means to be a product manager with Adobe, what he sees as the current trends in Analytics, and how he stays focused on the strategic view of the product.   WHAT YOU’LL HEAR… 

Today's guest, John Pestana, is the Co-founder of ObservePoint, a software as a service company based in Provo, Utah. ObservePoint builds an innovative Data Assurance technology that improves the data quality of online marketing technologies. Prior to ObservePoint John co-founded Omniture, a web analytics company which was sold to Adobe in 2009. A distinguished entrepreneur, John has been honored with awards such as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Entrepreneur of the Decade by the BYU Marriott School Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. Of all of his accomplishments, John is most proud to be married to his lovely wife, Heidi, and to be the father of three wonderful children. On top of all that, he's humble and I can't find anyone who'd have something negative to say about him. John's here to share with us all his Jedi Master tricks that progressed his business into what became a multibillion-dollar sale and how he's used what he learned throughout that in his current business today. 

EP155 - Cyber-5 Recap w/ Adobe's Tamera Gaffney. Tamara Gaffney (@tamarag) is the Adobe’s Principal Analyst, Experience Index.  Tamera joins us to discuss the holiday e-commerce results from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (Cyber 5).  Tamera has access to anonymous, and aggregated data from more than 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud (including Adobe Analytics formerly known as Omniture), which represents one of the largest samples of the overall e-commerce industry available.  Her team publishes useful insights based on that data throughout the year. Adobe 2018 Holiday Forecast and Realtime Holiday Dashboard Adobe Digital Insights Adobe CyberMonday Press Release Long time listeners will remember that Tamara first appeared on Episode 60 with Holiday Predictions for 2016, and Episode 109 for a recap of 2017 Cyber-5. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 155 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday November 29, 2018. Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 155 being recorded on a Wednesday November 28th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners well folks we are past the cyber-5 or turkey 5 or whatever phrase you want to use for those magical 5 days that we plan all year for in retail and and this is part 2 of our three-part halftime check in for Holiday 18 we are excited to have back on the show for the third time you may remember her from episode 6109 and here she is on 155 tomorrow Gaffney. Tomorrow is adobe's principal analyst for the experience index welcome back to the show for the third time tomorrow. Tamara: [1:18] Hey it's getting to be a trend it's great to be here thanks for having me. Jason: [1:23] I like it when the data animats recognizes that it's a trend that switch it. Tamara super excited to have you back you're in rare company is a three-time guess I think you might be only our second three-time gas. Tamara: [1:37] Oh my gosh that's like do I get it do I get it like a metal or a hat or something. Jason: [1:43] Oh my God all the propagandas in the mail to you right now. Scot: [1:47] I'm thinking a turkey had I've seen these turkey hats for 35. Jason: [1:51] No no no no I knew gift became available today which is exclusively the only gift I'll be giving out this Christmas season Bob the singing bass now Alexa enabled. Tamara: [2:03] Oh my gosh really that is just that that's just perfect but it should be a thing in Turkey. Jason: [2:12] Yeah that would be more thematic by the couple years ago a guy hacked one of the singing Bass with an Alexa and now there's apparently an official product so I'm buying them in bulk just in case anyone needs it. Tamara: [2:23] I think it will be a collector's item. Jason: [2:25] You are probably right so one fun thing about the show as we keep collecting more and more audience so for the audience that may not have heard the last two shows can we get like the brief version of your background and how you came to it. Tamara: [2:40] Okay well the brief background was a long and winding road but basically I love data I do a lot of stuff storytelling with data and in the case of adobe which most people don't know this and maybe some of your listeners don't those who've been here while I figured out that it will be as more of than Photoshop and acrobat PDF we actually have, the infrastructure the we called the experience cloud and it runs in behind the scenes it pretty much runs a lot of the internet of all the way from the websites to how people track their data on the web for in their mobile applications or even I mean this was really kind of cool you know there was Coke machine that you go up to and you you select what you want or call the freestyle machine some of our technology is even on that screen as well and so you know a baby has tons and tons of information and put in particular retail information or a trillion business to retail sites that are 55 million excuse which basically means Unique Products during 80 of the top 100 Us online retailers so that's a lot of data we've been doing this a long time and to track what's going on by my tail so that's what's coming up out of this report and how we got to it. Jason: [4:04] Awesome and in that experience Cloud there's things like Adobe experience manager which runs a lot of the websites there's there now is Magento which is a e-commerce platform that our lives would be familiar with but in particular there's a web analytics platform that was formerly known as I'm not sure which is, near and dear to a lot of our hearts. Tamara: [4:27] Yeah. Jason: [4:28] My assumption is a lot of this Pacific Holiday retail data were talking about, comes from aggregating all of the the omniture clients out there a my my generally right on that. Tamara: [4:41] You're generally right although many of them have only been around since before and after that your name was retired which was over / what 8 years ago good news Alex cloud is finally getting more search term. Then on the trailer is after 8 years it was a very good brand so and that yes that's where the date is coming from for this type of information. And it's your last day. I'm going to be quoting. Jason: [5:12] Awesome and I know you're not the product manager so I'm not teasing you about this Technically when you retire a name you should change the url and since most analysts metro.com get their data that's it somewhat it's not officially retired in my mind. Tamara: [5:27] How details. Jason: [5:31] I'm at I'm just having fun and magenta was a pretty new acquisition are you starting to get data from them as well. Tamara: [5:39] We are starting to but we've been really very light touch this particular holiday season because they are e-commerce platform company and so obviously this is their busiest time of year so disturbing them information was was not something we wanted to do right in the middle of Black Friday when they need to make sure the systems are all running at perfect chub fish. Scot: [6:06] Colts so I have a burning question based on the freestyle machines what's the most popular flavor of grade can you. Tamara: [6:12] I have no idea I'm going to go ahead and guess it's just flat-out cook. Scot: [6:21] Yeah my favorite is when kids sit there and they put every little flavor injection and it takes like 2 hours. Tamara: [6:30] It comes out like this really you know being or something like that. Scot: [6:36] But seriously back into the world of e-commerce let's talk about holiday 2018 it, thirty thousand foot level what did you guys expect coming in and how are we shaking. Tamara: [6:47] So what we expected for the whole season was about a 14.7% growth rate Which is higher than the growth rate we had last year at 14.3% and anyone who understands stats knows that when you have a higher growth rate on top of the higher number the absolute growth is quite a bit more and I'm so that was surprising and we looked at Labor Day which turned out to be the first-ever to billion dollar online day outside of the holiday season and that's happened this Labor Day and we had over 25% growth on Labor Day so we were heading into the holiday season really trying for it to be big and so with the prediction was that it was going to be her gross than last year and and then going through the first part of the Season it was looking I'm even bigger and what we had predicted up until then cyber-5 days we were at 58.5 billion dollars which was a 19.9% growth rates our expectations and then we were looking at what was happening during the the Cyber 5 and it was starting to come in much higher than our predictions so we're definitely seeing. [8:15] Very strong season so far. Jason: [8:18] Yeah so that was the one of the first things that jumped out of me is is November December you know somewhat aggressive week calling for 14.7% growth and then you get 19 almost 20% growth rolling into the cyber-5 in the average over the Cyber five I want is some place in the order of magnitude of by 28% truck so I guess I was curious. What is that kind of expected and it just feels like more of the the sales are aggregating in that like Peak shopping time and we're going to see much more modest growth the rest of the, the holiday. Or is there a chance we're going to blow away that 14.7. Tamara: [8:58] Yeah that's a really good question and normally does cyber-5 is a 20-plus percent growth and so that wasn't as much of a blowout I'll go Black Friday was higher than we expected it to be and you know that's actually been a trend in the last 5 years that we weave under-estimated Black Friday Friday's came in within 1% of what we expected the first 5 days of Thanksgiving to be and so we're at a point now where either if we see a law happening and we did start to see a pitiable also Cyber Monday grew at 19.3% it was a 7.9 billion dollar day and I remember reporting numbers when we were first hitting two billion on Cyber Monday and now we're almost at 8 and so there are definitely seen a really consolidation along this weekend but the very beginning part of the season was definitely up so if we don't see a Slowdown in the next couple of weeks. We will probably be higher than our overall she's an estimate. Jason: [10:11] Nice and then one inside baseball thing I think there's one more day in the holiday. This year than last year right so. Tamara: [10:17] Serious and I was taking into account interesting little factoids and and some of this information what we're trying to reading now is that is about a 280 million dollar increase in online sales just to have one more day and I think if you correct me if I'm wrong cuz I'm not sure if it is it's the longest the season gets is it going to go back just too short next year I think it might. Jason: [10:42] I noticed you're shorter that you can keep Stephanie I I can't sit here and defend it to be say this is the the longest of the total calendar cycle. Tamara: [10:52] I think it is I think this is the longest it gets and then what ends up happening is that it locks off like a whole week next year and so, that costs about 280 million dollars a day just because retailers have pegged to the shopping to start on a day that, isn't necessarily. Yeah the same distance from Christmas and that's it that's a really big challenge for them next year this year it's a big chest so. That's what we we saw that we predicted that into our findings and what we saw actually a couple years ago before we exported the notion of Black Friday over the pond to Europe wish now is a very big day in Europe but it didn't used to be and what we discovered before we had steam Black Friday get exported was that Europeans started their shopping earlier and so what retailers have done by creating Black Friday is delay shopping although this year it looks like there wasn't as much of a delay people got on it. Elise online a lot faster than the normal. Jason: [12:04] I like it so as lazy Americans are even exporting are are lazy shopping habits I love it. Tamara: [12:09] Well yeah and they're both they're all shopping and in London on Black Friday and have absolutely no idea where they're shopping. Jason: [12:19] Yep yep I totally get it in side note it does feel like there's. Pretty darn favorable consumer macroeconomic conditions this this year and you know there's that the there's personal income tax benefits this year that go away next year and all these things. The shorter holiday next year and the super favorable climate this year I do sort of feel bad for a lot of retailers they're going to have to comp against this year or next year is going to be a little rough. Tamara: [12:46] Yeah I know they're probably going to head into January starting to think how on Earth am I going to get what I got out of this season next year. Jason: [12:55] Exactly but that's tomorrow's problem. Tamara: [12:57] It is and you're a little fun fact for you about cyber monday us consumer spent 11 Thousand Years shopping online on Cyber Monday. Jason: [13:08] 11000 man years. Tamara: [13:10] 11000 man years I know right. Scot: [13:14] Well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show if we didn't talk about Amazon and if you don't want to talk with Amazon that's fine we can talk about any interesting retailer trends that you You observe that you want. Tamara: [13:28] Well I guess I don't tend to talk specifics about retailers in part because you're getting the permission to aggravate findings you don't want to really call any of them out per se but one of the interesting findings that I will talk about is what they call. B o p i s b o p i s. [13:57] And that was a huge increased 65% increase in that on Cyber Monday and so, it really gives you a lot of. Concept around why did Amazon buy Whole Foods and why are pure play retailers setting up pop-up retail locations or or something for people to try to go and physically interact so it's funny because in the past the idea was you didn't have the extensive having any kind of physical location but the reality is is it really is a benefit and so that is a big trend for retailers and it also helps extend the back end of the season so, in the past we saw shopping pretty much ground to a halt around the 16th or 17th of December and now we will see shopping all the way up until Christmas Eve and that's because you can pick up in store. And so that's that's what I would say is the most interesting retail Trend that we track this year. Jason: [15:08] Yeah yeah for sure in in side note if you're in Europe instead of saying bopis you say click and collect which sounds more more of sophisticated. Tamara: [15:19] Doesn't it there always been so much more sophisticated you know. Jason: [15:21] Exactly Timber instead of what they have all kinds of. What is the use and everything I thought I saw another interesting stat along with the in the omni-channel category were you seeing. Retailers that had a break-in Wonder presents outperforming sure play retailers am I remembering that right or am I making it up. Tamara: [15:47] That was in the prediction and we didn't put out anything yet on whether or not that's that's coming true but it was a part of our prediction. Jason: [15:57] Okay, we will look forward to hearing how that plays out in increasingly omni-channel thing to me is how customers are behaving on mobile phones because. There there you know in addition using his mobile phones at home a lot there they're using them in the store until I'm particularly interested in, mobile played out this holiday and so can you share any insights in terms of like traffic or number of orders or a retinue on. A mobile vs. desktop. Tamara: [16:34] Yeah that's the cool thing about our our dataset is that we can see visits from any kind of device and track what type of device it was, by the way those people who came with an iPhone or much more likely to purchase and those came with an Android I'm an Android User so I'm feeling a little bit and now I don't know maybe you got to have an iPhone to be at the pool all the time, the mobile shopping what ended up happening was Cyber Monday brought into .2, billion dollars of the 7.9 off of mobile devices that's at 55.6% versus last year so apparently starting to figure out and is jealous the majority of the shopping list starting to figure out how to get, that actual sale Austin last year over 50%, work on a mobile device but much lower percentage of did of the final sales, that's growing tremendously and I think it has a lot to do with a number of improvements to the experience of shopping on mobile. Jason: [17:49] Yeah I know you probably should have digital index year-round I don't want to put you on the spot to memorize a bunch of numbers but. Is The majority like across the whole index is the majority of traffic now on mobile or is or is when it goes over 50% in holiday is that a seasonal Peak. Tamara: [18:12] Yeah that's a seasonal Peak those are the most mobile days that we have ever seen and it has a lot to do with the fact that people during that high-volume visit. Aren't you at home. And so you'll see really high Mobile on Christmas day you'll see it on Memorial weekend you know the typical times when people are out and about or on vacation is when we start to see mobile heading over 50% but it's not enough of the year yet to be over all over 50%. Jason: [18:47] Got into it's interesting to me is my clients tend to be very large retards at the top of the echo system and the number of them are like. Basically experiencing year-round 50% rates now which not surprising their the most likely to have. In Avid mobile app user base in all these things but the problem we always run into is we're seeing more and more traffic go to mobile but the conversion rates on mobile have historically lagged and the aovs on mobile hey black and so you have this big gap. We're more traffic shifting to mobile but the mobile is in generating the same Revenue that the desktop is it used to. And my my hypothesis is that is we all get better at mobile experiences that Gap is starting to naira or can you confirm or deny that from, from what you're seeing this holiday is is there less of a gap between traffic and revenue this year than there was last year. Tamara: [19:43] There is very still look at but it is closing and in particular is closing on these very high shopping days a large part of that is coming from an email click map of the mobile device and I talked about this maybe in your in the last episode we did together but there's this notion of rolling over here not even out of bed yet and starting your Black Friday shopping on the phone before you know you've even put your slippers on and so, the combination of those people who are willing to buy off of their mobile devices through email is becoming much more. Prevalence and there's less friction the biggest friction points in this is from data that we did several months ago the biggest Russian points are really around the size, I love the picture of you will see what you're shopping for so you will not see as many higher-end device things not just general you know gifts to the mobile device but it isn't necessarily affecting every kind of retailer the same. [20:57] Shop retailers have super high-end luxury goods and people want to see those maybe a little bigger and that's that's one of the big challenges has gotten much easier and being able to zoom in you know at least a c text larger it's gotten easier, and I should point out that none of this information includes mobile app shopping because that isn't coming through to Adobe analytics in the same way. And I can be a very big percentage especially for large large retailers. Scot: [21:41] Got its that could be maybe if we included mobile app we could be kind of over 50% on a consistent basis I guess. Tamara: [21:47] Yeah and mobile apps would research shows us that what happens when the holidays sometimes people will install a retailer app and then uninstall it in January or Adele really keep you recharge staffs but not very many. Scot: [22:04] So sounds like holiday at least from a top line perspective is doing well can you tell how promotional it is so anecdotally you know I'm finding the Shoppers in my family are finding, it just feels like better deals this year which implies you no more of a percent off and could be a worse bottom line is as this kind of is revealed if you want you have any. Directional guidance. Tamara: [22:31] Well I'm looking at the discounts televisions were at about an 18.9% discount computers were about 17.9 and Toys R Us 30.9. What word seeing overall look very similar to what we saw last year toys have a little bit more discount this year than they did last year last year but overall the discount percentages look very similar maybe what you're seeing is a particular, decline in prices overall and so they don't need to Discount to television as much because it's it's list price was lower than it was last year. Jason: [23:09] Interesting well that that's potentially good news is I was sort of the line with with Scott antidote Ali it felt like a very promotional season but I will be glad to find out. That we didn't give away too much margin I think you guys also look at the percentage of free shipping and is that pretty consistent this year from last year are we giving away more shipping. Tamara: [23:30] We look at free shipping in our production and it is a factor but it is looks like it's very similar tablet has been in them in the past with the exception of the click and collect to be the more elegant European term is is helping retailers to not have to give away as much free shipping and so I think that will will see is that the shipping expense will start to decline overall as resellers find a way to avoid a lot or express shipping. Jason: [24:05] Yeah for sure related to my earlier mobile question I'm I'm also kind of curious if so. One of the things I think as a lot of friction on mobile as it's not very much fun to take your credit card information into a mobile phone. But increasingly there's better Utilities in North America for digital wallets like there's more users on PayPal Apple pay is getting more traction you mentioned Apple users are spending a lot more than Android users are you able to see, any data around payment methods and are there any interesting friends coming up this holiday season in terms of payment method. Tamara: [24:40] You know that is a part of the data said that we could look at it but we tend to stay away from looking at anything close to how people are paying just know we don't have any personal identifiable or any six your data in the system so it's really very Anonymous but we feel that if we kind of start putting out a lot of information around how people are paying and might feel creepy and so what we're doing is just kind of, taking that piece the data out of all of what we look at. Jason: [25:10] . so you're saying even if I turn off the mic you can't tell me what Scott's credit card number is. Tamara: [25:16] If I did I would have gone shopping with myself that's a joke friends. Jason: [25:25] I'm right there with you we. Heavy not your data set is like one of my favorite datasets around this holiday because I sort of feel like. You guys are at the broadest view the widest range of different different. Types of retailers that use your products and therefore you see their data there are a bunch of vendors that published their own data and some of it's interesting because they show me niches like I'm always curious. Like what Shopify says they're doing this year because I think of them and started a long tail, 11 manner that published by the date of this year is a Salesforce what used to be the old demandware, Commerce platform in one of the things that surprised me about their data set over this holiday is you have sort of them obituaries me to expect Cyber Monday to be the biggest day and Black Friday to be a big day but not as big and it sounds like a customer. Black Friday outsold Cyber Monday when I was just curious if that surprises you or what like what how you interpret that. Tamara: [26:36] Yeah well LOL just say this about. They know what their methodology is I can't speak to their methodology but, astrology with 80 of the top 100 retailers I feel like it, very large dataset it does maardata said does tend to skew towards the larger Enterprise retailers and so, is possible that for smaller retailers that there might be a different pattern but. I don't think that that represents the actual true dollar spending because of the large retailers way outperforming smaller retailers in the gap between large and small is getting larger and larger as digital. Digital experiences require quite a bit of investment and it's getting harder for smaller businesses to keep up with that level investment that's part of the reason why some of them have closed down and also. Acquired by the larger Enterprises so that they can get their experiences online to be as good as what needs to be that's cuz you're expecting more. Scot: [27:50] Wrinkled so we're getting right up to time so I wanted to ask kind of a three-part question I'll sneak in their number one. Tamara: [27:57] Spider-Man. Scot: [28:00] Is there trick once we get. Tamara: [28:02] Fish now. Jason: [28:04] One more push up one more push up. Scot: [28:06] So parte you talk about email as kind of a referral for mobile any interesting referral trends like social up or down or PVC up or down like that, number to anything else you want to highlight the data and then number three maybe we wrap with any punches case should you have about the rest of holiday. Tamara: [28:29] Okay so as far as the demand sales drivers what we saw was just typing it and going directly to a retailer was the most and by the way that also includes jumping in from an email that looks like you typed it in directly, and paid search was at 21.6% of the traffic and that is up 6.2% year-over-year interesting made from another report that I did that isn't related to this it was a survey report I asked people where they like to find out about new things so we're still. Using search we don't really like it if you tell her she don't really like it and I really like it but it's kind of where we are the other thing natural search was down social media is about the same. At about 1.3% at the flicks coming from social media so not a whole lot of change a little bit more potential earnings power for our friends at Google other than that I can't really nothing nothing super shocking about that. Scot: [29:47] Second question was was raining in the data that we haven't asked about where you you said I really need to talk to Jason and see. Tamara: [29:54] Warriors are something that I think is interesting on the toys on that on area toys and this isn't maybe you guys you know we all have kids so maybe you can help figure out why this is a surprise gifts, things that come in little packages like you know those toys you get like one or two time at the counter and you don't really know what's going to be in it but it's. Something bad, those types of things and the LOL surprise kind of packages r r a trend. I don't understand why kids today want not only a gift which is a surprise in and of itself, to be a surprise even after they open it I just crave getting surprised nowadays. Scot: [30:55] Yes it's on the Big Star Wars fan and this is been in the collectible world forever and we can blind boxes that usually vinyl blind boxes and is collector you like it cuz it's kind of a fun game to try to collect them all and I think it's kind of leaked out of the collective world and into the mainstream. I'm so see you at the the law surprise is probably going to be you know, this year's last year they had the finger links was in the hatchlings were hard to get this year you see him everywhere and you can't find the loss of so so I just think it's kind of moved into the mainstream in it it's just going to add some onion and. You know surprise to Holiday. Tamara: [31:33] I just wonder what that whole Collectibles mindset amongst gen Z or the guy like to call them crackers are creators because I hate it's so boring but I just wonder if that's going to change their generation in some way and they will change the whole idea of. Collectibles as being a much bigger thing as they go into adulthood I don't know. Scot: [31:59] Yeah I think instead of going and buying them all to get them I think that Generations more into kind of like trading and so I think it's going to be kind of like it's collectors you don't really trade him unless you get extras cuz you're trying to all inclusive and get a full set so but I bet you know it'll be interesting to see I think they're designed with more of a trading angle versus a you got to get them all have an angle. Jason: [32:21] Yeah I know I do. I do think that the notion for these kids of scarcity, is going to be very different than previous generations right so you know it in Scottsdale he only had to be the person in his circle of friends that got the cool Star Wars thing out of the blind box and there weren't like perfectly efficient markets if in one one pool of of Star Wars collectors there were too many of something in another pool at something was super scared now all these markets, super efficient and you know when you have something you need it has to be unique amongst your ten thousand friends on Instagram not just your, your 50 friends in real life in so that you know I do think. Unique and scarce is going to equal like through limited editions of things and you know more personalized things. For this generation in past but it's going to be interesting to watch. Tamara: [33:16] You know I just thought of a new business idea we need to sell parents and sort of x-ray machine that they can take to the store and see which of the surprise boxes are the unique ones that their kid really want. Scot: [33:31] Unblind box Tech. Tamara: [33:33] Is the unwinding Jewel. Jason: [33:37] That's a sad thing is of course kids would figure out how to use it way before the parents would so. The defeating factor and that's probably going to be a good place to leave it because we have used up our lot of time for this holiday quick-hit edition, but it was hers have any follow-up questions or want to continue the discussion as always jump on her Facebook page and will continue the dialogue there. And of course if you enjoy this show we sure would appreciate it if you jump on iTunes and is a holiday gift us Cotton-Eye you can give us that five star review. Scot: [34:10] Two are thanks for joining us working folks find you online if they want to come and follow things through the rest of the holiday. Tamara: [34:16] Well I'm Twitter I'm at tomorrow G wish I had I got in pretty early on that name and you can actually find us on sorry to shut up because you guys look like you're having way too much fun and so I wanted to have more fun and have a little podcast you so I'm not a podcast is call J & T data talk and that's on Android and on iTunes and so I'll be a good way to to keep track of what's going on but you can always contact me on Twitter message. Scot: [34:48] Awesome so after you listen to episode 155 switch on over to that podcast and check it out. Jason: [34:56] Thanks again for coming on the show and until next time happy commercing.

Jacob Baadsgaard is Founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising, an agency that helps companies grow to the next level using Google and Facebook ads, leveraging the platforms with revenue—through a CRM- or lead-gen-based campaign or by ensuring that the ecommerce analytics are strong so everything is revenue-driven, testing website experience to see what resonates with potential customers, and perfecting the website experience so clients can effectively scale. Jacob started his career in web analytics implementation with Omniture. He soon discovered that pay per click (PPC) was the easiest metric to track and provided the most insights, and left Omniture shortly after it was acquired by Adobe to go out on his own. As his agency grew, it leaned heavily on Google-Adwords-based paid search to drive traffic to landing pages—but had no way to measure conversion until they implemented Unbounce.com to refine the landing page experience. Disruptive Advertising is located in Lindon, Utah. With a 2017 population of almost 11,000, Lindon nestles between beautiful Mount Timpanogo and Utah Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Utah. In 2009, 2011, and 2013, CNN Money Magazine listed it as one of the "100 Best Small Cities to Live in America." Lindon is part of the Provo-Orem Metropolitan area, with a 2016 population of slightly over 600,000. Lindon is not the bustling metropolitan area where one would expect to find a thriving advertising agency with over 100 employees. Disruptive Advertising has around 500 clients—and they're not the mom-n-pops. An enterprise team manages accounts with monthly spends of $100 to a million dollars. A small business division works with lower-spend clients, e.g., healthcare and home service companies. The majority of Disruptive's clients have an average Facebook and/or Google monthly spend of $20,000 to $50,000. Hardly average. How does that happen? Jacob credits his company's success to the fact that it takes its own marketing and branding very seriously, to the tune of a million dollars a year. Disruptive drives a lot of inbound, but, at the same time, maintains a laser focus on its performance-driven PPC and PPC ancillary services. When clients request “other” types of work, Disruptive provides these by partnering with agencies that excel in those specialties. Quality control is also critical for keeping Disruptive's customers happy. In order to track the performance of over 100 employees, Disruptive uses a technology that continually audits all accounts to confirm that best practices are consistently and universally implemented. Employees and their managers are likewise responsible for ensuring this is done. In addition, product owners in the areas of Google Ads, Facebook Ads, site testing, and analytics review all accounts on a specified schedule—a triple redundancy that ensures customers get the services they expect. For years, Jacob put all his energy into growing his company, to the detriment of his health and his relationships. He felt the success of his business was a reflection of his value as a human being and that, the minute his company stopped growing, he would no longer be a good person . . . he would be a failure. A company valuation and mergers & acquisitions expert asked him some pivotal questions: “What is your plan with the business? What is your exit strategy? What is going on?” When Jacob didn't know whether he wanted to sell the business or what he enjoyed about it, the expert told him, “If you love what you're doing and you love the people that you're working with, run it the way that you love running it, take a little more off the table along the way, and just be involved with it long term.” When Jacob realized he could define his own success, he fell in love with his business all over again. Jacob can be reached on his company's website at disruptiveadvertising.com or on its LinkedIn account at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/disruptive-advertising/

I am the co-founder of ObservePoint, an online data quality assurance platform. Prior to ObservePoint, I co-founded Omniture, which I helped build and grow to over 1200 employees. Omniture grew from a student-run business to a world-wide, publicly traded company in 2006 and then sold to software giant Adobe in November of 2009. It was a lot of work. Whew! Over the years I have been honored to received awards such as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Decade by the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship.

Known as the Pioneer of the Utah Tech World, John Pestana is the Co-founder of ObservePoint, a software as a service company based in Provo, Utah. ObservePoint builds an innovative Data Assurance technology that improves the data quality of online marketing technologies. Prior to ObservePoint John co-founded Omniture, a web analytics company which was sold to Adobe in 2009 for over a billion dollars. A extraordinary entrepreneur, John has been honored with awards such as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Entrepreneur of the Decade by the BYU Marriott School Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology.

My guest this episode is Adam Greco, a web analytics expert who has worked for companies such as Omniture and Salesforce. Most people are easily overwhelmed with data analytics and don’t know where to start. Many organizations also function in a vacuum with each department using their own data and not sharing their findings across the team. As users we don’t want reports, we want insights to help make decisions. This episode we’re going to talk about how to turn that data into insights you can actually use, how to spot problems on your website and sales funnel, how to score your leads, and how to know what to focus on. Adam is a prominent member of the web analytics community and he gives us a practical guide to analytics you can start implementing in your business or project right away. *** Tap on this link to access show notes+transcripts, join our private community of mavericks, or sign up to the newsletter: EveryoneHatesMarketers.com/links

Tamara Gaffney is the Director of the Strategic Insights Engagement Group at Adobe.  Tamera joins us to discuss the holiday e-commerce results from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (Cyber 5).  Tamera has access to anonymous, and aggregated data from more than 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud (including Adobe Analytics formerly known as Omniture), which represents one of the largest samples of the overall e-commerce industry available.  Her team publishes useful insights based on that data throughout the year. Adobe 2017 Holiday Forecast and Realtime Holiday Dashboard Adobe Digital Insights Adobe Digital Price Index Long time listeners will remember that Tamara first appeared on Episode 60 with Holiday Predictions for 2016. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 107 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 30, 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature – Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 109 being recorded on Thursday November 30th 2017 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as always I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot & Tamara: [0:40] Jason and welcome back Jason Scott shirtless nurse, podcast Jason you know but maybe audience doesn’t that one of our most popular episodes last year was the infamous episode 60 which was our holiday preview that feature adobe’s, Tamara Gaffney and today we are excited to announce that tomorrow is back with us and we thought I’d be even cooler that instead of doing a preview, if we could carve out just a little bit of her time even though she’s super busy being the date of wizard out there to give us a read kind of hot take on what’s going on after the Cyber 5 so we’re really excited to have tomorrow back with us she is too strategic insights engagement rings director at Adobe welcome tomorrow. [1:23] Hi thanks for having me back on it’s been. I got to well it’s been a year, I think this year will be even more exciting because we’re going to get some instead of previews will actually get reviews so excited to hear wake me up set. Yeah we’re right in the thick of things aren’t we weave just just crossed over 50 billion dollars in online spending so it’s a big big year. Jason: [1:48] And most of that is just got so that’s pretty impressive too. Scot & Tamara: [1:51] Yeah but 10% is not not Scot at my I think I wanted to have your job. Jason: [2:03] I think Scott has to have multiple jobs to support his Star Wars have it. Scot & Tamara: [2:07] Yes yes I’m sure if you look in the data what will have a Star Wars? Okay. Jason: [2:11] Tomorrow before we get into it can you refresh our listeners as to how it is that you know so much about what’s happening with holiday spending can you talk about the the dataset you’re working a little bit. Scot & Tamara: [2:26] Yeah let me start there because most everybody who is listening in its thinking Adobe and they’re thinking Photoshop I thinking acrobat not syncing data analysis. Unless they were listening last year. Jason: [2:41] Adobe Audition. Scot & Tamara: [2:43] But we actually have a. Technology for marketing that we called experience cloud and inside that we have some baby clouds in an a particular the analytics Cloud which is running the collection mechanism for getting all of the information for a vast majority of online retailers, as well as the Nvidia Titan and tonic the first most of the web is using Adobe analytics to track, information for themselves and and we have the keys to Fort Knox in our team in Adobe Digital insights where we’re allowed to go in and look at the aggregate of all of, the clients in the cloud so what you’re seeing or hearing today off of this data is coming out of shopping carts and the actual tracking of what is going in and out of shopping carts how much getting fat. What kind of device is buying it, all kinds of information that’s tracked inside of adobe analytics and we aggregate points add up into massive numbers. Jason: [3:52] Got you in for really old school listeners the Adobe analytics Cloud was at one point on the charger. Scot & Tamara: [4:00] That’s right yeah it’s in fact when you login if your client when you login it still says that and who are also. Jason: [4:08] Let’s say I didn’t want I don’t have to use the product manager who’s I know we’ve totally normalized all the new names but yeah the URL still on the chair. Scot & Tamara: [4:15] Right it’s been 7 years now that we’ve been an adobe analytics and everyone still remember said that old Brandon so that’s that must be the Hallmark of a good brand right there. Jason: [4:27] I absolutely in and soul to soul recap like their other vendors, out there that give holiday data based on their customer bases but they’re you know most most vendors have you can have every real best business in and steal your customers might represent 5 or 10% of the market and. That depending on your product it sort of self-select for a particular type of of customer in so you know there can be a lot of sort of inherent bias is in a lot of those data sets that that vendors that aren’t really in the analytic space have when they, try to share some of that their holiday insights but in your case it’s it’s the same tool that that many retailers are using the tractor, their own progress and I think you’re going to tell me that you have a pretty big representative sample of the overall e-commerce industry. Scot & Tamara: [5:18] Yeah we do and to be fair to everyone we all have a sample, we just happen to have a drink normally huge sample which makes it frankly a little bit easy to predict what’s going to happen there isn’t that much out there that I’m trying to. Figure out but but yeah we’re covering 80% of the top 100 retailers web retailers and we are. Covering about $7.50 out of every $10 spent on line inside of the Adobe analytics and Adobe experience Cloud platform so, the date of that we’re looking at is very very big we’re talking about trillions of visits and billions of a shopping carts purchased During the period of time that our predictive model is looking at, data to, give estimates about where we should be and then of course he know we’re tracking the actuals and if you were watching the news over the holiday weekend you probably heard adobe’s, recorded because we had over 9,000 press articles in the last 5 days so it’s been a really great for us to get the word out, that’s awesome congrats on the so much sense I hope you get paid by mention. [6:34] I wish that’s what we do track it in analytics just like you know everything else that was up 18% and are kpi so we’re happy. Awesome yes it’s he said that at the top of the show 50 billion that feels good. [6:49] Maybe we can start time at thirty thousand foot level what was your thinking coming into the holiday and your how are we tracking against that thinking, knee revision to the back end up or down think that they are seen. Take a giant step back and talk about our prediction that we put out the very very beginning of November and the predicted model this year we were, down to the studs and rebuilt it completely and it took us we started February and it took us all this time to get it get it redone and the reason why we had to do that if we were starting to watch how our model was working against, behavioral patterns that we’re seeing in the market we noticed that that these big shopping days we’re stealing. [7:42] Feeling shopping stealing revenue from other days and and that caused the model which had some assumptions in it about some constant growth. In various levels of e-commerce spend to really start to become. Not the right way to measure things so because we are never satisfied with what we used to do we decided that we needed to have a specific growth rate, estimate for everyday of the year and and that it has changed our Outlook and it changed a little bit of r model from the. Back so we did some revising of the past but not too big and and then we put out our prediction which was 107.4 billion dollars and that is a 13.8% growth rate last year was a 14.4% growth rate based on our revised, I data in our models and so you can see that the growth rate is starting to decline but the actual total difference in spending is, and and groceries are very difficult to conceptualize number because as a base gets bigger and bigger a grocery and actually goes down so so do not enter, the lower growth rate the last year as a negative sign because e-commerce is still alive and well and in fact if you’ve been watching the news it’s it’s all the same as it ever was talking about. How much more is going online. [9:11] Yeah I think in the offline world where things are going to happen 4% will take. 14 or 18 in is probably fine like I said we are seeing that retailers pricing promotions are causing. The consumers to wait, And Delay spending so some of this growth that we see big spiky growth in days like Cyber Monday, the expense of the beginning of November. Which is strange considering that, if you’re watching your email box or paying attention to what retailers are doing you see them talking about Black Friday earlier and earlier and you think well the sales must be really ramping up earlier than it used to but that is not an, not in fact true. Consumers has become online shopping ninjas and they know that the best prices are not until the Thanksgiving holiday weekend it’s okay, it’s not always good for retailers, but they’re waiting but they’re competing with each other and they it’s such a competitive Marketplace that they can’t afford to not have the lowest prices and everything else does, so so that’s why you’re seeing the concentration of the holiday spending becoming Tighter and Tighter over the course of time. Jason: [10:35] Interesting in I want to go down in that just a little bit more because when you when you think about. More spending over the holiday. Like there’s a couple reasons that could be right like so you don’t want is people are just getting more good than they got last year or a bigger percentage of their goods online and offline it work if we’re just looking at the online number but another one is, the time frame can be different right because we don’t have the same number of days every year and holiday and if I’m not mistaken this year we have one more day than we had last year so do we. [11:07] You try to account for that in your model when you talk about the growth percentage or is it just there’s a small amount of the growth percentage that we should just expect because we have one more shopping day. Scot & Tamara: [11:18] Yes or model really looks at the two months of November and December and doesn’t, pacifically look at when Thanksgiving starts although you’re absolutely right to point that out in previous analysis we had measured the impact of a shortened season because we’re. Climbing backup in terms of days after a couple years ago we got to the shortest window between Thanksgiving and Christmas and. And now you know every year we get one extra day which is great for retailers in the past when we look at what happens when you get a short season it was five six hundred million dollars a day and lost Revenue, and that was because people don’t really start. Shopping until Thanksgiving Black Friday time. And then they shop for as many days as they have left. So when you have fewer days left you just don’t get as far out in your shopping and terms of the nice to have gifts as you would have if you had more time, having said that though the counterbalance to all of it has been over the past two years and to even greater, greatest here we have the Advent of click-and-collect shopping, cell that has links in the season that and the fact that we have longer. Periods of time that we can wait before shipping free shipping stops and. Before the shipper say they can’t get stuff to us that’s because of. [12:50] Really Improvement in logistics and data analysis on the part of the shippers themselves so we have a lengthened online shopping season compared to 5 years ago because of those factors, and that helps online but the shortened season in general hurts all shopping. And and all of that is it is a part of the model but not as specifically as you know looking at the number of days between. Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jason: [13:21] That that’s actually a great point so if you get back in that time machine and and Scott and I’ve been doing this for a long time like an old days you had this one thing you have a cutoff date right and that was the last day you can hand something ups and still have it delivered, via ground to it to a consumer in so. Emotionally you were selling stuff online until that cut off date and once you got past that cut update your strategy was to sell gift cards. Like something you could deliver electronically and like you know over the last 10 years, we have multiple cut-off dates because there’s that ground cut off date and now you know a lot of shippers are a lot of consumers hurt you know getting express delivery weather you know that’s bundled for free or weather, they’re paying a premium for that to your point because updates just are shorter because the shippers are better at it and then you know the the big Advent is you is you rightly mentioned is now instead of promoting gift cards for those last two days were saying, click and collect buy it online and you can drive in curbside and pick it up or coming in the store and pick it up. Scot & Tamara: [14:25] Yeah and the end. In places like you know Amazon for example in certain cities they have same day delivery because they’ve got warehouses located in those titties themselves, so some of it is for the positioning of goods around the country and where where they are I remember a couple years ago watching UPS backup into a Nike store and take online orders out a physical store and deliver them in a local area so there’s all kinds of strategies that have come into place in The Last 5 Years to get Goods, out of sight out of the computer and into your porch without it having to be a cut off so early. Jason: [15:05] For sure and and now it’s in the porch soon it’s going to be in the refrigerator but because. Scot & Tamara: [15:11] I heard that. Jason: [15:12] Are going to have the keys to our house. But before we get there the other thing you mentioned which I think is potentially even bigger deal is it’s it’s I think it’s always dangerous to talk about growth without talking about dressed Ricky Powell. Discounting the reason I say that is sort of twofold. Whip and Seasons when retailers aggressively discount earlier in the season like you know it’s possible that they’re just shifting more sales early so we can see big growth over this kind of cyber 5mm really all we’ve done is like we’ve given away margin to pull those heels earlier into the season, I’m in in their other Seasons where they aggressively discount throughout the season and they do drive more sales but of course I can have a hugely negative impact on on profitability in so you can have a season where I V, we all Drew really well oh bummer we all lost more money than ever before. Until I’m I’m always curious to track permit the promotional activity in one of the things that’s always exciting to me about your data set is I think you actually see, the price consumers are paying in the level of discounting so are you able to talk about that what time you’re sitting there at all. Scot & Tamara: [16:24] Yeah I actually am because it again going back to how we collect the data we’re looking at a line item a product going into a shopping cart for pretty, price and then we’re looking at the totals, and you know what kind of credit card with use all that stuff is stored in Adobe analytics and so would we go in and do that we’ve created actually by the, by the way every month we were Lisa digital price index which is a corollary to the Consumer Price Index and it allows everyone to track, online price changes so so we use that type of information that we’ve built up in the digital price index to help understand what kind of discounting is happening during the holiday season and the interesting things this year for me was that, the discount rate, for the biggest discounts tend to be on items like televisions and computers and the electronic category has a much bigger discounts than other categories, so last year we hit 25% discounts on televisions at tablets this year we hit 24, so not a super big difference but not as much discount as we had before, the little trick there though to keep in mind is that I’m calculating a discount rate meaning there was a price and then it got you know kind of lowered, they’re actually could be that the prices came into the season lower and therefore the discount rate still got you out the door for less money. [17:56] Then you would have even know there was a smaller discount so I’m so keep that in mind but some of the categories that we were tracking, did not have this as Hyatt discounts this year as last year last year seemed to be a huge huge discount here and this one is a, better. Sporting Goods with about 11% off and I actually saw an article about people buying guns which was interesting cuz that’s in the sporting good category apparel about 15% computers 15%, and you know the. Toy category itself is holding it about 19% discounts at the the real big. Problem with side with pricing is that the times when things actually get their lowest is already the time when a lot of the hottest products are sold out, so retailers don’t necessarily give you their lowest price on something that’s about to sell out until after they get through knowing whether or not, they have enough inventory and optimizing pretty well using a lot of data mining to do that, the other thing that I’ll tell you is that the shopping carts themselves were a little bit, bigger than they were last year and the data that’s coming in after I prediction it’s showing us that the season is going to be a little a little bit bigger than a predictive model, could touch 100 V 110 billion possibly so we’re going to have to see if. [19:32] If the big Cyber Monday that we just came off of, does feel some of the shopping center from the rest the back half of the season I don’t think it will though based on looking at the state of for 5 years people seem to shop as much as they have time for. Jason: [19:49] Very cool and. So you did touch one thing that I haven’t fully considered but I’ll bet you is it a newer challenge so you see discounts in terms of sort of is was pricing right like this price was this in an hour I’ll bring it at this n o n a lot of retailers are heavily promotional so that’s their their motor cyber on die, but increasingly like there’s a there’s a huge everyday low price retailer out there and Walmart that really doesn’t. Quote on quote discount but they certainly adjust there, their offer price and more more we’re starting to see this Dynamic pricing where retailers change pricing all the time based on, on market conditions and obviously Amazon famous for that, I’m assuming you can see that is was promotions but you really don’t have a great way to call out the fact when a retard just gets more aggressive on their base price during a particular. Particular there a dynamic processor. Scot & Tamara: [20:49] So this particular analysis that gives you the discount rates. Doesn’t have that but the digital price index where were looking at the price index by category of product does. So if we’re starting to see things trending down or we seem deflation in a certain category. It’s showing up an additional price index so in January probably around the 5th or so we will put out the December digital price index and it will have, more of a trend around how much how much does everyday low prices are we seeing hit the mark, versus the discount rate which is we going to Jack’s prices up and then discounted make you feel like you got a good deal. Jason: [21:35] Awesome and it not to do it from the overall message we’re seeing a healthy growth rate and potentially slightly less promotional than last year which is probably good good news for profitability. Scot & Tamara: [21:49] Yeah it does seem like it it is also feels like Americans are feeling jolly and that they want to I’ll go out and spend we, never have I seen before and this is the intangible in anybody’s model not just ours but a stock market High the day before Thanksgiving. And. You know an all-time high and so so there’s that that question lingering how much is the economy and the stock market positive overhang going, this holiday season in ways that the model couldn’t have predicted because we’ve never had data to feed into the model with this kind of economy. In it it feels like we got a really no tail lens there any other Bitcoin hitting 10,000 which I’m sure all the US consumers are excited about. Well you know a lot of people nowadays do have something in in the market in the retirement or wherever and so it does seem like it creates a certain sense of willingness to, send when when when that Mark is going well. [23:00] Chocolate with shift gears a little bit and I know you guys do some really interesting research and tracking around the device Trends what are we seeing as far as mobile vs. desktop in anything interesting there that you seen the shirt. [23:14] Yeah let’s talk about that because when I’ve been asked what the biggest surprise was this year for me. [23:24] It comes into the mobile device area which you would think nothing would surprise me about mobile anymore because I talked about it now every single year as if it’s you know the most important thing but the problem that I seen in Mobile is that. Traffic is switching from desktop to mobile over the course in the last 2 years and traffic at people’s buying habits are consolidating and two fewer fewer websites to the actual traffic to websites. [23:52] In general at in retail that also everywhere is declining. Play Lee and and its increasing dramatically in the smartphone. And at the expense of the desktop and the tablets declining a little bit. So the problem with smartphone traffic is it doesn’t convert well it’s people don’t hit the buy button when they’re on their smartphone nearly as often and the. Average order size on a smartphone is lower so from a retail perspective it becomes really difficult if more people shop on their smartphones. We were calling this year for smartphone traffic to surpass 50% to hit 54% and it is. [24:44] Is a general going to be true that statement the first couple weeks of the year were a little bit lower in Mobile Traffic, when we started getting into Thanksgiving we went through the roof on on mobile traffic and in particular smartphone traffic it got up to over 60% of visits to retailer website, add some of those big holiday days and what I was fearing would happen would that would be that the revenue would take a hit, as a result and it and it didn’t and that’s the big surprise for me so we had about a 40% growth rate, in Revenue coming off of smartphones and in particular on Cyber Monday we had mobile Revenue which is a smartphone plus tablet. 2 billion dollars on that day alone are very first two billion dollar day, mobile standing and so what what I’ve noticed is that the conversion rate and the shopping cart size on the smartphone has grown much faster than we were expecting. Which is me a perfect timing really because it could have been a disaster the reason why. I believe has to do with our ability to autofill forms and autofilter credit card and use our fingerprint, on a mobile device, it was just so much easier for me personally to shop on my smartphone this year than it was last year now last year I had it and iPhone 6 plus this year I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. [26:26] I don’t know how much of it has to do and see no switching from Apple to Samsung are or just the general improvements in the smartphone or the Improvement of the website and being able to use the smartphone but it was. Tremendously easier for me and I think that’s part of the reason why we saw so much more Revenue coming from smartphones this year that was my big big surprise. At the season. Jason: [26:51] Interesting that that’s really great news and we shall we often talk about that that lower mobile conversion rate is the Serta mobile Gap. [27:00] And in general I would even say historically you we see the mobile Gap close a little bit on shopping days with a high purchase intense right like so. And in that kind of makes sense if you’re shopping on a mobile device on a regular day and you’re in line at the bank and it’s too hard to check out and you run out of time. [27:19] You just don’t complete the transaction but if you’re you know you’re shopping for a gift that you need for your nephew next week. You’re you’re more motivated to complete the transaction even if that that phone number is all that payment information is harder to enter on your phone. [27:36] And we we sometimes also talked about. [27:41] Unit conversion rate not being a perfect metric right like so you know most sites when they talk about the conversion rate it’s all the traffic to the site and what percentage of that complete upper chest. But of course if you’re not any channel retailer lot of people are coming to your site to get your store address or your store hours or check the you know lots of other tasks besides shopping and on these high shopping days. Higher percentage of the traffic is going to the. The purchase pages instead of the you know the informational pages that might be on your site and so. [28:12] I guess I would expect it to be a little narrower but but. It’s really exciting to see that the Gap closing if your premises right that it’s because there’s less payment friction though we should see the maintain those better conversion rates even after holiday is that right. Scot & Tamara: [28:29] I would think so we’ll have to watch and see how how well we do at. The revenue coming from smartphones and how well were trending I did notice that in the past that we had seen some games and it was getting better, the overall amount of smartphone Revenue at the percentage is around 21% we hit 27%, on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday and 20% of Revenue so well over a quarter of the revenue is coming from a smartphone not just a mobile device so I agree with you though all good points. It’s going to be one of those things that retailers have to figure out how to how to, the momentum because the desktop traffic for the first 27 days of the season was, Ware County for 70% of the purchases so as it goes more smartphone definitely that mobile Gap is is. Big worry and if they can’t find ways to improve the conversion rate for we’re going to see their revenue take a hit eventually. Jason: [29:35] For sure in and one thing that I would just encourage people to keep an eye on. For sure it’s true that the shopping experience on a mobile device is more miserable than a desktop device in terms of. Entering payment information and in some other usability things and then we are seeing lots of the improvements get made that you know hopefully we become permanent and and help help a bait that that mobile Gap but there’s one particular technology that I personally am excited about that’s called the, payment API the Google is deployed so you may be benefiting from in your Samsung phone so it’s in Chrome right now and it. It dramatically makes it easier to autofill all those to Safeway auto fill all those payment fields, on a mobile check out and so that that’s in a bunch of the browsers at this point but only a small subset of retailers have have implemented in their site yet and so. [30:36] If that technology gets broadly adopted by next year you know that it can dramatically reduce the checkout friction and in a week we look at the average mobile checkout at something like 27 fields that you have to fill out in this this potentially reduces you down to, eight or nine Clicks in order to to make a purchase so so pretty meaningful difference if a lot of retailers end up adopting it. Scot & Tamara: [31:00] Yeah I don’t actually know where my phone gets that stuff to put in I just observe it as a. Consumer and love it and you know when you when you have an awesome digital experience like for example the first time I. Checked into a hotel room using my phone to open the door you know you kind of remember those things like how well how something just changed my world is rock and it takes a really long time for everyone to adopt, when you see it then it becomes your new Norm for what you expect and that’s one of the things that we talked about a lot here is is the, Haitian gap between what’s possible and we know we can do it because we’ve done it on one retailer site, and and then everyone else very quickly have to follow or as consumers we don’t have a lot of patience for it to be anything lower than the best possible digital experience we’ve ever seen. And that that that makes it kind of tough. One of the things that we looked at for mobile that I think is worth pointing out is the conversion rate on small businesses those who are making $10 a year or less in total. Online Revenue was almost two times higher than it was for large large companies and, on smartphone and so one of the things that I think it’s fascinating is this idea that we are gravitating towards the super large product catalog shopping environment where we can go there and buy everything from you know I’ve been cleaner to diamond rings. [32:36] And it’s just easier we got everything set up and we go there and up and down. Counterbalance of this Boutique experience where I don’t have to go in and type in silver. [32:56] Silver bracelets and get a thousand pages on my smartphone, and that that’s something that I think it’s really interesting Dynamic for retailing going forward assist, decapitation of the big retailers as we’ll watch them try to figure out how to make themselves more consumable on a smartphone. And how to create this identity that people who have particular Styles will, well enjoy I think that the small retailers have a little bit of a benefit there I think they also have a little bit of a benefit in that they’re forced out of it because I can’t afford it so they’re into Instagram and places like that where they have a chance to stand out, and to get some of this holiday shopping headed their Direction. Jason: [33:46] Interesting I want to unpack that just slightly your original point that hey one return offers a much better experience and then that becomes the new expectation and no one else’s Force to match it. I totally agree with that that you know that that’s helpful to the oil industry that. That open your hotel room with your smartphone experience I do have a pet pee with that one though and that’s it most of the hotels that support that still make you use your key to go up the elevator. [34:12] Which defeats the purpose to me but I digress. The mobile conversion rate being higher for small businesses is super fast in the I hadn’t really thought about that before and. For sure you could be right like part of that can be the Paradox of choice that they that you know they have a much more curated assortment and you know so maybe some of this white catalog shopping as. [34:35] Particularly arduous on a mobile phone and it’s hurting conversion a little bit when you’ve got. [34:40] Amazon with 100 million skus in Walmart with 70 million skus I could totally see that I could. [34:49] Totally see your other point that hey is way harder for the small site to get traffic and so the traffic they get is likely to have much higher purchase intent. So you know that the organic search on Google is going to get one by that big. Big site and it’s going to send you to a page that might not be totally relevant to the keyword you know and they’re the ones they’re going to buy ads that you click on and those sorts of things but the people that find those small sites like probably had to do some work to get to that site and that means they probably. I knew they wanted something there to other sort of yeah I guess one other interesting premise. But another interesting thing about all those small businesses is. The 10 to rent their e-commerce platform form from a big provider right like so you know these days it’s most likely Shopify and those big provider do a pretty good job of. [35:40] Upgrading all the best practices all the time so you have a pretty modern mobile checkout experience on Shopify and you know if your small business in your on that site like and, and something like this Google payment API comes up like you just automatically get it very fast where is on the on the really big sites that have sort of custom-built themselves. Interesting Lee they have a harder time adapt adopting all the new ux stuff. As fast and sew-in in some small ways like there’s actually a user experience benefit too many of these smaller sites that have to Outsource their e-commerce platforms versus some of the the big site to do it themselves so I wonder if that has. Has some small role in it. Scot & Tamara: [36:21] Yeah I think. I agree I think that’s a really good point most people assume that just because they were small businesses they couldn’t have as good a mobile experience in our data is saying that that assumption is is, past you know it’s way old and it is very well could be due to these types of platforms that provide small businesses with in particular small retailers with all the same mobile capacity, as I access the big guys so now we’re now we’re talking about, how is the world going to become more personalized in these Big B catalogs I don’t think they’re going to standby, and let small business kind of go back and get an advantage and they certainly do have a lot of resources to deploy a trying to find ways to make themselves look, it just seems like that’s going to be, a trend that will watch you happen I’m not sure if it’ll work though because we’re now selling more and more to Millennials and even genze which I like to call Crafters cuz I don’t like, Jen actions you think, boring but anyway I eyes I believe that those folks just turned 22 and entered the workforce this year so we’re now sorry to Pivot our conversation on to be on Millennials into this newer generation which, is even more. Interested in doing things like looking at influencers on Instagram to decide where they want to buy Apparel in jewelry and. [37:55] Sporting goods and things like that from. Pretty cool too so that’s been a really good tour of the macro Trends what was talked about a couple that’s the city days and you put on some tidbits near but I want to make sure we drill in Autumn let’s start with Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the last 3 or 4 years as retailers have kind of started moving. Black Friday deals around a Thanksgiving we’ve seen time and acceleration of Thanksgiving in a Slowdown of Black Friday is that Zack. Something you saw this year and any other insights on those two days would be interested. [38:30] Yeah so we had predicted Thanksgiving day to be a 2.79 billion dollar day came in at 2.87 billion 18.3% growth rate, so yes it grew a little faster however the Black Friday total we predict, to be 5.0 1 billion it came in at 5.03 billion and so so we’re still a little bit higher on Black Friday then or predictive models, did and add the 16.9% growth rate so as we talked about this floor, the percentage growth rate on a much bigger number is harder to achieve. Thanksgiving day is quote-unquote growing faster but it’s on a smaller base and a Black Friday just crossed the five billion dollar Mark which is pretty impressive we also had out of every single day up until. Cyber Monday was more than a billion dollar day online last year two of the days fell below a billion dollars so we’re now at a point where. Everything to billion dollar day we’re going to have 18 We Believe corn for model 18 to billion dollar day, 2 + $3 days, in the season so so that’s that’s kind of what happened on Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day then we got into small business Saturday and Sunday where we were just a tiny bit above projection these were like 10% gross days and then we hit Cyber Monday we. [40:04] Got to be 6.58 billion dollars came in at 6.5 $90 so I knew bottles working out pretty well but that’s a 16.8% so the biggest gross day was. The biggest day which is in front of the 10-6 perspective it’s very impressive and we all saw it. Cyber Monday was starting to become irrelevant and it turns out it’s more relevant than ever. [40:30] Which was surprising but Thanksgiving 18% but your. You’re saying Cyber Monday grow faster because it like added more dollars it’s not the price of the percentage. In spending on Cyber Monday versus last year you said that start as soon probably earlier than that like. When we started tracking on November 1st we we we saw Billion Dollar Days Every day since then. And every day in the season will probably be a billion dollar day plus and 18 will be more than 2 billion. [41:16] Just one day to point it at televisor we saw on Thanksgiving was Arpita mobile day we saw traffic at 81%. So yeah I was always imagine people in the store first and they can’t find me to look for the house on their phone to check the real time in the three other stores or two. And try to get that one TV there after where are the stud that the phones become almost burnt the doorbuster fun there. I call it shopping under the table that’s when you bring your cell phone to the Thanksgiving table and you know he’s kind of looking down, doing your thing hoping grandma doesn’t bust you for praying this phone to the table. You know you saw it you see a spike in store location look up sore or ship from store or any of that kind of stuff. [42:08] Bill with trillions of transactions in as trying to get data out three times during that day we didn’t look into that, we look into those types of things in January when we do a wrap-up report and and that’s really usually time for the NRF. Need a timing in January to go talk about how people are using mobile devices for retail more generally. Jason: [42:33] And we will certainly be looking forward to hearing about that in January it’s interesting with all these days because I feel like we’re just making this transition from utility the convention right like that. Thursday is obviously a high mobile shopping day because. You’re not at home in front of your desk so you know even if you were someone that would predominantly shop on on your computer you just have fewer hours on your computer you’re more likely event at a family member’s house in your on your phone and then of course. [43:05] Friday was was a prominent lea-ann in store day and Monday was predominantly in online day because in the early days. [43:14] You didn’t have that good internet access or computer at home so you know when you got to work on Monday that was your first opportunity. [43:20] To shop online like I feel like all of those those things are dramatically less true like you know we’re sort of ubiquitously online like we certainly have good internet access at home but then they turned into these. The shopping conventions in and now you know retailers have as a completely separate promotional strategy for Cyber Monday than they did Black Friday and then you know they’re driving. [43:46] More sales on Cyber Monday not because that the first time the customer had access to a computer but because they got a whole fresh list of offers and if they felt like they missed some of the Thanksgiving offers because they were with family like this is. They’re sort of second bite at the Apple at the perceived good good pricing. Scot & Tamara: [44:04] Yeah I think I’m. I haven’t I have another serious well I agree with you but there’s one other piece of data that surprised me on February and a because I just kept thinking to myself why is Monday such as you know why is it still so big and, D we looked at the shopping patterns by hour and the peak shopping hours on Cyber Monday or 8 p.m. to midnight. Not during the middle of the day when you’re at work, so us so it’s really this last ditch effort to get the lowest prices it seems to drive Cyber Monday and I have a Siri that there are people. Need to press the buy button is dependent on whether they think something will go out of stock or whether they think the price will go up and. And there are many things that we’ve put into shopping carts that we maybe haven’t finished. With yet we get to the last hours of Cyber Monday and realize we better finish our shopping because if we wait past midnight the prices will most certainly go up until I think that there’s a little bit of the. The bucket of Unfinished shopping hits Monday. Especially the last hours of Monday and that causes I reminded to grow as much as it is. Jason: [45:29] That makes total sense. Scot & Tamara: [45:32] Cool in the flag gets ass pretty caught up I guess so we we had the you know we were recording this on Thursday probably not much of note during since Cyber Monday, we look forward to your 18 greater than 2 billion dollar days so in your forecast, you know we usually talk about green Monday which is that second Monday in December which is the 11th this year, and then there’s this free shipping day which is like the last day to get free shipping outside of Amazon and yes I’d say on 12:15 and then as you kind of, look at the ones cause they’re in and see what you think about those days yeah so. You’re right those are in the to go over 2 billion dollar days Mondays traditionally are big shopping days because we got our shopping list done for the weekend we go in and and do our shopping on Mondays. Is there a there are probably more bigger high-growth days coming after. Final. [46:38] Time. We used to see the big growth days because of the click and collect and the extended shopping season so for example Christmas Eve last year was like a 25% gross day. Because of Click and Clack. It’s really funny when you look at that. Jason: [46:59] Pictures of the gifts we ordered for them. Scot & Tamara: [47:01] Yeah that’s right you when you look at the jewelry category pricing it’s like starts to really Peak right there at the very end because of you guys. They got your number is nobody. Jason: [47:21] Went one thing just a historical like anomaly always found interesting is that perceives that Cyber Monday was always the biggest shopping day of the year and I think in toll. Five or six years ago that green Monday was actually a bigger online day then Cyber Monday so it it. [47:39] It hasn’t always been that Cyber Monday. Just have fun. Scot & Tamara: [47:42] Well I actually think that retailer should change their date from Cyber Monday to the Monday around Veterans Day I get this whole season started faster and you know it it all it would take is for Amazon to decide that was the day, and we couldn’t, Cyber Monday could be a thing of the past like instantly because Prime day has only been around for two years came out of nothing and it was an almost 10%, what does average gross Day last year for what we measured so I just think it’s interesting that, they wait too long to have these load low price days when they could actually kick the season off faster and change Cyber Monday to something much earlier in November. Jason: [48:25] Yeah so that’s interesting for two reasons right like in brick and mortar which is been selling stuff for much longer than we have digitally like. We see a very similar phenomenon right like there’s. There’s this race to open earlier and earlier you know because everyone wants to be like they know that the consumers in general are trending towards visiting fewer stores and so it’s it’s it becomes a bigger imperative. That you be the first door they visit right in so you know retailers used to open on. Early in the morning on Friday and now you know they’re opening earlier and earlier and now they start to open on Thursday and they’re opening earlier and earlier it’s surprising that we haven’t seen that same sort of. Progression with with online promotions and then you mentioned Veterans Day like there’s already a word for shopping holiday on Veterans Day and it’s called. [49:16] Single day right likes in in China 11 11 is when the ball gets rolling and that’s that super convenient right like there’s there’s been a lot of talk about. You know when and if Alibaba wood would successfully make single dad thing here and I I’m not optimistic that they ever will. [49:39] But but to your point like if it seems like there’s. There’s enough permission in the market now for for a retailer and I’ll be an Amazon would be an obvious one to do it just sort of embrace. Starting you know that that 11:11 time. As the starting of the official promotions in it and I guess to a limited extent we did see that this year right because then they start with 10 days of promotion. [50:03] Running up to Black Friday. Scot & Tamara: [50:05] Yeah deep well everyone did but the problem was at the truly lowest prices were not. We’re not then maybe on certain point products they were but in general they weren’t and I was watching free sample and email is watching discount coupons come from various sites that I track and I was kidding, you know the progressively a couple percent more off as, time past until I hit Cyber Monday when I got a 20% coupon when it’s only at 12% so I think I think that the problem is that. Consumers recognize when the lowest price time is and it’s till then and until it truly is a different day our Behavior won’t change and you can promote, as much as you want to but we’re we’re smart enough Shoppers to know when things are over the lowest price we watch our email boxes we know, unless were the procrastinator convenience shop in which case we don’t really care so I just don’t understand why we haven’t had Cyber Monday you know leap in front of Black Friday yet. [51:10] Givens why why give why give brick-and-mortar the The Edge to get the shopping started first doesn’t make sense to me. Jason: [51:17] I agree it’s interesting like I mean there’s a bunch of reasons I would hope it it potentially doesn’t happen but but from a. [51:27] Perma pure sale standpoint it like you know you would you would think there’s someone that would if for no other reason than to grab that first-mover advantage and grab a chunk of wallet share you know while I want Elsa standing flat-footed you you might almost expect that in. Yeah you know what to see what happens next year. But I know we’re running out of time sort of final question like is there anything in particular that you’d be looking out for or that you think might surprise us as the rest of the holiday season plays out like is there. You know you know make a break stuff around the end of the shipping cutoff sir or you know inventory levels or anything like that that you think people have been keeping an eye on. Scot & Tamara: [52:10] No I don’t think so I think the the question that I’m starting to ask myself is how much more can the shippers handle without having a breakdown. Especially because things have gotten so Consolidated and the amount of packages so we we also tracked that the total number of units. In a package is increasing us old people are buying lower-priced things and more of them which is probably meeting even more boxes than ever and last year when I was. It was I was giving Tuesday I was in. Manhattan and I’m walking around and the streets were literally 7 8 feet high of boxes everywhere. And I’m just kind of wondering last year we didn’t have a major snowstorm happen during the holiday season 2 to slow down and pay the shipping this year. It doesn’t seem like there’s too much to worry about it hurts the weather yet but at some point, those boxes are going to get stuck and one thing we saw a couple years ago we had a little bit of edge of a problem with delivery and. People lost. Samsung trust in online and then an impacted online the next year so these our area today. We we can’t really. 4C but I’m certainly interested in tracking if you see anything major happen with shipping or with storms or something like that it could be could be interesting. [53:46] Have it have it down stream up at impact. Jason: [53:49] For sure that like certainly one that we look out for his weather like you know talking about going in we are talking a lot about the hurricane affecting you know what kind of effect that had on retailers in. In big chunks of the country is there reporting or Q3 numbers. [54:06] The the shipping thing is is super interesting / scary we we talk a lot about it on the podcast and of course there’s a lot of news you know that Amazon has. As aggressively built their own Last Mile fulfillment capacity in a course now they own a free two planes and pay a lot of their own employees to deliver packages. The the interesting thing there is no. [54:31] People you know including us are kind of speculating like hey maybe they’ll become a carrier one day but I point out. Amazon we need to be doing this even if they’d never want to sell capacity that just UPS and FedEx are adding 8% capacity every year and you just told us that we’re going to be up by like 14% this holiday and so if you do the math. UPS isn’t growing fast enough to keep up with. The growth in our industry inside the smart retailers are saying hey how am I going to keep growing at these rates even when. Shipping capacity is increasingly becoming. A constraining factor and so are you know I think I think the the shipping Logistics are getting increasingly vulnerable so that is certainly something. I’ll be watching closely this holiday the other thing and I hope it doesn’t become a thing to every year there’s some external Factor you worry about like there been. Labor issues with some of the ports that you have been scary in the past there been labor issues with the carriers that have been scary in the past last year we had a very novel election happening over Holiday Inn and you know I think. Scot & Tamara: [55:37] Yeah that did. Jason: [55:38] We certainly saw that affect it until you know the one thing in that elk that could come to play this year is a lot of the consumer confidence in a lot of the spending is probably predicated on the fact that most of us are sending we’re getting a tax break. And so if something happens with that like that you know it wouldn’t shock me to see that create some kind of. Glitch in the in the spending patterns as well. Scot & Tamara: [56:05] Fascinating stuff we could talk about it for another hour but but yeah you will. Jason: [56:14] Exactly and maybe we will all have fun but but it has a course happen again that we’ve used up out a lot of time and I know we have you in the middle of the day so I want to make sure we get you out on time, but we certainly appreciated talking to you and thanks for getting us all updated on the holiday season. Scot & Tamara: [56:33] My pleasure as always thanks for having me on okay bye bye. Jason: [56:38] Until next time happy commercing.

Wolfgang Allisat is the Chief Commercial Officer at Unbabel - "The World's Translation Layer". Unbabel - funded by the Notion Capital, Google Ventures, Faber Ventures, Matrix Partners, Schilling Capital and Caixa Capital - utilizes artificial intelligence to enable translations between companies and their customers. Wolf has previously held international sales leadership positions at a number of successful software scaleups including Omniture where he was the first international employee and grew the European business to more than 1,100 customers and 200 employees. Wolf discusses how enterprise software ventures can successfully expand their sales and marketing teams internationally including: The research and planning required to support successful overseas expansion How to recruit your initial sales hires with the characteristics to evangelise your offering and drive customer successes in new markets  How to adapt your business culture to succeed in each local market Wolf also discusses the way Unbabel have created a unique culture to resonate with the millennials they typically hire - including weekly company-wide surfing sessions! For more information on Unbabel's AI-powered translation solutions head over to https://unbabel.com and check out http://alpinasearch.com/clients/ for advice on recruiting A-players to globally scale your software/SaaS venture  

This week I chatted with Jim Feuille, General Partner at Crosslink Capital. Jim joined Crosslink after a successful career in finance, previously serving as Global Head of Technology Investment Banking at UBS. Over the past 15 years in venture, Jim has invested in successful teams at Omniture, Ancestry.com, Coupa and most notably, Pandora. Jim and I covered a number of topics in this one; ranging from Pandora and the state of the consumer internet in 1995 to capital allocation in venture today and what new entrants (i.e Softbank and their $100bn Vision Fund) are thinking. Some of my favorite moments included: how the Crosslink team was able to source Pandora (11:55), why the freemium model was core to Pandora’s rapid growth (18:40) and what he thinks of capital allocation and valuations today (23:20).

It happens all the time. You’re working and delivering services and in the course of business you come across a process, a system, a problem that you believe you can solve by building a little custom software. Soon enough, you’ve got it built and it's doing the job it’s supposed to do and you think... what if I sold this to another client? It’s not easy to make the transition from selling services to becoming a full-on product company. Many agencies have tried, but few succeed. So what is it about those that succeeded that sets them apart? How did they manage to not lose focus on the services side of the business as they spun up their software efforts? Join us as we speak to Josh Manion about making the transition from services firm to software startup. Guest – Josh Manion, CEO, Ensighten Josh is CEO of Ensighten, a tag management company he founded in 2009. He leads the company’s technology vision and strategic operations. He established Ensighten’s key accounts, including Sony, Microsoft, American Express, Staples, Home Depot and Capital One, which put the company on the fast track to success. Prior to Ensighten, he served for seven years as the CEO of Stratigent, a web analytics and marketing optimization consultancy. Over his career, Josh has worked with clients such as Motorola, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Mattel and General Mills, and with partners such as Omniture, Google Analytics, Coremetrics and ExactTarget. Josh has played chess professionally and is currently ranked among the top 60 players in the United States. He holds a degree in Management Science with a focus on Information Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

MRS 019: Eric Berry Today's episode of My Ruby Story is an interview with Eric Berry, who is our newest panelist on Ruby Rogues. [01:10] Introduction to Eric Eric is one of Chuck's friends from early in his programming career. Eric is @coderberry on Twitter. He's been a Ruby developer for about 9 years and doing software for about 19 years. [02:15] How Eric got into programming He was hired to do HTML for a company called vLender. Eric worked in Photoshop 2 (pre-layers). He, then, went on an LDS mission and while on his mission, he built a system to track the cars and assets for the mission. Then, his brother moved out to Switzerland to join an eCommerce company. Eric bought a PHP book, read it, got a passport, and started showing up at his work. Eventually they hired him. They started shifting over to Java. They coded Java with VIM. While in Switzerland, Eric and his brother had created an app that allowed them to share photos with family back home. His brother raised funds and they moved to England to build up the photo sharing app. They eventually sold shareaphoto.com to HP. Eric jokes that this was his "college." 9/11 hit and Eric's brother moved back to the states. Eric stayed for another 2 years, then moved to Las Vegas. He was a residential appraiser for about 4 years. While there, he built some software to help the company. Eric took a pay cut from $180,000 to $65,000 per year to go back to software. He and his wife eventually moved back to Utah and got a job working for AtTask (now Workfront) [10:43] Eric finds Ruby Eric and one of his co-workers went out and created projects with Django and Rails. They both loved Rails. Eric was using Rails at AtTask in the marketing department and spent a ton of time figuring out how to deploy Rails with mongrel. Eric has also worked for Omniture (acquired by Adobe), Instructure, and One-on-One Marketing. [14:12] Teach Me to Code screencasts and Chuck's story Initially, Eric created Teach Me to Code as an homage to Ryan Bates from RailsCasts. Eric left his mistakes and fumbling in. He got feedback from people that liked that it showed how to debug and figure out issues. Chuck came in to create content for Teach Me to Code. Eric's company and focus moved to Groovy on Grails which prompted him to hand the series off to Chuck. Eric mentions Chuck's tenacity. Teach Me to Code is a large part of Chuck's journey into podcasting. [19:11] Codesponsor Eric has been building other people's businesses for about 20 years. He's done all kinds of projects at all levels. He doesn't want to continue on a path where he doesn't participate in the end result of the project. Eric tried out AdWords. It'll pay off in 2-5 years, but he has not passion for it. Eric loves programming and developers and wanted to do something that served them. Open Source is starting to have problems with sustainability. People are building their businesses on top of software that's maintained by 1-2 developers. These folks have a day job and aren't paid to write their open source software. The get a bunch of requests for help and that workload doesn't go away. Then they get burned out. Then you have the "no longer maintained" notices on projects that you're using. Codesponsor solves this problem by bringing marketing into the picture to put some money into the developers' pockets and gives them some validation for what they did. Eric talks about a pay me button that Kent C. Dodds put on some of his repos. He didn't get any contributions. The problem with corporate sponsors is that the developer feels obligated to provide unpaid support when their sponsor has a problem. OpenCollective explained. Their biggest problem is money is not coming in. Open Design Collective CodeSponsor allows companies that want to get in front of developers to put non-obtrusive, subtle text ads in the README's and websites of the projects without creating the issues that come with direct sponsorship. Mention of ReadTheDocs.org [37:02] Eric's current work situation and Nate Hopkins Eric talks about Nate Hopkins and Chuck mentions that Nate Hopkins was his first mentor as a professional developer. Eric shares a funny story about Chuck and Nate working together. Picks Eric Carbonads.com Timber.io Rework podcast by Basecamp React Table Chuck Ruby Dev Summit React Podcast Plans - TBA Elixir Podcast Plans - TBA Dave Thomas' Elixir Course

MRS 019: Eric Berry Today's episode of My Ruby Story is an interview with Eric Berry, who is our newest panelist on Ruby Rogues. [01:10] Introduction to Eric Eric is one of Chuck's friends from early in his programming career. Eric is @coderberry on Twitter. He's been a Ruby developer for about 9 years and doing software for about 19 years. [02:15] How Eric got into programming He was hired to do HTML for a company called vLender. Eric worked in Photoshop 2 (pre-layers). He, then, went on an LDS mission and while on his mission, he built a system to track the cars and assets for the mission. Then, his brother moved out to Switzerland to join an eCommerce company. Eric bought a PHP book, read it, got a passport, and started showing up at his work. Eventually they hired him. They started shifting over to Java. They coded Java with VIM. While in Switzerland, Eric and his brother had created an app that allowed them to share photos with family back home. His brother raised funds and they moved to England to build up the photo sharing app. They eventually sold shareaphoto.com to HP. Eric jokes that this was his "college." 9/11 hit and Eric's brother moved back to the states. Eric stayed for another 2 years, then moved to Las Vegas. He was a residential appraiser for about 4 years. While there, he built some software to help the company. Eric took a pay cut from $180,000 to $65,000 per year to go back to software. He and his wife eventually moved back to Utah and got a job working for AtTask (now Workfront) [10:43] Eric finds Ruby Eric and one of his co-workers went out and created projects with Django and Rails. They both loved Rails. Eric was using Rails at AtTask in the marketing department and spent a ton of time figuring out how to deploy Rails with mongrel. Eric has also worked for Omniture (acquired by Adobe), Instructure, and One-on-One Marketing. [14:12] Teach Me to Code screencasts and Chuck's story Initially, Eric created Teach Me to Code as an homage to Ryan Bates from RailsCasts. Eric left his mistakes and fumbling in. He got feedback from people that liked that it showed how to debug and figure out issues. Chuck came in to create content for Teach Me to Code. Eric's company and focus moved to Groovy on Grails which prompted him to hand the series off to Chuck. Eric mentions Chuck's tenacity. Teach Me to Code is a large part of Chuck's journey into podcasting. [19:11] Codesponsor Eric has been building other people's businesses for about 20 years. He's done all kinds of projects at all levels. He doesn't want to continue on a path where he doesn't participate in the end result of the project. Eric tried out AdWords. It'll pay off in 2-5 years, but he has not passion for it. Eric loves programming and developers and wanted to do something that served them. Open Source is starting to have problems with sustainability. People are building their businesses on top of software that's maintained by 1-2 developers. These folks have a day job and aren't paid to write their open source software. The get a bunch of requests for help and that workload doesn't go away. Then they get burned out. Then you have the "no longer maintained" notices on projects that you're using. Codesponsor solves this problem by bringing marketing into the picture to put some money into the developers' pockets and gives them some validation for what they did. Eric talks about a pay me button that Kent C. Dodds put on some of his repos. He didn't get any contributions. The problem with corporate sponsors is that the developer feels obligated to provide unpaid support when their sponsor has a problem. OpenCollective explained. Their biggest problem is money is not coming in. Open Design Collective CodeSponsor allows companies that want to get in front of developers to put non-obtrusive, subtle text ads in the README's and websites of the projects without creating the issues that come with direct sponsorship. Mention of ReadTheDocs.org [37:02] Eric's current work situation and Nate Hopkins Eric talks about Nate Hopkins and Chuck mentions that Nate Hopkins was his first mentor as a professional developer. Eric shares a funny story about Chuck and Nate working together. Picks Eric Carbonads.com Timber.io Rework podcast by Basecamp React Table Chuck Ruby Dev Summit React Podcast Plans - TBA Elixir Podcast Plans - TBA Dave Thomas' Elixir Course

MRS 019: Eric Berry Today's episode of My Ruby Story is an interview with Eric Berry, who is our newest panelist on Ruby Rogues. [01:10] Introduction to Eric Eric is one of Chuck's friends from early in his programming career. Eric is @coderberry on Twitter. He's been a Ruby developer for about 9 years and doing software for about 19 years. [02:15] How Eric got into programming He was hired to do HTML for a company called vLender. Eric worked in Photoshop 2 (pre-layers). He, then, went on an LDS mission and while on his mission, he built a system to track the cars and assets for the mission. Then, his brother moved out to Switzerland to join an eCommerce company. Eric bought a PHP book, read it, got a passport, and started showing up at his work. Eventually they hired him. They started shifting over to Java. They coded Java with VIM. While in Switzerland, Eric and his brother had created an app that allowed them to share photos with family back home. His brother raised funds and they moved to England to build up the photo sharing app. They eventually sold shareaphoto.com to HP. Eric jokes that this was his "college." 9/11 hit and Eric's brother moved back to the states. Eric stayed for another 2 years, then moved to Las Vegas. He was a residential appraiser for about 4 years. While there, he built some software to help the company. Eric took a pay cut from $180,000 to $65,000 per year to go back to software. He and his wife eventually moved back to Utah and got a job working for AtTask (now Workfront) [10:43] Eric finds Ruby Eric and one of his co-workers went out and created projects with Django and Rails. They both loved Rails. Eric was using Rails at AtTask in the marketing department and spent a ton of time figuring out how to deploy Rails with mongrel. Eric has also worked for Omniture (acquired by Adobe), Instructure, and One-on-One Marketing. [14:12] Teach Me to Code screencasts and Chuck's story Initially, Eric created Teach Me to Code as an homage to Ryan Bates from RailsCasts. Eric left his mistakes and fumbling in. He got feedback from people that liked that it showed how to debug and figure out issues. Chuck came in to create content for Teach Me to Code. Eric's company and focus moved to Groovy on Grails which prompted him to hand the series off to Chuck. Eric mentions Chuck's tenacity. Teach Me to Code is a large part of Chuck's journey into podcasting. [19:11] Codesponsor Eric has been building other people's businesses for about 20 years. He's done all kinds of projects at all levels. He doesn't want to continue on a path where he doesn't participate in the end result of the project. Eric tried out AdWords. It'll pay off in 2-5 years, but he has not passion for it. Eric loves programming and developers and wanted to do something that served them. Open Source is starting to have problems with sustainability. People are building their businesses on top of software that's maintained by 1-2 developers. These folks have a day job and aren't paid to write their open source software. The get a bunch of requests for help and that workload doesn't go away. Then they get burned out. Then you have the "no longer maintained" notices on projects that you're using. Codesponsor solves this problem by bringing marketing into the picture to put some money into the developers' pockets and gives them some validation for what they did. Eric talks about a pay me button that Kent C. Dodds put on some of his repos. He didn't get any contributions. The problem with corporate sponsors is that the developer feels obligated to provide unpaid support when their sponsor has a problem. OpenCollective explained. Their biggest problem is money is not coming in. Open Design Collective CodeSponsor allows companies that want to get in front of developers to put non-obtrusive, subtle text ads in the README's and websites of the projects without creating the issues that come with direct sponsorship. Mention of ReadTheDocs.org [37:02] Eric's current work situation and Nate Hopkins Eric talks about Nate Hopkins and Chuck mentions that Nate Hopkins was his first mentor as a professional developer. Eric shares a funny story about Chuck and Nate working together. Picks Eric Carbonads.com Timber.io Rework podcast by Basecamp React Table Chuck Ruby Dev Summit React Podcast Plans - TBA Elixir Podcast Plans - TBA Dave Thomas' Elixir Course

In Episode #244, Eric and Neil discuss whether Omniture or Google 360 premium are worth the extra cost. Tune in to find out if you’re making the right decision in purchasing the paid versions of these products and Eric and Neil’s firsthand experience using both of them.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: Is Omniture or Google 360 Premium Worth the Cost? 00:34 – Omniture and Google 360 are analytics tools 00:44 – Omniture is from Adobe and 360 is from Google 00:53 – Eric has used Omniture in the past and his friend used the premium service 01:30 – Eric’s friend’s feedback from using Omniture was that it was not worth it 01:52 – You can do a lot with Google Analytics without the paid version 02:43 – Neil has used the paid version and there’s really no difference 03:00 – You can use Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, and Heap Analytics instead 03:15 – Omniture is almost the same as Google Analytics 03:55 – Don’t use either of them and you’ll save money! 04:01 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Try the tool, first, before purchasing its premium version. Opt for the more efficient, but less pricey tools if you can. Beware—not all paid versions are better versions. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In Episode #244, Eric and Neil discuss whether Omniture or Google 360 premium are worth the extra cost. Tune in to find out if you're making the right decision in purchasing the paid versions of these products and Eric and Neil's firsthand experience using both of them.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today's topic: Is Omniture or Google 360 Premium Worth the Cost? 00:34 – Omniture and Google 360 are analytics tools 00:44 – Omniture is from Adobe and 360 is from Google 00:53 – Eric has used Omniture in the past and his friend used the premium service 01:30 – Eric's friend's feedback from using Omniture was that it was not worth it 01:52 – You can do a lot with Google Analytics without the paid version 02:43 – Neil has used the paid version and there's really no difference 03:00 – You can use Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, and Heap Analytics instead 03:15 – Omniture is almost the same as Google Analytics 03:55 – Don't use either of them and you'll save money! 04:01 – That's it for today's episode! 3 Key Points: Try the tool, first, before purchasing its premium version. Opt for the more efficient, but less pricey tools if you can. Beware—not all paid versions are better versions. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

“BIG LESSONS: STAY CALM & GET THINGS DONE FAST!” This week, we interview a former BYU student entrepreneur who in 1996 began building websites at the dawn of the Internet, John Pestana. His earliest company was JP Interactive, a company that he sold all his (and his wife’s) wedding gifts to buy a computer for, a company that eventually became Omniture. John and Josh James, his partner, put everything on the line to survive the dot-com crash, raise money, meet payroll, and land Fortune 500 clients. Through sheer determination and grit, they built Omniture into a successful public company that was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009 for $1.8 billion dollars. Early investors in Omniture enjoyed 100x+ returns and hundreds of others, became multi-millionaires! Most founders would have immediately retired. John, like Josh, did not! John Pestana went on to co-found ObservePoint, a SaaS company based in Provo that improves the technology and data quality of clients engaged in online marketing. Even though he is very busy managing a portfolio of real estate properties that include apartment complexes and commercial office buildings, he still feels most comfortable running another high-tech, high-growth company with Rob Seolas his co-founder and CEO of ObservePoint. We have had the pleasure of interviewing many of the best entrepreneurs and business leaders in Utah, but no one quite like John. He is versatile and well-rounded, focused but very eclectic, a real Renaissance man! He owns a model train company, writes and records music with his band, SilentMonk, has the best “man cave” in the country–complete with very cool car collection, an amazing aquarium, arcade, recording studio, spa, and two slides, etc. John is also very generous in spirit and deed. We hope you enjoy this illuminating podcast with John Pestana!

EP060 - Holiday Preview w/ Adobe's Tamara Gaffney Tamara Gaffney is the Principal Analyst and Director for Adobe Digital Insights (ADI).  ADI aggregates data from all of adobe's products and customers, and is able to provide insight about various markets.  In particular, Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture) is used by over 5400 e-commerce sites, representing 55m skus, and tracking $7.50 out of every $10 spent on e-commerce in North America.   Adobe is forecasting that e-commerce will grow 11% this holiday season (November and December).  This is a lower forecast than a number of other sources: eMarketer: 17% e-commerce, 3.3% all retail Deloitte: 17-19% e-commerce, 4% all retail NRF: 3.6% all retail (no e-comm breakout) Comscore: 16-19% Forrester: 13% Tamara attributes the lower forecast to slower spending coming out of the US election.  In particular heavily populated states like New York and California that strongly supported Hillary Clinton (who ultimately lost the election), are spending at a much lower rate than the forecast models would predict.   So far this represents over $800M in lost e-commerce spending (as of Nov 17th), that Adobe believes will negatively effect the overall holiday season. We also discussed mobile, omni-channel, singles day, and a variety of other interesting topics. You can follow the Adobe Digital Insights website, and subscribe to their newsletter for frequent updates throughout the holiday season. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 60 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 17, 2016. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Neeraj Agrawal is a general partner at Battery Ventures investing in SaaS and Internet companies across all stages.  He was a founding investor in BladeLogic in 2001 and has invested in several other companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage and Wayfair. His current, private investments include AppDynamics, Catchpoint, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Glassdoor.com, Nutanix, Optimizely, Pendo, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, StellaService, Tealium and Yesware. For the last six years, Neeraj has been recognized on the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists in the world.   Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Neeraj made his way into the world of VC? 2.)Question From Logan Bartlett: 'What is your thought process on what makes a good vs a bad deal? Also, how have you developed your ability to process deals and poke holes in logic?' 3.) How can early stage Saas founders determine the extent to their product market fit?? 4.) What is it like to back rocketships like GlassDoor or Marketo and helping scale operations when you’re in hyper growth mode? Does Neeraj agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? 5.) Neeraj previously stated in a Nasdaq article that it is all about the team and the market. So I am intrigued what are Neeraj's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Neeraj also places emphasis on the market, so how does Neeraj view the juxtaposition between current and future market? 6.) One hurdle preventing some companies from growth is the ability to attain later rounds of funding so as a largely Series B investor, why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Neeraj's Fave Blog: Brad Feld, Jason Lemkin Neeraj's Most Recent Investment: Pendo.io As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Neeraj on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Back in October 2014 David Rodnitzky wrote an article called “Preparing for a keyword-less SEM world” – on the face of it that sounds an incredible thing to say. But of course Google’s advertising opportunities extend much further than pay per click ads beside search results now. Find out more in my interview with David Rodnitzky from 3QDigital. Today on Digital Marketing Radio we discuss whether or not keywords are dying in SEM, with topics including: How would you say Google are actually killing keywords? Why are keywords not as important as they used to be in search engine marketing? When did you get started in search engine advertising? What was it like in search engine advertising back when  you go started? How much if anything of what applied back then still applies now? What are the biggest paid advertising opportunities at the moment – Facebook / Twitter? And of course you provide paid advertising services at 3Q Digital – can you see more of these activities being done in-house in the future? How can you measure the effectiveness of native advertising? If so, what does that mean for the future of agencies? What are the likely to be the big advertising opportunities over the coming 12 months? It is possible to successfully cross-device track visitors at the moment? Is last click an acceptable form of attributing referring traffic credit? [Tweet ""You need to figure out where your customers are and not beholden to a specific channel" @rodnitzky"] Software I couldn't live without What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact your marketing success? Excel [Spreadsheet software] Google Analytics [Visitor tracking software] Omniture [Visitor tracking software] What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future? A data management platform of some sort My number 1 takeaway What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses? Follow your customer. Whether you're a B2B or B2C company people are using multiple devices and they're on multiple channels. And you need to figure out where your customers are and not beholden to a specific channel or a specific device, but understand the customer journey and then set up your marketing to reach them where they're actually visiting on the internet.