Project Rethink

Beet.tv talks about a new phenomena in web-based advertising networks, “they are going vertical”.

Advertising networks are fragmenting into specialized verticals like travel ad networks, women’s ad networks and gay ad networks, according to Frank Addante, serial entrepreneur and CEO of advertising technology company The Rubicon Project. The fragmentation is mimicking the way television stations split off into cable channels…

Permission Marketing

In 1999, renowned author and marketing “guru” Seth Godin writes about this concept in his book, “Permission Marketing”. Godin describes a change in marketing where consumers give marketers permission to read their advertisements.  We see it every day in targeted ads like Google Ad-words and ad-banners (some ad- banners).  And now, as Beet.tv mentioned, the industry itself is changing.

Innovate and be creative

Since the first radio programs of the early 1920′s, small commercial advertisements were placed in the middle of broadcasts to help pay for the program; a program that was, by all practical measures, distributed to the public for free.  Consumers understood that these commercials paid for their program, and learned to accept the occasional interruption.  Fast-forward 80-90 years and we have television programs and streaming multimedia.  Almost 100 years later and broadcasted programs still use an interrupt-based model.

Are we doing all we can?  Maybe it’s time we rethought a few things.

1. What is this product trying to do? Am I trying to change the world, or is this just something to pay the bills?
2. Is this product new, or an iteration of a pervious product?
3. What determines the success or failure?  At what point am I done; at what point do I give up.

Most people will ask themselves at least one of these questions at the start of a new venture.  But it is important that we ask all three.  A combination of these answers can reveal a lot about your business model.

You might have one approach if you are “trying to change the world” and your product is new; however, if your product is just an iterative idea, things should change.  New products often take longer to make a serious impact. You cannot expect a new product to catch on overnight, so your failure point should change as well.

Define your product, design your product, deliver.

Be creative.

Seth Godin brings up a great point on patience and points out that often the people who stick it out are the ones who succeed.

…the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

Seth Godin