AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC: CEO Showcase Shorts

The last round of CEO pitches were very good.  Here were my favs and not favs.

1. Unisfair  is a provider of virtual events and virtual worlds for marketing or any other event type that a company might want to run.  Gave a great example of the Cisco partner space, a virtual world for Cisco and its key partners and includes a partner pavilion where partners can have a branded virtual space as well as assets and ways to interact with Cisco and the partner via chat, VOIP, Webex etc... brilliant idea.  It also has a contact center platform for backend routing and queuing of contact requests.  This is a really nice enterprise play.  Someone should snap these guys up.
2. ImageSpan provides a licensing royalty automation platform. Virtually all royalty transactions are manual  - whether it be for content or applications. These guys have a nice web service platform which makes licensing digital content simple... its a managed service for the licensing of content and apps. The CEO did a great job of demonstrating why an eCommerce engine does not fit the bill for licensing transactions and what's needed is an eLicensing platform. Comcast and Adobe are current customers.
3. AzoogleAds - is a performance-based  Ad network which connects advertisers to highly targeted consumers online. The company has 150mm in revenue and is cashflow financed. Their model is "CPA" (cost per Action) NOT CPM or CPC. The advertiser pays once a transaction is generated.  They seem to have a serious optimization algorithm that looks at behavioral, contextual, geo, demo and time of day information to serve up the right ad to the right ad channel. Interesting to me as a marketer because they are focused on conversions NOT impressions.  Ed, are you listening?

1. Clupedia - clues = opinions, whether they are in posts, ratings, comments, reviews etc... clupedia aims to be an aggregator mainly from partners such as Amazon Reviews (seems like only partner right now), trying to create a metaweb of opinion information. Has decent toolbar functionality to highlight any term and  build a rating around that highlight, clues are then propagated out to the web (but I don't see how this propagation works or how I would leverage this, seems like epinions could extend their already strong base of opinions with some functional social enhancements similar to what Clupedia is aiming at.  Clupedia is to my way of thinking a social version of epinions.com
2. 1020 Placecast - combines demographics, physical locale,  proximity info to create a hyper local targeting information for an ad target. Not a compelling pitch. I didnt hear why I should care.  They also need to get 'physical' around doing better presentations.

Comments

[C. EDward Brice]

Of Course I'm listening Steve. Azoogfle represents the immediate future. While most marketing professionals see product, brand, and experience coming together I don’t think most see exactly how. For example take brand. While we see convergence of product, brand and experience the brand itself must become more personalized, more dynamic, and move from 1 to many to 1-1. So if we are to turn our prospects and customers into brand evangelists we must therefore have an individualized brand experience. How to do this? Before I can serve dynamic and personalized content I MUST know about the individual’s behavior. What they do, where they go, what their interested in, what content they generate. This is where behavioral segmentation starts to come into play in big way as it will give marketing professionals and media company’s new ways to engage in a individualized and dynamic way.

[Steve Mann]

Ed, thanx for your comments. It was great to hear an Ad network focused on conversion NOT impressions and I totally agree that attitudinal segmentation is a tool we need to leverage to really understand the individual as a means to personalizing the experience!

Steve

[David Saad]

This is my comment about your assessment of Clupedia. I can summarize my counter argument by saying that Ferrari is nothing but a prettier and faster car than a Toyota, and if Toyota, with its billions were to build a similar car, they would put Ferrari out of business.

Now let's get into the specifics:

1. Epinions includes reviews about products, and products only. Clupedia includes clues about anything and everything - from products to politics and everything in between.

2. Epinions is limited to reviews. Clupedia's clues include ratings, reviews, recommendations, tags, bookmarks, notes, links, and even blogs.

3. Epinions is limited to text reviews. Clupedia will include rich text, audio, and video clues.

4. Epinions is a destination site. Clupedia is a platform that allows you to engage from a three touch points: browser toolbar, our website, and mobile device eventually.

5. Epinions does not constitute the wisdom of crowds because it includes just its own reviews. Clupedia includes its own clues along with all others. So, unlike what was assessed, Clupedia is not just an aggregator of reviews.

6. We launched the products 2.5 months ago and during such short period of time, we were able to establish a relationship with one of the largest e-commerce site. That's an excellent performance and endorsement. Of course, saying that we only have one partner is true but at this time but it's like seeing the cup half empty all the time. Give us a break.

6. As far as the propagation of clues is concerned, it's like watching a figure skater - the easier it looks to your eyes, the harder it is to do. You are assuming that the algorithm of the propgation is easy. Well, it isn't, and it's not very clear to me that epinions can do it. In addition, we file a patent for it. So, it's not so easy for epinions to duplicate what we do, and if they do, we're not just sitting on the sideline watching them eat our lunch.

There is a reason why Clupedia received the AO100 Media Award three nights ago.

Having said all that, I can see how you could have overlooked some of those points and I welcome the opportunity to sit with you and show you our innovation, uniqueness, and value proposition.

[Steve Mann]

David, thanx for your comments. I sat and watched your presentation which formed the basis of my opinion. I assume that my blog will eventually turn into a clue by someone in order to be used to rate Clupedia. Most of your points reinforce my original point that Cluepedia is a "social version of epinions." I assume that any social form of opinion gathering will go beyond product.

As to your partnerships, I am sure you are working on more but I don't think I misinterpreted your slides where you showed Clupedia interacting with your partners. there were three or four partner boxes but only 1 partner name... Amazon. Give me a break.

Also, as to your algorithm. I stated, "i don't get how your algorithm works or how I would leverage this" and I don't. In your presentation, I saw lots of pretty pictures of clues flying out to the Internet but no idea how that will work and how I will derive benefit from it. Sorry, but you didn't address that in your pitch. And I would love to learn more.

By the way, I'd love to have another discussion with you on ways to engage bloggers in profitable discussion.