Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

To make themselves ready for their attack on search, MSN will split up in two groups.

Just found this short bit on MarketingWonk, my new daily reading and a really nice and informative side. For all those wanting to delve down into how the Google ranking works, here is a short introduction.

The formula for the top rank at Google is likely very close to something like

CTR*CPC*1000 = RPM

CTR = Click-Through Ratio
CPC = Cost-per-Click
RPM = Revenue per thousand (M coming from Roman numerology)

This in effect gives you a number and the higher the number the more money Google earns with that advertiser for that keyword. An example will make it clear.

Advertiser 1 is paying $1 per Click and has a 5% clickthrough rate.
Advertiser 2 is paying $0.5 per Click but has a 15% clickthrough rate.

Other pay-per-click sites now put Advertiser 1 above Advertiser 2. Google would put Advertiser 2 above Advertiser 1. Why?

Let’s looks at 1000 searches for the keyword they are both advertising on.

Advertiser 1: $1*1000*0.05=$50
Advertiser 2: $0.5*1000*0.15=$75

It makes more sense to put 2 on top and give him this little extra push in clickthroughs to increase your revenue. You also want to make that advertiser happy.

As a side effect, the ad more clicks is guessed to be the one more relevant for he user. This is where we are getting very complicated though and as Kevin said in the comments, you need to see which position, wording, CPC, … is right for you and your campaign. This would be going to deep for this short introduction. It’s a great field.

Let’s put it like this. It doesn’t sell for places that sell it as a gaming platform. Two things here.

1. Gamers hate it and hated it since E3, or so it seems.
2. Placed that sell it as a game deck, don’t subsidise it with their monthly airtime…

Telecom providers do! They are selling it for 150€ and more off the standard price. I can now have the N-Gage for 180€ easily as a phone and will likely find it for less. It won’t sell like this in retail outlets that focus on games, especially because it needs a network connection anyway.

It’ll be interesting to see what Nokia does next. Check out a bit more about this at this The Register story.

Ross Mayfield write gives some interesting quotes and links in relation to his thinking about Knowledge Management here. Of course he is CEO of Socialtext and thus has a legitimate interest in saying what he does, but it still brings across an interesting point. Can you manage knowledge as such, top-down, enforcing it. Or would it be better to let all the pressure go and just enable it to be shared. In the second part you have the potential of loosing lots of knowledge as you are not forcing, but the question is if you will not be able to capture so much more as you let the minds run free.

What birds can do. This is hilarious.