• More people want sex than jesus
• More people want jesus than Mel Gibson
• Paris Hilton was bigger than jesus, briefly
• The Beatles are not bigger than jesus, at least in 2006 (if only they had data from 1963...)

Search Engine RoundTable gives a good overview of how this tool can be used by online marketers.

Bonus: Don't miss the related research from Andrew Sullivan

This is all interesting, but an easier way to define it is taking the viewpoint of the advertiser. If the person who clicked does not have genuine intent to either learn more about, or purchase, the product/service being advertised, then the click is 'fraudulent' (or better-yet 'invalid' as Andy Beal suggest).

Another commenter suggests the CPA deals would elminate the problem, since advertisers would only pay when visitors actually purchase. In other words, turn all of PPC land into affiliate marketing. Not a bad idea, and a little birdy told me that Google is already testing the idea.

...the very forward-looking Henry Copeland had long since lined up Chris Locke and myself to participate in a panel on Cluetrain+7 in the Interactive track of the show.

to me writers block happens when you are afraid to say the things that you want to say. it happens when you self edit yourself before you start writing or while you are writing. it happens when youre trying to be a perfectionist. when youre trying to write to one hard-to-reach person instead of to a willing and wide audience. and it happens when youre confused as to who your audience is.

Here's my question: what exactly has driven marketers like us to stalk our prospects or harass our customers?

Certainly there are consultants and business writers who use the phrase 'best practices' as a cure-all. But it also means doing the basics right, and taking advantage of what's been learned by all those who already did what you're trying to do. The alternatives are 'worst practices' or 'a better way'. Fair enough, and Sig is clearly advocating the latter. But why not use best practices (assuming they really are the best, or even 'good enough' as some commenters suggest) and then innovate on top of them?

Geoffry Moore pointed out in one of his books that there is a difference between the innovations that set you apart and the basics that make your business run (he called them core and context, respectively). So best practices in many (probably most) cases actually enable innovation, because the alternative is wasting time reinventing the past.

The concept of best practices is on my mind in part because it's part of a phrase I often use to describe what most web sites are missing when it comes to online marketing. The vast majority of web sites haven't properly implemented even the basics of search engine optimization, run pay-per-click campaigns that lack even simple organization, and display landing and other web pages that could be entries into the 'conversion rate hall of shame'. In these cases, a simple set of best practices can have remarkable results (tm) :-). (That's my oft-repeaded phrase.) If only because I've seen the alternative.

Watching the world of tagging emerge, the idea of enabling users to contribute to solving this problem has been occuring to me lately - not that user input or feedback is a new idea - but it was brilliantly brought up today in a post by Bubblegeneration who took it a step further and suggested that users get paid for helping.

Search deperately needs to catch up with the hype and dollars. It needs lots of improved vertical search solutions. It needs the invisible tabs to get visible. It needs a lot more 'spam pages' to be filtered out. The algo's and the engines that own them can't do it alone. I hope they let us help.

If you're looking for voice mail or virtual office phone management, and saw the ads or heard the radio spots for GotVmail, I suggest you return to Google and find one of their competitors.

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center." - Peter Drucker

"But what YOU DO have control over is whether or not you're holding the smartest conversation on the planet about the market you're in, bar none. And once you do, the need to market evaporates." - Hugh @ gapingvoid.com

There's a lot of good thinking and summazation of ideas here, and I particularly like the nods to user participation and conversation. But there are some important ways in which this alone doesn't answer Seth's question or satisfy my 'problems with Marketing'. For one, I'm not yet convinced that the concept of 'brand marketing' is or should be at the center of marketing (not that the author necessarily makes that claim). And the goal of 'becoming part of the fabric of entertainment' (even with the disclaimers provided) is also limiting. Finally, I don't think the article makes the final leap to 'spreading ideas.'

But it is a great start to the search for a definition, or re-definition, of Marketing.

One thing about setting goals for the future - make sure they are RAM. Realistic, achieveable and measurable. For instance, I can establish my yearly goal of losing some weight, or I can establish a goal to lose 10 pounds by March 1. This is a clear goal that is realistic, achieveable and measurable. For some goals it may make sense to identify milestones along the way. If my goal is to build a new building in 2006 which will take eight months, I may want to include some significant milestones along the way - foundation in place by February, framing in place by April, etc.

My primary observation has been that 'Marketing' is badly named, branded, and positioned. Hopefully that will be the subject of a future post or ten.

But today in the first of a series of brilliant posts even by his own high standards, Seth Godin summarizes part of the confusion I have about marketing with this question:

Is marketing the art of tricking people into buying stuff they don’t need? Or is it about spreading ideas that people fall in love with?

I think both are done under this banner, and that's a problem. Hopefully admitting you have a problem is the first step to a resolution.

So how do Bob Dylan and Neil Young come into this? At BobFest in 1992 Neil Young said that what was great about Dylan was how simple he could be. Anyone can be complex he said, but Bob can be simple. I think this is true of Seth too.

(I don't have the exact Neil Young quote, but have asked the experts and should be able to post it here soon.)