profitlabinc.com

I’ve been working on a marketing article for several months, but haven’t really had as full a perspective as I’d like to have on the “picture”. It’s grand theme is measurement. I want to describe how a division has taken place in the universe of marketing, into the category of tactics that give effects we can measure and those that yield results we cannot. Online is in the former category. Most traditional marketing is in the latter. I would also describe how it has been (for most of the history of the marketing praxis) a big part of what marketing “does” to try to establish correlations between specific marketing actions and specific sales reactions. I would then go on to describe how the ability to precisely determine ROI (a given with online advertising) has commenced a massive flux in the way marketing budgets are being divided, in favor of measurable online. At the same time, marketing departments and ad agencies are coming under the leadership of “online marketers”… by that I mean executives who came up through the ranks buying and selling clicks. It is likely a grave disrespect to many talented and well-rounded marketing professionals to say that people who understand “traditional” marketing (PR, print, and all that’s not online) are in decline. But I think it’s generally true. Then again, perhaps all I am doing is observing an evolution, and there’s no reason to lament the disappearance of methods that don’t work anymore… or at least that do not work well enough to warrant investing in people who have those skills…

We’ve come a long way from seashells and colored beads.

When the de Medicis invented banking in the 14th Century, they veered us irrevocably into the realm of the abstract.

“Value” remained valuable, even in theoretical, projected circumstances, and risk analysis was born. With it, the concept of interest, and — miraculously — so was born the way to make money on money.

The effects of credit on our lives remains a divisive subject. Being able to borrow against value can make your dreams come true. But it can also wreck your life.

But this is not about credit.

Money and economics have influenced every aspect of our lives, since long before the advent of the Web. In the beginning, electronic commerce enjoyed the pre-existing electronic infrastructure of the credit card networks. It was a great fit. Some XX billion dollars changed hands that way in 2005 on planet Earth.

To pay for something online with a credit (or ATM) card has become synonymous with electronic commerce.

But something’s wrong.

In an earlier post, I speculated about a webmaster bbs where kids make money bumping threads. This HBM operates within that same theoretical scenario, and further presumes that senders of traffic (webmasters) make their decision (yay or nay) as regards particular affiliate programs based on what they read on the bbs. The Sig Whore’s MO is to sport a program’s banner in his “sig”. A sig (short for “signature”) is a display area that appears underneath the posts you make on a bbs. Your sig may contain text, images and outbound links.

Because it provides a clear visual identification, the sig may be used to build the brand of a program or a person. Sigs are an important aspect of one’s board persona. Some board members are strongly associated with a program (perhaps because they are an owner/employee or a Sig Whore with consistency).

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