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Hyper-Targeting and Why TV will Lose Smart Advertisers

Orbitz Chief Marketing Officer Randy Wagner says [in this week’s BusinessWeek article – "Cable’s Big Bet on Hyper-Targeting] reaching consumers with ads they won’t skip is a priority.  She likens the goal to Amazon.com’s strategy of recommending products based on past purchases.  "It’s so relevant, it feels like a service instead of selling." I had … Read more

JavaOne Shows Emergence of Mobile Applications

I had the chance to make an unexpected stop at the JavaOne conference today in San Francisco, meeting with the Japanese team behind the promising new xfy technology.  The product created a great buzz among developers who have struggled with the limitations of current development environments and inefficiencies.  As a marketer, the most interesting point … Read more

Do blogs matter?

I have heard that once a "hot new technology" makes it onto the cover of Business Week, it’s already on the road to mainstream.  Blogs have been heading that way since all the publicity during the 2004 election around the "citizen journalists", and even before.  But do they matter outside politics?  Apart from providing information, … Read more

Visual Search and the Future of Search Engine Marketing

I tried out Grokker today, the latest release from Yahoo! offering a "visual search" tool that groups search results contextually into circular clusters.  Despite a somewhat clunky visual interface with some strange mouseover behaviours, it definitely has promise for giving users a more intuitive way to use online search more powerfully to hone in on … Read more

Digital Influence in Two Letters

Recently we have been asked by a number of clients to explain the concept of digital influence.  How are people influenced through digital communications media to purchase, believe, or become involved in something?  We always say it’s a combination of blogs, search engines, online (and offline) media, and yes, even advertising.  But it all sounds … Read more

Content Protection, Piracy and Fair Use

A contract between Google and the University of Michigan released publicly on Friday contains no provisions for protecting the privacy of people who will eventually be able to search the school’s vast library collection over the Internet.  (Cnet Report) Here’s another hurdle in Google’s ambitious project to catalogue works from many libraries in a vast … Read more

Online Moms and Travel Booking Online

On my way to a meeting in New York yesterday for a client in the travel industry, I started to consider the convergence of research reports that I have seen recently on both moms and travel booking online.  A Disney-commissioned audience segmentation I read some time ago noted the following key segments of moms: "Tech … Read more

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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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