Seth Godin on “the mediocre middle”

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“Most industries innovate from both ends:

  • The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.
  • The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.
  • It’s the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.

They wait for ‘proof’ that this new idea is going to work, or at least won’t prove fatal. (It’s the impulse to wait that made them mediocre in the first place, of course). So, in every industry, the middle waits. And watches. And then, once they realize they can survive the switch (or once they’re persuaded that their current model is truly fading away), they jump in. The irony, of course, is that by jumping in last, they’re condemning themselves to more mediocrity.”

Blogs most trusted form of web advertising

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“Consumer-generated content is by far a more trusted form of advertising worldwide than search engine ads, banner ads, or text ads, according to Nielsen, and is trusted almost as much as physical word-of-mouth. 66 percent of North Americans trust consumer-generated media, such as blogs. Only higher trust ranking was ‘other consumer recommendations,’ which earned 78 percent of respondents’ trust.” [WebProNews via LexBlog]

Recent example: George’s review of the new Sony HRD-CX7 digital video camera. I happen to know that George knows a LOT about cameras, hardware and software. If he likes this camera enough to buy and recommend it, that’s all I need to know.

Buy $1,000 in radio spots, get $2,000 back

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TechCrunch wonders if Google’s radio ad network –Google Audio– is in trouble:

“Google is offering $2,000 to any advertiser who spends $1,000 on a Google Audio ad campaign. The $2,000 comes in the form of a credit on future ad campaigns, but part of it still comes out of Google’s pocket since it needs to pay the radio stations who will run the ads. It amounts to a “buy one, get two free” offer and is good through the end of the year.

If (Google) truly has a better way of buying and selling radio ads, advertisers and radio stations will quickly figure that out on their own. It is not a good sign when Google has to resort to paying customers to try out a new product.”

Update 10/15/07: This from a reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) who works at a radio station that runs Google Audio ads:

“This week we ran on average 18 :60’s a day for Google. They just fill in avails that are on our schedule, so many of them are in the evening between 6p-11p. Some hours may have a Google Ad in each stop set.

I don’t see the checks but I’ve heard they range from $500-$2,000 a month. We do have the ability to block out any hours or programming we don’t want their stuff in.

To me it would just seem to be up to the station owner/company is the money worth tying up the time with these filler type ads.  I’ve yet to hear an ad I thought specifically targets to our region or even state… and no real big name company’s like Ford, GM, McDonald’s, JC Penney, Target or anything.”

Websites: “great” and “good enough”

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Seth Godin on how to create a great website and how to create a good enough website. A few of my favorite nuggets:

Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a dealbreaker.

Many websites say, “look at me.” Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.”

Start with design. Don’t involve the programming team until you’re 90% done with the look and feel of your pages.

(Do) not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? If your organization can’t find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.