Speaker: Eric Bradlow, Co-Director of Wharton Interactive Media Initiative

From the program:

The world of practice and academia have never collided so positively and mightily as in the sector of interactive media. The presentation will focus on practically-academic and academically-practical findings in interactive media and their implications for social commerce and social shopping. The intent is to encourage people to look towards data-oriented academics to assist in the understanding of this complex new media and develop practical applications from the data that arises from it.

There is no great divide between academic and practical.

Why listen to Eric?

• He takes corporate partner business problems and present them to the academic community.
• He does his own academic research.
• He participates in academic research conferences and WIMI-funded research.

WIMI learning network:

Google, Expedia, digital lab, Microsoft, ESPN, New York Times, online marketing institute, zumbox, hulu, OMD, RAPP, Philadelphia Zoo, organic, BBDO Worldwide, Wharton University, Wharton Lab for Publishing Innovation, Office Arrow

What is the #1 problem today for internet ad publishers?

Aside from the ability to target ads, nobody knows how much to pay them!

• Advertising Attribution
  • Not last click – money is given to the last click
  • Not equally spread

Digital advertising paths allow you to see every ad they clicked on to get to the last one. The key is having ads, click-throughs and money linked together. Media needs to be tracked to the money.

What’s the #1 problem today in search, from the search firm’s perspective?

“What should I show you?” (Relevance)

Key to problem is data – it allows you to answer. If you don’t track individual level behavior, then you’re just supposing what’s going to affect ROI.

One example Eric gave of using this data is Hulu, where their goal was a forecasting system to predict dead users.

To do this, they only used data that Hulu already had.The data contains 23,000 users of Hulu.com who registered during February 2009. Customers fell into four categories:

1. Alive then dead: high use then none at all
2. Alive then cold: high use to low use
3. Alive or dead: back and forth between high use and none at all
4. Alive or cold: back and forth between high and low use

The data was then used to make graphs, which showed that the highest group of customers was the alive then dead group. How does Hulu make money using this? At any point in time they can see if a customer is about to die.

What does this information mean for Hulu? Because most are likely to use it for a while and then never again, hulu should invest their money in paying for customer acquisition over customer retention.

What else can we learn from WIMI?

• If you’re not listening to what people are saying about you and your industry on social media, you may not be dead yet, but you will be.
• What your customers are saying matters. You can take user-generated content to the bank.
• Use the wisdom of the crowds to create new products. The wisdom of the crowd is good, but you better have a big crowd. The sun don’t shine on the dog’s ass twice.
• Knowing a customer’s social graph helps predict their purchases.
• Consumers bring additional value through the community.
• Low price, build up desirability, charge people downstream.
• Influencers work, but slowly and “locally”. If you want to use social influence to drive sales and make real money, you better have a lot of influencers.
• Freemium works! Popularity begets popularity; but how do you get it? Start out free. When it gets popular, start charging.
• Biggest problem going forward is data minimization. “Here’s the minimum amount of data you need to collect.” Today there is too much data to collect. Solution: Keep what is needed, fit what is there.

Lift: The B2B Social Commerce Summit is a “must attend” event for marketing executives, senior management and business owners looking to apply real-world social tactics that drive sales lift to their business.