News You Can Bruise for 2004 July 7

Permalink [Comments] (4) Wed Jul 07 2004 21:01 Money, it's a crime:

Very interesting postmortem on Microsoft Money. Shows how metrics affect the thing being metricked (usually detrimentally) and how bad (for consumers) market definitions result in bad (for everyone) metrics.

technology/software

Comments:

Posted by Kristofer Straub at Thu Jul 08 2004 03:06

This is exactly my feelings about advertising on the internet itself. Remember when you could make money in your basement by running a bunch of machines with AllAdvantage? I don't understand why companies will pay tens of thousands of dollars for a billboard above a freeway, but won't spring similarly (in a normalized fashion) for a banner ad.

I don't run out and see Walking Tall starring The Rock when I see the billboard, and I don't go to LendingTree.com when I see their banner. The only difference is, the latter can TELL that I don't go there.

Posted by Susie at Thu Jul 08 2004 12:30

I read that article because I use Money because it was free. And I like budgeting and keeping track of stuff. The article was funny. I am fully expecting mom to offer to let me copy her Quicken CD after she reads this =)

Posted by Leonard at Thu Jul 08 2004 12:31

I believe the problem is that the information about who clicks the ad is so good. Nobody clicks the ad. People think "online advertising is useless" and go with other types of advertising whose miserable response rates can't be known with certainty.

Posted by Kristofer Straub at Thu Jul 08 2004 15:44

YES. I think if there was a way to track eye movement and the imprint on one's mind that a billboard had, all the way to its effectiveness in sending that person to the store, billboard prices would plummet. Of course, then execs would say "so that means TV and radio are the only viable media for ads!"

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