Start-Up Watch COD: appbackr is the wholesale marketplace for apps

Many talented people have made good money developing and selling mobile apps in the iPhone and Android stores. But as the number of apps has increased, so have the number of challenges.

Quite simply, it’s gotten harder and harder to get noticed, and the costs in time and money to promote an app have increased.

appbackr is a wholesale marketplace designed to help developers and would be app backers (backrs in the parlance) by enabling them to connect and transact with one another. The backr purchases a quantity of app instances at a wholesale price, and then resells those instances at the full price. They make money on the spread between the wholesale and retail prices, while the app developer gets paid immediately for their work.

It’s essentially a three step process:

1. Developer posts their app in the marketplace. The wholesale price is based upon the retail price and whether the product already exists today or is in development. The developer is not sellingproviding an ongoing right to sell copies of an app, only the right to promote the number of app instances purchased via the appbackr marketplace.
2.  A “backr” purchases instances of the app at a wholesale price, and then promotes them in whatever means they choose. At the moment of initial wholesale purchase the developer receives a cut of the purchase price immediately.
3.  As apps are sold, the backr earns the bulk of the profit, while the developer receives an additional payment per app as they sell. Backrs are credited with sales in one of two ways. If a developer chooses sequential payment, the first buyer of apps is credited with the first sales on the Apple or Android markets. When their quantity of apps is sold, the second buyer is credited with the next sales and so forth. The other payment method gives backrs a percentage of sales on the Apple and Android markets based upon the percentage of app instances that they purchased divided by the quantity purchased by all backrs.

appbackr charges a reasonable commission per sale to make money.

Because a concept app may not have a set launch date if it's still in development, the potential return to the backr is much higher. Concept apps have a potential profit of 54% while backing a finished app has a potential profit of 26%.

Here’s the very clear video intro:

Developers who participate in appbackr must be a registered Apple and/or Android developer.

For the app developer, the marketplace provides immediate revenue to pay salaries and fund app improvements or additional apps. It also takes the “risk” of marketing activity out of the question for them. Because the people who make apps are generally NOT marketers, this risk reduction is a serious benefit.

While backrs are assuming risk in this model, it is likely that they may have special capabilities that make them ideally suited to promoting certain kinds of apps. Access to a network of potential users, for example, can make the process of publicizing an app and converting prospects a whole lot easier.

I think this is a powerful model that can help spawn continued growth in the app space while allowing more people to participate and profit.

Start-Up Watch COD: EyePredict’s EPflow optimizes catalog item displays to your objectives

When you are selling multiple items online, one of the key challenges you face is to design your online catalog screens. Naturally, different items have different price points and profitability, or relevance to larger numbers of people. How do you decide what goes where?

Well, certain rules have been known for decades. Bigger tends to get noticed more. Top right hand area on the screen is better than bottom left, that sort of thing. Lots of companies sort of punt and copy Apple’s home page for their own, and then mimic other stores for interior pages.

Another common approach is to try to make everything a priority. You know the drill. Blinking, starbursts, red discount messages and the like all over the page. Which, of course, accomplishes nothing beyond giving the consumer too many competing pieces of stimuli.

I am reminded of the words of one of the most talented marketers I know, Joanna Abel of FreeWheel, who used to tell her clients “When everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.” I love that simple but critical truism.

EyePredict is a start-up focused on using neuroscience to optimize catalog displays for its customers. The idea is to provide them with your objectives and item assortment, and their EPflow platform optimizes the specific placement of items based upon those criteria coupled with what they know about the things people notice and why.

According to the company, some of the digital merchandising “rules” we all live by are incorrect, or at least oversimplifications of what it takes to get people to notice things. All this comes into play particularly when you are placing many items on a page. It’s all well and good to put the high margin, high penny profit item above all the low margin items if there are only four things on the page. But what about when there are 10 or 20?

EPflow isn’t using simplistic models of where people generally look – rather they are optimizing the placement of EVERY item based upon its many characteristics.

Nor are they using click tracking or eye tracking. Rather, they are drawing upon extensive research into the topic that enables them to try thousands of item placement combinations in a few seconds or minutes. No waiting months for research results.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach, they have undertaken some massive testing to determine the business impact of their tool versus other approaches. You can probably tell that I am way way way out of my element in explaining this, so why not let them explain it themselves…

What I found appealing about this is that it represents neuroscience with an actual…you know…purpose. One of the disappointing aspects of much neuroscience research is that it is qualitative in nature. Interesting and nice to know, but not as actionable as one would really want. These folks have figured out a way to make neuroscience effective and relentlessly actionable. Hard not to like that.

Start-Up Watch COD: Yext Local delivers “Power Listings” for local businesses across the web

Different gets noticed. We all know that. If everyone else is in a white shirt and a repp tie, you’ll stand out in blue. And when a consumer is confronted with dozens of options for the same service, little differences between your listing and the others can dramatically boost your conversion rates.

Yext is a business built squarely on this truism. The idea behind Yext is to make a local business listings stand out by adding additional pieces of information so that consumers notice one listing over others and are more likely to convert. Using Yext, the business owner can manage multiple listing presences from a single venue, and even monitor their online reputation across social media with email text alerts.

Some of the added value services Yext offers in its Power Listings offering include:

• Placement of your listing across directory sites
• Opportunity to review/edit basic information in your listing like address and phone number
• A “Verified” designation indicating that the contact information has been reviewed for accuracy
• A special offer statement enabling the business to make a promotional statement
• Opportunity to add additional information and content to a listing like a url, photos, and hours.
• Optimization of a listing for mobile search
• Tracking and reporting that indicates how many times your business appeared in search results and was clicked on

Since there are a variety of online listing services online that deliver information to consumers about small business, Yext works with many of the leading platforms, giving small businesses the opportunity to stand out more on some or all of these sites. Specifically, Yext can enhance a listing on:

• Yelp
• Yahoo!
• Citysearch
• MapQuest
• Superpages
• Yellowbook
• WhitePages
• Local.com
• YellowBot

While the particulars of the listings enhancements vary somewhat based upon the particulars of each platform and agreement, in each case the opportunity to enhance the listing is quite clear and vivid.

Because Yext is a cross platform solution, it offers a solid set of advantages for small businesses looking to drive more clicks and converts. First, you can manage your enhanced listings across sites from a single location. Second, the service charges a set monthly fee, so you don’t end up paying for clicks you might have gotten organically. Third, the pricing for Yext is significantly below the cost of manually purchasing enhancements on each platform. Finally, the service offers additional added value products like reputation monitoring that can help small business owners spend less time on online execution and more delivering great products and services.

Start-Up Watch COD: Hunch Creates A Personalized Recommendations Community Through Their Massive “Taste Graph”

Reviews of products and services have become a currency of the web, helping consumers make more informed purchase decisions. If they have a serious fault, it is that recommender and reader may have wildly different tastes. Without understanding the perspective and lifestyle of a recommender, it can be challenging to identify the posts that are most relevant to you.

Hunch is a start-up that wants to address that particular issue by developing a deeper understanding of what makes you tick, so that you can have a better and more relevant experience online. They also seek to create a super ratings community, encompassing more product categories and playing more of a constant role in members’ lives.

All this understanding of you comes from connecting your FB and Twitter accounts to the service, along with information that you provide directly to the site. By collecting information on countless numbers of members, they are able to uncover what they call taste graphs, which relate to correlations between preferences for one type of thing and the likelihood of preference to other things. For example, consider this from a story on the company fromRWW:

…according to Hunch CEO and co-founder Chris Dixon, liberals do prefer arugula while conservatives opt for iceberg lettuce. The connection between lettuce preferences and political orientation is something that Hunch has uncovered through its taste graph and recommendation engine, something that Dixon describes as "the most sophisticated system ever built for predicting human preferences."

 Members join the community and identify categories that are most meaningful to them. At the time of this writing, the site offered specific recommendations in the following categories:

• Art
• Food and Drink
• Movies and Entertainment
• Music
• Gaming
• Books
• Home and Garden
• Men’s Fashion
• Women’s Fashion
• Tech
• Other

You and other members can read each other’s profiles and reviews and decided whom to follow. After you make ten ratings, the site will also identify individuals that have similar taste to you. As you consume information on the site, their engine is identifying your likely preferences, and updating its taste graph to reflect your actual preferences as they are revealed.

I wanted to see how good the engine was, so I joined and answered literally 685 questions relating to everything from political POVs to whether I am an over the top toilet roll person, or under the bottom.

I liked the experience that resulted. When you are transported into the community, you can turn on or off various product categories and consumer reviews that are recent and relevant to your likely preferences. Recognizing that my test was n=1, I found the content the site delivered to me engaging, and eclectically appealing.

As with all social communities, there is a hard core set of recommenders that are more engaged with the site and have delivered hundreds of recommendations. These people have also amassed thousands of followers, which doubtless also impacts the taste graph.

Brands can also apply to participate in the site. They currently make their money, however, on rev share with certain sites that sell goods the community members organically recommend. So, for example, reviews of books are linked to Amazon, as well as other review sites that members identify. Additionally, they have many partners who use their relationship with Hunch and its insights to make their on site or in app experiences more personalized and relevant to individuals.

A really fascinating community building a set of information that may have a profound impact on how we experience the web in the years ahead!

Start-Up Watch COD: Kikin Is a Leap Forward On The Road To A Personalized Web

With billions of web pages available to all of us, one might think that we would be constantly exploring new venues and avenues. And we are…to some extent. But we spend most of our digital time in a relatively small set of communities and websites that deliver content we value and enjoy.

Part of the reason why we are such creatures of habit, in my view, is that the discrete structure of websites discourages broader exploration. The goal of most websites is to keep us within their own walls, not foster cross site visitation. The creation of Facebook Connect helped many sites integrate social experience into their otherwise discrete environments, but it really only solved a small portion of the opportunity to help consumers experience more of the sorts of contnt and features that they enjoy.

A browser called Kikin is taking a decidedly more comprehensive view of the opportunity to help users experience the web on their terms. Their mission, they say, is to make the web more enjoyable and useful to people, and they try to achieve these auspicious goals by offering consumers more ways to connect to people, information sources, and content types that they care about. While they have gotten favorable press for all of their offerings, their iPad browser has been particularly well received.

Kikin’s foundation is a pinned icon structure that attached quick links to your favorite information sites and friends on the right site of the browser. As you consume web content, you can click the icon of a favorite site like Wikipedia or YouTube and get more information on the key topic of the page. The icons featured on your pinned icon bar are set by you. If you want to search on a term or subtopic of the page, you simply highlight the text and Kikin returns links to additional information.

You don’t necessarily leave the page your on to consume this additional content. It can appear in windows before the page you are on, to enable you to return to the original page at your leisure.

The application also makes it easy to save pages for later consumption, placing a list of saved sites a single click away.

By integrating Kikin with your connections on social media sites, you can get access to posts and updates related to the topic of your choice. This can be valuable because it enables you to connect with opinions and reviews from people you trust. At any time you can enable or disable individuals from the results you receive. You can also easily send the content of a web page to people in your social graph with just a click or two.

When you are shopping, Kikin can help you identify the best price on an item by querying multiple sites at once. That can dramatically simplify your shopping experience on high consideration items like travel.

Another very popular aspect of the service is a related videos feature that enables users to browse different videos related to a given topic WITHOUT venturing from one site to another. It’s a really pleasant and seamless experience.

Here's an intro vid:

How is this relevant to brands? Well, for pubs, the service says that its users tend to consume more pages because of access to related content on a site. When a pub partners with the site and drives downloads of the application, they receive additional information on users to help them refine and customize content experience. Advertisers can target consumers with high likelihood of interest in their products by featuring their ads on related content pages.

Beyond these direct benefits of partnering with the platform, marketers also need to see and prepare for the underlying trend – toward fully customized user experience. The “mass” approach to marketing has been losing relevance for years – offerings like Kikin reflect and eccelerate this ongoing decline. It is also reflecting a culture and a consumer that expects personalized experience at all times. This has broad implications on paid, earned and owned experiences we create. Quite simply, we need to be just as good at creating personalized experiences as pubs and soc nets. No easy task.

Start-Up Watch COD: TapIt focuses on making Mobile perform for more marketers

The CW on Mobile is horribly outdated. Issues of Scale, CPM, and Creative Freedom have been well addressed. Really. But while tens of millions of Americans are now relying on their Mobile devices for access, most brands aren’t leveraging Mobile, or at least not very much.

So why is this? I think part of the reason is that a lot of the early Mobile selling focused on the whizbang things that were possible in some environments and on some devices. In my view, this resulted in a lot of passion for the potential of Mobile, but not a lot of IOs.

TapIt is a new Mobile ad network that is changing the dynamic of brand performance Mobile marketing by taking what it says is a more objectives-based approach to the space. Its management team has roots in the performance side of digital, which gives them a more objectives- and goals-centered perspective on what clients want and how they can leverage Mobile to deliver it.

I think few would disagree that Mobile lags in terms of attracting DR dollars. While they represent a significant majority of PC web dollars, the figure for online is lower. While DR is not the only business that TapIt is after, their focus significant attention on how they can better deliver against hard sales and lead gen metrics.

A big part of their message is to eradicate the perception that performance mobile marketing is simply delivering clicks to advertisers, rather than results. Their consultative, objectives-focused campaign development process empowers advertisers to gain insight and results on their campaigns.. Since performance is at the core of their history in online media, they say that this gives them an edge on helping companies interested in more than simply delivering impressions and soft metrics. Particularly transactional metrics. It’s hard to look at the MCommerce trends and disagree with the viability of this strategy

Rather than focusing on delivering and measuring performance on a cost per click, TapIt provides a broad range of automated optimization technology, including creatives, landing pages, ad placements and targeting optimization. TapIt says this creates more effective, manageable and measureable results towards advertisers desired KPI’s. Further, they offer extensive creative services to help translate specific business and performance objectives into more effective ad copy and creative. In fact a big part of their model is to design and field a range of executions and use performance measures to identify creative characteristics that deliver best. Then, throughout the campaign, their creative team is modifying the units to optimize performance. Instead of requiring brands and media teams to scramble to get new ads up, they handle it all.

For TapIt, interoperability is a central theme in their creative approach. We all know that the advent of iPhone has presented challenges for people who have traditionally focused on flash development. TapIt relies primarily on creating executions in HTML5. They are also fully integrated with most of the third party rich media partners for those that prefer to develop creative internally.

They have thousands of publisher direct inventory relationships, and focus primarily on well defined target segments. They have preexisting business relationships with most of the third party data providers, and can also integrate your first party data if desired. An interesting aspect of their targeting is to use pre-existing segments to glean insights about digital usage that inform creative and media selection from the outset of an effort. They also offer the option of managing to a CPA after an initial CPM/ CPC run.

TapIt is currently integrated with more than 30,000 apps and websites, and offers a publisher inventory solution that helps them sell inventory directly, while leveraging the technology and strengths of thier platform.

Hey, there are hundreds of options these days when you are thinking about Mobile. TapIt believes that they can succeed because they focus more on what the client wants first, rather than on the whizbang capabilities that are becoming possible on Mobile devices.

Customers first, shiny objects second.

Start-Up Watch COD: Everloop is out to make social remarkably safe for kids

Sometimes I wonder how parents are able to sleep at night, given all of the dangers that are out there for kids. Particularly online. Oh, I get it intellectually – you teach, weigh risks and benefits, trust, and monitor.

But it has to be darn hard to make your peace with certain activities. And one of those is social.

The statistics for online predators being what they are, it’s clear that the potential danger is real, though largely avoidable. But the younger your kids are, the more risk there is that their trusting natures and budding self confidence can cause problems.

Everloop is a social media community designed to give kids the benefits of social while enabling parents to use tools that mitigate risk.

The uniqueness of Everloop begins when a kid chooses to join. All children are associated with a verified parent, so you know that the individuals interacting with your kids are also kids.

That parental association results in the parent having access to a control dashboard that helps them define the parameters of how their kids interact online. As a parent you can decide whether your kids can IM or email friends, appear on people searches, meet new people and more. And it also allows you to keep a copy of their interactions so that you can monitor their activities in a way that is comprehensive yet respectful.

As part of the service, several layers of monitoring and protection are also part of the mix. Technology monitors for inappropriate activities and conversations. Bullying is a one strike and you’re out offense. Kids can report anything that bothers them. And good natured chaperones also scour the site looking for problems they can address.

The results is an online world that is considerably more appropriate for kids, and one that can keep parents in closer touch with what their kids are doing online without the need to hover over them 24-7. Here’s a vid that gives the safety features a onceover.

Of course, safety alone does not community make. Ultimately, Everloop is designed to be loads o’fun at whatever level of sharing a parent selects. It’s free to join, with a great deal of free activity available.

• Let’s start with decorating your profile. Did someone say…stickers? Kids get an enormous amount of freedom to develop and modify the look of their profiles. Included in that process of virtual stickers – some free, some that cost credits that can be earned or purchased.
• Loops are a safer alternative to open communication in which kids set up networks of preapproved friends with which they can communicate.
• Games abound on the site, some simple in keeping with the lower end of the target, and some rather more difficult – certainly offering sufficient challenge to keep kids interested. New games are added frequently to keep the site fresh.
• Fun and educational videos are also available – all preapproved to ensure a safe community for all.
• Best of all is Goobing, which is playing good natured pranks on friends. For example, your bestie might log in and find their profile TP-ed. Hilarity sure to ensure.

It’s pretty clear that having a social network for under 13s could be a really valuable thing. While others have certainly tried and are trying, I am going to be watching Everloop closely.

Start-Up Watch COD: Vurve puts advertising for ecommerce sites on autopilot

Different ecommerce sites have different levels of management resources available to them. Some sites have entire teams focused on driving traffic and sales, while others have small staffs charged with many duties to juggle.

Vurve is a web-based service that helps such sites drive stronger results from online marketing efforts by automating the process of planning, trafficking, and optimizing efforts. Clearly designed for small and medium sized businesses, the service promises strong results for budgets as small as $10 a day and with less than 15 minutes per week of hands-on campaign management.

Core to the service is an optimization and management software tool they call Sophie. They promise that Sophie identifies the best channels and locations for online marketing efforts, based upon target, products offered, past experience, and more.

The tool focuses on companies spending between $10 a day and $10,000 per month. An engagement begins by giving Sophie access to your store platform for analysis. As of this writing, Yahoo and Shopify are the supported platforms, making the tool relevant to millions of small business sites. Based upon this examination, the service identifies places to market and develops its first set of ads on your behalf.

Vurve focuses on five ad channels that are known to produce good results for small businesses:

• Social media ads appear on Facebook and Twitter, targeting people with known interest in products like yours. The platform tracks efforts down to the sale, optimizing ads and strategies over time to optimize results.
• Sponsored search results are placed and optimized on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
• Shopping comparison sites are also leveraged, with your messages and inventory appearing in results for searches in relevant categories.
• Retargeting ads appear on the largest online sites like Google and Yahoo.
• Display ads appear in sponsorable shopping environments like Amazon.

Vurve charges a straight 15% of total budget for its services.

To make trying the service low risk, they offer a guarantee that if you try Vurve for three months and subsequently identify another vendor that can derive better results at the same budget, they will refund their fees. There are a few restrictions, but it is a genuine offer.

While some business people may be reluctant to outsource advertising because of its critical importance to their businesses, I think that’s a decision that warrants further consideration. The extent to which the service provides better results than you are already getting really depends upon your prowess in online marketing. Organizations like Vurve have spent a great deal of time developing strategies and approaches that reflect strong insights into what works online. While online marketing isn’t rocket science, it may be that an outsourced service can deliver better results by dint of their focus on making these dollars work harder.

Only you know for sure how good you are at going it alone.

Start-Up Watch: SeamBI reinvents product placement in the shape of advertising placement

It has never ceased to amaze me that lots of companies are able to get their acts together sufficiently to purchase product placement opps months and months in advance. Oh, I understand why it makes sense to plan ahead – it’s just that I’ve been working in digital for so long. And digital is a space where people don’t understand why we cannot make a decision Tuesday and be in market by Friday with new creative.

A company called SeamBI has made important headway into changing the dynamics of product placement so that brands can purchase it in the same manner as they might ad placements. The idea behind SeamBI is to create ad avails within already shot content, and sell those to advertisers in the same way one might a standalone: 30. By integrating brand messages into the content, SeamBI executions mitigate the risks of DVR fast forwards and selective attention.

Theirs is essentially a three step process: The company identifies potential product placement opps within content, and creates flexible placement locations in the content. They make that potential inventory available in a sales platform, through which it can be sold to advertisers. Advertiser content is integrated seamlessly, and advertisers can be swapped in and out for different airings, etc. The ad-enhanced content is delivered to broadcasters for air.

One of the key values of this offering is that their technology makes it easy to integrate, customize and replace sponsored content quickly, and without involving costly custom graphics teams. Messages can be integrated regionally as well. An example they provide is running Hellmann’s Mayo on the East Coast, and Best Foods in the West. Probably the best way for me to communicate the creative possibilities here is to show you a demo video now:
 

As you can see from that example, SeamBI is adept at integrating these sorts of brand messages in ways that make them feel organically part of the content, while also standing out as real brand enhancers. There are two key types of SeamBI solutions: In Episode content is integrated into content, and appears on screen for between 20 and 120 seconds. Broadcasters and content owners can sell it solo or as part of integrated packages along with bona fide ad units. Sponsored Promos integrate marketer messages into a program’s daily promo messages. These too can be purchased separately or as part of integrated packages. 

Attractive, flexible, and with good noticing value. And by making the process simple as well as cost effective, SeamBI is changing the game for product placement, and making it possible for ad dollars to shift into this fascinating communications arena.

Why We Need A Revolution Starring Agency Account People

When I started in advertising many tree rings ago, it wasn’t unusual for relationships between agencies and brands to last decades. Now we live by an adage that the agency must begin planning for the departure of an account as soon as the contract ink is dry.

Accounts come and go very fast these days. A thick paper towel has a longer useful life than many agency relationships. We lament over the whys, and then plan for the departure of our accounts.

There aren’t whys. There is one WHY.

It’s the gradual decline in the respect and training given to account people, and the plunge in our ability to attract and retain account management superstars to our business.

Most agencies – especially in digital realm but also increasingly in traditional – think account people are a dime a dozen. They roll in any yutz with a business suit and the ability to carry a bag. Because account people are seen as an optional administrative extra, a cost rather than an asset.

Tighter margins, the rise of the holding companies, increasing creative costs, blah blah blah. There a myriad reasons why agencies have cut back on the account discipline. But if you were running a hospital and an increase in patient deaths was driving down patient counts, you wouldn’t solve the problem by firing the doctors.
That’s what agencies are doing when they reduce the number and quality of account people. That’s what they are doing when they drop a 22 year old with no experience into the role of primary agency contact. That’s what they are doing when they ask the media lead to also bear the responsibilities of account management. I am not bashing 22 year olds or multitasking MDs when I say this. I simply point out that these are not models for success if you place any sort of importance on client longevity.

Great account people are great. They can be the incredibly valuable assets of an agency because they form relationships, provide continuity, and deliver great thinking on a daily basis. It takes a special temperament to be a great account person.

It’s murderously hard to do well. An account person is responsible for strategic thinking, daily tasks, the care and feeding of the temperamental people around them, revenue, profitability, and building bonds of trust.

And yet most agencies treat them like crap.

Often when the agency world gets hold of someone with the myriad strengths it requires, we respond by burning them into the ground by giving them too many accounts or making them play St Jude – the fixer Saint you throw into a disastrous relationship that through neglect has been turned into a desperate situation.
What I have seen over the past decade or so is the systematic driving out of the business of those great account people. We either don’t attract them because no one wants a devalued and thankless job, or act in ways that drive them to quickly seek client side jobs.

Great account people are born AND made. They possess a set of smarts and personal qualities that make them the most valuable assets an agency – or a brand – can have. And they learn from other great account people how to turn their innate abilities into remarkable engagements.

The faint rainbow to this storm of instability is that quite a few account people are tough as nails. There are still some greats left walking into shiny agency offices every day. For that our industry should be very grateful.

For those great account people that are reading this, I hope this homage to your skills and abilities reminds you of how important and remarkable you are.
And for those agency leaders who are reading this, I assert that the “inevitable loss” of that account you are worried about might well be remedied if you valued, supported, trained, and rewarded your account people better.