As the U.S. voting season gets into high gear, I’d like to talk about the election in the context of our philosophy that we are all co-contributors in this life.

I confess to a bit of political apathy back in November 2000. I was guilty of all the usual reasoning: ‘My vote doesn’t matter,’ ‘My state’s not a swing state,’ etc. I was lucky that year, because I had additional excuses: I was away on a three-month road show, in New Orleans on election night, and the absentee ballot was too difficult to navigate.

That Tuesday, we watched the news from the French Quarter. You all know the story. Gore. Then Bush. Then Gore. Then nobody. Like many of you, we went to bed in limbo.

The first thing I did when my eyes opened the next day was flip on CNN. There was a man there summarizing the results. ‘Well, it’s still undecided,’ he said, ‘and it all comes down to the state of Florida.’

Sugar! I thought. That’s my state!

‘And in Florida,’ he continued, ‘one of the most hotly contested counties is Broward County.’

Fudge! I thought. That’s my county!

‘And I’m here in Broward now,’ he went on, oblivious to my suffering, ‘broadcasting from Lester’s Diner, in the heart of the problem,’

Vinegar! I thought. That’s my local diner, where I have breakfast every day!

‘And YOU, KAILA COLBIN, DIDN’T VOTE, AND THIS WHOLE THING IS ALL YOUR FAULT!’

Okay, I’m pretty sure I imagined that last bit, but that’s sure how I felt.

We all know the results, and we can argue ad infinitum about hanging chads, system manipulation, and what have you. But the bottom line for me is that I have no voice in that argument. I didn’t vote. I didn’t participate. My role was so simple, so straightforward—all I had to do was fill in a form—and I couldn’t even be bothered to do that.

Starting with the following election, I began to have voting parties. These were non-partisan educational events, where we’d discuss the wording of issues and referenda and try to unravel the meaning. The idea was that people should vote however they like, but they should know what they’re voting for.

Our society and everything in it is comprised of the aggregate actions of each of us. We are all responsible, and no single one of us is responsible, for the world we live in.

I’ve been thinking about this because of a recent Behavioral Insider interview with Dakota Sullivan, CMO of Blue Lithium. She was talking about user targeting and politics:

BI: What are the unique advantages online targeting can provide political campaigns?

Sullivan: The rise of behavioral targeting allows campaigns to go beyond demographics or Zip codes to connect with voters based on highly specific interests and passions. One example is, say, the John Edwards campaign, which has made poverty a core issue. Using online behavior, it becomes possible to identify people who are most engaged in and motivated by the issue based on sites they’ve visited, searches they’ve made, offers and ads they’ve been responsive to and communities of interest. In the past, campaigns were limited to looking at demographic markers like education level, age, income and race as a proxy for who might be interested in an issue.

Do you think it’s fair for campaigns to do that? Personally, I think it makes sense. I’m no politician, but I have a bit of a different philosophy to most of them. My philosophy says, ‘If you agree with me, you should vote for me, but if you don’t, you shouldn’t.’ So I support activities that allow like-minded people to find each other. But of course, that opens the door for people to game the system.

What are your thoughts?

P.S. I’m in New Zealand now, and haven’t yet registered as an absentee voter. Anybody got any advice for me?

Last week, Steve Rubel published Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web on AdAge. I am proud to report that VortexDNA is applying all three. Here are his strategies and our take on them:

• Think web services, not websites.
  VortexDNA’s purpose is to provide individuals, site owners and businesses with the tools to create better, more relevant web experiences. Improved relevance shouldn’t be limited to a website. It should be delivered across the entire Internet, as and when people want it.
• Connect people.
  Rubel’s got this second, but this is our single most important driver. It’s the focus of everything we do. Relevance by the people, for the people. VortexDNA isn’t about dictating; it’s about empowering people to create for themselves. We’ve seen it before, in wikis, in social bookmarking, in user-generated content. Our approach is a bit different, but our concept is the same: no individual person or organization can rival the power of community.
• Make everything portable.
  Because VortexDNA is focused on you, the individual, it goes with you wherever you go. A site that stays in one place and waits for you to visit it is focused on itself. If you have a tool that helps you identify the Web world most relevant to you, taking it with you allows you unlimited access. Otherwise you identify a tiny piece and then you’re stuck.

Obviously, I agree with Rubel and his strategies, but what do you think? What do you see as the most important adaptation for Web companies?

P.S. If you haven’t already, and you happen to be a Firefox user, I also encourage you to download the mywebDNA Firefox extension. If you are using it, please let us know your experience of it!

Boy was I wrong when I said that dynamic in-video ads hadn’t been done before!

From Cory Treffiletti at Online Spin:

Last week I made the statement that the majority of online video networks either serve video into existing ad units or are manually attaching video spots like 30-second commercials into existing video content. That set off a flurry of responses from such companies as Scanscout, Tremor Media, Eyeblaster, Broadband Enterprises and a new start-up called QMeCom. Each of these folks professes to be capable of dynamically ad-serving video spots into video content based on cookie profiles or behavioral data. I did take a peek at each of their newest products and they do appear to be delivering these services to advertisers within their existing networks of inventory, By using an ad tag from Doubleclick, Atlas or any of the major ad-servers, you can track these units in your digital dashboard for ad management and reporting. I can’t speak on the performance of any of these, as I have not tested them, but at least you know where to look.

Then Michael Arrington reinforced the point with his aptly titled post: Ok, Ok. All of You (even YouTube) Invented Video Overlay Ads “First”:

VideoEgg has certainly been doing this for a year or so…

Next up was Adbrite founder Philip Kaplan, who emailed me to say that Adbrite has had their own overlay product for nearly a year…

And finally, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire sent me a long email saying they’ve been doing this as far back as October 2005…

So where did I read recently that dynamically generated ads were the holy grail for video content? Seriously. It was within the past month. I’ll send a Facebook gift to anyone who can help me figure it out.

Interestingly, Jeremy Allaire continued by saying that advertisers weren’t particularly interested in video overlays:

There are a lot of factors behind this limited uptake, including:

- the advertising community buying video have been very focused on leveraging existing creative and buying patterns in the online video space
- most content publishers and media owners have been focused on getting the ‘basics’ up and running, and also responding to the RFPs from marketers and advertisers, which are almost 100% focused on basic short-form video commercials
- for premium brands and content, the basic pre-roll and companion banners are yielding extremely attractive CPMs and there is little evidence that :15 ads have any negative impact on end-user viewership behavior — in fact, our own metrics show that sites that run without any ads, and then introduce :15 pre-rolls and banners achieve identical usage and performance (e.g. no drop-off in users because of ads) on their content.

Brian Hayes pointed out after my last post that Google’s going to have a tough time recouping their $1.6 billion using this model.

So consumers don’t like it, advertisers aren’t interested, and Google can’t make money at it. Why are they doing it, then? And what do you recommend instead?

In case you’ve overlooked it, or in case you’re viewing this on an RSS reader, I’m going to republish here the VortexDNA blog summary:

VortexDNA is fundamentally about people, and our aim here is to engage on a personal level — about what you care about, what we care about, and what binds us as human beings.

At the end of the day, the Web is only what we make it, and only as good as the benefit it gives us.

We the people are still at the center of the equation, and this is the spot where we get to remember that, together.

Here are some beliefs of mine:

• We are not separate from the world we live in. Far from it. We, each of us, create our experience.

• We don’t have to ‘do’ anything to create our experience. We participate just by being born, or by dying.

• Think about a movie. Without the director, there’s no movie. Ditto without the producer, the cameraman, the editor, the actors. Ditto without the studio, the film distribution house, the duplicators, the theaters. No ticket-takers, no reviewers, no audience: no movie.

  No you, no movie.

• That’s what life is like. We think other people are external to us, but it is us, in the aggregate, who are responsible for our existence.

• And here is why I’m discussing this now:

  That’s what the Internet is like.

  No websites, no content creators, no users, no readers: no Internet. The Web serves no purpose without us. The Web wouldn’t exist without us. The Web is nothing without us.

Those are my personal beliefs, but I know I’m not alone. Mike Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, agrees, and has managed to express these concepts far more eloquently than I have:

Just this morning, I was having a conversation with Branton (VortexDNA Director) about this very topic, about the inseparability of ‘Us’ from ‘The Web’. Then I stumbled across the above video on AdGabber. Mysterious ways, indeed.

Do you believe that you create the Web? I’d love to hear from you. (Caution: by leaving a comment you are contributing to the creation of the Web.)

Hey everybody! I’m on holiday today, off to the Scallop Festival in Whitianga (pronounced ‘Fitty-anga’). So today is just a bit of lightheartedness.

Thanks to Funnymos for this one:

A known fact from our experiences is that toast always lands butter side down. We also know that cats always land on their feet. Let’s start taking advantage of this!

Tameka Kee from Online Media Daily reported today that Google has unveiled a new ad platform, allowing advertisers to show content within videos on YouTube:

The YouTube InVideo Ads are semi-transparent overlays that appear in the bottom 20% of the video player. The rich media animations show up 15 seconds after the chosen content begins, with the overlay lasting up to 10 seconds. The overlays also have interactive functionality, allowing users to click through to an advertiser’s linked URL–or to launch a new player within the original window that will run a video ad and bring the user back to the content at any time).

Advertisers have the option to target users by age, sex, geography, daypart, and video genre. YouTube is selling the InVideo Ads on an impression basis, with $20/cpm as the baseline, but YouTube also provides click-through data to ad partners. The overlay, once it appears, counts as an impression.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time dynamic in-video advertising is available, anywhere, so this is a pretty important step for GoogleTube.

The article doesn’t say anything about whether content providers will have any control over what gets shown with their videos, and neither does the announcement on YouTube itself:

Today we’re offering select partners the ability to incorporate YouTube InVideo ads into their content. These are animated overlays that appear on the bottom 20 percent of a video. If you’re interested by what you see there, clicking on the overlay launches a deeper interactive video ad that we think is relevant and entertaining. (The video you were watching is temporarily paused.) If you choose not to click on the overlay, it will simply disappear, so that you’re in full control of your YouTube experience.

The comments show that users have a mixed reaction to the announcement, although somewhat more skewed to the negative, as evidenced by this sample from Mainyard48:

Worst idea ever. When I start to see that crap, it’ll be time to unsubscribe. I have no problem with sitting through a pre-roll . At least that won’t obscure the actual content I wish to see.

Those who do support the initiative are primarily taking a resigned, oh-well-it’s-a-business stance:

It’s not “moneygrubbing”… Google still has 13,000 employees to pay, shareholders to respond to, and customers who want them to build cool stuff. I’m sorry to say but all of that does actually take money and time (which is also money) Besides, this is actually way better than a TV ad - just think if you could have a tv ad go away after a few seconds of not responding to it? Instead, they always run the full 30 - unless you have DVR or TIVO - but you PAY for that feature. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out, and if it can keep google stock moving.

Personally, I understand the rationale, but I’m sure YouTube and Google will be treading very cautiously to avoid irritating the public—who are, after all, the reason the ad space has value in the first place.

I recently wrote a piece for Online Publishing Insider, in which I expressed my belief that advertisers need to look at ways in which the ads themselves can be perceived as valuable:

If we take it as a given that users have infinite choice and zero obligation to absorb our advertising messages, then we have to change the way we think about the messages we provide. As Steve says, we have to focus on being of use to the consumers.

If advertisers deliver value through the ads, then consumers have a motivation to pay attention. The trick is to make sure the giveaway is intricately linked to the product or service.

What does this involve? It means thinking of ads as a service to the consumer rather than a message from the advertiser.

I firmly believe that the companies that will be truly successful over the long term are those who focus on providing value through everything they do—whether that value is entertainment or something else.

What do you think of YouTube’s move and advertising in general?