What on earth would make me want to spend $90 on a monocle? 

Even stranger:  what would make me save a catalog for over 12 years?

Amazing copy. 

Check this out, from the J. Peterman (yes, that J. Peterman) catalog, dated “Christmas 1995.”  I haven’t changed a word.

The Return of the Monocle.

“Good grief, Peterman, do you want me to look like Erich von Stroheim?”

Relax, I’m not suggesting that at all.

It’s just that a monocle is more convenient and less ostentatious than carrying around a magnifying glass for tasks eyeglasses aren’t up to, like examining NASDAQ listings or the wings of a Vanessa atalanta.

Later, for private amusement, you might practice holding it in your eye, just as Napoleon, Beethoven, and other famous monocle-wearers have done before you.  There’s an art to this.  Please note extensions on the top and bottom of the frame (”galleries”) designed to help it stay put. 

There you have it.  Perfectly sensible, plus an option for hours, months, a lifetime, of drollery.

Magnifying Monocle (No. 39A2500) with 22K gold-plated nickel-silver frame, 42″ silk monocle cord (goes around one’s neck), and velour-lined carrying case.  Price: $90.  Made in England (where else?).

Monocle Method (sidebar)

Ca. 1806. The monocle as we now know it originates on the English stage.  Standardized monocle gestures soon develop to signify emotions with no facial expressions required, e.g., slowly removing monocle indicates anger; letting monocle drop from eye and bounce on waistcoat indicates surprise; inserting monocle indicates one is about to launch a shaft of wit.

My thoughts on this:

• Isn’t it funny that in the time that I’ve kept this catalog the idea of looking at NASDAQ listings in tiny print in the newspaper, rather than online, has become so quaint it’s almost funny?
• Let’s be clear.  A monocle isn’t “less ostentatious” than anything this side of a Carrera.
• Can you imagine how crazy you would seem if you pulled out a monocle at any time in public for any reason?
• And yet, in 1995, having just started my first real job, living in New York on far too little money, I really did want to plunk down $90 for this.  The copy got to me.

Just in case you thought great copywriting didn’t exist anymore, or in any case, didn’t exist on the web, you owe it to yourself to subscribe to the Woot Wine blog.   Here’s an example of amazing copy there: 

It’s an American tradition to oak chardonnay, and it’s a wine-snob tradition to turn up one’s nose at it. As you’d expect, Roshambo turns both traditions on their crusty old ears. Roshambo 2004 Chardonnay “Imago” is fermented in nothing but stainless (and flavorless) steel, so you taste the fruit, not the tree. Instead of oaky butter, here we find crisp, tropical flavors of white peach, pineapple, pear, and lemon zest. The “anything but Chardonnay” brigade ignore it to their detriment.

So let the snobs snicker and the scolds scoff. Let the exalted grand poobahs of the grape issue their fatwas against those who violate proper wine decorum. Roshambo’s heard it all before. Although lately, they’re hearing it less and less…

So as Peterman would say, there you have it.  Resolution #1 for 2008: write better copy.  It works.

Photo credit: sant0sk1

Tamar Weinberg just wrote a great post about how she uses the big social media sites.  Since she asked for everyone’s opinion, I thought I would add my thoughts on the subject.  This is somewhat easier for me since I mostly ignore everything except Facebook and LinkedIn, i.e. no MySpace for me. 

I have a longstanding account on Stanford’s alumni network, InCircle (maybe this was this the first social networking site? I wonder).  It’s really useless.  I get emails from friends-of-friends-of-friends looking for apartments or programmers in NYC or the Bay Area.  In about 7 years of being signed up the only thing interesting was that one email came from a mutual friend of Sergey Brin (each email shows the path it took to find you).  2 seconds of “that’s kind of neat” was about all of the use I’ve had from that network.

Lately I’ve been getting requests for friends on Plaxo, which I have accepted as they are from colleagues, but I’m thinking Plaxo is pretty late to this party.  I also got one from Spock (an old friend) and signed up, but I’m not comfortable enough with Spock to give them the keys to my social networking kingdom, such as it is.

For both Facebook and LinkedIn, I think I have accepted everyone who friends me.  Since I’m not a famous blogger, I don’t really have a bunch of people I don’t know trying to friend me.  I do vet everyone, making sure that people I don’t know are at least credible (like Google, I won’t disclose the super secret algorithm I use in the vetting) and so far everyone has passed the test.  I guess I fall pretty close to Jason Calacanis’s thinking here, that rejecting friend requests really angers some people, so I’m better off keeping some of personal life off of the site and being more liberal with who I accept.  That said, any of my Facebook friends can see me dressed like the Beast from Beauty and Beast bearing my “claws” and looking pretty silly. 

Last thought, this one on LinkedIn.  I have a pretty extensive Outlook contacts list (growing for almost a decade).  As LinkedIn encourages, at one point I sent a link request to everyone in there.  Keep in mind these are all people I have met in person at some point.  A couple of people chose the “didn’t know” option which is like making an obscene gesture back to the requester.  It basically put a ban on my account.  Here is the tip of the day, if somebody sends you a LinkedIn request and you aren’t sure who they are, have the courtesy to ask them in a reply.  If they reply and you still don’t want to link to them, just ignore it.  And to the folks at LinkedIn, if 2 or 3 people out of hundreds say “don’t know” you may want to look at whether that really should trigger any kind of hold on an account.

My final thought is that though my LinkedIn list is older and much bigger, I find Facebook at least 10x more useful.   My friends and colleagues post pictures, send me messages,  and in general, interact with me as friends do.  LinkedIn just sits there.  Occasionally there is a request I can help someone with or one I put out asking for help.  But, it is much closer to the old Stanford network than Facebook, which feels alive to me.  I think if LinkedIn doesn’t replicate the most useful features of Facebook very quickly they will lose the business market to the network that is actually used by its members.

Photo credit:  Luc Legay

I’ve been thinking about doing a travel tips post with all of the travel I’ve been doing of late.  Of course, when I got back from Pubcon, I noticed that others had the same idea.  But, I’m going to go ahead anyway.

1. Be Chill.   Back in my management consulting days, I used to obsess over my travel.  Did I get an upgrade? the exit row? an aisle seat? all my miles credited?  etc., etc.  I shudder to think about what I must have been like to deal with back then.  Without being a complete push-over, my attitude now is that there will usually be full planes, occasional problems with reservations, seat assignments gone wrong, etc.  But, really, now that I’ve come to accept that, I get far less stressed when these things happen.
2. If it’s important to get there, get there a day early.  This almost became rule #1.  If you have a speech to give or a cruise to catch or a can’t miss business meeting on a Monday, you need to fly in on Sunday.  For international travel (or other locations where there is only 1 flight per day), make that 2 days ahead.   Why?  Planes are usually full now, so if your flight gets cancelled, you may not be able to get re-booked until the following day.  I almost missed my late afternoon panel at SES San Jose because my early morning flight got cancelled and there were very few available options.
3. Smile and be nice.   People in the travel industry often have pretty stressful jobs.  There are delays, packed planes, staffing cutback and, let’s face it, less than fabulous pay for those on the front lines facing customers.  On flights, I make it a point to always greet the flight attendants with a smile and “good morning” or “good afternoon.”   It doesn’t take much effort for me respectful to those who are there for us while travelling and seems to make the whole experience better.  Related thoughts:  be patient for older folks and people with kids and offer to help if you can.  You will feel way better about the whole thing.
4. Don’t check bags.  Most people just think about the extra time getting your bag after the flight and the possibility that it will get lost.  Those are good reasons, but the #1 reason not to check is flexibility.  If you want to change flights you need to be carry-on only.
5. Get to the airport early.  I used to cut it close all of the time, but no more.  I was in LAX a few weeks ago and all of their computer check-in terminals were down. I think I was one of the few people who made my flight, with no stress.  Especially with a laptop and wifi or a mobile card, you can get plenty of work done at the airport.
6. Buy food and water in the terminal. Unless you are flying in trans-continental first or business class, buy food before you get on the flight.  In most airports you can get a sandwich or burrito for about $10 and it will be far better than the food (or in most cases, nothing) that you get on the flight.
7. Bring ready-made snacks.  Jeremy suggested protein shakes.  For me, it’s Clif bars or granola bars.  Have something that gives you at least a couple of hundred calories to get you to the next spot you can eat.
8. Get through security like a pro.  It blows me away how long it takes some people to get through the line (even though I follow rule 1 and am chill about it, it seems to stress them out).  Be a pro.  At home, pack 1 (one) quart-sized bag with all liquids and gels you want to take, each no more than 3 oz.  Put it where you can easily find it.  When it’s your turn to put your stuff on the counter to go through x-ray, take out your laptop, your bag o’ liquids and put them in separate bins.  Leave your laptop in its own bin and add your cellphone and keys to the liquid bin.   Put your shoes in that one if it all fits or get a new one.  You also have to take off your coat if you have one.  Wear slip on shoes and no belt and you’ve made your life even easier.  Keep your boarding pass in your pocket and show it to the security person when you get past the metal detector.  The shoes and boarding pass showing are about 50% of the time, but why not just do it and be done with it?
9. Use your cell to remember where you parked.  Jeremy had a great idea about calling your cell with your hotel room number to remember that.  For airport parking, I do something similar.  I take a picture with my phone of the nearest sign and then another picture of the door to the terminal that gets me there.  The only time this hasn’t worked out for me was when I dropped my cellphone in the river while fly-fishing.  But what’s the chance of that happening again?

I hope the tips helped.  Please add good ones you think I’ve missed. 

Photo credit: Haseo

I highly recommend that you read this short article from the New Yorker about how a checklist dramatically improved outcomes in a hospital’s ICU. 

Those who know me know that my business life is dominated by checklists.  During calls or meetings, I make little boxes in my notebook to indicate that there is a task to be done.  If the tasks are easy/quick, I get them done right away, if not they get transferred to my Outlook task sheet.  If items make this “task stream,” they get done, if not, they don’t.

We also use group checklists for our business.  New customer account set-up is an example.  It’s not like flying a jet or saving a life in the ICU, but nonetheless, it’s pretty difficult to get all of the steps down without a checklist.

One other area crying for a checklist:  setting up a search campaign.  Setting geo-targeting, turning off the content network, setting a budget, choosing your ad delivery format, etc.  One little mistake and you could be looking at significant losses for you or your client until you find what you forgot to set.

If a simple checklist could make the “flying fortress” flyable and save thousands of lives in an ICU, isn’t it worth a try in your business? 

Photo credit:  TeeRish (TrishaBrunner) 

Here’s the question of the day:  who do we compare Major League Baseball to, Enron or FindWhat? 

First, a little background.  I grew up loving baseball, in particular, the Dodgers.  I bled Dodger Blue.  Each win was a triumph, each loss a dagger through my heart.   I was at the stadium to see Fernando pitch in the World Series.  I was there when Pedro Guerrero scored on the squeeze play.  I was there when Mickey Hatcher slid head first into home.  I was at a playoff game as a kid and got a pat on the head from Stan Musial, one of my dad’s favorite players.  Of course, he was of a different era, not this sorry “steroid era.”

I was turned off baseball first by the last players strike.  But, I have to admit, I was brought back in for a while by the home run chase.  We even named our last cat Sammy in honor of Sammy Sosa (it was during the summer he and McGuire were going at it, back and forth).   When it became clear (no pun intended, but ”the clear” was one of Barry Bond’s alleged steroids of choice) that many baseball players were just bloated, steroid-injecting junkies, I can’t tell you how deflating it was.  Now, I don’t even recognize it as the same sport I grew up watching. 

I think one of the things non baseball fans don’t realize is how important history and statistics are to the game.  It’s true for every sport to some degree, but baseball is a thinking person’s game that has always attracted a great deal of historical reflection amongst its fans.  To illustrate: as wildly popular as the NBA was and the NFL is, I can’t really imagine either league warranting the Ken Burns treatment.

But now, in just a few short years, two of the most important historical records in baseball, the single season and lifetime home-run records, have been erased.  And all of the asterisks in the world won’t bring them back.   This, of course, is just a kicker to add to the message that has been sent to every kid in America who plays the game.  Hey, kids, you don’t cheat?  What are you thinking?  How do expect to be the next big star if you don’t juice?  Even competitive cycling now seems clean by comparison.

Well, that was a lot of background.  How do Enron and FindWhat come into play?  Both companies had good core businesses, got greedy, developed a short-term focus and went down the tubes.  

First let’s take Enron and compare it to MLB.  Good core business, but they wanted more.  Top execs (at best) looked the other way while fraud was going on, as the fraud made them a tremendous amount of money.  The fraud was discovered and the company went down in flames. 

FindWhat has a similar story.  At one point they were the 3rd choice for search marketers after Google and Overture.  They didn’t have as much traffic, nor the same quality, but with the right bids you could generate decent ROI.  But, then they got greedy and started the now familiar downward spiral.  The traffic quality went lower and lower as they brought more garbage traffic into the network.  Naturally, CPC declines followed. To increase profits, they had to bring more and more garbage in.  CPCs collapsed to almost nil.  And, nearly a billion dollars in valuation evaporated. 

I know there are hundreds of more examples of companies taking very short-term profits over building long-term value.  But, it’s still spectacular every time it blows up so publicly as it just did for baseball.

Here’s the only reasonable resolution of the baseball mess. MLB commissioner Bud Selig needs to resign immediately.  He is baseball’s Ken Lay.  At the very least, he should have known what was going on and his inaction poisoned the game. Second, the player’s union needs to call immediately for random drug testing, including blood testing (to catch HGH cheats).  Why on earth do they sacrifice the majority of their players on behalf of the cheaters?  What can they possibly be thinking?

OK, end of rant.  If you’re not a baseball fan, you can count on this being my last post on the subject.

After a little more than a month away from the SureHits blog (and mostly away from home), I’m back.  And, I’ll be here regularly from here on out. I need to thank Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts for getting me going on the blog again.  He said some really encouraging words to me at Pubcon in Vegas. Stephan’s proof that there are some really great folks in our industry.

So where have I been for the past month or so?

• Ad:tech NYC, with about 12,000 of my closest friends and associates in online marketing.   I like ad:tech since so many of our current partners attend.  What would I change?  They should charge at least $50 for the expo passes and/or move to a larger venue.  I can’t imagine how the fire code would allow that many people into the Hilton
• A wedding in Berkeley.  It was held at the Berkeley City Club, which is an amazing historic hotel and club.  Definitely a place to check out if you are going to Berkeley and like unique places to stay.
• The Midwest, Cleveland and Detroit.  I flew out to Cleveland and then drove to suburban Detroit to meet with customers. I was pretty excited to see that part of the country as I haven’t spent much time there.  While there, I had a few cups of coffee (and later, a wonderful dinner) on the main street of a little town called Chagrin Falls.  I kid you not when I say that it may be the best small town in America.  Just a picture perfect main street, beautiful older houses, and mature trees.  It was raining cats and dogs and about 20 degrees when I was there and I still loved it.
• ILM:07 in LA. The Kelsey Group put together a local and mobile conference with the SES folks.  It was a good group of people.  I had a chance to meet search conference regulars Li Evans and Anne Kennedy.   And, I got to hang out with Matt Van Wagner, which is always a great privilege.
• Finally, last week I was in Vegas for Pubcon.  I spoke on two panels, met and reconnected with dozens of folks at our booth, parties, and, of course, the hotel bar.  

All in all, really good trips.  But, I have to say, it’s great to be back.

Sorry for the light posting of late, I’m on my third trip in the last 2 weeks (with 2 more upcoming).   I’m at ad:tech NYC with 10,000+ of my closest internet marketing friends.  I’ll give a recap soon.  In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to at SureHits,  (adapted from our recent newsletter):

The SureHits Quality Engine (a/k/a Project Costa Rica)
It’s been just over a month since we made the most significant upgrade ever to our ad network. The goal of this exciting upgrade was to more deeply integrate quality into every aspect of our ad system. So what changed for Advertisers, Publishers and Consumers?

1. For the first time on our network, advertisers may pay less than the amount bid for each click. Advertiser may receive a traffic quality discount from their bid CPC, based on the quality of the traffic received. We determine publishers’ traffic quality based on statistical data we receive from our advertisers. Our goal is to reduce variance in CPA for advertisers at any given bid level as we add new publishers on the network.
2. Advertisers now receive an automatic 3% discount for installing our AdProve™ tracking code.
3. The ranking of ads in our list now includes an ad quality factor, similar to the major search engines. Ad rank will be determined by bid CPC and ad quality, as determined by an ad’s click-through-rate (CTR). Our goal is to reward advertisers who present quality offers to consumers, creating a better consumer experience.
4. Also in line with major search engines, other advertisers’ bids will no longer be displayed on the system. Our goal is to ensure the confidentiality of advertiser data given that ad quality is now a factor in the ranking system. Tools have been provided on our system to help advertisers determine what bid will achieve a top position.
5. For publishers, we’ve developed a system to maximize earning per results page. We do this by looking at both the cost per click for each advertiser and the click-through-rate (CTR) of each ad. By bringing popular ads to the top of the listings, publishers earn more revenue per page and also provide a better consumer experience. A true win-win
6. We’ve also developed a dynamic system that shows a different number of ads per page depending on the bids and ad quality. This helps to maximize the output of each page for publishers.

Referral Bonus
I want to remind everyone about the SureHits referral bonus. This program rewards our current customers for referrals of both new advertisers and new publishers. For more information please contact Toni, Keith, Shawn, Scott.

SureHits 524th on the Inc. 5000 List
Inc. announced in August the nation’s 5000 fastest growing private companies and I’m excited to announce that SureHits is officially 524th. They considered revenue growth from 2003 through 2006 to determine the ranking. During that time we grew an astonishing 587.7%.

I want to congratulate all of our partners and everyone in the company for making that happen and thank all of our customers who made it possible. We couldn’t be prouder of this achievement.

Introducing Mike Johnson and Scott Shedeck
SureHits would like to welcome Mike Johnson as part of the SureHits technology team. Previously Mike served as Senior Software Developer for LSG Solutions. Scott Shedeck is our new addition to the sales department where he will serve as a Business Dev. Manager handling Advertising accounts. Prior to joining SureHits Scott worked 9 years with AT&T where he served as a Sr. Account Representative for the Advertising & Publishing department.

Upcoming Conferences
Next up for us is the Interactive Local Media (ILM:07) conference in LA from November 28th - 30th. I’ll be speaking on “Best Practices for Using PPC for Local Targeting” on Tuesday the 29th. Please let me know if you will be in attendance so we can meet up.

Our final stop this year will be on 12/4-12/7 at Las Vegas Convention Center for PubCon 2007. This exciting conference will include topics on search engine marketing, website publishing, and ecommerce management among many others. More information about the conference can be found at http://www.pubcon.com/vegas-pubcon-2007.htm. As an exhibitor we have been allotted ten coupons for 25% off the registration price, code: sh-23125. Please let me know if you’ll be there.

By the way, if you are not receiving the SureHits newsletter, please drop me a note to get included! 

Craig Kelly, the EVP & CMO at SunTrust Bank delivered a fine keynote on Monday. 

We were at the 5th Annual Financial Services Symposium, which was pretty much a dud overall.   Some of the speakers I caught were very good, though:  Sylvia Reynolds from Wells Fargo and Jenny Powell from U.S. Bank in particular. But, for being a small conference, it didn’t have the intimacy and connection that I’ve seen at other small conferences we’ve attended.

Here what I found notable from Craig’s speech :

• “Embrace Change as a Friend” - this was the title and theme of his presentation.  The point: to thrive in business you have to go beyond losing your fear of change, you have to expect change and welcome it. 
• “Simple to Sell, Easy to Buy?” - I loved this.  Whenever a marketing manager presents to Craig, it’s the first thing he asks.  Great ideas are often bogged down in complexity.  Taking the time to make it simple is a key to success.
• “Two Ears, One Mouth” - an old saying, but a great reminder.  We should all be listening at least twice as much as we are talking.
• Less “vision” / more value proposition - I’ll be walking the floor of ad:tech in a few weeks and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about this.  A 10×10 booth is a great opportunity to see whether a company has honed its value proposition or just has a general idea for what they want to sell.
• “Don’t Give them a Bic”- Craig made a great comparison between Bic and MontBlanc pens.  They both know their markets and have their own specific value proposition.  For everyday use, Bic does gets the job done.  But, if you are making a gift, then you might not want to choose the Bic.

“We are in a noble business”

Craig concluded by reminding everyone in the audience that financial services is a “noble business” that requires the trust of the public to succeed.  I know that the industry has come under fire lately for the sub-prime mess, but I want to echo Craig’s sentiment.  There are thousands upon thousands of people in our country who work very hard to ensure that our finances are safe and secure.  And almost everyone I’ve met in our industry over the years has made me proud to be a part of it. 

My favorite tree is the one I’m lucky enough to look at almost every day, pictured above.  It sits just outside my office window.  I’ve been told that this tree is a ponderosa pine and is over 100 years old. 

100!  That’s amazing to me.  Think of the vast changes that have happened in our world since that tree began to grow, just a few feet from where I work each day.  Just to give you a sense of how different things are from 100 years ago (from Infoplease), in 1907:

• Oklahoma became the 46th state
• Stamps cost 2 cents
• The President was Teddy Roosevelt
• Yale was the national champion in football
• And, the most shocking thing of all: the Cubs won the World Series!

Things have changed since that tree began it’s life. 

Today, more than 100 years later, it’s “Blog Action Day,” where thousands of people have written about one topic, the environment.  Ours isn’t a political blog, so I’m not going to write a treatise about what you or the government should do about a given environmental problem.  Instead, I’m going to write about trees.

Why trees?

Selling financial services online (which happens to be our business) saves a lot of them.  By my best estimate, consumers have generated about 1 million insurance and loan quotes on our ad network.  Yes, 1 million.  Can you imagine how many trees would have died if those quotes were filled out on paper forms?  I’ve done a quick calculation. Here it is:

• We have generated about 1 million quotes
• Let’s assume 5 pieces of paper saved per quote or lead
• Each tree yields an aveage of 8,333.3 sheets of paper

That works out to 600 trees (1MM * 5 / 8,333.3). 

It’s not an entire rainforest, I know.  But the point is this:  not just in our industry, but in every industry, the net has moved a tremendous amount of commerce from paper to silicon.  That makes me feel good about what we’ve all collectively done with the web in reducing our environmental footprint.  And there is so much more to do to move our industry fully online, both in sales and account service.

Let the Environment Inspire You 

I don’t want my Blog Action Day post to be solely about patting ourselves on the back as internet marketers with all the trees we are saving.  I would also like to talk a little bit about inspiration.  We often look at successful people or companies to get inspired, but I just as often get inspired by things I’ve noticed in the environment.

When I was in Yellowstone national park earlier this year, we visited another tree.  It was a few years older than the one outside my office (and technically, dead).  The petrified tree in Yellowstone (pictured below) has been standing in the same spot for over 50 million years! 

I won’t go into how different the earth was back then, but suffice it to say, the Cubs had not yet garnered their first and only Series win.  Thinking about that old survivor and the 100 year old tree in my back yard helps inspire me to take the long view.  It helps me to consider the implications my choices will have not just for tomorrow but for years or even decades to come.  It also makes me think a bit about survivorship bias. But, that’s another post.

The question I’ll leave you with on this “blog action day” is this.  Are you building something to last?  Something that will be around in a year, 10 years, or even possibly 100?  Or are you just getting through from day to day? 

Photo credits: 1) ponderosa pine photo by Karla Kelly, 2) Yellowstone tree photo by Kevin Keller

At the Graphing Social Patterns conference on “the business and technology of Facebook” (yes, that conference does sound ridiculous) Jason Calacanis went into a short, but fairly accurate rant about why Facebook is not close to delivering the ad value of Google.  My favorite line:

“Social networking is second only to chat rooms as the worst place to advertise.”

He’s right.  He goes on to give 2 explanations as to why that is:

1. On Google, when you type in a phrase “we know what you’re looking for.”
2. When you are on Facebook, the ads can never compete with the other content, which is far more compelling.

Both explanations are correct.  But, he still misses the single biggest factor:  intent.

Millions of people go to Google each year intent on buying something.  Could be a new computer, a new car, or even insurance.  Buying is the intent.  That is why they are there.  That is what they are doing.  They are trying to buy. 

And, for fear of stating the obvious, showing ads to people who are trying to buy things, especially when the ads are for exactly what they are trying to buy, creates enormous economic value.

On the other hand… 

If you are on Facebook, there are a lot of reasons you could be there.  But one thing is clear.  Your intent is not to buy something.  If it was, you would be somewhere else.  So, you as a user you are less valuable to advertisers.  It’s not about “targeting” or the relative attractiveness of the ads and the content.  It’s the user’s intent.  You are on Facebook to do something other than buy.  Thus, you not as valuable to advertisers.   

By the way, I’m not saying that Facebook’s inventory is valueless.  Neither, as Jason noted, is chat room inventory - or Digg, e-mail reader inventory, or news inventory for that matter.  They just have, on an eCPM level, far less value than search.  And it’s hard to imagine how that can change.