The State of Fusion
One of my favourite parts about summer days in southern Ontario is our strategic location an hour away from one of the sunniest beaches in Canada. There’s nothing quite like grabbing a couple pre-cooked ribs and potato wedges from the local grocery store and heading up north to a place where the 3G doesn’t shine — but that’s another story for another day.
When I was little, I remember seeing dogs roam the beach, leash-less and free. Watching them gallop across the sand, splashing in the frothy waves — it was the only time I ever saw dogs off their leashes and it just felt so… right.
Everyone took care of their own animal, and everyone reaped the benefits of a dog-friendly beach.
But one year, all the dogs disappeared. The beach that had once welcomed dogs with open arms had now banned them. Dog poop had been left scattered across the shoreline, and the Health and Safety officers had done what they thought best. Certain owners had grown careless and abused their rights, in turn, ruining the beach for all dog owners.
A couple bad apples spoiled the batch for everybody.
And that’s exactly what’s happened to the advertising industry.
‘Nothing In Life Is Free’
I am passionate about advertising. I think it’s a brilliant concept that has been pooped upon by selfish marketers, resulting in corrupted motives and flawed execution (not to mention universal condemnation of the entire industry).
Everyone hates advertising. I hate that I run a company that’s title carries with it all the negative connotations that accompany ‘advertising’.
Kyle Baxter eloquently describes the state of web advertising:
Online advertising is broken. Web sites place ads to the side of content, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in the header, and readers learn to ignore it; so web sites put ads in-line with content, and readers learn to scroll past it; so web sites use video ads and create ones that overflow into the content, so readers stop reading.
Really, I love advertising. It allows companies and individuals to give their content or products away free of charge, while, in many cases, making a full time living. To be honest, I’m a little perturbed that people “hate” the very means by which their favourite content is delivered to them for free.
If nothing in life is free, then why do we expect content to be? Why do we feel that it is our God-given right to consume any form of blog post, movie, song, podcast — any sort of content whatsoever — without paying the price that comes along with that content?
Maybe it’s because I’ve actually produced content of my own, and I know how long it takes to make something worth consuming. Or maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last 6 months in the business of selling ads. I don’t know.
It’s time to remember that just because we don’t pay for the content doesn’t mean it’s free. Content and services take time and money and can’t simply be done ‘for the community’.
Advertising is the economy of the web. When someone gives my favourite blog money to help them continue to be my favourite blog, I think that someone is pretty cool. And if that someone respects me enough not to bombard me with flashy animations and obnoxious pop-ups, maybe, just maybe, I’ll click on the ad and discover a new product.
Advertising was meant to be a win-win-win solution for consumers, publishers, and advertisers alike.
Blocking the Poop
Up until a week ago, my clean install of Mac OS X typically included a tradition that involved (1) opening Safari, (2) navigating to CNN.com, (3) closing the window, (4) downloading and installing the free Safari AdBlock, and (5) navigating to ad-free CNN.com once again.
(Of course, filtering Fusion and The Deck ads along the ways.)
I know, I know: it’s a little weird for someone running an ad network to block ads. But they’re the enemy! They’re the ones pooping on the beach and ruining the market for everyone. They don’t deserve to make money off me or anyone else.
Then I had my ephiany: despite how much I hate the way flashy ads look or how they ramp up my processor or how they bombard me and insult my intelligence — the fact of the matter remains, many people make their living off advertising.
When you purchase a product, you look at the pricetag and the value the product adds to your life, and make an intelligent business decision about whether or not to buy said product. If the product’s not worth the pricetag then you simply don’t buy it.
The same can be said for free content and services online.
Looking at the value of the product, you have to make a decision about whether the content is worth putting up with the flashy, intrusive, disgusting ads. And guess what? If the content’s not worth it, you don’t consume it.
It’s quite simple really.
You don’t strip the content of the ads — that’s stealing.
As a result of this shift, I find myself spending less time consuming content wrapped in layers of ads, and more time reading content that values my attention.
Adblockers are only a temporary answer to the poop. But they don’t solve the problem.
The State of Fusion
One year ago to the day, the idea behind Fusion Ads was birthed. Six months ago, we launched Fusion with ten sites, a single advertiser, and big dreams. Our network served a mere 300,000 impressions a month to ten advertisers at $640 each. We never sold out a single month.
Fast forward two network expansions, a couple mistakes, and a lot of hard work later, and you have Fusion Ads today. Thirty-three established publishers serving 8,000,000 impressions a month. There are fifteen ad spots available at $950 apiece, and we’ve already sold out for the month of May.
“We’ve grown” is the understatement of the century. We started off charging advertisers $640 for a meagre 30,000 impressions per ad, and are now serving well-over 500,000 impressions for $950 a month. For those of your keeping score at home, that’s a 50% raise in price for a 1600% increase in value.
But numbers were never why we created Fusion.
For me, having a Fusion ad on my website has never been about joining a club of exclusive bloggers or making a ton of money. I’ve always thought of the Fusion ad as a statement — that my content takes time and money to create; that I respect the time you take to consume it; that I value your attention.
Adding publishers to Fusion has been somewhat of a selfish obsession of mine. When I add sites like Geek & Mild, Phil Coffman, and Ignore the Code, it’s because I’m an avid reader and fan of the stuff they make. Already, a good 30% of my feed reader has been Fusion-ized.
Some of the feedback we’ve received about our ads in Tweetie for Mac has blown me away. I’m used to people not minding our ads. But liking them enough to deliberately turn them on in software that they paid good money for? That puts us in a whole different ball game.
I’ve seen quotes and testimonials from publishers that have made a lot of money going with this ad network or that ad network, but I’ve never seen end-users raving about advertisements. Until now.
I love how Adam Lisagor put it in a private email conversation: “You bring taste back to a space of the world that has been lacking in taste these days.”
I enjoy the ads in Tweetie. I’m continually wishing there were more of them. I’m biased, so that may not count, but when people say that our ads are more relevant than half their tweets, I start to wonder if we’re really advertising after all (at least, in the traditional sense of the word).
I feel that my job has changed from simply filling x number of ad spots every month, to finding great new products that are worthy of your attention, and presenting them to you in the best way possible.
Via The Deck
Starting out, my biggest mistake was not having a clearly defined vision. I wanted to be a smaller version of The Deck — riding on their success and making a little profit while at it.
Needless to say, that has changed over the last six months.
I don’t want to be like The Deck because we’re not The Deck. While we do believe in the same calibre of advertising, our focus is different. I want us to be an advocate for the small guy. I want to find unknown publishers and advertisers that reek of awesomeness, and I want to tell you about them.
The same goes for other ad networks like (the recently shut-down) SidebarAds. When Steve Jobs was asked whether iTunes competed with other online music retailers, he questioned how they could compete when they all had a common enemy — piracy. The challenge was not bickering among themselves to determine who’s best, but creating a solution that was better than piracy.
Our enemy is traditional advertising. Anyone that chooses to offer quality ads, no matter the target market, is not my competitor. We’re all on the same side.
The Road Ahead
Right now, we have a reputation for serving some of the best looking ads around. My priority is to make sure that we can grow and expand while keeping our ads beautiful and relevant. It’s not easy to turn down someone who wants to give you money, but I’d like Fusion to be in the place financially to vet advertisers.
I’m proud to say that we’ve already turned down a considerable number of ads. The first one was tough, but it got easier from there on out. It really comes down to not advertising products that make me cringe everytime I see them.
I am a user and a reader that sees my ads and clicks my ads and even buys products from my ads (that Ballpark one got me!). I’m not saying we’re perfect, but I’d like to get to the place where not only are most Fusion ads beautiful, but all of them.
There are a few people I want to take the time to highlight and thank: Chris Bowler, for being my faithful partner and putting up with my rigid spreadsheets, Shawn Blanc, for continually finding flaws in my work and leaving it up to me to discover how to fix them, Cameron Hunt, for designing some downright sexy ads and raising the bar for Fusion as a network, and Chris Thomson, for making sure the ads actually show up on everyone else’s screen.
I really believe in this kind of advertising. If we can create an ecosystem that isn’t really an ad network, but instead, a place where great people are free to make great things and get paid by other great people making other great things, all while readers get to learn about and experience new products that actually interest them — well, that would be my dream. My great thing.
Mark Jardine on designing Convertbot -
Our goal was to make unit conversions fun and enjoyable. I wanted to separate the conversion steps into little tasks that need to be completed. It gives a sense of satisfaction when you’ve completed a unit selection sequence or shock if you press the wrong button. It’s like a game. Regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, it brings out emotion in the user and that was my goal. Once you get used to it, there’s a sense of satisfaction and rhythm to the process. It’s very subliminal, but it’s there.
Part of what I love about Tapbots’ vision as a company is their conviction to make mundane tasks beautiful and — dare I say? — fun.
Some would argue that the interfaces of apps like Convertbot and Time Machine are unnecessary and take too many clicks to navigate. But really, at the end of the day I’m not counting the clicks. An app’s real value is whether or not it can add a little bit of pleasure — a little fun to the seemingly mundane tasks of my day.
And I think Tapbots nailed it.
(Via Sophia Teutschler)
The Big Picture has put together another awe-inspiring collection of before and after images during Earth Hour 2009 . Simply click the images to watch the lights fade out. Number fifeteen is by far my favourite.
The feed reader is the fast food joint of the reading experience, but I want the farmer’s market, the slow-cooked greens, the home-baked bread. I don’t want to feed, I want to eat, with all the attendant history that word evokes—the flavor, the company, the time.
Mandy Brown masterfully articulates how feed reading and unread counts have turned reading into a rushed chore, rather than something to savour and enjoy.
HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! -
If you haven’t had the chance to listen to Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s 60 minute talk from SxSW, you’re missing out on one of the best pro-creativity, anti-social media-y talks of the year. Filled with all sorts of inspirational goodness (like not actually having anything to do with its title), I highly recommend it for all creative types out there — whether you publish a weblog or not.
I’ll leave you with a single tidbit:
“If everything is what you want to do, then you’re not really doing a thing. How do you know that you’ve reached the right person if you tried to reach everybody?”
And of course, it automatically sounds 142% more intelligent coming from the mouth of Gruber.
You know there’s something absolutely crazy going on when a puny link on my modest weblog leads to an all-out dieting competition between Viddler’s technology evangelist and a squash-playing Canadian musician.
Kyle claims to have found iPhone OS 3.0’s best new feature. I tend to agree with him.
The Current State of the Camcorder Industry
John Rust writes a provoking piece on the removal of FireWire 400 from every single piece of new Mac hardware — from Mini to Pro — and what it means for the the MiniDV “standard”:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to reality. Recording HD video on a little Flip camera isn’t an alternative to a real camera. A DSLR is meant for photos, not jello-like video that can only be recorded in little 5-minute segments of QuickTime video. Why does the “industry standard” have long lists of incompatibilities that will be updated “as more is known”? And who honestly needs to bother with the differences between hard drives and SD cards? They both do the same thing.
John argues that MiniDV tapes were the medium that bridged the prosumer video gap for years, and should remain the predominant standard. After a decade of owning a tape-based camcorder, and 90 days of owning a Nikon D90 (which records HD video on SD cards), I can firmly disagree with him.
Flash memory has revolutionized the way I shoot video.
Scoff at it all you want, but it’s the comparable to the difference between film and digital. Recording on tape takes work to set up, work to shoot, and work to import. So much so, that you need complete and total preparation along with a whole post-processing workflow just to make a simple 60 second clip. And as unimportant as that may seem, it limits experimentation. Which limits creativity. Which is worse than any jello-cam footage, I can assure you.
With flash memory, I can press a single button and I’m recording — and there’s a 0% chance that I’m going to be taping over something. I can actually browse through my separate clips with thumbnails on the camera. I can import HD footage within seconds, drastically reducing the realtime import limitations of MiniDV, and the video actually imports as separate, distinct clips. Amazing!
I’ve filmed more in the last 90 days with the D90 than in the last decade with my MiniDV-based camcorder. The best camera is the one you always have with you, and is not a pain to operate. Experimentation and creativity can spark something so emotionally captivating that pro cameras can only hope to capture.
It seems like there is a gap in the camcorder industry right now. We have high-end cameras coming out that take advantage of flash and hard drive based memory storage. And we have low-end, ultraportable, Flip-style camcorders that bring HD video to the masses. But what about the advanced amateur? John is right, there really is no optimal solution at the moment.
But it’s coming. Like the transition from floppies to CD-ROMs and from film to digital, it will take time, but a better solution is on the way.
Just like Apple’s vision of a non-linear editor with iMovie ‘08 that ruffled so many people’s feathers when first announced, transitions — especially in creative spaces — aren’t easy. Nor are they embraced with loving affection. The first implementation may be flawed, the second, clunky, but over time, it will evolve. And it will make all of us more productive, less frustrated, and more creative.
In the words of Seth Godin, “You don’t have to like change to take advantage of it.”
Should we stick to what we’re comfortable with, or choose to embrace the future with open arms?
Confessions: The Internet and My Ego Disorder -
“The truth is that in the real world I am just like everybody else. The riders of public transit, my fellow patrons in the coffee shops, every pedestrian I pass—I am fundamentally no less anonymous and nameless than they are. In the real world nobody is asking for my opinion; I am not the keynote speaker; I am not even a good author. In fact, I am nothing that anybody else really wants to be. Hence I flee from reality. Oh sweet Internet domain, come stroke my fragile ego with your soothing readership stats!”
Yikes. Something tells me there’s a little bit of this in each of us that we need to get rid of.
(Via Pat)
From my Facebook Wall -
so.
funny story.
we were going over camera RAW in my photography class today. and since we have computers with us in the class room and i was slightly bored ((it was so nice outside and so i didnt want to be in class)) i decided to look up “camera RAW” on google images.
no joke. your picture was like the third down. it was you taking a SP [self portrait] in a mirror..not that there arent like hundreds of those but yeah.
i started laughing out loud in class.
just thought you should know
Of course, the picture she’s referring to is courtesy of my RAW vs. JPEG post written awhile back. From a simple weblog to a Liberty University classroom. Like that.
Google: perpetually connecting.
Five Blogs You Probably Aren’t Reading but Should Be
In no particular order:
And one blog that you should already be reading, but just in case…
