Digital Media Buzz > How to Capitalize on Consumer Behavior

How to Capitalize on Consumer Behavior

By David Silversmith

Once upon a time a company controlled its media and how it was measured. Sure, somebody could draw a mustache on one of your bus stop signs, but at the end of the day any attempts to manipulate your media were just noise — nothing that would keep your marketing teams awake at night.

Let’s contrast this with the life of a digital marketer at Amazon.com. I know that they are using their volumes of data to analyze visitors’ behaviors and design Web pages that maximize the revenue for Amazon. But, with Web 2.0 features, some section of the population is literally drawing digital mustaches on the Amazon site. Consider these consumer behaviors:

I know that Amazon encourages consumer reviews because overall reviews lead to sales, but if the length of these reviews bothers you there is Pluribo. This is a plugin that can be added to the Firefox browser that uses artificial intelligence to scan all the reviews on an Amazon Web page and automatically summarize them down into a single paragraph. So while Amazon designed the pages for the consumer to see lots of reviews — Pluribo users just see a summary. Now if this leads to these users buying more products, Amazon probably wouldn’t care. But that is the question for today’s digital marketers — what is the impact of third parties changing your display?
Another customization, Collapsible Amazon, takes any section of an Amazon page and collapses it out of sight. On the one hand, Amazon might hope that anybody who cares enough to install a plugin dedicated to Amazon is a dedicated Amazon shopper. But on the other hand — what is the real impact of this plugin on purchase behavior?

While we’ve looked at plugins, let’s also discuss mash-ups, which happen when multiple technologies or websites are literally mashed together.  Zoomii.com is an impressive mashup of Amazon that changes the whole paradigm. The creator of Zoomii loves bookstores and wandering the shelves. Zoomii combines the amazing prices and huge selections of Amazon with the idea of wandering through a bookstore. This actually uses the Amazon API — the technology that Amazon has embraced that allows other sites to tap into the Amazon catalog.

Now the above options are currently only being used by thousands of people. Open this practice up to a mass audience concern like advertising. It started with blocking pop-up ads and has evolved into a entire world of software tools to block advertisements. While there is no definitive data on the percentage of users who have installed these applications, consider that there have been more than 49 million downloads of Ad-Block Plus from the Firefox Add-ons site. That is just one ad-blocking software and just one of the many places where it is available for downloading. So while ad blocking is not universal — it’s more than just the geeks who are blocking ads.

Concern or Opportunity?
While I use Amazon as the poster child, you can find similar tools for eBay, Netflix and a growing number of Internet sites. Only ad-blocking has the volume to warrant concern, but the growing availability of technology like this should be an early warning to digital marketers. However, I think there are ways that a digital marketer can effectively use these new tools — just one more adaptation for the digital world.

First and foremost, digital marketers need to become aggressive explorers in the world of Web 2.0 — and this doesn’t mean getting a Twitter or Facebook account. Digital marketers should be looking for the next generation of tools. They need to know if there are plug-in programs being written that could impact their sites. Digital marketers should be looking at any mash-ups that link into their sites. These are the incubators of the next trends that will impact the Web.

As with any incubator, there is a lot that can be learned. While we’ve already pointed out some of the challenges for Amazon and these plugins, let’s also consider the potential benefits. Any digital marketer is limited in how much research it can do and these types of tools can allow for more tests. If, for example, Collapsible Amazon starts gathering steam — there might be features that Amazon’s team wants to incorporate, features they might not have come up with on their own.

While the Internet has led to many changes in digital marketing, the evolution is far from over. The consumer is getting more control — but the best digital marketers will be looking to use the same tools to help ensure that with Web 3.0, all they have to do is cede some control — not lose control!