Q: 1.) What exactly is Free 411 and what does it do?


A: We provide free, telephone based directory assistance via 1-800-FREE411. The service works for cell phones as well as traditional land lines. We are entirely free to the consumer. By comparison, the average 411 call costs $1.25 when placed through the phone companies and can be as expensive as $3.50. So, if a consumer calls 1-800-FREE rather than dialing 411, they can save as much as 50 cents for each additional digit they press.

Our service is paid for by businesses that sponsor individual yellow pages categories. The businesses pay us only when we connect live, interested consumers with them.

Here is an example of how it works. Say a consumer calls looking for their local Pizza Hut. While we search for the requested listing, we might offer an instant offer (think of it as a virtual coupon) from a competing pizza merchant, like Domino’s. The messages are very short and are directly related to the request that the consumer is making.


Q: What happens when there isn't an advertiser for a particular keyword or category? Who foots the bill for that call?


A: If we don’t have an advertiser relevant to the search request, we don’t play an ad because it would simply waste the time of the consumer. For instance, if someone calls us to request the number of a plumber because their sink is overflowing, the last message they would want to hear is one that can save them money on their auto insurance. By contrast, if we can recommend a merchant that will give them $50 off on their plumbing service, the consumer gets value in addition to the free lookup we performed.

Additionally, we don’t advertise against our residential listings, but we think that providing the entire range of directory assistance is important to the consumer.


Q: If you have two multiple businesses in the same yellow pages category, how do you determine whose to play? Is it a bid model?


A: Great question. It’s not a bid model. We use a fixed rate card so that merchants can accurately budget their lead generation activities. In the case of multiple merchants in a yellow pages category, we play the advertisement that best resonates with the consumers. For instance, if one plumber is offers a 50% discount and the other is giving a 10% discount, all other things being equal, the advertisement for the plumber offering a 50% discount ought to experience a higher response rate. Correspondingly, that merchant will be given priority within our system. Essentially, we let merchants determine their placement through the value they offer to the consumers.


Q: Have you had any issues with not recognizing the words a caller is searching for?


A: We use a combination of speech recognition and live operators. If we can’t immediately interpret the user’s request, we transfer the call to a live, US based agent. Our success rate, using the combination of speech recognition and live agent back-up is near 100%, as long as the number is available.


Q: Do you have any partners using your pay per call technology already?


A: Yes, we have over 35,000 merchants in our network, including many prestigious national companies.


Q: What, if any, patents or intellectual property have you developed to secure your position in the directory assistance market?


A: That’s a great question. Our intellectual property is a central component to our strategy. Having lived this market for the last several years, we know which business models work, and which ones can’t work. Our intellectual property provides very broad protection.


Q: Where are you based?


A: Headquarters is Boston, MA. We also have offices in the Bay Area.


Q: How do you handle call fraud?


A: Obviously, this is a huge problem in the online world of clicks. We go to great lengths to protect our merchants from the equivalent of “click-fraud� through several measures. First, we don’t charge for multiple calls from the same phone number over a 7 day period. Secondly, we don’t charge merchants for calls under 30 seconds.


Q: Who are your competitors in the free directory assistance market? In the pay per call market?


A: Online search and Internet yellow pages are competitors in that they provide phone numbers for free on the Internet. Nevertheless, their’s is a different distribution medium, so some companies you might initially deem competitors are actually potential partners. There are also a few providers who offer phone numbers via SMS including Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO). We view SMS more as a feature.

In the traditional telephone world, we occasionally hear rumblings about start-ups interested in a similar model and we expect that others will try over the coming months and years. Given our intellectual property, brand (1-800-FREE411), strategic relationships and consumer satisfaction we know that our sole challenge is to execute our operating plan.


Q: What methods of advertising did you use to initially build up call volume on your system and what methods were the most effective?


A: The word of mouth and press reception has been tremendous. Our call volume and consumer repeat rate has grown each week since our launch. We have a comprehensive advertising campaign with an intriguing viral component coming soon.


Q: Who is funding Free411?


A: We are a venture funded start-up, an announcement about our most recent capital round is coming shortly.

Robert Stockton, BlogPulse's software architect did a nice in-depth piece on spam blogs [splogs] that's a must read. Sorry for the brief post but I'm in and out of the office today. BlogPulse is a technical bunch of folks anyway and this post is pretty funny but a good explaination of splogs with examples of different techcniques used to create spam blogs. From Hexadecimal Dan to Affiliate Fraud Fred, he profiles the whole bunch.

It's funny all the attention splogs are getting right now. Did you see the piece on splogs in the WSJ this am? And I was interviewed by Revenue Magazine earlier this week on a piece their putting out next month... what's this world coming to?

It's not often that I read a forum or discussion on anything, there's just not enough time in the day to monitor every blog and discussion forum out there. But there are times I come across something that's kind of interesting and should be shared with you. Today I got an email notification from Soflow about a new post in the Creative World group and the post was about ads and determining Ad spend ROI. I thought it was good so here's the original post and a users response to that post.

“We are a full service advertising agency and among others have a supermarket client that has been doing business with us for few years now. We do a (two page spread) tactical product ad for them every Monday. Recently the client raised the issue of Return on Investment on this ad. He wanted to know what were some of the ways we could quickly calculate ROI. So I am trying to prepare a list which would include the overall sales differentials on the day(s) of the ad, differentials in traffic, coupons brought in (if any), the differentials in the amount of the featured products sold vis-a-vis other days, etc.

What would be some of the other Key Performance Indicators that I could include in this list? Are there other ways of calculating this kind of retail ROIs? How do we factor in the effect on Brand equity for each ad? Does anyone have experience with a similar situation?”

Just to be clear, I'm not asking the question, this was posed by a user of Soflow... [carry on].

Response To Ad Spend ROI Question

“...you didn't make it clear what channel you're referring to, so I've assumed Press.

One of the best ways to evaluate ROI on an ad like this is to start a testing matrix.

Presumably you use a grid structure for the ad?

Essentially you need to start thinking of your ads like Retailers think about floor space - if you use a grid structure in the ad's you can allocate a % of the overall ad cost to different quadrants.

For example, in a full-page press ad, products placed in the top left are generally noticed more frequently than those featured in the centre right.

The amount of space given to a particular product in an ad should be directly connected to the amount of stock the retailer wants to shift, how good the offer is and how much return your client can expect from each product.

Every week, you need to evaluate how different factors influenced sales etc...If you build in coupons or other response mechanisms you'll gain a much clearer view than just measuring sales.

Anyone involved in retail/FMCG knows that over half of all purchase decisions are made in-store...even people with clear purchase intentions can be swayed once they reach the store due to competitive offers, how easy it is to locate product etc...so it can make measuring advertising very tricky without direct response mechanisms like coupons.

I could go on, but...”

I love it when people define any metric using a specific formula or describe the variables used as well as what each variable means and where they're pulled from, that's good stuff. Now go measure your Ad Spend ROI in the press :)

Citigate Cunningham sent a press release out this am inviting certain members of the press, clients and even lil ol bloggers like me to join them in celebrating their first 20 years in business. To be honest I had never heard of them but figured I'd look into it real quick-like, even though I normally file these type of press release submissions to mshift in my “To Do Basket”.

Well, it appears Citigate Cunningham is a legit PR firm, although they call it “Strategic Public Relations”. They're based in San Francisco which is good and bad. It's good for them and their technology centric clients but it's bad cause it means there is no way in hades I'm gonna make that party today. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

From Their Press Release

“Citigate Cunningham today marks its first 20 years in business at a festive celebration bringing together clients, media, current employees and distinguished alumni and other friends of the firm.”

Am I a friend of the firm? ha!

Some of Their Clients

“Motorola, IBM, Cisco, eTrade, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Rambus, Adobe Systems, Sprint, Sybase as well pro-bono clients like the Lance Armstrong and craigslist foundations. Agency talent helped to launch the Macintosh, develop the first comprehensive ingredient branding strategy for a semiconductor company...

...established the ASP hosted applications category for Corio and re-franchised Sybase around its leadership in the Unwired Enterprise.”

Something I found interesting was a quote their CEO, Paul Bergevin, gave about their processes and methods of researching and marketing their clients message. Kind of falls in line with a bit of my own philosophy, go figure.

“Cunningham pioneered many of the innovations that have come to define high-tech public relations as we know it...

...From the trademarked way we approach positioning and messaging, which draws on empirical research to help shape the most compelling story for our clients, to our relentless focus on telling that story to the right market audiences, Citigate Cunningham has earned a reputation for the depth of its technology expertise and the service drive of its people.”

Forgive my sloppiness but I've been slammed all day. Here are links to each of the more important features & screens within MSN's new adCenter marketing console.

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 5
Screenshot 6

Yep, that's right. Microsoft´s latest product hasn't even been released and I've got your hack right here. The MSN adCenter is going to compete with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing [formerly known as Overture] and every other ppc program out there. I'm a little unclear as to when the MSN adCenter is actually scheduled to launch, I initially thought it was set to launch today but I think it may be the 18th of next month. I'll let you know as soon as I find out, chances are their PR department will be all over me just after I publish this post anyway.

Hacking The New MSN adCenter
First off this hack is just a way for you to sign up for an account without being invited as a beta tester. Right now MSN is rolling out the program to a handful of agencies & influential individuals in an effort to get feedback on the product and build buzz. But what if you don´t have an invite... ah yes, let us begin.

First off you can go to the MSN adCenter url [https://adcenter.msn.com/] directly and you'll be greeted with a signin page. But if you don't have an account that will do you no good. But when you click on the link to create an account the form may ask you for the email address your invitation was sent to.

Note: I tried the signup form again this am and it didn't ask me for a special email addy so you may just be able to create your account from here but I'm not certain. Just post your comments on whether or not you were able to create an account here so others will know which methods for creating accounts work the most often.

Ignore This Step If You Were Able To Create An Account Above
Once you get to that page you need to go to the Singapore MSN adCenter url [https://adcenter.msn.com.sg]. Then click on the “Create an account” link and you should then be able to create an account without having to offer up the special email address your non-existent invitation was sent to.

That's it, now wasn't that simple? I'm going to post an initial review of the adCenter later today but there are a few things I must point out.

1.) The urls above just found their way to me, I can't quite remember how.
2.) The MSN adCenter has an incredible number of bugs and if they plan on rolling it out by the 18th of next month then I'll be impressed.
3.) I'm not sure why they're rolling it out to key influencers right now because it's really just making them look bad with the amount of bugs there are in it.
4.) Hey, at least MSN is finally getting it together with their own ppc management system.

My full review will follow later today.

Last Friday, Sue MacDonald [Intelliseek's manager of PR] sent an email out to a few key bloggers regarding a partnership deal Intelliseek had struck with AOL that was set to be announced today [Monday]. Being a courteous blogger I decided not to post the news Friday since I figured there was an embargo on blogging about the whole deal until Monday when the official press release was sent out. Stupid me. I should've known that sitting on information "leaked" out by anyone in PR is fair game unless you have been told otherwise.

Because of my lack of indiscretion I was not the first to break the story. No, Rubel broke the headline on Friday [probably as soon as he received the email from Sue]. As a result he already has 15 other blogs linking to his post. That's one of the things that's kind of annoying about this whole blogging game. If you aren't the very first to break a story then you don't get all that much of the initial traffic slash buzz surrounding the news item. So just like a mother waiting in line at 3am in front of Toys-R-Us the morning after Thanksgiving to get her child a coveted FlyPen, sometimes you have to push your way to the front of the line and ask forgiveness later.

Before I get too carried away cry-babying about how bloggers tick me off, let me tell you a bit about the partnership. Basically, AOL is getting a bunch of blog metrics data from BlogPulse and they're going to do something similar to what Yahoo did by providing blog headlines next to news results. It's interesting to me how much attention AOL is paying to the blogosphere these days. First they acquired WebLogs Inc last week and now they're partnering with Inteliseek, I wonder where they plan on heading next... Is it unrealistic for me to predict a Technorati acquisition by AOL? I don't think so, could very well happen, but I doubt it because if they had planned on acquiring Technorati then they would not be partnering with BlogPulse right now. I know BlogPulse isn't for sale and that even if it were for sale, it would mean the BlogPulse team would have to go along with the purchase and that's not something AOL would be able to integrate very well because it's such a huge project and really needs to be run by a geek company, not a consumer facing company. You never know though, every company can be sold if a buyer has enough cash.

From the press release...

”Intelliseek announced today a new agreement to provide AOL with daily blog data and trend analysis from Intelliseek's BlogPulseâ„¢, one of the most popular blog search engines on the Internet.

Under the agreement, Cincinnati-based Intelliseek's blog data, statistics, trend charts and blog entries will be featured on the AOL® network. These daily blog reports will update Web users in real time about Internet activity and "buzz."

Included in the daily feeds will be top blogs, top blog posts, top news stories and news sources being cited by bloggers, top website/blog links being shared by bloggers, as well as the top personalities and phrases being discussed by bloggers in their posts. AOL also will have access to BlogPulse's two blogs - BlogPulse Newswire, a summary of blog activity, and the entertainment-focused BlogPulse Spotlight. “

Another interesting note here is that AOL / Time Warner owns Business 2.0 Magazine and this month had an article on reaching the unreachable demographic of people that are no longer watching television but instead spending time online. The discussed blogs as one of the places people are spending their time online so I believe I'll renew my subscription to business 2.0 and start scanning the headlines a bit closer for AOL´s foreshadowing of potential partnerships. I don't believe they mentioned BlogPulse in the article though, rats!

Back to complaint mode
Yes, I'm learning. Blogging is not a career move for me, at least not the writing part anyway. And there are notes I'm taking on what to do, when to do it and how to do it when it comes to newsworthy items, posting to blogs, stories to post, what works, what doesn't... Honestly the list goes on and on but I can tell you that I'm creating a machine and I will not be burned another time on breaking a newsworthy story before it's time if I have not been told explicity otherwise.

Rubel beware, there’s a new ruthless reporter in town, and he’s got wicked sweet images to go along with all his posts :)