Freelance Consultant's Diary

Well, if you believe many click fraud experts (who by the way often have a vested interest in scaring advertisers because they sell click-fraud detection services), it would appear that the advertising world is about to come to an end. At iProceed , we conducted research into the extent of click fraud, and here are our findings: The advertisers would rather not have click fraud in a perfect world but they understand that advertising effectiveness is extremely low in all cases. In fact, in our analysis, we learned that advertisers found text links to have the highest ROI even if one considers the high-end estimate of click fraud (~20%). (Related link: Comparison of advertising costs ) Advertisers understand that banner ads click rate is ~0.25%, the response rate on direct mail is ~3%, and most advertising in print and television media has not been producing a ROI for years now. The only advertising that really works is text links (in search results or as listings on a content rich websi...

Management consultants are not big fans of CEO's who take major business decisions based on their gut feeling and refuse to do quantitative analysis. At least that is the impression I got watching Hank McKinnell go about putting together a Celebrex strategy. As I said last week, Pfizer was pursuing a wrong Celebrex strategy and the numbers are here to show (Celebrex prescriptions dropped by half) that McKinnell was not thinking it through. I was hoping that after watching Merck's flawed Vioxx recall strategy , another pharma CEO will pay attention and learn from it. The manner in which was Vioxx was recalled and the whole process managed by Merck has been very interesting and there are many great lessons for all executives (Related article: Vioxx recall lessons for business executives ). But what McKinnell did was totally opposite to what I had said last week: Pfizer, like any other firm, should have managed its appetite for risk . From here on too, it is going to be downhill f...

Today's decision by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that VOIP phone calls can not be regulated as traditional phone traffic is a tremendous boost to what is still a technology in its infancy: VOIP. The Federal Communications Commission last month had issued its own rules favoring VOIP, saying that Internet phone services should not be governed by the same state regulations as traditional telephone companies. Fortune Magazine calls VOIP the technology of 2004. And here at iProceed , we believe that the way cell phones have replaced traditional phone lines, the day is not far off when most of the voice data will be transmitted over the Internet. It may take some time though since VOIP is not yet ready for prime time. Being a Vonage customer for over a year now, I am very satisfied with domestic phone quality but forget about a management consultant doing a conference call with his overseas clients. Not only is the sound quality bad, you can be disconnected any time. So I sti...

Since the recall of Vioxx , advertising for prescription drugs (and more specifically, direct-to-consumer advertising) has come under attack from doctors, experts, lawyers, ethicists, and management consultants like me. The only two groups that love direct-to-consumer advertising are the drug firms themselves and the consumers. In fact, it is reported that the ROI is extremely high on direct-to-consumer advertising with every dollar invested in advertising producing four dollars in additional drug sales. No wonder it makes so many of us so uncomfortable. This is also attributed to one out of two Americans taking at least one prescription drug at any given time. Even worse, direct-to-consumer advertising may also be responsible for more deaths and injuries because Americans go to their doctors with imaginary illnesses and ask for drugs that were advertised directly to them. Role of direct-to-consumer advertising in the recent Vioxx controversy With the big controversy related to Vioxx a...

The rapidly falling dollar (and overall currency fluctuations) are causing a lot of pain to businesses (and to consumers to a smaller extent). I dealt with this issue yesterday and provided tips on how to protect your business from currency fluctuations . But a falling dollar also creates interesting business opportunities for businesses of all sizes. In fact, that is one reason the US Government is letting the dollar fall in the first place. New business opportunities from a weak dollar If you have seen your business mature in the United States with a 1.0-2.0X GDP growth, then this may be the perfect time to explore entry/expansion into high-growth markets, particularly in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries. A weak dollar means that you will be at a disadvantage when buying products/services overseas, and at a even greater disadvantage if your customers are in the United States. A weak dollar makes your products and services cheaper in the global market. Thus, businesse...