Habitaquo

"Industry, Intelligence, Integrity, Initiative" Clive Davis

Those are Clive Davis' "Four Is." The advice he once gave to me when asked "What are the secrets to success? What is most important?" Excellent counsel from a great gentleman and genius. We can all learn something from Clive.

"Until your conversion rate is 100%, there's always room for improvement" so says Google product manager Tony Leung. Tony's team has rolled out Website Optimizer a tool designed to help site owners test different landing pages. Brilliant! Tobi Elkin has the story Google Bows Website Optimization Tool via OMD here. Congrats to Tony and his crew!

Free, still the best value proposition: To the surprise of no one more than three quarters of consumers who listen to audio content via their cell or other mobile device prefer free ad-supported content to subscription or fee based services. This according to a study by Arbitron and Telephia. More from Erik Sass Mobile Audio Study Favors Ad-Supported Model via MDN here. Erik also offers up a good writing on what's happening with radio revenues. He interviews our favorite economist, BIA's Mark Fratrik. Erik quotes Mark "To really grow beyond the low single digits, it's going to take other things...the internet, podcasting or events." Exactly. Kudos to Mark and thanks to Erik! Read the article Radio Turnaround Seen For '07 here. Seems like only yesterday that we were talking about events ;) Before I get any emails from N Street allow me to add - my second favorite economist remains David K. Rehr.

Microsoft v Google: The battle for DoubleClick is instructive. Readers know I heart Google, however, Microsoft is right where they need to be. And where is Yahoo? My sense is Yahoo has become the fast follower. It seems more and more of a two horse race. Meanwhile DoubleClick moves forward with their new product; Louise Story details the new next product via NYT coverage of the DoubleClick "NASDAQ-like" exchange. Smart, very smart. The indications are '07 will be a monster year for M&A in the interactive space. (Closed circuit to broadcasters: What is your Redmond strategy? Your Mountain View strategy? You do have one, right?)

Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP CE, says "Start experimenting with mobile, test, refine, repeat." Speaking at a mobile entertainment summit he says 50% of his agency spend is traditional media while the other half is spent on outdoor, new media, market research and PR. He goes on to say the dead tree guys are most in danger by new media followed by radio and TV. "Probably the least affected is outdoor and cinema" More by Enid Burns via ClickZ news here. I would agree with Sir Martin on outdoor. The migration to digital art refreshes outdoor media making it a killer app all over again.

Say what?: Way back when, Episode single digit something of Diggnation to be exact, I sent a heads up email to two broadcast network honchos suggesting they look into what these lads were doing. I thought it fresh and engaging. Lots of possibilities. Got back the Blackberry "thanks" reply from both, nothing more. Then yesterday I get an email from one of them to wit: "Have you heard of digg? What is it? Any ideas?" Well, now that you mention it. (LATER: We enjoyed a good laugh about this, after I found and forwarded the original email w/reply. Stay tuned.)

Thanks for the emails! A bunch of response on yesterday's comments about remotes. Many from folks working outside the largest markets about the reality of med/sm market sales. My sense is there is still a better way to execute. I understand the differences between New York and New London, got the Louisville is not LA message. Will scribble something on this later this week. Again, thanks for the feedback - it's appreciated.