Some time ago, I have written about predictive analytics, which describes, among other things, the essential idea behind my previous startup Placedise.

A major point of discussion there is always the idea of “free will”. Many believe that behavior can neither be influenced nor predicted, since man has a free will. But is this correct?

Let’s push this thought a little further.

Free will means in this argument that people always behave differently than one would predict it. If this were the case, the behavior would, however, again be predictable as it always would be the opposite of the original…

In this post I want to show five important principles that are relevant to a proper performance and success measurement of product placement — from the perspective of advertising companies. Currently, unfortunately many of them are often not or only insufficiently taken into account. This not only leads to wrong results and recommendations, but can also lead to dangerous actions. Of course we know that this is only in rare cases because of the experts in the marketing departments. …

My story of becoming a rockstar PM

When I was 12 years old, I started to write code. This never stopped and I went from my first 100% self-made 3D First-Person-Shooter (without any “engine” or “toolkit”!) to web development to building my own AI and ML (when those things were no over-used bullshit-bingo-buzzwords yet).

In between, I have studied business administration at the UCLA (USA) and the University of Bayreuth (Germany) — with a major in marketing.
Many HR “experts” told me to give up this strange mixture and focus on one (IT) or the other (business and marketing).

I am kind of stubborn and did not…

Do you remember the times, when a janitor was just a janitor?
Well, those times are long gone. Nowadays the same person is called a “senior large-scale facility manager” — or something like this.

The same happens to digital product roles and this is a huge problem.

Maybe this is due to the extended “think-time” during COVID-19 or maybe it is just because people want to be seen as experts and start inventing things no one needs.

Three examples of current product bullshit

Product Ops

Somehow (I cannot explain), people came up with the idea to establish a role for “Product Operations” besides Product Owners and Product Managers.

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You work with Performance Marketing at a brand?
(This is usually not for agencies.)
Welcome to a short online targeting fact check.

This is a “spin-off” of my articles:

• The new old Holy Grail of Marketing Targeting
• Performance Marketing. You are doing it wrong.

Myth 1

It is a new way to magically identify a specific person and his/her wishes.

What you can do with cookies, digital fingerprints, and the help of statistics: You can identify a specific machine (PC, Smartphone, …) and make some assumptions on how the average person behind it ticks.

Sure, the deeper you go, the closer it gets to the actual person. …

This is for corporate managers or consultants, who plan to develop some software with an external team (means via an agency).

First, agile does not mean fast!!

It often is, but there are also cases where it is not (e.g. if you have a lot of change requests). This, however, is a common misunderstanding with managers, who think they know what it is, but do not.

In very short terms, AGILE refers to methods, where it is all about communication, flexibility, and getting the best quality, the fastest way, to a happy client. See the Agile Manifesto here. …

Over the last years, many companies claimed that Performance Marketing does not work for them. Why? They stopped their campaigns and somehow nothing changed with regards to revenue or at least profit.

Most of them were strong brands like eBay (2013), Adidas (2019), or Procter&Gamble (2018).

It is quite clear, why they got to this conclusion.
But the same as blind trust in Performance Marketing has been wrong right from the beginning, it is wrong to conclude it is “not working” in general!

Those companies are most probably right about their observations. …

Most managers are familiar with the traditional “make or buy” decision. With digital projects, it is not that simple

Whenever you start to build a new digital project, no matter if is a simple website or a complex enterprise application, you face the following major question:

Should we buy and customize existing systems or build it from scratch?

Imagine this question as the one, you should ask immediately after “make or buy”. Mind that no matter if you make it yourself or buy it by paying some external service provider, you need to decide “from scratch or configure existing things”.

What to expect

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