So, on Sunday, my wife and I watched the season premier of America’s Funniest Home Videos…yes, the early 90’s Bob Saget started show based on cute children, talented pets, and men getting hit in the crotch.

It’s still on, and in its 19th season no less, who knew? So, after we reveled in the darker side of humanity and the pain of others, I started thinking about how America’s Funniest Home Videos (or AFV as it’s now officially abbreviated) was the YouTube of its day.

It (far ahead of its time) used the wisdom of the crowd to produce a show popular enough to last 19 seasons and be on its third host. Most TV shows nowadays get canceled after an episode or three let alone several hosts. (That is unless you’re Family Feud. Anything that can survive Louie Anderson must be something special.)

So, what am I blabbering about? Why should you care? Because we all should have seen YouTube coming. We all should have been able to stand upon the shoulders of giants like Bob Saget and create that next big thing. Certainly there had to be a confluence of technology and business savvy to make it work.  But, 16 years before YouTube was founded, Vin Di Bona (AFV’s Producer) saw something that became the basis of Web 2.0.

The only way you’re going to stay ahead of the game in this business is to constantly innovate. To constantly ask yourself, “What next?” and to keep pushing for new ways to interact with your customers and constituents. By the time you’re done reading this blog and blogs like us, the current industry fad will be over and you’ll be behind the curve. So push forward, beyond the bounds of what you see, and strike deep into the heartland of that yet undiscovered country that is the next big thing… your big thing.

This started out as a very different post.  The plan was to just explain all of the reasons why using a tool that automates your pay-per-click decisions and changes is a very bad idea.  The plan was to explain using examples of nightmares, horror stories, as well as serious debates we had about the subject at ClickTracks.  That was the plan.  But, then the plan changed.

Recently, I moved to the DC area and spend a good bit of time not knowing how to get where I need to go.  Obviously, the logical solution was a GPS.  So, for the past weeks, I’ve been relying pretty heavily on my GPS…until this past weekend. 

My trip into DC went perfectly (although I will say that I always tend to second guess the routes chosen, knowing that there must be a faster, more efficient way).  After spending the day with my sister, I returned to the parking garage, fired up the GPS and headed home.  Or so I thought.

Navigating my way out of the parking garage, I was prompted with a question to which I responded ‘yes’ or ‘continue’ like I always did.  Or so I thought.

Apparently, the question is different IF you happen to be in a parking garage or anywhere else where the GPS loses the satellite.  The question (if one were to read it) has to do with the GPS going into simulation mode.  And, granted I probably should have read the manual.  But, the best that I can figure is that in simulation mode the GPS serves up the directions in reverse (from where you came from) to help you to ‘Go Home’ using the assumption that a) you know where you are and b) you follow the directions.  Neither of which – for me - happened.

But, the GPS happily continues to provide directions and locations for as long as the car is on.  I know this because as I was getting deeper and deeper into an area I know that I had not passed on the way into DC, I had this sort of false sense of confidence that I was somehow heading in the right direction because the GPS never said ‘Recalculating’ (as it does often when I miss a turn or don’t follow directions).

Then, that gut instinct took over and I realized I was incredibly lost.  You see my point about autopilot.

Of course, there was one more realization that also changed the point of this post.  As I sat on the Metro today, returning from a client meeting (sure, someday, I will trust the GPS again, but not now),  I started thinking about the evolution of pay-per-click:

Its Beginnings – Overture’s pure auction based pay-per-position model
Enter Google – A little smarter auction (bids teamed with history and performance)
Enter the Quality Score – Wow, even better now relevance factors in to what you pay for a click
Evolve the Quality Score – Landing pages, geography, and more stringent relevance considerations

And, I realized that Google doesn’t have AdWords on autopilot.  I imagine that there are teams of engineers, user experience experts, and business analysts who continually monitor AdWords performance – both for the users and for the massive revenue stream that it is.  And, continue to improve and evolve AdWords.

The premise that any technology can completely remove the human brain from having input is completely dangerous.  If Google is not willing to take this risk on something so key to its business model, maybe you should think twice about taking the risk with such a huge portion of your marketing budget.

Today, I’m off to SMX East, and will be presenting on the topic of Reputation Management. So, I thought I’d put together a quick 6 step guide to managing your reputation.

1. Find out whether people are talking about your company, your product, your executives, etc.

Alerts and RSS feeds will give you an insight into what’s going on now.  But, you need to go back into the past in order to understand what’s been said before and to create a baseline.

2. Find out where they’re talking.

Don’t just assume that Google and Yahoo will give you every discussion on every site…they won’t.  There are many instances where a site or a forum discussion won’t be indexed, either intentionally (closed forums, noindex, blocked through robots.txt, etc), unintentionally, or because the search engines just don’t dig deep enough into the site.

3. Identify the influencers.

Which channels are the customers engaged on?  Which sites contain the greatest degree of conversations?   Which sites get the most eyeballs?

4. Determine the sentiment.

Are the discussions predominantly positive or negative?  Are there certain locations which sway one way or another?

5. Plan and implement your participation in the discussion.

Maybe you want to reward the positives, talk to the negatives to understand their concerns, and maybe move them to the neutral or positive column.  Or maybe, it’s just that you want to be part of the conversation, showing that you are listening.

6. Identify gaps in the conversation.

If you find that there’s an audience out there, but no central location for them, then, maybe there’s the potential for your company to create their own site for the audience to use.  And, if you can get them there, and they stay, it’s going to be so much easier for you to monitor the conversations.

Or alternatively, you could just send an email to Nan at serengeticommunications.com and let us figure it all out for you.

Microsoft, in what appears to be a desperate attempt to gain search share, has announced a new program called SearchPerks. What is SearchPerks? It is similar to your credit cards rewards program except instead of earning points based on how much you spend, you earn “tickets” based on how many search queries you perform. You can then redeem your “tickets” for prizes once the promotion ends.

In order to take part in the promotion you must sign up by December 31, 2008. You will then have to download a small program that tracks your usage and use Internet Explorer 6.0 or later (in fact you must use IE 6.0 or later to even view the site where you sign up). Microsoft limits the number of tickets you can earn per day to 25. You must also “participate in the program until its completion” in order to be eligible for any prizes. It’s not apparent what that means, but I would guess it requires you to either perform a minimum number of searches per month, week or day.

If you sign up today, you’ll be able to accumulate 5,400 points which does not appear to be enough to get the top prize (an xbox controller). Maybe you can earn bonus points during the promotion to reach the top prize, but regardless of how you get the points, it’s a pretty pathetic top prize.

So if you’re interested in getting some prizes for performing searches then check out SearchPerks, but make sure you read the fine print so that you can make sure that at the end of the promotion you’re still eligable to receive your prizes.

It’s always nice to see the older model working well with the new one.