(empo-fioy) Why geographic targeting doesn't work

I'm sure that many of you have tried to view or do something on the Internet and have been prevented from doing so with a message along the lines of "This video cannot be shown in your country" or something like that. Because of contractual obligations, some content is only authorized for use in certain countries of the world, and not others.

Similarly, let's say that you want to buy advertisements via a popular advertising service. Since most people don't want to advertise to the entire world, the advertiser can choose where the advertisements can be shown. So if I have a product that is only available in the United States, I can specify that my ads only be shown in the United States.

Why does this work? Because there are various ways to identify the location of someone on the Internet. If I travel to China, my last.fm won't work. When I log on at home, it presents ads for my local geographic area. When I log on at work, it presents ads for...

...um, in that case it presents ads for the location where my employer's servers are. Since we have several offices in the United States, this may or may not be my own local geographical area.

But it could be worse. Look at the story of Dr. Harlan Kilstein (H/T David Cohen), who purchased ads on Facebook that were intended to be shown to United States users. Only one minor problem:

Airtel Nigeria has recently begun offering free Facebook connectivity to its subscribers without using the Internet. Just by dialing *688#, the Nigerian Facebook user has free and unlimited access to Facebook.

Apparently, Facebook’s targeting does not detect Airtel’s Nigerian subscribers who click on ads and subscribe to lists they are interested in.

Ordinarily, this would be fine. For so-called "SEO experts," this would be great, since there are a lot of ad clicks and list subscriptions. But if you really want to make money, there's a big problem. As I noted back in 2010, online purchasing systems that work well in the United States do not work in other parts of the world. Kilstein:

If you buy ads targeting the U.S., it is now very likely that you are getting traffic from Nigeria and other parts of Africa, as well.

These leads are unable to purchase your products or services because most merchant accounts and PayPal block these countries due to massive fraud claims.

So what happens is that a Nigerian (or South African, or someone from another part of Africa) uses Airtel Nigeria to get onto Facebook, sees an interesting ad, but then doesn't buy.

Am really interested but I don't have a credit card to make payment but have Naira (cash)....

Now I don't know if Kilstein even knows what "Naira" is. I certainly didn't until now.

What Kilstein does know is that he's paying Facebook good money to advertise to U.S. customers, and between 17 to 20 percent of his leads come from outside the United States.

And the Airtel Nigeria users are honest users. What of the people who use spoofing and other tactics to mask their true locations?

Of course you can implement other workarounds, such as a "we only ship to U.S. addresses" policy. But there are mail forwarders everywhere.

So how can you GUARANTEE that your product will only be sold to U.S. customers?

There's only one way. Design a product that is beloved by Americans, but that is totally odious to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any such product. A baseball-themed product is a possible choice, but the game of baseball is played in Canada (Blue Jay fever), the Caribbean, and eastern Asia.

Country music has similar issues. I recently saw a YouTube video featuring a Finnish bluegrass band.



And American talk show hosts don't offer a differentiator. Conan O'Brien is beloved in Finland.

So do we give up on geotargeting (geotarding)?

(empo-fioy) Startup supporter - guess the country!

If the hashtag didn't give it away, consider that one of the organization's incubators is called the Startup Sauna:

During the Startup Sauna, the selected teams work intensively to develop their business model, technology & its applications, and early market entry. The teams graduating will be prepared to seek for initial investments and first customers. Startups will go through blood, sweat and tears to become the next success story.

The sponsoring organization is Aaltoes:

Aalto Entrepreneurship Society is an independent, privately funded student and post-graduate led community initiative. We encourage high-tech, high-growth, scalable entrepreneurship, providing a tight startup community in Northern Europe. Founded in 2009, Aaltoes believes in grassroots action, self-initiative and lean practices.

The name "Aalto" comes from Aalto University, and since many of the business courses are taught in English (rather than Finnish), the organization is clearly aware of the meaning of the English word "toes." Presumably they help people dip their toes into the waters of the startup world.

And Aaltoes presumably supplies the sausages that startups need to get started.

(empo-fioy) Seppo Paju - Finland's next sports hero

I have blogged about Finnish sports figures (primarily figure skaters) in the past, but I have not yet blogged about the person who will become Finland's next sports hero - Seppo Paju.

Paju, who is all of 16 years old, made the news in the United States in a recent sports competition.

Paju's sport? Disc golf.

The competition? The Pro Disc Gold World Championships, recently held in Santa Cruz, California. Those who have heard of Santa Cruz will not be surprised that a "disc golf" championship was held there.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported on Paju's triumph, and his massive monetary winnings.

In a distance exhibition event that was part of the Pro Disc Golf World Championships, competitors flung discs off the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf toward a basket 360 feet away on Main Beach for a cash prize.

And Paju's second throw was right on the money....

Competitors were given three chances in 90 seconds each to make an ace. Their first throws had the potential to net $5,000, and the second and third opportunities were for $500.

So Paju qualified for the $500. Now that's $500 in U.S. money, which is probably something like €20 at the moment. But it's still something - if Paju were an American, he'd probably lose his amateur status over it.

But that doesn't matter, because Paju is a member of the PROFESSIONAL Disc Gold Association. He has had a relatively good 2011, placing 8th in the European Open. Total winnings for the year (as of July 24) were over $3,000 (again, that's presumably something like €120).

And yes, I kid about the exchange rate. The Euro itself has had its share of troubles. I just wanted the opportunity to type the Euro symbol (€), now that I've reset my keyboards to recognize the "U.S. International layout"; this allows me to type all sorts of non-English symbols. I feel distinctly non-"ugly American" at the moment.

(empo-fioy) Broadband? NOW! An update to Finland's "legal right" to fast broadband

In October 2009, I wrote a post detailing Finland's plans to make 1 Mbps broadband a "legal right." Subsequent to my post, Point Topic described exactly what that meant:

In December 2008, Finland committed to meeting a universal service obligation of 1 Mbps broadband throughout the country at a "reasonable price" without public funding by the end of 2010. In October 2009, the country adopted a law obliging telecom operators to provide all Finnish residents with broadband connections with at least 1 Mbps, effectively becoming the first country in the world to make broadband access a legal right. The obligation came into force on 1 July 2010....

But that is just the start:

Finnish government is committed, as part of the “Broadband 2015” project, to providing 100 Mbps access to 99 per cent of the population by 2015. The aim of this project is to ensure that end users are no further than 2 km from a 100 Mbps fibre or cable network.

So how are things progressing?

According to data from 2010, 95 per cent of all Finnish counties are connected to fibre. This represents 99 per cent of the population. Over 50 per cent of the counties have more than one fibre network provider.

However, private industry is already exceeding present and future government mandates:

DNA claims to have the largest number of TV channels in Finland, nearly 160 in total, including 18 HD channels, a combination of which can be chosen under the new Mix HD offering.

As part of the fixed network upgrade, the maximum speed of the broadband connections is 200 Mbps thanks to DOCSIS 3.0 technology, while entry-level speeds are now 10 Mbps.

Incidentally, that text was quoted from a site called CSI, and it talks about a company called DNA. If you've read my blog before, you won't be surprised to know that I'm confused at this point. If you take those acronyms at face value, you have to eyeball them for a while before you can put your finger on what they really mean.