fleeQ: and you shall find.

Open letter to the publishers of the world.

Introduction:
I would like to take you, if you are willing to journey with me, on a
‘transcendental’ journey. It may change the way you perceive yourself,
your brand, the Internet, and in the end, hopefully bring enlightenment
and pleasure for you. You may find this journey fundamentally changes your
business philosophies about the net, or you may choose to cling to what
you are familiar with, in how you interact with your web users. So be it.
That is your free will, your choice. But perhaps, you may decide to
reinvigorate your perceptions about what is possible on the net. You may
seize a new opportunity that I am about to explain. This journey may seem
long in words, but it is laid out to provide you a step by step path for
understanding.  Let our journey, together, begin.

PATH OF NO RETURN:
the “old school” search box

When a typical web user has visited your site, browsed around, clicked on
a couple things, read a few articles, or purchased some items and finally
was completely done with their experience on your site, what did they do?
If they wanted to try going elsewhere on the net they may have clicked a
hyperlink and departed, clicked out through the bookmark in their browser,
or ’searched’ themselves away from your website through a search engine
box you embedded. Perhaps, you have one of those Google search boxes
integrated into your website that says  “search the web”  or “search this
site”. Whether or not your site has one, you’re probably very familiar
with these search boxes.

Examples would be search boxes from Google, which come in three different
flavors: a free search box, that sends the user directly to Google.com and
displays any arbitrary search results that the user searched for; an ad
sense box; or an integrated search box, which you pay for, that provides
custom search results that are displayed within your website. These search
results show matches (within your site) against any arbitrary search term
the user searched for. It also displays Web results from Google.com, and
it displays contextual ads located on that page.

You may have an ‘ad sense’(TM) search box which sends the user directly to
Google.com and displays any arbitrary search results the user searched
for, with one small twist, if the user clicks on ads located on that page,
Google promises to pay you a portion of the click revenue. Yes, many big
publishers with lots of traffic make a whole lot of money with ad
sense(TM) search. It’s free to sign up, and very simple to integrate into
your site.

If you are a small web publisher, you may see a bit of residual revenue by
offering a search box to your site visitor, unfortunately, Google does not
promise traffic back to your website in any way, shape or form. Those
ubiquitous “free” search boxes are designed from the get-go to make money
for the search engine. By design, they regularly drive traffic away from
your website to other publishers. There they go, away from your site! Will
they be back?  Despite hemorrhaging away their traffic via search boxes,
millions of publishers still feature search results, or incorporate a
‘free’ search box. Publishers have settled for hope, that they might get
paid later (after a user click event).

FAITH:
Search engine relationships

You gotta have ‘faith’ when you embed a search engine box in your site.
Faith some link will be clicked. Millions of publishers cast their fate
and faith to the fickle wind of search engine clicks. They hope the search
engine delivers some fantastic contextual ad, next to the organic results,
and that the user will find the ad appears more relevant than the natural
organic results. If the user clicks one of these pay per click ad words,
the search originating publisher will get paid. Supposedly. How much? Who
knows? This unknown requires faith.

Especially in the case with Google, who unilaterally tracks the click from
the consumer. Only Google decides what constitutes a click in their
network, and only Google decides what’s to be paid for your traffic. You
have zero ability to question their figures and zero ability to calculate
what you think you should have really been earning. You just have to
accept it, have some faith.

Google is non-transparent about the percentage or “cut” millions of its
publisher partners receive. This fact is clearly defined in their ad
sense(TM) terms and conditions, you can read that here. <[Link to Google
terms and conditions ]> Yet, millions of web publishers believe Google is
gospel. Google has created a belief system, of sorts, of faithful
publisher servants.

A while back, I heard someone evangelize their belief as to Google’s
business   model being fair to network partners,(that Google’s gives more
than it receives, paraphrasing their comment), the woman insisted, “Google
gives back some 70% of their gross revenue to their (90 million) network
publishers”. However, a reading of Google’s SEC filings on Edgar settles
this matter as myth. By their own admission, Google has described their
cost of revenue for traffic /clicks received from their network partners
at 30% of their total gross. This more adequately explains Google’s
enormous profits.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED:
trust, faith, doubt

A lack of transparency can often breed doubt in a business partnership.
When publishers have no choice but to operate on faith, they have no
choice but to accept their fate. For the time being 90 million publisher
partners keep Google’s technology running through websites of differing
scales, big and small. In the end, they may get a check or wire transfer
for some arbitrary amount, an amount that inherently is non-transparent in
how it was aggregated and determined by Google. Quoting Google terms with
its publishers: “global does not specify a percentage of revenue shared
with its publishers”. This kind of non-transparency cannot help but to
breed doubt with those on the receiving end.

In short, you must have faith in Google’s accuracy about the number of
clicks your users have generated in Google’s network. Google’s numbers are
final, non-auditable, and therefore basically unavailable to you. You must
accept them as the gospel truth. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but
don’t feel alone, if you are one of millions publishers in the Google
network swallowing that bitter pill. <(See emarketer stats)>.

Actually,(here’s a tip)the largest publishers do get a specified
percentage from Google. The rules Google applies to you, don’t apply to
them. Why, you might say, that’s not very democratic!! No, but Google is
not a democracy. Large chunks of clicks are more important to Google than
small crumbs of clicks. Of course, Google wants your clicks too, because
they want scale. Google figures that the little guys, the smaller
publishers are too small independently to do anything about the inequity.
Google maybe right, but only if publishers remain sheep-like, follow a
Google belief system, and look nowhere else for their daily bread, which
is web user traffic.

DOMINION:
the frightening meaning of power

Google has sought to control the advertising supported search marketplace
for many years. In 2007, Google made up 35% of all online ad spending by
advertisers. In March 2008, Google formally acquired DoubleClick.
DoubleClick made up 32% of all online ad spending by advertisers in 2007.
Now together, they exercise sovereign control of over 70% of all online ad
spending.

The DoubleClick acquisition elevated Google, in the opinion of some
industry analysts, to a monopolistic market position that is seemingly
irreversible. Many have complained, other companies have been investigated
as a monopolies with even less than a 70% market share, such as IBM
(1972-82), so why not Google? Likely, because more and more, global
business economies of scale, such as Google, are allowed to operate under
a global economic philosophy of laissez faire.

Laissez faire, is a French phrase literally meaning “Let do.”. It is
generally understood to be a doctrine that maintains “private initiative
and production are best allowed to be free of economic interventionism by
the state beyond what is necessary to maintain individual liberty, peace,
security, and property rights”.
In the case of Google’s purchase of Double Click, one would expect another
player such as Microsoft would have cried foul and gotten government
attention. But in the end, Microsoft has merely made a play for Yahoo so
it could itself gain a market advantage, and has actively been acquiring
numerous other business entities to compete more efficiently with Google
for online ad revenues.

Let’s think about online ad spending. Not only publishers are concerned
about Google’s dominion in this realm.  What does this situation mean in
the marketplace for advertisers?  Summed up, advertisers and web
publishers are singing from the same hymn book, Google’s. Competitive
choices in directing online traffic to their products and/or services have
been effectively extinguished. In order to get their advertising brand
message seen and heard, involvement with Google is a market reality
advertisers had to face, and will pay for, like it or not. At the end of
the day, 70% of all websites featuring any form of advertisements, now
include Google code on the page.

A NEW PATH:
freedom through technology

Are there alternatives, is there hope, you may ask? Yes there is.
Technology, at the same time both amazing and very scary, can disrupt
monopolistic strongholds that operate in markets, so yes there is hope,
and now there is an alternative.  A pendulum can swing both ways.  I’m
going to explain for you a new path, that is available to change the flow
of the karmic tide with a new technology that captures dollars away from
monopolistic-behaving search giants.  This technology is capable of
driving traffic and revenues back your way, leveling the playing field
back to the small publisher, and puts your value back where it belongs,
under your control.

At adUup we have a totally different belief system than the big search
engines, we believe publishers who create net content, are equally as
important as web users who create net clicks. Publishers joining adUup
will experience transparency– in part because of our special partnership
with Omniture, which has been engaged to provide transparency in our
business with our publisher partners.  The cloak of doubt is removed in
our model, a fair basis for a traffic and revenue partnership is restored
to the publisher, no more need to pray for a click. Read further, and I
will explain.

THE CROSSROADS:
choice makes all the difference

As a publisher or website owner you have had two choices, so far:

One, lock down your website from spiders and bots. Effectively cutting your
own traffic throat to protect your content and your value as a brand.
Thus, in the end prohibiting the search engine from copying your content,
you
effectively stop people from locating you organically via the search engines;
or, Second, allow the spiders and bots access to your property rights and
an opportunity to sell ads next to your work. We would assume publishers
and Webmasters desire traffic to their website, so it is not surprising
they choose the second choice; despite the inevitable outcome, the search
engines are very effectively luring consumers away through organic
listings.

If you are listed organically on a search engine and you do not purchase
SEM advertisements, odds are, you are not ranked very high.  With only an
organic ranking, you are pitted against the advertisers. Your site links
and page content has become part of the organic search engines inventories
which they leverage for their gargantuan profits. In fact, Google and MSN
have entire organizations dedicated to teaching you how to make their
taking of your content easier and more valuable for them to do. Amazing!
<(See webmaster.google.com and Jane and robot.com)>

In this construct, the search engines want you to think your opportunity
to get exposure on bare or gimmick search results listings outweighs your
sacrifice of your property. Effectively, you allow them to take from you,
for a future traffic benefit they can’t and don’t guarantee. Big search
engines make billions of dollars from publisher websites and publisher
creativity. Logically, you should be objecting to other people profiting
from your work, right? However, unfortunately you have had limited venues
in which you can drive traffic organically to your website. As Google
says, you can always buy ad words.

However, search engine optimization, the art of ranking higher in search
results, is both a science and an art. Suffice to say, there are many
other ranking issues, beyond ad words, much deeper than we can discuss
here. So, you buy ad words, in hopes that when somebody searches, they
will click on your link and view your site. If you are buying ad words to
your own website (which has been indexed by the spiders) you are
effectively agreeing to allow them to charge you for the value of your own
relevant content enticing a user to visit.

“But, we need organic traffic to our websites!” say all the web masters
who don’t buy ad words. “After all, it is a free chance for traffic and
possible revenue for us. We can’t do without it.”  So true, publishers
have had to, until now, accept Google as the sovereign source of organic
Web exposure for a chance to drive traffic to their sites. In light of
this, some publishers may even feel a sense of undeserved guilt for being
manipulated, or a sense of indebtedness to the search engines for the
“opportunity” of being indexed. Rationalizing, that although the search
engine spiders copied their content in the first place, the engines at
least give them an obscure chance, among millions of others, to be found
on the net. No matter how minute or unlikely the traffic opportunity is,
some publishers may even feel unduly grateful.

UNBURDEN YOURSELF:
Cast off the old, seize the moment

You no longer have to kneel down and continue to accept less from these
search engines! adUup & fleeQ offer an egalitarian, fairer alternative for
small publishers. Through technology, a platform that enables
transparency, and the effective capture of revenues and traffic, fleeQ
technology can and wants to give back to the publisher. This technology is
uniquely capable of disrupting the entrenched problem (inherent with
search engines) that is damaging small, independent, creative, and
resourceful webmasters and publishers of the world.

As a publisher, you are entitled to a share of the revenue when your
content and copyrighted material is copied by other parties to generate
revenue to themselves.  You have always known in your heart you should be
entitled to be reimbursed for the use of your property. However, sharing
fairly (with publishers)the revenues generated from indexing and siphoning
websites was never part of the traditional big search engine business
model. It never will be.

Our technology was designed for a guaranteed benefit to publishers,
sharing fairly. We can guarantee you will be paid for your content. And if
payment is not what you seek, if rather it’s traffic you want, we can
guarantee that for you too. Joining the adUup network cost nothing, it’s
100% free. So, how do we make a promise you can bank on? It’s based upon a
patent pending technology. It is a methodology of changing how search
results are displayed.

Search results, represent a mathematical calculation and weight, put
against a specific URL (as per the algorithm of a search engine) and then
displayed in a specific orderly format within a web device. Our technology
performs that standard function, except that it takes a slightly different
spin. It utilizes modern asynchronous communication via APIs that are
publicly available to every webmaster and publisher in the world.

Google and the other search engines offer access to data they initially
reaped (without compensating publisher websites) via a number of arcane
APIs that fewer than 10% of all publishers have the technical knowledge of
utilizing. These APIs are a direct feed into the search engine’s index.
These feeds show organic search results from the search engine with no
advertisements.

In simple terms, our technology retrieves data from search engines (what
Google and the other search engines took from publishers)and converts it
into a display as search results over our partnering publisher websites.
Doing this, we enable publishers to either earn traffic, or generate cash
revenue.

Like Google is a publisher, as a publisher, you too are entitled to
display advertisements next to the content of your website. You may sell
those ad deliveries at any price you desire, and you can sell them through
whomever you desire. Advertisers are always willing pay to place a brand
or message next to your content if they believe a consumer will be
influenced to buy their product or service.

The intent of the advertiser, and the intent of the publisher have been
often times at odds, but there’s no reason it can’t be a win win.
Advertising has been called a necessary evil, however, without advertising
most websites would fail. Without advertising, Google would fail. A
primary aspect of our technology makes it possible for you as a webmaster
or publisher to leverage your own content value back from the search
engines, by integrating our fleeQ search technology into your site, as an
alternative to theirs.

VISITATIONS:
core user value

Our technology satisfies your desires as a publisher, while appeasing the
search intent of the web user. You can now restore back to yourself both
revenue and traffic (from search engines) in a totally unique and
effective manner. Yes, sounds too good to be true, but it’s in our code,
and our proprietary method. The power of algorithms and disruptive
technology can actually restore freedom to a marketplace.

The traffic we send to your website is based upon contextual searches on
other sites. You define your keywords and category when you sign up for
an account. With your permission, our servers then Index and spider your
site so as to get a better understanding of what you offer the web user.
>From this information, we keep only key words and concepts.

We do not copy, store, or save your content. We only look at your content
to gain it’s contextual relevance, build a profile, and then map it
against logical synonyms that represent the ideas of your site. This is a
bit different than the ‘word for word mapping’ that the other search
engines do.

Simply put, we evaluate, categorize your site, and analyze the key words
which best represent your service, products, and message. When a user
search originating from another website in our network occurs, we
calculate how closely your website matches their contextual search terms.
If you are a close match, and we have recorded your site as a
target-for-owed-traffic (which is based upon an exchange model of 3-1) we
will redirect that user to your website.

Over your site, we will display search results from multiple search
engines, that match the user’s search term organically. What this means to
you, is that you know you just received free traffic to your site that was
contextual, relevant, and targeted. The 3-1 ratio is simple to explain,
for every three people that you send to our network, we will send one
targeted relevant visitor back to you from another website. Simple. No
catch. Completely free.

To do this, we replace the old and antiquated search boxes that are
located throughout your website with our easy to use fleeQ search. Rather
than sending a search engine, such as Google, your user traffic (with your
fingers crossed in hopes that you will get paid if someone clicks) you can
now access our fleeQ technology and be guaranteed either traffic or
revenue back to your site.

THE GARDEN PATH:
user relevancy makes it beautiful

Relevancy matters to consumers. If you’re a consumer or user of
television, when it comes to marketer messages, you have no choice in the
relevancy matter. Your favorite show is periodically interrupted by
commercials (you may find wholly irrelevant to you) streamed directly to
your television set. Though this is passive consumption on the part of the
user, it is an aggressive method (captive audience) used for decades by
marketers. This is the paradigm in which most every television network
model is built upon. You want to watch a show? You must view the ads that
the television network pushes at you.

When TiVo offered a unique feature, allowing consumers to become viewers,
it was entirely disruptive to an instilled television paradigm. TiVo
technology allowed the viewer to delete the ads from a television
recording. Thus giving the consumer a choice in the matter. Holy Moly! The
TV industry blew up, they threw millions of dollars into a court battle,
and effectively had the technology outlawed. (See TiVo court reference).
The broadcast industry thus delivered the message to consumers “if you
want to view our content, you must consume our ads”. This marketing
paradigm impacts the consumer and publisher relationship online as well.

The online publisher recognizes that without advertisements, their ability
to deliver quality content is diminished. As in the case of television,
how else would creative artists, such as actors, makeup artists, and
directors get paid if ads were not an integral part of the television
programming? So it goes with online creatives. The case of TiVo and the
broadcast industry somewhat parallels the publisher and search engine
industry. As an online publisher your content is no less important to you,
than content of a broadcast network is to itself.

DESIRE:
user fulfillment

Our technology is designed to best benefit the web user as well, based
upon their intent. It all comes down to intent. When a consumer or user
intends to search the web, they expect to receive relevant search results
that match their query. They usually intend to click on either an organic
result or they intend to click on an advertiser who matches their desires.
Contextual algorithms make sense of intent and deliver relevancy in the
form of organic results and pay per click ads. Intent of the user is
paramount in our model. The method in which we employ traffic-driving
technologies takes this into account.

Let’s say, you are searching for “shoes”, the search engine deducts that
you are looking for a noun, an object, and possibly a product. From this
deduction, organic results are located (relevant against your search term)
based upon the search index algorithms that the engineers have designed
into the software. Some engines work this process through democratic
algorithms. But in the end, they all locate websites that match what you
are looking for, and make a best effort in displaying those.

Secondly, the search engine also locates in its list of advertisers, any
company that claims their products or services match your search term.
Thus, Nordstrom’s.com may possibly advertise against the search term
“shoes”.
If your intent as a user was to locate search results, products, or
services related issues, you may or may not find that Nordstrom’s.com is
relevant, but you won’t be offended or confused by the result. Typically,
you will see the ‘Nordstrom’ message or brand next to the organic matches
from Google in a designated ‘advertising display zone’ on their website
page, so as you will not be confused about the <<intent> > of the search
results in the ‘paper clip zone’ of the page.

Obviously, some websites are designed to sell, others are designed to
inform, so  understanding the intent of the user must be considered
paramount in delivering site results. Since it was the consumer or user
who requested the search results, we must assume that they seek relevance.
Unfortunately, we cannot perfectly predict intent and desire with the
computer yet. So we must deliver search results in a fashion that best
meets the needs of the individual, allowing them an opportunity of
choosing for themselves which type of result is more important, organic
results (often consisting of informational and product websites)and/or
advertisements.

For the most part, we can assume that users who seek Web results just want
a relevant match against their desires, and for that, organic and pay per
click results can effectively solve their requirements.  Given the fact
that the user is sometimes interested in browsing away from a publisher’s
website, we have designed a system that maximizes upon the assumed
desires/intents of both the consumer user and the publisher. Until now,
there has not been anything remotely close to a guaranteed revolving-exit
door bringing search traffic back to a web publisher, fulfilling their
most fundamental desire.

A HOLISTIC APPROACH:
intent and content

Ours is a new shift in search results display, it is a new paradigm in
traffic generation. It’s an expression of our business belief system. It
is a new way of looking at publisher content, and the value it should
command, in symbiotic relationship to the web user’s intent.

The status quo method of search engines is to deliver information via a
webpage on their site. They are programmed to display their search
results, and advertisements along the side or at the top of their page.
This method has been in practice for many years. How search results are
displayed has been dependent on search engine assumptions that users
intend only to click organic and pay per click search results. Our fleeQ
search engine service does not presume similarly, and therefore, displays
differently.

Form follows function. We believe that many consumers may also be
interested in a highly relevant website result available for immediate
viewing.  We feel, given the opportunity to see a new and alternative
website that is contextual, relevant, and accurate to their search term,
why should consumers not be allowed such a viewing opportunity? Search
‘use beliefs’ are forever being argued, however, overriding them all, is
our simple belief that the consumer should have a choice in the matter.
Therefore, we deliver more substance to the user than the typical search
engines.

LIFTING THE VEIL:
Transparency is relevant

Our technology tracks the origin of a consumer search to the publisher’s
identifier, therefore, we ensure that publisher is compensated for this
traffic, generated through our fleeQ search tool, embedded in their site.
The publisher who directs this “revenue opportunity” (in the form of a
search) can transparently validate the actions of their users through our
platform. Our technology and search service tracks the revenue event
whether it be a click, the display of a banner, or the action of the user
to purchase from an advertiser’s website, via a third party. These records
and reports are freely available to the adUup publisher, unlike with
Google.

Creating transparency with a publisher is only part of our solution.
Publishers and webmasters have a variety of differing agendas. Their
motivation for an online presence generally falls into two categories.
One, being a profit desire, using marketing and technology to drive
revenue for a company. Yet, there are also others, who for many reasons
seek not money, but desire more recognition or exposure online. This
second desire is the more complex of the two.

Many want to share a message or seek to expose their business to those who
would otherwise never have found them with organic search results. How can
you deliver eyeballs to a message (in this case a website) that the
consumer did not anticipate seeing? How can you do this in a non-invasive
model, by capturing the moment of their intent to view something relevant,
the same as the search engine does when it delivers an advertisement
relevant to a search query.

SEEK AND THEY SHALL FIND:
finding meaning

Through adUup, those web users seeking relevancy in their lives (while on
the net) will have you there, willing and enabled to share your relevancy
via the fleeQ search process, over and over again. You will not have to
pay anything to the search engines. Utilizing our technology that
integrates search results from multiple search engines into your website,
when we direct a visitor to your site, you can effectively capture back
what is rightfully yours once again.

To learn more go to http://publisher.fleeQ.com

Dylan Rosario
adUup - Founder, Inventor, and President

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