As the web has continued to mature, online advertising technology has grown into a complex business filled with custom algorithms and real-time bidding. Over the past few years, ad server technology has become really good at focusing on serving its customers highly relevant ads. For example, let’s say you are searching for flights to California on usair.com and the next site you visit (not necessarily travel related) serves you an ad for Southwest.com. For ad servers, the goal is to serve you the most relevant ad to your specific preferences at the time you are most likely to make a purchase.

Ad servers are like personal biographies creating an online profile of your likes/dislikes and what you are most likely to purchase. The way it works is they take a look at cookies (Read my article on cookies that do not taste good) stored in your browser by sites you visit, then based on the cookies and some other data they know about you, a relevant ad is served. Make sense, right? Well, here is the problem, cookies do not talk, they do not tell the ad servers if you have already booked your flight to California, or you already purchased that new car you have been searching for.

There is a major disconnect here, the ad servers do not have the ability to know if you are still interested in purchasing the product they are trying to serve you. Here are two recent examples of where ad servers are clearly missing the mark and wasting advertisers serious money.

1. Recently, I have been scouring the internet for a way to watch the Orioles game while on the road. I researched SlingBox, the HD Homerun, and pretty much every other competitor in that space. So unsurprisingly ads started popping up for Slingbox on every site that I visited. What the ad servers did not know was that I already purchased a Slingbox (10 days ago). Thus resulting in hundreds of impressions wasted on someone that already made the purchase.

2. I consistently get served Comcast Xfinity ads wherever I surf, however I am already a Comcast customer. Again a total waste of impressions by serving ads that are not relevant to me.

So when are these cookies going to get smart and tell the ad servers I already own a Slingbox or I am already a Comcast customer? Knowing how quickly online ad technology is growing, it will not be long.

I recently made some major link schema changes to LocalGolfer.com mainly to better categorize golf courses through region, counties and cities. I knew prior to implementing this change it could have some major impacts on both my search prevalence and ranking. Unbeknownst to me, this change uncovered some interesting information about those pesky search engine crawlers.

Before implementing the schema changes, I added some error checking and implemented some php code to email me every time a user (or a crawler) would access an old page. The code would tell me, the referring page and the agent string.

Implementing this code allowed me to:

1. Receive notification if I had some remnants of old links on my existing pages

2. If the crawlers were still accessing my old pages.

Next, I uploaded a new sitemap which detailed every new page and omitting the pages that no longer existed and published the sitemaps to Google and Bing. 24 hours after the change, I received about 100 crawl errors, Day 2 about the same, now we are at Day 6 and we are still seeing the same crawl error. Interestingly enough the crawlers are not leveraging the new sitemap, and focusing on previous crawl history. I am surprised Google’s crawlers continue to crawl the same pages day after day even though the page has not existed for six days.

Crawlers use many different resources to navigate through a website, for example, they use old sitemaps, previous crawl attempts, or even RSS feeds. So just because you update your sitemap does not mean that those pesky little crawlers will stop crawling your dead links.

Yes, I am sure you hate passwords too. Usernames and passwords have turned in to a simply unmanageable, ineffective and annoying part of the connected world. The average person has over 25 different passwords in which they use on a monthly basis; how is a person supposed to remember all of these passwords?

Answer: They Don’t!

My father keeps a word document of all of his passwords and usernames (shreek!!). Yes, I know you are probably thinking to yourself: Neil, as a security professional how can you let your father do the unthinkable…pretty much providing the keys to the castle on a computer which is susceptible to viruses and malware. Unfortunately, I just do not have a solution for him. Of course, I have told him that he should not store his passwords in clear text on his computer and now he encrypts his secret password file, but still there has got to be a better option.

Right now at work, I have to remember three complex (14 character + ) passwords which have to be changed monthly. When I go on vacation, I usually forget one of the three….where is the security in that? I am pretty sure I can blame my progressing carpal tunnel on typing and retying these passwords over and over again.

Single Sign On is clearly the solution, but no one on the internet trusts one another. Also, every source wants to be the one authoritative source. Facebook won’t trust Google, and Apple definitely won’t trust Google – so what are we to do?

Ok, here is the solution….we need a non-profit, government supported organization to put this password crisis to rest. This organization would be trusted as the central authority to authenticate users (unlike Open ID), the single sign on solution for authentication across the web, mobile, and smart devices. Develop an easy to use API just like Facebook and Google has already accomplished, but make it simple username, password – authenticated! Get the big wigs on the bandwagon and we have solution and no more carpal tunnel ☺

Done. Now you only need to have one password, maybe two at the most. Who is in?

Now that I have to enter my zipcode at every gas station, it seems like getting gas is a huge hassle. (It’s the little things in life, right?). When you drive up to fill your gas, it takes at least five steps to go through the menus where you literally enter the same information every time you are at the pump. First you have to scan your credit card, next you have to put in your zip code, then you have to select the gas type, and finally you have to select whether or not you want a receipt. Do people really still want paper receipts? The worst part is you have to push the dirty buttons to enter in your information.

Considering that I make the same selections every time I get up to the pump, why can’t let’s say ExxonMobil use my phone’s NFC chip to know exactly who I am and enter in my preferences for me. Think about it, this could eliminate you having to do anything except putting the pump in your car.

Imagine this: You get to the pump, you launch your gas mobile app, hold your phone up to the pump, it would know who you are, so you wouldn’t have to enter your zip code, it would know what kind of gas you like and it would have your credit card information so you wouldn’t have to even take your wallet out of your pocket. This app would condense 5 steps down to 1 and you wouldn’t have to touch the dirty buttons. Brilliant!

Step up to the plate ExxonMobil, Shell, Citgo create a real app that is not just a gas station finder. An app like this would surely bring brand loyalty and a huge differentiation for the mobile savvy crowd.

As I am almost through the Steve Jobs Book, (which is by the way the best biographic tribute I have ever read) it is clearly apparent that Jobs never compromised perfection. Time in and time out Jobs would spend the extra money, time and resources to ensure his product was absolutely perfect. And when it wasn’t? He would kill the product all together.

Siri clearly isn’t perfect. I think Jobs would support Siri (and probably blessed the product before he passed), however there is no way Jobs would approve a multi-million dollar celebrity ridden advertising campaign for Siri. Anybody with an iPhone knows these commercials are a joke, Siri does not work as advertised. Samuel L. Jackson and Apple should be ashamed.

Check out this hilarious video of the comparison between Apple’s advertisements and Siri’s real capability:

In general I believe it is okay to bring a product to mass market that works, but is not perfect. Advertising that infers Siri is a perfect product is highway robbery and a true disservice to Apple’s reputation post Steve Jobs.