Welcoming Ben Edelman, Our Keynote Speaker For WATSummit 2012

WATSummit 2012 is just a week away. Joining our already impressive line-up of speakers is Prof. Ben Edelman, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School to the Summit . He will be delivering the second keynote speech on Day 1 of the Summit which titled, ‘ Building a Global Internet Company: Driving traffic to your website .’ He is attached to the Negotiation, Organization & Markets unit at Harvard Business School. His active area of research is the exploration of the public and private forces which impact Internet architecture and business opportunities. His other areas of research are Internet Search, Internet Privacy Investigations and online advertising. He has found out serious privacy flaws in Google’s and Facebook ’s services. Ben holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a Master’s degree in Statistics from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard College. We spoke to him about his work, Internet search, the daily deals business and finally what he thought was in store for India at the onset of the Digital Age. Ben Edelman Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School. 1. Could you briefly tell us about the things you are are working on currently? I’m finishing revisions to a paper about labeling advertisements on search engines – what labels consumers can best understand, and how consumers respond to varying labels. It seems search engines could do more to help users recognize advertisements. I’m also working on an article about tactics search engines use to leverage their various services. We’ve all seen that when a user runs a search at Google, Google can direct the user to Google Maps, Google Finance, Google Offers, and various other Google services. But in fact Google has found quite a few other ways to link its services – techniques reminiscent of the bundling and tying activities that competition law often flags. 2. There are a lot of daily deals sites that have popped up in India. What do you think about the daily deals business model? Certainly many businesses find themselves with excess capacity – extra tables in a restaurant, extra time at a salon, and so forth. Offering lower prices on this excess capacity can make good business sense, particularly if offers are structured to attract new customers. But there’s also plenty that can go wrong. The consumers most likely to respond to a given offer are those who already know the merchant because they already go there often – the merchant’s regular customers. Offering them a discount is money down the drain – costs that drop straight to the bottom line. Meanwhile, deals services charge strikingly high fees. And requiring consumers to prepay raises myriad complexities – what if the consumer changes his or her mind, the services aren’t as described, or the merchant ceases operation? Then there are legal questions like expiration and tax. It’s strikingly complicated, and I don’t think deals sites have thought through all the details with the expected level of rigor. Last year I wrote a piece about various consumer protection issues raised by deals sites. 3. You have done a lot of research on Internet search. Can you tell us about your perspective on personalized search results and how search is going to evolve in the future? Personalized search can certainly be handy. And there’s already plenty of it going on: Search for “hotel” in Boston and you’ll get completely different results from a user doing the same search in Mumbai. When I think about search, I’m most struck by the immense power search engines have to control what consumers see, where they go, and what they buy. I fear this power can be easily abused – pushing consumers to services a search engine elects to favor, rather than to the destinations that actually best meet the consumer’s needs. But it can be difficult to prove that any such tampering is actually occurring. In the coming years, regulators will need to figure out what, if anything, they can do about this problem. Certainly it would be easier to detect improprieties – and easier for users to avoid them – if there were many strong competing search engines. But in many countries, Google has a dominant position while competitors struggle to get started. In the context of air travel search, US and European regulators have required that flights and airlines be sorted by objective criteria, not favoring a search service’s owner or partners. In other contexts, dominant firms have divested other services in order to reduce the incentive for tampering. These kinds of remedies could be appropriate in search. Meanwhile, any company trying to reach consumers faces some important challenges in search. If a user types the company’s name, will the company’s site appear at the top? That may seem natural, but it’s not guaranteed: What if a competitor submits a high bid to nab these customers? Here too, there are important questions of law still being discussed. 4. The theme of WATSummit is the ‘The Dawn of the Digital Age’ in India. Can you share your views on this with us? India is particularly exciting to me because India can watch challenges in other markets, and adapt its response accordingly. See a problem tricking consumers or overcharging advertisers in the US and Europe? A nimble regulatory intervention could make a real difference, and in India, it’s not too late to consider such action. So folks, get ready for an International perspective on the Dawn of the Digital Age at WATSummit 2012 and book your seats while you still can. Contact: For Speaker/Registration related queries: Krishney Asnani krishney@watconsult.com +91-9967674955 If you wish to be a part of WATSmmit as a Sponsor then please contact: Peter Kotikalapudi peter@watconsult.com +91-9819873875 Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency Related Posts Welcoming Parijat Chakraborty, TNS India At WATSummit 2012 Welcoming Narayanan Madhavan, Hindustan Times As A Speaker At WATSummit 2012 Mahendra Swarup – Chairman and Chief Mentor, Smile Interactive Technologies Group The Keynote Speaker @ WATSummit 2012 Welcoming Muralikrishnan B: Country Manager Of eBay India As A Speaker At WATSummit 2012 Welcoming Lavina Tauro Of UTV As A Speaker At WATSummit 2012

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