Gullible Milestone PR Person Shows Why You Should Be Skeptical Of Manufacturer Marketing

IPVM

Public relations people, even ones with 15 years in the industry, are regularly gullible and careless in what they promote. Here is a good example:

@milestonesys was a TOP 10 most popular video surveillance product in 2017 on https://t.co/QXXiGGnqwa ! https://t.co/dbKrG6pmAg
— Courtney D Pedersen (@CommCourt) June 7, 2018

This is ironic, since more than a month ago, we posted ASMAG Top 10 Most Popular: Luxriot Beats Hikvision And Milestone showing why it was obvious that the ranking was a meaningless gimmick.

Anyone who has even a little bit of understanding of the industry can see the chart is absurd. Milestone comes in 10th place being beat by, among others, these:

So Dahua's top product was a thermal mini hybrid and an Infinite Electro-Optics Viper was more popular than any product from global behemoth Hikvision. This is as useful as ranking products by drawing numbers from a hat.

And despite us sharing our explanation of the ASMAG ranking issues, Milestone's PR person still tried to defend her promotion of ASMAG's ranking, responding:

Asmag is clear that it's their readers showing interest, not a tested evaluation of products or analysis of business data. IPVM surely also checks its site stats to see which articles garner interest.
— Courtney D Pedersen (@CommCourt) June 7, 2018

So we are left with a choice: (A) ASMAG's readers are insane (e.g., they are genuinely more interested in an Electro-Optics Viper camera than anything from Axis, Hikvision, and Milestone) or (B) that page reads do not come anywhere close to reflecting what the reality is of what industry people want.

As for site stats, that is exactly why we would never rank any products or companies based on reads, which can obviously be impacted by oddities of search traffic referrals (i.e., Google sends more people to the Electro-Optics Viper page than any Hikvision page, etc.) which is especially important for low traffic sites like ASMAG.

Net/net - PR people, if you wonder why IPVM and other sophisticated industry people are skeptical of your promotions, this is a great example. Be careful what you put out there and ask yourself whether the 'ranking', 'awards' or claims you are making are legitimate and authentic.

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Israel Gogol

Disclosure - i work for the company that runs asmag

asmag has a little over 114,000 unique monthly visitors with ~1.5 million monthly page views, our traffic demographics are different than IPVM (mostly from Asia), but i believe these numbers are significant enough not to classify us under "low traffic" .

I believe that your understanding of the ranking is wrong. The ranking is not an endorsement or evaluation of any product, it is only an indicator what asmag readers were looking for in our product section (asmag has a library of ~2500 products).

In other words, this ranking reflects what our readers were looking for, if Luxriot came before Milestone it tells you that in my region (Asia) people are looking for a VMS and more people looked up Luxriot compared to Milestone or Genetec.

Maybe it is because Milestone and Genetec are better known (so there is no need to look them up) or maybe they are looking for something cheaper, that is something i don't know and do not want to speculate about.

in any way, i assure you that asmag readers are not insane, just different than yours. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you need any more information

israel.gogol@newera.messefrankfurt.com

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Undisclosed #2

asmag has a little over 114,000 unique monthly visitors with ~1.5 million monthly page views, our traffic demographics are different than IPVM (mostly from Asia), but i believe these numbers are significant enough not to classify us under "low traffic" .

It puts you just above "small fish", by some metrics.

Maybe it is because Milestone and Genetec are better known (so there is no need to look them up) or maybe they are looking for something cheaper, that is something i don't know and do not want to speculate about.

I think this statement is the crux of the issue. You are more or less admitting that you have no real understanding of what these numbers mean. They are "data", but they are not "information" in any usable way.

While you certainly should not "speculate" about what the numbers mean, it is a disservice to your readers to convert some log stats to graphics and post that up as "information", or in any way being representative of, well, anything other than raw hits. Spending some time analyzing the data, and attempting to turn the data into knowledge that readers can use would be a great value-add service.

As far as Milestone is concerned, retweeting this is indefensible. This is less valuable than a pot-metal participation trophy for an elementary school dodge-ball tournament.

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John Honovich

IPVM

Isreal, thanks for responding in detail. I appreciate the feedback. However, you are defending the indefensible.

The Luxriot / Milestone issue is only one of various fundamental problems with your 'Top Products' ranking.

Your justification is that this is from 'Asia'? Ok, explain why a March Networks ATM camera beat out everything from Dahua and Hikvision, the two dominant suppliers from Asia, in Asia. Or why Infiniti Electro-Optics, a company most have never heard of beat out Dahua and Hikvision. Do you think that actually reflects what is popular in 'Asia'?

I certainly can believe these are the actual page views on ASMAG.com but the issue is your company declaring this:

It's unjustifiable and the fact that you and Milestone's PR person can't understand that shows your lack of industry expertise.

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

The ranking is not an endorsement or evaluation of any product...

OK Gogol

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Lynn Harold

"In other words, this ranking reflects what our readers were looking for"

If asmag's readers in the Asia markets were looking for Luxriot, was there perhaps a popular and lucrative bid that was advertised in the area to cause the high volume of searches? In my area, when a bid goes out in the NYC area, you can bet the search volumes for the specific products that are hard spec'ed, if measurable, would exceed general knowledge searches.

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

I think the asmag stats are not worth too much.

However, assuming they are an accurate representation of what people are actually searching for, then they are at least a cut above the spineless, manufacturer friendly editorial content found on most of the pages.

For instance, here’s some especially cloying content, credited to the asmag editorial team, that might make even a Milestone flack blush:

New technologies and developments are pushing the security industry to change. Milestone responded to this challenge a few years back by transforming itself from a product driven to a platform-centric company. The company has not looked back since, as this bold move has enabled it to build a strong partner community and realize a greater potential for growth.

Notice how the intrepid and prescient Milestone responded years ago to today’s challenges.

And though Milestone itself has “not looked back since”, asmag is more than willing to, and proceeds to offer a sobering critical assessment:

this bold move has enabled it to...realize a greater potential for growth.

Ok, it’s enabled, but did they actually realize the growth or did they just get a greater potential for growth?

Of course, normal people when they read this type of crap don’t really try to understand it. Fortunately.

Its just a soporific word salad, existing only to plausibly frame and adorn the only essential word in the ‘graf, Milestone.

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Undisclosed Integrator #3

My wife, in an attempt to make her small home based business appear more reputable/larger/older paid to gain some followers on her instagram, 90% of them ended up being from Asia.

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Undisclosed #2

From Facebook this morning, Milestone is "proud" of the fact they ranked in the Top 10 of a statistic that asmag cannot fully explain the relevance of:

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John Honovich

In reply to Undisclosed #2

IPVM

And on LinkedIn:

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

Will Infinite Electro-Optics crack the 2018 top ten again?

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Sean Nelson