• Ed:Blog -- The 'Following' Day
    Few statements about the power of social media could have been more impactful than the one made by the State Dept. to Twitter. The microblogging service was asked by U.S. government officials not to go down for maintenance as it had planned, because people protesting in Iran were relying on tweets to inform the outside world. Overnight, all of the arguments and silly rants about how Twitter was a vehicle for navel gazing and mundane reports, a cocktail party where everyone was shouting and nobody was listening, seemed to fall away. Evan Williams and Biz Stone could harldy have asked …
  • Moving Units
    In the nascent field of mobile-phone marketing, most of the early experiments have come from consumer marketers like Pepsi and Visa. But software giant Microsoft recently proved that mobile phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys can bring tremendous payoff in business-to-business campaigns, with exponentially higher engagement rates than online alone.
  • Behind the Numbers: Making Last-Click Assumptions
    You know the saying about assumptions -- they make an ... This is especially true in online advertising, where marketers and publishers have relied on the idea that the final ad a consumer sees before clicking the buy button is the most important marketing message of all.
  • Video Focus: Pre-Rolling the Dice
    The promise of online video - and the pay-offThe promise of online video ad revenue has proven elusive for all but the largest Web publishers. Smaller to midsize sites have had little patience with video providers as they've struggled with bandwidth, expensive setup and storage, unimpressive roi and insufficient marketing efforts that failed to gain traction and critical mass.Today, costs of bandwidth and storage have fallen to the extent that video is an expected part of the user experience. With more eyeballs come more advertisers, and pre/post-roll video ads, rich media overlays, product placements, and branded viral video applications are …
  • Metrics Focus: Bigger Is Actually Better
    Resist commoditizing your inventoryAt the IAB conference in February, some speakers took direct aim at companies that - in part - provide the "science" behind display advertising. Multiple speakers argued that, in our industry, too much attention is paid to science at the expense of creativity, or the "art," of advertising. I agree that our industry has made creativitya sacrificial lamb to metrics, which many equate to profit. But, there is more to this story.I consider myself an inventory expert. I can say with a great deal of confidence that interactive inventory supply is outstripping demand 10-to-1. This in …
  • Logging In: Have It Your Way
    New news versus old news A bright media analyst recently asked me, “Sometimes I think The New York Times’ strategy is to be the last one standing. All the other newspapers are cratering. Someone has to survive. Makes sense, no?” No.It may be the strategy the paper is hoping for, but it is no strategy because the very premise of the observation is wrong. It assumes that there is something called “online newspapers,” and that a “newspaper” must survive. It confuses presentation (a fixed thing with sections and subsections and articles) and distribution (a fixed thing delivered to your door), …
  • Industry Watch: Marketing With All the Frills
    Lingerie makers ask women what they really want.
  • Market Focus: Band of Hermanos
    Amid the general downturn of everything, here's some good news: Hispanics rocketed ticket sales of the film "Fast and Furious" so high on its opening weekend that "Variety" noted the trend. Hispanics were 46 percent of the audience, "Variety" reported, for a domestic opening of $72.5 million, second only to "The Dark Knight." The editor of the Spanish-language daily "El Diario La Prensa" was swept up in incredulous media interviews because the paper's circulation actually grew during two of the past three years. And Univision says it's seeing double-digit sales growth for marketers who advertise to Hispanics.
  • Web U: Learning to Crawl First
    Social media's not quite ready to run.
  • 5 questions for Sasha Pasulka
    Evil Beet Gossip founder and head writer Sasha Pasulka represents a growing number of micropublishing moguls who are boldly reshaping media in their own image. A longtime overachiever, Pasulka is driven by a desire to have her voice heard (and one “heart-wrenching break-up.”) As a result, in less than three years, celebrity gossip site Evil Beet has carved out an audience of roughly 3 million devoted readers, and Pasulka now aims to repeat that success with Zelda Lily — a new blog venture focused on women’s and feminist issues. As a member of the new media establishment, we wanted to …
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