• Woe the Digital Sale: Job-Hopping Blues
    Last week I found out that a person whom I've been calling on and speaking with about a deal for months at an agency has left the company. I know nobody else there and I dread starting over. As if selling advertising right now isn't hard enough. Any help? -- Salesperson from a large digital media company
  • What the Best Sites Know
    The good news: just as many RFPs are going out now as did last year. The bad news: the average site had a 50/50 chance of getting on the buy last year; the average site now has a one in three shot. After years of expansion, the digital marketplace is consolidating during this recessionary economy.
  • The Elephant in The Room: A 'Creative Stimulus' Plan
    Lame creative is the elephant in the room. No publisher or salesperson wants to criticize the agencies that are placing business with them. But experts who see a lot of creative tested know that far greater lift in results can be had from improved creative than from "optimized" media targeting. And a great way to optimize creative is to tailor it to each audience.
  • Do We Matter?
    Like most of you, I prefer to think that I walk into the office each day to do something more than just make money and pass the time. This discomfort with our industry's impact on the world lead me to ask several questions: How do we make the world better? How could we make a bigger difference? Most important, how do we ensure that when we die, our tombstone doesn't read, "He handled a lot of insertion orders."
  • Letting The Cookie Crumble Will Bake Better Creative
    Giving users the tools to choose what cookies they want to shape their online experience versus the option to remove them won't make cookies disappear, but will remove an ominous shadow our medium casts. Tracking someone's behavior because we think it's best for them doesn't even sound normal, let alone appropriate. And yet the benefits are recognizable to the user -- and as a market, we must continue to excel at producing offerings for advertisers powered by superior technology.
  • How Is Bond Trading Like Online Advertising?
    I was visiting with the CEO and the SVP of Operations at a large online publisher and we started talking about ways to increase revenues and efficiencies. The CEO asked what kind of skills are needed to best manage the online ad business and make sure that the revenue needle is pegged at all times. To my surprise and delight, the SVP answered, "bond traders." That got me thinking about what a great question (and answer) that was. And provided me a topic for a quick post.
  • We're All Fruit
    In the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" the father of the bride, Gus Portokalos, takes a moment during a pre-wedding feast to wax philosophic about the differences between the Portokalos family and the groom's family, the Millers. He explains that Portokalos means orange (like the fruit) in Greek, and the root of the word Miller means apple in Greek. The conclusion he draws from this nugget of Grecian trivia is that "We're different, but in the end, we're all fruit." Classically brilliant.
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