• ONLINE SPIN
    No, Henry, TV is Not Going The Way of Newspapers
    Last week, in a now-(in)famous column -- "Don't Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse" -- Business Insider's Henry Blodget suggested the television industry looks very much like the newspaper industry did in the moments before their businesses started to collapse. Henry's column sparked scores of response pieces in the trade press, blogs and on Twitter. While I think the world of Henry Blodget (and, full disclosure, am an investor in Business Insider), I don't think that what the television industry is facing today looks anything at all like what newspapers started to confront …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Social Media: 70% Hype, 30% Business Opportunity
    The last few weeks have confirmed it for me: Social media is about 70% hype, and 30% business. I mean that the majority of conversations surrounding social media center on behavior that creates page views but very little actual value to a brand marketer, and therefore little impact on the business of the Internet. Let's deconstruct my statement for a bit, because I know many of you will immediately jump to skewer me for this
  • ONLINE SPIN
    If You Work In Slop, You Tend To Produce Slop
    "If you work in [enter four-letter dirty word that rhymes with spit], you tend to produce [enter four-letter dirty word that rhymes with spit]." That's a quote I overheard from a renowned chef at one of New York's top French restaurants, where I once worked. To be sure, the quote included the actual four-letter word. I really like the quote because it's direct and packed with meaning. It's tactical, but also aspirational.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    How Networks Are Staying In The Ad Business
    The traditional wisdom has been that all the ad networks were doomed. That hasn't happened. Sure, the herd may have thinned a bit, but in my informal surveys of companies, I found networks alive and well, with the largest doing the best. How on earth can this be? Shouldn't the agencies, with their trading desks and technology partners, be crushing every ad network by now? Weren't publishers going to build private exchanges and cut the networks out? There are half a dozen factors that explain why the top networks are doing so well:
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Can Social Media Empower Victims Of Abuse?
    When the movie "Kids" came out in 1995, it terrified me. Not because Larry Clark's portrayal of a group of kids doing drugs and having unprotected sex was so disturbing, but because it was so easy to imagine myself hanging out with them. I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I went to a "good" school. And, like kids everywhere since the dawn of time, we experimented. We didn't always make smart choices. We often didn't understand the implications of our actions.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    How Do We Shape Future Media Leaders?
    The advertising, marketing and media industry is fortunate to have so many great trade organizations and lots of stand-alone charitable foundations focused on attracting, retaining, retraining and mentoring present and future talent. Like many of you, I'm part of an industry foundation dedicated to shaping future media leaders, and was part of several discussions this week of how the mission of shaping our future leaders is changing. I would like to discuss some of these issues --and, hopefully, get some of your feedback and create some conversations about these important issues.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    The Age of The Algorithm Is About More Than Ads
    Much has been written about the advent of the "math men" in advertising, but with the events of the last two weeks I think it makes sense to talk about the algorithms of social media and how they should be applied to more than just advertising -- also to content delivery and the overall consumer experience.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Why You Should Put Yourself In New, Uncomfortable Places
    Thanks to the continual spate of interviews with luminaries paying tribute to Steve Jobs, the D10 conference dominated last week's tech and media news flows. I wasn't there live, but I followed the coverage and watched some of the videos. My favorite was an interview with Dr. Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios. He also founded the computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology, the computer division of Lucasfilm Ltd, and Pixar Animation Studios (where he was partners with Steve Jobs). Perhaps more than anyone else, Catmull has been behind the …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Are Venture Capitalists Bad For The Media Business?
    Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), was recently quoted in an article saying that venture capitalists were the biggest obstacle to our industry. "Venture capital has supported and financed a bunch of chaos," Rothenberg said. Unsurprisingly, the response from the VC industry was swift and harsh. The venture capitalists argue that they have helped bring tremendous innovation to the media industry, funding startups like Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter. The problem is that these are not the only startups that VC money has funded. If you have worked at a media agency at any time over the …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Monetization? Screen Size DOES Matter -- Though Mostly Just for Advertising
    As most of us in the industry know, mobile Web usage hasn't monetized for advertising nearly as well as "on PC" usage has. Earlier this week at the All Things D Conference, Kliener Perkins' Mary Meeker told us that rates for mobile Web advertising are only 20% of the rates for Web ads presented on personal computers.
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