• Lauren (Zalaznick), Not Laura (Lang) "Blows" It
    That's what I get for sitting in the back of the room, tucked behind the video camera operator, and looking down  for a moment when a female voice rejoined Trevor Kaufman's quip that 90-95% of branded content "blows," with her own observation that "90-95% of everything blows." Turns out the blower was not Digitas' Laura Lang, but NBC Universal's Lauren Zalaznick. Hey, you can see for yourself, and you can fact that all the rest of my "raw" blog coverage of the Future of Media Forum at the video posted here: https://www.mediapost.com/events/?/showID/FutureofMedia.10.NYC/type/Content/itemID/1443/FutureofMedia-FUTURE%20OF%20MEDIA%20FORUM.html
  • Laura Lang: "99% Of Everything Blows"
    You certainly don't expect to hear that from a leading brand steward like Digitas CEO Laura Lang, but I'm sure she meant that the 1% that doesn't blow happen to be the brands represented by Publicis agencies like Digitas. Actually, Lang made that quip, when Schematic CEO Trevor Kaufman was pointing out that "99% of branded content blows." Of which there is little debate.
  • Hilary Schneider Shares Yahoo's "Diabolical" Plot
    Actually, Schneider chided her fellow Future of Media Forum panelists who have been discussing the DemandMedia model of sourcing content to people based on what they are searching for. "It all sounds so diabolical to me," Schneider quipped, adding, "There's a lot of goodness for the consumer right now." "We can tell, during the Olympics, what people are seraching for." So when users are searching for information about, say downhill skiing, Schneider said Yahoo knows to serve it to them. She pointed out that Yahoo also recently acquired Associated Content to help fill that demand. "We …
  • NBCU Chief Likens Video Sampling Model To Drug Dealers Pushing Addictive Drugs To Kids
    NBC U's Lauren Zalaznick, amazingly just disclosed a seemingly secret big media strategy that I've never heard articulated quite this way before. Tell me what you think about it. Here's what she had to say about big media companies marketing content to kids like a drug pusher marketing addictive drugs.
  • Fred Wilson Gets It – The Conversation Has Moved Online, And Brands Can Join it
    Noting how consumer lifestyles have changed, and especially how "hectic and full" they've gotten, and most importantly, how they are displacing conventional forms of communicating, Fred Wilson just made an astute observation that they are shifting to online forums where brands can actually insinuate themselves into the conversation. His example is that old school "knitting circles" have gone the way of the horse and buggy and are now are happening online in places like iVillage's forums. iVillage, NBC U's Lauren Zalasnick, pointed out currently averages about 20,000 "brand mentions" a month. "Think about it," Wilson noted, pointing …
  • Twitter's Evan Williams Busts Yahoo's Hilary Schneider
    Digital diva Hilary Schneider, executive vice president at Yahoo, was just telling us how she was using a digital medium -- the smart phone -- while driving around searching for a new hockey stick to buy for her son, when Twitter founder Evan Williams blurted in with a less than 140-character quip: "You shouldn't be using your phone when you drive." Busted!
  • Trevor Kaufman: Facebook Is Not An Effective Ad Medium
    That's right, Trevor Kaufman, the CEO of WPP digital flagship Schematic, doesn't think "the social network" is a very effective ad medium for a couple of reasons. One is that consumers don't really want advertising and brand messages when they are networking socially. And two, because the Facebook creators didn't create it that way. "Facebook was not designed to be a particularly effective advertising medium," Kaufman said during MEDIA's Future of Media Forum in New York this morning. "I don't think advertising was in Mark Zuckerberg's head when they made that up, and we have to live with that." …
  • Fred Wilson: Old Advertising Is "Dumb"
    Speaking at MEDIA magazine's Future of Media Forum this morning, leading digital media industry Fred Wilson, is calling the old advertising model -- and attempts to apply it to new, digital media -- "dumb." That's right, he is saying that banner ads and pre-roll and other attempts to retrofit classic advertising models into media like Web sites, are anachronistic. Instead, he says the new model is what you might see when basketball superstar LeBron James tweets about Nike. "That's the new way to advertise," he says. Digitas chief Laura Lang is countering that Wilson, and the other digerati …
  • Agencies' future focused on consumers
    Continuing on theme of the agency's role in the ever-shifting digital environment, a group of Madison Avenue executives on the afternoon's final panel pointed to a focus on areas like research and analytics, consumer insights and more consultative work to help clients sift through myriad technologies and platforms emerging as media outlets. Carat CEO Martin Cass argued that consumer understanding will increasingly be the key value-add of agencies. "You're going to see agencies much more focused on consumers and what motivates and drives them," he said. Providing that kind of deep expertise in market research will keep agencies relevant. …
  • Kenny On Video Content Explosion
    Behavioral ads aren't going away, but the increasingly video-centric online landscape is creating "a natural reason to go behavioral," according David Kenny, Former Managing Director, Vivaki and CEO, Digitas; now President of content delivery network Akamai Technologies. "This will change ads," Kenny said of the Web's changing landscape. "This will change ad models in a big way." In the next 3-to-5 years, Kenny is expecting a 500x increase in the amount of content being shared and consumed online. "This will change people's professional lives and personal lives," he said. Coming from my years on the agency side, Kenny has …
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