• Time For Adland To Wake Up To The March Of The Accountants
    Procurement is taking the lead in agency negotiations for the first time -- so brands, marketers and advertising executives need to be concerned. The involvement of accountants requesting endless averaged-out prices for deliverables that cannot be considered average will leak its way into agency rosters. It's early days, but do you really want to work with agencies you know and trust -- or those that have been selected because they have secured a great price on copier toner which is reflected in a reduced monthly retainer?
  • Twitter's Second-Screeners Show Love For Relevant, Entertaining Marketing As They Settle For A #BigNightIn
    Twitter is going from strength to strength as it positions itself as the channel through which brands can reach out to second screens. Follow the three rules of a unique hashtag, entertaining rich media messages and a target audience to promote to -- and the results will speak for themselves. Well, at least that would appear to be Domino's experience, which has had huge success from top television shows without the expense of sponsorship.
  • Local TV. Who Is Going To End The Suffering And Pull The Plug On These Pointless, Expensive Pet Projects?
    Financial impropriety is inconvenient -- but what will really hit the pet projects that are littering the media landscape at the moment are bad viewing figures. That's exactly what London Live is now reporting. There were probably more people on your tube this morning than were watching a flagship show on the new channel. So if nobody's interested and local television has to be financed by the licence fee payer, who's going to have the courage to call an end to this pointless, expensive experiment in how quickly the BBC can shell out money on no-hopers?
  • Wearables Heating Up As Facebook, Apple And Nike Get In On The Next Big Marketing Craze
    Logging runs, cycle rides and walks is so exciting a new area that Facebook has had to get into the act with the purchase of Moves, in the same week that we hear rumours of Apple and NIke collaborating for the future. With such exciting technology being so widely used, the advertising and marketing implications are very exciting -- from loyalty points earned through sweat and tears to offers targeted to those who are keeping in shape. Although wearables are likely to transform into our smartphones and watches, they are truly one of the most exciting areas in marketing and …
  • Facebook Organic Slashing Really Was All About Mobile Revenues After All
    As Facebook announces that the majority of its ad revenue comes from mobile, for the first time, it's vindication for those who have long argued that its constant slashing of organic results for brands among their own followers is all about mobile. With little screen space to play with, Facebook is selling the news feeds of its users, ironically often to brands whom they actually 'like.' It's a sleight of hand that hasn't gone unnoticed but appears to be pushing the social media giant to close the gap on Google for mobile advertising revenue.
  • How Does Adland Solve Video Ad Problems Like Facebook Auto-Play? Should It Bother?
    Facebook's service to allow selected partners' videos to play automatically in timelines not only flies in the face of its claim to be making feeds less "spammy," it also underscores the extremely complex issue of measuring video. Digital display has been ruled on by the IAB but video has been kicked into the long grass because it's tough reaching agreement on what denotes a video being either viewable or viewed. However, one potential scenario is that the decisions are so tough that digital marketers could give up and just go back to TV's reach mechanics to sell campaigns and report …
  • Who Are The Gangsters Now As 2 Sisters Food Expects Adland To Wait 120 Days To Get Paid?
    Vinnie the Panda is renowned for his gangster quips and veiled humorous threats, but what would Fox's Biscuits frontman make of 120-day payment terms? That's exactly what 2 Sisters Food Group is expecting a London ad agency to swallow as it seeks to replace MediaCom -- which, surprise surprise, is not repitching for an account that will require more than a full quarter to elapse between billing and payment. Hopefully adland will join together and let the group that is also behind Goodfella's pizza realise that this is a raquet too far.
  • Performance Marketing Offers Adland Its First Chance To Span Online And In-Store Retail. Time To Get Excited. Very Excited
    Advertisers and marketers may not immediately look at AffiliateWindow launching StoreWindow as a big deal. If that's the case, they're wrong. Very wrong. It marks the meeting of online and in-store marketing and advertising. That, my friends, is a very big deal and the brightest minds in adland should right now drop everything and start thinking how they can use this new bridge to span digital and physical.
  • Native Advertising Could Be Answer To British Brand Mistrust
    The UK public has been shown today to be one of the toughest in the world for advertisers to convince. Trust is well below the global average because -- let's face it -- trust in just about everything in the UK right now is at rock bottom. Whether you're a brand, a tabloid hack, policeman, politician or banker, you'll need no introduction to the low ebb public trust has sunk to. That's why native advertising holds so much promise. With the freedom to get over brand messages in their own time and space, advertisers can operate from within a media …
  • Twitter Wins Data Hearts And Minds While Facebook Becomes Another Greedy Google
    As Facebook becomes the greedy face of social networking, charging brands to reach people who have actively chosen to "like" them, Twitter is well positioned to be the good guy. Every announcement it makes surrounds how it is gathering an A Team of data specialists to help brands make sense of the channel so budgets can be highly targeted. It's the classic "Good Cop, Bad Cop," and the data insights it reveals should help brands crack the elusive challenge of joining in the background chatter that would otherwise fly by them in the Twittersphere.
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