• ONLINE SPIN
    Can P2P Become a Legitimate, Ad-Supported Marketplace?
    This week I spoke to a bunch of industry professionals trying to create a legitimate, ad-supported marketplace using Peer to Peer (P2P) networks. It was an interesting opportunity because, as I mentioned to them, P2P is sort of a "dirty word" in advertising circles, for the same reasons that social networking is not yet a mature medium: the content. In social networking people are afraid their brands will come up alongside inappropriate content. In P2P they're afraid their brands will be associated with an illegal and/or inappropriate activity. The fact is that the P2P is quickly becoming a legitimate atmosphere …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    A Tipping Point For Social Media Advertising
    Last week in "A Tipping Point For Social Media Advertising" we began to explore the ever-expanding role of the tipping point phenomenon to tomorrow's advertisers. We focused on the need for advertisers to achieve intermediate goals of engineering tipping points for their social media campaigns in order to effectively achieve the end goal: having engineered cultural tipping points for their brands/products. So now that we know what will be required of tomorrow's social media advertisers, it begs the question: When will this industry reach its tipping point?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Happy World Internet Day
    Well, I must say I had no idea today was named World Internet Day. While we don't have the day off work, I thought it would be fun to pay homage to our way of life. Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Fiber Optic Internet: Yes Or No?
    "Dear Max A. Kalehoff: I bet you remember the first time you heard the unmistakable mating call of your computer's modem dialing into an ISP. And I'm guessing you remember the feelings of frustration that it brought too. Well, soon you're going to feel the same way about your High Speed Internet. That's because we're about to change your expectations of what Internet should be, with Verizon FiOS."...
  • ONLINE SPIN
    The Trust Issue
    Earlier this month came reports of a global study from Nielsen in which consumers rated Internet advertising at the bottom when it comes to trust as compared to offline media. Specifically, 63% said they trust newspaper ads, 56% trusted TV spots and magazine placements -- while search ads got a trust thumbs-up from just 34%, and banner ads were trusted by just 26% of the respondents. Online ads have one-half of the trust of offline ads? Wow! All this time we thought that we were all working on the worlds' greatest and most-loved consumer medium. Apparently not.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    A Tipping Point For Social Media Advertising
    A cultural tipping point, a concept given definition and made famous by Malcolm Gladwell's phenomenal study of cultural epidemics, "The Tipping Point," is the point at which an idea reaches a critical mass within a society, and in effect gains its own momentum. Engineering cultural tipping points through marketing and advertising has long been the goal of brands for their products. However, the new social media landscape has given rise to an interesting phenomenon. As advertisers and agencies rely ever increasingly on individuals to pass along their marketing message, the advertising and marketing messages themselves must now achieve their own …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Defining Catalytic Media; Beyond Standard Opportunities
    Let's look at some numbers, shall we? According to various industry research tools, approximately 40% of online advertising dollars are allocated to search. That leaves approximately 60% allocated to online display ads. Of that remaining 60%, approximately half is allocated towards ad networks. This means that about 30% of total online advertising dollars are allocated towards non-search and non-network inventory. That 30% gets allocated towards the portals, the targeted content sites and what I like to refer to as "catalytic media."
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Shaping Or Breaking Brands
    In today's sliding online landscape we need to keep a close eye on the care and feeding of consumers. What they say about our brands (and our clients) can shape or break them. User-generated content provides the online universe an even bigger microphone to shout with. No matter where you search, you can most likely find product/service reviews from people -- real reviews, not brand-biased reviews.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    A Compelling Pitch For My Attention
    "You have no idea who I am, I haven't taken the time to get to know you, and now I'm going to pitch you my client's product. Now, please write about it!" Sadly, this has been the spirit of a growing number of emails landing in my inbox.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Too Much Ad-Supported Media?
    With all of the funding from venture capitalists, and with offline media companies trying to build online media franchises, everyone is launching ad-supported Web sites. Of course, this flurry of activity, and competition, is freaking out some folks who have historically controlled the ad world, but is also freaking out some investors who are learning that there are virtually no "barriers to entry" when it comes to creating and publishing ad-supported Web content. They now publicly wonder if we are going to see this intense competition pull down online ad rates and eventually find that many of these ventures will …
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