• ONLINE SPIN
    Ad Block Is The New DVR, And You Should Be Concerned
    You hear publishing execs griping sometimes about ad blockers: browser extensions that strip the Internet experience of advertising, even YouTube and Facebook ads. But that griping's on the verge of getting a lot louder, because ad blockers like AdBlock and AdBlock Plus are hitting the mainstream. Think the introduction of ad-skipping DVRs posed an issue for TV advertisers? Wait until you see what's happening on the Web.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Apple And Beats -- I Like The Sound Of That
    When the Internet went abuzz last week with the news of the impending acquisition of Beats Electronics by Apple, everyone chimed in with their two cents. I was surprised at first to see these two companies getting together, but after I thought about it a while, it started to make more sense. I was also surprised, though I shouldn't be, about the negative comments posted by people in our industry who had to chime in with their viewpoints about the relative strengths of both Apple and Beats.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Just Pivot
    I'm not sure when Nike ceased to be a shoe company for serious athletes and instead become a technology company for average Joes (like me) looking to enjoy a health and active lifestyle. Perhaps it was Nike ID that first hinted at things to come. Or Nike +, Nike Running, or Nike Fuelband that finally drove home the transformation from Just Do it to Just Digit (sorry).
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Hey, Twitter: Stop Trying To Be Facebook!
    I am confused about Twitter's approach to try and be Facebook. Twitter's latest effort is the integration of photography in its timeline, as the company just announced in an email. It really offers almost verbatim Facebook's photo-integration. This comes on the back of Twitter's overhaul of its timeline, which now looks remarkably like Facebook's as well. So I ask you, Twitter: Why?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Don't Be Right And Don't Ask Why: Essential Ingredients For Building A Team
    Imagine the following scenario: You ask someone on your team to provide you with performance data for a project he's working on. He rolls his eyes. Or this one: you find a huge mistake in a report that's meant to go to the CEO. No one seems to know how it got there. These are not technology problems. They are not problems of skill or of expertise. They are problems of human dynamics, and they are the biggest challenges any team will ever face.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Digital Ad Fraud, Ad-Supported Piracy, Non-Viewability: When Will Enough Be Enough?
    You can't read digital advertising news these days without running into stories about yet another problem with robotic traffic, ad fraud, non-viewable ads or ad-supported piracy. Unfortunately, it's no longer the trades that are running these stories.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Attribution And 'The Matrix' Trilogy
    Understanding attribution is sort of like trying to sit down and watch all three "Matrix" movies at once. At first it sounds great, and some of it even makes sense. You get very excited simply talking about it. Once you go deeper and deeper into the topic, it starts to unravel and lose sight of where you started. As a matter of fact, attribution is a very important concept, and one that almost nobody fully understands. Sound familiar?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    The Golden Age of Instagram
    Have we been taking a certain social media platform Instaforgranted? Last week, a study released by Forrester analyst Nate Elliott showed brand posts on Instagram generated 58 times higher engagement per follower, on average, than brands' Facebook posts, and 120 times more engagement than Tweets. Although we marketers have begun to recognize the brand-friendly benefits of Instagram -- such as a less cluttered feed and a young, click-happy user base -- I confess these statistics were a bit jaw-dropping. The obvious moral of the story is that brands should be active on Instagram. Like, now. But maybe not for the …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Procurement And Marketing Go Together Like...
    Recently the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) released a report that updated research from 2011 on the status of agency remuneration by marketers. Soon there were many articles written about the fact that procurement is now in many instances the lead negotiator with agencies, with marketers playing a secondary role. Apparently this is bad -- really bad. Qualifications like "marketers take back seat" and "pencil and paperclip buyers control agency remuneration" were some of the kinder descriptions. But I have to say I do not agree with how procurement is being pooh-poohed.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    White House Big Data Report Raises Questions About Kind Of World We Want To Live In
    Big data is amazing. There are big data projects in cancer research, energy use, traffic patterns, fertility treatments. But so far it seems the biggest use of big data is to further consumerism. Thanks to big data, we are now meant to receive only and exactly the content we want, only and exactly when we want it. Every ad should be for a product we are just thinking we should buy. Every service should be tailored perfectly to our needs. It's meant to sound wonderful, but it doesn't sound wonderful to me.
« Previous EntriesNext Entries »