• Smartphones, Mad Men, And The Decline Of Social Media
    Michael Ginsberg, the character in "Mad Men," has always been a loose cannon, and the fictional ad agency's purchase of an IBM 360 mainframe computer caused him to pull his own trigger. "The computer makes you do things," he claimed. He sought relief from the internal psychotic pressure created by the presence of this computer by cutting off his right nipple and handing it to his boss in a gift box.
  • In Native Advertising, Deception Is A Dangerous Game
    In a recent column here, I exhorted marketers to take control of the sales conversion path in their native advertising programs. I emphasized in that piece the vital importance of not ceding complete control and responsibility to publishers. In this companion piece, I want to tackle another storm cloud hovering over the native advertising space, one that if not dispersed, could rain all over the current parade of passion and dollars into the sector. Simply put, this column is all about the perils of deception.
  • Nothing In Life Is Guaranteed -- Except Media
    The current programmatic market is large and still growing rapidly, even after five years of impressive gains. It has largely been built off non-guaranteed or "remnant" inventory that publishers have put into real-time marketplaces, where buyers can use data to bid on what they want, and buy as much or as little inventory as they need at any time. It's a real marketplace, with shifts in demand and supply happening all the time. This model has worked great for the buy side and many tech vendors, while many publishers would argue that this new innovation has been neutral if not …
  • The Sounds Of Settling
    When a house gets older, it starts to make noises. Those creaks and crackles are not the sounds of ghosts; they are the sounds of a house settling. I am hearing those same sounds in the online ad world. A press release here, a news report there, and comments heard in the course of business, all start to add up. It has been 20 years since we sold our first banner and we're starting to settle as an industry. For all the talk about how much has changed in online over this time, the reality is, so much more has …
  • Publishers: Five Tips To Keep Zombie Bots At Bay
    Whether you're in advertising or publishing, scale is the Holy Grail. In a digital environment, dollars and cents really mean clicks and impressions, or traffic to your site. But traffic quality is quietly being degraded and devalued -- by zombies. That's right. "The Walking Dead" isn't just a TV show; we're living it every day. According to security firm Solve Media, just under 30% of all global display ad traffic is driven and maintained by bot networks.
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