 | John GaffneyJohn Gaffney has been part of the Internet marketing world since the mid-90s via executive positions at Perot Systems and Yahoo, and as an award-winning journalist at Revolution, Mediapost, Business 2.0, 1to1 Media and DemandGen Report. |
Digirant Nov. 10: Sign Of The TimesTuesday, November 10, 2009Apparently The New York Times hasn’t made up its mind yet about charging for website content. Managing Editor’s Bill Keller’s leaked speech to the troops last week indicates that the issue is still open for discussion and that the ad side of the church and state debate is winning for now. The ad state, undoubtedly, wants to keep as much content free as it can. If you don’t have to sign up for the bottom line P&L or report to those nasty NYT board members, it’s easy to fire off about The Times. [...] Read more | Comments (0) |
Game Changer: Google Buys AdMobMonday, November 9, 2009Consolidation. Excitement. Game-changer. Dominance. Welcome to the Google-ized world of mobile advertising. As the rest of the world was watching the company’s expected court filing on its digital book case, Google stepped out and bought AdMob for $750 million in stock. In the process, the landscape for mobile marketing is different than the one that existed Monday morning.
“This is the kind of game-changing event I’ve been predicting for more than a year,” says Jordan Greene, principal of mobile advisory firm Mella Media. [...] Mobile, TechnologyRead more | Comments (0) |
DigiRant: The Week Don't Want No FreaksMonday, November 9, 2009I love trash talk. Love it when an athlete can be so confident that they can tell you what they’re going to do before they do it. It used to be an artform, now it has been lowered to copycatting like most everything else. For every Larry Bird who during a three point content shootaround said, "I'm just looking around to see who's gonna finish up second," there’s a Larry Johnson calling out teammates on Twitter. C’mon man. Step up your game, playa.
When I read this morning about The Week’s gauntlet-throwing on advertising contracts, I liked it like I like a good bit of trash talk. [...] Marketing, MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
Friday Digirant: Cry, Baby, CryFriday, November 6, 2009Story of the Week: No kidding. A real iPhone app was launched by Spanish company Biloop Technologic called the the Cry Translator . The company says this ground-breaking application is designed to help parents and caregivers learn to understand their baby's first language - their cry. The Cry Translator involves a revolutionary sound analysis technology that quickly identifies an infant's cry, based on one of five emotional or physiological states: hunger, fatigue, annoyance, stress or boredom. These five cries are universal to all babies regardless of culture or language. [...] Media, MobileRead more | Comments (0) |
Assessing The E-Reader Battle PlansFriday, November 6, 2009It’s not a full-out price war, but the makings of one are starting to hit the e-reader market. Before the category spends its first competitive Christmas in the retail world, Amazon has consistently dropped the price of the Kindle as Barnes & Noble and Sony try to find a price position. With the discount happy mentality of the retailers involved in selling these products (Best Buy, WalMart, Target) e-readers could move down the price scale quickly. More than a few analysts are predicting a quick to drop to $100 by Christmas 2010 for the mid-line e-reader product. [...] Marketing, MobileRead more | Comments (0) |
Business.com Calls For Attitude Adjustment Of Social MediaThursday, November 5, 2009Maybe you don’t have to worry about all that time employees spend on Facebook. A new research report from Business.com shows that businesses and business professionals people are using social media for profitable purposes.
Based on insights from 2,948 professionals across North America, the study recommends that “current trends to restrict access to social networks like Facebook or Twitter at work need to be re-thought in light of the business value in such activity.”
That activity shows that webinars and podcasts are the top social media resources for business professionals, used by 69 of respondents. [...] Media, Metrics, SocialRead more | Comments (1) |
Digirant: Paid PatternsWednesday, November 4, 2009As my friend Ken Horowitz pointed out in his column yesterday, the patterns of the past can foreshadow the future. He was talking about the e-reader format struggles. I have some similar thoughts about patterns and paid content, but these are aimed at the future.
The current content landscape is brand new territory. Never has any business in history gone from substantial profit to complete inability to charge for its product and then come back again. Forget the time compression factor involved, the content business has had its entire business model melted down like plastic for action figures. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
Q&A With Pontiflex VP Evan AdlmanTuesday, November 3, 2009Ponitflex shook up the digital ad world in late summer with its study that showed marketers will pay publishers an average price of $2.27 for each reader they can qualify as a lead. With that as its business model Pontiflex has led advertisers to relevant websites, social networks and mobile apps, in the quest of connecting the right people no matter where they are. We caught up with VP Evan Adlman to talk about the cost-per-lead pricing model and other important issues.
Digiday: There’s certainly a lot out there for publishers to choose from in the world of content monetization tools. [...] Marketing, Media, TechnologyRead more | Comments (1) |
Digirant: Halloween WeekFriday, October 30, 2009I am a digital tree hugger. I believe that all companies live in the same ecosystem in which they all compete for customers and dollars. As in a natural ecosystem some of them dominate, some prey, some are eaten, and some disrupt the balance of the ecosystem by eating too much or causing disease.
You know where I’m going with this.
The debate about what constitutes unfair or unnatural ecosystem behavior is as old as the printing press. Lately, what used to be fair predators are disrupting the balance. [...] Media, TechnologyRead more | Comments (0) |
New Partnership For Real-Time BiddingThursday, October 29, 2009Add another term to the digital content and advertising lexicon. “Real-time bidding” capabilities have been added by inventory platforms AdMeld and PubMatic via new partnerships announced today with Turn Inc.
The process and the players in real-time bidding can be complex, but represent a new monetization opportunity for publishers. Here’s how it works. If a publisher uses an ad platform such as PubMatic, which has the ability to offer display inventory that can be bid on, companies such as Turn can provide the technology to compress that bidding into real time instead of the irregular updates that bidding now works within. [...] Media, TechnologyRead more | Comments (0) |
Digirant: AdTech RealityWednesday, October 28, 2009Back when I was a little punk Jersey kid and songs on the radio were more subtle and innocent than they are now, there was a song by Melanie that went something like this: “I got a brand new pair of roller skates, you got a brand new key.” It was hardly “rockin’ this party eight days a week” like the braggadocio kids listen to today, but I was reminded of this corny little line when I listened to various publishers and ad technology executives at yesterday’s DPAC conference. The content owners have brand new roller skates. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
Pride In Ownership at DPACTuesday, October 27, 2009Maybe the Internet content and advertising business is tired of playing defense. Judging from today’s DPAC IV event in New York City, the attitude has become lean and mean rather than serene.
At panel after panel, speaker after speaker the apologies for low click -thrus or recessionary revenue numbers went unexpressed. As Brian Quinn, VP and GM of WSJ told the audience early in the day, parts of his company’s properties are sold out for the month of November and many advertisers have taken advantage of front page takeovers and other sponsorships. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
Peeking Behind the Newspaper NumbersMonday, October 26, 2009Being an optimist about the future of newspapers is kind of like rooting for the Washington Redskins. Things are so bad that any news is good news, and when the bad things happen, well, they were supposed to happen anyway. So while the latest numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulation are hard to get excited about, at the same time they may be showing some promise. Maybe this team will only win a few games this season, but they have next season to look forward to.
Admittedly, these numbers continue to show an undisputed decline. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
DigiRant For Week of Oct. 23Friday, October 23, 2009After reading The Business Insider’s list of 22 magazines that are exceeding expectations, I decided to write a little rant about the importance of content as it relates to success. Wish I could write that. Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s World, Soap Opera Digest – none of these have Pulitzers. The only common denominator I found among the 22 overachievers was leverage. From Muscle and Fitness to Ladies Home Journal to Organic Gardening, these magazines combine solid circ, with editorial edge and tight or innovative design. [...] Marketing, MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
Holiday '09 Will Happen on Social NetworksThursday, October 22, 2009When times get tough retailers get social. That’s the main conclusion of Shop.org’s eHoliday Study, conducted by BIGresearch. It says continued economic uncertainty will bring changes in retail marketing and promotions this holiday season.
It says that “with an understanding that many of today’s shoppers use Facebook and Twitter regularly, and because these tools are more cost-effective than traditional advertising, 47.1 percent of retailers surveyed will be increasing their use of social media this holiday season. [...] MetricsRead more | Comments (1) |
Digirant: Read, Baby, ReadTuesday, October 20, 2009Let’s not lose sight of the most important part of the term “e-reader.” It’s “reader.” We love to talk about devices and speculate on future marker share and who gets exclusives and who buys whom, but in the end the person reading the content has to win. I think the e-reader business is fighting the right fight.
Evidence of the solid competitive foundation here can be seen in Barnes & Noble’s new e-reader introduced today. There’s enough compatibility with other formats to make it reader-friendly (you can even share content) with enough proprietary technology to let B&N carve out a brand. [...] Marketing, MediaRead more | Comments (1) |
Digirant: Watching FoxMonday, October 19, 2009Most announcements like this enter the endless flow of press releases about people moving from here to there, but this one got my attention. “Fox Filmed Entertainment has formed a new digital group called Fox Digital Studios (FDS), focused on development, production and distribution of original and derivative programming for initial release on digital platforms.” What makes this different? Well first of all it hired real hitters to run it. Roger Mincheff will be SVP of Branded Entertainment for digital content. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
New Momentum For Semantic TargetingMonday, October 19, 2009As behavioral targeting continues to be a game-changer for digital content, the words themselves have found their own advertising momentum. Semantic targeting has attracted new add-on technologies, new clients, new suppliers and a new respect as content sites search for ways to monetize their inventory.
“No technology is going to change the fact that around 50 percent of all inventory is still remnant inventory,” says Amiad Solomon, CEO of semantic web platform Peer 39. “And if you have fundamental problems like weak content or poor market positioning, no technology will save your business. [...] MediaRead more | Comments (0) |
DigiRant For Week of Oct. 16Friday, October 16, 2009Media, TechnologyRead more | Comments (0) |
DigiRant: Simplifying BusinessWeekWednesday, October 14, 2009In the absolute deluge of speculation about who was going to buy BusinessWeek (Bloomberg) and then what they would do with it, one big thing has been missing: Assets. BusinessWeek for all its problems, is still an asset. It is not the asset it was five years ago to be sure. But there’s still a lot of expertise on that staff, quality in its circulation, and compelling reasons to advertise to its audience. So without mocking the purchase price (anywhere from $1 to $5 million) here’s what I would do if I was Bloomberg: [...] MediaRead more | Comments (1) |
