May 2013
6 posts
7 tags
“Marketers want simple. It’s time-intensive and costly to build banners of all...”
– http://www.digiday.com/publishers/responsive-ads-are-coming/
10 tags
When To Raise Money in Ad Tech
There are essentially two paths in the lifecycle of an advertising technology/digital media business when it comes to the big questions on when to raise money.
Path A is most common, thanks to a healthy funding environment that still exists for ad tech. Have an idea, raise some money, build the tech and go to market to validate via customer sales. The ideal scenario, which happens in the minority...
10 tags
What Exactly is Happening in RTB Land?
Last night, as I reflected on the flurry of recent news about the Facebook Exchange (FBX) moving into the News Feed, it dawned on me that you really don’t hear much about standard display units - good old banners - in the context of real-time bidding (RTB).
Even beyond FBX, the discussion about banner-based RTB has sharply declined. AppNexus’ latest partner summit was largely about...
10 tags
Will Ecommerce Drive a Wave of Digital Media...
Last year I posted a quick piece on the trend of big retailers and Ecommerce companies moving into digital media.
Since then we have seen things continue to play out with eBay being the most recent expansion into the market.
eBay was very visible at Ad Tech in San Francisco earlier this year.
One thing that is not discussed enough - credit to Terry Kawaja who has been evangelizing it - is this:...
10 tags
Digital Media is an 'And', Not an 'Or', Market
In business there are ‘and’ markets and there are ‘or’ markets.
I define ‘or’ as markets where based on the need the customer has to choose. It’s company A or company B. For customer CRM, which feeds into marketing, accounting, workflow and all other business processes you are either going to use Salesforce or SugarCRM, for example (after a full assessment of course). Payroll processing is another...
5 tags
Quarterly Business Reviews
This week the senior management team at Undertone met offsite for our quarterly business review (QBR).
QBRs are a time to review the company’s performance as a whole, KPIs for each functional area, the annual plan, priorities, challenges, opportunities, strategy and big picture ideas. Also, given geographies and travel schedules, it is often the only time our senior team can be together in...
April 2013
6 posts
5 tags
Apple - iPhone 5 - TV Ad - Photos Every Day -... →
I love the new iPhone 5 TV ad. It nails how people use it for photos all day.
6 tags
9 tags
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7 tags
Ten Random Things from Ad Tech 2013, San Francisco
Adexchanger’s Programmatic.io conference. From the venue (St. Regis) to production, everything was top notch.
Rishad Tobaccowala’s keynote at Programmatic.io.
Cappuccino at The Grove, 690 Mission Street.
The W Hotel and St. Regis have become the official meeting spots of Ad Tech and it was impossible to get a seat. Mental note to find an under the radar location for next year.
Tea (Schizandra...
March 2013
4 posts
11 tags
6 tags
“Twitter is best to reach large audiences and react in real time; Google+ is best...”
– Rishad Tobaccowala on use cases for the various social networks.
February 2013
4 posts
12 tags
Time: the Forgotten Native Digital Unit
Last week I met with Jonah Goodhart. Jonah is an online advertising pioneer (Colonize), investor (Right Media) and founder/CEO (Moat). This was the first time we met, and we hit it off. His company Moat is up to some really interesting things with respect to measurement and analytics.
One thing Jonah and I have in common is that we share a vision and focus for helping brands navigate digital. We...
5 tags
“If agencies are purely middlemen, they deserve to be cut out. Clients should pay...”
– Darren Herman, chief digital media officer of Kirshenbaum Senecal + Partners
http://www.digiday.com/etc/shifting-roles-in-digital-media/
Ironically, this afternoon I was trading notes with a social media agency founder. He was telling me about Facebook strategies he is running for clients that are...
6 tags
Mobile Advertising Frustration and Conversation
Gary Vaynerchuk had a good, short video blog last week elaborating on his frustration with a recent mobile advertising experience: namely, receiving a “roadblock” ad from Samsung prior to landing on ESPN.com. Check it out here (warning, language).
Gary is a smart guy and I think he articulated some of the challenges of mobile advertising well from the user perspective. Most notably that mobile is...
11 tags
Are (Much) Shorter Video Ads Native to the Web?
This is something that I have been thinking about since Twitter launched Vine. I would love some feedback on this thesis.
Are shorter online video ads native to the Web, and are they going to be the norm in the near future?
YouTube seems to be doing well with its :05 video ad format, after which it allows the user to skip or continue on to watch it. This creates a user-friendly ad experience...
January 2013
3 posts
6 tags
Starting vs. Scaling: What Do They Have In Common?
Starting a company requires, amongst other things: an idea, the guts to go out into the world and create something around that idea, the passion to attract a team to work on that idea, the leadership to bring out the best in them and a business model to make it real.
Scaling a company requires, amongst other things: a business model that is appealing to a much larger customer base, the systems...
December 2012
7 posts
5 tags
How I Work(out): The Six Minute Workout
I mentioned in the How I Work post that my dad used to take me to the gym at 5 AM in the morning before school. Working out has been a love of mine for a long time. Previously it was to be able to compete at a high level in strength sports. Now its to be able to remain strong and functional. This post details how I do it.
A workout for me has to meet a few criteria: safety (years of working out,...
6 tags
How I Work
Get moving early. This was drilled into me by my dad at a young age. If I wanted a ride to the gym, it was at 5 AM when he went so he could get a start on his workday at 6:30. Over the years I got an appreciation for how things are different in the morning. The commute is quieter and less prone to delays. I can do all of my scans of the trade and business publications and jot down ideas and...
6 tags
Download
What I’m…
Reading: I finished Renegades Write the Rules by Amy Jo Martin a couple of weeks ago. More than just a book on social media (although for that it’s a great primer), it’s about leadership, challenging the status quo and work/life integration.
Watching: I’ve been watching Superman (the originals) with Christopher Reeve. I get a kick out of watching them with my son, who is around the age I...
12 tags
Trend Watch: Retailers and Online Media
Retailers such as eBay and Walmart have been selling ad space on their sites for some time. Recently we have been seeing more retailers entering into the space and with greater sophistication.
Amazon is leveraging its powerful data across the broader web with an ad network model, in addition to selling ads on its sites and devices.
Today, Adweek wrote that Target is selling ads on site in a...
3 tags
November 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Part 2: The Mobile Ad Do-Over
I sent a link to the mobile post to Brian Morrissey of Digiday. He encouraged me to expand on it a bit from an advertising perspective. You can view it here on Digiday.com.
3 tags
The Mobile Experience
Lately I have been doing most of my writing on my iPhone or iPad. Partly because one of them is always within arms reach. But importantly, I have found that they lend themselves well to high-focus tasks like writing. One application (in my case, it’s Notepad), one task, no distractions. I tend to have a lot of distractions on a pc: email, instant messenger and browsers are right there, even...
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When To Pivot
In start-ups, there are forces both internal and external that can change the company’s focus, by a little or a lot. When direction radically changes, it’s often referred to as a pivot.
Typically a pivot happens when the company’s previous idea or business model was not gaining traction. So the founders are forced to change direction. There are some legendary stories of radical...
October 2012
1 post
2 tags
Social Algorithms
Kevin Rose asks the interesting question of why we move to one service to another every few years. I think it’s partly because of the new shiny thing but mostly because current social services do not optimize for relationship changes.
The only way to keep Facebook and LinkedIn up to date is to add new connections, delete old ones and create groups. On the latter two, it can be potentially awkward...
September 2012
2 posts
