Archive for May, 2008
Earth to Online Ad Industry: Prepare for a Planetary Crash
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008Sometimes reality just creeps up on you and slams you with a 2 by 4, and this is exactly what seems to be happening with the online ad industry. Slowly, it’s dawning on people that you can’t run an industry on nothing more than hot air, whatever fancy names (”brand engagement, view-through conversions) you come […]
Make No Mistake: Microsoft Called Carl Icahn
Thursday, May 15th, 2008So what do you do if you’re Steve Ballmer and you’ve had it up to here with the juvenile antics of your takeover target’s board? You call Carl Icahn and tell him to go to work. I’m completely convinced that Icahn (who will announce Yahoo’s alternate board today) has already gotten firm agreement from Microsoft […]
Social Networking Gets a Much-Needed Downgrade
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008A blistering new report from EMarketer hammers a couple of much-needed nails into the coffin of social networks as ad media. The fact that advertising doesn’t work on social networks is obvious: users are too busy diddling around with some doo-dad to pay attention to marketing pitches. Here’s more bad news for social networking hype-meisters:
Revenue […]
When Will We Finally Abolish the Banner Ad?
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008Sean X Cummings, of Ask.com, writes a witty, well-reasoned article on how ad agencies consistently fall down when designing those horribly ubiquitous banner ads we see almost everywhere on the Web. According to Cummings, just about everything is wrong with ad banners, from their conception to final delivery. Unfortunately, he offers no real corrective remedy, […]
You Can’t Wake Up a Dead Man
Monday, May 5th, 2008I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of hearing about conferences where the advertising industry is issued an urgent “wake up call” to become digitally competent and leave its glorious but completely irrelevant past behind. But this is exactly what happened this week at Dana Point, as reported in The New York Times […]