Don Marti
Wed 18 Jul 2012 07:44:31 AM PDT
Advertising link frenzy
Some links that came up in a recent email thread on Internet advertising, and some more that should have.
Start with Charles Stross: The inadmissible assumptions. "All advertising tends towards the state of spam." (I would disagree with this as long as there are advertising media that can be made scarce and expensive. The challenge is how to make that possible. In my humble opinion, you can't de-spamify Internet advertising, and thereby make it valuable, without massive improvements in privacy tools. Quora thread: What is the percentage of Internet users that employ AdBlock Plus or similar ad blocking plugins?)
Good counterpoint from Terence Kawaja: The Golden Age of Advertising Technology. From the inside, it looks as if all is well. Local maxima or bust!
Somehow, it looks as if Microsoft, of all companies, is starting to get the online advertising problem. All I can see from the outside is a promising combination of Tracking Protection and other privacy-enhancing measures on the browser side, and utter FAIL on the advertising side. Anybody any closer to making sense of this? Or are the browser and ad tech groups so separated that it's pointless to talk about "Microsoft" as a decision-making entity here?
Do Not Track: It’s the user’s voice that matters
IAB’s Rothenberg: ‘Microsoft’s DNT Reversal Makes No Sense’
SOURCE: Microsoft May Abandon The Ad Business Over IE10 Fiasco (MSFT)
The Display Ad Market Is In Big Trouble
Enough about Redmond, Washington. No discussion of advertising on the Internet would be complete without some mention of the ad-infested Android platform.
Two useful pieces from Horace Dediu: Android Economics and The Android Income Statement
If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them.
Not all bad news, though: Android's Overblown Fragmentation Problem by Nick Bradbury makes a good point.
Get your head out of phone space anyway. Try The Phone Stack.
Some good discussion of that company your creepy ex-co-workers haven't killed yet. Michael Wolff: The Facebook Fallacy. "Facebook not only is on course to go bust but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it." Three follow-ups:
Doc Searls: After Facebook fails
Richard Stacy: Doc Searls, Michael Wolff and The Facebook Fairy
Benjamin Mako Hill: Why Facebook's Network Effects are Overrated
Robert Bruce says every company is a media company: Traditional Advertising is Truly Dead
Henry Blodget: Don't Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse - Business Insider
Think Different: Orbitz Discriminates Against Mac Users ... Just Like It Should Be Doing
Jerry Neumann breaks down the money in targeting: Your personal data is not worth anywhere near what you think it's worth
This makes sense to somebody, I guess: A Framework For The $10B+ Native Advertising Market. "Native advertising is defined as ad strategies that allow brands to promote their content into the endemic experience of a site in a non-interruptive, integrated way."
At least we have some promising news from the Journalism front. Frédéric Filloux: Lessons from ProPublica and How ProPublica changed investigative reporting. Just to show a good example of a ProPublica story: Inside the Investigation of Leading Republican Money Man Sheldon Adelson. Your winnings, sir.