Category: Media/Tech Business Models

Programmatic Needs Context

Today Digiday published a piece I wrote about the lack of context in the display advertising marketplace. Check it out, I’ve posted it below as well for posterity.

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Before the rise of programmatic buying and “audience retargeting,” most quality brand media was purchased based on a very particular contextual signal –- even if the market didn’t really call it that. Back then, “context” was code for a publication or television program’s brand, and for the audience that brand attracted. If you wanted to reach moms at home, for example, you’d buy Ladies Home Journal or the soap operas. If you wanted business executives, you’d put Fortune or Forbes on your plan, maybe with a dose of golf or baseball broadcasts.

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Google+ Won (Or Why Google Never Needed A Social Network)

google+Since the news that Google+ chief Vic Gundotra has abruptly left the company, the common wisdom holds that Google’s oft-derided Facebook clone will not be long for this world. But whether or not Google+ continues as a standalone  product isn’t the question. Google likely never cared if Google+ “won” as a competitor to Facebook (though if it did, that would have been a nice bonus). All that mattered, in the end, was whether Plus became the connective tissue between all of Google’s formerly scattered services. And in a few short years, it’s fair to say it has.

As I wrote three years ago , the rise of social and mobile created a major problem for Google – all of a sudden, people were not navigating their digital lives through web-based search alone, they were also using social services like Facebook – gifting that company a honeypot of personal information along the way – as well as mobile platforms and apps, which existed mainly outside the reach of web-based search.

If Google was going to compete, it had to find a way to tie the identity of its users across all of its major platforms, building robust profiles of their usage habits and the like along the way. Google countered with Android and Google+, but of the two, only Android really had to win. Google+ was, to my mind, all about creating a first-party data connection between Google most important services – search, mail, YouTube, Android/Play, and apps.

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Else 4.21.14: It’s (Almost) All Google

GOOG5.21.14Welcome back to Else – I took a week off for Spring break, so this covers two weeks of the best stories related to the work I’m doing on the book. Reflecting an increased focus on Google, this edition of Else is flush with Google news, from its purchase of Titan Aerospace to its unusual willingness to show us a peek behind the curtain of Google X. Google also had a confounding earnings release, took steps to consolidate power in the hands of its founders (again), and had an entertaining wrinkle in its ongoing tiff with European publishers.

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To the links:

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To Win The Newsfeed, Facebook Should Put Its Users In Control


Lost in the latest Facebook kerfuffle (if you’ve missed it, read this cheeky Eat24 post, and the hundreds of articles it prompted) is the fact that we all seemed quite confused about what Facebook’s newsfeed is supposed to be. Is it an intimate channel for peer to peer communication, where you stay in touch with people who matter to you? Is is a place you go to find out what’s happening in the world at large, a watercooler of sorts, a newspaper, as Zuckerberg has said? Is it a marketing channel, where any brand can pay for the right to pitch you things based on your stated or inferred interests? Is it all of these things? Can it be?

We’re in the midst of finding out. Of course, I have an opinion. It boils down to this: Facebook’s newsfeed should be what I tell it to be, not what Facebook – or anyone else – tells me it should be. If I want to fill my newsfeed with Eat24 sushi porn, then it should be brimming with it. If I tell it to only show musings from Dwight Schrute and  Marc Cuban, then that’s what I want to see. If I love what Mickey D’s is posting and want to see the best of their posts as determined by engagement, then Big Mac me. And if I prefer to keep it to my immediate family, then damnit, show me that.

If the cost of giving me that kind of control is that I have to see a marketer’s post every five or six entries, I’m cool with that. That’s what Twitter does, and it doesn’t bother me, it’s table stakes, I get it. But what I think Facebook’s got wrong is where they’ve instrumented the controls. Facebook spends an inordinate amount of time and energy tweaking a black box set of algorithms to figure out what it thinks I want in my feed, boiling an ever-larger ocean of content into a stream of stuff it believes I want. For reasons I can’t fathom, it doesn’t give me the chance to truly curate my feed, beyond some clunky lists and filters which, from what I can tell, are only good for blocking people or indicating preference for a particular feed (but not saying, for example, “show me everything from this source.”)

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Thinking Out Loud: Potential Information

o-ALPINE-SLIDE-PARK-CITY-570
Plenty of potential at the top of this particular system.

(image) If you took first-year physics in school, you’re familiar with the concepts of potential and kinetic energy. If you skipped Physics, here’s a brief review: Kinetic energy is energy possessed by bodies in motion. Potential energy is energy stored inside a body that has the potential to create motion. It’s sort of kinetic energy’s twin – the two work in concert, defining how pretty much everything moves around in physical space.

I like to think of potential energy as a force that’s waiting to become kinetic. For example, if you climb up a slide, you have expressed kinetic energy to overcome the force of gravity and bring your “mass” (your body) to the top. Once you sit at the top of that slide, you are full of the potential energy created by your climb – which you may once again express as kinetic energy on your way back down. Gravity provides what is known as the field, or system, which drives all this energy transfer.

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To Be Clear: Do Not Build Your Brand House On Land You Don’t Own

Too07(image) I took a rigorous walk early this morning, a new habit I’m trying to adopt – today was Day Two. Long walks force a certain meditative awareness. You’re not moving so fast that you miss the world’s details passing by  – in fact, you can stop to inspect something that might catch your eye. Today I explored an abandoned log cabin set beside a lake, for example. I’ve sped by that cabin at least a thousand times on my mountain bike, but when you’re walking, discovery is far more of an affordance.

Besides the cabin, the most remarkable quality of today’s walk was the water – it’s (finally) been raining hard here in Northern California, and the hills and forests of Marin are again alive with the rush of water coursing its inevitable path toward the sea. White twisting ribbons cut through each topographic wrinkle, joining forces to form great streams at the base of any given canyon. The gathering roar of a swollen stream, rich with foam and brown earth – well, it’s certainly  good for the soul.

I can’t say the same of my daily “walks” through the Internet. Each day I spend an hour or more reading industry news. I’m pretty sure you do too – that’s probably the impetus for your visit here – chances are you clicked on a link on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, or in email. Someone you know said “check this out,” or – and bless you if this is the case – you actually follow my musings and visit on a regular basis.

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What Would You Ask Sundar Pichai, SVP Android & Chrome at Google?

sundar_pichaiA week from this coming Sunday at SXSW, I’ll be interviewing Sundar Pichai, Google’s Senior Vice President, Android, Chrome & Apps. Pichai has a huge job at Google, overseeing the company’s mobile ecosystem, from hardware (the Nexus platform) to the burgeoning Play store (oh, and that little browser/OS called Chrome, to boot). Last year, he took over Android from its founder Andy Rubin, who has moved his focus to new (and currently undisclosed) Google moonshots. Android is a huge business for Google – more than a billion devices have been activated since its inception. And that’s well before markets for autos, wearables, and enterprise heat up.

The interview is in classic SXSW keynote form – just us on stage, with a room of 1,000 or so attendees from the festival’s interactive track. On a prep call last week, Sundar mentioned he’d be up for hearing from readers here and on various social networks, so I’m issuing a call: What questions do you have for the man in charge of Google’s mobile future? A few that come to mind:

– What is Android’s role beyond phones & tablets? Pichai has said Android is moving into areas such as the enterprise, wearables, and automobiles. How might that play out? Will Nest become an Android device? Will you have to join Google+ to manage your thermostat?!

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Buh-Bye, CableCo

chromecastWhen it comes to television business models and the endless debate about “cutting the cord,” I consider myself in the “fast follower” camp – I’m not willing to endure the headaches and technical backflips required to get rid of cable entirely, but I sure am open to alternatives should they present themselves. I’m eager for Aereo to get to San Francisco, but until it does, I’ve stuck with my way-too-expensive cable subscription.

My rants on cable’s products (here’s my favorite – still true after 8 years!) and services (please don’t get me started) are well known by friends and family, but because I have had no simple alternative, I pay more than $200 a month to Comcast, who announced plans today to consolidate its market by purchasing one its largest peers, Time Warner.

But in the past few months, a clever, $35 device from Google has started to chip away at Comcast’s grip on my family television viewership. You’ve probably heard about it – it’s called Chromecast. It’s a neat little hack – it looks like a USB storage dongle, but you plug it into any HDMI port on a standard flatscreen. It uses wifi to sync with your mobile phone or tablet, and within minutes you are watching Netflix, YouTube, or your browser on your television. It’s kind of magic, and it’s changed how we watch TV completely.

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We Are Not Google, Therefore, We Are

RubiconS1If you read me regularly, you know I am a fan of programmatic adtech. In fact, I think it’s one of the most important developments of the 21st century. And over the past few quarters, adtech has gotten quite hot, thanks to the recent successes of Rocket Fuel (up to 50 and holding from its open at 29), Criteo (trading above its already inflated opening price of 31), and, by extension, Facebook and Twitter (don’t get me started, but both these companies should be understood as programmatic plays, in my opinion).

But while I like all those companies, I find Rubicon’s recent filing far more interesting. Why? Well, here’s the money shot of the S-1:

Independence. We believe our independent market position enables us to better serve buyers and sellers because we are not burdened with any structural conflicts arising from owning and operating digital media properties while offering advertising purchasing solutions to buyers.

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A Big Day For Federated, and the Birth of Sovrn Holdings

LINFMSOVRNToday marks a big milestone for Federated Media, the company we launched way back in 2005. As you can read here, LIN Media is acquiring Federated Media’s brand and content marketing business, and a new company, sovrn Holdings, Inc. (“sovrn”), has been born. Sovrn will continue to build on what was FM’s programmatic publisher platform, a business based on our acquisition of Lijit Networks back in 2011.

When I returned as FM’s CEO in early 2013 after a two-year absence, it was my job to assess where we stood, and how we could most successfully invest our resources. At the time, FM had two distinct business lines: Its pioneering content marketing practice, and its burgeoning programmatic exchange. As readers of this site know well, I’m bullish on both.  I love our legacy as one of the creators of modern content marketing and defender of premium independent publishing, and I’m extremely proud of our massive exchange, which is growing like crazy (more than 90% topline growth y/y, and profitable). Both businesses have strong partners, strong people, and great futures.

So why split them up? Well, the truth is LIN Media offered us a deal that just made sense. LIN, a public company, is focused on building a world-class digital media offering, and has the resources and people that can take Federated’s business to the next level. It’s incredibly important to me personally that something I was instrumental in building finds a home that respects and appreciates its history, while at the same time desiring to invest in its future. That’s exactly what LIN is committed to doing. Now that it is part of LIN, the Federated Media brand can grow faster – and that means more revenue and opportunities for the partners who have made FM what it is.

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