Month: March 2010

Monday’s Signal round up is light. The news was a bit boring over the weekend, and I’m OK with that. We all watched the Oscars and enjoyed the suspense of disbelief. I tweeted that it feels like, as a culture, we’re closing in on One Big Mass Media Event each month. Oscars, Super Bowl, New Year’s Eve….What’s the next one?

Meanwhile, I am doing a lot of writing/producing right now. The theme for Web 2 this year is really, really interesting (it centers on points of control and strategy across the Internet), and we’re also a few days away from unveiling the new CM Summit site (the theme this year is “Marketing in Real Time” – and the speakers are extraordinary). Not to mention some deep stuff I’m working on for FM and the future of its business (off to NYC this week for more on that). Oh, and yeah, I want to update that Database of Intentions post I did last Friday. Lots of great input from all of you – in comments, Facebook, Twitter – and I’ve decided that for sure, we need to add a Signal for Commerce. Health, Music, others – I am not sure about yet. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, the links I did find worth digging into over the weekend:

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(image) Today I’m not going to write a piece and then append links. You’ve been giving me a lot of feedback, and you miss my in depth stuff. Honestly, I’m doing a lot more of it – both recently and in the intentional near future. Much of it has been at the top of Signal pieces. But Fridays are different, it’s when I will write the equivalent of a weekly column. I have a piece in me that will come, ideally, after this round up post. Meanwhile, as I perused the news of the last day, I was struck with how much of it involved Google, and the pure breadth that involvement spanned. Behold, Signal, the at-least-half Google edition:

Google Makes A Bid For More Premium Display Dollars With ‘Above The Fold’ Ads (PaidContent) Look, publishers, one chip at a time, Google is doing stuff that means you have to raise your bar. Sell stuff they can’t. If you want tips, email me.

Stars make search more personal (Google Blog) Google is adding a star rating system to its search results. Amazon, anyone? or Twitter?

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Today will be light, I’m preparing for a talk at the Omniture Summit. Outside my window are majestic peaks capped in snow, it’s hard to be here and not even have time to go outside, much less hit the slopes. But time is precious, so let’s get to the news of the past 24 hours:

Apple Eyes HTC in Latest Patent Lawsuit (Mashable) Unquestionably the biggest news of the past day, and another salvo in the ongoing war for control of the mobile marketplace. Apple v. Google is starting to make Apple v. Microsoft or Microsoft v. Google look like small stakes. Sure, Apple sued HTC, but HTC makes Google’s most popular Android phones. It’s something of a proxy.

Facebook Analytics War Heats Up (ClickZ) Announced here at the Omniture Summit, a deal between Facebook and Omniture to help marketers leverage Facebook’s advertising platform. More also here: Facebook And Omniture Deepen Their Ties For Analytics And Marketing

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Off to Salt Lake later today for the Omniture Summit. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time studying marketing platforms of one kind or another, and will be spending a lot more time on it in the future. I’ve got a few theories as to where they’re headed, and the role technology plays in the future of marketing. What I find important about tools like Omniture is that they allow marketers to act like true publishers online (among other things of course). More on that in coming Signals. Today, however, is a bevy of shorter items. To wit:

DSPs Stir Up Drama (MediaWeek) Along the lines of my ongoing fascination with platforms. “Demand side platforms” are created by agencies looking to consolidate buying power and add their own value on top. Premium publishers don’t like them much. From the piece: “DSPs, such as VivaKi (Publicis) and Cadreon (IPG), were a hot topic last week at the Interactive Advertising Bureau annual confab in Carlsbad, Calif., with publisher sentiments ranging from wariness to downright paranoia. And conversations with publishers revealed a sentiment that premium sites should opt out of selling this way. Said Brian Quinn, vp/gm, ad sales for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network: “If people want to buy from us, we want them to call us.” On the flip side, many agency execs doubt that publishers can hold such a tough stance as online buying becomes more automated.”

I’m going to go back to Chicago and New York in the coming two weeks to investigate this and form a stronger POV.

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Consider this the *early* Monday Signal, as I’m already deep in writing this morning, then off to staff meetings the rest of the day. So these are notes from my weekend readings, for the most part. Besides a rant on the iPad that I wrote in something of a hurry (and elicited a very strong response, I’ll admit), here’s what I found interesting, and why:

Redrawing the Route to Online Privacy (NYT) If you are in marketing, you should read this. From it: “….the next round of online privacy regulation needs to proceed carefully, policy experts warn. They say that online data collection and analysis is an economic imperative, and that the Internet industry of the future will involve adding value to the free flow of information — much of it created by individuals and their browsing activity.” And if you’re not sure privacy is a big deal, please also read The Eternal Value of Privacy (Bruce Schneier) As I’ve said before, I don’t think we as a society have had a full throated conversation about this topic, and we’re heading into a potential privacy pileup that could retard all of our growth – the marketing industry’s certainly, but also the breadth and depth of services that the web can deliver to us overall. This will get far more complicated before it resolves.

The synaptic fluid of social business (Anne McCrossan – Visceral Business) Two weeks, old, but worth a read. Inspired by a debate about private communities, but I like this post for the last paragraph: “Old business models are yielding fewer returns. Generative listening is an antidote to the velocity of today’s overloaded information flows. The action potential contained within committed, visceral and trustworthy human relationships, that’s at the heart of the social connections, has never been more important. It’s the synaptic fluid of social business.”

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