Tag: Federated Media

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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Nearly 30 Years In Less Than an Hour

Pinch me: Last week I gave a “distinguished” lecture in Engineering at Berkeley. It was an honor to do so – I don’t really see myself as distinguished in any academic sense – and certainly not when it comes to engineering. (I do think my greying temples are starting to look distinguished, if I do say so….) Anyway, it was a lot of fun – in particular because my hosts asked me to spend a bit of time reviewing the past 30 or so years of my own work. Should you want to take a spin through the early days of Macweek, Wired (and HotWired), The Industry Standard, Web 2 Summit, my last book, the launch of and present adtech resurgence of FM, as well as the next book – well, here ya go. Bonus: I had a cold, so I was totally hopped up on Actifed.

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“Peanut Butter Cup Marketing” In A Few Minutes

I had a chance to stop by Bloomberg TV yesterday to talk about “content reachtargeting” and the larger secular trends driving digital marketing today. Here’s the video:

http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=B5NzV2ZDrdczexo184RPR5GsjTqwfwXc&playerBrandingId=8a7a9c84ac2f4e8398ebe50c07eb2f9d&width=640&deepLinkEmbedCode=B5NzV2ZDrdczexo184RPR5GsjTqwfwXc&height=360&thruParam_bloomberg-ui%5BpopOutButtonVisible%5D=FALSE

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Great Content, Meet Great Targeting (And Reach)

Today on the Federated site, I’ve posted a preview of something we’re working on for a Fall release. I’m cross posting a portion of it here, as I know many of you are interested in media and data-driven marketing.

It’s no secret that Federated Media has deep roots in content marketing: We re-imagined CM for the modern web eight years ago, and since then have executed thousands of content-driven programs with hundreds of awesome publishers, services, and brands. “All Brands Are Publishers” has been one of our core mantras since our founding. And each year we run the CM Summit, where the topic of native, content, and conversation-driven marketing across all digital platforms is dissected.

Back when I was first studying the intersection of brand marketing and technology – about the same time as The Search and the founding of FM – I started talking and writing about  “The Conversation Economy.” Its core theme is this: “In the future, all companies must learn how to have 1-1 conversations with their customers at scale, leveraging digital technologies.”

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Excellent Content Marketing: Dear NSA…

This short Slideshare deck, an extremely clever satire of the now infamous NSA slide deck, should be Slideshare’s marketing calling card. It’s a promotional gift to the service, timely, clever, and leveraging the product perfectly. If this ever happens to you, use it in your marketing!

Echoes of the Tide and Oreo executions that are getting such plaudits recently. Love it.

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The Full First Day of CM Summit, In One Place

Thanks to our sponsor Google, we got the full first day of last week’s CM Summit, featuring Fred Wilson fresh from the Tumblr deal, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, and about 20 speakers in between for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

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It’s Time To Call Out Fraud In The Adtech Ecosystem

A confusing landscape = ripe opportunities for fraud.

As part of research I’m doing both for the book and for my upcoming conference (the CM Summit, more on that soon), I’ve been in pretty extensive conversations lately with dozens of key players in the advertising technology industry. I find the ecosystem that has developed  to be fascinating, complex, and ripe with opportunity (and deeply important to the future of our society, not just marketing). I’ll be writing about it quite a bit in coming months. But before I do, I wanted to call out a growing issue that our industry will have to tackle sooner rather than later.

Just as in the early, wild west days of search (1999-2004), the programmatic advertising business – a multi-billion dollar marketplace growing faster than search, video, or anything else for that matter – is riddled with fraud.

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The Evolution of Display: Change Is Here, For Good

The first banner ad to run on the web – AT&T’s “You Will” campaign. It asked “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here?” The answer turned out to be “You Will…for a while. Then, not so much.”

 

Earlier this year I wrote a long post about the “death of display,” since then, I’ve consistently been asked about it, and in particular, to expand on my thoughts around display advertising economics, and the prospects for what might broadly be termed “independent creators of content,” or what I call “the independent web.”

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On Mayer, Yahoo!, and The (Other) Customer

Mayer at the Web 2 Summit, San Francisco

(image James Duncan Davidson)

I try to let big news percolate for a few days before weighing in, and it seems even more appropriate to follow that playbook when it came to the scrum around Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo.

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The Conversational Marketing Summit, Seventh Edition: A Searchblog (Deep) Discount

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

Each year at Internet Week in New York, I curate a conference on media and marketing called the CM Summit (video from last year above). Past speakers have included Dick Costolo, CEO Twitter, Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook, John Hayes, CMO American Express, Laura Desmond CEO Starcom Mediavest Group, will.i.am, and many, many more. We’re on the seventh edition of the CM Summit, and it’s only getting better. (By comparison, I’ve done eight Web 2 Summits – so this is the second longest running conference I’ve ever curated).

Speakers at this year’s event, slated for May 14-15, include the legendary Valley investor Ron Conway, the always fascinating founder of Huffington Post Arianna Huffington, and chiefs of marketing for Coca Cola, Nokia, Mastercard, and many, many others. We’ve got startup founders who are changing the game in media, agency chiefs who oversee hundreds of millions in spending, and publishers who are redefining our understanding of content. (And a few surprises yet to come…). For more, head over to the ever-evolving speaker page here.

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