You could think of TotallyHer.com as one giant, in-house version of Outbrain. The newly launched site pulls the top content from a network of owned and partner sites, then mixes in native ad content. Other sites in the network act as farm teams for TotallyHer, which is what gets promoted by site owner Evolve Media. Hmmmm.
As global mobile traffic approaches half of all website visits, every company wants to be “digital first.” And, as @RandSchulman says in this article, because so much of a B2C company’s interaction happens online, digital marketing has become the central force in many companies.
Should companies rethink the role of the CMO in the organization — or maybe do away with it in favor of some new job like chief digital officer?
Hear from Schulman, as well as PwC and Camford Management Associates in Is the CMO Dead?
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I’m honored that a rather elderly article I wrote for Wired.com on synthetic humans is referenced in a book review in the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities. The article was written in the early days of computer animation, when “virtual humans” — computer-generated characters that could interact to external stimuli — were just beginning to be possible.
Image Is Everything is one of the first stories I wrote for Wired.com was about the possible that virtual versions of famous people could be used commercially without their approval — a notion that seems quaint in this era of cyberstalking and digital personae.
Here’s the official citation:
Johnson, Peter (2001) “Can You Quote Donald Duck?: Intellectual Property in Cyberculture,” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol13/iss2/4
See also an early story for ClickZ, Putting Virtual Humans to Work, and
Internet cookies are the Mark Twain of marketing: We’ve been hearing they’re dead — or should be abolished — since the commercial web began. At AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco last week, one speaker warned that marketers need to find a solution by June, thanks to browser makers making do-not-track the default setting. We’ll see.
Read it: Should Marketers Fear the Cookie Apocalypse?
PHOTO: Plutor
Smaller marketers, brands, and indie artists and writers can have trouble rising through the ranks in social media. It’s easy for their posts or pins to get lost. Pinterest now includes recommendations, the “people who pinned this also pinned …” information that can help users find new things to like.
This strategy is not limited to these two companies; I’ve gotten a lot of pitches in the last two weeks about corporations paying for original content to be published onmore traditional journalistic websites. And there’s a new breed of web publishers taking advantage of this.
Before you start moaning about the ethics, my journo friends, companies now seem to realize that they need well-written content that isn’t just advertorial. And hey, someone has to be willing to pay us to write.
I’m rather proud of this story, even though it’s pretty “inside baseball.” While the advertising technology sector may be opaque to most people, it’s huge and it matters. Please note the story elements I brought in:
This is a story that’s going to take off, I think. The market — and consumers — are apps-crazy, so quick-and-dirty developers are grabbing boilerplate privacy permissions that ask for everything. To be determined: Are these companies using those permissions, and if so, what for?
FTC Acts on Privacy as Rogue Apps Proliferate
Digital advertisers and publishers seek a better method of counting whether an ad has been delivered. Impressions served is the standard metric, and it’s based on whether the web server delivers an ad as part of a page request.
Unfortunately, with today’s highly cluttered web pages that render slowly, this metric doesn’t tell the advertiser much, as I wrote in a story about comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials (vCE), used by USA Today.
ESPN did something smart when it redesigned the site for its X Games: It used a mobile-style swipe navigation that it says creates 100 percent-viewable impressions. Read about it in my ClickZ article about the mobile-forward X Games site.
Good timing on this article, in light of the buzz Ford got this week for announcement of its open developer program.
I spoke with Patrick Hoffstetter about Renault’s plans. Hoffstetter leads Renault’s Digital Laboratory. Because I also cover digital advertising, I was especially intrigued by his mention of the prospects for creating what will be another screen to which ads can be served.
Okay, I know. No more ads. But still. Think about it. Just like search ads are so effective because you actually are looking for something and they help you find it, ads and promotions delivered to your car could help you identify local businesses or give you a reason to choose one merchant over another. Yeah, the Starbucks mobile coupon thing. Okay, I know.
Read the Q&A, it’s interesting!