SpectatorBytes

Upon learning of Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, very few industry people (myself included) were surprised that Facebook needed to acquire a company to bring in talent to compete with Twitter. However, if one takes a step back, this news should have at least raised an eyebrow. Currently, Facebook is one of the hottest digital [...]

YouTube’s recent programming and advertising initiatives are pretty exciting. In them, I can see that YouTube is taking steps to unlock the value of online video.

First, YouTube recently allowed one of its content partners, CBS, to use their own video player to broadcast “March Madness” on YouTube.com. The second was YouTube’s experiment with a [...]

Over the past couple of years, I have advised the digital companies with which I am and have been involved to minimize their marketing spending. Instead, I have advocated that management teams focus on product development and maximizing distribution, which I strongly believe is a superior recipe for success.
The list of digital products that [...]

I recently attended an interesting “unconference” organized by WPP’s Mark Read and Yossi Vardi in Athens, Greece (Thanks to both of them for hosting this event). After reflecting about the many conversations I had in Athens about online advertising, I thought I would start outlining my thoughts on what is going in online advertising [...]

Venture Beat picked an interesting story from Ad Age which outlines the challenges facing the online advertising industry (See Here) which outlines the challenges facing the onlineadvertising industry. Below is one of the most interesting statement’s in the Ad Age piece.
“The inconvenient truth is that for all its new-media spin, display advertising is “old” [...]

This was a tough week for online advertising given Valueclick’s lower guidance for Q208 (see below), Google’s less than stellar performance and even eBay’s cautious outlook for Q3.

Valueclick’s Guidance - Fiscal Year 2008 Revenue by Segment

Year-Over-Year Growth

Affiliate Marketing2(excludes Search123)

+8%

Comparison Shopping and Search (includes Search123)

+19% pro-forma

Technology

+18%

Media, Total

-18%

Display advertising

Low single digit increase

Lead generation

High 20% decrease

While Valueclick’s [...]

I have written several posts about the need for offering innovative ad solutions to brand advertisers. I wanted to share a couple of solutions for brand advertisers that two companies in our portfolio have developed (obviously I have a vested interest in the success of these two companies). Nevertheless, I think that they are offering [...]

Today, there was an interesting article on USA Today about the impact of DVRs on TV viewership (See Here). It seems that we have certainly been talking about DVRs and specifically Tivo for quite some time. Yet, as the article indicates, DVRs have yet to reach mainstream; penetration levels are hovering at 23%. This [...]

Recent report by Pubmatic (see here) over the past week indicate that online advertising prices are declining. This trend had already become evident as leading Web players announced their Q1 results.
The forces that have enabled the growth in advertising on the Web now seem to be working against it.
Direct Response advertisers have driven [...]

In an effort to increase TV audiences, the CW network has decided to stop streaming new episodes of Gossip Girl on the Web. To some extent, this decision seems to ignore evolving consumer media habits and appears to be founded on the hope that the traditional television model still works. While I [...]

For content producers and providers, the Web is bound to create significant value in the middle. Much has been said about the Web’s long-tail over the past few years, and certainly many companies are focused on the “head” since most offline models have been built around the “head”. However, the middle – which some [...]

Today’s major news headline is NewsCorp’s FIM sales reorganization (see here). While internal politics have been blamed for the changes in the blogosphere, in an strategic sense, I would expect the move to further help FIM built its brand advertising revenues. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Increases focus on creating “scalable” [...]

There has been some recent posts discussing the impact of the Web on other media. Today’s Techcrunch post on publishing and blogging is the latest example of that (see here). In my view, these editorials are signals that the Web is finally coming on its own as a medium. This got me thinking about [...]

Some interesting news came out GM today (see GM roars Forward Into Digital Ad Channels). This suggests brand advertisers are finally ready to commit significant spending to digital media. This is certainly good news for the industry, and in particular for companies that are creating solutions specifically designed to serve brand advertisers.
GM’s [...]

I recently came across an article in Ad Age that urged us to think differently and consider a scenario in which the Web is not a medium suited for advertising (Think Different: Maybe the Web’s Not a Place to Stick Your Ads). While the argument is well constructed, I believe the author may [...]