“For the first time, beginning Jan. 4, innkeepers and hotels can list their URLs, phone numbers and e-mails for a flat monthly fee within their property displays on TripAdvisor so consumers can navigate directly to the properties’ websites.”
TripAdvisor is changing their model a bit. Hard to believe they haven’t been doing this until now.
Dan Frommer is 27 years old and works as a writer for a technology Web site. Frommer pulled the plug on cable TV in May 2008 and instead gets shows from the Internet via a Macintosh computer hooked to his LCD television. He can’t get everything he’d like to see, but he’s saved $1,500 on cable-TV fees. “I’m not going to let myself get ripped off for a bunch of garbage that I don’t watch anyway,” he says. Many of his 20-something friends have also pulled the plug. The next generation—today’s teenagers—will likely never sign up for cable TV at all.This is dreadful news for cable companies. For decades they’ve had a glorious business model, running the tollbooth that stood between you and the shows. Now the Internet provides a way to get around that tollbooth, and cable companies are faced with a dilemma: do they embrace the Internet and try to make money online, or do they fight the Internet and try to hold off the destruction? The answer is to do both—holding off the rising tide with one hand while racing to devise workable Internet business models with the other.
- Lyons, explaining the Comcast-NBC deal (via newsweek) (via mikehudack) (via xxxjustinralconxxx) (via evangotlib)
That’s kinda funny. It’s not that now there is no more tollbooth. On the internet it’s other tollbooths - and for better of worse, they’re also technology companies, like Apple, Amazon, Roku, etc. Distribution is still key.
“In some ways RTB may be a red herring that might distract us from the underlying goal of creating a centralized market mechanism that provides quick access to inventory that gets the owner of the inventory the best price for it – RTB could cynically be seen as a way for ad exchanges/hubs outsourcing their decisioning and infrastructure costs to others.”
The Real Costs of Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
Perhaps - but let’s not forget that this is a lot about agencies and the value they try to bring. And agencies have been badly hurt by behavioural ad network thingamajigs that were OK at best and a scam at worst. Having spent 5 years managing an agency’s ad serving farm, I’ve seen my share of networks doing nasty things.
Agencies want their strategic control over their customers, advertisers. But for data to make sense you do need to make decisions on each impression.
Real-time reporting is also not what is used to be. There is a number of technologies that facilitate real-time reporting that weren’t there (or at least not inexpensively) even a year ago.
Another great thought-provoking post by Rob Leathern.
“Mark Beccue, a senior analyst at Abi Research who studies consumer mobile technology, also has reservations. “What puzzles me is, what market we are addressing here?” he says. “I saw a video of using [Square] in a coffee shop and thought, ‘Don’t they have a cash register?’ ” Beccue concedes that the product may work for certain niches, such as markets or art fairs, but he doesn’t think it has mainstream appeal. He suggests that most small businesses will prefer traditional point-of-sale systems for managing credit cards, and that ATMs are convenient enough that individuals aren’t likely to turn to Square to pay each other.”
Technology Review: New System Swaps the Cash Register for an iPhone (via kevintwohy)
Oftentimes people fail to see beyond the first version of the product. What I like in this prototype is the transformation of a simple monetary transaction into an application that leaves a trace.
That application may eventually include a request for the payer to review or rate the restaurant, etc. So for that article to talk about how “the device won’t be sturdy enough in the long-term” is kind of ridiculous. It’s a first version. It adds meta to monetary transactions. And think of the advertising opportunities! It’s cool, aight?
“Imagine a world where only half of the visitors to FoxSports.com had watched a sporting event in the past week, or where students comprised less than 5% of visitors to MTV.com.”
That’s going to be interesting.
“With a lot of prodding from the Federal Trade Commission, the Internet advertising industry has committed to telling Web site users about how they collect and use data to customize the ads they display. And it has agreed to find a more prominent and clear way to do this than the cryptic privacy policies you can find if you click a tiny link at the bottom of many Web pages.”- Seeking a Symbol for ‘This Ad Knows About You’ - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Good idea but let’s think here. An agency runs ads on many, many sites some of which are individual, direct buys while others are network buys. In some cases ad networks collect data and target, in some they don’t. The agency typically collects data and may target as well. The icon should include privacy info from both - but how can this be managed? My gut feeling is that everyone will just slap the “we do everything” icon on the ads and the icon itself will lose its meaning. But this is still a step in the right direction.
The best newspapers have always held up a mirror to their communities. Now they can offer a digital place for their readers to congregate and talk. And just as we have seen different models of payment for TV as choice has increased and new providers have become involved, I believe we will see the same with news. We could easily see free access for mass-market content funded from advertising alongside the equivalent of subscription and pay-for-view for material with a niche readership.I certainly don’t believe that the Internet will mean the death of news. Through innovation and technology, it can endure with newfound profitability and vitality. Video didn’t kill the radio star. It created a whole new additional industry.
Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers - WSJ.com
It may very will be that new ways of consuming online content will bring a new life to advertising. One of the biggest problems with online is lack of context — but consuming a magazine on a digital tablet of sorts may bring context, reduce content ADD, and even bring some richness to formats (ex. size).
Over at the London Newcastle project space until tomorrow is this exhibition, which showcases Daniele Tamagni’s latest book ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’. The book seeks both to explore and to celebrate the fast-spreading fashion wave that has hit Congo. The phenomenon sees mostly the men of Congo sport Dandy-esque, bourgeois, or 50’s-gangster outfits, each complete with contemporary flair (and color!).
“The new IAB audit will go a long way to standardize the industry. An overwhelming amount of impressions are audited throughout the web, and verification systems will need to help the ecosystem and not hurt the process. According to a survey Dan initiated, “Ad Ops is 50% more complex than it was 3 years ago”. Fragmentation is out of control right now because of the different sites and structure in the marketplace. While innovation and growth are not slowing down, the largest concern for media companies is “Inventory and Yield Management”. A close second is “Billing Discrepancies.””
“Ad Ops is 50% more complex than it was 3 years ago”- IAB Ad Operations Summit | Operative Blog
What an exciting year 2010 will be. Ad exchanges, data decoupled from media context, real time bidding… Publishers trying to figure out what to do with ad networks… Ad networks trying to figure out what it is that they’ll be selling… Agencies trying to make sense of data they’re collecting… And that’s all before even thinking about formats and experiences that need to be delivered to brands.
Advertising has never been this complex.
Yahoo Rebrands Its Right Media Exchange as PremiumMove Hopes to Capitalize on Agency Dollars Entering Exchanges, Shed Bad Rap of Ad Networks
Digital: Yahoo Rebrands Its Right Media Exchange as Premium - Advertising Age - Digital
I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone there for months. You can’t leave a phone message. Emails go unanswered. Forms on web site as well. Emailing the top guy through LinkedIn didn’t help either.
Sorry Yahoo, but as far as I’m concerned, rebranding RightMedia as Premium will not help you at this pace.