Tag Archives: advertising Blog

Mobile Rising

As if we needed more proof that the world has gone mobile, FB ended its desktop advertising platform. The numbers in this article paint a clear picture of why. http://cnb.cx/1Wl0ShB

What should we do in the face of the mobile juggernaut? Create a separate mobile website? How about an app? You can avoid the cost and hassle of both these options by converting your existing site to a responsive design. Very simply, responsive design uses simple browser technology to automatically reconfigure a typical website based on the size of the screen being used to view it. In other words, responsive websites look great on big desktop screens, little phones, and everything else in between.

Going responsive may require redesigning your existing web presence. Still, the benefits can be huge when considering how many people access the web and email via smartphones today. And responsive is far less costly than developing an app or separate mobile site. Also, going responsive would be a good reason to convert to WordPress, the free, open-source platform for web development that’s become so popular. Most WordPress themes are responsive right out of the box. Plus, you’ll get benefits like customizability, search engine optimization, and a plugin architecture that provides a world of added features, all of which come with WordPress.

Some Trends to Watch in Digital Media

The twin forces of mobile and social are creating changes across the board for online businesses.  While it can appear overwhelming, there are opportunities if we grasp the trends and develop plans to position us “on the wave.” Here are five interesting trends that will continue to grow and, as a result, change things in ways that require us to adapt as the digital world speeds on further.

We are all simultaneously creating, being disrupted by and exploiting an incredible array of changes in the way our digital world works. While these shifts can sometimes seem overwhelming because they are proliferating and accelerating so fast, their broad themes can be simplified to help us understand their underlying meaning.

  1. Multi-Screen Proliferation
  2. Advertising Precision
  3. Accelerating Automation
  4. Interruptive to Native
  5. Static to Real-Time

Read full article: http://linkd.in/18e9HAo

Why Facebook Can’t Be Google

Facebook’s recent privacy policy woes stem from a fundamental flaw in understanding its own platform, as an excellent post by blogger Adam Fields points out. Though phenomenally popular, FB needs a business model. Their hope, like Google’s, is to leverage the data they accumulate from their huge base of users to make money selling advertising. However, these users expect they can trust FB to keep their data private — or at least to use it only in ways they approve. Additionally, users want control over the data they provide, and they want those controls to be easy to use and stable in the sense that the privacy policy doesn’t change every few months.

The fact that FB wants to make users’ data more publicly available, and therefore more valuable to advertisers, forms the basis of the conflict they’ve created with their users. The crux is that FB’s data is social while Google’s is public, and public data is more useful when more people know about it. Social data, however, inherently has much less reach because its purpose is not for widespread consumption but to serve a limited social circle.

From Fields’ post:

“Social sharing isn’t the same as public sharing. When I write something in a public forum, I want as many people as possible to read it. In that kind of forum, Google can make more money if more people see it, as can Facebook (which is why Facebook is trying to turn its entire platform into a more public one). This is at odds with what the users want for social, which is controlled sharing among a very small group. There is certainly an aspect of making new friends and extending one’s social circle outwards, but the object here is generally to share only inside that circle. People tend to resist being forced or coerced by the platform to share more widely.”

Hijacking user data appears to be a bad strategy for FB unless it can persuade users to give up their current ideas about privacy. And just as FB can never be Google, Google will find it difficult to become a social platform like FB because the nature of the data at the heart of each platform is different.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/bOnk5t

Cablevision-ABC Standoff a Result of Shifting Audiences

The recent blackout of ABC’s programming in the New York area can be chalked up to audiences shifting from broadcast to the Internet — a shift that has been underway for several years. “As the broadcast networks are less able to get advertising revenue, they’re turning to the cable guys [to pay more to the networks to show their programming] to make up for that shortfall,” states Todd Mitchell, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers Lp, as quoted in a recent Newsday article. Ad dollars are in short supply because TV audiences have found other options for their time, especially growing Internet use.

A similar shift has hurt the print industry, record sales, DVD sales, and other businesses with physical products that could be delivered digitally. Consumers have shown they prefer entertainment, information, and connections to be digital. Even telecoms will have to face the fact that Internet telephony is the preferred option for many consumers, and TV programmers must eventually follow suit as well.

But in the meantime, according to the Newsday article, we can expect more of these inconveniences as yet another business, built on an outdated model, tries to defy reality and force its market to stand still. Do these companies believe they can continue holding customers hostage? Tactics always lag technology. Consumers, who vote with their dollars, will have the final say, which the iTunes store has already proven when it comes to digital goods.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/dgb94E [subscription requ