Archive for the Politics category

August 14th, 2010

Best Campaign Commercials Ever!

Exchanges, Behavioral Targeting, RTB, SSP, DSP’s, Dynamic Creative, Ad Verification, Attribution – sometimes I can’t help to think we’ve got it all wrong. Instead of making peoples lives better; online advertising is at best Meta-Advertising. It seams like we spend most our time selling advertising not actually disseminating great ideas / products.

Meta-advertising is at best repeating the same message over and over; at worst personally customized brand messaging based on 400 data points. Technology means nothing without creativity; technology has become our ultimate distraction.

Add Art & Copy to your Netflix Queue.

Hal Riney put out some of the most emotionally compelling advertising that has ever been seen. Like or hate the message the ads are art; they connect and resonate.

April 15th, 2010

Controlling the Point System – Free Ipods for everyone

March 2nd, 2010

Joseph Turow – Media buying, privacy, transparency, and the data enomomy.

From “When the Audience Clicks: Buying Attention in the Digital Age” presented at the Oxford Internet Institute.

Check out 68:28 for a lively discussion on my favorite behavioral targeting topic – coffee cup capitalism.

February 15th, 2010

Where does food come from?

December 12th, 2009

Flash Cookies – Taste Better than Browser Cookies

Have you ever wondered why sites like Pandora.com seam to know who you are – even if you deleted your browser cookies recently?

Up to 100k, difficult to find, non transparent, non expiring, not cleared by any browser “Clear / Delete Cookie” functions – Flash Cookies are oh so very sweet for collecting data – so much better than plain old browser based Cookies.

I have heard the stories of ADNETS using Flash to re-spawn browser cookies when a user deletes their browser Cookies; but I had no idea just how many sites are using Flash Cookies for tracking.

Viewing my own Flash cookies (hundreds of entries) I identified no less than a dozen ADNET’s, ad servers, and online marketer cookies. My bank is even using them – they don’t even have flash on their site… Check Your Flash Cookies yourself…

Flash Cookies

Flash Cookie

Flash Cokies

Want more… check out this wired article on Flash Cookies.

December 11th, 2009

Reptilian Words – Words that work

November 30th, 2009

The Persuaders – invading the privacy of our minds

I started reading Shoptimism by Lee Eisenberg a few days ago. I have only gotten through 50 pages – but so far it’s an interesting read on consumer marketing. An early section on the work of Vance Packard and his exploration (in the 1950′s) of consumer motivational research by social scientist working for advertising agencies reminded me of an incredibly insightful (and somewhat frightening) PBS FrontLine documentary on the same topic. If you have not seen The Persuaders – it’s mandatory viewing for anyone interested in advertising and if your not living off the grid on some atoll in the South Pacific you should be interested in advertising right now.

With respect to Online Advertising check out the narrowcasting section and how marketers and political parties have been working with data vendors (Axiom in this case) to customize their packaging / messaging for every consumer segment – with all the recent talk in the ad industry about customization, personalization, the consumer in charge; makes you think.


August 30th, 2009

Craigslist is Punk Rock

July 24th, 2009

Asymmetry and Serendipity

Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows us why we are so bad at prediction. If this is your cup of tea go read Black Swan.


@ Yahoo! Video
April 19th, 2009

Greed is Good, Part two.