I can't think of an online ad I like. Can you? Online content, sure. Brand supported online content even. But an ad? No. Generally speaking, online advertising is some weak shit. A fact which makes it all the harder to accept that valuable print vehicles are struggling to stay afloat because their lifeblood--print advertising--is migrating online. Case in point: No Depression, one of the nation's best music mags is …
Google’s Special Algorithms Now Available On YouTube’s À La Carte Menu
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the lengths YouTube is going to help make Toyota's wishes comes true. The car maker paid $4 million for a new destination on the site, dubbed "Best in Jest." Special algorithms created by YouTube find up-and-coming comedy videos on the site each week and feature them in Toyota's designated space. "Best in Jest" rolls out next week. Toyota also is sponsoring a sketch-comedy …
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Why Agencies Need To Become Content Creators
PR man and Ad Age columnist, Steve Rubel, envisions a world where agencies are disintermediated by media companies. Today nearly every media company (91%) offers some kind of "agency-like" services. This includes former untouchables like idea generation (88%) and creative development (79%). The image of media companies as lumbering dinosaurs lingering toward extinction in a world of infinite content is downright …
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Trade Pubs to Bring Some Cash
Variety, Publishers Weekly and dozens of other trade publications are going up for sale as the publishing company Reed Elsevier looks to get out of the uncertain advertising market. The company's business information unit includes some relatively well-known titles (Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, New Scientist) along with sector-specific publications (Custom Builder, Microprocessor Report, Home Textiles …
Local Business News On the Ropes
According to Ad Age, stand alone Business sections in daily newspapers are dropping like flies. Which sucks, because that's my favorite section of any newspaper. The Denver Post -- which folded its business section into other sections on every day but Sunday -- this month became at least the eighth daily to cut its stand-alone daily business section since early 2007. …
Hot Or Not Sold
According to TechCrunch, the novelty site turned dating community HotorNot has been acquired by Avid Life Media for a sum rumored to be in the neighborhood of $20 million. Not bad for the owners, James Hong and Jim Young, who started the thing seven years ago on a whim, sans ambition or vision. TechCrunch reports that the site's annual revenue is estimated to be "around $5 million, with $2 million in profit." Here's …
Newsweek Needs Our Help
According to The New York Observer, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham speaking to an audience of about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school said, "Look, I need you. I've got people out there risking their lives right now." "It's an incredible frustration that I've got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and …
Once In A Lifetime
Katharine Weymouth, a granddaughter of the late Washington Post Co. chairman Katharine Graham and niece of Tina Weymouth, the bass guitarist in the new wave band Talking Heads, has been named chief executive of Washington Post Media, a new division that will oversee The Washington Post newspaper and its online component, washingtonpost.com. Weymouth, 41, will also serve as the newspaper's publisher, the fifth member …