Posts tagged advertising
Business Insider points to comments section of Sheryl Sandberg’s blog post addressing the role of advertising on Facebook. Advertisers take note: these are the people you’re paying to reach.
* It took a lot of effort not to pick apart Sandberg’s piece and the Facebook/Google party line that advertising improves user experience. A screed for another time…
“ I am not saying that it is a bad or dishonest thing to try to sell your work. It is not. What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to commodify everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird.”
Maureen Johnson has written a manifest against personal branding. It is lovely and refreshing. Go read it.
I’ve written it in countless presentations: a brand is a stand-in for real, human connection when real, human connection is impossible. You don’t know the people who make Coca-Cola. But you can be ‘friends’ with the brand. Coke, Ikea, Apple, etc need brands because their products are sold a scale that is too large for them to individually address. So their brand, their watered down human connection, acts as a proxy. (In a way, it’s kind of like a robot.)
Why someone would want to reduce their real, human connections and become a brand is beyond me. Sure, it makes you easier to scale throughout media, but it threatens to make all future interactions flat, defined by the light, portable version of yourself.
If your ad is about craftsmanship and attention to detail, your media placement should not be this slipshod. (Spotted at The Daily Beast)
* And no, I don’t care how much it improves your click-through.
Twitter Bans All Ad Platforms Besides Their Own
In the second recent threat to Twitter’s developer-friendly reputation, Costolo announces in a blog post that: “Aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”
Building a developer community around your product is like waking a Golem.
Write The Future. Probably the best ad I’ve ever seen. (by W+K (of course), via Nalden)
Keeping MySpace From the Grave
Over at The Atlantic Wire they collected top tech pundits opinions and net out with this 3 part fix:
- Make it music hub
- Get freedom from News Corp
- Find a visionary leader
My two cents: I like the music angle, but think that the boat sailed a year ago. Now Apple stands to crush it with Lala and Facebook is fast becoming the place for bands (most I know have switched or are switching from MySpace to Facebook).
Michael Arrington is behind option #2, but I think he’s suffering from his Silicon Valley shortsightedness. The upsides of being part of News Corp are insane, if you choose to leverage them. MySpace is a digital manifestation of Murdoch’s strategy for giving the lower classes a voice (see the Post, Fox, etc).
Here’s how I’d turn MySpace around: I’d drink the News Corp Kool-Aid.
I’d accept I’m not going to beat Facebook head-on. I’d accept that MySpace squandered their music opportunity and better equipped companies are going to own the market. But I’d cherish the access to News Corp content and audiences I have, and realize that by aligning myself with them I stand cut costs drastically while increasing my reach and marketing. I’d turn MySpace into something between it and Ning: a social network that’s built on media networks. There’d be a flavor for the WSJ, a video hub for Fox, and even a Tea-Party hub for Fox News.
Gather the audiences News Corp already owns, then build from there…
Why is Google Afraid of Facebook? Because Social Networking Could Soon Pass Search
It’s often said these days that Google and Facebook are major rivals, but how could that be if one is in search and the other, social networking? Traffic analyst firm Hitwise provided one very clear clue tonight when it published new numbers for web user activity in Australia. For perhaps the first time ever, social networking sites have surpassed the traffic search engines receive, Hitwise says. There is reason to question the company’s categorization of web traffic, but the trend is worth examining none the less.
» via ReadWriteWeb
Isn’t google trying to monetize this by bringing status updates into search?
Huh.
In a few short years, search and social have recreated the fight for position being played out by telco companies and content providers. Search plays the role of telco, the service which is quickly being commodified and turned into “dumb pipes.” (See here) Social, with it’s rich content and emotional relationships, plays the part of content. AKA, the stuff people actually care about.
I had a related, heated discussion with a strategist from a search engine optimization company who shall remain nameless. My position was that in the future, search would be marginalized. It would become so slick, so ubiquitous, so second-nature that people would simply cease to care about it. In that dangerous position, search share becomes a fight over installs in software, OSes and hardware, like we’re seeing with Bing’s current strategy. Suddenly, the all the effort Google has invested in serving reliable ads is diluted by all the disparate offerings that, ultimately, are second nature. Once invisible, search ads are purely directional, true brands will be built on the backs of media people care about: content, friends.
This strategist disagreed.
Cute. (Via Gizmodo)
“ Celebrity Attorney seeks Writer that can compose and SUCCESSFULLY post a Wikipedia Entry including links etc. Attorney has appeared on all major national television networks and worked on well known and publicized cases. Compensation will be cash or personal check written out to writer who can post entry WITHOUT it getting DELETED by Wikipedia. Payment is $50.00 or more based on length and quality of work as well as more work opportunities to follow.”
Dynamist Blog: New Form of Ambulance Chasing? Or the Future of Journalism?
Good point. But the new form of ambulance chasing is search marketing.
(quote via murketing)
Understanding Why Apple Bought a Mobile Advertiser, in 3 Steps
- Go use a Kindle. Realize the experience is fantastic, fluid, and engaging.
- Realize the Kindle doesn’t have advertising. Especially in their magazines and newspapers.
- Look at this chart:
