Category Archives: digital marketing

Killing the Paywall

Tom Goodwin’s recent article, “Why making content on the internet free was our biggest mistake… and how to fix it” is required reading for all marketers in publishing. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Mr. Goodwin only wrote … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Media, Strategy, Tactics | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Killing the Paywall

Buy direct

There’s only one correct way to buy ads, and that’s direct from the publisher. If you buy any other way you’ll pay too much in adtech tax or get scammed buying something that’s not what you think it is. Probably … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Media | Tagged , | Comments Off on Buy direct

Ads on blogs

I just had a chance to check my blog. Here’s the type of quality ad that gets served on blogs like mine. Do you know if the creative is automatically generated by some brilliant AI? Or have you ever really … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, Direct Response, Marketing, Media, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ads on blogs

Your Facebook Rebate

Q2 2018 is in the books. Plenty of time for advertisers and their agencies to true up Q1 and really start work on the second half of the year. As a reminder, in Q1 Facebook removed: 583MM fake accounts. 21MM … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Your Facebook Rebate

Default Power

Facebook recently said that most of the 2 billion people on their platform had their personal data scraped. The reason, aside from Facebook’s appallingly sloppy controls over access to data, is defaults. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that most people kept … Continue reading

Posted in Behavioral economics, Data, digital marketing, Security | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Default Power

The Forgotten Boolean NOT

I spent last week in Glasgow and London, with a UK SIM card temporarily in my phone. As part of my daily routine of checking Twitter, I learned that many social media advertisers and agencies have forgotten how to use … Continue reading

Posted in Data, digital marketing, Direct Response, Media, Social Media Marketing, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Forgotten Boolean NOT

Algorithms: Recipes for Disaster

When we purchase digital advertising, we place our faith in the algorithms–a fancy word for “recipes”–used to determine things like the final price of the inventory, which creative is shown, and the frequency at which those impressions are shown. There’s … Continue reading

Posted in Data, digital marketing, Education, Leadership, Media, Strategy | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Algorithms: Recipes for Disaster

Attacking You With Retargeting

WebKit recently updated WebKit to address “An attacker seeking to track site visitors can take advantage of the user’s HSTS cache to store one bit of information on that user’s device.” in an interesting and understandable technical blog post by … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Leadership, Privacy, Security | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Attacking You With Retargeting

P&G eliminated 20% of their most ineffective spend and generated 10% more reach, according to this article in AdWeek. Wait, that doesn’t fit the narrative about digital media. It’s all supposed to be about good, cheap media, reaching the right … Continue reading

Posted on by markpilip | Comments Off on Reduce Spend, Increase Reach? Wait, This Can’t Be Right…

Programmatic: Buying or Media?

I’ve been asked a couple of times if I’m pro- or anti-programmatic. My answer, sometimes to the asker’s frustration, is “it depends.” Whether or not a medium works for you depends on many things. The first, and most fundamental question … Continue reading

Posted in digital marketing, Media, Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Programmatic: Buying or Media?