Category Archives: digital marketing

Bots in the Walled Garden!

I’ve been getting a spike in “likes” every week for my Facebook business page over the last 4-6 months. They’re all clearly bot likes, as they appear to come from India, where I do no business nor have friends or … Continue reading

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Canal Street Ad Impressions

You’ll never find a real Rolex on Canal Street in New York City for $30. But for some reason we delude ourselves into believing that the FT.com ad impressions that show up on some sketchy exchange for $2 CPM are … Continue reading

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Buy Digital Directly. No, I’m Not Crazy!

Dr. Augustine Fou just published an interesting presentation, “You’re Not Getting What You Paid For,” which I encourage all marketers to read. The presentation lays out a number of the ways you–yes you–are being screwed in the digital ecosystem. In … Continue reading

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Guitar Effects: Two Legends and a Sale

My core beliefs include positivity and assuming goodwill. If you only knew me from my writing here, you might not think that. It’s hard to be positive sometimes when I seem to spend the whole day mired in “digital” marketing … Continue reading

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Need an EVP of Brand Safety? You’ve Got a Problem!

It took a second read of the “Lets Talk About The Brand Safety Tax” column in AdExchanger last Tuesday to catch this: It’s a small price to pay, said John Montgomery, global EVP of brand safety at GroupM, running somewhere … Continue reading

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Who’s Going to Debug Digital Advertising?

In Alan Kay’s talk “How To Invent The Future II” he quotes Tony Hoare: “Debugging is  harder than programming, so don’t use all your cleverness to write the program.” The entire digital ecosystem, so incredibly complicated that nobody can tell … Continue reading

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Live by the Algorithm, Die by Same

Think your fancy, all-seeing algorithm can’t be gamed? So do the fools at Uber. Unfortunately, it looks like Uber drivers can just switch off the app at once and trigger surge pricing. No complicated competing algorithm, no data scientists needed. Complex … Continue reading

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How Many Tracking Pixels to Screw in a Light Bulb?

I turned on WordPress’s WordAds on this blog a couple of days ago. It takes a couple of days for the ad tech ecosystem to smell the fresh blood, but as of this morning, there are 66 tracking pixels firing … Continue reading

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Handling Marketing “Helmet Fire”

Helmet fire, also known as task saturation, is a silent killer among pilots. As more things happen at once, you start to fail. You might get fixated on one thing–like the 20 cent light that killed 101 aboard Eastern Air … Continue reading

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Videri Quam Esse: P&G and Digital Advertising

P&G cut between $100 and $140 million in digital advertising last quarter and sales went up. I don’t mean they were flat or that margins went up through a short-sided strategy of cutting marketing investment. This wasn’t just advertising that sort … Continue reading

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