Category Archives: Marketing

Guitar Effects: Two Legends and a Sale

Posted on Friday, 1 September 2017 9:12 am by

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 →

Posted in Branding, Communications, digital marketing, Guitar, Marketing, Media, Sales, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Source Level Triage

Posted on Tuesday, 22 August 2017 9:08 am by

Let’s assume you’ve built your marketing whiffletree and have a banding model at the source level that you can analyze every Monday. Of course, you’ll sort your sources from most effective to least and do more of the things that … Continue reading →

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Who’s Going to Debug Digital Advertising?

Posted on Wednesday, 16 August 2017 11:33 am by

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 →

Posted in Data, digital marketing, Marketing, Media | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Live by the Algorithm, Die by Same

Posted on Tuesday, 15 August 2017 9:09 am by

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 →

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Marketing, Philosophy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How Many Tracking Pixels to Screw in a Light Bulb?

Posted on Friday, 4 August 2017 11:59 am by

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 →

Posted in Analysis, digital marketing, Marketing, Media, Privacy | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Data’s FUBAR? Your Process is TARFU!

Posted on Friday, 4 August 2017 9:28 am by

I’ve taken to ignoring most of the text in trade industry publications until I’ve looked at the numbers. Often, the math doesn’t match the narrative or tells another story completely. Case in point: a couple of days ago, this article … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Marketing, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Handling Marketing “Helmet Fire”

Posted on Tuesday, 1 August 2017 11:59 am by

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 →

Posted in digital marketing, Marketing, Tactics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Videri Quam Esse: P&G and Digital Advertising

Posted on Monday, 31 July 2017 10:11 am by

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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“Digital” is Just Accelerated Direct Marketing

Says the great Drayton Bird in his email this morning: “On-line marketing is just accelerated direct marketing.” He’s right. It’s therefore more important than ever that your marketers are properly trained: it’s harder to keep the rubber on the road … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:14 am by | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

More on Ads.txt

Print out a page with your ad on it. Put it on the whiteboard and give your buying team a marker and ask them to draw out exactly how that particular ad showed up on that particular website and why. By that, I mean all the names of the ad tech and martech players involved. No looking anything up. Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Wednesday, 19 July 2017 12:41 pm by | Tagged , , | Leave a comment