Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Advertising Martin Sorrell reigned as one of the most influential leaders in the advertising industry for three decades as the chief executive of the marketing colossus WPP. After he abruptly resigned in April following an investigation into alleged personal misconduct, the normally sharp-tongued, frenetic 73-year-old slipped unexpectedly out of sight. But not for long. By…
Three years after former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel gave a blistering speech alleging widespread media rebates in the U.S. — and the Association of National Advertisers launched a crusade to investigate and stop them — nothing much has changed, according to a report by McKinsey & Co. Sarah Armstrong. The McKinsey effort, which was scheduled…
Ad sellers are also ending the days of having separate programmatic sales teams. Though the evidence is mostly anecdotal, publishers like The New York Times, Dotdash, Meredith and BuzzFeed have taken steps to more fully integrate their programmatic products throughout their entire sales operation. When different buying teams don’t work together, discrepancies arise over planning…
Inserting fresh ads into podcasts is challenging and time-consuming. An online article loads fresh ads every time a page loads. But in the podcasting world, readers download content and ads together, which means the two must be stitched together beforehand. Because of this challenge, many older podcasts run with no ads or stale ones, even…
Mobile screens are likely to stay small, but the share of ads they are taking on is becoming immense. In fewer than five years, nearly seven out of every 10 digital ad dollars will go to mobile, according to a fresh forecast from Forrester. That’s thanks to what the research firm is predicting will be…
No means no when it comes to ad blockers, according to GroupM. The media-buying giant is closing off a growing alternative for publishers beset by ad blocking: ad reinsertion, a method by which publishers can deliver ads to users who have ad blockers installed. Publishers often work with vendors like Secret Media and Sourcepoint to re-insert ads…
This is an edited version of a talk that marketing keynote speaker and The Drum’s Promotion Fix columnist, Samuel Scott, gave last week at the Synergy Digital Forum in Moscow. The deck with related links and source material is here. I do not remember PPC ads, display ads, social media ads, programmatic ads, or anything…
Univision Holdings Inc. has been offering buyouts to employees at Gizmodo Media Group, according to a person familiar with the matter, marking the latest case of a digital-media upstart tightening its belt. The former Gawker Media websites, which include the sports outlet Deadspin and the woman-focused site Jezebel, began offering employees buyout packages last week,…
About 20 PC games — including The Elder Scrolls Online and Conan Exiles — have removed a piece of third-party spyware tracking users’ activity outside of the game, and dozens more are said to still have it more than a week after it came to light on Reddit and Steam forums. Called Red Shell (yes,…
Three years ago, Lisa Linh quit her full-time job to travel the world and document it on Instagram, where she has nearly 100,000 followers; since then, she has stayed in breathtaking hotels everywhere from Mexico to Quebec to the Cook Islands. Often, she stays for free. Linh is part of an ever-growing class of people who have…