Tag Archives: programmatic

Next to Now for July 21

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PREMIUM WEBSITE ADS PERFORM BETTER

A new study from ComScore underlines that ads on premium websites—such as the New York Times, WSJ, and various imprints of Condé Nast and Hearst media—deliver better results than ads on non-premium websites. From the Wall Street Journal article on this report:

“The study, which comScore said analyzed the ad campaigns of 15 large brands across a number of advertiser categories, concluded that ads placed on DCN sites were 67% more effective than non-DCN sites. According to comScore, that difference confirmed that ‘premium sites deliver premium performance.’

“The study also found that premium publisher sites were more effective in driving so-called ‘mid-funnel brand metrics,’ which measure consumer attitudes including favorability, consideration and intent to recommend.

“’The primary driver of this increased effectiveness is the halo effect that comes from the value of the contextual environment in which these ads are seen,” the report concluded. Basically, ads perform better when they appear alongside high-quality content.”

This is a value-proposition inherent in the way ads on premium websites are priced—with CPMs often 2-3x as expensive as non-premium sites—and matches with results we see at Verso. But it’s good to have more data backing up our observations.

Here’s a link to more detail from report from AdWeek. And here’s Niemen Lab’s take on the same study. 

#targeting #data #performance #ripepeachestastebest

 

GOOGLE ADDS NATIVE TO PROGRAMMATIC TOOLS

Google announced that it now can deliver native ads programmatically. The best performing native ads are those that are crafted in the unique voice of a particular website, and that ability is still beyond the reach of Google’s system. But adjusting headline and copy to each website’s particular style is a decent, and more affordable second option.

#native #programmatic #google #everypeachisdifferent

 

PRIME DAY BEYOND AMAZON

Amazon’s Prime Day was discussed (and dissed) as an expression of the company’s power, which it was . . . But that doesn’t mean the news was all bad for smaller retailers who took advantage of the “deal hunting” in the communal air to up their own business. In a study of last year’s Prime Day, BloomReach found that traffic to other retailers was up 21% and conversion improved by an average of 57% as a result of Prime Day. It’s a form of the real estate adage, “location location location.” Put your business where the action is, and use the wind as it is (even if you don’t like the source of the hot air) to power your boat.

#primeday #amazon #local #localpeaches

 

SPONSORED LOCATIONS IN POKEMON GO

You knew this was coming, right? Pokemon Go is introducing “Sponsored Locations,” a new revenue stream for Niantic, the maker of the app, and a good idea for marketers, especially if they’re a bricks and mortar retail store . . . or a company that sells its products there.

#pokemongo #geotargeting #peacheeoto

 

THE END OF LANDSCAPE VIDEO?

After Snapchat has declared the rise of vertical video, a new report suggests square video is not only the format needed for Instagram, it’s also proving to be the best performing format for video on Facebook in several head-to-head tests:

“For the past several months, we have started shooting videos for square crop and posting videos in square crop,” said Jason Stein, founder and CEO of Laundry Service. “We are doing this because in executing the media buys for these videos, we found that view-through rate and engagement rate are much higher on square than landscape videos. This is likely due to the larger amount of real estate that a square video gets in feed.”

#video #creative #uprightpeaches

 

CROWDSOURCED AD DELIVERY

A new company called Wrapify is allowing any car owner to let their car become a trackable, digitally connected, moving billboard. Spotify and PetCo are advertisers who have tested the technology for their own products. Here’s a link to the AdWeek story.

#digital #outdoor #peachesforeveryone

 

Photo: Peaches from Union Sq Greenmarket (c) 2016 Martha Otis

Next to Now: Independence Day

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DO MEDIA BRANDS EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?

Columbia Journalism Review asks the question at the heart of advertising: In a world where information is coming at you from all sides, does it matter who says what and where? According to  study by CJR and the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism, yes it does matter:

“Readers are less likely to trust a longform story that appears to have run on BuzzFeed than the same article on The New Yorker’s website.”

While CJR is focused on journalism, the implications are clear for contextual advertising as well: it matters where information is coming from. While it’s true that some study members did not notice the media brand—a growing phenomenon captured by the Reuter’s 2016 Digital News Report—those that did notice  tended to be older and better read. That is, a better match for the core hardcover book buying audience.

#media #brands

 

LINKEDIN OPENS TO PROGRAMMATIC EXCHANGES

LinkedIn announced that it is opening its advertising to open exchanges to deliver increased banner impressions on the network. This is good news for anyone wanting to target the LinkedIn audience with a business or self-improvement book, especially those who do not have the budgets to take advantage of LinkedIn’s sponsored content opportunities.

#linkedin #business #programmatic

 

SNAPCHAT DROPS AD MINIMUMS

The minimum buy for a Snapchat campaign is reportedly dropping from $750,000 to $100,000. Book advertisers are likely to be waiting for another round or two before buying ads through the platform’s API. That said, there are co-branded Snapchat opportunities with such partners as People magazine that are workable for bigger book-size budgets. Contact your Verso account executive to learn more.

#snapchat #social

 

THE LIMITS OF ALGORITHMS

Facebook announces a new service that curates local events as selected by a team of people, not algorithms. This is good news for Facebook users (and other humans), but less good news for local media players such as Time Out:

“The product is launching in 10 U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The curated program appears to take on local publishers such as Time Out New York and the Village Voice as well as mobile apps like Eventbrite, Like a Local, Scout and Field Trip.”

#facebook #local #human

 

FOOD PORN MOVES TO SNAPCHAT

AdWeek reports that many of the most popular foodie brands on Instagram are moving to Snapchat. 

“‘As Instagram has really slowed down the last four months or so, you can just see what’s happened on that platform and it’s obviously changing a lot,’ said Andrew Steinthal, co-founder of The Infatuation, a restaurant review site that’s heavily leaned on Instagram to build a following since launching in 2009.

‘Our entire audience is on Snapchat now—it’s the most reactive social network that we have. You can just see the impact on Snapchat and feel it right away right now. People are so deep into Snapchat and reacting to it.'”

While Snapchat requires more hands-on engagement from brands, it’s precisely that hands-on quality that makes it an effective platform.

#food #snapchat #instagram

 

FOX NEWS DELIVERS FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT

For years, the highly engaged Fox News audience has made the site one of our best performers with digital ads. Readers on the site are hungry not only for news and information you’d expect, but also for high quality commercial fiction, especially thrillers. While Fox News is not the biggest media property, this engagement is translating to superlative response from the brand’s audience on Facebook:

“Fox News had nearly 120 million likes, shares and comments on its page in the first six months of the year, well ahead of digital natives including No. 2 NowThis (80 million interactions) and The Huffington Post (61 million). Mark Zuckerberg himself recently cited Fox News in defending Facebook against charges that it’s politically liberal, saying Fox ‘drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world. It’s not even close.’”

As the digital landscape evolves, Fox News continues to draw a passionate, curious audience that loves books. Click here to read the Digiday article. 

#foxnews #targeting #facebook

 

HOLD THE VIDEO

Columbia Journalism Review reports that social media’s influence on news consumption is growing. While there are more and more social conversations around news topics, the fact that the conversations are taking place on social networks means that Facebook and Twitter are becoming more dominant as brands for news and traditional brands such as The New York Times and The Guardian are  beginning to lose some of their traction with readers. One surprising bit of information from the study was the continuing importance of text to news consumers despite the rise of video:

“Platforms and publishers alike have been pouring money into video sharing, such as Facebook Live. One Facebook executive even predicted last week that in the next five years video will replace the written word. But the report suggests that many news consumers are resistant to watching video because it is faster to read an article, and because of the ads that often precede videos.”

http://www.cjr.org/analysis/reuters_report.php

#social #video

 

Photo (c) Martha Otis

Next to Now: The News from SXSWi, Influencer Marketing & More

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Spring 2016 unfolds with exciting new marketing platforms, a digital shout-out for an old but effective ad platform, new developments in looking at what readers want and more . . .

 

 

SXSW INTERACTIVE

Adweek points to the hot topics at the recently concluded SXSWi, and they’re not a surprise, but they do underscore areas all marketers need to be aware of as they develop on the near horizon: Messaging, VR, Snapchat.

#messaging #vr #snapchat

 

MICRO-INFLUENCERS FTW

Gnack, a start-up announced at SXSW is experimenting with ways to make labor-intensive influencer marketing work on a programmatic platform. They’re starting with micro-influencers, those with no more than 10,000 followers—the kinds of influencers, that is, that are more friendly to book budgets.

#influencer #programmatic

 

APPLE’S ENTRY INTO NATIVE ADS

Apple News is developing a native ad product, worth watching for:

“Apple News will be updated as part of the latest version of iOS, expected to be released next week. Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of online services, told The Wall Street Journal that 40 million people had used the Apple News app in January.”

#apple #news #native

 

HERE COMES THE READER DATA! BUT WHICH READERS?

Everyone in publishing wants to get data on how people read—at least to get information as good as what Amazon and Apple have via Kindle and iBooks. For that reason we applaud Jellybooks’ efforts to democratize this data and read the New York Times article on their presentation at DBW with interest. But there are big limitations with the data collected here. Jellybooks only counts readers reading on special e-readers, who have sought out the Jellybooks platform, read whatever few e-books are available there, and then agree to share the specifics of their reading habits for that particular book. This is a very different kind of person from the avid book buyer who buys, reads, and buys more copies, often in print.

#data #readers

 

VIDEO HABITS OF MILLENNIALS

An infographic on Adweek provides great insight into the video watching habits of millennials (as well as which video ads are OK with them, and which are not). Top three video watching sources are YouTube (85%), Netflix (66%), and Facebook (53%).

#video #millennials

 

IN PRAISE OF THE BILLBOARD

From Digiday, a little rant in favor of the ultimate non-digital advertising product:  

“These days, billboards are viewed as, mostly, for local businesses only. Bull. Brands, if you took just a small part of your worthless social media budget and put up one billboard in a high-visibility spot, you’d see some big-ass ROI in awareness and sales.”

#outdoor

TARGETING

Ad targeting that relies on user profiling makes many users uncomfortable, and not just tinfoil-hatted privacy advocates. But it turns out that people also hate seeing ads that aren’t right for them. The younger the user the more s/he is likely to expect ads that are better targeted.

#targeting

 

 

Next to Now: Holidays Are Here Edition

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As the New York City sidewalks become forests of blue spruce and Canadian tree sellers and the Rockefeller Center tree lights up the night, the world of digital advertising continues to evolve. Here are links to some of the most relevant ad news we’ve seen this week:

ADBLOCKING NOT YET AN ISSUE FOR MOBILE

Nieman Lab reports that, despite the sturm und drang, adblocking for mobile is currently not a factor, though it is affecting desktop:

“The good news from publishers’ perspective is that the mobile ad apocalypse does not seem to have arrived — yet, at least. While most publishers we spoke with were reluctant to share specific numbers on the record, most said that the share of their ads being blocked on mobile since iOS 9 launched in September was minuscule — ‘1 or 2 percent’ was the range we heard most often. The big concern is still on the desktop.”

#adblocking

 

THE GUARDIAN GOES AFTER SPORTS

Digiday reports on how the Guardian’s digital team is going after the global sports audience. With the growing U.S. market interest in the English Premier League, this could make it a good venue for the right book.

#sports

 

TWITTER’S PROMOTED MOMENTS CAN BE YOURS FOR ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Twitter’s “Moments” channel has a lot of promise, especially when advertising around live events such as sports or presidential election days. As with most new high profile platforms, the bar for entry is too high for book publishers: a cool million. But over time those prices will come down. Meanwhile we can see how the high cost Starbucks, REI, and Verizon campaigns perform now, while thinking about what we want to do more efficiently down the road.

#newplatforms #twitter #social

 

FACEBOOK GETS INTO LIVE STREAMING

The social media giant introduced a live streaming platform that will compete with Periscope and Meerkat. Given their user base, this is definitely a platform that’s worth watching.  

#facebook #streaming #social

 

FACEBOOK’S NOT COOL, BUT IT HAS ITS USES

YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram are at the top of this survey of social media that teens find “cool.” But while Facebook is only the seventh coolest in the list, teens still use it:

“A new study from research firm Forrester found that while only 65% of 12 t0 17-year-olds consider the social network “cool,” (ranking it below most other popular apps), it still generates more “hyper usage” than Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter. About 61% say it’s the social network they use the most.”

#facebook #social #teens

 

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW STUDIES MOBILE’S IN-STORE IMPACT

In a study sponsored by Google, HBR looked into the impact of mobile activity on brick and mortar stores. Among the findings: 28% of in-store sales were influenced by mobile activity before or during the purchase, and top uses included searching for a local retailer who carried the item (39%) or taking a picture of an item to ask a friend or family member for an opinion (38%).   

#mobile

 

SNAPCHAT LETS ‘DISCOVER’ USERS SHARE

For the first time, Snapchat is allowing companies to “deep link” to content shared on Snapchat from elsewhere. As Digiday reports:

“Until now, Discover publishers couldn’t link to their Snapchat pages from anywhere outside the app. With the benefit of social media promotion, they are likely to see a boost in traffic. It is similar to how YouTube creators expand their audience by sharing video links to third-party platforms.”  

#snapchat #social

 

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF BANNERS

Are the best years of banner ads in the past or in the future? AdWeek makes a case for programmatic creative.

#programmatic #creative

 

Next to Now: The Structure of Innovation

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This week, the articles that caught our eye were about innovation in targeting and storytelling.

 

ONLINE VIDEO: IT’S NOT JUST MILLENNIALS

Once predominantly the province of Millennials, online video watching has now stretched to include Gen X as well:

“The average consumer between the ages of 16 and 45 watches 204 minutes of video a day, split equally between TV and online. Forty-five minutes of the average online viewing time is done on a smartphone, while desktop accounts for 37 minutes and tablet for 20 minutes.”

#video

 

FEWER ADS MEANS BETTER ENGAGEMENT 

This article in Digiday argues that the Atlantic’s recent redesign has upped ad performance by lessening the amount of content (including ads) on the homepage. It’s certainly worth paying more to be the only ad on a relevant page. If that’s the future of the ad-supported Web, we’re all for it.

#adtech #engagement

 

MARKETING WITH SHAZAM

ClickZ reports on the use of Shazam in print and TV ads for such retailers as Target.

“For about a decade now, marketers have been racking their brains trying to figure out the best way to link traditional ads with the Web. URLs came first, then hashtags and a call to action to visit Twitter. And while these tactics have certainly managed to boost engagement and interaction online, they don’t necessarily deliver the rich digital experience brands hope to provide.”

The article briefly mentions HarperCollins as well, which uses Shazam to link to Web content in their books (and, we’d add, has experimented with using it in ads as well). The jury’s out on whether the Shazam experiments will help enrich user experience or simply prove more popular with marketers than consumers. However it plays out, the ways physical products are linking up with information on the Web continues to be one of the most exciting frontiers of marketing innovation. We are pleased to see HarperCollins’s Shazam program gain wider recognition with the nomination in the “Marketing Campaign” category for the UK’s FutureBook Awards.

#shazam #adtech #futurebook

 

COSMO WINS 3MM VIEWS A DAY ON SNAPCHAT

Cosmo is showing how it’s done on the Snapchat “Discover” feature, growing their audience from 1.8 MM a day to over 3MM.

“Kate Lewis [VP and editorial director of digital at Cosmo] also said that people share Cosmo content in large numbers, which is an activity that is not typically associated with Snapchat, because sharing and retweeting are not common there. That may be changing, though. Cosmo’s Discover stories are shared up to 1.2 million times daily, Lewis said.”

 

#cosmo #snapchat #social

 

NEW GE CMO ON STORYTELLING

Buried in this article on storytelling and marketing is a GE program with Wattpad to sponsor new Sci Fi writing by the Wattpad community based on old GE materials. We know that fan fiction is often a consequence of a popular series such as Twilight and Harry Potter, but could sponsored fan fiction work as a marketing tool?

#storytelling #social #fanfiction #wattpad

 

INSTAGRAM AND EMAIL—TWO GREAT MARKETING TOOLS THAT WORK GREAT TOGETHER

This HubSpot article advocates bringing “inspirational” Instagram posts into the email marketing experience. Interesting stats from this article:

  • In 2015 more than 200 billion emails will be sent every day. 57% of those will come from brands (what’s the point when consumers just abandon email altogether because it’s too spammy?)
  • Instagram delivers 58% more engagement per post than Facebook and 120% more per post than Twitter
  • 4 fo 5 Instagram users give brands permission to share their images

#social #email #instagram

ARE EMAIL ADDRESSES THE NEW COOKIE?

Emails have remained a secret weapon for marketing departments for years. As this ClickZ article puts it,

“While only 20 percent of the people (and email marketing’s audience is overwhelmingly people, not bots) open the email you send them, that 20 percent does so happily. They click and convert enough to make your tiny and underfunded email marketing department punch way above its weight.”

But now Google’s Custom Match, Facebook’s Custom Audiences, and Twitter’s Tailored Audiences allows you to upload email addresses to their systems and use them to target ads specifically to opt-in audiences you know will be interested in your book. This kind of targeting is also available through programmatic campaigns with such partners as AdRoll and Turn.

#email #programmatic

Next to Now: The Fall Sprint

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January may mark the start of the calendar year, but for everything else — including book publishing and advertising — the real starting gun seems to go off the day after Labor Day. Which is a good time to remember that when you’re moving at full speed you better have an eye on the road ahead:

 

MOBILE PREPAREDNESS FOR TV CAMPAIGNS

If you’re paying for TV ads, make sure you’re paying attention to mobile media at the same time, especially if you’re running ads on a live event:

“Digital research is a natural activity to pair with commercials when so many people are already using a second screen besides the television.”

#mobile #social #tv

 

ALEX CHEE ON ELENA FERRANTE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

A terrific writer who is prominent  on social media discusses the improbable success Ferrante’s found in part by opting out. It’s all good, but we admit that this caught our eye:

“When I see ads from publishers now on book blogs, I still mourn the old reviews.”

#social

 

FACEBOOK BOWS TO PRESSURE ON ADS

Facebook announces changes the ad industry has been calling for: the option of buying 100% video viewability (as opposed to counting partial views), and introducing third party measurement of ad performance

#social #video #tracking

 

MORE ON AD BLOCKING

A smart piece from the Verge about the angst in the industry around ad blocking:

“You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.”

#adblocking

 

CLUETRAIN AUTHOR SAYS AD TECH DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE

The coauthor of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Doc Searls, argues against trends of personalization and targeting and for old fashioned values of good product, service, and honest brand awareness

#adtech #data #targeting

 

THE RISE OF THE HUMANIST SANS SERIF

Bloomberg takes a look at changes in logo fonts of tech companies, and investigates what that says about the evolution of tech strategy.

#design

 

IS LIVE STREAMING THE NEXT CRUCIAL MARKETING PLATFORM?

This article for ClickZ suggests it is.

#livestream

 

AL ROKER, “RIGHT NOW I’M PERISCOPING YOU . . . “

“. . . and boom: 40 . . . 50 people. Bam.” Ad Week talks to Al Roker about live streaming, video apps, and why he thinks people should watch video horizontally (even if they won’t).

#livestream

 

GO HAWKEYES!

The presidential campaign in Iowa saw its first geo-filter ads: Ted Cruz in advance of the Iowa-Iowa State game.

#social #snapchat #geotarget

 

U.S. READERS (EVEN THOSE WHO PREFER PRINT) ARE ON THE MOBILE WEB

But you knew that. Here are the latest numbers to back it up: 

“One direct consequence of widespread smartphone and tablet use is vastly extended mobile internet access. About 60% of North America’s residents—more than 215 million people, eMarketer projects—will use a mobile phone to access the web in 2015.”

#mobile

 

WHAT’S YOUR READER’S MOOD: DISCOVER, LEARN, TRY, OR BUY?

When it comes to the marketing funnel, book advertising usually leans heavily toward discovery, but the whole route to purchase is important to keep in mind. What are readers looking to do when they see your ad: are they looking to discover a book? learn more about something? ready to buy? eMarketer shares a chart from the CMO Club that outlines the different platforms US and European marketers find best for the different stages of the customer journey.  

#marketingfunnel

 

MYSPACE?!?

New owners Specific Media are trying to convince us that MySpace still has legs. Here’s their argument:

“In March, measurement firm comScore reported that between December 2013 and December 2014, MySpace had grown traffic in the US by 469%, making it a bigger property than Snapchat and Vice. ComScore said the “surprising renaissance” was thanks to MySpace’s pivot to music and video content.”

#social #myspace #again?

 

DIFFERENT GENERATIONS SHARE DIFFERENTLY

This infographic from Accenture shows levels of social platform sharing and brand trust across different social networks, broken out by age. What family and friends share ranks much higher than what brands share. Facebook and print newspapers are the most trusted platforms for paid messages; Snapchat and blogs are the least.  

#social

 

 

IS DARK SOCIAL A GOOD PLACE TO ADVERTISE?

Yes, says Whisper. Coke, Fox, and MTV seem to agree.  

#social

 

DOES PROGRAMMATIC HAVE A COST ADVANTAGE OVER PRINT?

Not necessarily, says this article for Ad Age:

“Programmatic ad tech involves not just the ad inventory at the end, but a trail of fees and costs along the way to pay for expensive engineers and traders, data-management platforms, research and development and more. It adds up to make programmatic buying more expensive than ordering print ad pages or TV commercials through insertion orders and other routine methods.”

Applicability warning: This is an article about campaigns that range from the seven figure to the nine figure. At the levels that book publishers typically run, the fees and costs are less onerous, but it’s still important to keep in mind.   

#programmatic

 

VIDEO AD ROI

We’ve linked a lot to performance numbers for video ads in Next to Now over the months. But it’s worth remember that they are also more expensive to produce. It’s this discrepancy that leads many marketers to worry about ROI and video ads.

#video

 

REACHING YOUNG (BUT NOT *TOO* YOUNG) USERS ON SNAPCHAT

Jim Beam is using Snapchat to market it’s apple-flavored bourbon. While Snapchat does not allow much targeting — and this is on purpose — they offer enough age targeting to allow the bourbon maker to advertise only to users 21 and over. There’s still plenty of market there, since Snapchat’s 21-and-over audience represents 82 percent of its total user base.

#social

 

PODCASTS REMAIN HOT

Book publishers aren’t the only advertisers waking up to the power of podcast advertising.

#podcasts

Next to Now: Heart of the Summer Edition

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It’s alive!

Twitter makes it easier to link your advertising campaign to live events.

#social #live

 

Are interstitials worth it?

Google says they deliver great click-through numbers but also high levels of bad feeling.

#advertising

 

Peep shows, drones, and caffeine-ready concerts.

Check out some early marketing experiments with Perisocope.

#streaming #social

 

YouTube getting VR-ready.

“YouTube launched its first 360-degree video ad yesterday.”

#video

 

Apple gets into the streaming radio business.

“Earlier this year, Apple extended its mobile advertising network to iTunes Radio, its web streaming service that competes with Pandora, through programmatic ad buying.”

#programmatic #audio

 

“I ALWAYS MISSPELL GENIUS SMH! THE IRONY!”

For your next ad, might we humbly suggest an artisanal font made expressly for Kanye? Inspired by Kanye’s tweet, “Sometimes I get emotional over fonts,” Yeezy Display will add a mere $50,000 to your production cost.

(Via Dark Matter Issue 049)

#design #yeezy

 

The return to the couch.

OTT Devices (“Over the Top” boxes such as Apple TV or Roku) are bringing Hulu viewers, and presumably other streamers, back to the living couch—which means TV is regaining its “real-life” social component (because the couch is where we can watch with other people), without necessarily losing its digitally social component.

#video #streaming

 

Email on the fly.

There’s no more question about it, email is majority mobile-first.

#email #mobile #samething

 

The end of Inbox Zero?

It’s probably not a coincidence that the move to mobile with email is happening at the same time as we are rethinking workflow:

“Inbox Zero, while a great concept within the limits of email and paper (“Clean Desk policy”), is a fundamentally authoritarian high-modernist concept. It creates a strong, bright line between profane and sacred regimes of information, and encourages you to get to illusory control (a clean inbox) by hiding precisely the illegible chaos that’s tempting and dangerous to ignore (if you use folders, you likely have one or more misc folders even if you don’t call them that). This is dangerous because you’re just moving unprocessed chaos from a procrastination zone with strong temporal cues (the Inbox) to a denial zone with broken temporal cues (the set of de facto misc folders).”

 

(Via Dark Matter Issue 049)

#email

Thelonious Monk

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

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The Week in Reading for the Week of April 10

April 3, 2015

Monk’s advice never gets old.

April 6, 2015

Top brands on Instagram know the difference between quality of posts and quantity.

April 7, 2015

Sports fans care more about speed than quality. Don’t let your ad slow down their experience.

The founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America notices ebook sales leveling off, says (essentially), “Don’t believe the data.” Does he count as a disinterested observer?

April 8, 2015

Get your gifs here: Hulu does a deal with Tumblr.

Good tips for presentations.

Instagram’s carousel ads would be GREAT for book publishers. Now if we can just get them to come down a couple hundred thou on their minimum spend.

Used right, YouTube cards could be a great way to show more information in ads—always a plus for book publishers.

Get your word nerd on: A lovely piece on the use of quotation marks. (via @GroveAtlantic)

We aren’t going to London Book Fair, but if we were this is a presentation we’d love to attend. Sara Lloyd gives great talks.

Want to go write in the Antarctic for a few months? You might get a book deal out of it.

Welcome LitHub! A brand-spanking new website with a nifty pedigree: created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature.

April 9, 2015

A new video game lets you wander around de Chirico cityscapes!

Programmatic buys aren’t the end of creativity; they’re just the beginning!

April 10, 2015

iHeart Radio brings programmatic to broadcast. 

“Metaphysical Daring as a Post-human Survival Strategy” discussed in the French Embassy Ballroom at 5am. Who’s in?

Great take on advertising as seduction, excerpted from a book we were happy to work on.

The rise of the Instagram influencer (nice work if you can get it).

“This is terrifying and inspiring in equal measure,” says Google’s Ben Malbon about Chris Messina’s idea (reality) of “the full stack employee.” True dat.

Clay Shirky and the New York Times’ Margaret Sulllivan talk about the future of print news. Shirky’s “darker narrative” is about the print newspaper, but does it have relevance to the plateauing of print book share (versus digital)? Shirky says, “So it seems likely to me that after the early, rapid decline, we are now in a period of shallow, secular decay, which will give way to a late-stage period of rapid decline.”

Jason Fried on the differences between how platforms make you feel:

“Every scroll through Instagram puts someone’s good day in front of me. A vacation picture, something new they got that they love, pictures of nature, pictures of people they love, places they’ve been, and stuff they want to cheer about. It’s just flat out harder to be negative when sharing a picture. This isn’t a small thing – it’s a very big deal. I feel good when I browse Instagram. That’s the feel that matters.”

(via Almighty’s “Dark Matter” email)

The Vertical Video: An aesthetic disaster but a must for engagement. (via Almighty’s “Dark Matter” email)

 

 

Next to Now: Links for the Week’s News in Book-Relevant Ad Tech

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Links for the Week Ending March 20, 2015
March 13, 2015

Looking for the hottest thing in mobile? If you’re cool with $100 CPMs, Snapchat’s the way to go! Partner with CNN, ESPN, Cosmo, People, Food Network, Vice. Keep your eye on Snapchat (but keep your wallet close).

The video field is getting crowded. Who has the edge for mobile advertising going forward? Business Insider produced a good (pro- YouTube) breakdown on the differences between mobile advertising via YouTube, FB, and Vine.

It’s a supply and demand lesson: More advertisers going programmatic means programmatic prices are going up as supply goes down.

March 17, 2015

Programmatic advertising makes sense for book publishing—at least in certain cases. But it also represents great potential for fraud. ClickZ’s “6 Good Questions to Ask Your Programmatic Partner” are a good place to start any new relationship.

March 18, 2015

We like what the designer of the new Seattle Times site says about respecting reader experience—and how it’s good for advertising. For those of us who specialize in advertising things to read, that good sense goes double for us. Here is Mike Monteiro on “All the News Where It Needs to Fit.” (via @HawkThompson)

March 19, 2015

Podcasts: the perfect marriage between close attention, bookish demos, and mobile-friendly environment. Here’s eMarketer on growth in the podcast market.

This CJR report on Millennials and news has direct implications for the future of publishing. Pay attention to how the new generation is establishing its information gathering.