Facebook Kids
New advertising rules may have lifted a major barrier to Facebook’s long-held desire of signing up children under 13 years of age. The Federal Trade Communication revised the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to exclude parental consent from ads that are based on behavior, rather than personal information. So-called “contextual advertisements” would permit Facebook Continue Reading →
Antifragile
“…risk management is about fragility, not naive interpretation of past data. If Fannie Mae is sitting on a barrel of dynamite I would not use past statistical data for my current analysis. Risks are in the fragility.” – Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan  “Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is Continue Reading →
Instagram
On Monday, Instagram said that it has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry. The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing site. Unless Instagram users Continue Reading →
Microsoft’s Bing Team recently posted a short piece entitled, “The Choice is Clear, Don’t Get Scroogled this Year.” Here’s the important part: “We launched the “Scroogled” campaign to educate average people about what Google has done with their shopping site. Instead of showing you the most relevant shopping search results for the video game you’re Continue Reading →
Online Video Ads
In 2007, Millward Brown undertook the first industry-wide study of consumer-controlled, ad-supported video content. Dubbed the C-TV study, it concluded that, in terms of ad recall, online video advertising was substantially more effective than TV advertising. This year, in a major collaborative neuroscience study with VEVO, the prominent music-video channel, UM wanted to revisit that Continue Reading →
FiOS App for iPad
TVs, tablets, smartphones… although size matters, a screen is a screen is a screen. So, when will WiwWiwWiw (What I want, When I want, Where I want) video viewing actually happen? Verizon has taken a nice first step into the future with FiOS TV for the iPad. It’s an app that lets FiOS customers watch Continue Reading →
Twitter Discovery
When it comes to turning shoppers out for Black Friday deals, the 30-second TV spot, the advertising circular and the e-mail blast are so passé. Today’s savvy retailers realize that the only way to cut through the clutter and outsmart consumers armed with price comparison shopping apps is to find new ways to connect with Continue Reading →
Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross
  eMarketer recently estimated that buying display ads through real-time bidding (RTB) platforms will account for 13 percent of online display spending in 2012, and will rise to 25 percent in 2015. Does the increased use of RTB mean that more and more salespeople will be disintermediated by ad exchanges and trading desks and put out Continue Reading →