Media went programmatic and, in doing so, it lost its soul. It sacrificed quality for quantity, experience for scale, creativity for reach, meaning for volume. Brands have been encouraged by content aggregators, from walled-garden behemoths to open web SSPs, to skim the surface of content, bouncing off a layer of user data direct to users’ eyeballs. This…
A cold freeze is settling in. Not just around my toes on the platform in the morning but between the advertising industry and the digital community. The US Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) has given the cold-shoulder to Adblock Plus, an app that allows users to block ads on their mobile phones, which has been uninvited…
2015 has been a busy year for me as the worlds of MadTech and FinTech have exploded almost at the same rate. I have tried to keep in touch with both while attempting to diversify to some degree and below are my stand-out articles of 2015 collated for posterity and your reading pleasure. I should…
This book is a sobering account of the systematic destruction of value caused by the networked economy under whose spell we have fallen so deeply. It is a powerfully argued, complex and, at times, over-elaborate description of how we first invented and then released a genie that is disrupting its way through the fabric of…
Here, for you to enjoy with a cup of tea in the afternoon of the first Friday of 2014, is a compilation of excerpts from and links to the best blog posts I came across last year. Among a wealth of other nuggets I sifted through, these are the ones I found most thought-provoking and…
Following the deal in October with MediaVest, Publicis Omnicom Groupe is doubling down on its bet on digital with the largest upfront media buy that Google has agreed to date. However, as the insightful comments on this article from AdAge point out, Google’s latest $100 Million deal with POG agencies DigitasLBi and Razorfish raises big questions for…
Neil’s Recruitment have done it again. The best visualisation of the UK media industry gets updated for 2013. Nice one Neil! by Neil’s Recruitment Co.
As memories of a carefree summer fade and the coming winter revs up its engines, so the storms of complaints about businesses seem to have become deafening. From bitter disputes on trains about autumnal service glitches and painful season ticket price rises, to the furore over 10% fuel bill hikes, it seems that everyone has something to moan…
It has been 7 years since I started a new job and 3 months since I last worked full-time so I guess it was no surprise that finally starting in my new role at Havas Media on Monday was slightly disorientating. The countdown had begun weeks before with the desperate attempt to keep ‘up to…
In my review of Jay Baer’s book, Youtility, I talked about the opportunities available to brands to sponsor or co-develop elements of functionality on 3rd party platforms rather than just their own and here’s a prime example: Evernote + 3M’s Post It Notes As TechRadar puts it: Evernote is partnering with 3M to give the…
Wow. That was easy. I just got rid of all the ads on the internet. Before: After: All within 20 seconds of installing the Chrome extension AdBlock which is apparently now “The #1 most downloaded extension for Google Chrome and Safari”. Quartz.com reported that over a fifth of internet users are using some form of adblocking…
The commoditisation of media management is creeping ever upwards towards the top of the value chain – data management. In a world where measurable value is everything, it all comes down to the data; how clean and complete it is and how you handle it. Despite the pleas of creatives and content evangelists, they will always be…
Perhaps the most enjoyable memories of my early working life are of brainstorming ways to reimagine brands for the brave new Web. It was 1995 and the web (let alone the agency) was barely out of nappies but there we were proposing route-mapping software development to the RAC, digital postcards to Carlsberg (C-mail) and an…
[First published on Google+ 20/02/2013] So there I was at another through-the-line campaign briefing and I suddenly felt like I was in the wrong century. Planners from every channel were stepping up in quick succession to reveal with gushing enthusiasm how they intended to spend millions of pounds of nameless client budget. This is all…
[First published as an UpFronts column in Figaro Magazine on 3/01/12] This year opened with the predictable news that online marketing budgets were on the increase once again (72% of companies said they were increasing by 35% on average) and much has been made of the increasing budget allocated to online channels, mainly at the…
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