Swarm Tech: The Future of Collaborative Work

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the way we work is being transformed. The rise of the gig economy and the increasing prevalence of remote work have led to a new phenomenon: the swarm. Swarms are groups of freelance-based workers who self-organize to tackle tasks that are beyond the capability of any single individual. This…

Searching for the soul of media

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…

Adblocking is driving a wedge between Advertising and Marketing

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…

Book Review – Who Owns The Future? by Jaron Lanier

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…

6 of the best from 2013

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…

Nothing beats good customer service

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…

Adblocking

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 difference is in the data

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…