FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Last week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that online advertising dropped 5 percent during the first quarter of 2009.  This marks the first time Web advertising has posted a year-over-year decline since the fourth quarter of 2002.

Given the recession’s impact on advertising in general, this news is not at all remarkable, but, as Steve Smith, editor at the Media Industry Newsletter, notes: “The deeper question is where online ad spending will be when there is an inevitable upswing. Is online branding and the display economy being hurt in a permanent way by the rush to performance-based campaigns? CPMs continue to plunge. Ad inventory continues to gush online from social media. Searc More...

Last week I met a former colleague at Starbucks—or, as one Facebook “friend” put it recently, the 2009 version of a Depression-era breadline—for a cup of coffee.  

The colleague, who I will refer to as “Jill,” was recently caught in the undertow of one of her publishing company’s (sorry, “media” company’s) recent downsizings.  “Jill” is an outstanding seller and sales leader.  A divorced mother of two beautiful girls—ages 11 and 14—she has produced great top-line results everywhere she has been employed.  The love her customers and staff members have for her is exceeded only by the degree to which they res More...

According to a recently released Forrester Research report—dubbed “The Social Technographics of Business Buyers”—buyers and decision makers in the business-to-business sector are one of the most active groups of people when it comes to social media participation.  This can be evidenced by the dramatic growth of LinkedIn.    

Forrester surveyed 1200 buyers throughout America and Europe.  Because this was a b-to-b survey, buyers were not only asked how they participate in social networks but whether they used them for buying decisions.  Some highlights from the study:

•  91 percent of these deci More...

In a recent discussion of online display advertising, Erin Hunter, EVP at comScore, said the following:

“While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, certain studies demonstrate that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns.  For many, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit.  Ultimately judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a subset of people who may not be representative of the target audience.”  

Since recent digital More...

Some 20 years after applying for an ad sales position with a now-defunct medical and scientific publisher, I find myself obsessed with media and the challenges facing the industry today. Every day I hear or read about pay cuts, layoffs, the death of print, challenges around monetizing video or disappointing online ad revenue growth. I tell myself that the media industry is made up of many bright people and that we will collectively get our house in order.

Last night I came to the realization that I have been having the wrong conversation with myself. It is not about being bright. If it were, MySpace and Facebook would be highly profitable at this point. It is also not about the oft-used terms like "integration," &quo More...