Consumers Are Just Not That Into You

Seems like most marketers are still having a hard time understanding that consumers really don’t care about our brands. Sure, the Nike, Starbucks, and Apples of the world have iconic brands that consumers are truly fans of and are proud to flaunt their association with these types of brands. But for the average marketer, large [...]

DigiDay Networks & Targeting Conferences – Data, Data, Data

Yesterday I emceed my second set of DigiDay conferences (DigiDay Networks & DigiDay Target), where execs and thought leaders gathered from the industry’s  leading ad networks, optimization technology firms, data marketplaces, data exchanges, agencies, publishers, and even a few marketers were in the mix. Consistent with my last DigiDay experiences, it was a standing room [...]

Elf Yourself 2008 – “Viral Optimization”, If You Will

Last year over 25 million Americans Elved themselves. Heck, even the anchors from Good Morning America Elved themselves on the air – talk about a “viral success”.
Did you Elf yourself? Do you remember what brand provided the cool elfinator?
Chances are the answer is “nope”. Better yet, when I conduct public seminars and ask that question, [...]

All of My Online Video Dreams Are Coming True This Month

Ok, from the title of this post I assume I need to tell a few of you to get you minds out of the gutter!
Now on to my point – First TheWB.com launched a pretty much fully baked in-content video search function, now YouTube is taking the first step towards interactive video, albeit a baby [...]

Microsoft, WPP, Avenue A, Open Ad Stream – Oh My!

As someone who follows the digital agency world very closely, and the former CEO of an agency that once was in talks with Avenue A about an acquisition – my hats (because I wear multiple of course) go off to the agency for becoming the recipe of legend. After arguably becoming the most powerful stand [...]

Facebook Embraces Video, While NBC Quarantines It

I could have easily titled this post “A tale of two platforms – the old and the new”…
Have you been following the online Olympics buzz? NBC has been incredibly restrictive about where & when their 2,200 hours of video content will live online. To make matters more interesting, the video player on NBCOlympics.com requires Microsoft’s [...]

A New Era In Analytics Is Finally Upon Us

I am incredibly excited to discuss the first in a series of posts about the topic of the next generation of online media analytics.
Why is there a resounding silence and echo when I say that? Why is the industry not jumping at the opportunity to apply a more sophisticated model to our efforts?
Folks – this [...]

Digital Marketing Round-Up

I decided to add a new posting format to TheDigitalBlur.  The “Digital Marketing Round-Up” will be posted around the end of each month and will be a  combination of short thoughts on issues that I feel will have a big impact on us marketers in the not so distant future. This ranges from acquisitions to  [...]

Agency Chaos (In case you were living under a rock…or just needed one thrown at you)

As if the fragmentation of media itself wasn’t enough, agencies these days are wrought with such a hyper-evolutionary state of marketing disciplines across the board, it’s often mind boggling. So today I want to revisit one the fundamental reason why I started this blog – to focus on the blurring of media, marketing, creative & [...]

Square Marketing Pegs and Round Social Media Holes

“We want to do something in MySpace”, “What about Facebook?”, “We need to do a viral campaign”, “What the hell is Twitter anyway?”. These questions are asked by marketers, and answers pondered by agencies industry wide daily. Thankfully “Our CEO asked if we should experiement in Second Life” has waned over the last year (just [...]