Interesting article yesterday on the notion that time spent on-line by adults in the US is flat, after years of rapid growth. The article cites a Forrester Survey that states web surfing now takes up about 12 hours of our week (double what it was in 2004) but did not see significant growth from last […]

Everywhere we go, it seems that people believe that MySpace is for young people and Facebook is for an older crowd. Translation: brands perceive there is more value to being on Facebook than on MySpace.
Another report came out just today that said the same thing. Basically, it states that the “ideal” age group for […]

Chris Anderson’s book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” doesn’t get off to a good start for economists. After talking about how common “zero” prices are, Anderson says, “Surely economics must have something to say about this, I thought. But I couldn’t find anything. No theories of gratis, or pricing models that went […]

I’ve been watching the NYTimes recently and have noticed a few disturbing trends but let me focus on their web site. They have started putting in “interstitial ads”—you know, those really annoying ads that appear before and between web pages and annoy you for 30 seconds or so. I, and as far as […]

eMarketer’s report on social networks and ad spending concludes that 2010 will see a slew of increased “activity and deployment” of social strategy – and that 2009 marks the end of “experimental” social marketing. The implication is that social strategy will become a more vital component of how brands engage with their customers.
I agree, […]

Google announced that it is releasing a desktop operating system late next year. It is unclear at this point how this fits into Google’s overall strategy and thus whether it makes business sense or not. A sound business strategy for Google involves focusing on the online advertising business which they have mastered and has […]

The Internet has roiled the massive related worldwide industries of media and advertising. Advertising is what pays the rent in the newspaper, radio and television industries by and large. The content that these industries feed readers, listeners and viewers is merely the bait that attracts ears and eyeballs. These media businesses sell advertisers access to […]

Yesterday BT Group was the latest to distance itself from the Phorm behavioral targeting advertising technology for broadband and cable television. Phorm has gotten into a bad spat with Tim Berners-Lee and policymakers over its use of consumer data for targeting ads.
This is a bad development but comes on the heels of many […]

I have a feeling that the current economic environment is causing some merchants to rethink their approach to loyalty and rewards. Here’s why.
There is a very large, well known player in the grocery segment here in the Northeast that has long been regarded as a loyalty program innovator. They were one of the first to […]

I suppose dinosaurs were pretty disoriented in their final years roaming the earth so maybe we shouldn’t be too critical of the newspaper industry today.
Still the fact that the WSJ publisher is lashing out at Google as the cause of the newspaper death spiral is unsettling. Sure, Google has been a prominent player in […]