Madison Avenue is No Silicon Valley: It’s almost cliche these days to call on ad agencies to act more like software companies. There are problems galore with the analogy. The Atlantic carries entrepreneur Naeem Zafar’s 5 Secrets of Silicon Valley. The majority of the “secrets” — they’re actually quite commonplace — don’t apply to the bulk of the ad world. For instance, Zafar lauds Silicon Valley’s celebration of failure. One stop on ad blogs will tell you that the ad world doesn’t celebrate misses. He also points to Silicon Valley’s “aligned incentives.” This again can’t be said of Madison Avenue, where shops are actually incentivized to bill the most rather than based on outcomes. Finally, Zafar mentions the Valley’s “culture of collaboration.” Oh boy, if there’s anything ad agencies don’t do well, it’s collaborate. A client with multiple shops can be guaranteed those agencies will focus squarely on killing the other from Day 1. So until Madison Avenue fixes those structural problems, all the talk of acting like Silicon Valley will remain just that: talk.
Happy Birthday, Website: It was 20 years ago that Tim Berners-Lee put up the first website, which detailed his project on something called “the WorldWide Web.”
Dennis Crowley Up Close: Foursquare is the poster child for New York’s current crop of tech startups. And the personification of its role is cofounder Dennis Crowley. Ad Age has a profile of Crowley, who is described as less computer science geek and more master showman and social animal. In the portrait painted by Edmund Lee, Crowley comes across as a sensible technologist, less likely to build a robot than create a useful tool that solves a real problem. Now comes the big test: whether Crowley and his team can turn its big but not enormous user base into a the big-revenue business that its financial backers and the rest of the New York tech scene expect.
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Publishers say the competition is steeper than expected for event sponsorship dollars this year
Selling events was harder than expected for some publishers in Q2, but having a niche helped win some of the coveted sponsorship dollars.
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Why some publishers are giving their AI chatbots a personality
BuzzFeed and Ingenio are hoping giving their chatbots a unique voice and tone will differentiate their AI products but others are prioritizing utility over entertainment.
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Media Briefing: Publisher execs fear lack of visibility for Q3, but feel steady year over year
Publisher execs share how Q2 shook out for their businesses as they brace for an equally murky second half.
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SponsoredWhat the measurement and currency discussion really means to TV advertisers
Ali Mack, head of TV and agency, Experian Major streaming video providers have recently made headlines by adopting new currencies for ad measurement, threatening Nielsen’s long-standing TV ratings monopoly. NBCUniversal, for example, has certified iSpot and VideoAmp as currencies for advanced audiences and formed the Joint Industry Committee with Paramount, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery. […]
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Digiday+ Research: Nearly two-thirds of publishers think they will lose when the third-party cookie dies
Publishers have been busy prepping for the end of the third-party cookie, but that doesn't mean they think they'll come out on top in the post-cookie era. In fact, publishers count themselves among those who stand to lose from the end of the cookie.
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Spotify cancels six true crime podcasts amid layoffs, Gimlet-Parcast merger
Spotify is canceling six shows and laying off 200 people as it merges its Gimlet and Parcast units to push its podcast business towards profitability.
