FB Birthday Barrage: There’s nothing like a birthday to bring oddballs out of the woodwork on Facebook. Your wall quickly fills with well-wishes from those close to you and those you only vaguely know at all. It’s a nice but empty gesture. It was a funny coincidence that this article by Slate’s David Plotz, “My Fake Facebook Birthdays: What happened when I celebrated my Facebook birthday on July 11. And July 25. And July 28” was published this week, on my birthday. I did indeed experience the FB Birthday posts barrage. I did not, however, as Plotz did, then change my birthday on Facebook two more times to see if people still posted birthday messages on my new fake birthdays. The results of Plotz’s little FB birthday social experiment are at once comical (there were many “repeat-greeters”), sad (there were many “repeat-greeters”), and, I guess, a little reassuring (some of his actual friends knew his real birthday and paid enough attention to his FB activity to call him out on his prank). P.S., thanks everyone for all of the birthday wishes!! Slate
Browser IQ Hoax: Sorry all of you Internet Explorer users, you aren’t stupid after all. As it turns out, that study (which we and many other media outlets covered) about the correlation between the browser you use and your IQ was actually a hoax. It is not clear whether or not the company that released the research, ApTiquant, actually exists; its website was only created within the past month and its staff images were copied from a real business in Paris’ site. Sketchy. So anyway, we’re not going to judge you anymore, Internet Explorer fans; and Chrome and Opera users, you can stop feeling superior. BBC
Twitter Singles: To all you single ladies, Diana Adams wants to help you meet the man of your dreams — on Twitter, because bursts of 140 characters or less is a really great way to get to know someone. To that end, Diana has put together this lovely list of 30 eligible Twitter bachelors. She is very passionate about this cause. As she explains, “It is my greatest wish that perhaps this will spark a fun evening spent with Twitter friends, a romantic dinner for two, or even a lifelong partnership. You never know, right?” Bit Rebels
Tumblr of the Day: They can’t help it, they just look kind of funny. Dads on Vacation
Video of the Day: Marine Mariachi
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Marketers weigh the cons of working with Google Ad Manager amid Justice Department’s new lawsuit
When is it time to back away?
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Atlas Obscura wants to be profitable before raising funds in a tricky media market
Atlas Obscura wants to turn a profit this year before it raises another funding round, at a time when publishers are facing lower valuations and pickier investors as deal activity slows.
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Publishers report Q1 ad revenue is pacing 10-25% behind forecasts
Publishers are facing a slow start to Q1 and sales teams have a lot of work to do to regain lost time.
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SponsoredHow ad tech is tackling waste by optimizing supply chains
Sponsored by Bidtellect The programmatic and digital advertising industry is well aware of the inefficiencies in buying and selling — from auction duplication and volume bias to multi-integrations and reselling — but how did it get this out of control? How can we fix it? A redundant, multiple-step process to ad delivery has become the norm, […]
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WTF is cookie stuffing?
Fraud is a well-documented pox on digital advertising, but it’s also an issue for publishers and marketers working together on affiliate marketing deals, too. One of the more tried-and-true techniques is cookie stuffing.
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Bloomberg, Axios, Politico, other business publishers rethink subscriber retention during the economic downturn
Premium publishers, like POLITICO, Axios and Bloomberg, have to make sure their fees are still considered a necessity as readers recalculate their spending and companies recalculate their expense budgets.
