Myspace Was Ahead Of Its Time…



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Myspace Was Ahead Of Its Time





‘Sticky Videos’ Help Online Publishers Boost Video Ad Viewability

This drives me crazy about our industry. We made these moral judgements on what are “good ad experiences” and what are “bad ad experiences” that don’t ever consider the actual user experience. How does this happen? Are these ironic names and I’m just missing the joke?



Since when is autoplay video with the audio turned on that follows you around the page considered a “good experience”? Why is no one else asking this? Don’t answer that. I know the answer (because buyers pay good money for this) but it just makes me even more angry. We don’t care about user experience, we’re just whoring our pages out to whatever buyers care about this moment.



We write these long think pieces pontificating on what’s wrong with the industry and how we can confront ad blocking and we pin it on the Taboola’s or SmartRTB’s or “shady sites” and pat ourselves on the back about how premium our inventory is. We’re not like that. We care about our users. We don’t source traffic. Yeah we use outstream but it’s heavily frequency capped. Oh and look we decreased our ads per page! Sure the three we have follow you to the bathroom and back and but we’re certified!



If this is progress then my old Myspace page will blow your mind with it’s enriched user experience





Did Jason Kint Mention “Duopoly” This Week?





When you try to sound smart but don’t know what any of the words mean.

Current streak: 9 weeks







Other Articles





Snopes, in Heated Legal Battle, Asks Readers for Money to Survive

Ryan’s take: Let this be a lesson to you kids. I have no clue what the lesson is but this should probably be one of them.



Facebook Is Ready To Make Money On Messaging

Your BFD . You think Facebook paid $19B because it was interesting in in-app money transfers or stickers? This is a HUGE untapped ad market for Facebook. My concern is what happens when Facebook doesn’t rely on publishers for all of its content and thus its revenue? We all worry about Facebook screwing with our content and money now, but they need us. What happens when they don’t need us? You think they’ll bend to our requests? Watch this space closely.



Twitter Is Dying

No he’s not wrong. But ohgodmyeyes! Man… that page design. Look at how much is going on just to tell me that twitter didn’t add any users this quarter. There’s a giant call out. Some crazy cards. Then when you think you’re scrolling to get to an actual substantive portion of the article but… oh… no it’s just the next article that looks to have absolutely nothing to do with twitter or advertising.



If this is the future of publishing then game over man.



P&G Cuts More Than $100 Million in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ad

Let’s all get the emotional response out of the way. Fuck that’s bad! Ok everyone feel better? Now we can let the critical mind take over.



First a bit of context. P&G has been on a crusade this year to shame the industry into standardizing. This smells exactly like that to me. Second, there are scant details in this. Did they cut their programmatic buys? Direct buys? Was it across all of their brands? Publishers? Geos? Show us some numbers! Third, one quarter is hardly a long enough timeline to understand the impact of this decrease. Especially if they are measuring offline sales. Will they be continuing these cuts? Will they keep us up to speed with the results if they show a decrease in Q3? (no they won’t).



Is there fraud and waste in the system? Of course. But that doesn’t mean this is anything more than some Grade-A attention whoring.





Hot Takes



Confessions Of A Media Optimist: ‘What Is Overhyped Is The Death Of This Space’



Should Advertisers Ever Bring Dead Celebrities Back To Life?



R.I.P. Flash





Shameless Self Promotion

No podcast this week. Check me out next week when I talk Programmatic TV with Jason Burke (@jburkejburke) the VP of Strategic Development for Clypd (pronounced “clipped”).

In the meantime maybe you should read up on WTF Programmatic TV is.







Thanks for reading and have a great week! Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.

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