"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" – Mark Twain
So far in my nascent Online Ad Business 101 series, I’ve covered the overall advertising value chain, and looked at a superficial level at how an ad ‘call’ is actually handled. This installment brings together themes from those two first posts, by taking a look at ad networks. As I have mentioned before, ad networks … Read more
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the “dark side” of online advertising, in particular, the activities of companies like NebuAd and Phorm using somewhat shady techniques to gather behavioral data about users and using this data to target ads. I’ve even blogged about it myself. And click fraud remains a significant challenge to … Read more
In a move that I predicted on this blog 18 months ago (ok, really I just called out that a colleague had predicted it, but I shall take my prognostication credits where I can), Google has announced that it’s going to be using the AdSense network to distribute new episodes (I suppose you could use … Read more
This page is an index into my "Online Advertising Business 101" series of posts. Click on the links below to be taken to the relevant installment. Part I – The online advertising value chain Part II – How does adserving actually work? Part III – Ad Networks Part IV – Publishers Part V – Rich … Read more
Welcome to the second part of my Online Advertising 101 series. One of the things that I’ve discovered people fail to appreciate about online advertising is how much goes on behind the scenes in order to bring you an innocuous-looking banner ad. Whilst this is a relatively technical topic to cover in a series which … Read more
Outdoor advertising has not exactly been at the cutting edge of innovation in recent years, at least not in terms of broadening access to smaller advertisers. Whilst radio, TV and print advertising has been becoming easier to get into on a limited budget, getting your ad on a 96-sheet on the Cromwell Road has been … Read more
There’s a very interesting article in The Atlantic from Nicholas Carr in which he argues that the information delivery model of the web (and, in particular, the search engine model) is robbing us of our ability to read and digest information, and consequently affecting the very way we think. Whether this turns out to be … Read more
You may have heard of Silverlight, our Rich Internet Applications framework – and if you haven’t, you’re sure to hear more about it this summer, as it’ll be used on the NBC site to stream Olympics videos. But you don’t have to be NBC to take advantage of Silverlight video streaming – or know anything … Read more
When you spend as much time as I do examining the workings of the online ad industry, it’s easy to forget that, to many people, it really is pretty opaque. Not only is it characterized by some of the most complex and scalable technology in the world, but it also has its own, pretty unique, … Read more
As anyone who has spent any time in the UK will know, the BBC is a safe haven from that most grubby of industries, advertising. It’s enshrined in the BBC’s charter. But the BBC’s ban on advertising only applies to the UK (where anyone who owns a TV has to pay a $300 licence fee … Read more