Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Google (Page 3 of 6)

Music Biz Proves Again It Deserves Sleazy Reputation

One of my all-time favorite quotes is this one: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” It’s credited to the late Hunter S. Thompson.

Wsjmusicbus

Well, the industry is living up to its reputation quite well, thank you very much, if the news on The Journal’s front page today is any indication.

YouTube kool kids, you’ve been had. Tricked, scammed, bamboozled.

Note to music industry (and this label’s part of the Disney brand, for crying out loud!): the new world of marketing and promotion on the web is about transparency and honesty and disclosure. Not cheap Hollywood tricks and lies.

And the nice little rich girl from Brentwood, Marié Digby, ought to be ashamed of herself, too. This kind of front page exposure in the WSJ is definitely not what she and her parents had in mind.

You have to hand it to the Journal, though. My hat goes off to reporters Ethan Smith and Peter Lattman for bringing this one to our attention.

The New Age of Advertising Is Upon Us: Opportunity Abounds

We are in a major period of disruption in the advertising industry. I have never been more convinced of it. Getting into the middle of the ad:tech conference last week (see previous posts) just helped me experience and understand it even better, up close. The online portion of the industry is on a trajectory that cannot be stopped. (See graph in previous post.) The movement toward a new world order in the ad business is a major, ongoing story, and I can’t help but get excited about the changes and the opportunity it holds for so many of us.

Let me digress a bit. This story isn’t about me, but a little background: I began my career in an advertising agency — at what was then a top Minneapolis firm, which had many people who went on to ad fame and fortune. Nothing beats starting in the mailroom, that storied beginning in the business, where you learn so much, so quickly. And I danced in and out of the agency business for several years, even joining a top-ten worldwide ad agency as an account exec for a time, on a major, Fortune 500 piece of business. Later, in mid-career, I launched of my own marketing consulting firm, actually serving as an ad agency for several of my small tech and B2B clients, among my other duties, for quite a few years.

The reason I had earlier left the traditional agency business was because I thought it was mired in old ways of doing things. It didn’t get technology. It didn’t understand systems and productivity and stuff — you know, being out in front with new techniques and computer-driven processes. It relied only on the ethereal “creativity,” and, of course, the old boy network of expense accounts and golf and long lunches. It was living in the past, on old glory. It lived and died by winning and losing accounts, of course (it still does). But where was the innovation that would move things forward? It didn’t take me long to know I had to get back into tech, which I’d gotten a taste of soon after moving on from that first job in an agency. (I had graduated to being a copywriter on the client side. Computers and software were so much more exciting.) Once I finally left behind the idea of working for a large agency and went whole hog into tech, I never looked back (though I was certainly able to apply some of what I’d learned in running the business I later founded, especially how to manage client accounts and make a profit).

Today, traditional ad agencies still control a majority of the business, and traditional media still account for the vast majority of spending. But, boy, are things changing. The light is getting brighter at the end of the tunnel. The newer breed of tech-savvy, interactive, digital agencies is on the rise, along with new technology-based services, ad networks, exchanges, behavioral-targeting technology companies, widgets, and much more. Acquisitions are flying about everywhere. The dynamics of the industry are in major flux. The old ways, the old agencies die hard, but they do die. They must evolve, or new players simply step in. I liken much of the plight of the old guard today as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Sadly, some will surely go down. But so many new players will attain leadership positions in the industry.

Nowhere is this trend more evident or interesting, I think, than in the acquisition earlier this year of Digitas by Publicis (say it with me now: poob-li-cees), whose leader, Maurice Levy, claims he started the whole recent big-acquisition binge. Digitaslogo It’s hard to argue that the man doesn’t see the big picture. This recent article in the New York Times tells the story very well: It’s an Ad, Ad, Ad World. And the larger story about Publicis even has a local angle of sorts, in that famed Minneapolis agency Fallon is part of that holding company. Publicislogo On hard times lately, the agency recently announced that its chairman, Pat Fallon, was handing over the reins to Publicis sister agency Satchi & Satchi. The Fallon agency was a strong player early-on in interactive, but later jettisoned that department to refocus on the traditional part of the business. I never understood why.

Today, there’s no denying the ad game is changing — big time. Online is the new sheriff in town. GOOG and MSFT advertising companies? Who would have believed such a statement even six or seven years ago? Are they agencies? Well, they’re being very careful to hedge on that question. Perhaps they never will be. Meanwhile, the old guard is desparately trying to protect its flanks, preserve its share, posturing and manuevering at every turn, trying to out-smart competition coming at it from everywhere. The dollars are major, so it’s a fight worth watching.

But in this whole mix, of this there is no doubt: technology is finally coming to rule the advertising business. The Internet changed everything, and keeps on changing everything. And opportunity is adundant for new careers, new companies, and new wealth beyond our wildest dreams.

It’s about time!

Update: To add the pronunciation of Publicis….only because I love to talk Francais once in a while.

Google Picks Iowa – Goodbye ‘MinneGOOG’

It became official a couple days ago: Google has chosen Iowa as a site for a data center, dashing the hopes of us Minnesotans for the Big Guys to come to our state. Oh, the pain of it all! Losing again to the Hawkeyes…. My heart sank when I saw the news on CNet. Another story had appeared earlier, I learned, from my old buddies at Byte & Switch.

Mapiacolor

This news was especially painful in light of the post I did a while back, called Minne-GOOG?, in which I related a case that had been made by a fellow Minnesota blogger about why Google should buy the St. Paul Ford plant, which had just announced it was closing.

For a little perspective on this revolting development for Gopher fans, I asked Matt Bauer, the founder of Mosquito Mole Multiworks in Minneapolis, for some background on how such a thing could happen. MMMultiworks specializes in Rails development and hosting for startups. Matt’s a smart guy, and we were just talking about this very subject at lunch the week before this news broke.

“Google’s choice not to build a datacenter in Minnesota doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me,” he said. “This state doesn’t have cheap fiber connections — we’re just a spur off of Chicago for the most part. With its dark-fiber reserves, Google could probably overcome this, but they can’t overcome Minnesota’s energy problem.” He thus hit on the what would appear to be the real reason Google shunned the Gopher state.

“The biggest difficulty in building a datacenter is power — period,” Bauer continued. “That’s why Google buys more land than it needs for its data centers — so no one else can build nearby and take power. Minnesota has a good amount of power, but legislation put into law this February probably likely took Minnesota out of the running.” That legislation requires 25% of the state’s energy to come from next generation power sources. “I’m sure Google saw this and quickly became concerned about the quality of these new power sources and the associated costs. Iowa doesn’t have such legislation and gets its electricity from MidAmerican Energy, which hasn’t raised its prices since 1995. In fact, they’ve promised not to raise prices until 2010! Additionally, their new coal-fueled power plants operate very efficiently and predictably,” said Bauer.

Then there was the take of Ed Kohler, master blogger over at Minnesota’s own Technology Evangelist — the source of that great post I referred to above. He said, “Maybe it’s just there to speed up Warren Buffet’s searches?” Old-Mr.-Money-Bags Buffet lives just across the river from Council Bluffs in Omaha, Nebraska.

PagePow Launches Widgets with Advanced Reporting

PagePow Inc., a new web technology startup based in Minneapolis, today announced the launch of a private beta at PagePow.com. PagePow enables bloggers and web content owners to easily copy and paste web-based widgets into their blogs, web sites, auctions, social networking sites, and more. PagePow.com is immediately avalable as a private beta.

The startup is debuting with seven widgets:
– 5-Star Rating
– Poll
– Quiz
– Page Counter
– Google Map
– Contact Us
– Send Page to Friend

Pagepowhomepage

More widgets are planned. A key differentiator with PagePow is that bloggers and content owners will also have access to comprehensive reports generated by all the widgets they use. PagePow members will easily be able to monitor all the data their widgets produce through one simple interface at PagePow.com.

“Web site ease-of-use is a major focus for us, ” said PagePow founder Joe Sriver, an experienced UI designer whio worked in Silicon Valley for several years. “We spent a lot of time creating a simple, intuitive user interface to make sure people can come to the site, easily find what they need, and copy the code to their site within a couple minutes.”

Pagepow5starwidget

PagePow allows webmasters and bloggers to concentrate on generating content without having to worry about programming to have the cool features they want on their web sites, said Sriver.

PagePow offers comprehensive reports detailing statistics from PagePow widgets. “We wanted to offer widgets that any site could potentially use. We won’t have widgets that have a very narrow user base. For example, our poll widget can be used for any question,” said Sriver.

Users of PagePow widgets will be able to track all the data they generate while using the widgets, by logging in to PagePow and seeing their ratings, comments, poll/quiz answers, etc. all in one place. “This is something I haven’t seen on similar widget sites,” said Sriver. Otherpagepowwidgets “We let everyone take advantage of our widgets — not just webmasters or bloggers who put the code on their pages, but any user of the widgets.” Users will receive a one-time only pop-up dialog when they confirm their vote, comment, etc., and PagePow will prompt them to log in and will briefly explain the benefits of tracking their data.

Those interested in participating in the PagePow private beta can submit their name and email address at PagePow.com. Private beta testers are invited to comment on the functionality and UI and anything else they wish, said Sriver. A stage-one Public Beta is planned for the near future.

« Older posts Newer posts »