gregorykennedy

http://www.newmusictalk.com/forum/index.php

Sarah Lacy suggests in this new post on TechCrunch that innovation in the area of display advertising is a must for the industry to survive long in the long run. I could not agree more.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/online-ads-even-the-evangelists-turning-bearish/

Also the IAB introduced 3 new sizes. Not exactly what I have advocated, I would like to see a lot of simplification - but it's a start.
http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/4648

Here is a great chart from the NY Times that shows the declining number of advertisements per page for magazines. It's not all that surprising given the current economy and the continued rise of digital media. Does it mean digital ad spends will increase? In the long term I think it does, however the online advertising industry is in desperate need of innovation or the future will mean just less advertising in general. Perhaps that is a good thing.

The design agency that defined a generation has closed it's doors. I remember people fighting over the tDR edition of Emigre (which is sitting on a shelf next to me right now).

Read more:
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/the-designers-republic-is-dead-long-live-the-designers-republic/

Nobody likes banner ads. Have you ever heard any one speak positively about them? I think it's very interesting that even industry insiders openly talk about their contempt for banner ads. The same insiders whose salaries are in part paid by them. While Internet display advertising may have achieved sales larger than out-of-home advertising it still has a long way to go to achieve that same level of mind share.

Display advertising as it stands now is almost a complete failure. Consumers hate them, the performance is dismal, and their emotional impact (what really makes a TV commercial powerful) is all but negligible. However the inventory continues to rise, with the extreme popularity of social networks and on line media in general. What little innovation that has happened in this area has all been confined to data mining and improved targeting. But the actual content, improving the marketer's ability to connect with people in meaningful ways has been all but forgotten.

The Industry Needs to Re-invent Display
Advertising can be great. Sometimes it even succeeds at crossing over to become a cultural icon. There are countless examples of simple advertisements transcending their humble beginnings. Coke imagery and iconography, The Michelin Man, or the Budweiser Clydesdales are good examples. I myself have found memories of Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam. But in order for that to happen through display ads an industry wide shift needs to occur. Or the format is in real danger. I believe that display ads have huge potential to influence and persuade. It just has yet to be unlocekd. While there has been some very visionary attempts to do great things with them, rich media platform providers are one example and the creative use of streaming video is another. But these initiatives have been ad-hoc and scattered at best. What follows is collection of ideas how about to improve the format.

Too Many Formats and Too Much Complexity
There are just too many sizes and media formats for agencies to produce them efficiently. The standard IAB sizes which were created almost 10 years ago include a hodge-podge of strange and irregular sizes like: 728x90, 300x250, 120x600, and 160x600 plus a few other. This alone is difficult enough to manage, but each website has it's own k-size requirements on top of these physical size restrictions. Which can double the volume of creative one needs to deliver for a single campaign. Next add in the different rich media formats, like streaming video or expandable features and you have a bewildering amount of complexity, which takes the focus off what advertising really is about – the content.

An effort to develop a more streamlined number of formats and standardize most of the differences between sites would go a long way towards fixing most of this. For example the 300x250 box ad in test after test will consistently out-perform the other sizes. Why don't we just eliminate most of the other sizes? The advantages of this would be huge. Plus this one size is the only one that can run a standard video stream. The other sizes require the video to be squished down too much in order for it to fit.

Bookmarks for Banners
Since you can't bookmark a banner ad or save it in anyway, it's potential to influence in the same way that print ads can is extremely diminished. In the off chance that I see a print add for something that I like, I can show it other to people, I can take it with me to the shop, or even hang it up on the wall. The banner ad format doesn't allow for any of this interaction. So when I see a banner ad for something I like, I am forced to act immediately or just ignore it. Being able to save it and act on it later would radically change the way banner ads work.

A simple system that would let people bookmark and save ads would change everything about how marketers design campaigns. It would encourage creative thinking beyond finding more and more annoying ways to grab attention. Since you now would want to create something that people would go back to and enjoy.

Encourage Creativity and Innovation
This has clearly been lacking in the space for some time. The format's reputation is so poor that many creatives are reluctant to even admit that they do this type of work. Besides streaming video there has been very little innovation in the area. With the success of ad words and Facebook's innovations with classified ad targeting one might be lead to believe that the banner ad format is destined to stagnant and decline - only to suffer a slow death in the next 10 years. This perhaps still might be the case, if the large networks of sites that do actually make a living from display ads allow the format to languish and don't do anything to breath new life into it.

The large networks need to foster more innovation and creativity in the space. They could for example hold creative competitions to encourage developers to come up with interesting ways to do more with the format, and give out prizes like Facebook and Google have done. One idea that came up during a brainstorm was to stream TV shows through the format, as we wanted to provide content that people actually wanted in addition to the advertisement. Doing something like that certainly would go a long way in at least improving the formats reputation.

The Bottom Line
The formats own champions have simply done a poor job of promoting it and fostering it's reputation. At the last Yahoo! sponsored advertising conference I went to, I found it interesting that Yahoo! allowed  team after team to present just TV commercials. A format which to my knowledge, appears in only a few places on Yahoo! such as their video player. Not one team presented a banner ad. As I sat there I thought to myself, “If even Yahoo! isn't proud of this format then perhaps it's just an relic of the past that will soon die out. But to be replaced by what?" was the question I just kept mulling over.

Here is an interesting article from the NyTimes about how the technology to enable self published books continues to evolve and may even out strip the traditional publishing world. These numbers really surprised me:

Self publishing ... “It used to be an elite few,” said Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company whose revenue has grown to $30 million, from $1 million, in just two years and which published more than 300,000 titles last year. Many of those were personal books bought only by the author. “Now anyone can make a book, and it looks just like a book that you buy at the bookstore.”

"Should I stay or should I go now...", Joe Strummer and The Clash said it best. Given all the recent changes at LiveJournal (my team and I were laid off), I wasn't sure what to do about my Journal any more.

So I took a break and I thought through the options. I could move to Word Press, or some other system. I could become a Twitter fanatic (not my cup-o-tea). I could go back to MySpace (but that's so 2005). Or I could simply just shut it down completely. But In the end I decided to keep it and keep updating.

Well, at least for now.

Enjoy.

I thought these were great.
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/coffee/?em

I went to an art high school in New York City and athletics was not our strong point. My PE class had 50 kids in it. Which was completely unmanageable. The coach was old and defeated form years of trying to teach out-of-shape, goth, smokers. He just wanted to ride out his last few teaching years and collect a pension. He would have us run laps to start the class but the entire class would just walk. Since there wasn't a single jock in the school, our poor coach would blow his whistle a few times and then move onto the next exercise after just a few laps.

I think we ended playing volleyball most of year because we could just stand around and not do a whole lot. And it was indoors, since the school was located at Lincoln Center in Midtown and we couldn't go outside for any activities. Our basketball team lost every game they played. But no one cared. Our fencing team was awesome, however. I don't think many other NYC public schools had a fencing team.

Graffiti hotel decoration, cool right? Saw art, ate chocolate, had dinner with some friends. It was a lot colder than I had anticipated. I had to wear two coats over a sweater!


Poster for Balkan architecture exhibition in Basel.


They really know how to have dinner in Europe.


Streetcars in Zurich are just like the ones in SF. In fact Zurich and San Francisco are sister cities.


Chocolate stores are everywhere.


Art exhibition.


Zurich at night.

Now I might start using twitter.

Does anyone remember Shaq's brand expansion into into hip hop with Twism?

Мой журнал френдит много русских пользователей. Хотя я не знаю русского языка, мне поможет русский друг. Пожалуйста, в комментарии к этому посту напишите немного о себе и что вы думаете о моем журнале. Спасибо!

I am not so into this one. I like vampire movies, Underworld, Blade, and even that one with Bai Ling, The Breed. But this looks like The Gossip Girl Vampire Special.

This is a real shocker. The lipstick index is a widely understood phenomenon. During an economic downturn makeup sales go up. The beauty industry was my life raft during the last recession. Looks like there is no where to run and hide.

For those who don't want to read through the entire article here is the letter:

Dear Friends,

Many of you have been asking us about The Estée Lauder Companies Holiday press party this year. After much thought and consideration, we have decided that, at this moment in time, it is more appropriate to thank you and celebrate in another way. To express our gratitude for your support and to recognize our invaluable, deep relationships, The Estée Lauder Companies will be making a donation in your honor to Dress for Success. The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

So, although we will be cancelling the party on December 1st at Nobu 57, you are very much in our hearts….

The Lauder Family and The Estée Lauder Companies

Looks like they will still have their employee Holiday party. But no free drinks for the press.

Gorman SUX!

I love really love to smoke cigarettes. I quit a number of years ago, but every once in a while when I see smokers congregated in front of a bar I just can't help myself and I light up. But it does seem pretty pathetic when people are smoking outside in the freezing rain or snow.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/facebook-adds-pro-accounts-for-developers

I predicted this two years ago when they launched the app platform. The key to them cashing in on that was finding a way to charge the widget developers to be on the service, and so it goes.

A user submission (Thanks lizlux ) in this surprisingly engaging series, as I try to uncover ads that don't suck. This is a brilliant TV commercial for Toshiba's new flat panel. I find this ad extremely impressive. It's an almost high art concept that still does a great job at promoting a product.

This was a nice News post about us.
http://profy.com/2008/11/07/livejournal-innovates-subscription-based-revenue-model-%E2%80%93-offers-subscription-for-life/