Quote of the Day

Grumpy Brit on how web start-ups misunderstand the ad biz:

"Advertising hasn’t proven the monetizing panacea it was assumed to be because the people who fund, develop and manage web-based businesses know the square root of buggery bollocks about advertising. Which is a bit like the people responsible for laying track being ignorant of anything to do with trains. Despite this modest shortcoming the geeks act like they invented it."

-- via Ad Contrarian (Related thoughts from Seth Godin and Brian Morrissey.)

And wtf is buggery bollocks?

Quote of the Day

"Anyone who knows anything about advertising knows that experiencing a product has far more impact than experiencing an ad."
- Bob Hoffman in The Ad Contrarian eBook (pdf)

I don't agree it's always the case. Ads for Schwepps, for example, are much more fun than the carbonated water they peddle. But there are plenty of other soundbites in that ebook that you can believe in, like the one on the difference between puzzles and mysteries (read it yourself).

Or this one: "As we all know, In American business there is nothing stupider than the people who had the job before we did."

Newspapers Learn to Linkbait

To chime in on that "Google is amoral" piece in the Guardian that shot up to the top of Techmeme today: if all newspapers master the art of linkbait like Mr. Porter, then maybe they won't have to "give its content free to the search engine in order to survive."

Man, it takes serious copywriting talent to produce a line like this: "Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information."

Is Mr. Porter a fan of Mr. Keen?

Quote of the Day

"If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it's not because I like your brand, but rather because I like my friends."
-- Mike Arauz

Quote of the Day

"They collect followers on Twitter as proof of how brilliant they are at social media marketing, without realizing the irony that they are just turning their Twitter feed into a broadcast medium that reaches more people than they could possibly hope to have a "relationship" with."
- Kevin Rothermel

Can Social Networks Make Money?

The cover story in this month's MIT Tech Review: "It's a model that stirs memories of the first Internet bubble: build the user base and hope the money comes--from an IPO, a buyout, or ads. At this point, KickApps does not reveal revenue figures, or even what kind of a cut it is taking from the ads. That, too, brings back memories: staying mum about revenue was always a sign that there wasn't much to talk about."

"The problems with social-network advertising revolve around three main issues: attention, privacy, and content."

Quote of the Week

"The medium is the message from our sponsor."

- Nick Carr in his critique of Mark Zuckerberg's "The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today."