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This week’s link herd March 30, 2015

March 30, 2015 by Andrew Leave a Comment

A lengthy Link Herd today as we catch up with the the ins-and-outs of “We’re all publishers now”. We see some of the usual suspects here including the reoccurring bad-boy; publishers are struggling in the face of dropping ad revenue and the rise of alternative platforms. This week we can wonder whether Facebook has a solution is about to put the boot in.

herd-30-3-2015

  • The Facebook Reckoning
    Should publishers write for Facebook in an ad-revenue sharing deal? Is that evolution or throwing in the towel? Ben Thompson provides some interesting thoughts.
  • BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti Q&A About Publishing on Other Sites (Video)
    So people say, “Oh, Twitter doesn’t send that much traffic” — but we have this intuitive feeling that it’s more influential, and has a bigger effect [than people think]. Lots of people in the media see it. … The way that other blogs and publishers found our dress story was from the tweet, and they clicked through, and they re-shared, and posted it on their site, and that continued the cascade as well.
  • The dress is white and gold. Or, why BuzzFeed won
    We’re all publishers now but this piece from Brian Morrissey argues that all publishers are Buzzfeed. This is both essential for publishers needing page impressions but also the road to trouble as Buzzfeed will do it better.
  • Condé Nast Closes Blog Network NowManifest
    condenaste,bloggers, nowmanifest,platforms,deals,fashion
  • YouTube makes a move against brand-sponsored videos
    Vloggers will find it much harder to get paid to show a brand’s logo as an overlay. Google’s banned the practise unless the overlap was bought via them as a standard media deal.
  • Bloggers who used the platform include Susie BubbleAnna Dello RussoDerek BlasbergBryanBoy and Fashion Toast. They’ve been asked to focus on their own blogs and arrange their own ad deals.
    Livefyre which is both a comment platform and a large publisher content marketing tool has raised shy of $50m in another round of funding. Adobe and Salesforces are onboard as backers. Livefyre’s content tools are beyond this blogger’s budget but I’d very much like to see more community injected into their comment platform.
  • Why an SEO should think more like a publisher
    Linkbait man Lyndon Antcliff takes his history of SEO and joins the cause. He recommends “SEOs should think more like a publisher”.

This week’s link herd January 19, 2015

January 19, 2015 by Andrew Leave a Comment

One some Every Mondays Zebra Eclipse updates with a new Herd. The Herd is a digest of related links to stories appropriate to the blog. The goal is to show the common evolution of agency and publisher and to highlight the influence of creators, curators and community moderators.

19-01-2015-zestclould

  • Google Closes Gap on Facebook for Worldwide Social Logins
    The battle for the universal login is a brutal one fought below the headlines – for now. Facebook has been leading, is leading but the news that might surprise some given Google+’s struggles is that Google is closing the gap.
  • BuzzFeed to NME: publishers’ lessons in online video
    Sponsored tips from Outbrain on how brands can better use video. Unbundle and repackage – in other words; it’s better to have 10 videos that are a minute long than 1 video that’s 10 minutes long. Reuse your clips when you can and turn articles into videos.
  • Oxford Mail’s WhatsApp news service tops 1,200 subscribers after six months
    Publishers are experimenting with private message solutions like WhatsApp as a way to connect with their audiences.
  • Yet Another Publisher Sues Google For Withholding AdSense Earnings
    Super Cray, a clickbait site, had reassurance from their Google rep that their AdSense units were complaint with their rules. Even so; it is alleged that Google closed their account and denied over $500,000 just before payment.

This week’s link herd January 12, 2015

January 12, 2015 by Andrew Leave a Comment

stripes3

A big catch up of shared links and discovers from the end of 2014 and the first two weeks of 2015.

  • Twizoo – This Tiny Startup Has Figured Out How To Turn Twitter’s Free Data Into A Goldmine
    Business Insider on a startup called Twizoo that mines Twitter to pull together restaurant reviews. It’s said that this is a way to extract value from Twitter’s data and that there are about 7 tweet reviews per location in Twizoo to every one Yelp review.
  • Nick Denton says the traffic game is over, and BuzzFeed has won
    Nick Denton says Gawker Media is no longer just about the traffic. He says that while tipping a nod to Buzzfeed and admitting they’ve won. Does Google’s move towards viewable impressions make a difference here? It might for Gawker but won’t for Buzzfeed.
  • Why BuzzFeed Is Massively Underrated (and 9 Things Publishers and Brands Should Learn From It) |
    Shane Snow of Contently gets around to giving Buzzfeed some praise. My favourite of his 9 points is “Buzzfeed has figured out how to get premium advertisers their money’s worth”. How? Viral lift in the new metric. Exactly right.
  • Is Waterstones Getting Ready to Walk Away From Amazon?r
    Waterstones have said that Kindle sales dried up over Christmas. This has resulted in speculation as to whether they’ll walk from their deal with Amazon. Waterstones also claims that paper books sold well. There’s a difference between an ebook and a Kindle, though, and Waterstones gets reoccuring revenue on all ebooks bought from devices they’ve sold.
  • How to Get Read on Medium
    The team at Medium have an official guide on the best way to construct posts that get read.
  • Facing credibility gap, Upworthy poaches from The New York Times
    Upworthy has always insisted that its A/B testing was secondary to its goal of getting people to talk about socially worthy issues. Traffic is down from last year, the internet’s fasting growing site is off the boil, and hiring Amy O’Leary will give it editorial clout. What will Upworthy do with it?
  • What to Learn from the Man Who Managed Reddit’s Community of Millions
    Reddit’s community management boss puts instinct and intuition up there along with data. In fact, watch out you don’t get too bogged down in data.
  • Google Goes All In On “Viewability” For Display And YouTube Ads
    Google announced at CES 2015 that they’ll start to roll out “viewability” stats across their YouTube and DoubleClick network. This mean advertisers will be able to see if audiences actually saw the ads the advertisers bought.
  • What does the mobile market look like at the start of 2015?
    The Media Briefing puts together a look at the upcoming mobile landscape with insight and an extra bonus video presentation embed from Benedict Evans.
  • Private Marketplaces: The Death Knell For Publishers?
    Brian Fitzgerald offers insight on how to survive the “digital publishing apocalypse” in a piece in which PMPs are worryingly troublesome for publishers because they can’t predict the revenue those markets will drive.
  • Infographic: Reddit reports record-breaking 2014 with 71.25bn views
    The UK doesn’t even get a look in for Reddit’s top country list. It’s Iceland that comes top with 20.9 pageviews per capita. 54.9 million posts and 535 million comments in the last 12 months.
  • King of Clickbait
    A lengthy interview with Emerson Spartz, of Dose, who has a talent for headlines and clickbait. He’s into algorithms that cycle through and test alternative headlines but not trailblazing new ideas.
  • The Year’s 10 Most Popular Content Marketing Columns
    The Marketing Land team, sister of Search Engine Land, put together a list of the most popular “content marketing” columns they published this year. Worth a read even if many lean strongly towards the SEO.
  • 11 Actionable Content Marketing Articles You May Have Missed in 2014
    Unbounce offer up a slice of curation by linking too and networking with some of their favourite authors and dealers of common sense.
  • Retailers Waste More Than Half Of Digital Budgets On Bot Traffic
    Half of display budgets is wasted on artificial traffic created by bots. These bots, by and large, are interested in fraud and earning operates ill-gotten revenue based on fake clicks and impressions.
  • What You Can Learn From the Best Marketer of the Year
    Heinken set out to do beer advertising differently. It wanted to boost the profile of the beer drinker and by doing so boost the profile of beer.
  • Michael Wolff on digital media in 2015: ‘A deluge of crap’
    Shouty man Michael Wolff takes a bleak view of digital media. It’s all rubbish he argues and the value, the good content, isn’t possible to realise.
  • 3 Blogger Outreach Trends That You Can Implement
    Kristen Matthews picks three trends she sees in the art and science of blogger outreach and discusses each. Blogger outreach has been forefront of many marketing activities again this year and I think Kristen is spot on with these trends.
  • Platform Or Publisher? Whatever You Call It, It’s The Future Of Media
    Techcrunch host a post from CEO and co-founder of Moviepilot, Tobi Bauckhage, in which it is argued that publishing and/or platforms (kinda the same thing; says Bauckhage) is the future of media. Yup.
  • Say Media Buys Out Investors As It Exits The Media Business And Focuses On Its Publishing Platform
    We’re all publishers, right? Say Media gave it a good crack of the whip and spent a lot of money but now they’re buying out their investors and reinventing itself as a next-generation publishing platform.
  • Why PR is embracing the PESO model
    An insightful article on Mashable (yes) on how PR now must include paid media, earned and owned media. The summary: we’re all publishers now.
  • New questions in mobile
    Benedict Evans (always worth reading) asks some sensible questions about mobile. He looks at the pattern of bundling services into platforms and how long it can continue for. He looks at what the Chinese players might do and at what the future for Android might be.
  • Design revenues rise but staff costs hit the bottom line, report shows
    Accountant KingstonSmithW1 has a report that shows although income has risen by 5% in design agencies (which are mainly independent) that margins have fallen due to rising staff and operation costs.
  • UK agency profit margins hit 10-year low
    An accountancy firm has revealed that the profits of the top 40 UK based RP agencies are at an all time low. Why? Employment cost up by 5.25% and operating costs up by 7.47%. Wages account for 62% of gross income.
  • What Evernote and Uber deals mean for the future of media
    Quartz takes a look at two examples that help build Zebra Eclipse’s point – brands are becoming publishers. In this example we look at how Uber and Evernote position themselves as such for deal making.
  • A first look at Femsplain, a new publishing community for women
    The Daily Dot investigates Amber Gordon’s Femsplain. This is a publishing platform and community built by women for women.

This week’s link herd July 21, 2014

July 21, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

It is a large link herd update this week as there hasn’t been one for a while. The headline is, again, the constant rise of native advertising and publishers adapting to cope.  Today’s wordcloud is based off the herd’s bullet points.

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  • Time Inc. moves into native advertising with CEO Joe Ripp creating eight-person native team
    Big beast Time Inc have created an 8 person strong team that will specialise in native ads. The team will work side-by-side with editorial staff.
  • Amazon Isn’t Killing Writing, The Market Is
    Danny Crichton writes; “Amazon is finally reaching its end goal: the complete dissolution of the traditional book business model through a vertically integrated publishing platform, from writer to Kindle.”
  • French blogger fined over review’s Google search placing
    Oh dear. A French judge has fined a blogger after her negative review ranked too well on Google. There’s some comment on the ruling, though, to suggest this won’t create legal precedence.
  • Upworthy’s Sponsored Posts Are Crushing Their Regular Editorial. Here’s Why
    It turns out that Upworthy’s sponsored content might be better than their regular posts. Is this good or bad, though?
  • Does Michael Acton Smith stepping aside as CEO at Mind Candy mark the end of the company behind Moshi Monsters?
    A games centric write up of Michael Acton Smith stepping down from the role of CEO as Mind Candy. This is an interesting development as Mind Candy is one of those neo-publishers many brands strive to become. The challenge they face, though, is that their audience has changed. Kids grow up quickly. The next generation of kids are doing something different. Mind Candy has become a big company so is it agile enough to meet the needs and demands of kids today and tomorrow?
  • Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti expects branded content growth
    Peretti argues that the phrase “Native Advertising” is used in different ways by people who want it to mean different things.
  • In Google Newsroom, Brazil Defeat Is Not A Headline
    Wouldn’t be scary if Google tried its hand at being a publisher? Trick question. We’re all publishers now. In this piece Aarti Shahani gets access to Google’s experimental newsroom and discovers the giant is mining trends and using influencers in order to produce viral content.
  • The Biggest Media Company You’ve Never Heard Of
    Forbes’ write up of MLB Advanced Media. This is a company streamed 18,000 hours of live video – in 2009! The company does tickets and content; often a magic mix and that might be why they have $1bn 2016 target.
  • Ryanair eyes digital acquisitions for £10m-a-year tech hub ahead of second pan-European campaign
    Ryanair is on the hunt for digital acquisitions to build an in-house hub. This is in addition to looking for a digital agency for a long term partnership. In another sign that brands are all publishers Ryanair Labs will be looking at content as well as an understanding of the audience and the platforms (starting with mobile) they use.
  • Lanning: Publisher-developer relationships are very unfair
    From the world of computer gaming publishing – the returns for making the games are far less than those from publishing them. Lorne Lanning, who closed his studio in 2005, tells MVC that; “…for the most part the big publishers didn’t want to have anything to do with you if they couldn’t own your IP”
  • Facebook Buys LiveRail to Make Video Ads Better
    Facebook’s bought an ad optimisation system for video. It’s a good bit of technology and must, again, hint at Facebook moving towards video. Could Facebook be far off from launching a content rich AdSense rival?
  • Defining The Native Advertising Landscape (video)
    Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at Altimeter Group, talks about native ads to an audience of search marketers. The video is a 101 but contains some helpful insights and likely some points you won’t agree with – which is the hallmark for a good discussion.
  • EA Games rapped for ‘omitting’ in-app purchasing information in email ad
    I think there’s a lot to be said for the 0-1-100 model. That’s free to use, easy to spend £1 and possible to spend £100. A lot of “free to play” games use something similar. EA’s Dungeon Keeper tried but upset fans. Was the game really a playable experience without spending money? The ASA thought not.
  • ‘Traditional Marketing Is Broken,’ Declares Richard Edelman
    The famous Richard Edelman declares the marketing is all wrong – lots of money spent for very little results. Why the change? Brands are becoming publishers.
  • In content-marketing era, agencies tap publishers for expertise
    About DigitasLBi (disclaimer: work) hooking up with BuzzFeed while 360i teams up with Mashable’s viral trend spotter. In the article Ricardo Bilton argues that publishers know what agencies don’t.
  • 7 news trends and their effect on PR
    A PR point of view on the trends in the news business. Ever noticed how a story is “breaking” even though a news channel as been reporting on it for the last two hours?
Next Page »

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