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This week’s link herd March 24, 2014

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Today’s weekly round-up is actually two weeks of news in a single post. That’s agency life for you – even with a semi-automatic publishing system and an almost religious devotion to always-on sometimes the speed of events steal time.

One way to keep up with Zebra Eclipse Studios’ link discoveries is to follow on Twitter. @ZebraEclipse tweets via Delicious as it shares. Why Delicious? It’s not because this blogger is old school; it is because Delicious powers that semi-automatic publishing system and because it uses Twitter cards better than almost any other bookmark system. You preview each link find on Twitter without visiting the original site. Just enough for a teaser.

  • You ruined my wedding – and you’re suing me?
    The rising tide of contracts that include “Non-Disparagement” clauses that are intended to stop negative reviews. The “gotcha” factor, the article says, will be important in American courts. If it wasn’t reasonable to put a non-disparagement in a contract then it may not stand even if it’s signed.
  • Amazon Publishing to Expand in US, UK, Germany
    How well is Amazon Publishing doing? Read any blockbusters they’ve backed? Maybe so but Amazon Publishing will expand in the UK, US and Germany according to a leaked memo.
  • Coull Plays It Cool, Raising Another $4M Angel Round And Opening In NYC
    Video affiliate platform Coull is raising more cash and will be profitable this year. The system lets publishers ad overlay messages to YouTube videos to earn CPA revenue from clickthroughs. The CEO says they’ve no competitors and that may be true but only until YouTube eases up on their own overlay rules.
  • Kotaku invades UK
    Popular and sometimes controversial gaming site Kotaku is coming to the UK. A number of interesting things here – it’s a website; it’s already in the UK as most games that launch in the US launch in the UK. That’s why Kotaku alreadyy has 1.1m UK users every month. Secondly, Kotaku’s owners Gawkers won’t be managing the site but Future will be. Future and Gawker do have a partnership. Kotaku UK (Kotauk?) will be run by former IGN editor Keza MacDonald.
  • Fraudulent traffic: adventures in ad farming
    A walkthrough of how easy it is to drive fraudulent traffic and make a profit. In this example Jack Marshall makes a %30 markup on just $100 of fake traffic. It’s easy. The main “silver lining” of the post is that all but one ad networks wouldn’t touch his site.
  • How To Do Content Marketing Right
    An article with plenty of advice and opinion on the art and science of brand publishing. The first point – stop calling it content. This is not an uncommon argument these days. Let’s see how loud the calls become.
  • Group chats launches on io9 and Kotaku
    Gawker showing it understands how important community is by launching group charts out across their sites. The rollout began with Deadpsin and Jalopnik the feature which allows readers to talk online in groups is now on Io9 and Kotaku.

This week’s link herd February 17, 2014

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herd5

Every Monday 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.

  • Dropping the A-Bomb on publishing
    Simon Appleby’s essay on the division within publishing. This division, according to Appleby, is between narrative publishing and information publishing. The two are different, require different skills and so will have a different evolution. Publishers, he says, should split themselves along these lines.
  • Why 2014 will change everything for video advertising
    Affiliate video platform Coull have a feature written by CEO Irfon Watkins about the future of video. Business seems to be booming and pre-roll inventory sells out — but Watkins writes that around 54% of video ads are never seen. The industry is ripe for change and Watkins predicts more merchant integration, more mobile and publishers finally getting involved. Who’s doing well already? The Guardian.
  • Why Brands Need to Pay Attention to Upworthy’s Battle With Facebook
    Upworthy lost about 40m views in a quarter because of the change Facebook made to their newsfeed algorithm. The company is fighting back with a new metric “attention minutes” designed to show that even if page views are down the time people are spending with Upworthy content is increasing.
  • Google Europe Blog: Working with Spanish Publishers
    An interesting blog post from Google insofar as it doesn’t say very much except that they’re teaching SEO to Spanish newspapers.
  • Content economics, part 5: news
    “It is almost impossible to exaggerate the degree to which Facebook has changed the news business.” With Zebra Eclipse I argue that we’re all publishers now. In this article Felix Salmon suggests everybody is a journalist to some extent. An insightful piece.
  • BuzzFeed's native advertising: are they really making ads you want to share?
    The Media Briefing’s study into Buzzfeed’s native ad shows that they really do get shared. On average they enjoy 263 Facebook shares, 36 tweets, 7 Google +1s, 44 Pins and 2 LinkedIn shares. Facebook comes out as the clear lead for driving their traffic. That said, Buzzfeed is sculpted to suit Facebook style shares and is rarely appropriate for LinkedIn.
  • Q&A with Justin Smith, CEO of Bloomberg Media
    The new CEO of Bloomberg Media Group is about to announce his 100-day review of the company. It comes at a time when growth is “softening”. Already we’ve seen a move towards more video – with a whopping $75 CPM I can see why – and away from judging properties in silo. Ad Age have an interview.