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.

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?

This week’s link herd June 23, 2014

June 23, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

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.

NYT, OITNB and the state of native advertising
Shane O’Leary is a planner at Target McConnells and has blogged some wisdom on the state of native advertising. He begins by tackling the differences between advertorial and native, although you may disagree with his conclusion, and then goes on to look at Netflix’s most recent native OITNB deal with the New York Times.
Condé Nast, Google and Publicis come together to form 'premium' content agency
Here’s a twist in the “we’re all publishers” story I wasn’t expecting; a threeway team up with Conde Naste, Google and Publicis. The three will creating “La Maison”, helmed by Charles Georges-Picot, current CEO of Publicis 133, to produce content for marketers in the luxury space.
Three staff cut as Polygon moves away from features and video
Games blog Polygon has let their video director, motion graphics designer and features editor go. Why? After 2 years of making videos and special features they’ve found it hard to draw the audiences required to support the effort. While sites like Twitch are likely a factor here – since gamers can just tune in real time to watch a game rather than wait for a polished Polygon video – the job losses show the challenge even big blogs have at scaling content at the right cost.
Interview with Michael Brito: How to Transform Your Brand into Media Company via @britopian
Michael Brito gives an interview to Komfo on how brands can transform into media companies. He talks about content and distribution, storytelling and agility.
Scribd Connu: a Literary Match Made In Heaven
Scribd the platform that turns PDFs into easier-to-read and web embeddable documents has teamed up with Connu. The partnership is designed to help surface new author talent to readers.
Wattpad CEO Says The Social Reading App Will Be Free Forever And Make Money From Native Ads
The flip-side to agencies and publishers sharing a common evolutionary path is that publishers are getting better at making money from things enabled by, but not, their content. Step forward Wattpad the site that lets authors share their stories. They’ve confirmed that WattPad will be free forever as the platform will raise its revenue from native ads.
Time Out appoints Livefyre to increase user generated content as digital push continues
LiveFyre offers a free comment platform to bloggers that competes with the likes of Disqus. Whereas the latter looks to earn revenue from integrating ad services into the comment ecology LiveFyre offers techno-agency deals with brands. Time Out’s become the latest to appoint the company and will look to use LiveFyre’s real-time tooks to increase user-generated content and native ad opportunities.
Outbrain fails the ASA test for promoted content advertising – Marketers start to worry
Content Is Crap
The main thrust of the debate here is that the word “content” is a rubbish way to describe what marketers and brands need to produce. Why does Zebra Eclipse care? In the post the author spells out that brands must think more like publishers if they want to succeed.

We’re all professional video makers: AirDog

June 16, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

We’re all publishers. I don’t just mean brands and agencies but every one of us. As people become better and more able to produce fantastic media then the bar pushes ever higher for brands. Keep that in mind and check out this video pitch for a drone called AirDog.

At the time of writing the AirDog has $70,000+ worth of pledges and needs $200,000 to successfully fund. The campaign closes on Saturday 26th of July. You can contribute to the campaign here.

I’m no sports fan but even I can see the attraction to having a drone like this. Furthermore, you don’t need to ask a friend to help. I speculate this will mean some of the crazy stunts that normally happen when no one is around to see – or stop them – will be recorded.

It is easy to imagine YouTube channels springing up with content fuelled entirely from AirDog. It’s also easy to imagine professional broadcasters having a challenge on their hands. You no longer need a copter to take shots like this. Equally, if a professional sportsman or woman was to wear and AirLeash – who’s AirLeash would they wear?

This week’s link herd February 17, 2014

February 17, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

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.