eMedia Strategist

Comedic Ad and Content Collisions

March 2, 2007 – 8:37 am
Michael Madej, a friend of mine at IndustryWeek, has a knack for finding the funny side of online media. He sent me these screenshots showing the sometimes humorous and ironic juxtaposition of content and online advertising. He assures me these are 100% authentic and not doctored up. Enjoy! Unfortunate ad placement for United Economy Plus Subject says one thing ... reality says another If someone at Triscuit actually planned this, they should be promoted immediately

Posted in Rich Media & Ad Trafficking | 1 Comment »

Online Video Is Getting Hotter

February 27, 2007 – 9:37 pm
As I predicted in my post last December, online video continues to heat up as a key topic for publishers. The February issue of BtoB Media Business has a feature article on video, "Focus on Online Video: Publishers Get Ready for Surge" (although funny enough it's the one article they left off of their web site from the February issue). Similarly, Publishing Executive also has a feature story on video in the February issue, "2007: The Online Video Era". The story evens contains a photo of a really sharp looking emedia guy (at least my wife thinks so ... thanks sweetie). I've talked with a lot of publishers who are getting into online video or want to get into it soon. It has the same buzz in media circles that vertical search did last year. I was never a big fan of vertical search as a business model (with the exception of normalized databases like ...

Posted in Video & Audio | No Comments »

Do We Really Need Broadband? Revelations From Being Offline

February 25, 2007 – 10:22 am
My wife and I just finished building a new house about 10 miles away from our old home with fantastic views of the Rockies. We've been planning this for almost three years and it's hard to believe it's finally done. I took last week off from work to pack the house, move, and unpack. We love the new place, but if I never see another box again in my life, it will be too soon! During the entire week I went without broadband access to the Internet and didn't use my laptop or desktop computer at all. To my surprise, I didn't really miss them all that much. Why? My BlackBerry 8700 was with me constantly. I was instantly notified if I had any email to my Penton, eMedia Strategist, Yahoo, or Gmail accounts and could respond to any of them right away. If I needed to look up a phone number or address that I didn't know, I simply ...

Posted in Mobile, Personal | 1 Comment »

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

February 13, 2007 – 11:11 am
Mark Flythe at the ABM sent out this video on YouTube. This is really well done and drives home the point of the new web ... aka Web 2.0. It's a must-see for any publisher and shows how the Internet is changing the rules for publishers. Publishers must adapt and tap into the power of their communities (readers, advertisers, associations, etc.) if they want to be a future leader in publishing.

Posted in Community & Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

Update on the $1K / 30-day Web Site Challenge

February 9, 2007 – 6:49 pm
Day 3 of my challenge to launch a full-featured publication web site in under 30 days and $1000. The feedback to the challenge has been surprising ... most feedback on any post I've had to date! And some great suggestions. Thus far I've tested out a number of systems and am beginning to narrow down my selections. Here's what I'm leaning toward right now:

Posted in Development | 5 Comments »

A Full-Blown Publication Web Site for Under $1000

February 7, 2007 – 2:15 pm
I'm a Foodie. I love food, am totally in to Food Network (they have a great web site, BTW) and I'm not a half-bad cook either. My specialty is a Julia Child recipe for chicken with a wine, herb, and beef stock reduction. One show I particularly like is "$40 A Day" where Rachel Ray visits tourist locations and has only $40 to spend. The challenge is to see if she can eat at great places, but spend only $40 and stay within her budget. So in that same spirit, I'm going to throw out my own challenge: can I build a full-featured publication web site for under $1000? It sounds simple enough ... after all there are a ton of open source content management systems out there. The best resource for evaluating them is www.opensourcecms.com. It lists all major open source CMS's along with reviews and the ability to you to actually test drive both the front ...

Posted in Development | 13 Comments »

Does Size Really Matter To An Advertiser?

February 4, 2007 – 11:56 pm
Does it really matter to an advertiser whether your web site has 500,000 page views per month (PVPM) or 5 million PVPM? From a perception standpoint it may, but when it comes to quantifiable ROI it shouldn't matter at all. Why? Because unlike in print where an advertiser pays to reach your entire circulation in the month they advertise, on a web site an advertiser usually doesn't reach your entire web "circulation" or reach each month. To reach your entire site's audience in a given month, they would have to exclusively own an ad position for the entire month ... every impression served to that ad position would have to be their creative. That ad position also would have to appear on every page of your site. Then and only then would the advertiser reach every person that came to your site that month. In larger markets (mass market, IT, etc) advertisers typically buy on a CPM basis where they ...

Posted in Metrics & Measurement, Sales | 1 Comment »

When Did I Move to Minnesota?

February 2, 2007 – 12:16 pm
No offence to anyone from the upper mid-west, but I'm tired of the cold and snow. Please take it back! It's 5 below this morning here in beautiful Loveland, Colorado and the water main to my neighborhood broke. No, I wasn't able to take a shower and, yes, I now have to wear my Marianna Butte Golf Course cap to work this morning. This is the first time I can ever remember there being snow on the ground here in the Front Range area for seven weeks straight. I live here in Colorado specifically because I love the mountains and the weather. Yes, we do get an occasional snow of a couple inches, but then it's 50 or 60 degrees the next day and it all melts off. I've been golfing on both Christmas Eve day and New Years. OK, enough whining ... time to get back at it!

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments »