[I am going to make additions/changes to the list by editing the post itself.  I think that’s better than cluttering everyones’ feed.] A VC friend asked what he should read to better understand the online advertising market.  At the time I thought I could offer some decent advice.  But as I started to think about […]

Monday’s Wall Street Journal article on cookie tracking was a bit underwhelming. So although (a) we’ve been having the same conversation over and over again since 1996 without getting anywhere1, (b) the article was a bit misleading and maddeningly vague, and (c) industry rumor has it that the church/state divide at the Journal does not […]

Darren Herman wants a conflict-free ad exchange. So do I. We assume there could be one because we look at the much bigger and more efficient financial markets and see they are run on exchanges. But, in reality, the financial world has moved on from exchanges, and so will the ad world. An article of […]

I read Curt Hecht’s AdExchanger interview this morning with puzzlement and, eventually, horror. Vivaki is drawing the precisely wrong conclusions from their evaluation of the situation. [re Invite Media] Google realizes it’s for the DFA stack, away from media, and they appreciate that it works just like search bid management or serving ads. It’s a […]

I know plenty of people who know the facts, but none of them will talk*. So I’ll just tell you the rumors. Invite Media was acquired by Google last week. The initial guesses at the purchase price were in the $60 to $70 million range. Peter Kafka now says it was $81 million in cash. […]

I wrote something for AdExchanger today. John asked me whether media and data should be bundled. I said, at the end of a bit of a rant, [We] need a bit more idealism. We need to be trying to make the world a better place. We need to move beyond our defensive posture of being […]

Some of us old-timers are feeling a bit uneasy. My friend Seth is having flashbacks and reliving Q1 2000. I long ago overcame my own PTSD, embracing my dot com bubble grief after being repeatedly compelled to recall the events in excruciating detail by various lawyers and accountants (ah, the joy of working for a […]

As an aside to yesterday’s post, here’s the mental model I am using for the industry this week.

Just been reading the FTC complaint against… well, against everyone I know, it seems: the exchanges, the DSPs, the data targeters, the ad agencies, the analytics companies, the whole quantitative marketing shebang. It was pretty straightforward, quoting everyone’s marketing material, making the industry seem much, much larger than it actually is*. Ed Zimmerman has a […]