Archive for March 2008

Hal Riney, Ad Industry Giant, Dies at 75

In Advertising on Mar-31-2008 with
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Mr. Riney, who died of cancer a few days ago, maybe did as much for the advertising industry as any person in recent memory. He worked his way up from the mail room to be the head creative director at BBDO, built Ogilvy & Mather’s west coast office from scratch, and then founded his own agency he’d later sell to Publicis.

A different kind of agency. A different kind of adman. That was Hal Patrick Riney, who died from esophageal cancer March 24 at age 75. A study in contrasts, he decried the client-coddling of what he called advertising’s “suits,” yet at times epitomized the drinking, cussing “Mad Men” era. He was a cantankerous curmudgeon who could bring tears to the eyes with a commercial about depositing money in a bank. He was a creative titan whose outsize ego was counterbalanced by an “aw shucks” alter ego.

“Whatever success I’ve achieved has come from pretty much doing the opposite of what I’ve been told or expected to do,” Mr. Riney told students at the Academy of Art College during one of his last public-speaking engagements.

Links for Mar-30-08

In Links on Mar-30-2008 with
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• What is the probability of someone breaking Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak? Well the New York Times has crunched the numbers and you may be surprised by the results.
  [Tags: Sports, Statistics]
• It appears that Google’s lost in the FCC’s spectrum auction may in fact have actually been a victory. Verizon won so-called C block with a bid of $4.6 billion. By reaching that price point ensured that Verizon’s new wireless network has to accommodate all mobile devices, including those running Google’s Android OS.
  [Tags: Google, Wireless, Technology]

The 25 Most Valuable Blogs

In Business, Technology on Mar-30-2008 with
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It is really hard (insert impossible) to place a real value on a blog, but 24/7 Wall St. has made an attempt. According to them the top five include:

1. The Gawker Properties: $150 million. Gawker, ValleyWag, Gizmodo, Wonkette, and a number of smaller websites. The company claims 30 million monthly unique visitors.

2. MacRumors: $85 million. Blog knows more about Apple than Apple management does. It ranks No. 2,700 in Alexa. Compete shows 544,000 visitors and moving up quickly.

3. Huffington Post: $70 million. Several websites commented that HuffPo might be worth $100 million when it raised $5 million late last year. Arianna Huffington said to Portfolio that the business was in the process of becoming profitable. In late 2007 management claimed that the website had 4 million unique visitors per month and would bring in $7.5 million for the year.

4. PerezHilton: $48 million. Is No 755 in Alexa. Compete show 1.3 million visitors a month.

5. TechCrunch: $36 million. The TechCrunch network claims almost 3.2 million unique visitors and 14.6 million page views.

Newspapers Are Not Doing So Well

In Business, Media on Mar-28-2008 with
1 Comment

Newspaper ad revenues have taken their worst hit in almost 60 years—worse even than 2001. Editor & Publisher has the all the ugly details:

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006—the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry. The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.

Total advertising revenue in 2007—including online revenue—decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the prior year.

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

The NAA reported that online revenue now represents 7.5% of total newspaper ad revenue in 2007 compared to 5.7% in 2006.

That growth could not stave off the losses in the print however. National print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year. Retail slipped 5% to $21 billion. Classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.

“Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms,” John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

I think Mr. Sturm is missing the point here on multiple levels.

Of course, some of these results may be because of the economic, especially in real estate. But an awful lot more is at work here and the newspaper industry just can’t seem to grasp this simple fact.

URLs Are Out In Japan

In Business, Marketing on Mar-27-2008 with
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A lot of us in the United States that don’t travel much like to think we are the biggest, the first, the best. Well that often isn’t the case. A good example is an advertising trend Cabel Sasser noticed in a recent trip to Japan.

Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL’s. The replacement? Search boxes with recommended search terms!

As Cabel notes this actually makes a lot of sense. If you’ve tried to buy a domian anytime in the last decade or so anything remotely meaningful (and short) just doesn’t exist. And when you add in a couple slashs and a .tv extension a lot of folks will just never get to your site. So enter these type of ads, where the search term is what you need to recall to locate their site. Pretty freaking smart if you ask me.

New US Cyber-Security Czar Has No Experience

In Politics, Technology on Mar-26-2008 with
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The Bush Administration, who has repeatedly acknowledged that its information systems have been the target of repeated attacks, has finally filled the long-vacant “cyber-security czar”—with an individual that has no experience with cyber-security. According to the Washington Post:

By all accounts, [Rod] Beckstrom is neither a cyber-security expert nor a Washington insider. But his private-sector background and published writings emphasize a decentralized approach to managing large organizations.

Frontline: Bush’s War Initial Thoughts

In Culture, Media, Politics, TV on Mar-26-2008 with
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Over the past two nights PBS’s Frontline has highlighted (yet again) why it is the best show on television with their two-part special on how the Iraq war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and at the top-tiers of our government.

I think Davenetics sums up the program pretty well with this:

It really was a perfect storm of bad judgment, malicious intent, a power structure out of balance, a weak Natl Sec Adviser, a marginalized secretary of state, an all-powerful veep, a lazy Congress, and outplayed British PM, a foolishly managed French foreign policy, an ignored military leadership, an Oedipal complex hall of fame President, and a media that focused on Rumsfeld’s funny press conference delivery instead of highlighting the fact that he was wrong, horribly wrong, on just about any point that mattered.

You can view the entire documentary here as well as dive into a number of interactive features.

Wired’s Top 10 Reader Self-portraits

In Culture, Design, Photography on Mar-26-2008 with
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Some pretty interesting reader submitted self-pics to say the least.

Links for Mar-26-08

In Links on Mar-26-2008 with
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• A new analysis by Goldman Sachs Group finds that “Wall Street banks, brokerages and hedge funds may report $460 billion in credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, or almost four times the amount already disclosed.
  [Tags: Business]
• It is commentary like this from John Dvorak of PC Magazine that makes me wonder how the heck he has a job writing about technology.
  [Tags: Business, Technology]

Revision3 Inks Syndication Deal With Blip.tv

In Technology, Video on Mar-25-2008 with
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Here’s a video match made in Internet heaven. Revision3, basically the video sandbox of Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson has announced they are teaming up with Blip.tv to syndicate all of its roster of shows. Those includes Diggnation, the GigaOm Show, PixelPerfect, and my personal favorite The Totally Rad Show.

A number of these shows are already popular, especially Diggnation which is often one of the top 100 post popular podcasts on iTunes. Seems to be a win/win for everybody. Blip.tv gets a roster of professionally created programs. Revision3 gets even wider distribution (although they are already everywhere) and some ad revenue.