Adserving
Well, they said it would launch in Q3, and it has – yesterday Yahoo! unveiled its new ad management platform, called APT, at a razzamatazz-filled event in New York introduced by John Hamm, star of Mad Men (currently the topic of much debate in our house as to its merits).
Once upon a time, when I was a young turk, I would assiduously download every last doodad that my employer created as soon as it shipped - or often long before, happily reaching for the pile of floppy disks as I rebuilt my computer for the umpteenth time following the latest toxic combination of untested software.
So far in my nascent Online Ad Business 101 series, I've covered the overall advertising value chain, and looked at a superficial level at how an ad 'call' is actually handled. This installment brings together themes from those two first posts, by taking a look at ad networks.
There's been a lot of chatter recently about the "dark side" of online advertising, in particular, the activities of companies like NebuAd and Phorm using somewhat shady techniques to gather behavioral data about user
Welcome to the second part of my Online Advertising 101 series. One of the things that I've discovered people fail to appreciate about online advertising is how much goes on behind the scenes in order to bring you an innocuous-looking banner ad.
You may have heard of Silverlight, our Rich Internet Applications framework - and if you haven't, you're sure to hear more about it this summer, as it'll be used on the NBC site to stream Olympics videos.
When you spend as much time as I do examining the workings of the online ad industry, it's easy to forget that, to many people, it really is pretty opaque. Not only is it characterized by some of the most complex and scalable technology in the world, but it also has its own, pretty unique, economic model to boot.
As anyone who has spent any time in the UK will know, the BBC is a safe haven from that most grubby of industries, advertising. It's enshrined in the BBC's charter. But the BBC's ban on advertising only applies to the UK (where anyone who owns a TV has to pay a $300 licence fee every year, which funds the BBC). Here in the US, the BBC is free to licence its programmes to commercial stations, and also runs BBC America, which carries ads.
The last few weeks have seen plenty of interesting announcements from our esteemed competitors, Yahoo!
Here is an interesting example of celebrating African art and
ingenuity which coincidentally happened in Amsterdam only a week ago.
Africa, Surprising Africa
Cross media storytelling, vibrant, social and creative development
from cities across Africa
http://www.picnicnetwork.org/page/22316/en
Unique strength of Africa and its people.
In most cases Africa may lack the physical resources to meet various needs in the society but definitely not the brain power on how to go about solving the problems. So the aid that is often offered to African or developing countries will be far more beneficial if the recipients are part of the decision making process, not only that, but actually driving the projects themselves because they understand the context better.
As today is Gandhi’s birthday, I thought I would share this quote, which I think applies to the discussion.
“I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. I believe absolutely that she has a mission for the world. She is not to copy Europe blindly.” - Gandhi
I think a similar thing could be said of each part of Africa, etc… - there is a mission to fulfill for the world.
A very powerful contribution Ueli! This is indeed the attitude we should take, honest, frank, open to criticism, and use it in own circles to lobby for a change in attitude among those that have a bit more (money or political or otherwise) power!?