Category Archives: Next to Now

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

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Reading in book-related ad tech for the week ending April 17, 2015

April 11, 2015

The rise of messaging: Big 4 messaging app users now equal big 4 social network users.  #mobile

April 13, 2015

How the New York Times is becoming a mobile-first company according to Marc Frons, SVP, CIO NYT. (Via Benedict’s Newsletter No. 107) #mobile

90% of attendees at Coachella (600k people last year), use iPhones. Does this tell you more about iPhones or Coachella?(Via Benedict’s Newsletter No. 107) #mobile

“79 Theses on Technology for Disputation.” (Via Alexis Madrigal’s “Real Future”) #metatech

“The Cost of Paying Attention.” Cluttered environments that leave people feeling anxious is neither good for the people we’re advertising to, nor is it good for the products we’re advertising. It’s worth heeding even if (especially because?) this guy is taking aim at the ads that our bread-and-butter.  (Via “79 Theses…”) #metatech

“Surveillance as the normative form of care.” And, I’d add, as the normative form of education, marketing, policing, etc. etc.  (Via “79 Theses…”) #metatech

Six reasons to advertise in newspapers. For one, print newspapers index much higher for reader engagement and trust. #print

April 14, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is producing a series of videos in which contemporary artists talk about a piece in the Met’s collection that holds resonance for them. The latest features Nayland Blake talking about a work from Mali: “So much of its meaning as a sculpture is bound up, not in what you can see on the outside, but what it contains within.” #art

What moms want. Mother’s Day discovery tips from Bing researchers. (True, no one uses their search engine, but their research is top notch. Via Click Z’s “De-Averaging Moms” post) #moms #targeting

April 15, 2015

Speaking of surveillance: Is this the location-based advertising we’ve been waiting for? Tracking not just where you’ve been on the Web, but where you’ve been in real-life. #mobile #targeting

Ray Ozzie on what the rise of messaging means for work flow is worth listening to (even if it’s real purpose is to serve up his new app, Talko) #metatech

Native Advertising, by the numbers.  #native

The numbers on native mobile ads are (not surprisingly) good: “Research released in October 2014 by Polar showed higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) for native ads run on mobile compared with desktop in the US and UK. Average CTR for native placements on tablets was 0.28%, and smartphones were right behind at 0.27%. Meanwhile, CTR for desktop native ads was just 0.15%.” #native #mobile

April 16, 2015

“Gaming content remains one of best ways to reach young men.” Data from YouTube show how deeply pervasive gaming culture is, and how to reach the market. #gaming #targeting

Why it feels good to hear, read and watch stories, and why podcasts are particularly good at hooking us in. #podcasts

Playlist targeting comes to Spotify. Target readers of health books during their “Workout” playlist, cookbooks during their “Cooking” playlists, how-to readers during their “Cleaning” playlists, and more. #targeting

Everyone wants in on the video ad sales boom, even print magazines. And in a nifty meta-moment, the article about the ad features a video of the magazine playing the video. #wowfactor

Click Z works the numbers on why email remains the workhorse of digital marketing strategy. #email

Business Insider’s shameless with the click bait, but for advertising people these “Best of 2014” digital campaigns are great inspiration.   #inspiration

 

 

 

Thelonious Monk

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

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The Week in Reading for the Week of April 10

April 3, 2015

Monk’s advice never gets old.

April 6, 2015

Top brands on Instagram know the difference between quality of posts and quantity.

April 7, 2015

Sports fans care more about speed than quality. Don’t let your ad slow down their experience.

The founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America notices ebook sales leveling off, says (essentially), “Don’t believe the data.” Does he count as a disinterested observer?

April 8, 2015

Get your gifs here: Hulu does a deal with Tumblr.

Good tips for presentations.

Instagram’s carousel ads would be GREAT for book publishers. Now if we can just get them to come down a couple hundred thou on their minimum spend.

Used right, YouTube cards could be a great way to show more information in ads—always a plus for book publishers.

Get your word nerd on: A lovely piece on the use of quotation marks. (via @GroveAtlantic)

We aren’t going to London Book Fair, but if we were this is a presentation we’d love to attend. Sara Lloyd gives great talks.

Want to go write in the Antarctic for a few months? You might get a book deal out of it.

Welcome LitHub! A brand-spanking new website with a nifty pedigree: created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature.

April 9, 2015

A new video game lets you wander around de Chirico cityscapes!

Programmatic buys aren’t the end of creativity; they’re just the beginning!

April 10, 2015

iHeart Radio brings programmatic to broadcast. 

“Metaphysical Daring as a Post-human Survival Strategy” discussed in the French Embassy Ballroom at 5am. Who’s in?

Great take on advertising as seduction, excerpted from a book we were happy to work on.

The rise of the Instagram influencer (nice work if you can get it).

“This is terrifying and inspiring in equal measure,” says Google’s Ben Malbon about Chris Messina’s idea (reality) of “the full stack employee.” True dat.

Clay Shirky and the New York Times’ Margaret Sulllivan talk about the future of print news. Shirky’s “darker narrative” is about the print newspaper, but does it have relevance to the plateauing of print book share (versus digital)? Shirky says, “So it seems likely to me that after the early, rapid decline, we are now in a period of shallow, secular decay, which will give way to a late-stage period of rapid decline.”

Jason Fried on the differences between how platforms make you feel:

“Every scroll through Instagram puts someone’s good day in front of me. A vacation picture, something new they got that they love, pictures of nature, pictures of people they love, places they’ve been, and stuff they want to cheer about. It’s just flat out harder to be negative when sharing a picture. This isn’t a small thing – it’s a very big deal. I feel good when I browse Instagram. That’s the feel that matters.”

(via Almighty’s “Dark Matter” email)

The Vertical Video: An aesthetic disaster but a must for engagement. (via Almighty’s “Dark Matter” email)

 

 

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

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The Week in Reading Ending April 3
March 30, 2015

Digital natives would just as soon read it in print. 

March 31, 2015

Mobile messaging apps are the one category of app that retains its users. While current advertising options are beyond the reach of most book publishers. We’re watching this space closely for developments in ad products and lower prices.

Here’s another reason to think about messaging apps:  Over 50% of WeChat and Snapchat users are Mobile Shoppers. So get your mobile commerce on. (Via @PeterMcCarthy)

Here’s an interesting piece in the UK’s Bookseller about the potential connections between video game publishing and book publishing. Its insights about production and marketing are not applicable to all kinds of publishing, of course (no insights are true across a field as diverse as book publishing), but it’s worth thinking through.

As an advertising agency, we’re in the business of knowing as much about the users we’re sending ads to as possible. As an integral part of the book publishing ecosystem, we’re committed to both free speech and privacy.  In both those roles, we were keenly interested in this interview between two brilliant legal scholars with a literary bent. It serves as a strong corrective to the endless praise for Big Data, secret algorithms, and behavior-shaping policies. (via Alexis Madrigal’s Real Future newsletter)

This ad industry news reflects broader trends and also is good news for one of Verso’s ad partners: WPP keeps up the acquisitions, adds to Xaxis’s capabilities with mobile-first company Action X.

Is it time for the ad industry to lose its reliance on cookies?

Media buyers are planning on upping programmatic spend by 21% this year, but media suppliers (web publishers, etc) said they only expected to boost their programmatic sales by 4% this year. Something’s gotta give, and it’s probably the quality of the impression.

The New York Times is ready to boil down the news to one sentence to better fit new devices. How do you write a one-sentence news story, as distinct from a headline and a teaser? That might be a good new class to teach in J-School.

April 1, 2015

You should take notes by hand, not on a laptop. (Via everyone, but we saw it first from @timoreilly)

April 2, 2015

Eric Greitens gives a mid-air reading from his book Resilience, then helps an ailing passenger with techniques from the book. People, this is how you do an event.

Great interview with design star Michael Bierut. Love the 100-day project! (Via Dark Matter by Almighty)

“Capitalism is at its core a diverse, intimate network of human and non-human relations.” Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way. Here’s a new perspective on what they heck we’re all doing at work every day from “A Feminist Manifesto for the Study of Capitalism.” (via Alexis Madrigal’s Real Future newsletter)

“I still read the newspapers and scream every morning.” Seymour Hersch thinks we’ll be OK in a world where BuzzFeed and Gawker are the future of journalism. Also, we’ll always have the New York Times.

“A team losing a game is not a ‘disaster.’” The AP Stylebook gets real about hackneyed sports cliches.

Next to Now: A Week in Reading Links

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Union Square - Spring Tulips

Links for the week ending March 27, 2015
March 23, 2015

Good piece on designing for how we read. It’s about designing responsive web sites, but has implications for anyone who’s making consumable information (including book ads!). Via @hawkt.

March 24, 2016

How’s your mobile strategy coming? According to this article in eMarketer, “Mobile Will Account for 72% of US Digital Ad Spend by 2019.” They think this will come about because of “consumer usage” (you think?) and better ad formats (an agency can hope!).

March 25, 2015

“It’s go-time for Facebook Auto-Play Video ads.” It’s a great format, but you have to have the chops for it.

Here’s an ad to inspire you. And by “inspire” we mean literally (“inspire: To draw in by the operation of breathing; to inhale”). It’s made out of water vapor you can breathe in, or blow away.

OK, OK, we admit it: this Fran Lebowitz interview is pretty great. (Via everybody on Twitter)

Good thinking on responsive design from the Associate Director of Audience Development at the NYT. I remain a pro-responsive design guy, but his arguments are worth a good think.

Great tips on setting the stage for productive feedback, useful for any creative enterprise, including ads! Via @Almighty

March 26, 2015

A new report on the US Digital Display Market says Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo own nearly half of all digital display ads now, and more to come.

CJR has a good take on Facebook’s move to take control of more news content, and its relationship to Snapchat’s Discover platform. 

The CJR also has a good piece on podcasts that lays out the landscape for producers, listeners, and advertisers:

“But the real reason established media companies are starting to take podcasts seriously has more to do with the nature of their listeners. Podcast consumers, according to Edison Research, listen to an average of six episodes per week. Once they find a podcast they like, they tend to be devoted. The medium feels intimate. Unlike the audience online, which tends to click through and then bounce away quickly, podcasts draw people in for the duration of the episode. They feel a deep, personal connection with the hosts.”

 

Next to Now: Links for the Week’s News in Book-Relevant Ad Tech

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Links for the Week Ending March 20, 2015
March 13, 2015

Looking for the hottest thing in mobile? If you’re cool with $100 CPMs, Snapchat’s the way to go! Partner with CNN, ESPN, Cosmo, People, Food Network, Vice. Keep your eye on Snapchat (but keep your wallet close).

The video field is getting crowded. Who has the edge for mobile advertising going forward? Business Insider produced a good (pro- YouTube) breakdown on the differences between mobile advertising via YouTube, FB, and Vine.

It’s a supply and demand lesson: More advertisers going programmatic means programmatic prices are going up as supply goes down.

March 17, 2015

Programmatic advertising makes sense for book publishing—at least in certain cases. But it also represents great potential for fraud. ClickZ’s “6 Good Questions to Ask Your Programmatic Partner” are a good place to start any new relationship.

March 18, 2015

We like what the designer of the new Seattle Times site says about respecting reader experience—and how it’s good for advertising. For those of us who specialize in advertising things to read, that good sense goes double for us. Here is Mike Monteiro on “All the News Where It Needs to Fit.” (via @HawkThompson)

March 19, 2015

Podcasts: the perfect marriage between close attention, bookish demos, and mobile-friendly environment. Here’s eMarketer on growth in the podcast market.

This CJR report on Millennials and news has direct implications for the future of publishing. Pay attention to how the new generation is establishing its information gathering.

Summer Friday Links for August 16

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How to Stand Out in a Crowd (of Crowdfunders)

Wattpad gives writers (and their fans) a funding platform. Given the number of literary projects that have been popping up on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, this seems like perfect timing and a great way for beginning writers to develop a writing community from the ground up.

Facebook Ads as Market Research

We have been using non-book comparisons as a way to identify and reach audiences for years, but Peter McCarthy has an interesting twist on the idea by advocating using relatively inexpensive Facebook ads to test different comps. It’s a good idea if you’ve got the budget to do it.

The New Yorker’s Running Full-Tilt

We see the numbers, so we knew that the New Yorker’s digital reach took a huge leap forward in 2013. This article does a great job explaining why.

Gorgeous Branding for a Favorite Bookstore

One of our very favorite indie bookstores within lunch-break distance is Idlewild, so we are thrilled to see them get press for their brand redesign. And such design! As in all the best branding, Andrew Colin Beck simply brought out qualities that were already present, but oh boy did he bring them out! The perfect combination of books and looks.

Summer Friday Links for August 9

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The Ultimate Hothouse Review?

In which Robert Gottlieb uses a word we’d never heard of—“panjandrum”—to reference his old boss, Mr. Knopf. This is the review we’ve been waiting for.

The Return of the Comment?

After a good number of sites gave up on comments as a field for the worst in human nature, sites such as Quartz, Gawker and Medium are trying to make comments work with an in-story format coupled with a new name—“Annotation”. Even the New York Times is looking into it (gasp).

Measuring Twitter as a Driver of Consumer Behavior

Brian Stelter reports in the New York Times on a new Nielsen study that indicates Twitter is driving TV viewership. What does this mean for books? The report doesn’t speculate, and given the differences between TV and books that’s probably a good idea. TV remains at its heart a live experience with mass reach, while books live deeper in the niches, waiting more patiently and with greater memory than the most sophisticated DVR. While Twitter’s measurable influence on book buying remains elusive, the study’s implication is clear: Twitter is a driver of media consumption.

The “Untapped Marketing Opportunity” We’ve been Tapping for Years

Mobile Marketer suggests in-stream audio advertising is an “untapped marketing opportunity.” Really? We’ve been running campaigns for clients and touting the results for years.

Harry Potter as Allen Ginsburg?

We have mixed feelings about this, though early word is good. “Kill Your Darlings” with Daniel Radcliffe opens October 18.

Facebook to introduce video ads!

But book publishers might want to wait for the $2MM a day price tag to come down.

Summer Friday Links

Next to Now

Junot Díaz Puts the Genius into Rap Genius

From GigaOm: Junot Díaz has annotated a section of his 2008 book “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” on the interactive writing site RapGenius. Diaz added notes that explain his inspiration for the passage, including Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek and a number of bad science-fiction movies. Sheryl Sandberg did something similar with her book Lean In.

How Does the Publicis-Omnicom Merger Impact Tech?

Ask GigaOm

How Does It Impact Small Agencies?

Dan Weiden thinks small agencies are the place to be:

“Giant agencies are wobbling like drunkards… the rest of you should be sharpening your knives.”

Can Social Media Sell More Books?

Pete McCarthy dares to use the words “wisdom” and “social media” in the same sentence.

U.S. Adults Now Spending More Time on Digital Devices Than Watching TV

This doesn’t account for screen overlap (e.g. tweeting while watching the Academy Awards), but it’s a big enough deal that it’s all over the media.

Good News for the NEW YORK TIMES

That is, “good news” in the sense that “the glass is half full.”

Never Count Oprah Out. Never.

OWN turns a profit.

Buzzfeed Puts Reza Aslan’s ZEALOT in Context

A list of books about a particular religion written by someone not of that faith.

 

Links to think by for a Friday afternoon

Next to Now

A shortlist of some of the articles we’ve noticed in the past week.

The Booker Longlist:  Every shortlist should start with a longlist, don’t you think? Our end-of-summer reading list is now locked up.

Our favorite review of the week:  OK, this actually came out a couple weeks ago, but Jess Walter’s NYT review of “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P” is still too much fun to pass up: “. . . The data are in. All precincts have reported. It’s official: men suck.”

Oh, the granularity:  In a piece on bookstores, Mike Shatzkin lays out what makes the book industry so crazy-making for newcomers (we won’t get into what makes it crazy-making for old-timers):  “The unique characteristic of the book business that frustrates just about everybody coming into it from the outside: its sheer granularity…”

Keep your TV ads alive on the 2nd screen:  Twitter is opening up its ad service Twitter Amplify to any U.S. advertiser that has a nationwide TV campaign, allowing them to create Promoted Tweets featuring extra content, such as behind-the-scenes clips and highlight reels, and sending those to users Twitter says are likely to have watched their ad. The company said tests of viewers watching TV ads and interacting with related Promoted Tweets revealed a 58% higher purchase intent compared with those who just watched the TV ad.

iPad users love ads (the feeling is mutual):  CNET reports that Apple’s iPad commanded 84.3% of all tablet-generated Web traffic in the U.S. and Canada in June.

Goodreads doubles user base:  In one year, Goodreads goes from 10 million users to 20. Those are some very impressive numbers!

The long view:  Publishing consultant Brian O’Leary waxes lyrical about Norm MacDonald, John Updike, Abraham Lincoln, Carolyn Forché & the universe.