The East Coast is bracing for our first real snow of the season, preparing our Instagram filters and Twitter hashtags. So now’s a perfect time for all you East Coasters (and Midwesterners and West Coasters) to line up some good reading for the weekend. Here’s some of what we’ve noticed the last few days.
POLITICS UP
A presidential election year means big traffic for political websites — and good news for political books looking to target their audiences. Digiday outlines the top websites as measured by traffic—Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Hill, and Politico—and notes that The Hill and Mother Jones are growing fast.
NYT BRINGS “MODERN LOVE” TO PODCAST
The New York Times is teaming with NPR to produce a podcast of their popular Modern Love column: with essays read by actors including Jason Alexander, Judd Apatow, Sarah Paulson and more. What an amazing resource that will be to advertise fiction.
AOL AND TABOOLA TAKE ON FACEBOOK
In a world where reach is increasingly defined (or denied) by Facebook, AOL and Taboola are partnering up to increase the reach of AOL properties, including Huffington Post and Engadget.
PINTEREST TO ADD VIDEO ADS
Pinterest is adding video ad capabilities—which makes sense for such a visually oriented network. But to do it well, they’ll have to improve video on a site that, so far, has been all about the static image.
GOOGLE’S MICRO-MOMENTS GET PLAY IN THE PAPER OF RECORD
This article on intent-based advertising feels like it was written by someone receiving the many (convincing!) emails from Google marketing services about their concept of “micro-moments.” This article is worth reading, if for no other reason than the agile use of ancient Greek philosophy from Rocket Fuel (Liberal Arts education FTW).
“Randy Wootton, chief executive of the ad technology firm Rocket Fuel, which recently announced a ‘marketing in the moment’ approach, refers to ancient Greek concepts of time: chronos, or sequential time, and kairos, a moment of opportunity independent of linear time.”
That said, caveat emptor:
“Few marketers currently have all the skills needed for moments-based marketing, such as ethnographic studies of their customers and the ability to match customer data to the right context, according to a report released last July by Forrester Research. Without those skills developing throughout the industry, the latest scheme to reach peripatetic consumers could prove, well, momentary.”
BETTER GROWTH THROUGH PRIVATE ACCOUNTS?
Everlane experiments with a private Instagram account as a way to build community through a sense of exclusivity:
“’It’s like an Instagram incubator,’ said Gaskell. ‘We want to gauge criticisms, and we’re making it private in order to have a curated, high value experience. People will feel like they’re in on something.’”
Could it work for niche publishers?
FACEBOOK GETS SET TO JOIN THE SPORTS CONVERSATION
AdWeek reports on Facebook’s new sport-oriented platform. It’s a smart move by Facebook that is not great news for Twitter or ESPN. If this gets the traction I expect, it will be a great place to advertise sports books. Here’s the link to Facebook’s post about the feature:
“With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans.”