The Digitalists

The Digitalists

• “You don’t own your brand” June 4, 2010
  Over the past week, I’ve been following a hilarious Twitter feed called @BPGlobalPR, which may soon overtake @LTrainRat as my favorite parody Twitter account. The person or people behind the feed lampoons not just BP and its response to the Gulf oil spill, but the very notion of PR spin, with tweets such as: ANNOUNCEMENT: [...]
  Greg
• Math is hard, especially for journalists May 18, 2010
  In this week’s New York Times magazine, Andrew Rice has an piece on journalism startups wrestling with the dilemma of how to put a value on articles in a world where the written word has become commoditized. It’s a good overview of the issue, and I probably should provide some sort of in-depth analysis or [...]
  Greg
• Who is online video advertising’s game changer? March 11, 2010
  A few interesting advertising stats: Global Ad Business in 2010:  $544 billion The average city dweller gets 51,000 ad messages per day Cost of 30-second spot on American Idol:  $750,000 4 global companies buy 80% of advertising Ad spends by industry: Food:  $3.2 billion Cars:  $15 billion Political:  $2.6 billion These figures, which paint a [...]
  Daniel Granof
• Sezmi? Not so much maybe. . . March 3, 2010
  Thanks to Eric for his comment referencing less-than-stellar reviews on Sezmi.  Worth reading are specific reviews from commenters to a January 6 post on tech-geek blog Zatz Not Funny.    A few highlights: I’m in the LA Pilot. It’s lousy. The box is slow, often taking several seconds to register button presses on the remote. [...]
  Daniel Granof
• CPM watch: major video site getting $20-25 February 26, 2010
  The other day I met with the head of a well-known site that publishes lots of videos (viral and series).  He said they are getting $20-25 CPMs for some of their pre-rolls.  For reference:  at that rate a single video getting 100,000 views makes $2,000.  So if you can sell an advertiser on long-tail viewing [...]
  Daniel Granof
• Cut the cable cord? Says who?! Sezmi February 22, 2010
  A new competitor will try to make it easier for people to cut the cable cord, albeit by replacing it with a new tether.  Sezmi has just launched in L.A., and I’d be dying to try it out if I had a beautiful flat panel TV.  The company does an end-around on cable/satellite with a [...]
  Daniel Granof
• ReadWriteWeb, Facebook, and the limits of usability February 12, 2010
  The other day, the tech blog ReadWriteWeb published a piece entitled “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login“. Shortly afterward, the editors noticed something strange: the post attracted a number of comments from users upset for reasons that had nothing to do with anything the post said: when can we log in? … I [...]
  Greg
• SAG: give your content away for free, but not your acting February 11, 2010
  Sort of the same old at a panel and networking event I attended last night at the Screen Actors Guild, put on by Digital LA.  Meant to teach SAG actors as well as producers, directors, and writers about the how-tos of doing online video, it covered well-trodden ground, almost as if it we time-warped back [...]
  Daniel Granof
• Monster.com chases its own scale February 9, 2010
  I remain puzzled by Monster’s decision last week to buy HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. I should say at the outset that I’m hardly a disinterested observer; my own employer makes a good chunk of its revenue from a niche job board that competes with both companies. But it is precisely that perspective as [...]
  Greg
• MTV = TMI* February 9, 2010
  I know that as a child of the ’80s, I’m contractually obligated to complain about the fact that MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, and now has apparently removed the words “music television” from their logo. But really, who cares? MTV is a business, not a Gen X nostalgia factory. I heard their director of [...]
  Greg