Diamonds. Everyone knows the story, they are essentially worthless. But the cunning machinations of De Beers, starting in the early 20th century, turned a commodity into a luxury good. Combining clever marketing with ruthless domination of supply and distribution this common crystal is the only commodity whose price has increased steadily since the 1930s. In

Lot of activity in the advertising technology segment over the last few years. Much of it made (in)famous by Mr. Kawja’s chart. What these ad tech companies all seem to have in common? They often some version of a better calculator bolted to some serious tech gee whizzery. They all promise more accurate metrics and

Social media is like Narnia, a place where animals talk, magic is common, and good battles evil victoriously. In January 2010, for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi cancelled its annual Super Bowl advertising and joined the social media marketing hysteria by launching their much-hyped “Pepsi Refresh Project“. In Super Bowl ads from 1999

A question: Doesn’t the growing third party data segment mean that online publishers have given up on audience? In the old days, you bought ads in GQ because you assumed readers of the magazine fit the segment you wanted. GQ got paid a premium because they aggregated that audience. But the trend in online is

Of all the algorithmic gee-whizzery currently available to online marketers, behavioral targeting always strikes us as the most dubious tool in the utopian automation kit. (Our suspicion didn’t begin there but Augustine Fou had a great post a few years ago comparing behavioral targeting to belief in Santa.) We recently moved even closer to being

The president of France spoke last week about bringing the internet to heel at the star-studded eG8 conference he hosted (and, oh yeah, we attended). “We need to talk to you. We need to understand your expertise, your hopes … We need to hear your aspirations, your needs. You need to hear our limits, our

Navigation tabs are not an obvious source of comedy. But on ad network sites there are two tabs that tell a joke that is, well, a joke. Pick a random ad network site and look for these tabs: Publishers Advertisers Click the publisher tab and you read some version of: We turbo-charge your eCPM! Premium

Treating the web like TV – as we have mentioned before -  is an issue with amazing tenacity. And where the Web-as-TV thing is most dangerous is the conception of how both media are consumed. Television, as your parents probably let you know with irritating frequency, is a passive medium. The remote, sealing the deal

The association responsible for the .SE domain has an excellent overview of Sweden’s digital life in 2010. Given that Sweden (and just after them, Denmark) tops The Economist’s list of digital ready economies, the report is an amazing glimpse into the future. Too bad it is only available in Swedish (UPDATE: Our Swedish is even

In the US, national TV network CBS, is apparently going to stop using the original pillars of audience segmentation: Age, Sex. Adage reports, CBS Corp. Chief Research Officer David Poltrack, saying: A growing amount of data that matches audience measurement with purchase information shows that using demographics to target commercials is “essentially invalid,” he said,