Media Monkey

Oracle buys MOAT

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 02:14:00 +0000

Oracle have just announced that they are buying MOAT.

MOAT is a brand safety and visibility measurement company. They've come from a world where they've helped the programmatic world build trust when the main adservers were struggling.

Their main reason for existing is that they have brought a product to market quicker than Google were able to and have consistently stayed ahead of Google's trailing adserving platform.

I can see why MOAT is a valuable company in itself. They've got really strong relationships with publishers, they've gone through the certification process in order to be accepted across most industry bodies and they've built strong relationships with agencies. Given the recent brand safety issues, they're not going anywhere soon.

The question is how they will add value to Oracle's cloud service. Oracle at the moment are almost purely a data player. They sell big databases to store data, they have sources of data and they sell some things that help you activate your data.

From a data point of view, MOAT tells you if your ad was viewed. Integrating with Blue Kai so you can target viewers sounds good, but Blue Kai didn't need to buy the company to do this integration. It also will restrict them from pairing with other companies in this space.

From a tech point of view, MOAT's integration into Oracle is likely to slow them down. Aligning with Oracle's overall roadmap won't be fun and will likely meanthey can no longer run ahead of Doubleclick.

From a client point of view, MOAT is in a strong position within the marketplace. Most people who are going to go with a verification provider have already done it. There's a clear competitive set and MOAT have relationships at all relevant points in the ecosystem. Blue Kai has equivalent relationships so I don't see that Oracle will be able to do a better sales job than MOAT.

From an ownership point of view, it's good that they've not been bought by a media owner so we can have some continuing independence in the measurement space. The less that can be bought by Facebook or Google the better!

Overall, it's a strange acquisition. I don't really see a clear benefit for either party. I assume MOAT wanted money, which is always good. I don't think Oracle will particularly remember that they bought MOAT in five years.

Coalition for Better Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 15:31:00 +0000

Background:

Publishers have always had to balance pleasing their audience with pleasing their advertisers. Too much advertising turns audiences away, too little means less revenue. Then there are the bad ads, the annoying and irritating, disruptive ones. To tackle this problem, GroupM is helping to form The Coalition for Better Ads - a global industry movement of publishers, agencies, technology companies and advertisers that aims to develop and implement new standards in digital advertising.

Details and Implications:

The rise of ad blockers has tipped the balance of power and consumers now have the nuclear option to block all digital advertising. This means that creating ‘good’ ads is now the responsibility of the entire industry, because ad blockers are not going to be tempted back because one site or advertiser has changed its ways. It’s all or literally nothing.
The Coalition has a strategy to deliver on three areas: defining standards for acceptable advertising, building technology to measure compliance with these standards and building consumer awareness of this change.
These standards will likely be based on the new LEAN scoring from the IAB which specifies that advertising should be: Light, Encrypted, AdChoice Supported and Non-invasive. These four principles will be built upon and quantified but can definitely be put to work right now on current activity.
Once the industry embraces these standards and implements technology based upon them, we are likely to see some significant changes:

Buying ads in ‘non-disruptive’ environments:

Advertising revenues sometimes discourage publishers from maintaining the quality of their properties – adding in more and more ad units. If advertisers pay premiums for ‘non-disruptive’ environments then publishers may be seduced into improving their sites to improve their yields.

Selective ad blocking:

Once a system for scoring ads has been built ad blockers could specifically block ads that don’t meet the mark. Imagine an ad blocker that only stops THOSE ads.

Publishers charge a premium for certain advertising:

Sites that want to maintain their score could actually charge a significant premium for advertisers who break the rules.

Summary:

While we wait for The Coalition to do its work, Mindshare will be working with its clients and partners to lead the charge towards better ads. Delivering ads that are more considerate to consumers is central to delivering good experiences on behalf of our clients.
We urge you to take a look at the LEAN standards and see how we can move adverts away from being seen as annoying to being seen as something that informs and educates.

Google Updates Feeds to Require GTIN

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 11 May 2016 14:43:00 +0000

Background

As of May 16^th2016 if you sell a product that has a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) (a digital barcode) on Google, it will be compulsory to include it in your feed, or else those items will be disapproved.

Details & Implications

Many manufacturers make multiple products that are extremely similar when looked at within the product page of a website. Think of a time when you have tried to order something as simple as a TV, it’s amazing how hard it is to work out if you are comparing the same model across different websites. The difficulty in confidently identifying products, is what makes product comparison sites difficult to build. Despite the fact Google has created relatively robust face recognition software, the company has not come close to replicating this with products, so Google has decided to progress by forcing merchants to tell it exactly what each product is.

Merchants must now use a standardized identifier to make sure Google can compare Golden Delicious apples to Golden Delicious apples. The introduction of GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) uniquely identifies any product that arrives in any kind of packaging – barcodes are usually digital versions of a GTIN. The GTIN is as familiar to logistics people as GRPs are to media people. They act as a common language between warehouses and companies to ensure large companies are able to efficiently transport goods from one business to another without needing someone to key the actual order details each time.

Google’s change ensures that it is getting access to this consistent data and can therefore innovate on top of the existing infrastructure instead of creating its own framework from scratch. If merchants do not comply with Google’s decision, their product listing ads will simply stop working and their products will not appear within Google shopping. This will obviously impact volumes for merchants, so there will be a push on their side to include the GTIN.

Summary

After receiving the updated product listing feeds, Google will have an interesting new data source – the exact products on sale from a range of merchants and the ability to compare. Therefore, Google can start ranking these merchants on how quickly they stock new products, how successful they are at keeping items in stock and how broad \ unique a range they sell. Even more interestingly they can compare the prices these merchants offer, so give a guide as to how competitively merchants price. Google can now also start looking at extending quality scores to include metrics based on what retailers sell. Furthermore, other companies will be making these standardized identifiers available on the internet, making it potentially easier for the next Kelkoo to emerge.

Dynamic Creative Doesn't Require Decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 23:18:00 +0000

One of the things that annoys me with dynamic creative is when the first conversation about deploying is around 'decision trees'. If this is the first conversation about dynamic creative, it's usually a sign dynamic creative isn't fully understood and that there's going to be a fun conversation around what we are using dynamic creative for.

Decision trees are an amazing tool that Flashtalking popularised.

The tree shows a nice clean process where certain rules trigger certain changes to the creative. These changes aggregate up to a wonderful world where the creative will appear to respond according to things we know about people or know about the page the person is on.
To be clear, I think this is a wonderful tool and a massive step above the excel sheet driven approach of most of their competitors. My problem with it is that it conflates these decisions with the creative. Therefore we often see these decision points leading the creative process, leading to the horrible messes we often see within product ads (more on those later).
The idea of having creative that is dynamic doesn't require rules to be defined - creative can change themselves based on nothing at all (and often are changing at random).

Decision Twigs

Since the majority of creatives actually only need one decision or rule, I suspect there are a large number of twigs out there. This should be normal - most of our audience aren't paying much attention to our advertising and we shouldn't need to be deploying huge levels of creative complexity.

A single decision can mask a huge number of creatives

Imagine a decision based on the title of the page the ad is deployed on. The creative could show an Italian picture and some Italian copy based on words within the title. If the title contains France, the pictures and copy could be altered. This could continue into many other countries.

This single decision could be extended out into dozens of individual creative combinations. These will take time to input into Flashtalking's decision tree or another adserver's excel file but will only really involve a single decision from the adserver.

The actual achievement here is that Flashtalking have managed to sell a trafficking technique so well that creative agencies are selling on their behalf. The problem is that the creative agency then obsesses over how to make these trees look more complicated so they can feel that the dynamic setup looks 'clever'.

Testing new interface

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 22:10:00 +0000

Might be time to resurrect this. It's been a long time and media has moved a long way in that time.

I've missed out on blogging about:

RTB
Mobile
Cross device
Phone Hacking

Lots of things and I did have some opinions at the time!

Boris only likes cars...

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:42:00 +0000

Saw some bits from the Londonist on how the cost of transport in London has been changing from 2000 to 2012. Noticed some obvious hiking from Boris so thought would be nice to do a version of the Obama bar chart that shows unemployment.
I've assumed that Boris was in charge of the prices from 2009 onwards.
First, the one that hits the poorer people harder - bus fares.

This one shows very clearly how aggressively prices have gone up on the price of the standard bus fare. Maybe this is what's paying for the new buses?

Weekly passes had followed a similar trend but looked like they had been a priority for savings. Now it looks like they're going up just the same:

On Tube fares, I've replaced the cash price with the price of an Oyster card single journey as that seemed the most appropriate for Londoners rather than tourists (keen on the cash price remaining high to screw tourists!). Once you look like this it's pretty clear that Boris has been raising these like a madman.

The weekly numbers show that he's made pretty much no difference whatsoever -the numbers keep on going up.

He hasn't been as harsh to the congestion zone, only raising it once during his whole term and reducing the area it covers. Although he may talk lots about cycling, he actually seems to be nicest to motorists:

Just thought it necessary to emphasise while he's running talking about how he's saved us pennies in Council tax while taking pretty substantial amounts out through TFL rate rises.

Graphs from the Google Charts API. A little bit easier than D3, but difficult to do anything especially funky with them.

Integrated Marketing Campaigns

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:50:00 +0000

For everything people have been saying about John Lewis' new TV ad, it's interesting seeing what's live for digital advertising at the moment:

Not quite as interesting!

Six ways you can support the Guardian | Info | guardian.co.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Seems slightly desperate, but it's a good idea.

------ from www.guardian.co.uk, via Google Reader
Subscribe to the Guardian and Observer before the end of this month and pay only £5 per week for our seven-day package – a saving of 45% on the cover price

How to Install Google&;#39;s Note in Reader Bookmarklet in iPad&;#39;s Safari

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 15:15:00 +0000

Great - this does work!

------ from www.passwordincorrect.com, via Google Reader
If you want to install in your iPad's Safari a Google's Note in Reader bookmarklet, just in case you really need to share something from your mobile browse

How the Cable/Willetts market in higher education ended up inflating fees

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:22:00 +0000

Some nice quotes to remember

------ from Left Foot Forward, via Google Reader

Remember all that lovely spin about how higher education tuition fees of more than £6,000 a year would be rare?

“Mr Willetts gave warning that universities should only charge maximum fees only in ‘exceptional circumstances’.” – The Daily Telegraph, February 21st 2011

“People keep citing £9,000. You know, £9,000 should be the exception not the rule. If you want to go through the £6,000 barrier you are going to have to jump through a lot of hoops.” – The Independent, December 5th 2010

“Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD): ’One of the worries out there is that all universities might end up being allowed to charge £9,000. What assurance – what rules, what guarantees-can my Right Hon. Friend give that “exceptional” will mean “exceptional”, and that £6,000 will be the limit for most universities in the country?’

“Vince Cable: ’That is a highly pertinent question in the light of the experience of the last government, who had a two-tier system. There was a migration of all universities to the top of the range. They operated, in effect, like a cartel, and that must be stopped.’” – Hansard, December 9th 2011

Well, it’s all turned out rather differently.

As the BBC reported this morning:

More than a third of England’s universities have had their plans to charge £9,000 for every course officially approved. Some 58% will be allowed to charge £9,000 for at least some courses in 2012, said the fees watchdog the Office for Fair Access.

One major reason why is that universities fear students will price as shorthand for quality, so resulting in universities actually competing to raise prices. As Left Foot Forward reported recently, the Vice Chancellor of De Montford University, Professor Dominic Shellard, told his student newspaper that DMU will charge £9,000 next year because:

“…whether we like it or not there’s a correlation between what you charge and people’s perception of quality. We’re quite ambitious as an institution, we want to go well beyond this notion that we’re a post-92 institution. It was a reflection of our ambition.”

We are fast heading towards a two-tier higher education sector where potential employers will ask applicants “did you go to a £9K university?”; strangely, senior Liberal Democrats said they changed thier minds on tuition fees due to the need to reduce the deficit.

Yet, with government paying fees up front and institutions competing to drive prices upwards, we have a recipe for increasing government debt, at least in the short term.

Watch these kids play Star Wars on a giant touch screen

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:06:00 +0000

WANT

------ from Boing Boing, via Google Reader

It's probably the level of concentration required, but these kids do not look nearly as excited about what they are doing as I think they should.

For the last two years, University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student Arthur Nishimoto has been working on this incredible-looking video game based around a multi-touch interface. According to the YouTube page, the game:

... explores how a real-time interactive strategy game that would typically rely on complex keyboard commands and mouse interactions be transferred into a multi-user, multi-touch environment. Originally designed for use with TacTile, a 52-inch multi-touch LCD tabletop display, "Fleet Commander" game play has been ported to
EVL's 20-foot wide multi-touch LCD wall, Cyber-Commons. "Fleet Commander" uses Processing, an open source programming language.

There's more about the game's development at Nishimoto's website. Also: In before the Orson Scott Card jokes!

Video Link

Via Golem.de and Carl Wirth

Used bike ad is slightly militant

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:02:00 +0000

Awesome

------ from Boing Boing, via Google Reader

"Anyone buying this bike for a "fixie conversion" will be shot."

(Via Kent Peterson)

Google working on a marketplace for advertisers to buy and sell your data

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:47:00 +0000

This might be fun. If we can get some gold standard demographic data being fed in, things could get much more interesting.

------ from VentureBeat, via Google Reader

Google is working to create an online exchange where digital marketers can buy, sell and trade data on individuals, according to an Ad Age report.

Google deflected many questions we had about the service with a single, short statement.

“We’re working on a few initiatives with partners to improve the way that users, advertisers and publishers manage third party data, but there’s no single product or timetable,” according to a spokesperson.

Former DoubleClick executive and current Google VP Neal Mohan echoed that statement.

“If our vision is a comprehensive one, it needs to contemplate data in addition to ad inventory,” Mohan told AdAge.

A person familiar with DoubleClick’s internal workings told VentureBeat that an imminent product launch is not in the works. At this point, Google still has much to do before it can introduce one or many products that can deliver this type of service to marketers.

The move could help Google re-establish itself as a powerful and innovative force in advertising. But it also could gain scrutiny from privacy advocates that are nervous about such a large scale of user data being traded.

The exchange, which AdAge claims is known internally as “DDP,” will connect marketers in such a way that they can sell wide swaths or small fragments of audience data to each other. It will also work with Google’s DoubleClick server to help online publishers sell their data just as they would sell ad space. The exchange will compete directly with companies that already sell user data like Targus Info, Claritas and Catalina Marketing.

The report notes that data providers plan to strip out identifiable information when they sell user data, but because Google will be connecting companies at such a large scale, the project will likely receive a close look from privacy advocates.

Berin Szoka, president of tech policy think tank TechFreedom, said the concept of this data marketplace is a great idea for helping ad-supported publishers. But he notes Google would do well to implement the product with strong privacy controls.

“Google has the potential to do this in a very privacy friendly way,” Szoka said. “The company has already built considerable transparency into how ads are served. Extending that framework to how data is exchanged could be a big win for privacy, especially if such a market facilitates enforcement of existing self-regulatory commitments. Doing this correctly is the best way for Google to prevent further government involvement.”

Filed under: media, VentureBeat

How digital detectives deciphered Stuxnet, the most menacing malware in history

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:56:00 +0000

LOTS of detail about the Stuxnet virus. Brilliant to see Wired and Ars working together!

------ from arstechnica.com, via Google Reader
It was January 2010 when investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency realized something was off at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran. Months earlier, someone had silently unleashed a sophisticated and destructive digital worm that had been slithering its way through computers in Iran—to sabotage the country's uranium enrichment program and prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building a nuclear weapon.

Update: NOTW Redux? News International Registers 'SunOnSunday' Domains

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 13:59:00 +0000

Well done that 'cyber squatter'. Not sure what the value of paying people to buy a domain is anymore.
Can see that they may be buying these domain names to prevent spoofs of their site rather than because they want to launch a separate paper on the Sunday. Would it even need to have a different name?

------ from paidContent:UK, via Google Reader

Update: So now the mystery has been solved. Some time late today, the ownerships of the domain names thesunonsunday.co.uk and sunonsunday.co.uk flipped to News International, having originally be registered to unnamed parties. The domain thesunonsunday.com and sunonsunday.com are still registered to unnamed parties. In a meeting with News of the World staff today, Brooks reportedly discussed the future Sun on Sunday by name.

Meanwhile, subscribers to the NOTW.co.uk, which was put behind a paywall last year, were emailed today detailing that this Sunday would be the final edition of the paper. Access to the site “will be open to the public for free for our final edition on Sunday 10th July.” Those subscribers with outstanding credit will get a refund.

Original post: Yesterday, amid the shocking news that News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). would be shutting down its prized Sunday UK newspaper News of the World amid phone hacking allegations, some commentators started to gather around another fact: the domain names TheSunOnSunday.co.uk and TheSunOnSunday.co.uk had been registered only days ago. So was that part of parent News International’s tactic to resuscitate its Sunday publishing operation before losing its audience—the biggest of all the UK Sunday papers—to competitors? Some believe not.

A teardown of the registration, courtesy of the Online Journalism Blog, points to some reasons to think that this is just the work of your average, opportunistic cyber squatter:

—The who.is registrations. The who.is pages describing ownerships of the .com domain and the .co.uk domain are registered to different companies (.com to Webfusion Ltd in Leeds, and Mediaspring, also in Leeds). But both were filed on the same day, July 5, 2011, and both list http://www.123-reg.co.uk as the referral URL. The OJB post notes that News International usually uses CSC to register its domain names, rather than a site like 123-reg that is geared to small businesses and individuals.

—Then these is the issue of details on these companies. The co.uk domain, for example, is listed to a “UK individual”. It would “be odd for big corporation to withhold info on whois record”, the OJB notes. And it could be considered “Whois abuse” if it was found that a major corporation was masking as an individual in registering a name. (Although if the current allegations are to be believed, hiding facts is possibly not something unfamiliar in these parts.)

We have contacted Webfusion in Leeds to see if it can clarify why the name is listed to it and will update this post as we learn more.

Does the above mean that guesses about News International making a new Sunday tabloid (and therefore lessening the pain of needing to can NOTW) are entirely wrong? Not exactly. Extending a six-day publication to a seven-day schedule had been something News International was already mulling before this scandal broke this week, and may well end up doing—regardless of what name gets used.

The news of the domain name registration and speculation over what that meant had gone a bit media-viral by last night, with groups like CBS (NYSE: CBS) News, the BBC and even BSkyB’s Sky News (partly owned by News Corp, which is trying now to gain full control of the broadcaster) noting the domain and/or referring to News International’s plans to launch another UK Sunday tabloid.

Related

Murdoch At The Center Of The Story -- But Not In Control

News Of The World's Closure Brings Abrupt End To One Murdoch Paywall

News Corp. Seen Weathering Tabloid Scandal Despite Black Eye for News Int.

News Corp's Bid For BSkyB Up In The Air Again, May Blow Up

James Murdoch: 'Sullied' Tabloid Will Close Sunday

Update 2: Hacked Off Public May Derail News Corp Over Dowler Scandal

David Cameron apologises, but for the wrong thing

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Very good points here.

------ from Bagehot's notebook, via Google Reader

TWO DAVID Camerons held a press conference this morning in Downing Street. The first was assured and compelling, and pulled off the difficult task of jumping ahead of the news cycle and setting the agenda for what comes next in the ever-widening scandal involving tabloid phone-hacking and the alleged bribery of policemen.

This Mr Cameron did a whole series of smart things. He admitted that leading politicians had spent several years ignoring the signs of widespread misconduct within the British press because they were anxious to have the support of big press and media outlets. He included himself in that camp, and apologised. He promised that in the future relations with leading proprietors, editors and journalists would have to become less cosy if public trust was going to be regained. And he came close to cutting his ties of friendship and loyalty with Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive of News International and former editor of the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid at the centre of the storm which is to be closed this weekend for good. In his own Falstaff-Prince Hal moment, this new, less cosy prime minister noted press reports that Mrs Brooks had offered her resignation (though some at NI deny this), and said:

…as I have said, it’s not right for a Prime Minister to start picking and choosing who should and shouldn’t run media organisations. But it has been reported that she offered her resignation over this. And in this situation, I would have taken it

He announced that there would be a public inquiry chaired by a judge and taking evidence from witnesses on oath. He said it would address three questions. Why did a first police investigation into phone-hacking, conducted in 2006, fail so abysmally? What exactly was going on at the News of the World? And thirdly, what was going on at other newspapers? Independent police investigators would also probe allegations of bribe-taking by police officers, he said.

He announced a second inquiry into a completely new, independent system of press regulation, moving away from the current system of self-regulation. He declared, correctly, that the current Press Complaints Commission had been "absent" during this greatest of scandals. A committee of the great and the good seems to loom.

Then, alas, there was a second David Cameron on display today. Tense, tetchy, defensive and red-faced, he offered a wholly inadequate explanation of why he had hired as his press chief Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World arrested this morning to be questioned about what he knew about phone-hacking on his watch and the alleged corruption of police officers.

Again and again, Mr Cameron returned to the same formula, saying that he had given Mr Coulson a second chance, but that regrettably that second chance had not worked out. He suggested that Mr Coulson had done the decent thing by resigning from the News of the World in 2007 after the jailing of that tabloid's royal correspondent and a private investigator for phone hacking. Mr Cameron had sought assurances and received assurances that despite that resignation, Mr Coulson knew nothing about the wrongdoing in his newsroom. The prime minister revealed that he had commissioned a private company to run a background check on Mr Coulson.

Alas, he said repeatedly, it had not worked out, though—and Mr Cameron kept stressing this, as though frustrated that we hacks could not see the importance of this point—"no one has ever raised serious concerns about how he did his job for me."

This was a wretched defence. Worryingly, if Mr Cameron's tetchiness was at all sincere, he cannot yet see this. Mr Cameron has a big problem, relating to his decision to hire Andy Coulson in 2007, as his director of communications in opposition. He has a truly huge problem relating to his decision to take Mr Coulson with him into government in 2010 as Downing Street director of communications, after the Guardian and other papers had already raised serious allegations about Mr Coulson, notably in 2009.

Talking about giving Mr Coulson a second chance, and how he paid the price once by resigning in 2007, does not help at all. Mr Cameron is not a probation officer, worrying about the rehabilitation of offenders. His responsibility, when hiring Mr Coulson, was less to probe Mr Coulson's past troubles than to assess the present-day suspicion that Mr Coulson is a liar. The problem is that all working journalists with experience of any daily newsroom (including me), simply never, ever believed Mr Coulson's defence that he did not know how his own newspaper was landing some of its juiciest scoops. It was not just an implausible explanation, it was an insult to the intelligence.

Half the political editors and reporters in the room this morning knew of people who had warned Mr Cameron and his closest aides that hiring Mr Coulson was a grave error. Some of those in the room had probably passed on such warnings themselves. That explains the sense of real frustration on the side of the press: this clever man at the podium was defending a nonsensical argument.

If Mr Cameron had not hired Mr Coulson, this whole sordid saga would be mostly about the past, and acts that took place under a different government. By hiring Mr Coulson, this saga is squarely about Mr Cameron's judgement.

Here is why this all matters, and why it is not going away.

1. Mr Cameron was peppered with questions today about what he knew and when did he know it. He was asked if he knew that the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, had warned his aides about specific, serious allegations involving Mr Coulson that had yet to emerge. He was asked if he had been warned or knew of the existence of emails apparently showing that payments were made to corrupt policemen by the News of the World. He told us he did not know about those emails, and more broadly told us he wasn't given any "specific, actionable information" about Andy Coulson and wrongdoing.

Such questions are only going to increase in number. Mr Cameron is going to need a good, reassuring answer for every single one of them.

2. Mr Cameron's image as a decent, honourable man, his personal brand as the ultimate guarantor that this is a new, moderate Conservative Party, is on the line now.

The most revealing moment of the entire press conference for me came when Mr Cameron was asked a question about whether this was a moment of reputational damage to compare with Tony Blair and the Iraq war. In answering that this situation was not like the Iraq crisis at all, Mr Cameron—off his own bat—said it was also nonsense to compare it with money for tobacco advertising.

That was a reference to a smaller, earlier scandal involving Tony Blair and Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1 boss. That affair blew up very early in Mr Blair's time in office (Mr Ecclestone had given a donation to the Labour Party in 1997, and months later, the new Labour government proposed giving Formula 1 a lucrative exemption from a ban on tobacco advertising. Though there was no suggestion of impropriety by Mr Ecclestone, there was a big fuss, and in the end, the donation was repaid). At that time, Mr Blair used his post-election honeymoon aura to downplay the allegations of favours being bought, saying that voters knew he was a "pretty straight sort of guy". Later, as public distrust of Mr Blair grew, the moment would come to be seen as a symbol of the disenchantments that lay ahead.

Was the Ecclestone reference a slip of the tongue? Or a revelation about what is seething within Mr Cameron's brain, as he grapples with the first big threat to his own image, so central to his project of detoxifying the Tories? Is Mr Cameron worrying that this is the moment people start to question the idea that he is a pretty straight sort of guy?

Anti-PowerPoint Party

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:33:00 +0000

Nice

------ from Google Reader
The Swiss Anti-PowerPoint Party has been founded to ban the use of PowerPoint: "According to the APPP, the use of presentation software costs the Swiss economy 2.1 billion Swiss francs (US$2.5 billion) annually, while across the whole of Europe, presentation software causes an economic loss of €110 billion (US$160 billion). APPP bases its calculations on unverified assumptions about the number of employees attending presentations each week, and supposes that 85 percent of those employees see no purpose in the presentations." The party's founder has -- not coincidentally -- written a book about PowerPoint's evils (he recommends flip-charts instead). (via /.)

Zynga’s board earned millions in 2010, IPO reveals

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:34:00 +0000

Gosh. They've done quite well!

------ from VentureBeat, via Google Reader

Massively popular social gaming company Zynga today filed for a $1 billion IPO along with some staggering numbers, including that the company had already earned $90 million in profit in 2011. The filing also revealed what sort of compensation the executive board earned in 2010.

The biggest highlight regarding pay on the sheet is that Executive VP Owen Van Natta, a Myspace veteran, earned an enormous $43 million in 2010. Most of his pay came from stock and option awards, but he’s surely not complaining.

CEO and founder Mark Pincus only earned around $520,000, but that number is misleading as Pincus sold $110 million in shares last year and owns 16% of the company.

Another major number on the board belonged to Steven Chiang, co-president of games, who racked up nearly $29 million in total compensation. Then there’s CFO David Wehner, who earned around $18 million.

The eye-popping chart is below:

San Francisco-based Zynga generates its revenues from its Facebook-based games like FarmVille, CityVille, and Empires and Allies. Each successive game has become a hit and users happily purchase items inside otherwise free games, generating tons of cash.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. Our sponsors include Qualcomm, Flurry, Greystripe, Nexage, Tapjoy, Fun Mobility, TriNet, Zong, Spil Games and WildTangent.

Filed under: games, VentureBeat

Compared to Zynga, Groupon is run by a bunch of clowns

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:28:00 +0000

Good points, well made. Though I think it&;#39;s only fair to point out that GroupOn is throwing money to get scale before Google &;amp; co chomp it down.
Although Zynga faces some competition, none of the current gaming giants look capable of challenging their space in the near future.

------ from Google Reader

Social games maker Zynga, the developer behind smash hits like FarmVille and CityVille, filed for an initial public offering on Friday. It is one of the largest initial public offerings expected this year, alongside group-buying site Groupon.

But the way the companies are run, and how efficiently they generate money, couldn’t be any more different.

Compared to Groupon, which has enormous administrative costs and is hemorrhaging a lot of money, Zynga is a ruthlessly-run, well-oiled machine. The social gaming company has kept its administrative costs to a minimum and, while it hasn’t kept up with Groupon in terms of revenue, has been the most profitable company to file for an initial public offering this year.

Zynga has since become a Facebook distribution powerhouse like no other game company. That makes it a lot easier for Zynga to generate revenue, since a percentage of users usually pays for items in otherwise free games.

The company has delivered hit after hit to Facebook. Zynga’s latest social game, Empires &;amp; Allies, is another hit for the company. It attracted more players than FarmVille, its first breakout hit, in just 25 days. Empires &;amp; Allies is gaining new users at a rate of a million a day and 8 million a week now, according to AppData.

Here are a few significant differences between two of the most hotly anticipated IPOs this year:

Revenue: Groupon brings in much more revenue than Zynga. The group-buying site brought in $713.4 million in 2010. The company brought in $644.7 million in the first quarter this year, up from $44.2 million in the first quarter last year. By comparison, Zynga brought in $598 million in revenue last year and $235 million in revenue in the first quarter this year, up from $101 million in revenue in the same quarter a year earlier.

Profit: The biggest difference between the two companies is that Zynga is profitable, while Groupon has lost a lot of money. Zynga made a $90 million profit in 2010. It made a profit of $11.8 million in the first quarter this year, up from $6.4 million in the first quarter of 2010. Groupon has consistently lost money each quarter except for one — the first quarter of 2010, when it brought in an $8 million profit. Groupon lost $456.3 million in 2010 and $6.9 million in 2009. The company lost $146.5 million in the first quarter this year.

Marketing Costs: Compared to Groupon, Zynga spends very little on marketing. Groupon spent $263.2 million on marketing in 2010 and $208.2 million in the first quarter this year. Zynga spent $40.2 million on marketing in the first quarter this year and $114 million in 2010.

Selling, General and Administrative Costs: Groupon has enormous administrative costs that make up roughly a third of its operating expenses. Groupon spent $233.9 million on administrative costs in 2010. The company has spent $178.9 million on administrative costs in the first quarter this year, compared to $4 million in the first quarter last year.

By comparison, Zynga’s administrative costs only make up a fraction of the company’s total costs. The company spent $32.3 million on administrative costs in 2010, or 7 percent of its total costs. Zynga spent $27.1 million on administrative costs in the first quarter this year, or 13 percent of its total costs that quarter, compared to $16.5 million in the first quarter last year.

Groupon currently has 661 employees in North America and 2,895 international employees. As of the end of May, Zynga had 2,268 employees.

Filed under: games

Speculators unburned

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:23:00 +0000

Good point. Open auction is probably a very bad way to prevent speculation. Though not sure what the best way to do it would be.

------ from Google Reader

IT HAS been almost two weeks since the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced it would release 60m barrels of oil from its member governments’ reserves, apparently in response to “ongoing disruption of oil supplies from Libya”. How is that working out?

If the intention was to reduce prices in the medium- or long-term, it has failed. The price of Brent crude fell $5 on the announcement but has rallied since. The price of West Texas Intermediate (mainly produced in America) is trading higher than before the IEA announcement (see chart).

If the intention was to punish speculators, there is also cause for concern. Some speculators who were long oil may have lost big, but only those whose long positions were due for delivery in the few days after June 23rd, when the price was significantly depressed.

In the meantime, the IEA releases have created an opportunity for another potential speculative play. Some IEA members, including Japan and Britain, released their reserves directly to industry. Some even released refined products, such as diesel or jet fuel, which is only of use in specific industrial settings. In contrast America released 30m barrels (half of the IEA total) of unrefined crude, to public auction.

Oil traders are free to bid for it. And it seems they did. The Department for Energy says its auction was heavily oversubscribed with bids from more than 90 parties. For reference, there are 148 refineries in America, but most are owned by a few major players such as Exxon, who would do the actual bidding.

Traders who anticipate the oil price will rise, and have the capacity to store oil, can buy physical stocks now, and sell oil forward. As long as the price rises enough to cover storage costs, they will turn a profit. If a trader was able to purchase West Texas Intermediate—the oil held in America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)—at the spot price on June 24th, they would already be sitting on a tidy profit.

OMFG: Google wants to buy Hulu after all (sorry, Yahoo)

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:17:00 +0000

This would be very interesting

------ from Google Reader

Google has begun preliminary talks to acquire video-streaming service Hulu, according to unnamed sources in contact with the Los Angeles Times.

Last week, Hulu took steps to put itself up for sale by retaining investment banking firms to facilitate a potential acquisition. The company also concluded deals with its media partners and owners to extend licenses to stream exclusive film and television programming through the service — a necessary move since Hulu’s value is heavily tied to its library of content.

Hulu’s exclusive television content has attracted more than 600 major advertisers, including Nissan, McDonald’s and Johnson &;amp; Johnson. The company is expected to rake in $500 million in revenue from ad sales and fees from its premium subscription service.

Despite its financial success, Hulu’s various owners — which include Comcast, News Corp., Disney and Providence Equity Partners – rarely see eye-to-eye on which direction the business should pursue. Selling Hulu is a very attractive option since it would allow each media company to pursue its own content streaming strategy.

The news of Google’s interest in buying Hulu is contrary to earlier reports that explicitly stated that the search engine giant was not among the list of potential buyers. Reportedly, Yahoo was the first to make Hulu an acquisition offer. Both companies have declined to comment on that report.

These reports could well spark a bidding war over Hulu. Both Yahoo and Google could benefit from the acquisition of such a large library of exclusive programming from NBC-Universal, Fox, ABC and Viacom.

For Yahoo, adding Hulu to its fleet of services would allow the company to extend even further into the online video market. The company purchased social television startup IntoNow in April and lost a bid to acquire movie website Flixster (along with Rotten Tomatoes) in May. Rumors have also circulated that Yahoo would like to replace its current CEO Carol Bartz with Hulu’s CEO Jason Kilar.

Yet, Google could arguably leverage Hulu to greater effect. The company has been largely unsuccessful in its attempt to add popular licensed content to its YouTube video service. Acquiring Hulu would give the company a foot in the door to Hollywood as well as a team of people to manage relationships with movie and television studios.

Google and Yahoo are hardly the only companies who would benefit from acquiring Hulu. If social networking giant Facebook or streaming-video service Netflix were to join the bidding war, things would definitely heat up fast.

Filed under: Business and Technology, deals, media, News, social, VentureBeat

Fancy A Pint? Ten Top Pubs To Try. And A New Website.

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 16:56:00 +0000

This looks fun!

------ from Google Reader

The Fancyapint team have been busy. Not only have they been out tasting beer, testing bar staff and reviewing pubs, they’ve been working on a website makeover too. It’s now easier to find good pubs in the area you want over at new look Fancyapint.com. Disagree with their verdicts? Add your own review to the site.

This month’s top ten recommendations don’t include anything further south than Bermondsey but they’ve spanned the city with a recommendation for Hammersmith out west and Walthamstow out east.

By Stuart Cox

- Dean Swift Beer House (Bermondsey)

Good range of beers and the food’s not bad either

- Ain’t Nothin’ But… The Blues Bar (Soho)

One of our favourite live music venues in Soho

- William IV (Walthamstow)

Brew pub and home of the excellent Brodies Beer

- Old Eagle (Camden)

Genuine, friendly local boozer, with a good mixed crowd and friendly service

- Ye Olde Mitre Tavern (Farringdon)

An old favourite, and very historic, haunt with a landlord who knows his beer and how to keep it.

- The Draft House (Bermondsey)

Still a great bet for decent beer and good food

- Windsor Castle (Notting Hill)

A fine old pub with a rural feel in Hotting Hill – and a lovely garden

- The Masons Arms (Regent’s Park)

Decent pub off the beaten track, another old favourite

- The Queen’s Head (Brook Green)

Large beer garden, large interior and Fuller’s range of excellent ales

- The Gunmakers (Farringdon)

Titchy, but perfectly formed real ale pub in Clerkenwell

It’s all about going to the pub at Fancyapint.com

Puritans and Lady Godiva: why two justices voted to uphold California&;#39;s video game law

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:16:00 +0000

Yet more fantastic articles from ars. Nice point from the courts about narrow definitions for laws.
They do make a good point about the difference between obscenity and violence too.

------ from Ars Technica - The PC Enthusiast's Resource, via Google Reader

Justice Samuel Alito doesn't have a whole lot of love for the video game industry.

In some of these games, the violence is astounding. Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy. Blood gushes, splatters, and pools. Severed body parts and gobs of human remains are graphically shown. In some games, points are awarded based not only on the number of victims killed, but on the killing technique employed. It also appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit.

Read the comments on this post

'Hot News' doctrine gets a body-blow

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?

------ from Boing Boing, via Google Reader
Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright attorney Corynne McSherry has news about Barclays v FlyOnTheWall.com, a case that asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether the "Hot News" doctrine could be applied in the digital era. "Hot News" is an obscure corner of law that lets newsagencies treat publicly available facts as property and prevent others from reporting on them for a set time.

In Fly, the court heard argument that FlyOnTheWall.com was endangering the business-models of several financial recommendation services that provided stock-tips by reporting on those tips as soon as they were published. The court's decision is instructive:

The adoption of a new technology that injures or destroys present business models is commonplace. Whether fair or not, that cannot, without more, be prevented by application of the misappropriation tort... The Firms are making news; Fly, despite the Firms' understandable desire to protect their business model, is breaking it.

The court found in Fly's favor, and ruled that the "Hot News" doctrine is even narrower than previously thought, and can only be applied in true "free riding" cases where one news-entity is copying a competitor verbatim -- Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers and the other plaintiffs aren't news agencies, they're news. Their stock tips are newsworthy. When Fly reported on them and undermined their profitability, it was tough noogies (an incredibly underused legal concept, IME).

EFF was amicus on the case, and filed comments with Citizen Media Law Project and Public Citizen asking the court to find as it did. Other amici who took the defendant's side included Google and Twitter.

The "Hot News" Doctrine After Fly On the Wall: Surviving, But On Life Support

&;quot;Hot News&;quot; doctrine gets a body-blow

noreply@blogger.com (Media Monkey) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?

------ from Google Reader
Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright attorney Corynne McSherry has news about Barclays v FlyOnTheWall.com, a case that asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether the "Hot News" doctrine could be applied in the digital era. "Hot News" is an obscure corner of law that lets newsagencies treat publicly available facts as property and prevent others from reporting on them for a set time.

The adoption of a new technology that injures or destroys present business models is commonplace. Whether fair or not, that cannot, without more, be prevented by application of the misappropriation tort... The Firms are making news; Fly, despite the Firms' understandable desire to protect their business model, is breaking it.

The "Hot News" Doctrine After Fly On the Wall: Surviving, But On Life Support

Media Monkey

Oracle buys MOAT

Coalition for Better Advertising

Background:

Details and Implications:

Buying ads in ‘non-disruptive’ environments:

Selective ad blocking:

Publishers charge a premium for certain advertising:

Summary:

Google Updates Feeds to Require GTIN

Dynamic Creative Doesn't Require Decisions

Decision Twigs

A single decision can mask a huge number of creatives

Testing new interface

Boris only likes cars...

Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Six ways you can support the Guardian | Info | guardian.co.uk

Seems slightly desperate, but it's a good idea.

How to Install Google&;#39;s Note in Reader Bookmarklet in iPad&;#39;s Safari

Great - this does work!

How the Cable/Willetts market in higher education ended up inflating fees

Some nice quotes to remember

Watch these kids play Star Wars on a giant touch screen

WANT

Used bike ad is slightly militant

Awesome

Google working on a marketplace for advertisers to buy and sell your data

This might be fun. If we can get some gold standard demographic data being fed in, things could get much more interesting.

How digital detectives deciphered Stuxnet, the most menacing malware in history

LOTS of detail about the Stuxnet virus. Brilliant to see Wired and Ars working together!

Update: NOTW Redux? News International Registers 'SunOnSunday' Domains

David Cameron apologises, but for the wrong thing

Very good points here.

Anti-PowerPoint Party

Nice

Zynga’s board earned millions in 2010, IPO reveals

Gosh. They've done quite well!

Compared to Zynga, Groupon is run by a bunch of clowns

Good points, well made. Though I think it&;#39;s only fair to point out that GroupOn is throwing money to get scale before Google &;amp; co chomp it down.Although Zynga faces some competition, none of the current gaming giants look capable of challenging their space in the near future.

Speculators unburned

Good point. Open auction is probably a very bad way to prevent speculation. Though not sure what the best way to do it would be.

OMFG: Google wants to buy Hulu after all (sorry, Yahoo)

This would be very interesting

Fancy A Pint? Ten Top Pubs To Try. And A New Website.

This looks fun!

Puritans and Lady Godiva: why two justices voted to uphold California&;#39;s video game law

Yet more fantastic articles from ars. Nice point from the courts about narrow definitions for laws. They do make a good point about the difference between obscenity and violence too.

'Hot News' doctrine gets a body-blow

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?

&;quot;Hot News&;quot; doctrine gets a body-blow

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?

Good points, well made. Though I think it&;#39;s only fair to point out that GroupOn is throwing money to get scale before Google &;amp; co chomp it down.
Although Zynga faces some competition, none of the current gaming giants look capable of challenging their space in the near future.

Yet more fantastic articles from ars. Nice point from the courts about narrow definitions for laws.
They do make a good point about the difference between obscenity and violence too.