advertising
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Cluesday
Closer to homes Tornado Alley moves east. Here’s one I recorded live on my phone in February here in Bloomington, Indiana. Here is the trench of destruction dug by a later tornado that went through thick woodlands about twelve miles north of here. Didn’t know there was one, but yeah Chick-fil-A takes a stand against… Continue reading
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Moonday
Ilmoonination Actually, we have a waning gibbous moon tonight. It was full two nights ago. But I need to a headline, so there ya go. How's fishing? Mainstream media continues to get sidestreamed. That's what I take from Ad Market Resumes Tepid Growth In August, 'Traditional' Media's Share Falls Below 20%, by Joe Mandese in today's MediaPost.… Continue reading
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Hey Europe: Make Privacy a Contract
Anu Bradford‘s book, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (Oxford, 2019), hardly exaggerates the EU’s influence. Many EU regulations have global reach, especially in respect to personal privacy. And for that we should be grateful, because the US and China mostly don’t give a shit. On the other hand, every cookie… Continue reading
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Oozeday
I was overheard to have said Exhumed this from a Facebook comment to repost here: About advertising, there have been two state changes in the business. One I unpacked eleven years ago, in Separating Advertising’s Wheat and Chaff. The pull-quote: “Madison Avenue fell asleep, direct response marketing ate its brain, and it woke up as… Continue reading
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Chooseday
Working to kill off cookie notices The IEEE’s cookie notice says, “This website utilizes technologies such as cookies to enable essential site functionality, as well as for analytics, personalization, and targeted advertising. Privacy Policy.” Its privacy policy, at that last link, says it collects eighteen kinds of personal information, and says one of the purposes… Continue reading
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Ownday
Elemental differences Look up graphite, graphite company, or graphite the company, and you’ll mostly get geological and industrial answers. (Unless, of course, your search history suggests the company signing the billboard above.) The easy way to find out, of course, is to ask your friendly AI. It will tell you the company behind the billboard above is Graphite.com,… Continue reading
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Thurbsday
It’s still a bubble In May of 2018, I posted GDPR will pop the adtech bubble. It didn’t. The bubble is now bigger than ever. My mistake was assuming that there was a policy answer to a morally awful business that paid well. In retrospect, it’s a humbling reminder of how long one can be wrong… Continue reading
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From Losing the Web to Saving Us All
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy—Thesis #7, The Cluetrain Manifesto Big AI subverts everything, including hyperlinks, which are what make the Web a web. With Big AI, you no longer surf from searches to sources across an ocean of links. You ask questions and get answers from the world’s largest Magic 8-Balls. They top the new hierarchy, which… Continue reading
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Wochenende
That's weekend, auf Deutsch. As happened yesterday, something I wrote here in Wordland got too long, so I made it a separate post, titled So maybe it’s not too late to teach it to myself. German, that is. I still have the book I failed to versteh in 1962, so why not? And all of them need… Continue reading
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Default Lines
Suck onward I only had this one day to catch up on all kinds of stuff here in Santa Barbara, and ended up spending half of it trying to get our two printers working. The Brother is a laser printer that only worked on Wi-Fi after I downloaded new drivers and installed them with my… Continue reading
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The Other Reasons Why Podcasting is Hot
Near the end of this Pivot podcast, starting at about the 55 minute mark, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway give a great summary of why podcasting is “the fastest-growing ad-supported medium.” Among other things, they say “People actually listen to the ads,” and that host read-overs are very effective and remunerative (bringing much higher CPMs).… Continue reading
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Nowsday
Nobirds? Engadget: Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy. Say hello to “NewBird AI.” It’s April 15, not April 1. Just noting that. Reuters. Investopedia. Marketwatch. Apparently, you can still buy their shoes: allbirds.com. I love The Onion’s American Voices take. One more reason to hate advertising… Continue reading
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Keeping Up
Apple’s Mail.app sucks. I could give reasons, but it would only make me more tired than I already am from dealing with my storage issues. I just downloaded and set up Thunderbird for my Searls.com address to see if that works better. I’ve stayed away from Thunderbird since 2013, when it did real damage somehow.… Continue reading
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Back and (Go) Forth
Apologies for the relative silence. Between travels and slow recovery (still far from over) from cataract surgery for my left eye, looking at screens and writing on them hasn’t been easy. But things are improving. Had a productive Monday at the Summit on Human Agency. My talk was a 15-minute interview by Sheila Warren of Project Liberty,… Continue reading
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Watts Up
Book them now Early bird tickets are on sale for the 42nd IIW, which began on a Gillmor Gang podcast the last day of 2004. In my biased but correct opinion, IIW is the most leveraged tech conference on Earth. This one will happen on April 28th to 30th, Tuesday to Thursday. But for the… Continue reading
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Dues Day
Currently I have three of them. Do you have a principle? I hadn’t thought about that before reading Justin Mikolay‘s Inventing on Principle: A Distillation of Bret Victor’s Extraordinary Talk About How To Live Your Life. And that’s just one of many things that have been written about Bret Victor, a guy about whom I knew… Continue reading
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Sum Day
Super. Bowls a strike. Against ChatGPT. This is brilliant. Here's a bonus post from the reliably contrary Gary Marcus. Later… I didn't see this ad during the Super Bowl. But maybe it ran but I got sacked by the Seattle defense, which several times came right through my TV screen and threw me on the… Continue reading
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Endweek
Make America Grate Again Yesterday's depressing news was Trump's latest attempted slaying of the Hudson Tunnel Project, which may be more expensive to shut own than to complete. But that's just my off-the-wall take. The real story is far more complicated. Today's depressing news is the end of the CIA World Factbook, one of the… Continue reading
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Dept. of Overstate
Pull almost-quote: Never mistake malice for stupidity Says here that 4% support for the U.S. taking over Greenland is in the lizardman range. When will he come to the US? Peter Bence is an amazing pianist. Made it a bit punchier I just gave The Only Way to Get Privacy Online a fresh edit, based on… Continue reading
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Everwhen
Same cancer, different tumor Show of hands: Who wants surveillance pricing? Sez Wikipedia, at that link, “Surveillance pricing is a form of dynamic pricing where a consumer’s personal data and behavior is used to determine their willingness to pay.[1] This form of price discrimination assesses price sensitivity for a products or services based on an… Continue reading