Is “premium” ad space a hoax?

Answer: It kinda is. “Premium publishers” and “premium ad space” — these are often heard terms in programmatic advertising. But they are also dangerously fallacious ideas. I’ll give three reasons why: A priori problem Uniformity problem Equilibrium problem First, publishers define what is “premium” a priori (before results) which is not the right sequence to […]

Quick note: Measurement of brand advertising

Two brands colliding. Hm, I’m thinking (therefore, I am a digital marketer). The classical advertising question has been: How to measure the impact of advertising on a brand? And then the answer has been “oh, you can’t”, or “it’s difficult”, or something along those lines. But, they say, it is there! The marketers’ argument for […]

Algorithm Neutrality and Bias: How Much Control?

The Facebook algorithm is a global super power. So, I read this article: Facebook is prioritizing my family and friends – but am I? The point of the article — that you should focus on your friends & family in real life instead of Facebook — is poignant and topical. So much of our lives is spent […]

A New Paradigm for Digital Advertising

From its high point, the sheep can see far. Introduction In Finland, and maybe elsewhere in the world as well, media agencies used to reside inside advertising agencies, back in the 1970-80s. Then they were separated from one another in the 1990s, so that advertising agencies do creative planning and media companies buy ad space […]

Why social advertising beats display advertising

Introduction I’ve long been skeptical of display advertising. At least my students know this, since ever year I start the digital marketing course by giving a lecture on why display sucks (and why inbound / search-engine marketing performs much better). But this post is not about the many pitfalls of display. Rather, it’s outlining three arguments […]

Programmatic advertising: Red herring effect

Introduction Currently, there is very strong hype involved with programmatic buying. Corporations are increasing their investments on programmatic advertising and publishers are developing their own technologies to provide better targeting information for demand-side platforms. But all is not well in the kingdom. Display advertising still faces fundamental problems which are, in my opinion, more critical […]

Why do I love startups?

I’ve dedicated plenty of time for studying and coaching startups. But why do I care? Not only care, but be passionate about them, enough to say I love startups. I got to think about that, and here are the results of that quick reflection. 1. Startups are about technology Novelty, innovation, progress… call it what […]

Customers as a source of information: 4 risks

Introduction This post is based on Dr. Elina Jaakkola’s presentation “What is co-creation?” on 19th August, 2014. I will elaborate on some of the points she made in that presentation. Customer research, a sub-form of market research, serves the purpose of acquiring customer insight. Often, when pursuing information from consumers companies use surveys. Surveys, and usage of customers […]

Online ads: Forget tech, invest in creativity

Technology is not a long-lasting competitive advantage in SEM or other digital marketing – creativity is. This brief post is inspired by an article I read about different bid management platforms: “We combine data science to SEM, so you can target based on device, hour of day and NASDAQ development.” Yeah… but why would you do that? […]

Basic formulas for digital media planning

Planning makes happy people. Introduction Media planning, or campaign planning in general, requires you to set goal metrics, so that you are able to communicate the expected results to a client. In digital marketing, these are metrics like clicks, impressions, costs, etc. The actual planning process usually involves using estimates — that is, sophisticated guesses […]