The River

I loved Kent Nichols’ (of Ask a Ninja) explanation of what we at FM — specifically our salespeople — do. Paraphrasing here, but the moderator asked how AAN has been successful courting brand advertisers. The secret, Kent said, is “sweaty people who drink” — aka hard work building real-life relationships with agencies and advertisers, sometimes with the lubricating influence of alcohol. It’s the non-engineerable aspect of advertising, he said, and it requires the sweat of people who do “voodoo bullshit” and “close deals.”

This panel has completely rocked — best of the SXSW interactive conference so far — and Kent Nichols is a great instigator. He totally gets it, and he expresses it in a laugh-out-loud hilarous way.

Well, it’s happened. Google is buying DoubleClick. I followed DCLK really closely back in the day when I was based in NYC and it was our “hometown” ad serving company. They had that sign welcoming people to Silicon Alley, yada yada yada. So it’s wild — though not unexpected given rumors and reports — to see the company go so completely Valley. Folks have noted that the two companies already share a building in NYC, interestingly enough. Enough geographic musings. This represents a really interesting move for Google, one that will place it even more at the center of all digital advertising. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

UPDATE: Tom comments: “Actually, I think this is about GOOG continuing to “go New York” - ie, get more and more into wider media buying/selling market.”

Agreed, Tom. It’s really both. As Google moves to become more Madison Avenue — becoming more entrenched in the advertising/marketing mainstream — it takes the whole media world just a little more digital and technology-oriented. After all, Eric Schmidt has said he wants people to think of Google as an “operating system” for advertising, or some such. Can you imagine anyone even conceiving of an operating system for advertising, before Google?

Those ubiquitous, annoying ads you see online? They probably work, or they’d be unceremoniously dropped. The NYT has a fascinating look at the world of online direct response advertising (reg req), specifically the LowerMyBills.com dancing silhouettes that John Battelle pointed out here. The best part of the piece is an interview with the former employee who’d designed the dancing silhouettes ads.

And… yes, you, too, can use those undulating silhouettes in your ads. You can find them here at bigshotmedia, a stock images (and animations) company.

It’s hard to think of a product more well-suited for online marketing than Plan B, the Barr Pharmaceutical drug approved for sale to over-18s this week. A WSJ piece (reg req) today lays it all out pretty well. They need to reach a wide audience because contraception failure is the kind of thing that happens to a lot of people once or twice. It’s not the kind of situation where you try to reach your endemic audience, say HIV+ people or diabetes sufferers, and then target tightly based on that goal.

It’s also the kind of product for which advertising is more appropriate online. People are accustomed to doing all kinds of personal things online — paying bills, indulging their sexual proclivities, etc. — so seeing ads for Plan B aren’t likely to jar. This stands in stark contrast to how people might feel if they see such an ad while watching TV with family members. (May I suggest that FM’s Parenting Federation might be appropriate?)

The company’s Web site, go2planb.com is already getting great search rankings. It’s top of the heap and page 2 on Google, and it also benefits from shortcuts and refinements because the search engine recognizes it as a drug. I would have expected this kind of generic phrase to be difficult to optimize, but I would be wrong.

Note to Barr: It might be a good idea to update your Web site to reflect the FDA approval, and give potential customers an idea when they might expect to be able to buy over the counter. Right now, the site still says you need a prescription. The FDA approval, and corresponding media exposure, is likely to drive lots of traffic. (Note Google Trends report on the term. It’s really popular in Bogota, Colombia, interestingly.)

Yes, it’s true (as if you doubted it). I’m joining FM Publishing as author services manager, to work with John Battelle and his team on developing this next-generation publishing company.

Why? One of my earliest experiences in the Internet ad world was as intern/writer/ad sales person at @NY. I got the ad sales part of the job (and all the rest) courtesy of Tom Watson, who I’d met while finishing up my masters in journalism at Columbia. One of the more important things I learned (besides that I was not cut out for selling) was how difficult it was for agencies to buy ads across niche Web sites. No matter how engaged and influential their audiences, it was just plain logistically difficult to buy across all those sites. And that was 1998, before the explosion in blogs, and their accompanying engaged, influential (but niche) audiences. That’s one of the issues FM is looking to address.

Why else? I’ve spent the years since that experience thinking and writing about interactive advertising, watching the boom, the flameout and the subsequent rise. Joining FM is an opportunity for me to apply everything I’ve learned over the years about advertising and about managing writers. It’s also a great chance to work with brilliant, dedicated people who have a strong vision of the future of publishing. Needless to say I’m especially looking forward to getting to know the authors, many of whom I feel I know already through reading their compelling writing. I’m really eager to start helping them realize their dreams for their sites.

One of the things I had to really look at when considering this opportunity was whether I’d miss writing. I’ve helped with writing news and authored a bi-weekly column since 2001. I looked back recently over the archives of what I’ve written for ClickZ, and the sheer volume is amazing. Thankfully, FM, as you might expect, is supportive of my blogging, so I’ll have The River as an outlet for my musings. Not sure exactly how often I’ll be posting or what shape it’ll take, but give me time to get my feet wet and together we’ll see what emerges. (Feedback is always welcome, of course.)

I’m still at ClickZ for the next week. Then I’ll take a whole day (!) off to do yoga and nap (or something equally relaxing), and I start at FM on August 1. To all you FM authors out there, I look forward to working with you!

We visited my Dad on the ranch in small town Texas this past holiday weekend, and I noticed a couple of chuckle-inducing bits of outdoor advertising. (Sorry no pics but the camera chips were filled with grandpa and grandson snaps.)

In the first instance, I saw the Junior High/High School sign, which school officials use to announce upcoming events, was boldly emblazoned with the logos of two corporate sponsors: Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola. Take that, President Clinton (PDF).

Secondly, the sign for the town’s one liquor store, Tina’s Liquor, also touted another service: 24 Hour Wrecker. How’s that for cross-selling?

I love the way Gary Stein puts the Denuo announcement into historical context.

I imagine that the idea-marketplace is beginning to re-emerge. There was a lot of work in idea-creation in the late 90s, but that crashed quickly, giving way to the Accountability Era (which we’re currently in).

I’m completely behind Fred’s view on the Ricky Gervais podcast. I love love love the podcast. I haven’t been a huge adopter of podcasts, having lost my iPod on a trip last year, but we often listen to Ricky Gervais (and pals) on the computer or on our stereo via TiVo’s functionality. “Monkey News” has become a catchphrase around our household. (Could it be the first podcast-spawned media meme?) But still, I’m not willing to pay. Put advertising on it and make it free, will you? Or at least make that an option. They’ve already been doing house ads for Gervais-related content properties, and that doesn’t detract from the experience at all.

P.S. Should I get a video iPod? (It’s like I need the blogosphere’s blessing before I take the plunge.) Or maybe just a Nano or Shuffle? Too many iPod choices.

UPDATE: I’ve noticed this blog entry is one of my more popular content items, probably because people are searching for the actual Gervais Podcast. And so, by popular demand, here is a link to where you can access both seasons. The page where you used to be able to access season 1, for free, is apparently no longer making it available. That’s lame. Not only do you have to pay for season 2, but they’re also making you pay for season 1, previously available for free. Yuck.

I’ve been invited to participate in the beta for the nascent Yahoo! Publisher Network, so those of you who read this on the site will see the YPN ads to the right. (They seem to get cut off a bit in Firefox, at least, so need to work on the formatting.) The most interesting thing, thus far, is that you have the option of choose what categories of ads appear on your site, so categories are taken into account as well as (or maybe instead of) the context of the page. I chose the professional services/advertising-marketing category, but so far only ads for lowermybills.com and Vonage are showing up. They did say it might take a while. One other thing I found different from Google — if you’re both a YPN publisher and a YSM advertiser, you can take your publisher earnings and transfer them directly into your advertiser account.

I’ll keep you posted if I learn more as things go on.

My colleague Zach Rodgers penned (does that word still work in the electronic age?) an excellent feature story about two personalities in the world of blog advertising. And, no, they aren’t Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton.