This entry was posted June 24th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Internet rumor has it that Google is set to announce their new web measurement tool today. Various articles in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and others are all saying that Wayne Lin, Google Business Product Manager, will announce the new tool this afternoon at the Advertising Research Foundation media conference.
As most of us who plan and buy online media know, the current tools available are either lacking or quite expensive. To be fair, I have not used comScore or Nielsen @Plan due to their prohibitive costs. I currently use Quantcast and Compete for the majority of my research. However, while these tools give you a basic idea of site traffic and audience demo, that’s really where their usefulness ends.
Another issue with these tools is that they, like old-school media measurement tools, rely on user panels. This means that only those who have allowed comScore, et al. to measure their web activity are included in the numbers. The reason that Google’s program may be more beneficial is that they will be gathering data from web servers. This should allow them to have more definitive data.
Continue reading Google Ad Planner to be Announced Today
Posted in advertising
This entry was posted June 10th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
Last night was the Death Cab for Cutie show at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Despite the 100+ heat index, a few thousand people came out to enjoy the stylings of one of America’s biggest rock bands.

The show was opened by Rogue Wave, who I was looking forward to seeing. Though they only played for 30 minutes, Rogue Wave was tight and sounded great. The crowd applauded after each song, but it was obvious that the majority did not know Rogue Wave’s songs. The people were there for Death Cab.

Any time you see a band who is touring to promote a new album, you wonder if they are going to stick to their new songs, with maybe a smattering of previous hits thrown in. As you can see from the setlist below, Death Cab did an amazing job of working in songs from their entire catalogue. While not everyone knew some of the older songs, those who did were excited to hear them. Even though the set spanned the last decade, it flowed perfectly from song to song.
Continue reading Death Cab for Cutie Show
Posted in music
This entry was posted June 9th, 2008 and has no nomments.
This is just a quick post to link to some of the amazing new stuff that is out as of today.
New iPhone announced at WWDC. It will be available July 11 and starts at just $199. I think I’m going to have to cancel my TMobile contract early.
New Sigur Ros album leaked today. This is one of the greatest bands in the world. Their new album is beautiful, as always.
Tonight is the Death Cab for Cutie show at Merriweather. Hopefully I’ll have some photos to post tomorrow and will not get heat stroke.
The annual Maiste crab feast/cookout/karaoke party was this past weekend. As always, it was so much fun. Thanks Mike for hosting another great party.
I’ve also recently downloaded some other really good music that is worth listening to: Bowerbirds, Wye Oak (from Baltimore), and the new Lil’ Wayne. Check them out and let me know what you think.
Posted in advertising, music
This entry was posted June 2nd, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Last Wednesday, I travelled to NYC for the 2008 AAAA Digital Conference. I planned to live blog the event, but this didn’t quite work out. First, my train arrived a bit late, so I missed the first 30 minutes or so. I’m assuming that it was during the introduction that they doled out a username and password for their wi-fi. Needless to say, without the luxury of having this information, I had no internet connection.
While I was initially disappointed, I think it was actually a good thing. With so many conversations happening and information flying around, I definitely would have missed some key items if I had been also trying to craft coherent sentences. Instead of going through the conference session by session, I’m going to focus on the ones that most interested me and were, in my opinion, the most successful.
As I mentioned, due to a late train arrival, I missed almost half of Venture Capitalist Mark Kvamme’s talk. I did manage to catch his introduction of SearchMe.com. SearchMe looks pretty cool, but you have to wonder if it stands a chance in gaining enough users to make it viable. With its visual display, there is the opportunity for advertisers to incorporate much more engaging advertising than the standard 95 characters of text. It also takes a much different approach in displaying the search results, which makes it very interesting.
Continue reading AAAA Digital Conference
Posted in advertising, marketing