On July 1, 2008, Kara Swisher of AllthingD.com, a site devoted to news and opinion, focusing on technology, media and the Internet, featured an interview with Wenda Harris Millard. Mrs. Millard, who sits on ContextWeb’s Board of Directors, first went to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) as President of Media and recently was promoted to Co-CEO and President of Media after former President and CEO, Susan Lyne, stepped down.

Well quoted in the press recently for her “pork bellies” comment, which expressed her concern over the commodization of online media, Mrs. Millard and Kara Swisher discuss the current state of online media and more. Listen to the interview:

On the morning of June 18, 2008, Magazine Publisher’s Association (MPA) hosted Ad Networks and Exchanges: Building Brands Online, a seminar addressing the danger of publishers trading their online inventory like “pork bellies.” The event included three panels of publishers and ad technology solutions providers. Each panel discussed the role of vertical networks and ad exchanges in building brands, delivering ad campaigns and offering competitive CPMs.

Speakers included:

Ken Sonenclar, Managing Director, DeSilva & Phillips, gave an overview of the ad network and exchange marketplace.

Panel One:
Shanthi Sarkar, CPO, ContextWeb, spoke about ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Exchange, which offers publishers page-level, contextual ad targeting on Web pages. ADSDAQ also enables publishers to optimize the value of their inventory and extend their reach. ADSDAQ publishers Paul DeBraccio, CEO, Interevco-Interactive Revenue.com, and Scott Havens, Director - Business Development, Digital Media, Conde Nast Portfolio.com, gave insights on how the contextual solutions can increase a brand’s reach while retaining pricing/content control.

Panel Two:
Joelle Gropper Kaufman, VP Marketing & Media Operations, Adify, discussed how online publishers can build their own networks to aggregate high-quality, brand driven content. Adding great insights and expertise, Kevin Normandeau, VP Business Development, IDG TechNetwork and Prem Luthra, SVP Corporate Development and Strategy, Fidelity National Real Estate Solution and Cyberhomes Media Group.com, also participated in the discussion.

Panel Three:
Robert Ames, VP & General Manager, Digital Automotive Group, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc. spoke about Jumpstart Media, an automotive content and ad network Hachette acquired a year ago. David Cooperstein, CMO, Burst Media and Regina Sebring, VP Behavioral Targeting Solutions, Revenue Science and partner publishers discussed behavioral targeting, brand building, vertical networks and mobile advertising.

Agency executives also participated in the event. Among them were:

• Jay Bartlett, Sr. Advertising Manager at Xerox Corporation
• Jay Krihak, Sr Partner, Group Director, MEC Interaction, Mediaedge:cia
• Dave Marsey, VP/Group Media Director at Digitas
• Moderated by Mike Smith, General Manager, Forbes.com.

View video below:
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On May 29, San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group (SF Big) hosted a breakfast panel discussing the effects of media planning automation. With over 200 attendees, the panel had a great turnout. Cory Treffiletti, President, Managing Partner, Catalyst, moderated the panel.

And panelists included:

• Ryan Becker, VP Publisher Development, ContextWeb
• Shane Vaughan, VP Marketing, Balihoo
• Matt Boyd – SVP Sales, ValueClick
• Neil Monnens; Co founder and President, Good Hands Media.

With widespread acknowledgment that the media planning process could be more efficient, the panel focused on the new technologies being built that will help automate parts of the planning process. The panel discussed the critical importance of the human element in media planning, and panelists agreed that while many of the processes behind planning can be automated, there always will be the need for human interaction and creative thought when creating a successful ad campaign.

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Today, ContextWeb announced the launch of the ADSDAQ Reach Extension Program. This program will enable publishers to access targeted reach on a risk-free, on-demand basis – and most importantly, ContextWeb’s real-time scan of the pages will ensure that this inventory is provided in a brand-safe manner.

The industry trends show that the online user base is getting highly fragmented as users spend more and more of their time on long tail sites. This makes it challenging for marketers since they can no longer access all their potential consumers by going to the lead publishers in their category. Publishers are attempting to solve this problem by building out their own network of sites with content endemic to their brand property (as seen by the launch of Martha’s Circle and Forbes Audience Network). Building their own network is a significant amount of work and effort for publishers and a distraction from their core business of creating great content. To date, companies such as Adify (acquired today by Cox Enterprises) have attempted to meet this need by providing a white-label vertical network infrastructure.

With the ADSDAQ Reach extension program, site publishers now have an out-of-the-box solution to create their own branded network on the Exchange, without all the cost and effort of building and maintaining their own network.

Read More: MediaPost -”ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Exchange Adds Reach Extension Program”

When it comes to the effectiveness of online advertising, most people just think that if an ad for a product or service runs on a page of content directly related to that ad, it will be noticed, read and/or acted upon more than the same ad run in unrelated content, out-of-context; pudding if you will. But how do you prove it?

We started by working with some pros - OTX, a leading global consumer research and consulting firm (http://home.otxresearch.com/) that specializes in measuring and testing the impact of advertising messages on brands. In fact, we have done two, separate industry category studies on the effectiveness of contextual advertising with the folks at OTX; one with a leading personal consumer electronics advertiser and have just completed a second with a leading consumer packaged goods advertiser (Download the PDF).

The results prove what many have thought, but very few have ever tested: context works.

Our study tested the same skin care ad for three separate placements; on a general news page, on a page of content from a general news site specifically about skin care, and finally on a website specifically about skin care. 600 women between the ages of 18-65 saw each ad. The results conclusively show that the ads seen on pages of content directly related to the product produced significantly higher brand recognition for both the product and the advertiser than the ad seen in out-of-context content. (Read the press release here.).

Sometimes some of the most effective solutions in advertising are right in front of us. There certainly are a number of targeting options available for advertisers and their agencies. Geographic, demographic, behavioral, time-of-day are just some of everyone’s favorites. But as audiences continue to pursue their interests out beyond the portals, on the millions of vertical content sites (we like to call that the “Passion Tail“), smart brands will do well to start “in context,” before heading to the pudding.

Read more in Ad Age: “Contextual Targeting Boosts Loyal Following“

Last night, John Pavley, CTO of ContextWeb, and Derek Brinkman, VP of Product Development, presented the ADSDAQ Exchange self-service publisher portal at Scott Heiferman’s New York Tech Meetup.

With the able coordination of Dawn Barber from the NY Tech Meetup, John and Derek were pleased to be a part of the jam-packed agenda which included the following exciting, New York-area technology companies and technologists - check ‘em out!

1. Steve Rosenbaum: http://magnify.net
2. Oliver Hurst-Hiller: http://DonorsChoose.org
3. John and Derek: http://exchange.contextweb.com
4. Mark Ghuneim: http://www.trendrr.com
5. Ben Kaufman: http://kluster.com
6. Ben Satterfield: http://twiddla.com
7. Justin Ouellette: http://muxtape.com
8. Nate Westheimer: http://bricabox.com

To view the video of John and Derek’s complete presentation at the New York Tech Meetup at the IAC building, 555 West 18th Street, please click below:

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The Dallas-Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association (DFWIMA) invited us down last Tuesday, March 11th, to speak with their members about the who, what, where, why and how of advertising exchanges.

For an hour, we spoke about media fragmentation, marketplace response from portals, sites, networks and exchanges and about something we call “The Passion Tail”.

In presenting “The Passion Tail,” I argue that sites are no longer as relevant as individual pages of content. If you look at the proliferation of The Long Tail of content publishers (in the millions) and how 75% of site entry is a deep dive thru search (regardless of publisher size), the consumer is connecting with her passions by going directly to the pages of content that matter to her. Exchanges are one way to make this phenomenon addressable to marketers. In particular, at the ADSDAQ ad exchange, we contextualize each and every page and provide a level of control for the brand advertiser not commonly seen in exchange or network models.

For those that attended the presentation, below, we have also embedded video of Rob Norman of WPP’s GroupM speaking at the IAB Annual meeting in February.

Video, audio and a copy of the presentation follows.

Video of Jay Sears, SVP of ContextWeb at DFWIMA discussing Media Fragmentation and “The Passion Tail”:

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As announced on their blog, last night was the inaugural event, Dream Big - the future of Women in Media, for the NYC Women in Media & Technology (aka Wimlink).

I spoke on a panel with Dina Kaplan (Co-Founder and COO of Blip.tv) and Nicole Tecco Reece (Principal at Tipping Point Partners). Juliette Powell (co-founder of The Gathering Think Tank) did an excellent job moderating a lively discussion and kicked off the evening on a positive note with the question,“What are we optimistic about over the next few years?”

Dina felt optimistic about the creative video content Internet users are creating from their living rooms. Her company, Blip.tv, focuses on enabling this creativity by providing tools and services for hosting, software, advertising and distribution.

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Our Story So Far:

In Part 1 of this series, I pointed out that .NET and LAMP development is a matter of preference not features, or performance, or scalability. Basically .NET = LAMP for Web 2.0.

In Part 2, I talked about how the lack of professional project management for open source frameworks can lead to constantly churning architectures and abandoned projects.

By now, you might think I’m a Microsoft otaku. Maybe. Or, maybe I’ve learned through 15+ years of trying to transform ideas into production quality code that the popular answers are not always the best answers. It is popular to say that LAMP is more scalable than .NET or that open source code is better because it is free. You don’t make many friends at in the high tech world by calling into question the ubiquitous popularity of LAMP.

But now for the dramatic conclusion of the Web 2.0 .NET vs. LAMP showdown: Managed Code, what it is and why you should care.

Did you ever wonder why your computer crashes? What causes the dreaded blue screen of death or the spinning beach ball of death? Unmanaged code. Managed code, a term coined by Microsoft but a concept found in plenty of LAMP environments, is code that has boundaries. Managed Code runs inside a VM, a virtual machine, and it must obey the edicts of the VM. If the VM says it can’t write to a particular location in memory then that location is off limits. If the VM says it has to stop execution so the VM can check the health of the system then that is exactly what the code does. In the world of Managed Code the VM is the traffic cop, the code is the motorist, and the computer is one big speed trap.

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Whether it is Microsoft, or some other suitor, Yahoo!’s days as an independent company seem numbered. And this is a sad thing for a company that created a unique culture that served as a model of excellence for Silicon Valleys and Alleys the world over.

I’ve never been an Microsoft employee, although I do have an offer letter from 1995 that I turned down in a misguided act of fealty to Apple, but I feel as if I understand the Microsoftie culture very well. Like Yahoo!, Microsoft has a one-of-a-kind culture. There are even books on how to run your life the Microsoft Way. The Microsoft Way is so virulent that their culture is often compared to Star Trek’s Borg–”You will be assimilated!”

Thus I don’t think this whole “buy Yahoo!” thing is going to work for the Yahoos (That’s what the cool Yahoo employees call themselves: Management Yahoos, Technical Yahoos, Paranoid Yahoos, Chief Yahoos.).

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