Winning on three screens – infrastructure or inventory?

The three screen play in advertising is broadly understood to be the ability to deliver advertising on all of television, PC and mobile devices. Given that all are possible almost everywhere what is this debate really about? Put simply it is about control.
Some argue that owning the infrastructure is the place to be, others that the ownership of inventory [...]

Brussels: beer and bureaucracy

I get to spend some time in the next day or two with those that determine European competition policy. I will write more as the days progress but I have a question. Should success be penalised by competition law?
Google will be a hot topic here but I am anxious that the debate centers on acts of acquisition [...]

They think it’s all over

If teams of porcini, chanterelle, shitake, portabella and morel played some kind of Europe wide competition would it be called the UEFA Champignons League?

Microsoft and search – can Cashback be king?

The debut of Livesearch Cashback (such a catchy name) at Advance08 yesterday could been motivated  by one of three things:

An innocent belief in the value of the idea
A strategic ploy to increase trial and reappraisal of the Microsoft search platform
A potentially elegant ploy to provoke Google into matching Microsoft’s offer at the immense expense implied [...]

The home of the future?

Microsoft kindly gave us a tour of their vision of the home of the future. Notably the home features processors in everything, networked everything and personalized everything. Think it and it will be.
Microsoft is clearly better at technology than it is at interior design and there is a faint sense of disappointment as a result but the [...]

When content is all a bit Mickey Mouse

The great Michael Eisner addressed the audience at Microsoft’s Advance08 yesterday with a simple message ‘That storytelling will come to dominate online entertainment in the same way as it dominated television.’
Mr. Eisner is putting his not inconsiderable money where his mouth is by funding a couple of content ventures which he says have production costs [...]

Robbie Bach at Microsoft Advance08

Robbie delivered Microsoft’s device integration story across X Box, Zune and mobile platforms.
It’s a neat tale of high grade interaction but leaves the question of scaleability and replicability largely unanswered.
One thing, however, is quite clear. Robbie, when he’s done with Microsoft, has a glittering future as an infomercial pitchman.You read it here first.

Right at the very heart of it

Not New York, but Redmond Washington. The movers and shakers are split today between North West London at Google’s Zeitgeist and the (beautiful but damp) Pacific North West at Microsoft’s Advance08. Neither event agenda mentions Yahoo! yet for all the participants this remains the hot topic and this could be the first instance of the same [...]

Discovery and delivery – the end of target audiences

Target audiences are as much a part of media planning as a good steak is of a TV buyers lunch plans and they have their uses. Notably target audiences help define media choices through relevant composition and also act us a trading and audience measurement currency.
Their is also an alternative purpose. Target audiences tell us [...]

Our arrangement with Yahoo!

From the New York Times today, written by Stephanie Clifford:
YAHOO plans to announce Friday that it has formed a partnership with the WPP Group, the advertising holding company, that will give WPP’s clients a broader swath of Web sites where they can aim their messages.
Under the deal, the thousands of Web publishers that use Yahoo’s advertising [...]