Optimize & Prophesize – @jonathanmendez

  • CDPs: The Great Transformation

    Data and marketing are inextricably linked through time. So it’s no surprise the evolution of database technology continues to help marketers with more advanced strategies and tools. The past few years we have seen cloud based data warehouses like Redshift, Snowflake & HANA/BW continue to evolve. After a few stops and starts a central path…

  • What Happened to Local Publishers?

    What Happened to Local Publishers?

    There’s a saying. There’s even a book. “All News is Local.” This past October I was invited to participate in The Future of Advertising and Publishing conference held at the Harvard Innovation Lab. The event was co-sponsored by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, the Digital Initiative at Harvard Business School, and the Shorenstein Center on Media,…

  • The Threat to Google Advertising Dominance is Back – With Teeth

    The Threat to Google Advertising Dominance is Back – With Teeth

    In 2007 Google feared for its future as the digital ad leader. There were two huge technology holes in their advertising business strategy that could be exploited by others. These were real threats. One was the browser. The browser controls the DOM (Document Object Model) which controls the delivery and experience of content on a…

  • The Decade of Display That Wasn’t 2007 – 2017

    The Decade of Display That Wasn’t 2007 – 2017

    Act I: Crank That The year was 2007. Ten years ago. Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6.3B. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1B. Yahoo bought Right Media for $680M. Display was poised to take massive amounts of advertising dollars from television over the next decade and become the dominant form of advertising. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo were…

  • Autumn for Digital Publishers…and Everything After

    Autumn for Digital Publishers…and Everything After

    The digital media world was a rocked yesterday by news that Buzzfeed is going to miss revenue targets by 20% and Mashable was sold for $50M when its valuation last year was $250M. What is going on? The short answer is a lot. Buzzfeed is actually right in their statement where they put blame on…

  • Snap Revenues in Perspective. And What it Means.

    Snap Revenues in Perspective. And What it Means.

    Snap announced revenues yesterday and the stock got hammered. The miss was about 15% off projected but the company still did half the revenue it did all last year in one quarter. Pretty solid. What matters is not what Snap did last quarter but the overall potential of Snap as a company that sells media.…

  • The New Google Era

    Something has been happening on the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). It is the very thing that the FTC just closed the case on. It is the delivery on the promise that Larry and Sergey made from the beginning. That Google would organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. The keywords (pun…

  • End of the CPM Experiment

    The flag bearer of display advertising was always Yahoo. Their massive sales force stoked 15 years of equity into “the web banner.” Yahoo arguably had the greatest hand in providing the economic foundation for the entire web for many of its formative years.  That is why nothing better symbolizes the collapse of that foundation better…

  • Defending the Future of Mobile Ads

    The first time I read Fred Wilson’s Mobile is Where the Growth Is I was disturbed. I commented. Not what I really wanted to say but I said something. The second time I read it I had to write a blog response. Now I agree there’s a shift happening. But… This is unknown. Foursquare hasn’t…

  • Taste Graphs and the Future of User Controlled Media

    My friend Andy Weissman posted some really interesting ideas last week on the future of branded media that got me thinking. “we are moving to a world where almost everything is available, basically on demand. The problem for users in this environment is no longer "what CAN I watch" (or read or listen to). Instead,…

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