publishers | Internet Marketing Blog

France: stealing books isn't piracy when the government does it

If you were to download a copy of a copyrighted book through BitTorrent, you might be accused of stealing. And as piracy becomes a larger problem for publishers, you might even find yourself in court facing a lawsuit.

But there's good news: if you're the government, you don't have anything to worry about.

by Patricio Robles 29 February 2012 20:17pm 3 comments

Is big data a publisher's panacea?

For traditional publishers trying to find their place in the 21st century, digital media is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing: incredible opportunities to reach their audiences across channels, building stronger relationships in the process. The curse: digital has upended huge parts of the revenue models that kept them flush with cash in the past.

According to David Soloff, CEO of predictive analytics vendor Metamarkets, there is a panacea for publishers struggling with the curse: big data analytics.

by Patricio Robles 06 December 2011 18:00pm 1 comment

Advertisers seeking flexibility and protection for 2012

With questions about the global economy weighing heavily on the minds of advertising executives, companies are increasingly taking a cautious approach to the ad deals they're making for 2012.

According to Reuters' Yinka Adegoke, executives who attended the Reuters Global Media summit last week are citing the crisis in the Eurozone and the political situation in the United States as reasons for shortening up advertising agreements and other partnerships.

by Patricio Robles 06 December 2011 17:03pm 0 comments

Critics don't like Facebook's seamless sharing, but publishers do

Facebook may be one of the most successful companies to emerge on the consumer internet in the past decade, but it has made more than its fair share of blunders and is no stranger to controversy and criticism, especially when it comes to privacy.

The latest feature to attract negative attention is the company's seamless sharing, which was announced earlier this year at Facebook's F8 developer conference.

by Patricio Robles 21 November 2011 16:14pm 0 comments

Google 'Sources': a publisher's worst nightmare?

Google may be the world's largest, most widely-used search engine, but that's not all it is. Over the years, through both homegrown projects and acquisitions, the search behemoth has become a bona fide publisher in its own right.

Not surprisingly, this has created tensions between Google and some of the publishers that rely on its SERPs which drive traffic to their websites.

If Google is a publisher, many argue, how can it play fair when it comes to those SERPs?

by Patricio Robles 08 November 2011 15:18pm 1 comment

Will book publishers follow in the footsteps of the RIAA?

In its effort to defend the record labels, musicians and the recording industry at large, the RIAA became perhaps one of the most disliked organizations in the world.

Yes, most people will agree that piracy is wrong and that laws protecting content creators and rights holders are sensible, but the RIAA's tactics in fighting piracy, which infamously included widely-publicized lawsuits against grandmothers (dead or alive), didn't win it many fans.

by Patricio Robles 01 November 2011 15:03pm 0 comments

Facebook more profitable than Amazon. Who cares?

Facebook's revenue growth over the past several years is almost as impressive as its user growth. And with money pouring in, thanks in large part to advertisers eager to reach consumers on the world's largest social network, its profits are growing. How much?

According to Michael Arrington, Facebook generated nearly $800m in operating income in the first six months of this year.

By comparison, Arrington's sources said the company produced $1bn in operating income in all of last year.

by Patricio Robles 25 October 2011 15:10pm 2 comments

Google targets undesirable pagination

Pagination, the breaking up of content across multiple pages, is a common practice and in many cases, a product of good design.

After all, there are plenty of cases where pagination creates a more pleasurable, higher-performing user experience.

But pagination isn't always desirable. Some sites, for instance, employ pagination in a questionable attempt to boost page views, and thus ad impressions.

by Patricio Robles 19 September 2011 14:56pm 5 comments

Is computer-generated content better than content farm content?

Content farming may be a big business, but that doesn't mean that companies in the business of content farming are particularly well-liked.

The questionable quality of content produced by armies of authors paid to crank out search engine-friendly content has, not surprisingly, led Google to crack down on the content farmers.

But the internet is increasingly finding content from a new and perhaps even more controversial source: computers themselves.

by Patricio Robles 14 September 2011 15:02pm 3 comments

AOL succeeds, struggles with its new ad formats

A year ago, AOL was prepping plans to launch new ad formats. Its initiative, codenamed Project Devil, was designed to provide ads that are more eye-catching and engaging than 'normal' ads.

As we detailed at the time, the ads would be up to four times larger and "be enabled with new functionality, with room for a photo gallery, a video, coupons, Facebook or Twitter updates or maps".

Project Devil was seen as crucial to AOL, which had been seeing significant double-digit declines in ad revenue. If AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was going to turn the company around, it seemed that the new initiative's success would be crucial.

Last week, however, we learned that AOL's new ad formats aren't finding as much tracking as hoped.

by Patricio Robles 13 September 2011 15:19pm 0 comments