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Advertising

  • How to Write according to David Ogilvy

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    1 min read

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    In September of 1982, David Ogilvy shared the following:

    1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing.* Read it three times.
    2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
    3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
    4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
    5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
    6. Check your quotations.
    7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning —and then edit it.
    8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
    9. Before you send your letter or memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
    10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

    *Writing That Works., HARPER & ROW,

  • BBC Dracula billboard comes alive at night in the shadows

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    1 min read

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    Sometimes, advertising can be really really fun. BBC really outdid themselves here. Drive or walk by this billboard during the day and you see one thing — but at night you see a ghastly vampire visage. Very clever:

    (shared via u/lllDUNN at r/gifs – Reddit)

  • How Ad Tech Companies Are Becoming Publishers

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    3 min read

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    Visit Link

    So, I had no idea that the iconic content aggregator, Digg.com was sold to BuySellAds:

    Mind-blowing right? The seller, betaworks is based here in NYC. I’m happy for Digg, happy for betaworks and even happier for BSA. I really enjoy BuySellAds. Glad to see them beefing up ad inventory. In fact, I even employ some of their ads here on this blog. No huge returns or anything, but it helps cover my hosting costs, which is nice. I’m pro-BSA for two reasons:

    • BSA has a solid privacy policy (last updated in 2015).
    • BSA’s ads aren’t creepy. No wild tracking, or intrusive data collection about visitors (similar to The Deck, RIP), nor do they contribute significant page bloat.

    Todd Garland, (@toddo) is the CEO of BuySellAds. As I was researching the Digg purchase — I came across this particularly interesting interview:

    Why did you want to buy a digital publisher like Digg?

    Todd Garland: We were trying to secure a sales exclusivity deal for a big property. Then we just got to talking with the folks over there and it made more sense for us to buy a majority stake in Digg. We were starting to see a lot of overlap with our advertisers spending money on Digg, and we have been wanting to move further into more consumer-y tech-type inventory.

    Were you interested in purchasing them so that you could harvest their user data?

    Todd Garland: A lot of people thought that this was similar to Viant buying Myspace. That deal, as I understood it, was largely around the user data. This is the complete opposite of that. Like, we really don’t care about user data. We never have since the beginning of BuySellAds.

    A lot of ad tech execs would disagree with you and say there’s lots of value to be had from selling people’s data.

    Todd Garland: I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been approached by data brokers looking to buy our data, and it’s just such an easy “no” for us. Sure, we could probably make a few extra hundred thousand dollars a month. But the steam train that is the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] is coming down the track right now.

    I’m going to give Todd the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s 100% serious here. I believe this an overall good move for online advertising.