Simon Willison’s Weblog

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10 items tagged “advertising”

2021

Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it, and we're here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

Tim Cook

# 31st January 2021, 6 pm / advertising, apple, privacy

2018

So Fishing Times’s ad department is selling access to the prime Fishing Times readership. But the Data Lords can say, ‘we can show your ad just to Fishing Times readers when they’re on Facebook, or on some meme site, on the Times or TPM or really anywhere.’ Because the Data Lords have the data and they can track and target you. The publication’s role as the gatekeeper to an audience is totally undercut because the folks who control the data and the targeting can follow those readers anywhere and purchase the ads at the lowest price.

Josh Marshall

# 9th April 2018, 3:16 pm / advertising

Publishing history has various examples of advertising-only business models. But they are very much the exception. They mainly exist when there are near monopoly barriers to entry into the market which allow publishers to command and defend robust ad rates.

Josh Marshall

# 25th February 2018, 4:03 pm / advertising

2011

Your Web, Half a Second Sooner. Google AdSense now serves a tiny bit of JavaScript that loads everything else in a dynamically populated iframe, thus avoiding blocking the rest of the page load. It’s about time online advertising providers started taking page performance seriously.

# 17th March 2011, 5:39 pm / adsense, advertising, performance, recovered

2010

If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.

blue_beetle on MetaFilter

# 27th August 2010, 12:58 pm / advertising, recovered, userdrivencontent

Vintage Ad Browser. Fantastic. 100,000+ vintage advertisements scanned and organised by date and topic, going all the way back to the 1840s and covering every decade in between. An absolute gold mine.

# 6th January 2010, 9:04 am / ads, advertising, archive, design, history

2009

A Year Later, AOL Is Contemplating A Bebo Sale. Ignore the headline and read the actual article—Mike Butcher’s description of how Bebo targeted old fashioned TV advertising agencies while other social networks ignored them completely is riveting.

# 27th January 2009, 6:13 pm / advertising, agencies, aol, bebo, mike-butcher

2007

Quantcast top 100 US sites (via) The vast majority of the top 100 attract a more female than male audience. Digg is one notable exception.

# 23rd December 2007, 9:43 am / advertising, demographics, digg, quantcast

Apple UK Get a Mac ads. Totally awesome, they’re using Mitchell and Webb. Not sure how much Mac users will want to be associated with Jeremy from Peep Show though...

# 29th January 2007, 4:27 am / advertising, apple, mitchellandwebb, peepshow

2004

The return of the Spong Monkeys

Via Eric Meyer, at least I’m not the only one selling out. Joel Veitch’s infamous Spong Monkeys can now be seen in two TV ads for Quiznos sandwhiches: We love the subs and Take a buck off (Quicktime movies). It’s nice to see such awesome and uniquely British talent recognised at a global level.