Old habits die hard. Spend 20-some years in a newsroom and, well, you have to read the wires first thing every morning. Because you like it. We like to share, too. So here’s a short list of interesting items that have come across our screen the past few weeks.
First up: The New York Times piece on the failings, past, present and anticipated in political polling.
What’s interesting about this piece is what’s NOT being suggested, namely that the work that pollsters to may be taken over by, um, algorithms, those little mathematical formulas used to predict human behavior. Something like this is already happening at the national level – ask Jim Messina – but smaller campaigns who are going to have trouble.
Related, much longer, and well, probably not as easy read (but almost certainly worth it): Bloomberg Business Week’s one-theme issue on computer code. That’s right. The only story in the magazine is about the importance, use and place that “code” has in our culture and our business lives. We’re not pointing you to this lightly but if you don’t want to read the whole thing, Charlie Rose interviewed the writer and his editor.
Now, for the breaking news.
There’s a steady drumbeat about how dollars spent for television ad buys are falling and dollars for online ad buys are rising. There’s this from Broadcasting and Cable. And this from ad agency called – irony! – Zenith and this from another ad consulting shop. And a little naval-gazing from inside-the-Beltway about Facebook’s ability to target with some predictions about TV.
But enough about TV, let’s talk online. Google is worried enough about ad fraud, they’re dispatching a special team. And the National Journal talks about 2016 ads being sold out. That last one is no joke just a bit of overstatement. Lastly, here’s a look at a trend for mobile ad placement: 60-40/mobile-desktop. If you’ve done business with Spot-On in the past couple of months, you know this is our standing recommendation.
If you follow us on Twitter, most of these links aren’t news. And you hang with Spot-On on Facebook you’ve probably seen them as well. Feel free to join us there for more regular kibitzing.