It’s not rocket science! How code written for a manned mission to Mars ended up selling advertising March 13, 2017 It's a question we’ve all faced: what to do when you’ve written machine learning code to help Nasa determine the optimal configuration of components for a manned mission to Mars? Use it to sell advertising, obviously. Such is the story of DataXu, one of the pioneers of Real Time Bidding. Founded way back in 2007, [...]
No, YouTube.TV isn’t going to replace broadcast television. It’s New Coke March 6, 2017 I recently learned that in Scottish dialect the word “tube” is quite the insult – an idiot – and that when YouTube was first launched, many got the wrong end of the stick. “It’s on you tube!” could quite easily be interpreted as an invitation to fight. 12 years later and as far as established [...]
Ogilvy & Mather UK’s Annette King and Emma De La Fosse: “We’re not ‘women in power’ – we’re just the right people for the job” March 6, 2017 "It turns out there are a lot of women who just have a problem with women in power,” quipped Kellyanne Conway, de facto mouthpiece of the new White House in a recent interview. While they sip tomato juice and black coffee, I present the notion of “women in power” to Annette King and Emma De [...]
There’s no such thing as “fat-shaming” – it’s just advertising February 27, 2017 I take issue with the Vicariously Offended; the virtuous who take up the mantle of oppression, regardless of whether they are personally affected, at every given opportunity. I bit my tongue last week when they took offence at Protein World’s Tube campaign questioning commuters’ ability to “keep up with a [very slim] Kardashian.” It was, [...]
Joining the data dots to predict the future: Meet Ometria’s Ivan Mazour February 27, 2017 With nauseating velocity I’m elevated 40 floors up the Heron Tower, my ears popping with altitude, to meet Ivan Mazour at the Duck and Waffle. We’re here to talk about how Ometria, his seventh company by his early thirties, can predict the future. Often referred to pejoratively as “the son of a Russian billionaire”, Mazour is [...]
LIMA’s Kelvyn Gardner (007): A license to… reap the benefits of infintiely reproducable intellectual property February 20, 2017 In 1973 George Lucas approached Fox executives with an offer they couldn’t refuse: he would forfeit a 300 per cent salary increase in return for merchandising rights to Star Wars, and rights to any sequels. Rubbing their mitts behind muffled laughter, they graciously accepted what seemed like a naive offer from the young director. Of course [...]
YouTube’s double standards in banning PewDiePie February 20, 2017 If you've ever wondered what on earth a PewDiePie is, you’re not alone. He’s a man, Felix Kjellberg, who reviews video games online. In the YouTube world, he’s as famous as James Corden, as influential as Nick Robinson, and as we found out last week, as funny as Jim Davidson. “Very rich Swedish man pays [...]
Protecting data must be board-level priority February 15, 2017 The Queen has officially opened the National Cyber Security Centre, a government nerve centre that aims to protect the economy, state institutions and critical infrastructure from the growing threat of cyber attacks. Private businesses are also vulnerable. With so much of the City’s business conducted through digital networks, the threat from malicious actors is real. [...]
Can advertising be a force for good? Diageo’s Syl Saller certainly thinks so February 13, 2017 If the early bird catches the worm, then the attendees of this year’s Advertising Association LEAD summit must have been full by the time it began. Early starts are anathema to most in the media, myself included, but the full force of AdLand was on parade, bright-eyed – despite the culture secretary’s dry, cliched, keynote [...]
GDPR is the biggest ever overhaul of data protection regulations, yet few businesses are remotely prepared for it February 9, 2017 Eclipsed by the rising moons of Trump and Brexit, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is approaching fast. And yet, with just 14 months until enforcement, very few businesses are prepared, let alone aware of what it entails, or its myriad implications. A Veritas study in December found less than half had set in motion [...]
