Gawker: valleywag, saul hansell

New Twitter Ad System Tested by New York Times Reporter

Ryan Tate — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:20:04 EDT

How will Twitter ramp its revenue from nothing to $21 million a month in less than two years, as its managers forecast? Maybe by simply monitoring what you tweet about, and then targeting ads at you.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times tweets that he's testing just such a system. Now, it's possible that the tech writer was trying out a third-party advertising platform; i.e. ads served by a company other than Twitter Inc.

No matter: The concept is sound, and contextual ads based on user input have been Google's cash cow; given how many of its users tweet in order to find information, Twitter would be wise to at least test out such an elegantly simple system, if the microblogging service can find a way to show the text ads unobtrusively (for example in the sidebar, where it places those paid concept definitions).

As far as conceivable multimillion-dollar advertising schemes go, that would be among the least obnoxious. And if there's one thing Twitter users hate, it's obnoxiousness, right?? (*Cough*)

(Top pic: Twitter CEO Evan Williams at the company's San Francisco HQ, March 10. Getty Images.)

Be careful what you write about Glam

Owen Thomas — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:40:00 EDT

It's a predictable routine: Write about Glam Media, Samir Arora's dangerously bubbly online-advertising startup, and get bombarded by comments from website operators for whom Glam sells ads. The latest victim: Saul Hansell of the New York Times, who dared to point out that most of Glam's traffic comes not from the kind of high-quality, editorially driven websites his salespeople promise to advertisers, but from horoscopes, social networks, and gaming sites. Two Glam publishers promptly weighed in. It almost makes one wonder if, like a political campaign, Arora gins up faux grassroots complaints. (Valleywag has attracted its own reliable Glam commenter, AretinaAegeus.) Like a well-done Astroturfing, as the process is known in politics, the comments seem genuine enough — original wording, no cutting-and-pasting of talking points. But the process may backfire on Arora. Goaded by the commenters, Hansell updated his piece with a more concise — and damning — explanation of why Glam may be scamming its advertisers:

Glam has always described itself as an amalgamation of very focused sites. What I’m noting in this post is that the vast bulk of the users it is boasting about through ComScore come from games, social networks, personal publishing platforms and shopping bots. There’s nothing wrong with any of those sites, they simply are not what Glam has said its business is about. And I’m not entirely sure that ads on them deserve the premium price Glam hopes to charge.

I've noted an interesting new development in the comments from Glam publishers: They now argue that, in a stormy advertising market, Glam's guaranteed payments are a safe haven. But the guarantees are only as solid as Glam's business.

We're told the company is no longer offering them to all new publishers, and is desperately trying to renegotiate existing publisher contracts to get out of its guarantees. No surprise there: An insider says the company's revenues are running at almost half what it projected for investors. If Hansell really wanted to dig into Glam, he'd find out what those numbers are. Glam's vociferous commenters may well prompt him to do that.

Did the New York Times Joker-ize Digg CEO Jay Adelson?

Jackson West — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:00:00 EDT

Saul Hansell quoted Digg CEO Jay Adelson defending the Associated Press (of which Hansell's publication the Times is a member). TechCrunch's Michael Arrington freaked out, natch. Adelson then attempted to further explain his complicated position, trying to be diplomatic. Yawn. As we've said before, and will say again, exercise your fair use rights under the law and shut up, because giving the AP attention just feeds its argument and therefore reinforces its position. Moving on:

What struck me about Hansell's piece was the use of a file photo that features a wildly grinning and unbelievably baby-faced Adelson — with professionally trimmed hair, no less! Looks a little too much like a certain viral movie marketing campaign to be a coincidence. Is the gray lady secretly synergizing with News Corp. on the latest Dark Knight release and subtly Joker-izing Adelson?