AAN News

Carat Chief Muses on the Future of Advertisingnew

Arizona Daily Star  |  08-07-2007  9:34 am  |  Industry News

Digitas Looks to Build Global Digital Ad Networknew

"The goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer," the New York Times reports. To do this, Digitas, a unit of the Publicis Groupe, plans to create thousands of digital versions of ads using low-cost offshore labor, and then will use data about consumers and computer algorithms to decide which message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or TV. The Times notes that Publicis is "trying to carve out a niche as a middleman" between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and the consumer brand companies that buy advertising. "It's clear the three of those companies will have a huge share of revenues which will come from advertising,” says Maurice Levy, chairman and chief executive of the Publicis Groupe. "But they will have to make a choice between being a medium or being an ad agency, and I believe that their interest will be to be a medium."
The New York Times  |  08-06-2007  5:55 am  |  Industry News

AAN Distributes White Paper on Public Affairs Advertising

Alternative newsweeklies have always struggled to attract their fair share of political, public affairs and nonprofit advertising. Earlier this year, AAN commissioned a study by Fenton Communications -- the Washington, D.C.-based communications firm that represents MoveOn.org, Save Darfur, Rock the Vote, People for the American Way, and a host of other progressive organizations -- to find out why. The results of their research were mailed today to AAN publishers. While Fenton doesn't sugarcoat the problems alt-weeklies face in the political advertising space, they do offer several ideas about how we can improve our position. In the coming months, AAN will work on a number of action items contained in the report.
AAN  |  08-02-2007  6:11 pm  |  Association News

Reader Editor Says CL Acquisition Not a Sad Day for Chicago

In a staff message sent Friday, Alison True admits there "are reasons to be distressed by a change this big," but claims there are also "reasons to be optimistic" about the sale to Creative Loafing, including the new owners' pledge to maintain editorial independence and enhance the paper's business operations. MORE FROM CHICAGO: In an anonymous post on a Reader blog, a recently hired salesperson remembers why s/he took a large pay cut to take a job at the paper: "I did it because I love the Reader, and I have loved it since I was 15 years old sneaking away from the burbs and into the city searching for the comforting yellow newspaper dispenser. ... I wanted to be around people that keenly observed the world and cared about the people living in it, the people other than themselves with stories to tell. And I found that. Here at the Chicago Reader." (FULL STORY)
Alison True  |  07-30-2007  2:11 pm  |  Industry News

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