Author Archives: Frédéric Filloux

Why Google Will Crush Nielsen

May 19, 2013 – 10:43 pm

Tweet  Internet measurement techniques need a complete overhaul. New ways have emerged, potentially displacing older panel-based technologies. This will make it hard for incumbent players to stay in the game. The web user is the most watched consumer ever. For tracking purposes, every large site drops literally dozens of cookies in the visitor’s browser. In [...]

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Two strategies: The Washington Post vs. The NYT

May 13, 2013 – 8:22 am

Tweet  Both are great American newspapers, both suffer from the advertising slump and from the transition to digital. But the New York Times’ paywall strategy is making a huge difference.  The Washington Post’s financials provide a good glance at the current status of legacy media struggling with the shift to digital. Unlike others large dailies, [...]

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This Wristband Could Change Healthcare

April 29, 2013 – 3:56 am

Tweet  Jawbone is launching is UP wristband in Europe. Beyond the quirky gadget lies a much larger project: Changing healthcare — for better or for worst.   Hyperkinetic as he is, Hosain Rahman, the Jawbone founder, must be saturating his Jawbone UP wristband with data. The rubberized band, nicely designed by Yves Behar, is filled with [...]

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What’s the Fuss About Native Ads?

April 21, 2013 – 6:29 pm

Tweet  In the search for new advertising models, Native Ads are booming. The ensuing Web vs. Native controversy is a festival of fake naïveté and misplaced indignation.  Native Advertising is the politically correct term for Advertorial, period. Or rather, it’s an upgrade, the digital version of an old practice dating back to the era of [...]

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A lesson of Public e-Policy

April 14, 2013 – 8:00 pm

Tweet  The small Baltic republic of Estonia is run like a corporation. But its president believes government must to play a crucial role in areas of digital policy such as secure ID.  Toomas Hendrik Ilves must feel one-of-a-kind when he attends international summits. His personal trajectory has nothing in common with the backgrounds of other [...]

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Schibsted’s High Octane Diversification

April 7, 2013 – 9:31 pm

Tweet  The Norwegian media group Schibsted now aggressively invests in startups. The goal: digital dominance, one market at a time. France is in next in line. Here is a look at their strategy.  This thought haunts most media executives’ sleepless nights: “My legacy business is taking a hit from the internet; my digital conversion is [...]

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The Mobile Rogue Wave

March 24, 2013 – 10:56 pm

Tweet  Publishers are concerned: The shift to mobile advertising revenue is lagging way behind the transfer of users to smartphones and tablets. Solutions are coming, but it might take a while before mobile ads catch up with users. (A mistake in the ad revenue chart has been corrected)  Last week, at a self-congratulatory celebration held [...]

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Data in the driver’s seat

March 17, 2013 – 8:48 pm

Tweet  Autonomous vehicles — fully or partially — will rely on a large variety of data types. And guess who is best positioned to take advantage of this enormous new business? Yep, Google is.  The Google driveless car is an extraordinary technical achievement. To grasp the its scope, watch this video featuring a near-blind man [...]

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Growing Forces in Mobile

March 3, 2013 – 8:42 pm

Tweet  As seen last week in Barcelona, the mobile industry is red hot. The media sector will have to work harder to capture its share of that growth. The 2013 edition of the Mobile World Congress held last week in Barcelona was as large as the biggest auto-show in the world: 1500 exhibitors and a [...]

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Google News: The Secret Sauce

February 24, 2013 – 9:00 pm

Tweet  A closer look at Google’s patent for its news retrieval algorithm reveals a greater than expected emphasis on quality over quantity. Can this bias stay reliable over time? Ten years after its launch, Google News’ raw numbers are staggering: 50,000 sources scanned, 72 editions in 30 languages. Google’s crippled communication machine, plagued by bureaucracy [...]

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