MattCreamer.com

Whenever I talk to non-industry people about hot topics in advertising, the boom in Internet ads comes up. As I’m describing all the hope that the publishers, agencies, and advertisers are putting on the web as an ad-friendly successor to TV or magazines, a look of incredulity usually washes across their face. Invariably, they […]

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There’s been no posting here thanks to the holiday craziness, a bit of travel and because I’ve been immersed in editing Ad Age’s annual package on the agency business. Over the past two years, this has morphed from a straightforward look at a few agencies of the year alongside capsule reviews of 25 or so […]

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Barry Diller quoted in the Wall Street Journal on why he decided to break up IAC–whose holdings range from the search engine Ask.com, to Lending Tree, to the Home Shopping Network–into five publicly-traded companies:
Mr. Diller said that “while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to […]

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For the past five days, I’ve been consumed by the most salacious legal wrangling to hit the ad business since the whole Julie Roehm/Wal-Mart mess, which, incidentally, looks like it’s going away. What the lawsuit filed against Dentsu by an ex-creative director has that the Wal-Mart saga never did is a stomach-churning level of luridness. […]

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Honeyshed, the “QVC meets MTV” branded-entertainment project from David Droga, former big-agency muckety-muck who’s now a boutique-agency muckety-muck is now live in beta–and extremely buggy. Probably too buggy to get a good read on its prospects, sincem I think, so much of these online video plays are about execution. That and content, of course. […]

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TechCrunch has a great post on a forthcoming tell-all book on MySpace by Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin. A juicy detail: Co-founder Tom Anderson, everyone’s first friend on MySpace, has been lying about his age. Listed as 32 on his profile, it seems like he’s anywhere between 36 and 40. TechCrunch wonders,  “I can’t […]

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AOL chief Randy Falco in The New York Times on his struggling Internet player’s likeness to probably the greatest marketer in the world, a company that manages to grow its massive portfolio of low-involvement brands (soap, people!) against all odds and common sense.
“AOL is like Procter & Gamble,” Mr. Falco explained. “P&G has a number […]

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Another big day for consumers. The famously stubborn Apple announced that it would open up iPhone to third-party developers. In an entirely separate announcement, MySpace, the massively popular social network that been recently outflanked by Facebook, is doing the same. That means that any programmer can now create applications, meaning increased consumer choice and flexibility […]

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I just sat through a really interesting session on private-equity firms’ growing interest interest in the marketing business, whether in brands or in agencies or media sellers. The star was Anton Levy, who led General Atlantic’s deal for a majority stake in AKQA. Levy took a stab at altering the pervasive image of private-equity firms […]

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The big speaker was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who’s trying to change the business community’s view of Microsoft from a stodgy software-maker to a media innovator that’s at the center of digital future. In other words, Microsoft is trying to become a full-fledged ad seller. Ballmer, of course, is bumping up against the perception that […]

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