Darren Herman - Marketing, Media and Technology Conversations - Latest Comments

Re: One of my favorite days of the year: TMK Digital Media Venture Capital Conference

Venture Capital Partners — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:42:54 -0000

Awesome . Thanks for such an informative article . Keep sharing . :))

Re: Rethinking What I Know About Formal Education

Jon Burg — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:25:05 -0000

My wife and I have been discussing this for some time. With our recent move, we are learning our way through the Israeli educational system, which is an odd push both towards strong skills in math and science, as well as a more free-form approach to other subjects with far more opportunity for the arts.

In a country fueled by entrepreneurialism, what role will a traditional degree play in a career (as opposed to two or three years at a tech company)?

At the same time, look at what's happening at Yahoo! Clearly college still matters to many.

Re: Rethinking What I Know About Formal Education

falicon — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:23:26 -0000

Since it's fresh on your mind, I think you'll really enjoy today's XKCD -> http://xkcd.com/1052/

Re: Rethinking What I Know About Formal Education

dherman76 — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:41:28 -0000

We are in the same boat. I'm really interested in where all of this is heading.

Re: Rethinking What I Know About Formal Education

falicon — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:33:20 -0000

My wife and I have this debate often as well (ours are in 3rd and K right now)...she's much more a believer in traditional education than I am...I continue to say that by the time our boys are of college age it will look nothing like what she thinks of as 'college'...

Re: Marketing Wednesday: Media

kenne679 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:59:29 -0000

Nice job. Personally I like this article. I think it would be more and more helpful for all those people are want to drive their career in SEO field.

Re: Marketing Wednesday: Media

gary345 — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:08:24 -0000

Nice job. Personally I like this article. I think it would be more and more helpful for all those people are want to drive their career in SEO field.

Re: 30 Years. Tips for Being the Young Punk At the Table

Tom Hansbury — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:23:01 -0000

Great advise for any young ambitious professional, I've passed this onto many as a must read. Happy Birthday

Re: High Frequency Trading and Online Advertising

High Frequency Trading — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:57:02 -0000

Well put Michael, when HFT is used for fungible arbitrage it helps to create a much more efficient market place for all. Its funny that people take advantage of algos that were writtent to take advantage of humans in this round robin evolution in trading. The losers often cry foul. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are just slow.

Re: David Ogilvy Was Pontificating and It’s Happening Today (Video + Post)

Rob Sandie — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 02:30:36 -0000

fist shake pause at the end was most epic. seriously though.. nice video. amazing how brand vs. direct response advertising is finding it's own through the changes in mediums.

Re: David Ogilvy Was Pontificating and It’s Happening Today (Video + Post)

LeeF — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:11:51 -0000

Very powerful video, Darren. Great find! Here's another you may find relevant, Lester Wunderman describing the origin of accountable advertising... http://bit.ly/HsPMOs

Re: What does scale mean in an advertising world where it doesn’t matter?

dherman76 — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:51:11 -0000

I like it!

Re: What does scale mean in an advertising world where it doesn’t matter?

Kirby Winfield — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:53:52 -0000

Great post Darren. I like the idea of "audience rental". To push the metaphor further, perhaps the most successful digital campaigns are "rent to own"?

Re: 30 Years. Tips for Being the Young Punk At the Table

dherman76 — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:23:33 -0000

Thanks David!

Re: 30 Years. Tips for Being the Young Punk At the Table

David Chen — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:16:55 -0000

Happy Birthday! Can't believe you just turn 30.

Re: Search is bought, not sold

Joe Pych — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:11:55 -0000

Great points, Darren. One thing about search is that it satisfies demand, but it does not create demand. You already have intent when you search. Your intent may have been caused by other advertising efforts. One goal of advertising is to create intent. This intent-based approach will capture the demand after it is created. It seems you need both approaches... what do you think?

Re: Search is bought, not sold

Brent Halliburton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:06:49 -0000

I always tell people, "What makes Google valuable is that it has the best inventory in the world: A virtually exclusive monopoly on pages where people are actively expressing an interest in buying incredibly specific things - pages filled with people who are in-market shoppers for plasma TVs, for example"

Turns out, the best inventory in the world is worth ~$200b. Good stuff!

Re: 30 Years. Tips for Being the Young Punk At the Table

dherman76 — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:25:57 -0000

Thanks Dan!

Re: 30 Years. Tips for Being the Young Punk At the Table

Dan — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:15:43 -0000

Happy Birthday Darren, you're the man.

Re: Business Plan Competitions Don’t Reward Business

Dan Forbush — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:42:55 -0000

Well said!

Darren, all of us at Skidmore appreciate your joining us for this. Great to finally meet you!

Re: Business Plan Competitions Don’t Reward Business

Andrew Eisner — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:30:20 -0000

Nice post Darren. I just submitted a biz plan to a competition that disclosed scoring mechanism, and it seems to have a bias (not a strong bias, but it's definitely there) towards "can this team execute this plan?". Since we've got customers and strong inbound interest, that should work in our favor!

Re: Data Alone Is Not A Winning Proposition

David Chen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:55:30 -0000

...but decisions should be based on sound data.

Re: Super Bowl XLVI Advertising, When TV Spots Are No Longer TV Spots

Rob Hunter — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:05:00 -0000

I think that the notion of Connected14 is important, and will become more important over time, but I'm a little worried about that connection mechanic (getting your phone to listen to the audio of a commercial). I believe that the really critical piece in these kinds of transactions is incredibly low friction (and possibly a reward mechanic, even one without real teeth behind it, like Foursquare's). Do you think that by the time a user decides to take action, they'll have time to whip out their phone, get the app running, and take a sample of the commercial? I'd be afraid that they're going to be too late, and catch the next one.

The statements on the Connected14 page are pretty bold - 22% of households have a TV with apps, and ~13% of households use apps on their TV once a week. If your TV has apps, it connects to your wireless network, and it can (with the right app) talk to your phone directly. I'd bet that there are easier ways to make this connection, whether it's a direct communication between your TV and your phone, or your phone is able to access the last few ads run on your TV (through the content provider), there's definitely something really interesting here.

That being said, I hope that I'm totally wrong and that Shazam has figured out some of those problems (or I've overstated them) - they definitely have interesting technology, and I do love seeing involved technology firms succeed.

Re: 2012 Advertising & Media Technology Predictions

David Chen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:51:46 -0000

I like the idea of vGRP. comScore's value proposition to publishers is vGRP will help them surface undervalued inventories (turn remnant into premium). The concern from the publisher side from widely adopting this is what if the advertisers use vGRP to push down eCPM - only paid for the impressions that were viewed instead of paying for all the impressions. For premium publishers who don't have remnant inventory, vGRP can only hurt them. But I can see the value of it for the buyers.

Re: Super Bowl XLVI Advertising, When TV Spots Are No Longer TV Spots

e.p.c. — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:30:24 -0000

Have you heard of Sonic Notify? They demo'd at this month’s NYTM: http://sonicnotify.com/ Toolkit for adding calls-to-action in-stream in video which can be coupled with an app on your mobile device. Not quite as there as Shazam yet.