Advertising & Marketing

If you were Mark Zuckerberg and you wanted to get ahead of potential government regulation of your business, what would you fix first? Would you try to curtail social media addiction, protect privacy, reduce mental health risks, reduce weaponized information, eliminate hate speech, flag misinformation, deal with data governance, or address some other seemingly intractable problem? Here's what I'd fix first. Continue Reading →

OnlyFans (OF) announced that—for business reasons—it was going to ban sexually explicit content. Five days later, the company reversed its decision. Luckily, this article isn't about their decision-making process... it's about how you might build an alternative app. Continue Reading →

You have a hidden talent I’d like to call your attention to. By the time you were 18 years old, you had watched more than 20,000 hours of video (TV, movies, online, etc.). That’s more than twice the number of hours most people need to become an expert at any skill. So while you may not know all the technical jargon, when it comes to judging content, creativity, and execution, you are truly a video production expert. This is going to come in handy, because today, every major corporate meeting and event needs to be reimagined and staged to work for both in-person and online audiences. Continue Reading →

Over the past few months, people have started using the term "NFT" interchangeably with the term "digital collectible." This is unfortunate, because while most of the digital collectibles in the news are NFTs, the technology can be used to create value in many additional ways. When thinking about fan development, which we will define (just for this article) as a collection of purpose-built tools designed to grow communities of interest, perhaps the most obvious use for an NFT is as a ticket to an event. Let’s review some of the benefits you might expect from combining a ticket, some unique digital assets, and a smart contract. Continue Reading →

If you have an Alexa-enabled device or any Amazon device that is Amazon Sidewalk-capable, you are automatically opted in to sharing up to 80Kbps (capped at 500MB per month) of your WiFi network with Amazon and your neighbors. After I tell you how to opt-out, I'll tell you what it is and why Amazon thinks it's a good idea. If you want to use the service and lend part of your WiFi network to Jeff Bezos, you don't need to do anything. You are opted-in unless you do the following. Continue Reading →

As she approached the entrance to the club, she gave the frame of her new prescription AR glasses a gentle squeeze. When she got to the door, it appeared to turn green, indicating recognition that she was over 21 years of age. Then, a message appeared along with a friendly voice asking for the 5 ADA cover charge. She shook her head yes. A moment later, the door opened, which indicated that the transaction had cleared. And so begins a story about life in a trustless, decentralized world − a tale from under the Merkle tree. Continue Reading →

Whenever I'm asked about the fate of the television business, I always answer, "As goes the next NFL deal, so goes TV." Well, as everyone with even the slightest interest in the subject already knows, the NFL/TV deal is done—but times have changed. Continue Reading →

There's a reason you're getting more robocalls now: due to the pandemic, many international call centers were shut down. At the same time, the government did its best to reduce COVID-19-related phone scams. All that's over now. Robocall volume is back to pre-pandemic levels, and about 60 percent of these calls are scams or unsolicited telemarketing. Continue Reading →

The speed of information is directly equated to economic success. If you learn something before your competitor does and you have the tools to make the knowledge actionable, you are almost always going to profit from it. So, while it’s true that “knowledge is power,” the true power comes from the speed with which you can create information asymmetry in a transactional environment. This is the goal of our new online innovation briefings. Continue Reading →

The gravity of what happened in Washington this past week cannot be overstated. There can be no excuses made for the people who attacked the Capitol Building. There is no justification for what they did. To a person, they should be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. In the aftermath, Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Google and Apple removed Parler (an app that allows anyone to write anything) from their respective app stores. Not surprisingly, Trump supporters are trying to gaslight the Constitution. Continue Reading →