It has never ceased to amaze me that lots of companies are able to get their acts together sufficiently to purchase product placement opps months and months in advance. Oh, I understand why it makes sense to plan ahead – it’s just that I’ve been working in digital for so long. And digital is a [...]
Archive for August, 2011
Start-Up Watch: SeamBI reinvents product placement in the shape of advertising placement
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 24th, 2011at 12:01 am
Start-Up Watch COD: Vurve puts advertising for ecommerce sites on autopilot
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 22nd, 2011at 12:01 am
Different ecommerce sites have different levels of management resources available to them. Some sites have entire teams focused on driving traffic and sales, while others have small staffs charged with many duties to juggle.
Vurve is a web-based service that helps such sites drive stronger results from online marketing efforts by automating the process of planning, [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: Everloop is out to make social remarkably safe for kids
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 19th, 2011at 12:01 am
Sometimes I wonder how parents are able to sleep at night, given all of the dangers that are out there for kids. Particularly online. Oh, I get it intellectually – you teach, weigh risks and benefits, trust, and monitor.
But it has to be darn hard to make your peace with certain activities. And one of [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: TapIt focuses on making Mobile perform for more marketers
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 18th, 2011at 12:01 am
The CW on Mobile is horribly outdated. Issues of Scale, CPM, and Creative Freedom have been well addressed. Really. But while tens of millions of Americans are now relying on their Mobile devices for access, most brands aren’t leveraging Mobile, or at least not very much.
So why is this? I think part of the reason [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: Kikin Is a Leap Forward On The Road To A Personalized Web
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 17th, 2011at 12:01 am
With billions of web pages available to all of us, one might think that we would be constantly exploring new venues and avenues. And we are…to some extent. But we spend most of our digital time in a relatively small set of communities and websites that deliver content we value and enjoy.
Part of the reason [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: Hunch Creates A Personalized Recommendations Community Through Their Massive “Taste Graph”
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 16th, 2011at 12:01 am
Reviews of products and services have become a currency of the web, helping consumers make more informed purchase decisions. If they have a serious fault, it is that recommender and reader may have wildly different tastes. Without understanding the perspective and lifestyle of a recommender, it can be challenging to identify the posts that are [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: Yext Local delivers “Power Listings” for local businesses across the web
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 15th, 2011at 12:01 am
Different gets noticed. We all know that. If everyone else is in a white shirt and a repp tie, you’ll stand out in blue. And when a consumer is confronted with dozens of options for the same service, little differences between your listing and the others can dramatically boost your conversion rates.
Yext is a business [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: EyePredict’s EPflow optimizes catalog item displays to your objectives
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 12th, 2011at 12:01 am
When you are selling multiple items online, one of the key challenges you face is to design your online catalog screens. Naturally, different items have different price points and profitability, or relevance to larger numbers of people. How do you decide what goes where?
Well, certain rules have been known for decades. Bigger tends to get [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: appbackr is the wholesale marketplace for apps
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 11th, 2011at 12:01 am
Many talented people have made good money developing and selling mobile apps in the iPhone and Android stores. But as the number of apps has increased, so have the number of challenges.
Quite simply, it’s gotten harder and harder to get noticed, and the costs in time and money to promote an app have increased.
appbackr is [...]
Start-Up Watch COD: Bunchball is out to gamify a broad range of your brand’s online experiences
Posted by Jim Nichols on August 10th, 2011at 12:01 am
There are many actions that we hope consumers will take. Besides clicking to buy, of course. We want them to rate things, consume content, endorse our products, tell their friends about their experiences using our products, etc. We can’t MAKE THEM do these things. Those days, if they ever really existed, are long gone.
Bunchball is [...]
