Slate has an in-house agency, Slate Custom Group, that helps create content for brands.
When Slate began in 1996, Internet ads were getting 44 percent click-through rates on average. Then 10 years ago, click-through rates dropped to 10 percent. Today, well, we all know that scary .1 percent number.
In the middle of last year, Slate decided it needed to address a common ailment in the digital publishing arena: banner blindness. The result: an in-house agency, Slate Custom Group, to help advertisers create and distribute advertising content and programs.
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PBS’s digital arm, Digital Studios, has seen significant growth since it started last year. But it still needs to find ways to generate revenue.
Millions of Americans can point to PBS as a third parent, as the network that helped raise them with programs like “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
But PBS is not immune to the transition from analog to digital and needs to continually reinvent itself. Recent data points to success, no matter that Mitt Romney wants to kill Big Bird.
PBS Digital Studios, PBS’s digital arm, started in 2012 and has had a heck of a first year. For the first five months of 2013, PBS.org was the No. 1 TV network site for unique visitors, according to Comscore. It recently racked up seven Webby awards, more than any other media company. PBS Kids has been the No. 1 site in kids video for the last 16 months.
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Spin Media is trying to rebuild itself, and introducing a creative services team to help advertiser’s create content.
Spin Media’s Steve Hansen has had a hell of a first six months as the company’s CEO. But he’s looking over the horizon of the next two years, and while it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, Hansen sees some rays of sunlight peeking through.
Buzz Media, which bought Spin Media last July and rebranded itself as Spin Media this March, is coming off a year of tremendous turnover, both on the business side and editorial side. But out of the ashes, the company is focusing on three core tenets — audience engagement, better advertising opportunities for brands and a beefed-up technology platform — to build its digital business.
Click through to read the rest. Oh, and Spin Magazine, the print version, is coming back.
I’m currently researching vacation ideas. My job is to look into Prague and Budapest; my wife is looking into Croatia.
As I’ve been looking at hotels and attractions, I came across Sternberg Palace. Which led me to the Wikipedia entry about the castle, and interestingly, the etymology of my surname:
The name Šternberk derives from the German language and is the Czech spelling of the German composite word Sternberg (literally meaning “Starmountain”: Stern meaning “star” and Berg meaning “mountain”)
So there you have it. I am Joshua Starmountain.