(By Tom on 18 January 2010 | Posted in Announcements)
Bannerflow is a web application that you can access with a web browser to manage and store your banner ad campaigns. But, clearly, we’re not alone in the web app marketplace.
We wanted to provide a quick run-down of some web apps that we use daily, some we even swear by.
- Harvest—is a great tool for managing time, invoicing and creating estimates. We’ve used a variety of resources in the past–from free-hand MS Word docs to enterprise-level billing solutions–and Harvest is a dead-simple, gorgeous application. Like many of the applications on this list, it makes a boring task not only tolerable, but actually kind of enjoyable. Extra points for integration with Basecamp, QuickBooks and other popular applications.
- Basecamp—tons is already said about 37signals’ wildly-popular application. We totally agree–it helps us stay on track.
- Notable—we use this app for managing site revisions and platform upgrades. This QA tool is fantastic. It beats the pants off trading PDFs back and forth or–even worse–trading email commentary. Check it out if you’re doing any site review work.
- iContact—not exactly a web app in the sense that there would be any other way to manage this, but we wanted to give iContact a shout-out as our email service provider of choice. Yes, of course, there more-featured, enterprise-level ESPs out there, but that’s not what we want or need. iContact follows much of the theme of this list–it’s very easy and intuitive.
What web apps do you use?
(By Tom on 16 January 2010 | Posted in Banner Tips)
We asked this question a few months ago, and we’d like to see how the responses have changed
Take the survey: What version of ActionScript do you use? »(Survey Monkey link)
Let us know your feedback in the comments!
(By Tom on 4 January 2010 | Posted in Advertising)
Here’s a recap of several insightful forecasts and prognostications for the New Year.
- AdweekMedia Forecast 2010—“As it turns out, not all traditional brands love banner advertising. There is still far too much display inventory out there. And even the red-hot video segment lacks a sure business model.”
Not exactly a great pull quote from this article, but the article emphasizes the fact that flat-out banner ads will likely not drive growth in our sector this year. Look for search and video to be the big players, but the strategic buyer and creator will need to remember how to accompany display units with both video and any advances Google/Bing/Twitter make within their always-changing positions of search/display.
- Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO—“While media dollars have imploded, media consumption will continue to explode.”
Can’t be said much more simply. We hold a lot of excitement in this industry because the consumption will only grow by leaps and bounds. The media dollars spent in traditional sectors remains way out of proportion with the number of eyeballs sitting in front of digital screens. The recession will push us further into shifting more dollars to digital (59% of marketers say they’ll do just that).
- Analyst: Online Display Ads Set to Surge—“The stagnant display advertising space should bounce back in 2010, but it will be up to Web publishers to undertake more drastic measures to increase the value of their ad space, including reducing inventory and eschewing ad networks.”
As the publishers–whether news organizations or TV networks–face more and more the daily revelation that we’re all online, they’ll start to invest and strategically utilize their web properties more effectively. This includes adding some energy behind their ad offering. Clearly the days of just placing some banner ads on a page are coming to an end. Great article here.
