Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Flipside of the news

We flipped the news over to understand the whole story. Here's how we interpreted it.

News Item: 56% of Americans Check Online News Daily.
The Flipside: the remainder, or 44% of Americans, check Groupon and are exposed to name-calling; Groupon users 'stingy' say participating merchants.

News ItemDirect mail program for the post office targets advertising clients of newspapers. (FYI, newspapers are the post office's biggest clients).
The Flipside: Newspapers threaten to use online payment programs for subscriptions instead of mailing bills. Wait. Who has a subscription to the newspaper? Okay, newspapers threaten to switch  TMC products from direct mail to porch delivery.

News ItemAmerican Express hires advertising exec from Google to promote luxury online private sales.
The Flipside: the rest of America checks Groupon.

News ItemTwitter pushes ads into the timeline...again
The Flipside Prediction: Number of fans for participating companies plummet as Twitter users unfollow them to get away from the featured ads, but look for discounts on Groupon.

News ItemNewspaper that never made money closes.
The Flipside: Laid off workers are told they can apply for jobs at newspaper that almost makes money, should they ever open up (info from same link).

News ItemLos Angeles Times decides to lay off more workers, but before they could call them in, some begged to go.
The Flipside: "They were in talks with senior executives to decide whom to cut, some staffers offered to leave." (Info from same link).

News ItemYahoo Exchange Adds Publisher Real Time Basis Tools
The Flipside Prediction: In order to control advertising quality, publishers spend too much time deciding what inventory to sell to which buyer at what price, and overall site content slips.