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 Item: Direct 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 Item: American Express hires advertising exec from Google to promote luxury online private sales.
The Flipside: the rest of America checks Groupon.
News Item: Twitter 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 Item: Newspaper 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 Item: Los 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 Item: Yahoo 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.