Bubble Project

Online Local Advertising Estimated To Grow 26 Percent This Year To $20 Billion Local advertising is the great untapped market for the Web, and unlocking it is what is driving much of mobile and geo-targeted advertising these days. Think Google Places, Yelp, Craigslist, Foursquare, Patch, Citygrid, Gowalla, Yodle, Yext, and so on. How big is the local advertising pie and how much can Internet companies capture? According to a brand spanking new forecast from market research firm BIA/Kelsey, online local advertising in the U.S. will reach nearly $20 billion this year, which is up a very healthy 26 percent from last year. (That includes the online efforts of offline advertisers. BIA/Kelsey forecasts that online local advertising will grow to $35 billion by 2014, at which point it will make up 24 percent of a $145 billion market. Local TV advertising should also do well this year because of the boost from the elections.

TRUEsamples: life instructions 424 macon street bed-stuy, ny 11233 718. 919. 8925 TRUE@TRUEart.biz www.TRUEart.biz NON-PERMISSIONAL SITE-SPECIFIC PUBLIC INSTALLATION (1994-1999): i created my own versions of each of the mta’s subway instructional stickers, i then printed 3,000 of them and spent the next several months enlisting the aid of friends and friends of friends to ride the trains all night, installing my stickers over the originals. i called the series “life instructions,” because they each offered snippets of philosophy that had helped me turn my life in a more positive direction, and i thought that others might benefit from the ideas as well. although the largest of them were removed fairly quickly by mta officials (and admirers), the less conspicuous were seen as late as 1999. with an annual ridership of nearly 1.5 billion, one can only guess as to how many people saw these pieces over the course of their 5-year run. in each set of images below, the original is followed by my version.

Brand Affinity Technologies Raises $20M To Match Celebs With Endorsement Deals Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), the company that creates a technology that matches celebrities with endorsement deals, has just raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Miramar Venture Partners, with existing investors Newport Coast Investments, RimLight Capital, Fulcrum Venture Capital, CGI Opportunity Fund II, and Ad Pepper Media International also participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $26 million. We’ve heard that the pre-money valuation was in the ballpark of $60 to $80 million. BAT’s technology includes a research engine that matches advertisers with more than 38,000 celebrities for endorsement deal. The company’s proprietary technology will take into account the ambitions of an ad campaign and the particular brand of a celeb and recommend a deal with the appropriate athletes, actors and more. The company says that the investment will be used to extend BAT’s Endorsement technology into music and other celebrity categories, and international expansion.

The power of time off: Stefan Sagmeister on TED Design New playlist: Design giants Happy Tuesday! Live from TED2014 “If I don’t ask, I won’t get”: A recap of “I heart design,” All-Stars Session 4 at TED2014 By Liz Jacobs and Helen Walters It’s often said that good design is invisible design — it makes things easy and delightful without us realizing it. Forget Ads In Books, Lit-Lovers Face An Even More Hideous Prospect It’s a pity readers don’t want to pay for stories about the death of traditional media, because otherwise journalists and commentators would be riding a big fat cash cow. In recent months it’s been impossible to open a newspaper or magazine without being drenched by a tidal wave of “waaaaah”s and “woah”s and “oh my God we’re all doomed”s from those of us who make our living selling words. If it’s not newspapers – the fall of advertising! the rise of paywalls! the death of columnists! This week it’s books (again), and a stark warning from the Wall Street Journal’s Ron Adner and William Vincent to anyone who prefers literature unsullied by full-page ads for SUVs and tobacco. “With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers’ profits? Oh no! But now, thanks to e-readers, all that is changing. It’s much more appropriate to draw a parallel between books and film.

Making Happy June 13, 2007 Making Happy Replacement graphic for NYC subway signage The above graphic is not my idea. Like when I was a kid tracing the Sunday funnies—I always thought if I practiced enough, the magic would sink in and I could do it on my own. Post note: The art was made by TRUE. Right after posting in the wee hours of the morning, I consumed my smorgasbord of daily feeds hoping to wind down and get some sleep. I came across a link to Stefan Sagmeister's presentation at TED more than once—and it lingered in a back tab of my browser waiting to be fired up. Here is the video: TED Talks - Stefan Sagmeister: Yes, design can make you happy [ also note, I think the TED site design is the cat's whiskers ] If I collected all the funny YouTube I go through in any given period of time and channel it in to something else, I could actually, probably, learn something and enrich my life. The point is, I really enjoyed Stefan's talk and I'm glad this material is available online. Complaining is silly.

Here's The Personal Data Stored On Facebook's Tracking 'Cookie' For Advertisers