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My answer to What are some of the technology innovations we might see in online advertising in 2011?

Jan 20, ’11 4:01 PM

I think the two huge things that technology is changing in online advertising are 1) targeting. And 2) what I am starting to think of as “applitisements”, which is to say: display and mobile ads are going to become more and more like mini web applications. Neither of these things is a singular, momentary “innovation” in its own right, nor do I think as trends that they started or will end in 2011, but I think 2011 is when they start really coming together beyond the clumsy first steps.

Targeting is a bit more obvious and already on more people’s radar. As users share and connect more of their data, advertisers are going to be able to hyper-target and personalize their ad buys (think “males 30-40 who follow @mybrand on twitter and live in australia”). I think most people in the advertising world are aware of this at a conceptual level, but 2011 is when you’re going to really start seeing more effective targeted ads.

Applitisements, in the strictest technical sense, have been with us since the first Flash banner, but as online identities become more cross-site pervasive and HTML5 and integration APIs grow (see iAd), online ads are going to become much, much more robust and – hopefully :) – better.

Just to take a really simple example off the top of my head: Imagine you’re watching a movie trailer online. At the end of the trailer, not only are you provided with the “theaters closest to you”, but the applitisement already knows which theaters you buy tickets to the most often and displays those first, it lets you invite other people to go with you and buy the tickets without having to login or enter your CC info (ideally, there’s an in-ad password entry or other auth “reverify”). No jumping between websites, pages or windows or copying and pasting. All within the ad. And it doesn’t matter if you’re viewing the ad on a phone or a desktop, it just works.

Now, I’m not saying you’ll see the above example “this” year, but 2011 is the first year where I can actually say to myself “Okay, if I were going to write that ad, I need X, Y, and Z to happen and I have to do A, B, and C” and none of those things feel like some nebulous far-off “someday.” The pieces are all starting to come together.

What are some of the technology innovations we might see in online advertising in 2011?

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iPhone 3.0 still no lock screen options except for Rock Your Phone and not even that for 3GS

Jul 5, ’09 7:55 PM

I kind of went crazy with iPhone software after I got a 3GS. The speed increase of the GS is staggering compared to the original iPhone and visibly faster than the 3G. With the speed bump I found my phone much more useable and I went on an activation and app downloading craze, including activating my work Exchange account. Exchange support seems to work quite well. I basically just turned it on, set it to sync mail, calendar and contacts and, aside from now having 2 of every contact everything just worked.

Now I felt all set, I could finally discard my work blackberry (surely someone else at the office could use it…) cause I had my work mail and calendar on my phone. I could even provision new cloud servers and SSH to our VPN’d production servers, if needed. Everything was great and amazing, a mobile technology and productivity marvel.

But something was missing. At first I wasn’t sure what. I knew I kept checking my phone for new mail and that it felt annoying. So I looked at the Blackberry on my desk and it was obvious. The iPhone, even 3.0, doesn’t update the lock screen with any information. Surely this must be a setting or something I thought. No. After searching endlessly through the settings and in Google it would seem the only good solution out there at the moment is Intelliscreen. Oh well I’ll just get Rock Your Phone and jailbreak my phone and get that! Nope. Rock Your Phone doesn’t support the 3GS, at the moment anyway.

One has to think that either Apple or Rock Your Phone will rectify this in the next 12 months, but it’s still quite annoying and it makes the Exchange support seem kind of half-assed. Apple is clearly aiming at Microsoft’s enterprise dominance and leaving out something as simple as better indication of whether or not one has new mail almost feels like a silly oversight.

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