Adding yet more fuel to the argument of my previous post about the growth of international advertising is this article from MediaPost.  While the US is the leader among all global online advertising markets, the chart in the article makes it very clear that other markets that have much larger populations will soon become much bigger online advertising markets, especially China and India.  When computers fall below $100 (as One Laptop Per Child and Intel are proving can be done) and broadband or WiFi access become

The editors of our magazine Chilango (our city guide for Mexico City, much like New York Magazine serves the Big Apple), asked me to write a review of Ashes and Snow, the photography show that arrived in Manhattan 3 years ago, since I had seen it then. Following is the review in English and you can read the review on our website here in Spanish.  The nomadic museum appears in the historic Zócalo, the main plaza of downtown Mexico City in front of the cathedral.

My good friend and fellow blogger, Timothy Dahl, asked a good question in response to my last post about international search traffic and what language they search in.  So should we consider Spanish or any other language when planning our SEO strategy? Do Mexicans search in Spanish and then read English websites if they find what they are looking for? In Mexico, I have seen that the early adopters of the Internet are for the most part very well educated and read English with ease.  So,

This quote from John Battelle’s book The Search (on page 31) got my attention for a couple of reasons: 1) Publishers and marketers alike have not fully taken advantage of opportunities to sell/buy international advertising inventory partially because they don’t know what to do with it and also because budgets are organized by country.  In the coming year or two, we are going to see this area increase in importance as publishers try to monetize this inventory and as marketers work towards developing messages that take advantage

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to read a couple of excellent books. The Glass Castle is a memoir told from the perspective of a young girl who grows up with an alcoholic father and a mother who calls herself an “excitement addict.” It is an unbelievable story of survival as the parents move from town to town to evade bill collectors and how eventually the children grow up to take care of their own parents. The Search by John Battelle is about “How

Privacy experts, start your engines.  This story just blows my mind.  My brother used to consult a high-end restaurant chain in LA, which I will not name.  One of his friends there told him about how now, when employees (and especially the wait staff) call in sick, the management checks their MySpace pages.  I assume here that employees are required to give their email address upon application and the management looks on MySpace via their email (or perhaps just searching for their name).  So, the

‘Tis the season for holiday celebrations…and for media companies to roll out their best of the year lists. So many interesting trend overviews that it is frankly overwhelming. Nevertheless, I was glad that I read many of them as a means of getting a 50,000 view of what is happening in the media business and in our society in general. Time’s Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin, an interesting and controversial choice, perhaps to boost readership? Wall Street Journal’s list of the best CD’s was

Over this holiday week, I have had some great conversations with my parents.  Today, I asked them about their media habits growing up.  Oh what a different world we live in compared to when my folks grew up in suburban Milwaukee.  They are now 67 and 75 (and are avid Internet users).  My dad told me about how his family was one of the first to have a telephone in his neighborhood in 1939 or so.  The neighbors had to come over to his house to receive

This article in the WSJ about Yoani Sanchez, a blogger in Havana, completely blew me away.  US bloggers and Americans in general forget that freedom of speech and freedom of the press is not a given.  We are lucky to have that freedom and should foster it.  Yoani writes what she wants to say about Cuba in her blog and is taking a big risk in getting thrown in jail if her blog is discovered by the authorities.  Will Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, continue to allow her to publish

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season. I took this a couple of years ago, but thought it would make a very nice visual for the season. More soon…