HuffPo's Future; Dick Costolo's Last Day

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The Huffington Most

Speculation of a HuffPo spin-off percolated in the wake of Verizon’s AOL acquisition, but the company could bring value that’s hard to hand off. HuffPo has been a barometer of sorts for digital news, mastering SEO when most views came from Google searches and A/B headline testing when users moved to social media. The pub evidently offers a three-item native content deal to advertisers for $130,000. The NYT offers an interesting peek inside what one ex-staffer calls a “discombobulated chaos machine.” Among the story’s tidbits: 2014 revenue was $146 million, or about breakeven. Read it.

Exeunt Costolo

Wednesday marked Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s last day on the job, and he shared some parting words with The Guardian on his way out. According to Costolo, Twitter’s IPO sparked shortsightedness. “When we took the company public, I had an expectation that the market would evaluate us based on our financial metrics first and foremost,” he said. “I probably would frame the way we were thinking about the future of the company differently, understanding how we were in retrospect evaluated.” Despite growing Twitter revenues 97% year on year to $1.7 billion, Costolo fielded much criticism for stalled user growth. Read more.

The Internet Of My Things

As everyday goods like cars, kitchen appliances, brick-and-mortar retail and consumer-tech gadgets become more integrated with the digital world, brands see the potential for new consumer data sources. But balancing the high potential value of that data against consumers’ instinctive privacy concerns is a tough to navigate for many companies. Ad Age data editor Kate Kaye suggests all firms involved be more open with the public, as recent surveys show people are worried about connected devices collecting data. What’s needed may be education, not obfuscation. Read the full post at Ad Age.

Spotlight On Cross-Device

MIT Technology Review dives into cross-device targeting with a detailed primer by Adam Tanner. The brave new world in cross-device linking is, of course, television. “Advertisers on the whole are cautiously approaching targeted TV commercials, even as many expect such ad personalization in the future. Industry officials say they want to turn up the temperature slowly on the frogs in the pot of advertising, lest they leap out and prod regulation.” But the accuracy of cross-device methodologies – especially probabilistic measurement – is up for debate. More.

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