Marketing Pilgrim

There have been some great innovations that have come out of Google employees’ “20%” time. You know, the mandate from Google that they spend 20% of their time solving problems, building new features, or just changing the world for the better.

This isn’t one of them:

OK, so it probably didn’t come out of anyone’s 20% time, but I’m not sure why this was worthy of a Googler’s precious time. After all, it seems like a complex process:

The Adobe v. Apple tussle is now becoming an all out battle. Steve Jobs raised the bar recently with his attack on Adobe which surprised many by its level of intensity. We’re not completely sure why there is a serious bee in Jobs’ bonnet but its there for sure.

With the ball firmly in Adobe’s court we find today from Engadget that Adobe is ready to play hardball. They are running the following ad on sites (Engadget included)

Take that, Steve-O! There is a full page ad in the Washington Post as well so Adobe is apparently willing to put some hard earned Flash money into combating the attack. How quickly this turns into a full-blown battle or just a hair-pulling screaming match is anyone’s guess.

If you are tired of hearing about Facebook and privacy you may not be alone but there is also little to no relief in the long range forecast. It looks like there may be an extended heat wave relating to Facebook and their privacy attempts / blunders / mea culpas etc. Things must be getting pretty hot because yesterday Facebook called an “all hands” meeting for today to discuss the very issue that keeps putting Facebook in the spotlight for what it isn’t doing rather than what it is doing. No company likes that kind of press even if you appear to be inhuman like Facebook can at times.

Inside Facebook reports

Facebook served 16% of all display ads in Q1 of this year, according to comScore, making it the largest online display ad publisher in the US—handily beating #2 Yahoo, reports ClickZ.

Facebook’s growth is impressive whether compared to its Q4 numbers or Yahoo’s numbers. In Q1, Yahoo’s properties saw 132B impressions (12.1% of all online display ad impressions). In Q4, Facebook served about 115B impressions. In Q1 of this year, Facebook served a whopping 176B impressions: a 53% increase over its previous quarter. (Yahoo saw a slight decrease from Q4: down from 140B impressions, or 6%, and all other major ad players also saw declines.)

Last year in Q1, Facebook served 70B ad impressions, which means they increased their ad impressions by over 150% YOY.

(Not really, of course.)

Six Apart, owners of the blog-hosting service TypePad, have found a new way to monetize blogs: advertising. Okay, so that’s not new, and neither is the basic concept of sponsored conversations, but the execution this time is a little different.

We’ve seen sponsored blog posts for reviews and pay-per-post models—and we’ve seen them done badly, too. Paid reviews often ended up sounding like (surprise) ads, with or without disclosure. Six Apart’s new TypePad Conversations seeks to avoid that problem—by not having bloggers actually talk about the products.

Have you ever had some news to share with others–so exciting– that you simply can’t wait to get the word out?

The kind of news that you really should keep quiet about, but you’re just so giddy about it you have to tell everyone, no matter what the consequences?

Steve Jobs knows that experience.

You see, last month the Apple CEO couldn’t wait to share the company’s upcoming iAds–advertising for iPhone apps–and stick it to Google. Unfortunately for Jobs, that premature announcement tipped Apple’s hand and gave Google the ammunition it needed to push through its acquisition of AdMob–yes, the same company Apple tried to acquire.